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

Friday, May 30, 2008

Just a few final thoughts and impression from the Tour of Atlanta.

First, I'm surprised at how tired I feel during this week after the race has ended. I didn't ride on Tuesday and expected to feel OK on Wednesday. Not so much. I tried to do a TT interval workout and was good for about 75 minutes before my body and legs said no more. Tuesday night I couldn't sleep which was a sure sign of overtraining. I've never had that happen before. Every other time I've taken a day completely off, I've been able to come back and train pretty hard without becoming overtrained. Just goes to show you how deep we all went just to finish up the Tour. Last night I just did about 50 minutes of easy spinning and tonight will be about the same. Hopefully that'll get me back to a better equilibrium.

Second, I found out how important it is to sleep and take my vitamins while racing. I didn't do either very well before Saturday's two stage extravaganza and while I pulled my weight in the team time trial, I was cooked halfway through the road race. I spent the last 20 miles clinging to the back end of the race hoping none of my close rivals would launch a big attack or have their teams make the race hard. That night I went home, took a set of vitamins later in the evening and again in the morning and got about 9 hours of sleep in between. It made a world of difference.

Third, TTs and road races on the same day are really, really hard if you decide to drill the TT. I definitely prefer doing the TT and the crit on the same day. The crit's much shorter, and while it's more intense, I can do just about anything for 30 minutes if I need to.

Fourth, given my riding style and lack of explosive power, I need to roll the outside line in a crit. I can't afford to scrub a lot of speed taking a tighter inside line that I then have to power out of. Even though I have to cover a lot more ground going wide, I can hold speed and pick up pedaling again earlier. I also need to focus on being in a smaller gear as I come out of the corner and then shifting up quickly. Too many times I was in a big gear and lost a lot of ground getting up to speed. Given this, I now have to figure out how to move up on the outside after the turn.

Finally, I see why it's so important for pro teams to have helpers around for the riders. As I got more and more tired, it became more common to lose things and forget things. It would have been really nice to have had a team mechanic to give my bike the once over before each stage and a couple of folks to help with the set up and take down of tents and keeping thing straight. We race for a small amateur team so that'll never happen but it would have been cool.

So tomorrow and Sunday I race in the Union City Georgia Cup event. A much more manageable three stages in two days. I'm going to try to do well in the opening TT and then help teammates achieve their goals in the crit and road race. It's the State Championship so it'd be nice to pay back one of the guys who helped me out so much by giving him a nice new jersey to wear for the next year. This race will mean that I've done nine races in eleven days. It's a good thing I'll get about a three week break until the next races to recover and refocus my training. My big goals are coming up in late July and August and I want to be ready.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

As you can tell from the image, I managed to hang onto my place in the overall classification in the Tour of Atlanta. My teammate Robert J. finished first giving us a 1-2 on the final podium after a final day that was marked by the hardest crit stage we had done combined with two crashes right in front of both of us both times. Even with those obstacles, we managed to hold our places and finish on the top two steps. It's a real accomplishment for both of us and I think we spend the next couple of hour reveling in the feeling and celebrating with, of all things, ice cream (because all the places that might sell beer were closed on a Memorial Day). I think that the food that racing cyclists love more than any other is ice cream. In part, that's because of the high water content but the main reason is because we deny ourselves ice cream all through our training season as we try to lose weight.

There are a few observations I would make about the race. First, you do get to know the riders who are racing against you and you feel for them when things go against them. Ben O. spent most of the race in 3rd place and lost in on the last day (like I did in Gainesville). He raced well but didn't quite have it for the power climb on the last stage's crit. The fourth place rider crashed out on the last stage and ended the race with road rash over most of his right hip and a detached rear derailleur. Bike racing is cruel sport. It giveth and it taketh away and that's a hard thing to watch and experience. For Robert this is a season making result and for Ben it's a bitter taste in the mouth and a sour feeling in the belly that either leads to the consumption of too much sour mash or stokes the fire that makes him more hungry and angry and driven to train and inflict his rage on those of us who are both fortunate and unfortunate enough to race with and against him in future races.

I like the guys I race with right now. to race with the Security bank team is a real honor. Todd W., Bill C. and Ronnie H all did a huge amount of work for Robert and I to make our effort in the first time trial stick. We would have been pack fodder without there work on our behalf. I won't speak for Robert but my 2nd place finish is as much there's as it is mine. I rode harder in the two crits because I didn't want to let them down. Todd came back in the last crit to shepherd me through a bad patch in the middle of the race. While I didn't run my power meter for any of the races, Robert told me that he held a higher average power through the last crit than in any of the other stages expect the TTs.

It wasn't just the guys on our team. A shout out to Isaac, Ronnie and Jeff on the Aaron's team, Ben and his crew on HDR/Cycleworks and Roland from the Antares Team out of Huntsville, AL who finished third in four different stages but didn't have a team for the TTT. We all finished all the stages and all managed to stay upright though the whole thing. While they didn't finish on the podium, they did finish the biggest amateur stage race in the United States and there's something to be said for that. I'm honored to have raced with all these guys and I remember their efforts for a long time. I'll post a wrap-up post on what it was like to race in something that big and that long soon but let's just say that on the last day we were all pretty tired and I can say that I was super nervous until the very last lap.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Sunday, May 25, 2008

It's the Sunday morning of Memorial Day weekend and I have to say that I'm just about as exhausted as I can be. Since Thursday I've been racing in something called the Tour of Atlanta: seven stages in five days. So far we've done five races in the last three days and, depending on whether there was a timing error with one rider, I'm either in second or third overall. I'd really like to end up on the podium for this but we'll see how it goes. Right now, I'm just trying to hang on. I targeted the two stages I knew I'd do best at; the time trial and the team time trial. I took second to my teammate Robert on the TT by four seconds and our team won the TTT yesterday which has put us into a really good place. That was a big deal because it gives us some bragging rights here in the state. It was a shorter effort (only about 22 km) but we put a minute into the closest team and 90 seconds and 2 minutes into two of the big Atlanta teams that make a lot of noise at these races. Mixed in with those two stages have been a "sprint" stage which I did poorly in, a criterium where I lost a couple of seconds on the last lap and a 50 mile road race where I finished with the pack protecting my place in the overall classification.

While it's only been three days of racing, I already feel like my life is this little routine of travel, set-up, put on cycling clothes, warm-up up, race, warm down, eat and drink for recovery, take off cycling clothes, put stuff away, travel, sleep, get up, laundry, travel... You get the picture. For five days there will be no life outside of cycling. I have to say that while it's interesting it's not something I want to do at this age and stage in my life. When I was 25 and if I had someone to take care of all the non-cycling specific stuff and I had someone to massage my legs after each race I might be a lot happier but not now. I'm really ready to be done at this point. I feel like I need an entire day just to nap and eat and another day to get caught up on my household chores.

Today and tomorrow consist of crit races which I really hate. My goal is to stay out of trouble, keep the rubber side down and finish with the lead pack in each race. I'm hoping I can stay up with my teammates and use their physical presence to help me be more confident in my cornering so that I don't lose so many places every time we make a turn. When that happens I end up getting shuffled tot he back of the pack and I have to yo-yo on and off which is a lot harder way to race. The good thing is that the races will each only be about 35 minutes long and there is only one each day. Yesterday was by far the hardest day I've had racing in that I killed myself on the TTT with heavy legs, had about 90 minutes to rest and then had to go out and do a 50 mile road race. When we finished, I made the mistake of sitting down and almost couldn't get back up again. Somewhere along the line I've managed to strain a couple of intercostal muscles and so breathing is a little painful and twisting the wrong way can be difficult.

Anyways, enough complaining. I'm in the hunt for a podium spot as is my teammate in the biggest amateur stage race in Georgia so that's pretty cool. If we can just hang on we'll be standing on the biggest podium of our lives tomorrow in Buford. Wish us luck and pray that I keep the rubber side down. I'm off to start the process of getting things ready to travel up to Gainesville. The cycling continues...

Thanks for reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Friday, May 16, 2008

Today was the climb up Mt. Pisgah on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I had decided that rain or shine I would do it today because I didn't want to deal with weekend traffic and I wanted to enjoy our last Saturday here with my wife without the stress of dealing with a route I'd never done and that might blow up my body. So I traveled out to the US 74-A access point and rode south to climb the mountain. After a 5 mile warm-up I hit the climb and for the next 75 minutes I pretty much sat at my FTP and pedaled. It was about the most perfect climb I've ever done. But first, let me give you my impressions of the Parkway.

While I certainly can't speak of the whole thing given I've only ridden about 30 miles of the 400+ miles of the limited access scenic route, I can say that it was about as close to cycling nirvana as something can get while still having to share the road with automobiles. The BRP is a scenic motorway which is sort of a cross between an interstate and a national park. It's two lane with no marked shoulder but speed limits are 45 mph or less. There is only limited access and the drivers, at least around here, seem to understand that it's was build for enjoyment and not fast, convenient transportation. No commercial traffic is allowed on the Parkway and it seems that every effort was made to preserve the natural environment through which the Parkway was built. I would love to come back and do a tour that did a lot more of the route sometime in the future.

So, why was the climb perfect? Well, there were four or five distinct parts to it; each separated with a short flat to downhill section that lasted about a minute or so. What that meant was that I would set my power output at 300 or so and go at whatever speed that allowed for about 15-20 minutes and then get a short break. Some of the sections were steeper and I averaged around 9 mph while others were a little shallower and I could average 11-12. Every mile or so I come around a corner or curve and get a look out over a vista of the valleys surrounding the Pisgah ridgeline as I ascended to give me something to look at. The steepest parts of the climb were at the beginning and near the end but I never felt like anything I did was as hard as the two climbs I did earlier in the week. While those climbs were a lot shorter (3-4 miles instead of 15 and 1000 ft of vertical climb instead of 3000) they required more power output. It was definitely a Rhythm climb which works really well for me. I think if I lived here in Asheville, I might be real inclined to do the climb once per week during training weeks when I wanted to focus on increasing my FTP or my time trialing ability. I certainly understand why US Master TT Champion Andy Applegate chooses to live here.

So, it was an epic ride for me as the climb was the longest I've ever done (double the length of Hogpen though not much different in terms of the vertical gain) but as I wrote last time, it's hard to translate my experience into words. I think the biggest thing that characterized the ride was perseverance. The climb wasn't brutal most of the time but it did require a solid, hard effort for a long time. Come to think of it, it was a bit like getting my Ph.D. Most of that effort didn't require brutal hours and crushing effort but I had to work pretty hard day in and day out to do my research and write my dissertation. I think a lot of life is like that: to accomplish something lasting there needs to be a pretty hard, pretty constant effort with a few breaks to rest during the work. If you go too hard, you get a lot done but you blow up too soon. If you look too much at the mountain of work to be done, you'll get overwhelmed. If you focus too much on the risks and obstacles, you'll get fearful. If you don't ration your energy, you won't have enough when the going gets really steep and you need to go harder for a short time. If you don't take a break every so often, you'll just plain run out of gas.

The thing is that this analogy seems to work really well when you have a simple life with a small set of tasks like climbing a mountain or doing your Ph.D. work but I'm not sure how it goes when applied to a richer or more complicated life. It's a lot harder to go steady when there are 10 or 15 things clamoring for your attention. The saying goes that it's better to do a few things really well than to do a lot of things so-so but that can be hard to do. I'm reading a biography of Richard Carrington. Carrington was a "gentleman scientist" in 19th century England who did astronomy with a focus on solar observing. His work was fantastic when that was about all he did, but once his father died and left him a business that he had to run to provide for his extended family the wheels sort of came off the train. Maybe he had a mid-life crisis, maybe he tried to climb to hard and blew up but his career and his contributions were cut short by factors both within his control and without. It makes me consider what it is I really need to be doing and maybe simplify a lot.

Thanks for reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Well, I may have to do some serious work to get this ride in. Rain today, rain tomorrow and wind Friday and Saturday. I want to go climb Mt. Pisgah. I want the epic and the story that goes with it. I want the scenery and the vistas and all the memories. David Wilcox writes a song, "No Telling Where" from the Airstream album that goes:

On the map it shows the mountain, but I’d never seen a glimpse
Of the hundred miles of vista represented by an inch
That was just a trail of bread crumbs, all their words set out so clear
But there’s nothing they could tell me that could ever take me here

To this view - this height - that the heart remembers
It’s proof - It’s life - It’s the burning ember
My words - go cold - and there’s nothing to explain
There is just no telling where I’ve been

When this sunrise sees me
The first light burns brand new
Seems so easy
To tell what I’ve been through
But my little camera can’t keep up with panoramas all around
There’s just too much view to capture when we stand on sacred ground
Though my mind cannot explain it, my heart’s filled up to the sky
I know words could not contain it, but I’m fool enough to try

In a way that perfectly describes both why I want to ride to places I've never been and what that blog is to some degree. I show you my pictures but unless you've ridden the roads it's hard to understand, at a really deep level, what I'm writing about. I can tell you how much the climb over Hooker's Gap yesterday pushed my body and made me wonder why I decided to climb an road with way too many things I wasn't sure about. Would the pavement run out? Would a dog come out and chase me while I was riding a 7 mph up a steep section of the hill? Would my legs give out before the mountain did? Would I make a wrong turn and get lost with no sense of how to get back? Did the pioneers and trappers think these same thoughts as they were pushing west using the sketchy maps of those who had gone before them? Did they fight the little voice in their head that told them to turn around and return to the roads they knew? Did they fight the doubt and fear by focusing on the sense of excitement and anticipation that came with the unknown and a belief in their abilities?

No matter what I write, I don't think I can really tell the story the way it needs to be told so that you can get it. I can just leave metaphors and pictures of "panoramas all around" and hope that maybe you can follow where I've gone in whatever way has validity in your life.

The picture comes from the valley between Hooker's Gap and Newfound on Newfound Road on yesterday's ride. I almost rode right past it but then I realized that the sign had my wife's maiden name on it and that the barn was really cool so I decided to stop an take a shot of it. The sun wasn't in the best position but those are the breaks.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

This week I'm on vacation in Asheville, NC with my lovely wife. We drove up from home Sunday afternoon after the ugly weather and checked into our hotel. The room, or should I say suite, is much larger than I expected and the hotel has all the amenities including both a hot tub and dry sauna, both of which are very important considering one of the purposes of this trip.

The idea was first and foremost to get out of town on our first vacation just for the two of us in years. We decided on Asheville because I'd heard is was a cool, groovy town with lots of culture and great scenery. I also wanted to do a climbing camp. My wife was initially dubious until she found that Asheville may have more yarn and knitting shops per capita than any town in the Southeast (except, maybe, Savannah). So we had a great destination and I had to get my climbing legs back from the cleaners after Cheaha and get ready to go.

The post-Cheaha legs weren't so good. It was fortunate I had planned a recovery week after the century as my legs ached until Thursday after tackling the steep, steep middle climbs of the ride. So after leading the line at graduation and seeing the Weiss' with their new son, Elliott, and hiding out from the tornado warning we finally left the homestead and immediately hit high winds and cold weather. So, Sunday evening was lost as was Monday, at least in terms of riding. We did get to see part of funky Asheville and enjoy Barley's Pizzeria (and the very excellent French Broad Brewing Alt-Bier on draft and their incredible Pepperoni and Andoulee Sausage calzone).

So Sunday and Monday were given over to testing rides on the trainer. The one good thing I learned is that over the last month my FTP has gone up by about 10 watts. I've definitely felt like I was able to ride at a higher level at Cheaha than the 300 watt level I had tested at previously and the 20 minute TT test showed that I was able to ride in a hot, unventilated environment at about 315.

Finally, this morning I was able to ride out west of Asheville up something called Hooker's Gap (the first climb in the picture) and then up to Newfound (the second climb) and then out in the country west of there until returning to Asheville. The ride was hard but the scenery was really beautiful. In some ways it reminded me of growing up in Oregon with the mountain meadows and narrow, winding back roads. What was different was the number of small settlements scattered throughout the countryside and the lack of evergreens replaced by hardwood trees. The descent down Hooker's Gap was absolutely unbelievable and I definitely need to learn how to go downhill on a road bike. Of course, if I knew the roads it would have gone better.

The plan for tomorrow is to recover and then I want to try and do some sort of ride on the Blue Ridge Parkway. If I go south I have to climb Mt. Pisgah and if I go north I have to climb Mt. Mitchell. What a choice. Still, I did come down to climb I I'm thinking that the Parkways won't have killer grades so it may be a long, slow TT effort to climb up Mt. Pisgah. The question is whether the weather will let me. Anyways, between now and then it's some recovery and more enjoying the atmosphere of Asheville. I took a couple of good pictures on the ride and I'll try to post them here tomorrow.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Here's a shot from this weekend's trip at the 50's era general store/post office in Mountville, GA.  I'm not sure if the store is still open but I decided to try wrapping the fuel hose around the bike to suggest some sort of entrapment theme. I'm not sure the effect worked but the store takes me back to the times when we'd travel through rural Oregon, northern California and Nevada. Most of the filling stations out in the rural parts were of this sort where you could get everything from bread to bait. Around here the few of these that still survive have to add things to compete with the more modern stores such as a little restaurant or video gambling machines. An interesting but little known fact was that my family once held the only postal commission for all of northeast Nevada in a tiny little place known as Fort Hallick. The fort was built to protect the soon to come transcontinental railroad from possible raids from the local Native American tribes. My great grandfather and his brother brought the first stallions to the calvary fort and used the money they earned selling the horses to the Army to buy the land for the ranch that my family owned in the area for a couple of generations. The ranch and fort were outside the present day village of Lamoille, NV and I'm told you can still see the row of trees my great grandfather planted at the entrance to the ranch property nearest the house they built. Anyway, Enjoy!

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Monday, May 05, 2008

So yesterday I went to Piedmont, Alabama to ride the self-titled, "Toughest Ride in the South".  The Challenge was a ride from Piedmont south into the Talledega National Forest and up and over the highest point in Alabama, Cheaha Mountain.  The ride was really well organized and the rest stops were great with wonderful volunteer support.  The only real drawback was the condition of the scenic byway we rode through the forest and up the mountain.  Most of it was little better than chip and seal.

The ride follows an out and back route that I was initially pretty skeptical about.  I've done out and back centuries before and the last half of the route is usually drudgery as you've already seen everything.  This, however, was a bit different.  On the way out, every time I went down something fast a thought would pop into my head, "You have to climb this on the way back."  In the middle of the course, this was somewhat daunting.  On the way back, every time I descended something, I would marvel at having climbed it.  This was especially true for the four mile descent down the return side of Cheaha Mountain.  As the summit came at the 43 mile mark and again at the 59 mile mark, I was descending as others were climbing.  The looks on their faces was, well, disturbing.  I saw several people walking and a couple sitting at the side of the road with their heads in the their hands looking pretty ill.  That's a lot to take in while screaming down a mountain you don't know that well at 40 mph.  The thought that I had climbed that rise that the others were suffering on was really weird in the middle of a hard ride.

So, was it the "toughest ride in the south"?  It's hard to say I think.  The other contender (aside from the Assault on Mt. Mitchell" is the Six Gap Century in North Georgia.  I've done that one as well.  Six Gap has more climbing, about 3000-4000 feet more.  The thing is that the climbing is different.  At Cheaha theirs a lot more really steep climbing in shorter bursts.  There were several sections before the actual climb up Cheaha (on both sides) that were in excess of 10%, each one between 0.6 and 1.1 miles long.  On a couple of these sections I was reduced to climbing at about 6 mph with huge torque outputs (my power wasn't as high as my pedal revs were really low).  The climb up the mountain was actually easier in many ways because the grade wasn't as steep.  The climb was longer (15-20 minutes) but the grade was only 5-6% and I was able to keep my revs up and my power steady.  Six Gap's climbs are almost all of this second sort with the one notable section of Hogpen Gap which is unbelievable.  My time for the ride was about 5:15 which is comparable to what I did at Six Gap a few years back but I was in better shape then.  Road conditions were worse at Cheaha so that contributed as did missing the front group (most of whom I would pass later but who would have been nice to draft with for the first 25 miles or so).

All in all, it was good ride though my left leg cramped for like four hours afterwards.  I got to meet Frankie Andreau and talk with him a bit at lunch after the ride.  I climbed surprisingly well and passed a lot of people going uphill.  I descended terribly, getting passed by a lot of people going downhill.  The great thing was that I found that I could climb continuously at a power of 300-315 watts for as long as I needed to.  I'm not sure I could have done this for more than an hour but on the climbs where I could keep my power in this range, I had no problem keeping my rhythm and pace for as long as the climb went on.

This week is recovery week with some testing at the end.  Time to enjoy rides with little purpose other than to enjoy the scenery.

Thanks for Reading. 

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Friday, May 02, 2008

It's the end of the semester, the end of the year, the end of a training block and the temporary end of my last New Year's resolution.

Classes are wrapping up for the semester today. As I write this, my PHYS1111 students are taking their final exam. I can say that student/classwise, it's been a pretty good semester. My engineers struggled a bit at the end of this semester but none so badly that they won't get to pursue their dreams and maybe they'll learn to work just a little bit harder in the future. Wednesday night I took them all out for wings at a local restaurant and we played the trivia game and chatted. An alumnus that has gone on to Georgia Tech even stopped by. It was really a great time to celebrate the class' achievements and enjoy the students and their success. It's times like those that make all of the frustrating moments worthwhile. As I drove home from the gathering I just felt an enormous sense of pride in my students and hope for their futures.

Today will be the last Faculty Senate meeting wherein I will act as the Senate's Chair. It's been a very busy year with lots of things passed. To be honest, while I've been honored to serve, I'm more than happy to pass on the institutional mace to next year's Chair. For me, the most important thing I think I learned is that I don't think I really ever want to become an administrator of any sort. My "first, best destiny" (a gold star for anyone who can identify the movie quote) is to teach and mentor students. I have appreciated the respect and praise of my colleagues as I have carried out my duties but I honestly derive much more satisfaction from meeting with a student, as I did this morning, and finding out that my interaction with them, either in the classroom, as an academic adviser or in a more informal way, moved them towards their dreams and goals.

Also, I'm at the end of a three week training block. My body is ready for a rest week. I'll do a couple more days of training level rides and a hard century on Sunday and then I'll give my body a rest for a week before going on vacation to the North Carolina mountains and a sort of "training camp". My power numbers showed improvement throughout the first two weeks and my even show some more improvement this week. I'll start doing a significantly deeper analysis once I start the next cycle because I'll be able to start doing cycle comparisons. My next set of racing looks like it'll be the Tour of Atlanta over Memorial Day weekend. Lots of crits (I hate crits) but there's also an ITT and, more interestingly, a team time trial. Now that I'm officially an "associate member" of the Security Bank Cycling Team I'll ride with those guys. The team is shifting some of it's over 35 riders into the category I'm riding in which will make racing a lot nicer because I seem to handle pack dynamics a lot better when I've got friendly faces to ride with. It also helps me mentally when I know that I have a job to do in a race and that the success can be measured by more than what I do individually.

So at a time of endings I hope to find a chance to rest and recover a bit before setting out on new adventures.

Thanks For Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |