Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Monday, March 31, 2008

So, over the weekend, I had a chance to attend a TT clinic and a fitting session with 8 time Australian National Time Trial champion Nathan O'Neil. The clinic was about what I expected it to be with only a little information I didn't already know but the fit session was really interesting.

The idea was to get me into the best position I could be in on my time trial bike. Since I'm a pretty compact rider who is also pretty thick, I have a hard time getting down into a super aero postion so I needed some help to figure out how to squeeze more time out of the bike. In the discipline of time trialing, aerodynamics are really important as the biggest limiter to going fast is drag or air resistance. As body position is the biggest contributor to this, fit to the bike is a big deal.

So, for about an hour and a half, I worked with Mr. O'Neil to tune this up. We first looked at my cleat position and my leg length. Both of these were pretty good with the only adjustment being to shift my left cleat position back by about 3 mm. Once we finished that, we went to work on my position on the bike. I have, let us say, an unorthodox TT position. My saddle is shoved about as far forward as I can get it (and actually in violation of UCI rules) which puts me in a position where it's almost like I'm running on the bike. This tends to force my body upwards but it also allows me to produce huge amounts of power. We decided not to mess with this too much as it seems to be working for me right now.

So instead, we dropped the height of my handlebars by about an inch. Later on, I'll flip my stem over and lower it a bit more. The other thing we decided was something I tried about two years ago and abandoned because it was hard on my body. I tilted by aerobars up so I moved to a similar position as Levi and Floyd have been riding in. I'm not in quite as aggressive a position as they are but the idea is the same. Over the next two weeks, I'll work on trying to drop my head and tuck it in behind my hands. If I can do this (lots of stretching, exercises and on the bike time) I think I can really improve the aerodynamics of my body which means more of my power goes into going fast instead of pushing the air out of the way. Add to this the fact that I think I finally got a real aerodynamic front wheel and I might just be moving back towards scaryfast on my TT bike. The two time trials over the next couple of weeks will give me a much better indication.

As a final note, Nathan is really a nice guy. He was very respectful of the fact that I'm basically a cycling spud who has somehow found a way to go a little bit fast on a bike. I never felt like an idiot even though I'm sure he probably shook his head inside and wondered where guys like me come from (i.e.-guys who are fat and have totally goofy positions on their bikes). At the end of the session we ended up talking about our Golden Retrievers and agreed to meet up at the Gainesville Georgia Cup race this weekend to see how things are going with the new position. I have to say that if he was available as a coach, I'd definitely be interested. My guess, however, is that he's already booked up in that capacity and even if he wasn't, he'd be way too expensive for me.

Anyway, it was a good Saturday even though we stuck in death traffic coming back from the session and ended up missing a wedding reception we really wanted to make it to. It could have been worse. The traffic on I-75 north was so bad that it was stop and go all the way from exit 238 on the south side of Atlanta down to at least exit 201. I'm thinking that driving north on 75 has got to be the most insane thing ever.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Last Saturday I went down to Tarmac and once again I chose to inflict upon myself the suffering that comes with riding the Pain Train. I'll skip a description of the specific ride to instead focus on why I do this to myself.

Just six weeks ago I was raging about getting dropped on yet another edition of the Peach Peleton training ride. I was cranky not just that I got dropped but that the pace was just plain unwarranted and in obvious violation of at least a half a dozen statutes of the United Nations' Code on the Humane Treatment of Test Subjects. More than that, I was tired of being fat and slow and all of that. So why, when the group got together for a ride between race weekends, did I cheerfully sign on for a 80 mile spin through the back country of Georgia at a pace that would surely bring an investigation by Amnesty International? Do I like pain (well, yes, sort of...at least pain on the bike)? Do I enjoy groveling behind the Cat I and II riders who eat guys like me for breakfast and then pick their teeth with the spokes left over from our crushed and burned wheels (that bit...not so much)?

Actually, as I told the ride leader, I hate getting my ass kicked but I like the results. We trained a lot harder on Saturday than any of the races I've done this year and I suffered more than I did bridging back to the group at Perry in the road race. Lance said that the key to winning was to train harder than you race and the Peach peleton rides make me do that. The rotating paceline intervals pushed me over my lactate threshold for short bursts over 50 times in the first 40 miles of the ride. That'll make my time trials faster, allow me to surge with the group and help me to sustain breaks when I get better creating them. Pushing up the climbs on Pleasant Grove Church Road will help me to ride the climbs in Gainesville and Chattanooga harder and fast and I'll recover from the efforts more quickly.

In hindsight, I didn't do too badly compared to the other Cat IV guys in the group as I was pretty midpack (especially given that the Friday before the ride was Good Friday and I fasted to some extent)-faster than some and slower than others. More importantly, I pulled my weight through all of my interval sessions at the pace the Cat I/II guys wanted until the bigger hills so I guess I can't be too disappointed. I still hate getting dropped and I'm still too fat but there is hope. I'm not as slow and I'm not as fat and soon I won't grovel. Soon I'll be svelte and handsome and supermodels will be calling me wondering when I'm going to race so they can come and be amazed at my bicycling manliness...OK, well, maybe not the last two but I can see the chance of getting into good enough shape that I can go to Lexington in July and race Masters' Nationals.

I think that the next step is to get specific and to get technical. I need a PowerTap and CyclingPeaks and, eventually, a coach (maybe Letterman from the Electric Company can come to my house and change my couch to a coach with his super letter changing powers and save me a bundle). Anyone have a PowerTap they feel like giving me? One positive thing is that I have an opportunity to have a fit session with Olympian Nathan O'Neil and Spinblade to refine my position and my pedaling mechanics.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Well, Middle Georgia that is.

There have been some results updates. It turns out that I took 19th in the crit/circuit race on Saturday so I did better than I thought. Any time I finish in the top 20 of a crit like thing, that's good for me.

OK, on to Sunday. I've written about this race before but let's have a brief recap. The race name gives you a little bit of a clue about the race in that it is supposed to have some vague similarities to the French race with almost the same name. The route is a 12.5 mile loop that we did four times. On each loop there is a reasonably stiff double climb in the first few miles and then a 2 mile dirt road section (that is interrupted for a couple hundred meters by a paved overpass over I-75). Some years the dirt section is really firm, some years it's dry and powdery (which is really hard to corner in) and this year it was wet but a little loose. We had to scrub a lot of speed to make the corner onto the dirt section but the harder bit was the section itself. Unlike hardpack there was about a quarter of an inch of wet, loose dirt/sand stuff that wasn't slippery but that took a lot of extra effort to sort of plow through.

The climbs combined with the difficult dirt sections made the race one of attrition more than one of attacks. We also had a cross wind on two of the paved sections that meant that if you were popped off the group by an acceleration, it would be hard to get back on. Almost of the race fields (Pros, Masters, etc.) finished the race is groups of 10-15 rather than in one big pack. Our group was an exception for reasons I'll get to in a minute.

For me the race was a really interesting one. The double climb came about 2 miles into the first lap and I had positioned myself about midway through the pack for the first climb which I expected the pack to do piano. No sense in going off on a break 2 miles into the race with another 48 to go with a stiff wind on about 2/3rds of the course. I was wrong about that. A couple of first time racers decided to go pretty hard and so the pack went up the climb a bit harder than I expected. This wasn't really a problem for me but several other riders were caught of guard and stayed in their big rings too long. About a third of the way up the climb they started shifting into their little rings under load and the predictable thing happened: one guy threw his chain. Rather than try to deal with it, he put his foot down and came to a stop right in the middle of the pack. The sea parted with guys trying to dodge out of his way and I got pushed into the soft dirt on the side of the road and had to completely get off my bike. By the time I got back on the road and back on the bike and going in a way that was courteous and safe for the other riders, I was 200 meters behind the group and all by myself. I thought some really choice things in that moment and considered climbing off the bike and packing it in for the day. No way was I going to catch 60 guys pulling a group along all by myself. When I saw that several other riders had been gapped, I decided to see if I could catch a few and we could work together to get up to the lead group. I caught and dropped each one as it turned out they weren't really to race at this level yet and so I turned into the crosswinds and then headwinds chasing the group all by myself. I kept telling myself that even if my race was over, I was going to use this as a hard training ride and I was certainly doing that. There would be times I would get the gap down to 100 meters but after the dirt road it was almost a quarter of mile and I would wonder if I had lost my mind. I made up some group as the group went across the start/finish line at the end of lap one and a good bit more on the second ascent up the climb. That surprised me quite a bit so I decided to try to gut it out a bit more. I have been chasing for nearly forty minutes but I knew that I had about 15 more minutes left in me at that pace and I thought that maybe I could close things up. About 2 miles later I did. Wow! A 15 mile chase and I was back with the lead group. That was good. What was bad was that I had trashed my legs doing it. My leg hamstring was trying to cramp and everything else had that borderline lactic acid burn that comes from a long time trial. My strategy of putting in a few attacks to try and create a break wasn't in really good shape. I decided to sit in on the back, hope not to get caught out on a gap and recover. I did that for all of the rest lap two and a lot of lap three.

When we hit the dirt on lap three I could tell that some of the guys were suffering and I began to move up in the field. Not far enough to stick my nose in the wind but enough to make sure that I could bridge any gaps that opened up. That turned out to be a good move as gaps opened several times int he two miles and I was able to get across without too much trouble. It was during this time that I realized that the things I had seen in the crit on Saturday were happening here too. No one wanted to lose the race so no one was really willing to take the risks to win it. Had my legs felt better, I think I might have really had a chance to attack here and make it stick. When we came of the dirt we were all together for a 4-5 mile run into the wind before a turn and a short segment to the start/finish line. About a mile out from the turn, a group of about 5 guys got off the front and opened up a 200 meter or so gap. I was sort of stuck back behind some guys and I thought to myself, "Damn, there goes the break...perfect time too." The main group of about 30 guys I was with just sort of sat up and started to give these guys some lease which I thought was a really bad idea. Negative racing I figured with a couple of guys blocking for the group ahead. Then a gap opened I didn't need a second invitation to join the party. I decided that I wasn't going to do well just sitting in so I surged off the front of the group, hamstring be darned, and started to bridge across. Here again my TT skills served me well. Halfway across, when I looked back, the group still looked like it has sitting up noodling around. I figured that if I could make contact, I would be in the break and we could ease up once over the climbs.

I made contact just before the base and told the guys that the field had split and we had a pretty substantial gap. Everyone looked kind of surprised. They had going for some spring points at the line and weren't really thinking of making anything stick. I was sort of stunned and encouraged them to ride hard and smart. They didn't so much. To make matters worse, my legs weren't in great shape and the pack seemed to have woken up. We were swallowed up by a smaller field of 25 or so at the top of the climb and we were all together again. I was sort of stunned. Why wouldn't anyone races aggressively. I found out later that in all the other races similar moments had occurred and aggressive riders had used them to split up their races but not us.

As we rode through the dirt section again, we had several more field split but no one on the front would press the advantage. Twice the front 10 riders (myself included) opened up 50 meter gaps but then let the person on the front would let off the pressure and the gap would close. Had we held the gap off the dirt and into the headwind, we would have shredded the more tired riders. So, end the end, the race came down to a reduced field sprint. The bad thing was, as I've already mentioned, I'm not the best sprinter. The good thing was that all the good printers had been shelled out of the field by the process of attrition over the climbs and in the dirt. My hammy was cramping badly but I decided to go for it and if I got hurt or pulled something, I'd have a few weeks to heal up before the next race. My sprint was actually pretty good but a couple of guys either mishandled their bikes or pulled right in front of me to I had let up some. Still, I managed to finish eleventh which was a great result considering what I had gone through in the race.

Overall, I took 8th in the omnium (a summation of all the points) which is excellent at this point of the season. I have to say that the high point of the weekend was killing the time trial but not far behind that was that on Sunday morning two of the race officials sought me out to tell me how impressed they were about how I raced the crit on Saturday. That meant a lot to me. I guess that there's a lot of frustration about the negative racing that's been happening over the first two big race weekends as a lot of riders are racing not to lose and that there's been a lot of blocking when breaks get up the road. Having both John and Bill come over to tell me how impressed they were about my attacking style tells me that I need to keep training hard and getting better and that sooner or later I'll start winning road races.

Well, this has gotten really long and I'm sure you are bored with my stories. I'll post a final wrap up in the next couple of days.

Thanks for reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Sunday, March 16, 2008

It's been two years since I've been on the podium of a bike race but that ended this weekend in a big way. This weekend was the annual Perry-Roubaix omnium with a time trial Saturday morning, a long criterium/circuit race Saturday afternoon and a 50 mile road race with a twist this morning.

The time trial at the race is the perfect type of course for me. Flat to low rollers for the most part (there was a nasty climb about 4 miles in a the turn around), the route plays to my strength of being able to produce a lot of power at lactate threshold and to hold it there for about as long as I need to (at least up to the end of the first hour and then everything blows up). The TT was 10 miles long and even though I had a really bad start due to clip in problems, I was soon on top of a big gear and turning it over. About three miles in I realized I was holding a 25+ mph pace and that I still had some LT ceiling. When I hit the climb I clenched my teeth, bore down, stayed aero and powered up the hill. I had passed two guys on the way out and when I passed four guys on the mile long 4% climb I really began to believe it was going to be a good day. I passed the last two guys who had started ahead of me just as we started the descent and stayed up on the rivet all the way back home for a 23:16 time which is about 25.7 mph. I also won the race.

The last time I was on the podium of a race was the P-R TT two years ago and the last win was at Tundra just over two years ago. I'm not sure what has changed since I got kicked around up at Tundra but today my time compared really well with the Cat III and Master's 40+ riders so I guess I've added a bunch of power in the last month (as well as lost about 10 lbs). The series has a set of really cool podiums and it was so cool to stand up on the top step to have my picture taken.

That afternoon I participated in the most hated of bicycle racing forms; the criterium. I don't sprint, I don't corner well and I don't do surges; all of which are important for this type of racing. The race started and, like usual, my legs were rubbish for the first third of the race. About the time my legs started to round into form, the group decided to sort of sit up and take it easy and to leave a lne open for an attack. Since I have basically no chance to win in a final field sprint I decided to take a flyer to and see if anyone would come with me and maybe pick up a few primes. When I looked back, no one had come with me but they group had given me a lot of room. I decided to try and go a lap or two to see if I could entice someone to come across. Surprisingly to me, no one did but the group kept giving me room to ride and after about a quarter of a lap/30 second lead. About then, someone pointed out to the rest of the somewhat disinterested group that I had won the TT and that I could make this stick if someone didn't start working hard to pull me back I think it was probably the guy who took second in the TT). I lasted about two more laps. I took one more shot on the last lap to try and get away but that didn't stick either and I ended up finishing about 29th but I was ok with that. I had animated the race and made it interesting and I hadn't been content to sit in on other's wheels.

I'll report on the road race tomorrow, as that'll take another long entry but it went pretty well also. All in all, it was a great weekend of bike racing.

Thanks for Reading

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Monday, March 03, 2008

This past weekend was the first full on race weekend of the year. Here in Georgia we have a series of races known as the Georgia Cup. The series is an attempt to bring racing to a level that meets the needs of what is often referred to in cycling as "elite-level" teams. These are teams who have lots of really good riders who aren't quite able to race for a pro team for some reason or another but who are really good riders. They get some good sponsorship dollars that pay for things like race clothing, bike frames, wheels, hotel and race entry fees and the like but they don't actually get paid a salary. The Georgia Cup series is an attempt to make high quality racing available to this level of team. Add on to that the various lowest level profession teams (known as Continental) such as the Jittery Joe's team that are based in the area that are looking for race events to help prepare for the Pro level National Racing Calendar events and the solid area teams that have good category 1 and 2 racers and you have the target audience for the series. However, since the Georgia Cup can't break even with just these racers (and still pay out prize purses) they also put on races at the same venues for the lower categories in the sport. That's where guys like me come in.

So this weekend was the first race of this year's series. For the last three years, the series has started down in Albany in south Georgia with the hope that the weather will be better than if we raced up near Hotlanta. In the first two years, that wasn't the case (torrentail rain one year and cold and windy the next) but this year turned out to be great weather-wise. Before I get to my experience in the racing, let me just say that the event was really first rate. I've raced at some pretty crappy races (a couple put on by an earlier iteration of the Georgia Cup) but this was not that kind of event. Registration went well (pre-registering really helped as did showing up the Friday night before the Saturday races to get my registration packet), the courses were really great, things seemed to run pretty smoothly and the results were up pretty quickly. Timing was done by computer transponder which was really cool in a lot of ways and worked better than I had been lead to believe. While there were a few glitches, the Georgia Cup folks did a really nice job of putting this together. The only complaint that I might have is the lack of payouts in the lower classes but if that's what it takes to get good events put on for guys like me who aren't in the upper echelons of the amateur part of the sport-so be it.

My goals for the weekend were pretty modest. The time trial was really a prologue with lots of short straights, lots more turns, no climbs and only 3.2 km long. This is the worst type of TT for me so I just wanted to stay upright and place in the top half of my field. I did that but just barely.

The next event was the criterium. This is the "NASCAR" event of bike racing. You ride a short loop, usually less than a mile and a half in size, several times. There's lots of cornering in big packs of riders and lots of crashes. This crit loop was a little longer (1.6 miles) and was in a peanut shape with about eight turns per lap going both ways (right and left). It was run on the totally closed down downtown streets of Albany so we had wide roads to ride on and lot of room to maneuver. The course was about the second best crit course I've ever raced. I'm not a very good crit rider because I don't have a lot of confidence cornering in large packs of riders and I have a hard time sprinting out of turns. The race is a hard-easy-hard-easy- type of racing with lots and lots of short intervals. Not too good for a guy with very few fast twitch muscles. My goals here were to stay upright (no crashing), finish with the front group and just try to sprint to the finish. I achieved all of those things and even managed a top 25 finish in a pack of 60 riders which was bit of a surprise. I even managed to pass a few guys in the final sprint and I felt like my cornering improved through the race.

On Sunday, we had a fairly short road race of about 35 miles. Again, my goals were modest: stay upright, move through the pack and take a few digs off the front. Again, I accomplished all three. The hardest of the three for me is to move through the pack. I tend to give up position a little too easily and end up getting shuffled to the back. I also tend to play a little cautious sometimes and let small gaps open up which other riders take. I fought through those and found that I could make my way to the front when I needed to and I could get shuffled back into the middle of the pack and recover. I managed to do a couple of hard intervals off the front and even finished 21st in the field sprint at the end, passing guys in the last 100 meters.

I haven't seen the overall results, but I think I may have finished in the top 25 for the weekend and maybe even the top twenty which was a lot better than I expected on a flat course with lots of sprinters. I still have a lot of work to do but it was really encouraging not to get dropped by the fast group after having my butt kicked all winter long. It's frustrating to ride with teh local Cat 1 and 2 guys but I have to admit that it's been good for me. I still need to lose a lot of weight but that'll keep coming. I race again in two weeks on a course I really have liked in the past down in Perry. The TT there will be a longer one on a rolling course and so I expect to do better there than I did this week. In addition, there's some climbing and the road race is longer so that might play to my strengths a little more.

One final shout out. Over the winter I trained with a group of guys in Macon that were putting together a team for this season. I was hoping to be on the team but after a few auditions, it was pretty clear that I wasn't going to be much help to them (to be honest, I wouldn't have invited me to race on my own team if I had had one). This weekend was a really coming out event for them and they really did well. They won the road race they were in and took second in the crit. I'm thinking they'll win the overall and place two or three more riders in the top ten. So to the the Security Bank team with Doug and Jake and Robert and Drew and Bill and all the others: Good Job and Congrats on an outstanding weekend!

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |