Mt. Hood SR

Sunday, 20 May

Short story: If you're going to the Mt. Hood stage race in 10 days:

1. Make time to see the TT course before you race (you can drive most of it and ride the rest as out and back from either end of the trail portion--don't be a doof and try this on race day).

2. Take your winter cycling gear: neoprene booties, goretex gloves, rain jacket, everything. And if you're doing the 1-2 men's or women's race, remember that everybody on the team has to have matching clothing, including rain jackets, vests, etc. Per USAC.

Long-winded story:

On Saturday afternoon, I got to preride the TT course for the upcoming Mt. Hood stage race. It starts at the Discovery Center in The Dalles and ends just outside of Hood River (notice that you race east to west, into the prevailing headwind--the same wind that makes Hood River a windsurfing mecca). Point to point. You can drive the portion of the course between The Dalles and Mosier (which I recommend), but the Old Cascade Highway is closed to cars so you'll have to preview this on your bike (which I also recommend).

You can read the technical details about the course on the race website. But here's how I'd describe it:

The first 3 miles are slightly downhill to flat, really windy, I couldn't have stayed in my aero bars if I tried. You go through the community of Rowena and then up the biggest climb, about 3 miles. It's twisty, mostly not steep, and mostly sheltered. But it's a real climb, not just some little power hill like you usually find in a TT. You round the corner at the top and you're back in the wind. So much wind that I could not keep the bike on the right side of the yellow line and had to clip one foot out and push myself along whenever the gusts subsided. Then the course rolls, mostly downhill I think but with the wind it's tough to tell because you have to pedal hard just to keep the bike going in some sort of line. Finally you come to the cliffs just above Mosier (part of last year's TT course). This is a fast descent that was described to me as "technical"; I guess the wind blows over the top of the cliffs, and you just fly down the slightly twisting road. You roll through Mosier (watch out for traffic with all those driveways and businesses!) and turn right on the Old Cascade Highway. You turn right again (uphill) onto the portion of the highway that's now a bike trail. This is the smoothest asphalt you could ever hope to ride on! There's some more climbing, and then you ride down through the historic tunnel (still smooth asphalt, and no drippy ceiling--the promoter promises lights in here) and then through the bendy colonnade after the tunnel. This is like a snow shed but keeps rocks from the cliffs above from falling on your head. It's supported by square concrete columns maybe 10 feet apart down both sides of the 8?-feet-wide trail. There are a couple of gentle bends, but you are descending at a pretty good clip. The course rolls some more, but this portion is pretty sheltered and wind won't be such a factor through here.

After winning the TT national championship last July, Kristin Armstrong said the course at Seven Springs was the hardest TT she'd ever done. That one was hard because it was unrelentingly up and down and twisty and you couldn't ever get in a rhythm. This year's course at Mt. Hood is, I think, more challenging. It will reward the gutsy, aggressive rider who can battle the wind, but the long climb offers something for the mountain goats. At 18 miles, it is long for a stage race TT, and there's a significant amount of climbing. I realized that if I had raced in the conditions on Saturday, I would've lost more time to the GC leaders in the time trial than in the crit in downtown Hood River on the last day of the race. But I also learned a couple of things about how to better handle my bike in the wind.

As we were riding the course backward to get back to our car, we encountered the LFG on his way home from work (he commutes on this course!). He admitted that sometimes the wind does blow out of the east, which will make for some scary fast racing. The trick to a fast time if the wind is out of the west is knowing when you can stay in your aero bars...and, for lightweights, keeping your bike on the road.

Sunday's plan was to preview the new Wy East road course that starts at Cooper Spur and finishes at Mt. Hood Meadows. The first climb starts as soon as you hit the highway below Cooper Spur. It continues, steeper, when you turn left on Road 44. The first 2 miles on 44 are the steepest, but it's a good long climb. The pavement gets worse near the top, so that the descent is kind of bumpy. The descent has some uphill sections (kind of like stage 4 at Columbia Plateau after the big climb) but generally it's wide open and not technical. And fast. Guys go 50 mph on the bottom of this descent. There's a smooth, flat section before you get to Dufur, a feed zone on a very short little bump, a couple of miles on 197, then you turn off the highway and ride down a little valley. First it seems flat, then uphill false flat, then gradually climbing. It's never steep but it's always twisty. Finally you come to the sign for the summit of the Tygh ("Tie") Ridge and get back onto 197 for a long descent (wide open highway). Turn right, a half mile of flat road takes you into the town of Tygh Valley, and you start climbing again. I suppose you could say the final climb starts here, but really there's a lot of flat stuff after this climb past the town of Wamic.

The road after Wamic is punctuated by some of these and a whole bunch of cracks across the road (remember the ones from the finish of Elkhorn stage 1 back into Baker City?). The road gets narrower and starts to go up, and this is what I would consider the start of the last climb. But there are some significant descents, and it's not steep for a long, long time. It twists through forest and it kind of all looks alike. Eventually you come out onto the highway, keep climbing, turn right for Mt. Hood Meadows, and keep climbing some more. The promoter says the grade in this final section gets up to 12%, and I'm sure it will feel like 20% by that point in the race, but it sure didn't seem like 12% to me.

Today we encountered snow flurries at the top of the first and last climbs, and there was lumpy rain at Mt. Hood Meadows. Hence I encourage you to take your collection of warm clothes for wet weather to the race; if you don't need them, just be happy that you don't. The two Mt. Hood SR veterans with me said that this new course will be more about racing; the climbs aren't as steep as the old epic road course, and there are places to catch back on. I also see a lot of places to go out the back....

Purple thangs

Friday, 18 May










Gorgeous things sometimes happen in my garden, even when it seems I'm away racing or training all the time.

Bike to Work Day

Wednesday, 16 May
Happy Birthday, Nathan!

This Friday, May 18, Mt. St. Helens day, is Bike to Work Day in Seattle. How many commute stations can you visit on your morning ride to work?

http://cbcef.org/btw/btw_stations.html

If I take the long way to work (which is just the reverse of my long way home), I'll go by three. It means leaving early, but since it's officially called Starbucks Bike to Work Day, maybe there will be some caffeinated incentives to help me on my way?

Hope to see you out there. Guess I should wear a team jersey instead of my usual fredly commuter garb....

The right bike for the race

Monday, 14 May

Always be sure to to pick the right bike for conditions on a race course!

Saturday was the Wasco Wild West 75, just outside The Dalles. Any time you're in the Gorge, things are likely to be windy, but Saturday was particularly so. Like 40-50 mph. This race goes around part of the circuit for Stage 1 of the Mt. Hood stage race (4 laps), a really nice course with one long (1 mile?) climb and one short (400 meters?) climb. The longest descent comes after the second hill, and on a still day, you could probably just fly down this, especially since this is a tandem race. However....

We rolled out from the start, a chatty bunch. Where I remembered the course being rolly from last year, it seemed easy (that meant a tailwind, but I was oblivious on this lap). In the last half mile before the first climb, there was some headwind. Then we got to the climb, I thought we were going nice and steady, working but not all-out. After a couple of minutes, Sal said, casually, like he was asking what flavor gel I like, "do you want to stay with those guys?" I looked up and saw that the only male-male (carbon Calfee) bike had a gap. Well, this was lap one, and you don't just let people ride away, even if they are technically in a different category. So we closed the gap, worked a little harder on the rest of the climb, got to the top, and entered the wind tunnel at a low setting. Even then, I remember saying "I'm so glad I'm not on my single bike." It was a thought that came back to me many times during the rest of the race.

Laps 2 and 3 were pretty much the same, just us two bikes riding around, except that the flat tailwind section was noticeably faster (we hit 45), and somehow it was harder whenever we were NOT at the front (that's not how a rotating paceline is supposed to work, is it?). We pulled for about a mile before the hill the third time up, and then the boys attacked us on the climb. An attack on a tandem is usually a slow-motion thing, but these guys had dropped back a little and were going several miles an hour faster than us when they zoomed by. We could've jumped, closed the gap, hung with them for 10 feet, and then blown up--so we just went harder, hoping they'd blow up or at least have to ease up, and watched the gap gradually get bigger. By now, the wind tunnel at the top of the hill was at full blast, and we barely changed gears to go down the descent. A couple of times the bike went in an odd direction, and when we tried to get out of the saddle at one stage, the bike went one direction and I got blown another. "That's why you're locked into your pedals," Sal said.

For much of lap 4, we were mixed in with 3 recumbents from the race that started behind us, and the oddest experience was when we were lined up behind them. No draft effect, I'm sure, but why not try? They'd been sitting on us for miles. The last time down the descent was really, really hard--almost as hard the climb (which was also into the wind). In a moment of typical Sal understatement, he observed "you might describe this course as 'windswept.'" There were several times (in the tailwind section, where you could HEAR things besides air rushing past your ears) that the wind was howling so hard it actually had harmonic pitch. Our legs on this lap were pretty cooked, and we were lucky to get up the long climb without using the granny gear. Riding hard into a strong headwind works your legs differently than a climb, and the combination of the two is really tough.

We won our "co-ed" division, had a nice postrace "cowboy picnic," smiled for the cameras when we collected our medals, and headed out. I was bound for Wenatchee, which meant a gorgeous drive along the north side of the Gorge, over Satus Pass, through the dust storms and across the valley to Yakima, over the ridges to Ellensburg, and through the rainstorm over Blewitt Pass. Got to Wenatchee just in time to see Kenny take full advantage of the Canadian escort that followed Tyler F. everywhere he went in the pro-1-2 crit.

Sunday's omnium stage at Wenatchee was 4.5 flat miles out to a cone in the middle of the road, back to the start, 2 more flat miles, 12 miles up, long descent, and 8 miles of highway to the finish. Given that the selection of skills and tools I brought to this start was even more limited than usual, it seemed that the best I could do was help my climber teammates by keeping the pack together to the bottom of the climb so that they could work as little as possible. This plan worked fine (it probably would've worked just fine without me too, so I don't kid myself that I was a proverbial "factor" in the race). Nobody was the least bit interested in an attack (there was probably a 20 mph tailwind at the start) and nobody seemed to mind that I monopolized the front all the way to the bottom of the climb. (The tricky part was getting my bike around the cone: you don't steer on the back of a tandem, and it takes a while to get back into the habit.) We got to the hill, they took off, I went backward, and then it was time for a nice little training ride in the warm sunshine. Apart from the crushed ego and all the time I spent wondering why I could barely get up the hill in my 34x23, it was a nice ride. For once, I was grateful to be on my single bike: I thought repeatedly about how much I would hate this course on a tandem. And it wasn't the climbing part that scares me most: it's the descent!

Congrats to Allison for riding away from them all on the descent and staying away to the finish! And congrats too to Old as Dirt for beating all the Local Old Fast Guys!

Product review

Friday, 11 May

Maybe I should've titled this post "I think I'm losing my marbles." Yesterday's mail brought me a nifty little packet that contained a Jimi wallet. Junk mail? Probably not: it's got first-class postage and a packing slip (with no price) with my name and address and a viable commercial product. Mail order? I honestly don't think I did. But (here's the scary part) it's something I would have bought given the opportunity--so maybe I did? It's a spiffy plastic container just big enough to carry a few credit cards and the measly collection of cash in my regular wallet. That means it's the perfect thing to slip into my jersey pocket (it'll even fit the XS pockets on an XS jersey) for training rides. And it's made from recycled plastic. It's great. Except that figuring out how it came to me is driving me crazy. If you're responsible, thank you!

Other manna from heaven this week came from AxleyUSA. I think these cool pink glasses (is that a standard color option, PruDog?) are Bandits. They look, um, chunky, but they fit my face and the temples aren't too wide. They got rave reviews (coordinated with my pink jersey and pink socks) at Seward last night. And, since it's finally gotten warm enough to stow the Axley wool sweater in the closet for a couple of months, I have a new Axley T-shirt to sport. O.A.D. thinks it was intended for a PruPuppy but it is way better than one of those size M race T-shirts that are too big to even sleep in. Watch for it in Wenatchee. And thanks, PruDog. Chad's hat is on the list.

What I dug up

Wednesday, 9 May

Tonight it was time to put some tomatoes and geraniums and a new rosemary start in the ground--they weren't looking very perky any more in their plastic nursery boxes. I thought I'd try to do the right thing and went out back to dig a little mulch out of the compost bin. Now, like most of my gardening, my composting might be described as a homophone of my Half Fast friends in Oregon. The bin is a random blend of summer grass clippings, autumn leaves, deadheaded flowers, and Starbucks grounds for my garden. But down at the bottom, it's starting to make nice mulchy compost, so I stuck in my spading fork, turned over a couple of layers, and came up with a big surprise. Since this item was in close proximity to a peanut (also not a Northwest native), I can only assume that my cat's playmates, the squirrels, were busy after Halloween.

Now, this brings up an important question. No, two. If I harvest chocolate bars out of my backyard, does this qualify for the locavore experience (food grown close to home)? And what do you plant in order to harvest chocolate bars?

Really scandalous racing

Wednesday, 2 May

You've probably heard of Race Across America. People do this race not just on single bikes, but on tandems, and not just solo but in teams. As you can imagine, various "issues" develop as you race your bike pretty much nonstop across this continent. And if you're on a tandem, one of those "issues" (if you haven't had the foresight to ride much with your partner before you set out--duh!) could be Captain Masher and Stoker Spinner. But at RAAM 2006, one team with this problem "put our minds together" and figured that if just one person was on the bike at a time, the cadence incompatibility would not be a problem. And heck, if there's no stoker, we might as well remove the bars, pedals, saddle, and seatpost for the stoker position. So what if RAAM rules state that a rider must accompany the bike every inch of the way from sea to shining sea, or that a tandem bicycle is a bicycle built for two? Apparently RAAM rules in 2006 did not explicitly say that TWO people had to accompany a TANDEM bike for the whole route. So this tandem team (four people) set a course record and got an official finish for the World's Toughest Bicycle Race (Made EZ). For a fuller version of this story, see the last page of this document:

http://www.ultracycling.com/images/ultracycling_jan07.pdf

This stinks. Since when is a tandem a bike for one person to race (there's a reason they're made with TWO positions)? Since when is a tandem bike race conducted one rider to a bike?

Maybe you can't do anything about drugs in the pro peloton, but you can do some small part for the sport. Fire off an email message to the RAAM director (director@raceacrossamerica.org) and the HQ of the UltraMarathon Cycling Assocation (UMCAHQ@aol.com) that "There is a RAAM rule that states a bike MAY NOT ADVANCE WITHOUT THE RIDER. On a tandem this means two riders. Team JDRF should be struck from the list of official finishers for RAAM 2006."

DRVTT day 2

Sunday, 29 April

Ouch. Our tandem did not fly today. It got up to 41 mph, but that's not flying by tandem standards. And before we got to go fast, we had to go uphill. For a very long, painful way. There was supposed to be a steady tailwind so we would "rip." There was wind alright, and sometimes it was behind us, but sometimes it was sideways and sometimes in our faces. And it kept us from flying back down any of the hill on the return.

The first three miles of this out-and-back TT are a climb of probably at least 8% and very twisty and exposed. That's great on the way up (more about the way down in a sec). Then it flattens out to just a steady, relentless drag with some steeper rollers, some flatter bits. The promoter had put up numbered orange cones to mark off each mile; I swear we had passed 30 of them when Mick read out "17" (I saw the cones in my peripheral vision but never the numbers). The fast guys who started behind us (reverse order of yesterday's stage 2 finish) eventually all caught us, but we started to pass riders who started ahead of us, including both other tandems (who started 20 minutes in front of us today). We were both pretty darned uncomfortable, though. I discovered that you shouldn't climb in the drops (keeps the stoker's head down, out of the wind, more aero) for 24 miles because you're not meant to put that kind of pressure on the saddle. Once we started standing up every few miles, we felt better, although things are still sore and tight 8 hours after the race that have not been sore and tight before.

My stellar captain did a superb job of turning around our behemoth bike on the narrow road, with an audience--and then we were supposed to fly. With the wind, though, we just went fast. The mountain views were amazing again today, but I kept my eyes focused on the saddle right in front of me. You know, that's okay for a 10-mile TT, but it got pretty boring out there this morning. The fine scratches and lines in a saddle just aren't great entertainment. (In case you don't know, Mick only uses about the front 2 inches of his saddle, so I have lots of real estate on the back of our bike that the designer did not intend to be mine.) Every once in a while, I'd lift my head and check the view of Mt. Hood. Beautiful.

When I confessed before the start to being worried about the tight turns at high speed (well, more than 10 mph, which is how fast I'd take them on my single bike) in the last 3 miles, Kenny told me to just bury my head in Mick's back and close my eyes. I couldn't close my eyes, but I just kept staring at the saddle and NOT at the road. There were a couple of times when sudden braking caught me off guard, and I worried when the yellow line was under my right foot a few times, but we got down just fine, I didn't yell or scream once, and the bike went pretty smoothly through the turns. Good experience. "Look at the saddle" has become my new mantra.

The drama on the road today was the contest for the top spot in GC. Kenny, Dave, and Rob duked it out, taking turns pulling away and getting reeled in. Kenny dug deepest and pulled out the overall win (he was second on stage 1).

This was a fun weekend of tough racing, and it was great training for us on the tandem. Maupin is a pretty funky town, but the shopkeepers care that you have come to their tiny hamlet that's 40 miles from anywhere. The promoters of DRVTT are simply awesome; George was out early this morning making sure there was NO gravel anywhere on our course (and putting up all those mile markers), and Terri cranks out results before you get your bike put away. Both of them are positive all the time and make you think you are the hottest thing in bike racing. The roads are chipseal but as smooth as chipseal can be--no potholes, no cracks, AND NO CARS. The weather was warm and sunny. The views--of the mountains, of the river, of spring coming to the desert--are amazing. And we are tuckered.

Final results will be posted here.

DRVTT

Saturday, 28 April

Day One of the Deschutes River Valley TT Festival was a double-stage day. We started with the 26.2-mile loop that I did last September in the Ring of Fire 12-hour time trial. This stage is uphill from the line, with a 4-mile climb through the town of Maupin. We started after the women on single bikes and after the other two tandems. We had caught the other tandems by mile 1 and all of the women by mile 7. After the climb, there's about 5 miles of windy, flattish stuff on top of the plateau (great views of Mt. Hood), a fast descent, some rollers, a shorter descent through a tight canyon, and then 8 miles of flat road along the Deschutes River. My captain estimated going in that our time would be 1:07; we finished in 1:04:50.

We then had about 4 hours of leisure time (lunch, nap) before stage two. This is an 8-mile hillclimb of varying gradients. You get about 200 meters of flat at the start to get up to speed, then it goes up. Then there's hairpin and you've got about a mile of wicked headwind. Then you turn away from the river and it's mostly tailwind, and it's not so steep. Our 30-second guy missed his start and started about 15-20 seconds in front of us, which made a good rabbit to chase (not that I saw anything). We were pretty sure the guy 30 seconds behind us would catch us, but he went out too hard--trying to catch us early--and couldn't recover.


While an uphill tandem time trial is awesome, the views at the top of this one were spectacular. And you're not even on the top of a hill, just the top of the river canyon. Mt. Hood, of course, was in your face. To the south was Mt. Jefferson, but strung out to the north were Adams, St. Helens, and Rainier. It was kind of strange to have Rainier be the most diminutive peak in view!


The ride back "to town" may have been downhill, but the wind was pretty fierce. Going this direction, though, I got to enjoy the view. And at the bottom, we rolled into the Hobsons' camp. While the captain took a new stoker recruit out for a test drive, I sat and chatted with part of the rest of the family. And had a beer. I've never had a beer immediately after a race before, and it was quite the experience (dehydrated, empty stomach). I had to stop at half a bottle or I probably would not have been able to get on the bike to ride the last 500 meters to get back to our hotel--even though I didn't have to drive it!

Tomorrow is a funny stage: a 24-mile climb, out and back (48 miles total). It's steepest and twistiest at the bottom, and they keep telling us that the grade after that is gentle and the tailwind is fierce. The promoters (who've done RAAM on a tandem) tell us our tandem is going to fly. The road leads to places I've never heard of, but about third or fourth on the list is Fossil, which is familiar as the last stop in the Columbia Plateau Stage Race.

Now, okay, maybe this isn't super tactical, make-the-right-moves-for-your-teammates kind of "good racing." But a hotel on the banks of the Deschutes River, 80-degree sunshine, a beer in your hand before you even get off the bike, a very healthy time gap (25 minutes?) on the competition, and the prospect of another TT tomorrow: it's pretty nice.

Scathed

Thursday, 26 April

Well, from the on-blog and emailed comments about my What is racing? post last week, I appear well on my way to pariah status. But some people have said that I opened up good conversations that were overdue, so I’ll not be too depressed by others who were, um, more personal and devastating. I certainly did not intend to hurt feelings (there I go, being “girly” again) and will maintain that mine weren’t either. As for which comments were devastating or why, I ain’t tellin’—that way you won’t know where my skin isn’t quite so thick.

Watch for more on hats and gardening here—those should be less time-consuming from a self-defense perspective. Tell me I abuse my raspberry canes. Or that I don’t know squat about growing peas. Or what to do with my frostbit marjoram plant. Or the best way to make cat ears to add to a hat.

Oh yeah, there’s sure to be a report from the stage race on tap for this weekend but I should be able to dodge mention of team tactics.

Pounds

Tuesday, 24 April

Is it spam if it makes me laugh? This showed up in my email at work this morning:

Hi, I hate to be the one to mention this, but people at work are talking about your weight issue and it just disgusts me. Whether you know it by now, people are always chattering about each other at work but you come up more than enough. I feel the right thing to do is to let you know now before this gets worse....

There are a couple of funny things about this. While I've got about 3 pounds I'd like to lose but just can't seem to shake, I have enough self-confidence (too much of that, probably) and am positive enough about my body image to not worry that my "weight issue" is disgusting anyone. And just this morning I decided I'd try the "starve a cold" approach and see if that helps me conquer this head cold I picked up somewhere.

Most of the spam I get is about enhancing a body part I wasn't born with, but this one is almost as far off-target! How come there's never junk email about "tired of cycling jerseys that never fit?" or "wish your leg/arm warmers would stay up?"

The great unrace

Monday, 23 April

Yesterday I went to a great new race in Rainier, Oregon (it's just west of Longview, so it's closer than Portland), the Three Rivers road race. It's a 16-mile circuit through mostly rural farmland. Here are some observations about the course from the riders: There's maybe 200 meters of flat road on the entire course. It's pretty. The climbs are gradual. The steepest section is a descent (with a hairy 90-degree left turn at the bottom). It's like a roller coaster because you're either going up or down.

It was an unrace because three cat 1-2-3 women turned up. When they realized the anemic size of our field, the first one started with the cat 3 men and the second with the masters men. I was engaged in a conversation with an official and wasn't ready to go when the masters left. What to do? I rode backward on the course until the masters came along, hopped in with them (the other woman was gone) until I got dropped, hopped in with the 1-2s on the next lap, and then on the last lap I did a few miles with the cat 3s. In the long spell while I was hoping the 1-2s would catch me, I came across a motorcyclist who had gone too hot into a bend and then lost control of his bike as it went off the pavement. He got into the really soft dirt and gravel on the shoulder, and his bike eventually endoed so that it was upside down and facing backward. Amazingly, he didn't seem to be seriously hurt. His biggest concern was that his wife was going to find out. And it took me a minute to realize that he was a moto official with the race. Oops.

Anyway, great course and a well-run race. Rumor has it that Oregon state road championships might be here in 2008. Not a course for the pure climber OR sprinter.

Lil'est Curly

Saturday, 21 April

It probably won't match a thing in his wardrobe, but who says babies should only wear cute pastels?? (Yes, Coach, that's a Starbucks mug.)

By request

Friday, 20 April

Tom passed along the idea of melonhead hats and asked if I'd make a couple for himself and his charming, if dubious, wife. The third is for baby Amelia (no relation to Tom), whom I think I get to meet next weekend. These were a lot of fun to make, although seeds on a watermelon hat are even more of a pain than seeds in your watermelon. But seedless, in this case, just wouldn't be right.

What is racing?

Thursday, 19 April

I'm confused—so I’ll venture onto the controversial end of the blogging spectrum and stir up trouble.

Compare two comments about local women’s racing last weekend. Allison said this about Seward Park: “I found the tactics of some other teams a bit shady, so that made the race frustrating….This is the problem with women's racing….cattiness.” And one of her teammates said this about Kings Valley: “Women’s racing in Oregon makes women’s racing in Washington look like NRC racing.” I have to say from the get-go that these two women are both in the top three among local riders I respect; what seems to be in question is what makes a bike race.

Women’s racing in Washington this season has featured rotating pacelines (when no one is off the front OR the back) and relentless attacks by riders who go 50 meters (or 50 feet) and sit up. If the “right” mix of riders get in a break, everybody else slows down to 12 mph to make sure it sticks and then just pedals around to the finish line. Is this “racing” or even “teamwork”? It sure produces a lot of cattiness and criticism, and you don’t hear anyone saying “good race” at the finish.

When I was a cat 4, all women raced together. That means, yes, that I did stage races with riders with world champion stripes on their sleeves, with pro teams with team cars and team radios—when I was a cat 4. Race tactics for me were simple: hang on for dear life. And sometimes I did. When I didn’t, it wasn’t because of attacks or catty teamwork. It was because of selective features of the course where my skills were not up to those of the elite riders.

Early-season races in Washington have a distinct lack of selective features. Or else we pretend they do. So Mason Lake and Tour de Dung devolve into training sessions where everyone can work on their jumps and “teamwork.” At Mason Lake, for example, the little hill after corner 1 has the potential to break up a women’s field—if you are willing to commit to a hard effort. But only one rider in the last race of the series used this to that advantage (and she proved my point). I can’t comment on Tour de Dung because I wasn’t there, but I heard very few positive comments about race conduct in the women’s peloton. The same reports come every year and, frankly, that’s one factor in why I don’t go.

Along comes Independence Valley, where the hills ARE selective in the women’s race, and suddenly there was an amicable, cheery front group at the finish that all reported a “good race” (in spite of the monsoon). Funny, though, that TST did not produce similar results. There, however, one team dominated at least in numbers and played the “teamwork” card. It is hard to imagine why Suz needed anyone “working” for her to win that race.

Switch to Oregon. The course at Banana Belt, their early-season series, has lots o’ rollers and one pretty good hill. I did the third race in the series this year, and the race was strung out single file A LOT. The girls from Bend attacked on the downhills, and the smarter folks pushed the pace on the uphills AND AFTERWARD. The race was harder and more interesting than anything at Mason Lake—and the field was bigger. Kings Valley has a reputation for being a hard course, but it has one of those climbs that’s only as hard as you make it. And when the 1-2-3s are started with the 4s, there is usually an unspoken effort to keep the race together for the first lap so that some poor 4 isn’t out there riding 2.85 laps by herself and hating bike racing for the rest of her life. And, just as Suz predictably won TST, the two women duking it out in the sprint at Kings Valley would’ve been my picks at the start line. The difference? Suz’s teammates apparently pissed off some of the field by their tactics during the race, while at Kings Valley I think everybody was happy except the Washington rider looking for an NRC race.

No, I’m not a rah-rah sisterhood “let’s have a happy race” kind of person. On the other hand, I don’t think there’s much point in short, squirrelly attacks for naught that seem only to annoy the competition. If you want to race that way, don’t expect to see me much at the front; it’s better value as entertainment from the cheap seats at the back than as good, hard racing. And it’s great if cat 4s get some experience riding in a bigger group and develop confidence in their skills. I won’t say that’s why OBRA has three times as many members as the WSBA, but it can’t hurt.

Back to my question on what is racing. Is it just teamwork? The winner of the men cat 1-2 race at Kings Valley abided by the teamwork concept for most of the race, but his teammates really didn’t play a part in his drive from the pack, through the break, and on to the finish line. What is the point of an attack if your commitment to your effort lasts only 50 meters? At Mason Lake, I watched women push the pace up a roller, string things out, and then quite literally sit up and wait for the group to come back together. Huh? I also understand the point of blocking, but that makes you about as many friends as sitting in for the whole race and then sprinting at the finish.

You can rightfully ask why I don’t quit whining and just go ballistic and ride away from all this cat fighting. Lots of excuses: lack of training this winter, lack of ability to go ballistic, lack of confidence, lack of youth, and, sometimes, lack of interest. Apathy is a terrible thing.

The bottom line seems to be: give me a race with a hill in it. I’ll probably get dropped, like I did at Independence Valley, but at least everyone will be in a better mood after the race.

Brakes x 2

Sunday, 15 April

Happy birthday, Doug!

Brakes, round one: Saturday was the Kings Valley road race, one of Oregon's two classic one-day races. After taking the bouquet here last year (and the engraved vase that proves it), I figured there was no pressure on me this year because there was no way I was going to repeat. And no, I did not. The weather forecast was grim--and wrong. Scattered clouds and sunshine all day. We had a big women's field (more than 40), so I started at the front in order to not get gapped off behind some beginner cat 4s on the first roller (which comes 150 meters into the race). On the first descent, though, I noticed my rear brake was making a horrific screech, and when I tried to feather it, it would just make the brake hop on the rim. Nice. While assessing this, I quickly went backward through the pack. So, for the rest of the race, everyone around me knew every time I touched the brakes. I thought about dropping back to get another wheel from the support car, but odds were that any replacement would've been worse than what I had.

Riding with 40 women is a little different from the usual 10-12, and there weren't many opportunities to move up. Fortunately, there also weren't many sustained attacks. I did manage to work my way forward before the stairstep climb to the finish on the first lap--and then we were neutralized all the way up so that the cat 4-5 men could pass us. The men passed us at the bottom, and the lead car kept us neutral for the next kilometer; I think the follow official was just trying to be nice to the cat 4 women and keep some of them in the race a bit longer.

There was a pretty strong, long attack after we passed the finish line the first time. It was the same team that attacked on all the little descents at Banana Belt #3, and this again was a descent. Maybe this maneuver works in Bend (where the team is from), but all it did was string things out a bit and keep the pace up. But no one got dropped.

A few women got popped on the second lap, and things were totally disorganized in the mile-long crosswind section--which made it easy to move wherever I wanted. We dropped some more on rollers on the third lap, but the attacks were short. This time, the crosswind section was pretty hard and demonstrated the minimal grasp of the echelon concept. There's a steep pitch about 3 miles from the finish and then we settled down to a snail's pace. 13 mph at one stage. A couple of Washington women were effectively blocking on the front (nobody was up the road) and holding down the tempo. Why, I don't know. The race totally came apart in the last kilometer (which is all uphill), also predictable, but I did not get boxed in and was happy enough to finish seventh.

After the race, O.A.D. and I did one more (20-mile) lap on the tandem. It was fun to be able to look up and enjoy the scenery (covered bridge and all), although our legs were pretty tired.

Brakes, round two: Sunday's plan was to ride part of one of the stages of the Co-Motion Classic tandem stage race. O.A.D. wanted a good look at the descents in particular. We got the local FRM guy and race organizer, Sal, to come with us. It was a beautiful morning, if a little chilly, and we pretty much had the roads to ourselves. Sal, predictably, let us do all the work on the flats and then attacked us on the climb. We were able to keep the gap to just a couple hundred meters which, on a 2.5-mile climb, isn't too bad. But oh, I was a bad stoker. I begged and pleaded for brakes going into corners on the first long descent (okay, and on some of the short twisty descents before it, too). This bike feels soooo much different from Martin's: the bike is lighter and the captain is lighter too. The combo was....um...unnerving. At the bottom of the 2-mile descent, O.A.D. said HE had no problems on the descent except that the stoker was freaking out and making the bike all twitchy. So we towed Sal up the next 5 miles of false flat, he attacked us for the sprint at some unknown-to-us road sign at the top, and took off down the next descent. This time I vowed to shut up and just relax (or at least pretend like I was relaxed) and lean with the bike. I did, and we had almost caught Sal by the bottom--and, as he observed, he was pedaling like mad and we were not.

A phone conversation with KMF this afternoon made me realize that maybe part of my descending problem today was that I can see around O.A.D., whereas with Martin, I could not see much for about 50 feet in front of the bike. All I focus on is that turn coming up, rather than where the road is going. I think we're going to get this worked out--one way or another!--coming down Bakeoven Road in two weeks.

Finally, a request for a break. You may notice that the results and rider ranking pages of the WSBA website have gone live. Be kind if you send me corrections. We are counting on our users and readers to let us know about bugs, glitches, and snafus; when we think those are worked out, we'll announce the new pages.

Way to hot !!

Friday, 13 April

Here in Huskyville, the cheapest way to advertise student events is writing with sidewalk chalk on all the walkways around the student union building. It makes for some contorted postures among pedestrians as we try to read the words we're walking over, but I guess it works.

The latest event to get such treatment is a pageant hosted by some student association. Apparently the pageant is going to be "hot." Part of today's sidewalk art featured a thermometer with the mercury going all the way to the top and the phrase "way to hot !!" at the top. Am I as out of touch as Argentiopolis? Is "way to hot" some new exhortation, like "way to go"? Or are students just increasingly illiterate? The editor part of me thinks it's supposed to be "way TOO hot," but somehow I like the phrase "way to hot." It could apply after a great sprint or even a temper tantrum. Or a scathing blog entry.

And on the subject of contortions, in front of that same student union building, I saw a duck with a very bad hair day. I didn't know feathers got bent out of shape, but this poor girl obviously slept wrong on her pillow. It looked like she had an ear sticking out of one side of her head. Mallard bed head, I guess. Clearly, she needed a hat until she could get to a mirror.

Spring fashion

Wednesday, 11 April

If one LFG can get sidetracked onto muumuus after whinging and moaning about 30 mph tailwinds on the way to work and company-issued clothing, then I'm gonna jump onto the fashion bandwagon and whine about the weather.

It was 37 degrees when I left home this morning. That meant fuzzy warm socks up to my shins, shorts and tights, base layer, long-sleeved jersey, fleecy vest, and team windstopper jacket, plus gloves, booties, and hat. Standard stuff for the morning commute since...well, since before the start of our epic weather...when was that? It's been so long I can't remember.

Nine hours later, it was 64 degrees when I headed out the door from work for a few hill repeats. Clearly no tights needed ("cover your knees to 70 degrees" doesn't apply when you're going uphill with a backpack). Team jacket is a sauna when the temp is above 50. Long-sleeve jersey does NOT match shorts. Riding in the base layer alone would be like riding in my underwear. And then there are those socks that just look positively fredly with shorts, but the booties would be even worse. So I stick with the shorts (wrong team), the base layer, and the vest, which happens to be black. I try to roll the socks down so they're less conspicuous. A WOW guy and a MM guy acknowledged me on the trail, so I must've passed muster. And an HB guy didn't even see me, which is par for the course. Maybe the hot pink Axleys distracted everyone from the odd clothing combo.

Quite apart from my fashion avoidance, I managed quite the feat of self-restraint over the last 6 weeks. I gave up chocolate for Lent, not so much because I'm a devoutly religious person but because I was eating too much chocolate and it doesn't help me go uphill faster (although another LFG seems to thrive on it). To my personal surprise, I survived the whole 6 weeks of Lent with nary a piece of chocolate. Okay, there were some chocolate SPECKS in the mint ice cream from The Sweet Life and some other stray tastes, but I did not eat a single PIECE of chocolate by itself. And on Easter I was not about to finally break that fast with some sickly milk chocolate bunny; no, I held out for 74% dark chocolate from Dagoba (no, I don't think it comes from the Dagoba system in Star Wars). It made the Boat Street crit seem fun!

Recycled potatoes

Saturday, 7 April

No racing today in western WA or OR, so O.A.D. and I went for a little spin on our tandem toy. 93 miles (no racing tomorrow for us, either). A few tiny spits of rain, but all in all it was a good ride, although we felt really slow. There was that one screaming steep descent on Dubuque coming back into Snohomish where I was told that we hit 60 mph. Then he realized that was our distance, not our speed. The max speed for the ride was 81.2, which I assure you we did not do for anything more than an inch or two. For future reference, we were told we were not welcome in the bakery in Sultan. Something about our shoes, but they didn't ask us to take them off or walk carefully or not mark up the floor. They outright told O.A.D. they didn't want our business. So, if you ride to Sultan, stop at Vinaccio for your coffee, not the bakery. You don't need the donuts, anyway.

All this springtime weather has reminded me that my farming endeavors are a month behind, so I had an hour's rest (a.k.a. eat and make hats) when we got home, then headed out to the west 40. The vegetable patch doesn't grow nearly as many weeds over the winter as it does during the summer, but I still have to spade it up, pull out the weeds and infiltrating grass, add compost and other "amendments" (thanks, Starbucks, for the grounds for my garden--which were moldy!). So my ride recovery was two rounds of turning soil with a spading fork in this here vegetable garden. The rhubarb plant is probably older than I am--it is huge. And the great thing about parsley is that it seeds itself and just keeps on growing. My marjoram got blitzed this winter; I'm not sure it will come back.

Funny thing. When we were in Sultan today, we passed the local feed store, which was advertising seed potatoes. Now, I happened to need some seed potatoes but I couldn't quite see hauling potatoes all the way home from Sultan on the bike (never mind that I don't think the tandem's captain would've even stopped the bike for them). Much to my pleasant surprise, when I was spading up the garden, I came across some wee bitty spuds that were left from last year's crop. They'd wintered over just fine and had started to sprout roots and, in some cases, leaves. (The most exciting thing I've ever found in my garden is a stone spear point, but recyclable spuds were the best thing in recent years.) So I spaded that section more carefully and gathered enough to plant in my special spud box for a spring crop. You stick them in the bottom in a few inches of dirt, then keep adding more dirt as the foliage grows until your spud box is full. You are supposed to do this in a 30-gallon garbage can, but given the economies (?) of scale in my urban garden, I use this 8?-gallon bin instead.

Now it's time to go seed shopping!

Enumclaw alternative

Tuesday, 3 April

One of my hat victims brought to my attention this morning a previously little-known event: the Local Yarn Shop Tour. This is sort of like a pub crawl or art walk, but you visit LYSs instead. And these are spread out from Bellingham to Renton. If you visit all 20 shops over the weekend of 18-20 May, your name is entered in a drawing to win a $400 gift certificate from the LYS of your choice.

The problem with this tour is that you could (well, I could) EASILY spend more than $400 in the process of visiting 20 LYSs. That's only $20 at each one. It would be like sending me to visit 20 chocolatiers, except that I would have material to supply many more hat and scarf and baby blanket victims instead of just more fat to drag up climbs.

The good thing about this is that it makes the perfect alibi for missing the new/old Enumclaw omnium. I could even make it a training weekend: take the train to Bellingham and ride my way south, visiting all the LYSs along the way. Ideally, the training would be on the tandem, but I can't think of a single one of my tandem partners who would be remotely interested in this pursuit.

Fragments

Monday, 2 April

Tragedy today at my workplace: two people shot dead on the University of Washington campus, apparently a murder-suicide by a stalker of a stalkee with a restraining order. A very sad contrast to the lingering cherry blossoms in the Quad. Or maybe they're complementary Zen-like statements on the fleetingness of life.

Some other accumulated tidbits:

You know you're in Eugene when you walk into a store behind a woman and her two daughters, ages maybe 7 and 10, and all three (Caucasian) have full-on dreadlocks going.

Where else but Oregon, home of a pricey digital finish-line camera and high-tech results system, do you find results posted after your race, written on notebook paper in pencil?

And most unusual response upon receipt of a StokedHat, this from the recipient of my first OBRA hat: "it matches my truck!"

All good things must come to an end

Sunday, 1 April

My Tour of Willamette training camp ended with two days of racing (ouch!).

Saturday was the Icebreaker Criterium. Nobody else from Seattle turned up in Eugene for a big, flat, wide-cornered, early-season, windy, technology park crit. But I was in town anyway, the promoter is a tandem partner, and it's one crit course (probably the only one) where, on a good day, I stand a chance of not getting dropped. The weather was dicey, with showers all around. I waited to register until 6 laps to go in the race before mine; it was still dry so I had no excuse. I paid my money, crossed the street, and it started to rain. Really. Fortunately, then it stopped. When our pathetically small field lined up on the course, I lobbied to cut the race from 30 laps to 25, but everyone else wanted the workout (there was nowhere to hide on the headwind half of the course). Having ridden 250 miles in the previous 3 days, my legs weren't too good for quick accelerations, but I had enough power to repeatedly catch back on. I'm sure it was a hysterical race to watch, and the huge crowd (detect sarcasm) probably had a pool on how many times I would yo-yo off the back. There were two showers during our race so we were completely soaked and dirty, but because of the wind, the road was nearly dry again when we finished. And I finished with the "pack" and I was not DFL. I didn't win any sprints :) but I took some pulls (they usually left me up there for a lap or two when I made it to the front) and led it out to the last corner on the last lap. It was a pretty funny race--I was happy to finish and sure know what (all) I need to work on.

Sunday's course in Woodland at the Piece of Cake Road Race was sort of like a bigger version of Saturday's crit. The course is dead flat, with more than a few corners, and the only excitement is riding on top of the dike along the Columbia River. I started with the cat 3 men, and one guy told me that 3 riders in their race last year actually crashed down the dike into the river. I was lulled into an "I can do this" complacency in the first 10 miles. I managed to hang on when the pack decided to reel in a few breaks. Then things got nasty for a couple of miles and I finally got popped. I knew if I could just get back on, they'd settle down and I'd be fine. But those 250 miles in 3 days were still in my legs and there was no quick surge to be found. I rode another lap by myself, thankful that the sun had come out and the wind had not yet materialized.

Riding with the cat 3s was not my first choice, but: the women 1/2/3 raced at 1:45, which meant I would've gotten home at about 9 p.m.; I heard that last year the women pacelined for the entire race (zzzzz); there was also a masters women category, but they raced with the cat 4 women, which would've meant riding at the front all afternoon. And the cat 3 men gave me 3/4 of a lap of a pretty high-speed workout, which I needed--I just wish I could've gotten another lap out of them, but no complaints. And I missed the heinous crash in the race on the last lap.

So it was a good training camp. Beautiful roads, long climbs, and mostly sunshine. Four hats made and a baby blanket started. Essential shopping done. Not enough reading, not enough fantastic food, no wine tasting. Just not enough time, I guess. This week is one more CycleU TT, then I will have to take my ego to PR where it will get viciously deflated.

There's less weekend racing for me in April than in March, so maybe it's a good month to "retool." With all my new crit skills, watch for me at Boat Street (April Fool!).

Shotgun Creek

Friday, 30 March

Since a generation in bike racing is about five years, there are few left who will remember Shotgun Creek. And for those who do, I apologize for stirring your primal fears and inducing nightmares. But I could not ride by without paying my respects.

Today's ride followed the route of a race that hasn't been held in 5 or 6 or maybe even 7 years. It started out nice enough: tailwind through dead flat farmland. I missed a turn, but no worries because I just took the next one instead. The only hard thing about this stretch of the ride was that there was nowhere to stop and pee (the women's peloton used to be quite a spectacle when it would just stop somewhere, hopefully but not always out of sight of the nearest farmhouse). Whereas on Wednesday there was no traffic and a jillion trees, today there was traffic and nowhere to hide. Eventually, you climb out of the valley on Gap Road, which is like a mini pass, a stairsteppy, not too monstrous hill. There's a little town at the bottom on the other side, where I stopped for coffee and a scone (I'm tired of Clif bars, and those Blox taste like paint thinner). The town is just big enough that if you shut down all the streets, you could have a nice little 4-corner crit (me? thinking of crits? hmmm).

More flat farmland with more hat farms. A little crosswind but not bad. Then today's climb. It's never steep, but I think it goes on for about 4 miles. I had resolved to do it twice, to make up for the fact that this was otherwise a pretty flat ride. It seemed to go on forever. Just when I was marveling at how much litter was in the ditch and on the shoulder, I noticed a water bottle. Now, you know how when you're climbing and you want to think about something besides the climbing--well, that bottle stuck in my mind. You wouldn't ditch a bottle on a training ride or out touring, would you? But there aren't any races here any more. And there was a feed zone on this climb those many years ago. But how could a bottle sit there for 5 years and not get grown over or blown away or otherwise fade into the woodwork?

Well, I ended up so curious about that bottle that on my second time up the hill, I had to stop and look at it. I figured I'd just be able to accuse some local team of littering the countryside. I was astounded to discover that, indeed, it must have been sitting there, virtually unscathed, for these last 6 years. So when people tell you NOT to throw your water bottles off the road in a bike race, this is why: they do not go anywhere, they do not disintegrate, and as a general rule I do not go around 6 years after a race to pick up old bottles. Plastic is forever; be careful where you put it.

As I crested the climb and dropped down the other side, I thought "gee, it's steeper from this side; I should turn around and go up this one too." So I did. It was steeper, but there was a tailwind, so it wasn't too bad. I managed to turn a ride with one long climb into one with 3 good climbs.

Just when I thought I must have missed Shotgun Creek, I saw the sign to the "Recreation Area." It is now an OHV ("off highway vehicle") trail area, which seems somewhat more appropriate than the road bike courses we used to have to try to find through this jumble of barely paved forest roads of 10-14%. Curious to know what OHV stood for, I stopped to read an informational display and came across this picture from "back in the day" when we did indeed race on these "roads." The fifth guy in this line could be wearing an old Olympic Sports jersey.

And after Shotgun Creek, I passed the spot that invokes my strongest memories of Larry Kemp. He had flatted out of a break in the cat 3 race and still had not gotten a wheel change by the time I rolled through (OTB, as usual). To say he was pissed would be an understatement. We miss you, Larry. Rest in peace.

Hat farm

Thursday, 29 March

It's a hat farm. Get it? :)

Another great day here at training camp, sunshine all day long. It was a "double stage" day. The first stage was 82 miles, with 4 major climbs and one more of about a mile. Plus a long false flat section into a headwind where I really tried to push the pace. Some of it was backwoods riding, some of it was wine country. But still not much traffic. The third climb was one I raced up last year, and I was pretty tired by that point and could not figure out how I raced up it--twice! Maybe I'll find that fitness by the end of the season....

I was sworn to secrecy about the second stage, so all I can say is it was a short little loop, with some scenic farmland, rollers, and a two-mile gradual descent--the wide open kind where you just let the bike go. I thought my legs would be toast with 60 minutes off the bike to eat and drive to the second "stage," but they were okay.

O.A.D. wanted me to do the local Thursday night "ride," but my tandem partner from these parts is out of town and there's no way I can ride cat 1-2 men's race pace over hill and dale on my single bike. I might have to come back for another Thursday night this summer.

Extracurricular

Thursday, 29 March

Part of training camp is proper recovery and, unlike Old As Dirt, I can't watch TV for 6 hours straight. So I've been working the hat "business" on the side. Even got a "commission" for a totally new design for summer fashion; figuring that out gives me something to think about on the bike.

Two of these for OBRA friends. I hope the yellow matches their officials' clothing. Plus one of the custom hats purchased at the MVA auction. This is one of my favorite hats I've made; I sure hope Cindy likes it!

TC day 2: ding a ling

Wednesday, 28 March

I was out in the woods today and--being overly paranoid and cautious--I was worried about coming across a mama bear and her cub as I zoomed around each blind bend in the road. So I wore bells on my jersey zipper pull. You're laughing at me, but it worked: I didn't see a single bear! A bunch of squirrels and some birds I've never seen before, but no bears. This rock with a smiley face was pretty funny, although I realized as I was taking the picture that I was directly in the path of the slide!

Today's ride would've been beyond epic in yesterday's weather. It was cool and cloudy at the start (ding a ling forgot her armwarmers) but the sun was out for most of the day, so it was a great 85 miles. Within 0.2 miles of getting on the bike today, the road went uphill. All in all, I think there were 4 2-mile climbs, 2 3-mile climbs, 15 miles of 1-2% uphill (all in one piece), and 5 miles of steadily increasing grade with a headwind. No sign of snow. The road is pretty immaculately maintained by the feds (your tax dollars at work on a road with no traffic), so winter rock slides and fallen trees were all cleaned up. You see more road hazards in Seattle riding down Lake City Way to the bike trail.

I was out in the absolute back of beyond. Between mile 3 and mile 73, I saw TWO cars on the road. Two. One at mile 40 and one at mile 60. Sum total for the entire ride was 19 cars in 85 miles. Not bad, eh? Well, it did kind of put an edge on the first part of the ride. When there's absolutely nobody around, you worry (or at least I do) about what could go wrong, getting attacked by bears, or yahoos in a pickup with a gunrack just having fun. After 30 miles or so, the beauty of the woods sank in and I relaxed and started to enjoy it all. It was SO quiet whenever I stopped to take pictures.

I rode 12 miles out a nicely paved road, then did a 60-mile loop on chipseal forest roads that had no lines and were usually only about one lane wide. Early on in the loop, there was a directional sign to the Smith River Highway, which made me laugh because I didn't remember it being much of a highway. But, just for .n., I took pictures of the "highway" and the river.

The highway messes with your mind. It starts out at about 1%, which is fine and you still zoom along pretty fast. By itsy bitsy bits, the gradient increases. You know there's a climb coming, but after about 12 miles of this, you're feeling worked over and wonder how you'll get up a hill. It's hard to say where the climb begins because the road is probably up to 3-4% at the bottom. And it's a really twisty climb so you can't see more than about 50 meters at a stretch, and you're sure the top is around the next bend. But it's not.

In the excess baggage department today, I carried my cell phone (coverage died 10 miles before I parked the car) and cash and a credit card (I went by no commercial establishments whatsoever). I did not have enough clothes--but I didn't have room for them. The worst scare of the entire ride was coming down the next-to-last descent when both my tires skidded on gravel and I thought for sure I was going to slide down the hill. But I kept the bike up--across the center line, but upright. And the most unusual site on the whole ride is the "Inmate Forest Work Camp"--half my vehicle count came on the way back when a bunch of sheriff's vehicles passed me on their way to that camp.

What a beautiful day! The locals all know the route but I don't think they do it often.

Training camp day 1

Tuesday, March 27

Today was mostly a travel day for me, so that left only a little bit of time for the first official day of training camp. So what do you do with just a little time on the bike? Go uphill. The hill du jour is 9 miles from highway (1230') to summit (4100'). Until April 1, the gate is closed at about mile 5.5, but the fine print says it's open to walkers and cyclists year 'round.

The reason they have to close the road in winter is all this funny white stuff that was on the shoulder, on the trees, blowing off the trees onto me, and eventually (at mile 6.75) on the road. Of those 6.75 miles, about 1 mile of the climb is actually descending, which means you have to go up it on the way down (huh?). There's also a nice dirt section that today was mostly craters with puddles. The temperature in the nearest town (about 500' lower and 10 miles away) was in the low 40s, so it was a tad bit chilly, especially when the winds picked up. At least it quit raining and the sun came out!

I was pretty cold at the bottom of the descent, so I figured the best way to warm up was to go uphill again. I didn't go all the way up (the winds were howling), and then I made a third uphill effort of about half a mile. That seemed to let my body temperature reach equilibrium so I could put away my bike and change my clothes without getting hypothermic.

Did I mention that I saw just two cars in this entire jaunt? Obviously none past the gate. I was relieved to see walkers when I turned around--nice to know that someone might find me before the road opens on April 1 if I had a major disaster. And I'm a little worried about impending disaster. As I was putting the front wheel on my bike before the ride, I noticed a nice little crack almost all the way around the fork at the drop-out. It's probably just in the paint, but how do you tell? No decent bike shop is going to say "oh sure, it's fine, it's just in the paint"--think of the liability. So I tried to wiggle the drop-out (couldn't) and checked the crack every time I stopped to take a picture or put on more clothes.

In the self-ridicule department, I had to wonder why I schlepped a Clif bar AND a bottle of water up the hill for this effort. Like I was going to stop for a picnic? Or get thirsty at 35 degrees? Especially when I was never more than 6.75 miles from the car. Some habits are ingrained, I guess.

And in the will-wonders-never-cease department, after this little jaunt, I go into a favorite pseudo-Mexican (I had a "Greek" burrito with beans, rice, spinach, feta, and olives--mmm good) restaurant expecting solitude. And as I'm standing in line a guy who looks vaguely familiar calls me by name and asks what brings me to these parts. Sigh. Can't hide anywhere. I should've left my Axley shades on.

Down on the farm

Sunday, 25 March

No Sequim for me. Today's project was to plant some raspberry canes that my dad gave me about a month ago that have been living in giant plastic bags amid our recycling bins. They seemed to be doing okay, but I figured if I wanted berries this summer, my odds were better if they were stuck in the ground. They came from rural Skagit County, and I think they will have a tough time adjusting to the high density of urban living because my tired, aching body could only manage to clear a plot about 1.5 x 3.5 feet to plant maybe 25 canes. (Yeah, Curly, now this is a hats and tandems and farming blog.)

Breaking sod is not the smartest or pleasantest thing to do the day after your hardest bike race of the year, so far. Yesterday was the Independence Valley road race, which must be a great course because I realized on the last lap that I had used all the gears on my bike. The course features two hills per lap, and we did three laps. I was pretty happy to move up through the pack on the first hill, but then a couple of tactical errors pretty much put the nail in the coffin on my race and I waved goodbye to the pack after the second hill. I was in a group of three for the second lap; one rider cut her losses and bailed, and I just didn't have the focus to stay with the other one. So I rode the last 20 miles on my own. In the pouring rain (it rained ALL day). Of course, I spent the whole time I was alone looking over my shoulder, mainly for the cat 1-2s which I knew were back there somewhere. They came past me in bits and pieces (nice to see Jamie in the break, but Rich is amazing!). About 3/4 of the way through the lap, I saw a single rider behind me. I was sure my speed had gotten pathetic and it was another woman, overtaking me for coveted 8th place. Much to my delight, it was Steve H., so I got 30 seconds of chat with him and distraction from my pain before he hightailed it to the finish line ahead of the group that "wouldn't work" with him.

My burning question at the end of the race? There was a "for rent" sign on a single-wide, 30-year-old mobile home on the course. How much is rent on such a beast, 5 miles outside of Rochester, which is, like, 25 miles outside of Olympia?

After my lamentations last week, I must point out that my team had 4 riders in the top 10 yesterday. Of course, I must also point out that 2 of them were just plain strong, and 2 of us were just stubborn.

Extract foot

Monday, 19 March

So this is how I was supposed to express my frustrations about Saturday's race: "our team’s fitness/tactics are still coming around." Thanks, .n. Tact was not my major in college, not even one I could seriously consider.

And while a few folks have commented on the frequency of crashes in women's races (and I didn't even mention the one in my race on Sunday), at least we have so far managed to escape shenanigans (that's my big post-St. Patrick's Day word for you) like this cat 1 observation: "one of the HB guys was getting mad at one of the Axley boys cause they were disrupting HB's chase effort....I saw HB grab onto Axley's jersey, force him to the left and then he stopped pedaling so that Axley was in effect pushing him up the hill." That would go off the charts for race entertainment value.

Maybe henceforth I should post my weekend observations on Tuesdays, after dust/mud has settled, so I avoid putting my foot in my mouth and have some comparative basis for assessing the thrills (or lack thereof) in my races.

2 days, 2 races

Sunday, 18 March

I did two road races this weekend, and they were worlds apart (figuratively) and states apart (geographically).

Saturday was Mason Lake #3. Rain again. The "right" break got away and the entire pack sat up. No, let me rephrase that. The "right" group of women, representing (almost) each team in the race, got to the front of the race and everyone was happy to let them get detached. We got down to the snail's pace of 13 mph for a while. The break contained the two undisputedly strongest women in the field (including one of my teammates) plus last year's BARR champion plus two others, and we were not going to catch them whatever we did. So we kept going slowly, in the rain, except for a few frustrated attacks. This is billed as a training race, but I'm not sure what kind of training it offered.

OK, in the end, my teammate won. But she had the series won before she even got on her bike today. There were 17 women in the race, I had 4 teammates, and we got one in the top 10. The two teams with 3 riders each had all 3 of their riders in the top 10. We need to work on something--in addition to my sprinting.

Sunday was Banana Belt #3 at Hagg Lake west of Portland. 21 women in the field. The first lap (of 4) was a reasonable warm-up pace. Laps 2 and 3 were filled with attacks and counterattacks: on the uphills, on the downhills, in the corners. I got near the front on the climbs but was out the back more often than I want to admit. (Bless those cat 1-2s for passing us at a strategic time, and especially Donald, Matt, and Doug for having a nice gap off the front to prolong our neutralization!) Nobody got away for long, but a few got dropped for good. Thankfully, nobody practiced their track maneuvers by throwing their bikes across half a lane, which was a relief after Saturday. The last time up the biggest hill on the course, the official told us to ride hard or we'd be neutralized to let the cat 3s pass. Bodies launched everywhere. I couldn't quite hang onto the front group but managed to pull them back after the top. This was the best training I've had in a while.

The finish at BB is a scream. The biggest climb is about 3K from the finish (where we avoided being passed by the 3s), and it's mostly downhill after that. You can coast the entire last kilometer at 20 mph except for a tiny riser between 300 and 200m to go. And there's a sweeping righthand turn over a bumpy bridge at 350 to go. So the pack flies along at 30+ mph. The riser punctures some riders' sprint hopes, but then it's 200m of flying downhill to the finish. I do better at this sprint than the one at Mason Lake. Even with compact gearing. Go figure.

Hodge podge

Monday, 12 March

It was a weird weekend. It started at Mason Lake on Saturday, where it never really stopped raining. I was the official for the cat 4 women's race, and 100 meters after we turned onto the course, 3 of them crashed. Three-quarters of the way around the course, about 10 more piled into each other and crashed all over the road. After arranging "transport" for those whose bikes or bodies wouldn't go any farther, we passed about 20 women riding in onesies and twosies before we finally caught what was left of the race: 11 riders (37 started). Higgie was in the lead car and gave a post-race coaching clinic. I hope he was able to calm what must have been some pretty taut nerves.

There was nowhere near as much excitement (of any kind) in my own race. I wanted to race with the masters, but there weren't enough of them. And then I decided I wouldn't race at all because it was pouring and the road had a winter's worth of sand plus some new gravel in spots and I still had visions of bodies and bikes going every which way. But I knew that I would be my own biggest critic for a week if I didn't at least start, so I did. The riding wasn't so bad, and on the first 3 laps you could convince yourself it wasn't raining when you were on the backside of the course because there was a tailwind and no spray off the chipseal. But the main road was like being in a gritty shower. The field did not offer much hope for excitement: 5 Byrne (including last week's winner), 4 TiCycles, a sprinter from Portland, and a climber from Spokane. I now know who cannot sustain an attack for more than 100 meters and whose body language gives at least 5 seconds of notice before her attack starts. Of course, the right combo of last week's winner plus a Ti rider finally got away. The only thing left to do was marvel at the gap between the pro-1-2 break and pack (they passed us exactly one lap apart). Oh yeah, and it absolutely POURED for the whole last lap.

On to Sunday, after losing an hour's sleep on Saturday night. Old As Dirt and I led a ride with Frankie Andreu for the Cascade Bicycle Club. Early start: I rode to the ride while O.A.D. drove to pick up Frankie at his hotel. 25 die-hard fans turned out to ride with him, and he did not disappoint. He chatted with everybody, leaving O.A.D. to play gate-keeper and flat-fixer and me to ride on the front all day to make sure everybody went the right way. I learned from these Cascade riders that I (1) did not give the mandatory preride safety lecture (I obviously failed to do that on Saturday, too) and (2) ride a really smooth, constant pace (which tells you more about Cascade rides than about me). Brunch was fine, then it was off to the Bike Expo (the reason Frankie was here) to see sponsors, mechanic, coaching staff, framebuilders, race organizers, etc. When we picked Frankie up to go to dinner, the bag he set in the back seat next to me had a very subtle imprint on the top that said "U.S. Olympic Team 1988." Nice. I wonder how many airline employees see that. And good to know that we're not giving flimsy schwag to our Olympic athletes--this piece has been in use for 18 years.

Biggest ego boost of the weekend? Frankie recognized O.A.D. immediately because he was wearing his team StokedHat and Frankie had seen pictures of my donated auction item at the MVA auction on Saturday night. Well, that and Frankie accusing me of almost dropping him on Rainier Avenue.....

Remember riding in January ?

Thursday, 8 March

My employer thought it was a great idea to encourage people to ride their bikes to work in all kinds of weather conditions at the beginning of the year (remember them all?). Some people had so much fun doing it that they were inspired to submit their own haiku describing the experience. You can read the whole lot here. The winner of this part of the Ride in the Rain competition was:

I hate being wet / but I have no choice because / my husband makes me.

I thought that one was worth mentioning here. Another that strikes chords of sympathy:

Morning sky is blue / Black is ice upon the street / bicycle slides, body hurts.

Skipping over most of the sappy ones, this one might be a happy summary of why we ride if only it didn't imply we are going in endless circles:

It is a circle / Pleasure, pain, gain and again / Ride hard, ride often.

The jersey

Tuesday, 6 March

Tonight was meant to be my last installment of winter racing at CycleU. One more effort to find those elusive 20 average watts I lost somewhere in the last year. And then they give me the leader's jersey and tell me I keep it until I lose it. Oh, the pressure. Now I have to go back and defend. They figured out how to suck me in. And I try to tell myself I'm really not very competitive....

2007 race number one

Sunday, 25 February

Time trial. Tandem. Drive time to crochet. Does bike racing get any better?

My 2007 season started today with the Frostbite TT on the oh-so-familiar River Road between Lowell and Snohomish. As expected, the wind was out of the SE, so headwind out, tailwind back. And, as remembered, this is a smooth, smooth road, which meant tons of spray on my backside and feet because TT bikes have no fenders. But, as noted, no dirt...or, at least, no unpaved sections.

It was a pretty uneventful race. No major snafus. It still feels odd to leave a race without results, but there were "sorting issues" (and we all thought technology was supposed to make our lives easier). So not only do I not know how I placed, I don't even know how many women I was competing against. The good thing about that is I don't yet have any evidence that it's time to retire. That'll come soon enough, I'm sure.

On my single bike, I kept trying to tell myself that I'd worked harder trying to hang on the back of a group on fierce training rides on this road. That worked for the first part, which I figured was going to be the hardest because it was most directly into the wind. The one tiny short drag wasn't as bad as expected; I don't think I shifted at all until the turnaround. And after I turned--wow!!--I shifted up about 3 gears and rode all the way back in my 55x13. I was so proud of myself for (1) remembering to bring my watch and (2) remembering to start it with my one-minute guy. Next week I'll have to try (3) remembering to stop it as I cross the line so I know my time.

We got a really good (hard) start on the tandem, but I missed the sound of the disk wheel. O.A.D. turned us around just fine on the narrow-ish road, and then we were able to chase down his teammate, Paul. My position as stoker is head down and elbows tucked in out of the wind; I let myself look up when I thought we were at about 1K to go--and we were about 100m from the finish! Somehow, we didn't get any of that great tailwind boost on our return, so our speed didn't go up and we rode in the same gear both directions.

Kudos to Rob and everyone at PSB Racing for starting another fine TT tradition on a course we all love to ride hard on. 120 riders at a brand new race is an accomplishment. And thanks to the WSBA officials for standing out there in the bitter cold and wet.

A new baldy

Friday, 23 February

There are some fine people in my life who are bald, and there's about to be one more. Kenny Williams has teamed up with the St. Baldrick's Society to raise awareness and funds to cure kids' cancer. His role in this team effort is to get you and me to contribute money to a worthy cause and to shave his head as a gesture of solidarity with those kids he's trying to help. You can get all the details on his "space."

Since you're probably going to laugh at him when he shows up at a race in March with his helmet 2 sizes too big because he's lost his curly locks, then the least you can do is make a contribution!

Two-track Oregon ?

Friday, 23 February

OK, so it's a long way from the introduction of a bill to the building of a velodrome, but you've got to start somewhere. Oregon could have TWO new velodromes:

http://bikeportland.org/2007/02/23/portland-velodrome-takes-major-step-toward-reality/

http://www.pdxvelo.org/

Funds would come from lottery proceeds. I guess I'll have to buy a Powerball ticket next time I'm south of the border.

Antiquing

Saturday, 17 February

I did the FRM team ride today, riding tandem with Old As Dirt. After 65 hard miles, we roll into Snohomish. OAD teammate says, "We could go antiquing!" I say, "And carry it all home on the back of your bike?" And OAD says, "Isn't that what I've already got on the back of my bike?"

Apart from that little quip, it was a nice 90-mile ride today...except that we keep getting dropped on the climbs. I guess that's what happens when your stoker is an antique.

Stoked does the track

Ides of February

Sorry to make you drop your coffee cup in shock over that title above. What it really means is that I just donated custom, handmade StokedHats to the MVA auction. I didn't see any Axley items in the auction catalogue, but maybe PruDog is working on a secret model just for the MVA. I'll just assume the rest of you are going to support our velodrome by going to the auction and picking up some good stuff. If I'm lucky, nobody will want a hat by mid-March and Old As Dirt won't have to do all the driving to races this spring while I'm making somebody else's hats.

Done in the gym?

Lincoln's Birthday

Are you done at the gym for the winter? Think again.

Do you think you can quit lifting weights now that the road racing season is upon us? Think again.

Cycling is right up there with swimming and sitting on the couch for what it does for your bones--or, rather, for what it doesn't do for your bones. Whether you're male or female or not, whether you're 25 or 50, if you spend a lot of time on a bike, you also need to spend some time actively working to maintain your bone density. Year 'round. You don't have to put 493 pounds on the leg press or look like Arnold. But don't stop the resistance training, the high-impact routines. Your bones need to be jarred, so that when you really jar them--say, when you slip running down your front stairs to get a package from the FedEx driver--they are strong and not brittle.

So keep up with those weights. Run some stairs. Load the OBRA truck once a week. But don't just go sit on your bike and think you are the picture of health. Odds are, someday you'll fall off your bike, and that's when strong bones can make the difference between bruises and breaks.

OK, off my high horse and back to the latest, top-secret StokedHat.

Backseat driver

Saturday, 10 February

OK, so no one else thinks tunes in your shorts will make the training better, either (see below). But I assure you that training does go better on a tandem. Thanks, Sal!

Today I finally had a legitimate excuse for the backseat driving I am prone to do on a tandem: my captain had no clue where we were or where we were going (he's not from these parts). Fortunately for him, there were lots of long straightaways (E Lake Samm, Issaquah-Hobart, May Valley [mind the grates!!!], etc.) where I mostly shut up or blathered at someone else. It was a gorgeous day--58 degrees when I got home--and a mostly mellow ride. We took some long pulls and had to chase back on after a couple of spots that were hard to navigate on the tandem, and about 90 minutes after we got off the bike, I realized that my legs were really tired for a mostly flat 59-mile ride. One thing I love about riding tandem is that perceived effort is LESS than the amount of work you really do. Having tons of fun getting a hard workout: who needs music in their shorts?

Whose idea was this?

Friday, 9 February

The March issue of Outside magazine starts off its section of reviews of "the best gear, tested" with a full-page feature on the Pearl Izumi Vertex MP3 Bib Short. A "flash-drive player fits neatly into a rubberized port in the middle of your back, with integrated push-button controls on your thigh." And you gotta love the fact that your shorts will be Bluetooth-enabled. 512 mb. $500. I don't even know where to start on this one.

Tandems&hats: what else?

Friday, 9 February

OK, so it hasn't exactly been the best week ever. But it started with a warm date with my nearly under-age tandem partner at a place of his choosing that couldn't have made me happier (obviously women are NOT hard to figure out). Tuesday night I got to ride with a tandem newbie at the CycleU TT; he got a rude shock when he tried to suddenly stop pedaling while we were warming up because I kept pedaling ("it's worse than a track bike!"), and then got payback by trying to wear out the 12 and 13 cogs for the 14 minutes of our TT. But we had a good ride. And maybe, just maybe, there's a tandem ride in my tomorrow--but stokers are the last to know.

Last night I gave away my latest hat and the recipient seemed genuinely thrilled. I am now at work on a top-secret design that might be revealed by, say, Ohop. There's just a little thing called work that might get in the way.