Archive for September, 2009

It’s the off-season!  Back to some running, bodyweight workouts, and I think I’ll be joining a gym for the next couple months.  Time to keep the metabolism and aerobic capacity high while building some leg muscle and toning core/arms.

It’s also cyclocross season.  I had a bit of a rough introduction to cross – crashing out in the second lap of my first ever cross race.  I raced in the Bs and found the pace and intensity in the first lap about right – aka insanity.  People crashing all over the place, sliding around in corners, bumping and grinding over grass, dirt, gravel and pavement.  I missed getting a good hole shot, but still managed to slot into about 20th position when the race singled out.  The major run-up on the course followed a downhill dismount and a run down a very steep hill across a bridge.

The crash came on arguably the most straightforward part of the course, and ironically, on pavement.  I was headed towards a curb and barrier leading to a grass section and began my dismount.  I swung the leg over, had a hand on the top tube, and all was going as normal when I went to turn my second foot out of its clip to go into a run.  The shoe wouldn’t come out, and my balance was thrown off.  I ended up hopping along before finally falling, winding up going just about face-first into the curb.  My reaction time was quick and I got a hand out to catch myself, but I was rather surprised to suddenly find my faces stopped inches away from a curb.  The hand took the brunt of the impact, and as I went to get back on my bike and keep going my hand hurt rather badly.  I couldn’t put much weight on the handlebars, and decided to call it a race.  15 minutes later, I was rather worried I might have broken my hand.  Luckily, that turned out not to be the case – just a pulled muscle and some nice bone bruising.

So now the plan is to cut the tread on my shoes down further to ensure that doesn’t happen again.  And then I’ll get out there and try again.

That’s mostly it.

I’m also currently coordinating the OBRA Meet the Team rides, which are a number of rides for different teams that encourage new riders interested in joining a team to come out and ride.

The rest of life consists of my morning routine, working on a variety of fairly interesting projects at the office, coming home, spending some time on the computer, eating dinner, and then usually one or more of the following: a) working on side projects, b) an evening workout, c) dishes, food shopping, cleaning, etc., d) hanging out with friends.

I’ve got no complaints. That said, I still regularly think back to the exciting adventure that was my life this time a year ago.

I’m formulating plans to begin riding my bike to work 3 days/week coming up in the next week or two (now that I’m aware of the showers and lockers hidden in the basement of our building).  The other two days I’ll spend in the gym doing weights.  Then as the winter base miles season comes around, I’ll drop the gym in favor of riding to work 5 days a week.  That’ll end up being a minimum of 110 miles per week during the weekdays, not including any weekend riding.  This will also come with a necessary  sleep schedule change (hello waking up at 6am).  I’ll let you know how that goes.

Yesterday marked my long ride ever, coming in at approximately 139 miles as a part of the Rapha Gentlemen’s Race.
We headed out to the beach (Lincoln City) on Friday evening and stayed in a suite at the Inn at Spanish Head thanks to team president Jim who served as sugar daddy for the evening.  We also dined on an expensive dinner with wine, and room service for breakfast, all for an unreasonably low cost.  After all that pampering, leaving the comfort of the hotel for 140 miles of suffering loomed even larger.

The view out on the ocean from our suite

About the Race

This was the 2nd annual Rapha Gentlemen’s Race, which is technically not a race, but it is anyway.  The ride pits teams of 6 riders against each other in a test of endurance, mental strength, bike flat-resistance, and teamwork.  The course covered 140 miles starting way out on the coast near Lincoln city and ending in Downtown Portland just across the east side of the river.  Teams are seeded based upon racing category in order to (in theory) give everyone a chance at winning.  The winner is simply the first team to reach the finish, and the first team was given over an hour head start on the last team.  Two checkpoints along the way ensured racers were taking (approximately) the course that everyone else was.  There is no support for the race, and teams observe the rules of the road as in any other non-race ride.  But other than that, you go as hard and fast as you possibly can while trying to survive 140 miles.

About our Race

As one of the faster teams, we started at 10:03AM (the first team off was at 8:45AM) – we were the 20th of 23 teams to start, so we had a lot of catching to do.  We rolled out and immediately started on a climb where we passed our first team of the day that was off to a slower start.

The trusty race steed, outfitted with a brand new set of Gatorskins to minimize flatting potential.

We rode hard for the first several hours and had a good pace going averaging over 23MPH including several small climbs.  We stopped for a 60 second water-refill break and saw that the Nike team was right on our heels before we headed into the hardest part of the course – up and over the coast range on back-roads.  This included the longest climb of the day, which probably lasted the better part of ten miles.  Going up the climb, we caught a team that proceeded to latch onto the back of our paceline and sit there.  We got a little concerned and ramped the pace up on the climb to try to drop one of their riders off the back knowing that if one of them dropped off all of them would have to.  Unfortunately we ended up dropping one of our riders instead and had to slow up.  We couldn’t shake the other team, and even though we got to the first checkpoint first and got to leave first, they caught us again and ended up passing us and heading up the road a bit.  They finally got what was coming to them though.  We passed them following the first long gravel section when they had to pull over to fix a flat tire.

We got over the top of the big climb, but we’d burned several of our riders probably harder than we should have.  The entire pace of the ride so far had been fairly frantic, and there were definitely tensions running high within the team, myself included.  We were eating and drinking constantly, knowing that if one of us blew up we would all drop off the pace.  We hit the second gravel section at about mile 80, which consisted of a steep descent on gravel.  Chris broke a spoke on the descent, which delayed us several minutes.  Coming into Carlton, we made another quick stop for water and Snickers bars.

At about mile 100, I got the cramping, sick feeling in my stomach that I seem to get around the 4.5 to 5 hour mark in a long ride, but I fought through it.  I should also mention that I lost a contact lens overnight and had to ride with my glasses with a slightly weaker prescription than would be ideal.  This resulted in fighting a headache throughout parts of the ride from the sunlight and minor blurriness.

About mile 100, Rob really started to hurt and we had to slow our pace to make sure he didn’t blow up completely.  We made an emergency stop at Ace hardware at mile 115 to get Rob more water and some soda for a sugar/caffeine boost.  The carbonation in the soda also did wonders for my upset stomach.  However, this stop allowed the Nike team to finally pass us, as well as several others we had recently passed.  At this point we had no idea how many teams were in front of us or behind us.

Jim searching frantically for emergency refueling liquids at Ace Hardware

We hit the final checkpoint at mile 120 and were able to do some serious passing by not stopping at the checkpoint where a number of other teams were stopped to rest or refuel.

About mile 125, Jim went from feeling okay to very not okay in a hurry.  We slowed our pace further and tried to keep him in the group.  About this time, the frustration that had been present at points throughout the ride gave way to all working towards getting to the finish.  We got to the base of the final 3+ mile climb up into the west hills of Portland and had someone pushing Jim up the climb nearly the entire way, and much of the time someone pushing the pusher for the extra horsepower.  I was feeling amazing given the distance we’d traveled and actually had the juice left in my legs to be doing some of the pushing.  Jim was a trooper and made it over the top of the climb with much grunting and grimacing.

From there we descended into Portland and rolled down Burnside to the finish where we were met by a small cheering crowd, friends, and the welcome surprise of an open bar for the riders.

We finished in 7 hours 10 minutes, with 6:50 of that being riding time for an average speed of about 20.5MPH.  We were the 5th team in and had the 2nd or 3rd fastest start to finish time on the day.  Not to shabby considering how often it felt like things were going wrong along the way. Avoiding flats was definitely a key (some other teams reportedly had 3-4 flats or more).  It was surely an experience to remember, and at the end of the day we all had a great time.

Rob and Brian making some use of the open bar

An obscenely large $ value of bikes parked at the bar

The team, from left to right:

Swan – Solid start to finish.  140 miles?  Piece of cake.

Marcroft – He was perhaps the first of us to start suffering, but he pushed through amazingly well.

Me – Laughing at Rob. Rode strong, took some good pulls, felt better at 140 than at 80.

Rob – Being Rob.  After suffering at 100, he found a second wind in the last 15 miles.

Kennettron – After pounding 2 beers on an empty stomach immediately following the ride, here he’s seen demonstrating his “sexy face” that he was trying on women at the bar, with little effect.  Kennett gets the team anchor award for the day.  Long pulls, hard work, and made it look easy.

Sparky (AKA Jimbo (AKA Jim)) – Demonstrating the face he was sporting while suffering up the final climb.  He dug deep in the pain cave.

I’ve finally got my cyclocross bike together.  For those who aren’t familiar, at first glance it looks like a road bike, but there are several important differences.

The frame geometry is slightly different to provide more clearance between the wheels and the frame.

The bike uses mountain bike pedals
(in this case a variation on mountain pedals with a bigger surface area to push against while you’re not clipped in)

And also mountain shoes rather than road shoes

Complete with tread and spikes for running in the dirt and mud.

Probably the two biggest differences – cantilever brakes to provide extra stopping power and clearance around the wheels for mud, and knobby tires wider than a standard road tire.

That’s the cleanest you’ll ever see the bike again, more than likely.  I took it out yesterday to Mt. Tabor with some teammates, where I proceeded to learn the basics of the cross dismount, shouldering the bike, and remounting the bike.  Once you get good at it,  you can dismount into a full-on run while shouldering the bike, and take a flying leap still at running pace to get back on the bike.  I’m not that fast yet, but I got a pretty good rhythm going towards the end of the day.  Now I just need to do it more so it becomes habit and my form doesn’t fly out the window in my first cross race (whenever that may be).

Today I started out on a road ride with several friends and managed to have two flats within the first several miles of the ride.  I called it a day and hopped the MAX back home.  I still wanted to get out for a ride though (in a moderate downpour at times – I’m crazy), so I pulled out the cross bike and rode up into Forest Park for several hours, and ended up riding probably 25 miles in the dirt/mud.  I got a great feel for the cross bike today and how it handles at higher speeds after I got comfortable on it.  The bike feels like you’re riding a road bike, but it has the cornering and maneuverability of a mountain bike in the dirt.

I had a blast, and I’m guessing I will be riding in that area a bunch this winter.  With all the rain and mud, it was perfect conditions to get downright filthy.

On my way home I rode back through the Pearl District in downtown Portland, where I proceeded to get all sorts of interesting looks (from being covered in mud and all).  I could tell most of them were envious that I’d been out playing in the mud.  I also got a cat-call from someone who told me I had a “great ass”.  Speaking of great asses…

“Oh wait, let me put down my uzi so I can throw better”

Gotta love the celebratory fist pump at the end.