A wee bit warm

Friday, 21 July

You know it’s hot when you get back to your hotel 2.5 hours after your race finished and your jersey number is still soaking wet (we’re using cloth numbers here, and only stokers have to wear them). You know it’s hot when you drive tomorrow’s TT course to check it out and the bank thermometer says 100 degrees (Martin says bank thermometers are about as reliable as bank clocks—this one had exactly the same time as the clock in his van). You know it’s hot when Martha drinks three whole bottles in a 2.5-hour race.

Apart from the temperature, it was a really hard race today. We did seven laps around Cottage Grove Lake, for a total of 61 miles. Our average speed was 40.5 kilometers per hour (Martin doesn’t believe in computers on his bikes, so I asked somebody and he turned out to be Canadian), or about 25 mph. The course had one significant hill and not much else of interest, except maybe that a lot of it on one side of the lake was in the shade.

We were, in a way, marked from the beginning, with lots of queries about when we’re going to bring out “those jerseys” and comments from people who know we won this race last year. I did some homework last night, comparing prologue times with last year’s results. But really, it didn’t matter; you just had to watch everybody and go with whatever tried to get away.

There were A LOT of attacks. Two of the mixed bikes and one male-male combination have really powerful jumps. And, we found out, they can do it going uphill just as well as they can on the flats. Until the last lap, it was just fast fast fast all the time. Once or twice on the hill, a couple of bikes got away, and we had to chase to catch back on. That’s what hurt the most: riding as hard as we could up the hill, and then having to work even harder through the following flat section and up another little incline.

Back in Seven Springs, Clint had a conversation with Martin about how it was okay—once in a great while—to ask me to work a little bit harder to close a gap or get over the top of a climb. Martin had almost never done this before, but now Pandora’s box has been opened, and there were a lot of appeals today. Honestly, I was better about looking around him and keeping track of who was ahead of us and anybody who might be trying to accelerate past us from behind. But the going would get hard, I’d be in the drops, and suddenly somebody would counterattack and we’d have to work even harder to stay on the group.

The next-to-last time up the hill, Martin’s legs started to cramp up. Ever tried to push a 175-pound guy up a hill without getting dropped? No, it wasn’t that bad, but it would be pretty accurate to say that I buried myself. And of course that hill was followed by a gazillion attacks as people tried to get away before the last lap. The last time up the hill was still steady pressure but we managed to stay comfortably in the group. Then the pace slowed and Martin drifted to the back (Martin never drifts to the back) and started asking for something to drink.

There’s a corner about 4 miles from the finish, and we had to stay to the right of the centerline going into and out of the turn, so people tended not to attack there. But I was sure waiting on the last lap for the jumps to start. After the corner, Martin got tired of the dawdling pace and burst up the side of the group and rode off the front. It wasn’t an attack by any means, but it did stir things up. The pace didn’t get too bad until about 2 miles to the finish, but the first effort was short and not really hard. About 1.5 kilometers from the finish, the pace picked up. One of the more aggressive couples broke a spoke on their front wheel in this effort (ha—serves you right for jumping so hard!) and everyone else went sailing past. The group strung out but stayed together over the finish line. I was hoping that the 3 male-male bikes would take the time bonuses for the top 3 placings, but a mixed bike won the race and got the 15-second time bonus. They won the prologue too, so now we are 24 seconds back, tied for fourth with a male-male bike.

Two great things about today’s stage. Given that it was around a lake, we all got to go swimming when we were done. It felt so good, I went in twice. And they provided ice cream for us! I’m not sure where ice cream falls in the post-race recovery meal plan, but it was pretty tasty. I wanted a nap in the sun too, but figured I’d had enough sun for one day.

Tomorrow is a double stage day: a 13-mile time trial and a 45-minute criterium. The time trial course is almost flat but not quite. We rode a great TT on a different course at this event last year: it finished up a 2-mile climb. Compared to the TT at Seven Springs, this is a real snoozer. It starts out with a long, straight section where you’ll probably be able to see the bike that started 3 minutes ahead of you (well, I won’t, but Martin will). And it should be even hotter by crit time.

Martin's race report is here.

Life is good

Thursday, 20 July

I just finished a bike race and I'm watching the Tour and eating chocolate. And I'm not at home, so I can't feel guilty about not mopping the kitchen floor. Life is good.

Tonight was the prologue of the Co-Motion tandem stage race in Eugene. It's a 1-mile uphill time trial on Skinner Butte, home to many a prologue in Eugene bike racing. You've heard of decreasing radius turns; well, this is an increasing gradient climb. The first part of the course is mostly flat, then you hang a sharp left turn and go over the bottom shoulder of the butte (this hill was used in a Eugene Celebration crit!), and then keep winding your way to the top. Our race was complicated at this point by a handful of bikes that had started before us coming back DOWN the hill, straight at us. I was really surprised to hear Martin say something, then jerk the bike to the right to get out of their path. Then I saw the other bikes. The last 200 meters are quite steep, and Martin was pleased that we didn't bog down there in our big chain ring this year. In fact, he had time and energy and breath to keep calling for more and telling me we were almost there. That much I knew, thanks!

One good thing about small races is that results don't take very long. We were the third fastest bike and beat all but one of the male-male teams. We are currently 9 seconds behind first place.

There's a great friendly atmosphere at this race, for the most part. The couple who bought Martin's old tandem frame are here, racing on "his" bike. There are some folks from Seattle, but also from California and Massachusetts. The folks from MA come here every year for their summer vacation. The only other race they do on their tandem is the Mt. Washington Hillclimb. Ouch! Nicole and Craig and their little one stopped by the parking lot before our start and it was fun to see them. Craig was riding Nicole's old 800.com bike with baby trailer in tow, and Nicole was riding Craig's fixed gear bike. That's Eugene!

Tomorrow is some huge number of laps around a reservoir. The course rolls a little bit, but there are more laps than interesting road. Weather reports range from 95 to 105 degrees, so it's sure to be toasty. I'm packing my swimsuit in my race bag!

Martin's race report is here.

Brutal, again

Tuesday, 18 July

The first lap of our tandem road race on Monday afternoon was so fast and so hard, I was sure my legs would explode somewhere in lap 2 (of 7 laps) and we would get dropped and pulled from the race (which is what they did to anyone more than about 5 minutes down—including eventual medalists). All the tandems (25 of ‘em) started together. We were seeded by category, and one of the 90+ mixed bikes behind us attacked before they even got to the start line. They shot up the hill that begins this circuit and strung out the field. But I guess they had some trouble getting onto their big chain ring because they were off the bike fiddling with the chain when we went by after the road flattened out.

As a concession to either the high temps (90) or the difficulty of the course (same as my individual road race on Sunday) or both, our race had been shortened from 8 laps to 7. I had tried my best to recover from Sunday’s race, but I was still tired and my legs felt really heavy. Our warm-up consisted of riding up and down the rows of the empty parking lot by the lodge. At least riding slow and flat wasn’t painful. We were lucky to have new national champion Franz in the feed zone throughout our race to pass up lots of water. And after a few laps of the best electrolyte rehydration drink, water is all you really want.

The ballistic first lap shelled more than half the field. We did the 5.5-mile circuit with 800 feet of climbing in just 15 minutes. Things settled a little on the second lap as the faster male-male bikes rode away. Our second lap was 17 minutes, which felt a lot better. Unfortunately, one bike in our age group rode away on the climb on the main road and we just could not bring them back (the gap went over 2 minutes during the race but was just over 40 seconds by the finish). Eventually we settled into a group with 2 other bikes in our category plus a male-male tandem that yo-yoed on and off the back of the group.

It was a good race. I was better about trying to look around Martin on the climbs to make sure we were on the wheel in front of us and didn’t need a micro acceleration. At a couple of points, he had to ask for (and, I think, got) a little more as we crested a hill. The descents were fun, although I was a little disappointed to find out after the race that our max speed was only 52 mph. One of the descents was a head-down, pedals-level straight shot; as I looked down, it seemed that the bike was perfectly still while the road was just a blur underneath. And I think I even did okay with the technical bit of descending—Martin never once had to chant his “lean lean lean,” and whenever we were on the front through this section, we managed to get a small gap…just in time to fly at 30+ mph over some really rough pavement that bounced me off the saddle sometimes (this is challenging when someone else is forcing your feet to continue to go around with the pedals).

The tactician on a tandem is pretty much the captain because there aren’t many opportunities for a private meeting to discuss the options. But at the start of the last lap, on the section of the course where Martin usually got his gel packet delivered (opened) into the palm of his hand, he asked if I agreed that it would be best to wait for the last climb to “go.” The only other possibility was to make the most of the technical descent, but he thought the half-mile drag after it was too hard to stay away. So we got to the front before the last climb, set a comfortable tempo, then went hard up the last, steeper section. We had a gap for a while, but another bike was able to accelerate past us. So we were second in our “sprint” and third overall in our category.

I guess that ballistic first lap was just the warm-up I needed because after that I was never in danger of blowing up. My legs even felt pretty good. On one climb, I thought Martin was done because it felt like he was pedaling in squares. It turned out that he was pedaling easy because the group wasn’t going hard, but I was just in my “it’s a hill, it must be hard” mode and was trying to force things without realizing it. I was not as “done” at the end of the tandem race as I had been after my individual race—steadier pace and cooling temps may have helped. Maybe getting on the podium the second time helped too.

It was also a fun race because of the people we were riding with. They were all friendly before and after and even during the race. The captain of the bike that outsprinted us thanked me for tiring myself out by racing the day before—they had seen me race, I didn’t tell them. The stoker who won our category was so excited about their win that she was in tears on the podium, with her little good luck teddy bears sticking out of her pockets. She told us after the race that I look scary fast and tough/aggressive on a bike. Huh? About Martin, she just pointed at him and said “and he looks…well, just look at him.”

So, for all the complaints about the courses at Seven Springs, they treated me well: 3 trips to the podium and a stars-and-stripes jersey. The courses were fun. I remember the roller-coaster thrills more than the pain of the cumulative climbing. I really was stoked about all of my rides. Tandems were the first time trial and the last road race, which meant we spent too much time sitting around. I think one other tandem rider may have done as many events as I did, but I have to do some research to find out if anyone did more.

Martin's race report is here.

Sad but satisfied

(I have no clue what day or date it is any more)

[Congrats to Clint and Dave who were silver medalists and animators in their respective road races today. It's a privilege to be part of the bond and camaraderie among NW riders here in Seven Springs.]

Today was my individual road race here at masters nats, the second event I’m doing just because I happen to be here for the main event (the tandem races). Given that I was overly rested and overly bored, I should have been motivated for a good, hard race.

That’s exactly what it was. I found out what I can do about as well as the strongest women in my field (climb), almost as well as the most fearless (descend—surprisingly), and what I guess I have to work on in my winter training (that’s my secret).

We rode 8 laps of a 5.5-mile circuit that had something like 850 feet of climbing per lap (do the math—that’s a lot of climbing in not too many miles). You started climbing right from the start line, dropped down a long gradual descent, went up a short little hill, down the fastest and straightest descent on the course, up a long ol’ climb, a hard right turn into a housing development that turned into lots of fun sweeping turns at pretty good speeds, then a longish painful drag, short descent, then a super fast descent (I consistently hit 45 mph on this section), and then the long 1.5-kilometer climb back up to the start/finish line.

I think we had 16 starters in our race. By lap 3 we were down to 8. It was a real girlie race, though. The first two laps we pretty much soft-pedaled up the climbs; maybe everyone was just looking at each other or just trying to save their legs. The funniest thing was these two Velo Bella riders who would sit in the group until we came to the descents. Then they’d launch off the front, get a gap, go screaming off down the hill…and then promptly stop pedaling when the road went up again. It was like clockwork watching them do this before the most technical descent on each lap (I have to find amusement in a race or the suffering gets to be too much).

On lap 4 or 5 on that long ol’ climb, a woman who is registered with one team but racing in the jersey of another put in a ferocious attack and I got popped. So did several others. Eventually I was racing for fifth place—the last podium spot—and I had the “virtual” medal for a while on the road. But the other woman with me sat on my wheel most of the last two laps. The last time up the climb to the finish, I thought I was saving something for when she would surely punch it near the top. But I didn’t save enough, or there wasn’t anything left, and I pretty much just watched her go. Clint, Dave, and Martin were all there about 300 meters from the finish, and if the volume of their words and encouragement could have made my legs go faster, I would have gone flying past her.

It was a hard race, no question there. But, for someone who doesn’t like going around in circles (even 5.5-mile ones), I thought it was a fun course. It was much better in person than it has looked on “paper” for the last four months on the race website. The climbs aren’t steep, you can rest on the gradual descent (at least the way old ladies race it), and the technical descending bit was something to look forward to each lap.

So I’m sad not to get on the podium, sad to disappoint all the people who thought I could do better, but really satisfied that I rode the very best I could in a good race. I even surprised myself in some of the corners and descents and being able to push it over the tops of the climbs.

Now it’s on to an drink-eat-sleep cycle to recover for the same course tomorrow on the tandem.

Rest day no. 3

Saturday, 15 July

Another rest day (OK, this is masters nationals, so we’re all old, but how much rest do we need?). Random activities today generated random thoughts.

Kenny won his road race—in the rain. He did two laps of the “long course”; when they came through at the end of the first lap, somebody asked me if Kenny rode much in the rain. I tried not to laugh too hard. He was in a four-man break and while everyone else looked like the sprint was really hard, he made it look effortless. Well done!

“Neutral support” in the feed zone at this race means there are some coolers with Gatorade set up on a table by the side of the road. There are paper cups there too, so I guess you hope somebody might hand you up a cup of Gatorade? The “team feed zone” is about 100 feet long and was absolute chaos for the sold-out men’s 30-34 and 35-39 fields (many of whom DNSed in this weather) with so many team feeders squeezed into such a short distance.


Three not-attached-to-each-other people plus six bikes (one of them a tandem) plus all the bike cases and two wheel cases in a one-bedroom condo is quite a living experience.

The wildflowers here are beautiful. There are daisies and black-eyed susans and vetch and a bunch of flowers I don’t recognize. We (no, I) have seen blackcaps growing wild in several places along the side of the road.

We are out in the boonies in the woods, so I figured there would be a lot of deer. But we (no, I) have seen lots of vegetable gardens without fences, so deer must not be a problem. We did see one, dead, by the side of the road, so they are here. Clint and I saw a smallish brown mammal that we could not identify. Sort of like a marmot, but in the grassy verge on the edge of the woods. How big are groundhogs?

I am convinced that the number one pastime in rural Pennsylvania is mowing the lawn. Everyone has giant golf-course type greens surrounding their houses. Even double-wide trailers have expansive lawns. They’ve had more than three inches of rain here so far in July, so the grass must grow really fast. Maybe it’s how they keep the kids busy all summer—send them out on the John Deere for the afternoon.

I went for a little bike ride today that only made me want to go for a longer ride, but tomorrow is race day, so no fun for me. Well, that's not exactly true. We went on the “Alpine Slide” that is 1980 feet long with an elevation loss of 325 feet. You get to ride the chairlift up and zoom down on a sled on a pseudo-luge track. You can buy a 4-ride pass or pay $4 a ride. As soon as we got off the sleds at the bottom, I was ready to go again. No lines the second time, and it was great. Clint was wise and cautious and figured it wasn’t the thing to do the afternoon before a big race, but heck, what else was I going to do today? It was fun. And I didn’t even lose my flipflops going up the chairlift.

Rest day no. 2

Bastille Day

Another day of doing not much here in Seven Springs. Martin and I did three laps of our road race course on the tandem, figuring out gear selection and lines to take on the descents (there are two that are fast and fun). We then headed out doing the long course backward to meet up with Clint. We got to go down a hugely fun, long descent. Problem was that we met up with Clint about 3 miles later and had to turn around and slog our way all the back up that climb to the resort. And then once we're on resort property, it's another 1.5-mile climb back up to our condo.

After lunch, I hopped on my single bike and rode the more technical of the two descents, partly to actually SEE the road and partly to work out some of the tandem aftereffects. The descents on the course and getting to and from it were no problem (control of my single bike is often an issue after riding the tandem), but that was an awful lot of climbing for 8 miles of an easy spin. We are going to pack the bikes into our "car" tomorrow and drive to somewhere with flatter roads so we can just have an easy day before Clint and I have our individual road races on Sunday. I keep trying to remind myself that all this climbing is training for the Co-Motion tandem stage race next week.

Martin is bored stiff because he doesn't race again until the tandem road race on Monday at 4:30. He sees no reason to save his energy or save his legs (although he did have a long poolside stint this afternoon in a lounge chair). We are going to luge tomorrow after our bike ride. It sounded like a lot of fun once I found out you get your own brake! I'm a little worried about falling on my face when I get off the chairlift at the top, though.

Rest day

Thursday, 13 July

Nothing exciting on the agenda today in Seven Springs. We headed over to Kevin's B&B to watch the Tour, went shopping in the metropolis of Somerset, came home, tried to second-guess the weather, and went for a little ride. We prerode the "long" road course, which I never get to race on. My rule was to ride such an easy gear all day that my legs never hurt. It was a good challenge on a course that features about 4000 feet of climbing, but I managed. Some of the course is on nice little country roads like this one, but a bunch of it is on big ol' county roads, complete with big red pick-ups that don't want to give you an inch. At least we had a dry two-hour window!

Momentum is your friend

Wednesday, 12 July

This was my double stage day at masters nationals: first the tandem time trial (30K at 9:25), then my individual event (21K at 16:57).

Just as we set out on our warm-up ride on the tandem, it started to rain. Hard. We only had about 15 minutes to warm up before we had to report to the queue at the start line, so we rode up and down the road (getting soaked through), then went back to get checked in. Then we stood around, chatted with a couple of other tandem pairs, stretched, and it was time for one of our biggest races of the year.

Martin had not seen the course, and I think Clint and I made his eyes (ears?) glaze over as we tried to talk him through the whole 30K last night. He did remember the hairpin and the sharp corner/fast descent down to the one-lane bridge, but everything else was just chatter. Kenny’s advice as we were about 5 minutes from starting was to carry all the momentum we could through each descent/ascent transition.

Without much warm-up, we hurt going up the first climb. You think it’s a signifcant climb—until you get to the next one. But first you have to go around a hairpin bend where the winner of the elite men’s TT went off the road in a preride. We passed the bike ahead of us on that second climb, which made us feel pretty good. Martin said he was breathing really hard there, but so were they! (Oh yeah, so was I.)

The rest of the ride in the park and out into farm country was uneventful. In a bit of wishful thinking, Martin saw a corner marshall at the first intersection on the straight road and hoped it was the turnaround. But no, we had about another 3K to go before it was time to turn back.

Coming back hurt some more. We had to really dig deep in the granny gear to get up a couple of the rollers. There’s a big long descent going back as you head for the one-lane bridge, but it was over in very short order on the tandem. We kind of bogged down coming back to the county road that leads back to the park entrance, and it was raining fiercely at that point.

There’s a nice descent as you come into the park, a climb that seemed shorter on the tandem up to a park office, then a long, long descent that eventually transitions into the hairpin. I was surprised to feel Martin engage the brakes on this section—it’s where most folks hit 50 on their single bikes, so we were surely traveling faster than that (Martin is shaking his head no). And we carried our momentum so far into the hairpin that it was almost as technical going uphill as down!

About 1K from the finish, there’s a sharper/faster-than-you-expect bend where Martin couldn’t see for about 100 meters (which he told me after we finished). There was a sudden pull on the brakes there! We just powered up the last little hill before the gradual drop to the finish, straight through the chutes and under the banner. We had passed two bikes but had no idea how we did. (I’ll tell you later.)

Then it was back to our condo and every single recovery technique I’ve ever heard of. Martin and Clint went back to the TT course for Clint’s race, and I was supposed to sleep. But that didn’t happen. Ten minutes on the trainer and, when Martin sent me a text message to say the roads were drying out, 2.75 miles spinning around the adjoining parking lots on my road bike to try to remember how to handle a single bike.

For my single TT, I got to go down the start ramp. Of course the holder never holds you perfectly straight and I VERY nearly collided with the start clock at the bottom of the ramp. But with one expletive, I averted disaster and was on my way. It had stopped pouring just before my start, but there was still thunder in the area. The male companion of one woman in my age group summed up how to ride the course: carefully, but not too carefully.

I was too careful. The bike would’ve done more than I asked/let it. All I really wanted was a nap and it took me a while to get going well. I chose tuck (which kept my hands on the brakes) over aero bars a bit too often, and brakes instead of not braking way too often. I was surprised how often I had to get out of the saddle (we didn’t on the tandem). I had to go up two of the three hills we did in the granny gear on the tandem, but my lowest gear wasn’t nearly that low and my legs HURT. Every time I felt mostly miserable I reminded myself that this was national championships and would chant “PO-DI-UM” in my brain to try to make myself go that little bit faster—or at least not go slower.

I think I passed three or four riders, but they were all men in an older age group and thus not who I really wanted to pass. My 30-second woman took off like a shot from the start and I never saw her again. I didn’t see my 60-second woman, either, so I was getting worried that I was riding at a snail’s pace—but nobody caught me (except a moto, which gave me a brief scare when I thought it was a rider!).

So. Results. Martin and I won the masters mixed 70+ tandem race by 16 seconds. Not bad considering that our combined ages are 88 (the next higher category is 90+), which meant we were racing against folks a lot younger than us. We had no idea what to expect, and certainly didn’t expect to win. The main reason I did my individual time trial was because I thought I stood a reasonably good chance of making the podium. And I only JUST barely did: I was 1.4 seconds ahead of the woman in sixth place.

I learned/reaffirmed something today: it is really important to go as hard as you can every second in a time trial because sometimes things come down to a very small margin. And I surprised a whole bunch of people today by riding (and winning!) on the back of a tandem, in the rain, on a very hilly, technical course, with someone who had not ridden or driven the course and not having a single moment of fear or panic.

After winning elite nationals on this course last week, Kristin Armstrong said it was the hardest time trial she had ever done. That’s because TTs have become nearly by definition flat, straight, and boring. This was a really, really hard course, but it was so much more fun than powering along at a constant heart rate on some straight road. This is a thinker’s course: you have to pay attention the whole time. All those mantras I usually need never came into play (except “PO-DI-UM”). To get to race it twice was almost as good as the bling.

Martin's race report is here.

Regional dialects

Monday, 10 July

Clint and I were out preriding the TT course here in Seven Springs this afternoon when we came across this sign. I guess it translates as a statement about the condition of the road, but it might as well be a menu for a diner up the way. We had to drive 20 miles today to buy beer (only by the case, from a "distributor" in this state), so who knows how they like their chips!

The course was an absolute blast to soft pedal on a road bike. The TT itself will be a different matter, though: lots of time out of the saddle, out of the aerobars, in the small chain ring, wondering why I don't have a 34 small chain ring on my TT bike.... The road is never straight and never flat. There is one 180-degree hairpin and a couple of places where you can't see over the crest of a hill. The road goes every which way, so sometimes it's a headwind, sometimes a crosswind, and, I guess, sometimes a tailwind. There are three substantial climbs, but you can settle into those; the rest of the time the course just rolls and rolls.

It's a scenic course. The first and last 4 miles are through a beautiful forest in a state park, then you break out into rolling farm country. Green, lots of trees, kind of like Co. Wicklow but nothing like Co. Donegal for which a nearby town is named.

Tomorrow we preride it on the TT bikes, in the aero bars (where my nerves allow).

Ian and Kenny !!

Thursday, 6 July

Mick was reading to me last night some online report about "who to watch" in the time trial at elite national championships today. One of the men mentioned was someone he'd beaten in a TT, so he didn't give much credence to the story. Then, on the trainer this morning, I was thinking that Ian McKissick was the guy to watch--along with my teammate Kenny Williams, of course.

So it was pretty sweeeeet to find out that Ian won and Kenny was third! Way to go, guys! Congrats to Ian on his new jersey. He'll be watched for sure in the road race on Saturday. What a bittersweet year for everyone at Recycled Cycles.

Vinaccio Coffee

Tuesday, 4 July

I capped off the long holiday weekend with a 91-mile spin out to the lovely 'burb of Sultan, known to most as the last bastion of civilization on the way to skiing at Stevens Pass. On this holiday, the bakery (creators of the best donuts on any bike ride) was closed, so we explored a little and came to the Vinaccio Coffee Company. What an amazing place in the middle of the Sky Valley! A little bit of coffee culture in the midst of pickups-that-run-cyclists-off-the-road country. Most of their beans are fair trade and organic, and they roast their own. You just about stumble over the bags of beans stacked around the shop. Comfy chairs, tables outside, free internet access--what else do you need for a coffee stop in the middle of your summer (or winter!) ride?

And the stopping wasn't the only sweet part of this ride. The raspberries on the Tualco Loop Road were super fragrant in the humid sunshine, the stretch of the Ben Howard Road along the Skykomish River was magnificent, riding through the narrow wooded sections of the Old Pipeline Road was tranquil, and it was just a great day to be out and about on a bike!

A better example

Sunday, 2 July

Today I was schooled. A friendly and gracious professional woman cyclist, Kim Anderson of T-Mobile, paid a brief visit this weekend to Oregon bike racing. On Saturday, she very impressively rode 7 of the 9 laps (80 of 100 miles) of the pro-1-2 men's state road race championship. There were fewer than 20 men left in the race when she chose to pull out (she was sitting comfortably in the pack at that point). Today, she rode the cat 3 men's race at Mt. Tabor, finishing fourth, and then raced the cat 1-2-3 women's race.

Needless to say, she won. But she did it in such a thoughtful way. As we started, she said "let's keep it together." And she let the locals race their race. She didn't push the pace, I don't think she even sprinted for any primes. For the first few laps, she made sure the main group regrouped at the top of the hill. She congratulated all of us on a good race after the finish (whether we'd had one or not). She chatted with people after the race. She was a wonderful ambassador for the sport.

Okay, so my efforts on a bike are not remotely close to those of Kim Anderson, and it was pretty much a given that she was going to win today while I was unsure about some of my competition yesterday. But for all the cynical men who thought I was bonkers for entertaining the slightest bit of guilt for riding away from my field yesterday, look at Kim's example today and understand maybe a little bit of how women's racing is different from men's.

Results are here.

Guilty pleasure

Saturday, 1 July

Back in the Dark Ages when I was a cat 4, there were never any separate cat 4 women’s races so we always raced with the 1-2-3s. And I got really annoyed when a cat 1 or 2 woman would show up for a race and feel obliged to demonstrate her prowess, attack, blow the field apart, and turn some nice road race into a mass-start time trial. Women like to have fun at a bike race, and being made to realize your limitations from the get-go just isn’t very much fun. And lots of women who don’t have fun don’t come back to play. Hence the small fields and lack of separate cat 4 races in the Dark, Demeaning Ages of my past.

Today I was guilty of that offense. I didn’t mean to offend, and I took pleasure in my victory. But I probably didn’t do much for warm sentiment in the masters women’s field.

Sixteen women started the Oregon masters women state road race championship outside Elmira this afternoon. We started together but were scored in 3 age groups: 30+, 40+, and 50+. (Our course was the same as the one I raced tandem on a few weeks ago.) Some of the women I recognized, and I know that not all of them turn up for many mass-start events. So I knew from the gun that there were reluctant racers and women who probably didn’t really like racing with cat 1s and 2s. I vowed to myself to not ride at the front much early on, not set tempo on the climbs, and try to keep a happy group together for the first lap (we did 3).

But you know what they say about good intentions. I let Mary set tempo up the first hill (the shorter, steeper one), but she drifted back in the last 100 meters and I was first over the top. Two TGH women came past very quickly on the fast descent with about 6 more women on their wheels. We had a group of 9 for a while, and at least 2 of them demonstrated a distinct (no, scary) lack of pacelining experience. A few more caught back on as we were trying to explain the concept.

The second climb is about 2 kilometers long. I told myself again not to ride at the front, just let someone else set a tempo they were comfortable with. This worked for a while, but women kept dropping back and pretty soon there was no one between me and the lead car. If you let me settle into a comfortable rhythm, I tend to stay there. When the road flattened out with about 600 meters to the top of the hill, I just kept the effort constant. When the pitch increased again with about 300 meters to the top, there was no one on my wheel. And after that, the race was a time trial for just about everybody.

There’s a nice twisty descent after the longer climb, and I was happy to ride it solo. I was disappointed that it was not nearly as fast or as much fun as it had been on the tandem but I still motored along. At the bottom I realized I had a good gap and needed to get to work, so I went pretty hard up the short steep hill on the second lap. I was light-headed and seeing stars at the top! (I forgot to mention that it was 90 degrees this afternoon.) I watched my speedometer on the descent and smiled when it got over 45 mph. When the road flattened out, the driver of the lead car told me the gap was 32 seconds. I thought this section was flat on the tandem, but it really undulates and it was hard to stay focused on going hard. Three-quarters of a lap later, the lead car guy told me I had 2.5 minutes and said “just keep the hammer down, darlin’.” It’s been a while since anyone’s called me “darlin” so that kept me smiling for another stretch. And I decided maybe I didn’t need stars again at the top of the steep climb.

Yeah, I stayed away and won my category and the race overall. Yeah, the biggest group I saw finish together was 2 women. Yeah, I was happy to win and actually pleased to have some TT training, even if it was on the wrong bike. But I wonder if it would’ve been better to keep the race together, teach some of those women how to paceline, encourage others on the hard bits of the climb…..Okay, I don’t feel really guilty, but the thought did cross my mind that the me of 10 years ago would’ve been annoyed at the me of today. Proud, but annoyed.

Results are here.

What's in your blood?

Friday, 30 June

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the world's most ardent fan of pro bike racing. But still, I'm devastated by today's news from the Tour de France. It all reads like a bad April Fool's joke, three months late.... Maybe Tyler is getting his first good laugh in months....

Conversation starter

Sunday, 25 June

Where else but a bike race can a man start a conversation with a woman he barely knows with "is your butt sore after riding 100 miles"?

There were a few other entertaining features on the final day of the Elkhorn Classic, which involved 101 miles, 3 major climbs, 2 unrated climbs (each only about a mile long), and the epic 8-mile, 95-degree killer climb to the finish at the top of Dooley Mountain:

:) The ex-pro riding all day with the chainring tattoo (obviously, it does happen to the best of us).

:) The local cat 3/4 who said "clear" each time the ex-pro was ready to pull off the front of the rotating paceline (um, do you think she's done this before?).

:) The rider who, after the first climb, tried to slow down the race and watch and wait for her teammate to catch back on--who finally did about a mile before the second climb, at which time she immediately got dropped for good.

:) 15 women desperate for water, all trying to get the same bottle from the first feeder in the neutral feed zone, totally oblivious to the 25 other feeders spread out over the next 200 meters.

:) Goodies at the finish (which is 17 miles from the start) included generous supplies of bottled water, sliced watermelon and oranges and bananas, cookies no doubt made with love by every branch of the Hobson clan (and there are lots), pretzels, AND TWO KEGS OF BEER! Picture 400 hot, dehydrated bike racers at the top of an 8-mile climb and the end of a 101-mile race--sitting in the sun, drinking beer. Not very many bike races finish with that kind of party atmosphere.

In all fairness I have to admit that I was probably pretty entertaining in my efforts to put my clothes back on after our pee stop. Yes, bib shorts are comfortable, but without a full-zip jersey, they are quite the challenge. It wasn't so bad getting everything off, but trying to get the jersey back on before everyone else was a kilometer down the road brought an adrenaline rush. Especially because the jersey pockets were loaded with food, an empty bottle, and wrappers that I wouldn't want to strew in the sage brush.

And to those who would chastise me for being hypocritical in condemning men who pee in the parking lot at Pacific Raceways while I take part in race pee stops, all I can say is there wasn't a house within 10 miles and the landscape was populated by sage brush and a few cows. And certainly there were no porta-potties or flush toilets in sight. Uncle Sam and the Russians were no doubt watching from space, so we'll probably all show up on the Internet in a few days anyway. At least this year I managed not to get any burrs stuck to the inside of my shorts while they were down around my ankles!

Magical? Not so much

Saturday, 24 June

That magical combination I was hoping for in today's TT of downhill out, tailwind back turned out to be headwind out, uphill back. Semantic difference, I know, but it was a big one on the bike. I hardly got to ride in my 11 at all, and even the downhill bits didn't seem fast. Clint and others reported that the last 3K were really fast, but anything I have to ride in my 17 can't possibly be fast. I caught a few and was not passed, and I didn't have to either shift to my small ring or get out of the saddle on the hardest hill on the return. It was hard, but it's a good course, and more interesting than the old one here at Elkhorn.

We didn't get results until we turned up for the crit this afternoon, and my time wasn't so bad. Allison, whose TT times are usually really close to mine, proved that Philly and Nature Valley were great training and schooled me by 45 seconds. But there was no one in between us, so she got third and I was fourth. And I won stage money (thanks, Claire)!

I had a really hard act to follow in my crit. Never mind that I felt really tired and sleepy in the couple of hours before the start (not all naps are helpful). The masters raced right before the women, and Mick went off the front in the first two laps and stayed away to the finish. Clint bridged up, Mick's original break buddy got dropped, and Clint and Mick had 50 seconds on the pack by the finish. But for a $100 pack prime with 3 laps to go, they probably would've lapped the field.

So let's put a positive spin on my crit. I did better than I've ever done before on this course, and I only lost 20 more seconds in this stage than in the TT this morning. Compared to how much time most of us are going to lose tomorrow, a couple of minutes is a trifle.

And tomorrow should be interesting. In an effort to get the women's field to finish on the same day as the men (it's a 101-mile stage), we start first. That means 4 men's fields are going to pass us. We will have to be strategic about our pee break. It supposed to be 100 degrees in Portland tomorrow, so it will be a real cooker for us on the final 8-mile climb at about, what, 1:00 in the afternoon when the sun is blazing overhead. There are 2 feed zones, and it will be a day to drink a lot, even for me. I wonder how many layers of sunscreen applied at 7:30 a.m. it takes to still be effective at 1:00?

Turtles

Friday, 23 June

Funny thing happened in the race today. Okay, it wasn't so funny for the cat 3 rider who crashed and broke his collarbone. He hit a turtle. Not the kind you normally find on a crit course, but a real live creature who was out for a stroll on a summer afternoon. No word on the fate of the turtle. [Late addition: Turns out the crashee was a Second Ascent rider from Seattle, and the locals are baffled as to what a turtle was doing out there because the only turtles in these parts are in pet shops in Boise.]

Nothing so interesting in the women's race. We started out slow, which was fine with me because I had a long massage this morning and was hoping to spin everything out before the racing got serious. Some woman would periodically punch it, not to attack and get away, but just (I think) to move the pace up about 14 notches. We had our pee stop after the town of North Powder (it seems like a ghost town every year when we ride through) and then a pretty hard tempo up the never-ending climb that doesn't even get mentioned in the race bible. The descent into Union was very relaxed and the ride out of town along the river was pretty mellow. For a while. About 10K before "The Climb," the tempo went up and I thought I was going to have to put it back on my big ring. But spinning was my philosophy today, and I held on to that 34 front chain ring even when the tempo went over 20 mph.

One woman jumped not far into the main part of the climb, Alison was with her for a while and then wasn't, and then the chasing group of us just got smaller and smaller until there was a Tamarack rider and me. I couldn't hold her wheel through the feed zone, which was at the very top of the hill. Over the top and down the first sweeping turns and then the stairstep rollers up and up. I could see the two riders ahead of me but clearly was not making time on them. In another couple of miles, Heather Albert came flying past me like I was standing still--and then the train of about a dozen riders hot on her wheel. Between the technical descending and the crosswind, I just could not latch on to that train. Chase chase chase. Ouch. Never got on to that group, but it pretty much exploded in the last climb to the finish and I caught some of the fallout.

Nearly everyone today who raced is suffering from heat exhaustion and/or dehydration. I had goose bumps for a while before the finish. Every recovery trick in the book is being pressed into service tonight. Tomorrow is such a different day: TT and crit. But more wind and sunshine. Hopefully no turtles, though.

Baker City

Thursday, 22 June

I love Baker City. It's a big enough small town that you can't see from one end to the other. But it's a small enough big town that you can't get lost. The town sits in a valley between two mountain ranges, so the scenery is amazing. And you're a very long way from anywhere.

We rode out to the new Elkhorn time trial course this afternoon. It looks like the first mile of the course is downhill!! Carl was a little scared at the prospect of so many people going 50 mph at 30-second intervals. I'll use every cog on my cassette, but I think the 11 and 12 are going to be the favorites. It should be painful but magical: downhill out, tailwind back. Of course, the way you just "ride" a course is a lot different from how you race on it, so I'll probably fail to see anything magical about it on Saturday morning.

The forecast calls for sunshine all the way through Sunday, and I'm looking forward to the fifth year (my fourth--I had to skip it last year) of the Elkhorn Classic.

Bodily functions

Thursday, Ides of June

Okay, folks, remember all those things your mom told you not to do in public? That rule is in full force at bike races, too. You surely learned some common sense growing up; show the rest of us that you still have some left. Recent offenders include two men at Pacific Raceways this week:

To the guy in the 4-5s race who could not ride his bike in a straight line while spitting: unless you have some monster sinus infection (in which case you should probably not be on your bike), I can't figure out why you need to spit in the middle of a race. If you think you have to spit, at least figure out how to make your bike go straight when you turn your head. But please don't practice it in a race.

And to the male who had to pee in the parking lot, in spite of the plethora of porta-potties placed all over Pacific Raceways, I'm not sure what justice to wish upon your head. (There must be a great pun here involving the size of your "pee brain.") If marking "your" territory is part of your prerace ritual, please find another sport. You may be invited to do that anyway.

After those insults, I guess I'd better be on my best (or, at least, least offensive) behavior at the next few races....

Smack

Tuesday, 13 June

Hey all you smack talkin' guys, arguing about underperforming teams and overrepresented teams and "diverse" teams and all, I didn't see any of those aforementioned teams crossing the line first in the 1-2-3 race at Pacific Raceways tonight (or at Ballard on Saturday, for that matter). Way to go, Trevor (and Ron) (and Kenny)!

Paradise revisited

Sunday, 11 June

When I was down to the last two bites of my piece of chocolate cream pie in Eatonville this afternoon, I remembered yesterday's issue of flab.

But I deserved some flab-inducement today. Mick and I did a tour of the south side of Mt. Rainier: Ashford, Paradise, Stevens Canyon, Grove of the Patriarchs, Packwood, Skate Creek, and back to Ashford. I had never done this loop in this direction, and it is the only way to go! Less traffic on the busy stretch up to Paradise in the morning (waaay better than coming down with the tourist hordes in the afternoon). Almost no traffic on Stevens Canyon or 123 because Cayuse Pass is still closed. And Skate Creek from south to north is so beautiful you almost forget you're climbing (it's a 12-mile climb, so that's a pretty good trick).

We lucked out with the weather; the mountain was completely concealed by clouds when we got back to Ashford, but it was warm and sunny there. It was cold on the descent down Stevens Canyon (Reflection Lakes are still covered with ice and snow) but nearly 80 degrees in Packwood, and it was nice to ride in such warm sunshine.

Flab

Saturday, 10 June

Women store fat in different places than men. I used to work with a woman who wore long sleeves all summer because she was embarrased by how much fat she carried in her arms. I vowed not to let myself reach that state. So when I noticed a few years back on my TT bike that the fat in my forearms, um, jiggled when I rode, I figured I was headed in the wrong direction. But then I happened to see that Lance Armstrong suffered the same affliction when I watched a TT in the Tour that year. The pudgy jokes were all about Jan, not Lance, so I was hopeful that I didn't have so much to worry about.

Today Martin and I raced in the Oregon state tandem road race championship in Elmira (I think), west of Eugene. The course (which I last raced on 6? years ago) featured a "short, steep" climb (which was actually about a kilometer long, maybe 4-5% at the bottom and a healthy 8% at the top) and a "long, gradual" climb, which was about 2 kilometers long and maybe 4-5% most of the way. It was an 11-mile circuit we did 4 times. The descent off the "short, steep" climb was wicked fast: one tandem reported that they hit 52 mph, so we probably were somewhere in that ballpark.

So, going downhill at 52 mph on the back of a tandem, I now have no worries and plenty of time to notice that the fat in my upper arms jiggles when we're just rolling down a hill. I clench my muscles as tight as I can. Apparently I don't have enough muscle because it just keeps wobbling in the wind. WTF are all those hours in the gym for?? With nationals just a month away, clearly it's time for me to go on Kerry's Starbucks-and-water diet. And no, I don't have any delusions that I'm "fat," and yes, I remember that Leslie recently accused me of having arms so skinny that they are an "anatomy lesson." And the XS arm warmers I got for TRIA are loose and sag around my biceps/triceps. Maybe I should just wear long sleeves all the time so I can't notice my fat wobbling. Oh yeah, that was the problem/solution I vowed to avoid.

There was a race going on, even while I was having personal image issues. First time up the short hill we're neutral because the cat 4 men are catching us, and still I think we dropped 3 bikes. After the next time up that hill (also neutral--we played leapfrog with those guys until they finished at the end of our second lap), I think we were down to 6 bikes. And then 4. And then 3. The third lap was moderate up the hills because we figured it was going to come down to the last time up the last hill. And it did. We rode together pretty steady until 100m to the finish and then they accelerated and we did not. So we finished third.

Don't let anyone tell you stokers just sit on the back of the bike and confront their deepest fears of accumulating body fat and forget to pedal; my legs are more tired tonight than they were after the first road stage at Mt. Hood where I was racing/keeping up with professional women cyclists. I guess I should go to bed, eh, and stop blathering--I mean, blogging.

Martin's race report (sans flab) is here.
Results are here.

Stirrin' it up

Friday, 9 June

Current thinking apparently holds that you need to say shocking and offensive things to drive readers to your blog. I'm not out to offend any more than I have to, although I could have some fun with the spelling habits of various bloggers (especially the team manager who misspells the name of his own team). Instead, I'll skip the tabloid commentary and jump straight to the "inquiring minds want to know" department:


Next Saturday, 17 June, is the day of the Marymoor Little 100, one of the more spectacular bike racing events in the Northwest ("spectacular" here meaning "lots of people making spectacles of themselves"). Reliable sources indicate that these charming undies will grace the, ah, attire of one of those same spelling-challenged bloggers (whose offenses include "slams on his breaks").

So come out to Marymoor next Saturday afternoon and watch for Mighty Mouse to make his appearance. You might be shocked and you might be offended, but you'll surely have something to blog about!

Cooper

Saturday, 3 June

Sometimes when I'm sick and--at the most fundamental level--all I want is my mommy, the very next-best thing is a kitty. Lucky me, I found Cooper here today at the Cooper Spur Mountain Resort. When I finally dragged myself out of bed at 10:30 a.m., I came up to the lodge to get my wifi fix and spooked Cooper away from his food dish. On my way out, he didn't bolt quite so far, and I finally got close enough to pet him. Then he was butter in my hands, rolling on my feet, kneading his paws into my leg, and distracting me from my less than happy state. Purrs are very therapeutic.

D.N.S.

Friday, 2 June

It's been a long time (at least that I can remember) since I didn't start a stage at a race. (Bill W. was the CR then, too, but I don't think this is his fault.) I felt awful when I got up, breakfast didn't make it better, and I thought I was going to get carsick on the way to the start. I could've ridden the first 8 miles of today's course (ALL downhill), but then I would've been looking for a ride somewhere in the 8-mile climb back up to the Cooper Spur resort. And the race did that circuit 3 times. Which is worse: DNS or DNF?

I can't say much about the scenery up there on the mountain because it was either raining or foggy or both. Riders were covered in dirt and muck when they finished. Nobody wanted a bottle in the feed zone. "This is hell" were the words from a TGH rider, and even one of the very toughest riders in the women's peloton almost cracked and had a meltdown. I never know what exactly to say to riders as they suffer their way through a race where I'm standing by the side of the road. Well, not completely true: I told Adrian H. he rocked the second time he came through the feed zone in a 2-man break. He looked good (wet, dirty, in pain, but strong), but they were getting reeled in on the third pass.

So now I don't get to do the TT from windy hell or the crit from crit hell. I hope I feel better by Sunday so that I can ride that course, which is supposed to be heaven and hell on a bike.

Craziest thing I ever...

Thursday, 1 June

An incomplete sentence, maybe, but those words from another rider pretty well summed up the best bit of race entertainment (?) in the women’s peloton at Hood today. At the end of the first of our two laps, a woman dropped back in the field (not off the back, mind you) and started to roll down her shorts. She eventually had them pulled down below her crotch, positioned herself off one side of the bike, and I would assume she peed but the view and the thought of what was to come made me move up faster than anything has ever motivated me before. I’ve been in races where women have peed on the bike, but I had never seen the drop-the-drawers approach. The fact that she was able to keep pedaling (intermittently) and stay on the back of the pack suggests that she has practiced this before.

The other surprising thing about today’s race was that most of the field stayed together. Our Columbia Hills stage was much the same as the Wasco tandem race plus about 10 extra miles. The climb was the same, and oh did it hurt this time. The field got all strung out the first time up but everyone eventually caught back on. There were a couple of exposed descents and some 90-degree right turns in the new section. But the two much-talked-about features were a “heinous”/“acute” right turn and tricky hairpins in the last 5 miles. The acute turn was so heinous that the pack slowed down and navigated it carefully. The pitch in the apex of the turn was probably 20%, and there was gravel for added thrills. But it didn’t split the field. The hairpins were down a very gradual descent (1%?) and weren’t hairpins, just a twisty road—with a headwind. We all checked them out the first time around, thinking it would be a sweet place to get away and be out of sight going in to the finish.

I thought I was really smart on the first lap for knowing the course and tried to move up near the front in the half mile before the climb. But it was REALLY windy up there, and about half the field had the same idea. So fighting for position lost out to fighting the wind and I started up the hill in the last quarter of the field. I abandoned any notions of good position before the second climb, but the wind had picked up, which favored those of us on the back. I thought there would be attacks in the last 10 miles, what with those technical turns and fast descents and some painful little rollers. But no, we were all still together even after the acute corner. There were no attacks in all those twisty bends, but the speed really ramped up. I found an experienced wheel I knew and stuck to it. Things eased up a bit with 2K to go. I was waiting for an all-out explosion in the last kilometer, but it never materialized. I even moved up in the sprint. And (dare I say it?), the high-speed slightly technical finish was pretty fun. Several women said they didn’t like it, but I wasn’t one of ‘em!

This is the first time I can remember that I’ve raced with a rolling enclosure and got to use the whole road for the race. It was great. And it was the biggest field (72) I’ve been in for a very long time. There were a few times when our moto official moved up through our pack with the photographer behind him on another motorcycle. That wasn’t fun the first time (although it helped me move up), but we figured it out. The dead porcupine feature was gone from the shoulder. There was some interesting bike handling and a few choice words. Mostly, though, it was a pretty mellow race. Even the top of GC recognizes that the topography is what makes this race. Starting tomorrow.

Stage results are here.

Pesticide prologue

Wednesday, 31 May

Our 3-mile prologue at the Mt. Hood Cycling Classic started at a fruit warehouse and rolled along, ultimately more up than down, through orchards (newly sprayed, from the pervasive smell) on the hills above the Columbia River. Mt. Hood was a sentinel in the distance, gazing down at us across foothills and more orchards.

The thing I learned today is not to believe what everyone tells you about a course. That may be a very good thing to keep in mind through the stages ahead at this race, because nobody has said a kind word about a single one of them—except perhaps about the always-great views of Hood. The race organizer added a half-mile to previous years’ prologue, giving us an uphill start, a quick downhill, and then on to the rollers.

The course had been described to me by many people as being downhill, then uphill, with a little kicker to the finish. My description of the course is rollers with a short little hill at the finish. True enough, you couldn’t ride the whole thing in your big ring, but the “hill” before the kicker wasn’t much.

What no one had mentioned but was significant for me was the really rough pavement. Combined with a cross-headwind, it made for a little more thrilling bike ride than I hope for. I was flying along at 25? mph, hanging on for dear life and wondering what would happen if I encountered a big bump and a big gust at the same time. The Shimano neutral support guys knew where to be—about 200 meters past the end of the worst rough section.

My ride was okay. It probably would’ve been 10-15 seconds faster if I’d been able to preride the course. I got caught behind a car that dawdled along the course, riding its brake lights. I didn’t know what it was going to do, and I didn’t what to slam into it if it stopped abruptly. And then the marshalls at the last turn up to the finish thought their job was to yell encouraging things rather than direct riders to turn. It is kind of a cool finish: the gradient doesn’t get steeper but the diameter of the curve as you go up the hill gets tighter and tighter so you don’t see the finish line until you’re about 20 feet from it.

We had a few spits of rain while we were sitting on trainers (but everyone here seems to be like Dave H. and wouldn’t even let me observe out loud that there were wet specks on my bars), and a little more of a sprinkle on the way back, but nothing that affected the race or even really hastened our packing up afterward.

I just HAVE to mention what a great sponsor today's stage had: The Fruit Company. I guess it was their warehouse and parking lot that we used for staging. They had a table set up in front of their building and gave out beautiful apples and pears and fresh pineapple juice. You could take the enormous Anjou pears, or they would slice them up for you. I am really looking forward to my smoothie tomorrow morning!

TRIA had a couple of top 10 finishers today, and I managed 22nd in a field of 72. Tomorrow we will ride on much of the course from the Wasco Wild West 75, except that there’s an added section with a left turn, a sketchy descent, a really sharp (“acute”) right turn, and then hairpins down a 1% descent to the finish. I remember that both Martin and I were thankful that we weren’t on our single bikes in the wind on that course, but I guess I’ll get to find out what that experience will be like.

Mix it up

Sunday, 28 May

Ski to Sea is always about the most fun I have on my single bike all year, and it's not even a bike race. Well, it is, but it isn't. Ski to Sea is a 7-sport, 8-athletes-to-a-team relay race from the Mt. Baker ski area to Bellingham Bay. The road bike leg (leg #4) is a 36-mile TT with some climbing but a net elevation loss. If you've never experienced it, you cannot imagine the buzz in Bellingham leading up to the race as everyone tries to compare teams, who's going well, who that unknown cross-country skier is, etc. etc. And I am quite sure the next few days in that town are spent memorizing and dissecting the results for discussion all summer long and into the planning for next year's dream team, which begins...well, maybe today.

This was my fifth year racing at the event, all five of them with the Boundary Bay Brewing Co. team. Our captain/manager Janet goes out of her way to recruit amazing female athletes from the U.S. and Canada--national champions, national team members, inspiring women all the way around. Boundary Bay has a winning tradition at Ski to Sea, finishing first in the women's division since before I started on the team. But every year is a new challenge. Janet still dreams of a top-10 overall finish. Unfortunately, as more men's teams get tougher and tougher, that goal slips out of reach. That's not to say that some of our women aren't right up there stunning the male competition with amazingly fast times.

The bike leg of Ski to Sea starts at the DOT station about 8 miles below the Mt. Baker ski area on the Mt. Baker highway. The first half? of the race goes down the highway, there's a right turn at Kendall, then a left turn onto South Pass Road, which takes you all the way to the finish in Everson. There's some fairly technical descending, a few hard little hills, and lots of power-along-in-your-biggest-gear downhill.

In the other legs of this race, it's all about how fast you can go, how strong you are. It's not too hard to predict which team(s) will have the best times. But there's another element to the road bike leg: drafting is legal. Depending on how teammates (cross-country and downhill skiers, plus a runner) do up the mountain, you might ride the whole 36 miles solo, or you might have a traveling companion right from the very beginning. Or, if you're really lucky, a stronger cyclist will start behind you, catch you, and give you a nice draft for at least part of your ride. I've experienced all of these over the years, although it's pretty tough to stay with stronger guys in the hilly parts of this course.

Participating in this race requires almost as much logistical coordination as training. I am thankful for having been completely taken care of in this department by Brian and E'Lana; all I do is show up, and they get me and my stuff up the mountain, arrange to get it down the mountain (we finish 36 miles from where we start), and then find me with warm clothes at the finish and get me and my bike back to Bellingham. Consider that these logistics are played out over 7 legs of this race, and you begin to see the scope of the logistical operation. To add to the challenge, the Mt. Baker highway closes to all traffic a half-hour before the race starts. Athletes who race at the top sometimes don't get back to Bellingham until at least noon--after competing at 8:30 a.m.!

A typical feature of this race is persistent drizzle on Mt. Baker, and this year was no exception. So we were delighted that we had our own tent (thanks, RunningShoes.com) for warming up on our trainers. Since you have to get there so long before you start, there's plenty of time to check out who really showed up to race, who's substituting for whom, and who has what new gear. Race officials announce when the race starts, when the first hand-off is made between the ski legs, and when the first runners hit the road. Then, the tension really escalates as they call out the number of the first runner approaching the run-bike transition. All of us who expect to go out sooner rather than later swarm the start area, not caring so much about the drizzle any more. I was disappointed yesterday to watch just about all the male racing cyclists go out ahead of me; that meant no chance to draft them when they passed. There were a few strong combinations starting just about together, and I knew they'd be fast to the finish.

There's an element that complicates drafting here: what division riders' respective teams are in. Since I'm on an all-women's team, I'm no threat to any guy out there (no comments, please), and some have been extremely helpful in working with me in the past. In return, I don't much care what guys I tow around because I know they're not on a team that can challenge mine. But when guys start drafting each other, they'll pay attention to their individual divisions.

Because I was the first female starter on an all-women's team, I got my very own escort of two motorcycle cops all the way to the finish. At first I thought they were just patrolling the road and would soon go away; then I got annoyed because I felt like a suspected felon on a very short leash (I did not cross the center line, I promise, even though the road was closed); but then I decided to be flattered. I didn't get the draft that Glenn B. did from his pair, but I guess it was nice to have company.

I caught two guys fairly quickly, but then had to completely stop for a minor mechanical issue and they went right by. I passed them again, but then was caught by a group that these two had latched on to. At first I had high hopes for this group, but it was quickly very clear that one guy was doing all the work, and he was not super smooth or consistent. I sat in a little, drove the group a lot, and then the fastest guy and I dropped the others going up the hill into Maple Falls. We worked together for a ways, but then on the gradual downhill to Kendall, he pulled away. I was pedaling as hard as I could in my 55x11, but he probably weighed 80-100 pounds more than me and I just couldn't hold his wheel. Gravity at work. Before the turn at Kendall, I spied another group up the road and vowed to catch them before South Pass. And I did. They didn't even try to get on my wheel, so it was just me and my moto guys all the way to the finish.

Every year I am "challenged" by a few of the bends coming down off the Powerhouse climb and can't quite summon up the nerve to stay in my aero bars. I did better this year. But then in the last few miles as South Pass descends to the flats before Everson, there was such a swirling wind that I had to get out of the aero bars in every bend. I just had no control over the front wheel. I was dreading those 3? 4? 5? miles across the open, exposed valley to Everson with a strong crosswind, but I just put the bike in the middle of the lane (so that I had some road to blow across before I hit the ditch, if a strong gust came along). It was really fast, and bike control wasn't too bad. It had stopped raining for a few miles in the middle of the course, but it was raining again for the finish.

I was pretty happy with my ride this year. Not my fastest time ever, but not my slowest either, and considering that I had to stop by the side of the road, that's okay. I got another TV interview after my finish (same questions as last year, I think), and I remembered to find and thank the moto cops for their attentiveness. I moved my team from 30th to 26th overall, and we moved up to 23rd overall by the finish and won the women's open division for the sixth year in a row.

I suppose one reason this event is so fun for me is because it's an enormous time trial. But it is so much fun to work with athletes from other sports, to see them comparing their times to men and women they know in their sport (just like I do in mine), to hear what made their race fun or hard or both, and just to see the collective excitement of the whole team and our sponsors. And then there's the enthusiasm amassed by 400 teams of 8 athletes each. The "rec" category is huge, a few teams get DQed because they don't make the time cut-offs at particular points, and you wonder how some people can even ride 36 miles on the bikes or in the clothes they show up with. But EVERYBODY seems to have fun, and 3200 competitors having fun is a great thing to share.

All the results are here.

Stoked...in a Stetson

Saturday, 20 May

"Is the rider able to exit the vehicle without assistance?" So began our prerace technical inspection at the Wasco Wild West 75 tandem and recumbent road race. Having never heard such a thing at an OBRA, USAC, or UCI race, I thought, "we're not in Kansas anymore, Martin...."

The WWW75 is an unsanctioned race on a beautiful 18.75-mile circuit about 4 miles outside of The Dalles, Oregon. It features riders and bikes from all walks of cycling life, eager to take on a tough race, hoping to finish, improve on last year's time, and/or win. The event had been on our tandem race calendar for months, and we had no idea what to expect in the way of competition. The promoter told us in advance that we were the "prerace favorites"--pressure like that is hard to live up to. We just hoped it wasn't the equivalent of the Sports Illustrated jinx.

I can't say enough about the course. There were fewer than 20 houses on the entire route, and we saw fewer than 20 cars during the entire race. The topography is typical north central Oregon stuff: close rolling hills, little valleys, range land, sagebrush, wheat fields. And, with the Columbia River Gorge close by, wind is omnipresent. The first 10 miles are rolling, mostly tailwind today; then (into the headwind) there's about a one-mile climb, a little descending, a shorter climb, a lot of descending, and some flats back to the start/finish. And the road is entirely that oh-so-slow Oregon chipseal.

Tandems and recumbents raced separately and, since there was no lead car, the tandems went first because we were "bigger and more visible." Our field featured 6 mixed tandems and one male/male bike. Last year's winners were there, along with a super strong couple we've raced with before. We figured we knew who to watch. Sure enough, that strong couple took off within a half mile from the start (and I was reminded why it would've been a good thing to warm up before the race). A couple of us knew not to let them get away, so we went after them and pretty soon our group was down to just 4 bikes.

I think we set tempo on the climb (I think we did on every lap), and it was a pretty mellow tempo...as in my legs didn't hurt and I knew I wasn't going hard. Still, we were later accused of "turning on the afterburners." At the top, we were down to 2 bikes. Not relishing the thought of 2 bikes rotating for 60+ miles, we more or less waited for that energizer bunny couple, and sure enough they caught us after the descent. But they had trouble hanging with us on the second lap, and they quickly dropped off the next time up the climb.

So now Martin and I were checking out the two boys we were riding with. We had found out that this was their second ride together, that they were from Portland but didn't ride with a team or club, and that the stoker usually rode tandem with his wife. But they seemed strong and knew what they were doing. They were especially good at keeping stats. Martin and I ride without watches or cycling computer; these guys, on the other hand, reported our average speed and lap time every lap. And they seemed to consume a huge amount of food and water. In turn, they were checking us out. "So you guys did Co-Motion last year? You must have done well?" "Yeah, we did okay." "What category do you race in on your single bikes?" "Uh, 2." We found out later that they thought the answer to that second question was their tip that they were in trouble.

After weighing whether we should "go" the third or last time up the climb, Martin opted to wait for the last lap. And it worked (I don't mean to sound surprised--I agreed that it was the best plan). At the bottom of the climb, I thought we were in such a low gear, spinning like mad, that we couldn't possibly drop anybody. But we soon had a gap, and the gear felt much better (i.e., the hill felt much harder), and we worked harder than we had any of the three previous times up the hill. At the top of the second hill, we could see them at the bottom behind us. We pedaled as hard as we could down the descent (into the headwind, mind you) and time trialed along the flats. We had about 2 minutes on them by the finish. At least we didn't have to worry about testing our unpracticed sprinting skills.

To the winners of this tandem race went hats, suitable for winners of a "Wild West" race. I'm not sure how I ended up with the black one (isn't the guy with the white hat the good guy?!), except that I guess my head had swelled less and the black one was a smaller size.

The recumbent race was dominated by a team of Bacchetta guys. Four of them rode together off the front of their race and then split up the last time up the climb. They started just 5 minutes behind us, and we were surprised they didn't catch us. We lapped one poor recumbent rider not once but twice, so their field was really spread out. We had lots of opportunities after the race to ask questions about recumbents, and Martin went for a test drive.

Special kudos go to the race promoter, Clay Smith, and his many volunteers. I was apprehensive about having no lead or follow vehicles (the one sag pickup drove behind that rider we lapped twice), but it was an incredibly safe course. Marshalls were promised at all the intersections, but we got to the first one so quickly that there was not one there on lap 1--and they had gone home by lap 4. There was neutral water at the top of the second climb and at the start/finish line. And (another tip that this wasn't Kansas) there were two porta-potties for our use on the course. The volunteers were just as excited about the event as the racers, and it was just a cool race all the way around. And it was sunny!

Whatever I am going to do with a cowboy hat??

The view from the front of the tandem is here.

Paradise

Thursday, 18 May

Some places are aptly named, and today I visited one: Paradise. Coincidentally, it involved visiting a volcano on the anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.

Really, all I need to say is that I rode from Elbe to Paradise and back, on a tandem, in absolutely glorious weather, on roads almost totally devoid of cars. It was too perfect for (very many) words.



We saw a thousand shades of green and wildflowers just beginning to blossom. We rode within eight feet of two deer standing by the side of the road; they didn't freeze, and they didn't bolt. We saw zillions of waterfalls because there were still 8? 10? feet of snow in the parking lot at Paradise and lots of run-off everywhere. We visited (by going the wrong way on a one-way road) a viewpoint that neither of us had ever been to and had our picture taken by a visitor whose husband "rides all over Europe."


Adjectives fail me. It was, well, paradise.

Two out of three ain't bad?

Monday, 15 May

Racing this Mothers Day weekend was in Wenatchee, apple capital of the world. [My heart was at the 40K tandem TT on the beautiful course at Peoria, Oregon, but being there just didn't work out.] Two of the three stages started and finished at the Alcoa plant east of the "town" of Malaga. The drives to and from the race were beautiful (there's still snow under the bottom of the chairlift at Stevens Pass), the weather was sunny and not unbearably windy, Saturday's race schedule left time for snoozing and shopping--what more could you want? Oh yeah...results. I tried for some of those, too.

Our first stage was a 9.x mile TT. Reports from the first riders off were that it was hard on the way back because of the wind. Impossibly hard. Even my masters buddies who got back just before I started said it was ridiculous. But the wind while I was warming up didn't seem that bad, and certainly nothing like at the Ice Breaker TT back in March. Fortunately, there was one voice of reason among all the last-minute reports that confirmed what I was thinking, so I wasn't in a complete state of panic when I started.

It's a pretty uneventful TT course, except for the last 750 meters before the turnaround, which are up a fairly steep little hill. I stupidly stayed in my aero bars and should've sat up for a little more power; I was dragging pretty slow at the top. Straight out of the turnaround you got the full-on headwind. It was strong, but it didn't affect my ability to keep the bike in a straight line. And pretty soon I realized that it was hard mostly because it was mostly uphill. This was a combination I could cope with. In the end, I was just 8 seconds off the fastest women's time overall, and I beat all the other masters women.

I'll skip a description of the crit because I pretty much skipped that stage of the race. Let's just say that the highlights of the afternoon and evening were accomplishing my (shopping) goal for Wenatchee and watching friends race well. And breaking the law on the sidewalk in downtown Wenatchee....with law enforcement by my side....

Sunday's road race featured about 2 miles of more or less flat road, 10 miles of climbing broken up by a one-mile (oh-so-sweet) descent, a 2-part (more technical then not technical) descent, and a 9-mile flat road back to the finish. Apart from the pain and oxygen deprivation, the climb is spectacular. There is only one protracted section steep enough to make me cry, and that comes just before the feed zone so you know that help is literally just around the corner.

At the risk of sounding like Glenn B, who can talk himself into prerace fears no matter who is or is not at a race, I was not expecting a repeat of my 2005 performance on this course because the field included several cat 4s (masters women and cat 4s raced together) known for their stellar climbing skills as well as stronger masters women than last year.

Not wanting to have to work my way to the front on the climb, I rode at the front of the group from the start during the 2-mile headwind section to the climb. And nobody seemed particularly interested in coming around me. The climb starts with a short (200m?) pitch, then a few hundred meters of flat, then another short pitch, then a left turn onto the cutest little one-lane (uphill) road through orchards. After a half-kilometer or so, you have a beautiful view of the valley, and this is where I was riding by myself last year. But this year there were still some women on my wheel. Hmmm. Should I get worried yet? No, as it turned out. They didn't blow up, but the gap behind my wheel very gradually got bigger. At about mile 2 of this piddly little road (there are milepost markers), there was a good view back down through a sort of canyon, and I could see the field completely strung out as each rider tried to find her own rhythm.

I have one trick that consistently works for me for plugging along at a seemingly impossible and endless effort, and yesterday I found two more: I just imagined I was trying desperately to stay on Leah G's wheel (as I tried to do at Willamette), and I tried to close the gap to the lead car (I succeeded once!). I got through the hardest section without crying, I found my feeder in the feed zone and got a flawless hand-off (thanks, Tom!), and then had to mentally (physically, too, I guess) deal with all the climbing still ahead. The second part of the climb moves into pine forest, and the sunflowers were profuse. This climbing is not relentless, and there's that mile of luscious descending in the middle. This is really a fun, beautiful climb.

I knew I had to see the radio tower before I was at the top, but I had forgotten about the two tight bends in the very first part of the descent. This was the part of the course I knew I had to work at especially hard because a good descender could make up time on me. But (I think) everybody has to brake in the tightest corners, and the rest of the descending is pretty much straight, so that even I was bombing down the hill. It's hard to keep your heart rate up when you're zooming downhill at 35+ mph. Those 50 women in pursuit were a constant reminder, though, that that's exactly what I had to do.

I got no time checks on the road this year, so I just had to keep motoring along once I got to the flat highway and hope there wasn't a big, organized group about to overtake me. At about a mile to go, I started looking over my shoulder but I couldn't see anyone. I kept checking all the way to the last bend and with no one out there, at least I didn't have to sprint up this finish hill. I was almost expecting to get passed by Dave Z of the masters D field who had started not far behind us, but I was able to hold him off too.

During the afternoon, I drove up the climb twice more behind the men's cat 1-2 race, and I saw so much more scenery than that narrow little window you have when you're riding hard allows. Not only were the sunflowers profuse under the pines, but you could see them spread across meadows a half-mile away. The vistas to Mission Ridge and the surrounding Cascades were spectacular. And there are some pretty cool houses nestled on hilltops up there (along with less impressive doublewide trailers). And watching even the best cat 1 men suffer on that climb was reassurance that they're mortal too. Congrats to Andrew McD for an amazing attack the second time up the hill (he had 3 minutes by the feed zone--and only increased it before his finish) and to rider 808 from Boise who flatted on the highway and chased all the way up the climb to get back into the lead group.

When is climbing NOT training?

Wednesday, 10 May

When you choose a beautiful, sunny spring day and ride your bike on (arguably) the most beautiful road in the entire state, you hardly notice 5000 feet of elevation gain. Until you walk up the stairs at work the next day.

In exchange for having to work last Saturday (and therefore missing the state road race at Elma), I got to take Wednesday off and chose to ride from Newhalem to Washington Pass on SR20. While the cooling towers of the unfinished nuclear plant at Elma are, well, cool, I'll take the North Cascades any day. The round trip was 85 miles, 40 miles of climbing more or less, and an average of less than one car/RV/motorcycle per mile passed going our direction.

This is such a stunning ride that it's hard to say what was best about it. Just the privilege and pleasure of being there is overwhelming. The peaks around Diablo Lake are still covered in snow and made for beautiful reflections at Colonial Creek. There was a nice little tailwind when the climbing started after the descent to Panther Creek; I have no complaints about going uphill at 18 mph when it's wind-assisted. There was some tough headwind in the 6 or 8 miles before Rainy Pass, and where the ground was completely covered in snow, the wind across the snow was pretty cold. Just when I was feeling tired and slow, I passed a couple on a Co-Motion tandem with a fully loaded trailer; they had stopped to stretch and were clearly taking their time. (Mick found out when he passed that they had taken 3 days to get from Anacortes to Rainy Pass!) At Rainy Pass, there is probably still 4 feet of snow along the road. The DOT crews cut the cutest little parking indentations into the snow bank for folks who want to head into the back country. There's a little less snow at Washington Pass--maybe 3 feet.

The return was uneventful, not super windy (which it often is), so that the descent down to Colonial Creek was screaming fun. Goretex jacket, knee warmers, and gloves were a must for the first 20 miles of descending. At this time of year, there are waterfalls down every rock face, and the surrounding air temperature drops 20 or 30 degrees because the runoff from the snowfields above is so cold. It was like riding through refrigerators.

Flowering currant, ravens, deer, the smell of the forest, and of course all the snowy peaks made all that climbing hardly seem like going uphill at all--and certainly not in the least like training!

I won a WHAT? (redux)

Sunday, 7 May

Last year there was a concerted effort to get me to “do” crits. It was somewhat successful: I didn’t get pulled from the Enumclaw crit until two laps to go (a record for me!), I can almost say I had a lot of fun in the tandem crit at Co-Motion, and I even hung in to get pack time for two almost-crits in El Salvador. But I can still think of lots of better things to do with $20 or $25 than to sign up for a criterium.

This year the plan seems to be to make me sprint. I'm pleasantly surprised that I have apparently learned the mechanics of sprinting by osmosis over the years, because my brain tells me “now you need to do this.” Okay, I’m not delusional and I know I’m not “a sprinter,” but twice now this year I have won a road race in something somewhat resembling a sprint.

This weekend’s sprint came at the end of the master A women’s state road race championship at Longbranch. The race is on a 10.5-mile circuit with one really hard (steep) climb and another steep-enough, stairstep hill. We were combined with the master B women (cat 4s). Not only was it raining steadily at our start, but the wind was blowing too--my favorite.

Everyone knows this race comes down to the hill, so we just rode the first few miles, for once hating the really smooth county road because it throws up so much spray. A straight, fast descent rolls into the base of the climb, and I made sure I was at the front. Given my ineptitude at Willamette at shifting onto the small chain ring, I put the chain somewhere in the middle of the cassette before I tried to shift over. But the chain wouldn’t shift off the big ring. Panic. I cannot ride up this hill on my big ring. After about 5 pedal strokes and shifting back and forth, it finally dropped onto the small ring. I’m sure the women behind me were cursing me for blocking the road while I flailed helplessly for a gear. It’s false flat for the longest time at the top, which is where chasing and regrouping happen. I think there ended up being about 8 in our group here, but I couldn’t get off the front (I’m supposed to be flattered that they all think it’s my job to tow them around all day?) so I never drifted far enough back to count.

After the false flat and some rollers, there are some little descents, a crosswind section where the wind pushed me sideways, and then a tricky little bend over a poorly surfaced bridge over some tide flats. I was happy enough to stay at the front. Besides, now I knew it would take some time to shift onto the small ring for the next hill, which starts right after the bridge, so better to be at the front (and slow everyone else down!). I don’t know if we dropped anyone on this hill. (This is strange: I’m usually the gatekeeper at the back on climbs and know exactly who’s left in a race. Hmmmm.) Then there’s another gradual descent, a sweeping turn where folks sometimes go off the road, and a stretch of bad pavement at 1K to go that’s lots worse than announced at the start line.

This is a race of attrition, and some more folks attrited [wow! that really is a word!] on the second and third times up the hill(s). We tried to organize a paceline after the second time up the hill, but there were women in the group who had no clue what this was or how to do it. So Gina and I sat at the back until we got too scared and then we were back at the front. We were finally down to a gang of four: Gina, her teammate Julie, Karen, and me. Julie and Karen are Bs. Karen seemed very happy to ride at the front--except that she was always looking over her shoulder, which was disconcerting because I wanted her eyes on the road ahead--and I hardly ever saw Julie because she was seeking as much shelter as she could find.

Weather note: at the start of lap three, it was absolutely pouring rain. El Salvador quantities of rain (just about 20 degrees colder). We were lucky it was a short race. On the second time up the lesser hill, you could literally see the water cascading down the hill as we were trying to ride up it. After the third time up the big hill, it seemed to let up, and then it got brighter and you could see farther up the road. That was temporary, though, and it poured again right up until the afternoon session of men’s races started. Then the sun came out and there was beautiful blue sky for the rest of the afternoon.

With any other group of women, it would’ve come down to two separate races: Gina and me, and Julie and Karen. But Gina, who is a far better tactician and sprinter than I, is also a self-sacrificing teammate and wanted to be sure that Julie won her race. She attacked at about 300 meters to go to lead Julie out for the finishing sprint. I knew she was going to attack (just not that early), I thought “there she goes,” and then the little voice in my head that has learned sprinting by osmosis said “and now you get on her wheel.” That took some work. Fortunately, that same little voice did not say “that’s Julie’s wheel,” and Julie wasn’t in sight (peripherally--turns out she was on my wheel). Just when I was thinking there was no way I was going to get around Gina, much less pass her, her sprint started to fade. I waited until well after we passed the 200m sign to go around her. It was still a very long (uphill) way to the finish line and I wasn’t exactly accelerating, but I beat her to the line of duct tape across the road, with Julie on my wheel.

Three hundred meters isn’t very far, but it’s amazing to me how much thinking can go on in that distance. When someone accelerates on a hard climb, I am usually so oxygen deprived that there are no verbal cues in my brain, just the certainty that I have to get on that wheel. But in both this sprint and the one at Kings Valley (the sum total of my vast successful sprinting experience), the thoughts just seem to fly. Do this, do that. It’s as if my brain has been trained to tell me what to do…but it hasn’t been, which is why I think I’ve learned this by osmosis. Okay, there’s not that much involved in sprinting but there seems to be tons of time to think. In years past, my thinking at this point has mostly consisted of "and there they go."

Another observation is about how different people climb differently. Some like to go super hard at the bottom so that it’s a crap shoot whether they’ll be able to maintain enough effort to get over the top. Some just keep a steady tempo. And I know a couple of deviants who like to accelerate (i.e., turn the screws) near the top!

I hope Julie recognizes the sacrifice that Gina made for her yesterday and also learned some things about what teamwork can do for you. Not only did Gina help her at the finish, but I know she was “protecting” Julie and working for her during the race, and there were strategic chats at various points. Gina knows how I race and what I can and can’t do (or will and won’t do). She had at least as good a shot as I did at that gold medal with 1K to go. And yet it was more important to her to make sure that her teammate won her race. And--since she was the number one advocate for making me ride crits last year--maybe she wanted to give me the opportunity to work on sprinting.

Learning from spam

Friday, Cinco de Mayo

Like most of us, I get rather too much email that I don't want and didn't sign up for. But one today from Predator: Cycling's Journal of Mental Conditioning hits one of my pet peeves squarely on the head. Plus, the pithy words come from Davis Phinney, whom I was lucky enough to meet when he was here in February. Take heed, all ye who live by your heart rate monitors and power meters and hour-by-hour, mile-by-mile training programs:

"I think there is so much information and focus and attention paid to physical work in sport and training, and somewhat technique, but ultimately what has really been bypassed to a large extent is the mental part in the process and the preparation to be successful. It’s been touched on by a lot of people but people go for the salient bullet points and then say “ok, but tell me what to do. I gotta go out and train so tell me how high my heart rate should be, etc. etc.” People just want to be told what to do. They sort of want to click off their brain and just be programmed and then hey, I’ll be successful. I’ll be a good cyclist or runner or what have you. I see that and I’m like, you don’t get it. You actually have to start with your thought process and everything comes from that, everything originates from the power that you have in your mind.

"The most important tool I had was my brain."