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The team headed down to Salem yesterday for a ride with our Salem team members. The ride was planned to be over 100 miles with lots of climbing – perfect to test my legs for the 105 mile stage the last day of Elkhorn stage race that is quickly approaching.

This was the longest ride I’ve done this year, and is probably in my top 5 distance-wise ever.  The stats:

108 miles, 7200 feet of elevation gain, over 5000 calories burned, average speed 18MPH, 6 hours of ride time, 5 Clif bars, 1 PB & J sandwich, 5 water bottles, 1 snickers bar.

It was a great ride – battling some winds and a massive 16 mile stretch consisting primarily of climbing.  I felt good on the hills as is becoming the usual this year, and I pushed it up several of the bigger climbs even though we were only 40 miles into the ride and had a long way to go.  About mile 80 I was suffering pretty badly to hang in with the groups on the flats, but as of mile 90 I was recovering much better and I actually had some jump left in my legs on the smaller climbs near the end of the ride.  I felt much better at the end of the ride than I did between miles 70-85.

The ride gave me confidence that at the very least I’ll be able to hang in there at Elkhorn, which will be my first big Cat 3 race coming up in two weeks.

Also to note:

Much of Oregon had a wicked thunder/hail/wind storm tear through Thursday afternoon.  I only caught the north end of the storm, but still got to see some strong winds and 15 minutes of downpour.  I like extreme weather.

I watched Hancock.  That movie could not underwhelm more if it tried.  The plotline skips around and abandons its original thesis, fails to provide meaningful background to charachters, and leaves you thinking it was trying to teach a lesson, but you’re not sure what the lesson is.  And Will Smith is my favorite actor, but he just didn’t have it this time.

I’ll be racing Mt. Tabor this Wednesday.  Up and down an extinct volcano a bunch of times in a group going as hard as you can until you win, or puke, or both.  Sounds like it suits me much better than racing at PIR.

I’m volunteering at the Circe du Cycling criterium on Mississippi next Saturday.  It’s only about a mile from my place, which is handy.  Its a day filled with events intended to draw a crowd, which it does.  The race consists of only two different category races – a Cat 1/2 race and a Cat 3 race.  I could race, but its a course notorious for spectacular crashing.  This makes for great spectating, but not the best racing unless you really like criteriums or road rash.

All good things must come to an end, but I just realized that I’m done with one day road races for the season.  I suppose now it makes sense why they have the OBRA State Championship race so early in the season – all the one day road racing is done as of June.

The good news is that the racing itself is quite a ways from being over.  Criterium season is just gearing up, and while it’s not my favorite discipline, I’ll probably do a few of the local ones.  There are also weekly series at PIR and Mt. Tabor.  Then there are the multi-day races.  No Mt. Hood or Cascade Classic (the two biggest stage races) but I’m hoping to be able to do Elkhorn in late June and Eugene Celebration in late August.  Throw in the high Desert Omnium in July, and the end of the season is almost in sight.  Scary!

In other news, here’s a sweet action shot from the finishing uphill sprint at the Rehearsal race on Saturday.  So close!

I raced my bike at Portland International Raceway for the first time last night.

There’s a Tuesday night series that runs from April all the way through August.  It’s a completely different type of racing than many road races or criteriums.  Since it’s on a closed track, it’s completely open roads that are the equivalent of 2-5 lanes wide depending on the section of the course.  The pavement is as smooth as it comes, and the corners are all gradual enough that you never have to slow going into them.  This makes for an incredibly fast, fun race.

Having 80 degree weather in April resulting in more than 100 people showing up in your field makes things even more interesting.  It was the largest field I’ve ever raced in, and having that many people on an open road makes it hard to get to the front of the race, and harder to stay there.  My plan was to go and check the race out and get in a good workout without worrying about my overall placing, and I did just that.  I attacked off the front of the race on my own several times, sprinted a couple times, chased down one break, and overall got in some nice interval training while maintaining a high intensity level the entire race.  I went for the first two of three hot spots and just missed out on both.  I attacked the field with a quarter of a lap to go and tried to go solo, but got reeled in with about 200 yards to go.  The second one a teammate had gone solo off the front and was going to be pulled back in, so I decided to sprint for it.  I probably went a hair early and had the lead until about 100 meters to go when someone came around me on the left at a pace I couldn’t catch.

Our race was 12 two mile laps, and we finished in about 52 minutes.  That’s about a 26 – 27MPH average, which is easily the fastest race I’ve ever been in.  In the last lap I was feeling good about moving to the front and the pace was high with things strung out at the front.  Then with less than half a lap to go, the pace slowed and everyone bunched up at the front.  I never found a good way to get myself un-boxed, and didn’t have a chance to contest the sprint.  I rolled in right in the middle of the pack to take 40th of 102.  Fun times!

EDIT: Here’s a good shot of me sardined right in the middle front of the field.

I spent much of the day running one massive errand – delivering flyers promoting the Monday night race series coming up at PIR starting in May to bike shops scattered across the city.  I was doing it for the race organizer, who also happens to be the president of my cycling team.  I set off with a list of 21 bike shops in every part of the city, and ended up taking about 5 hours to do the entire loop of 57 or so miles.  Not bad considering all the traffic lights, stop signs, and stop time at each shop.  Here’s the loop:

I started out headed Northeast towards Forest park.  Springville road is a nice long climb up to the park, and then I took Springville road that turns into a trail into the park.  I had heard there were some decent gravel trails that could be managed by road bike, but Springville isn’t really one of them.  It turns into a steep downhill mountain bike trail that would have been slightly technical on a mountain bike, and was insane on a road bike.  It was muddy, which made things even more interesting.  I survived my way down it without ever stopping or even unclipping, but I rode the brakes the whole way down.

Then I took a wrong turn on Leif Erickson when I should have continued on Springville, and wound up at Germantown Road, so really I should have just taken Germantown in the first place.  Regardless, it was fun to explore Forest Park.  It’s beautiful and really peaceful.  Plus, I got some great practice for Eugene Roubaix.  Too bad I’m not racing it this year.  Here’s a view (through a plastic bag covering my phone) of Leif Erickson:

After finishing the windy, fun descent of Germantown, I crossed the St. Johns bridge (cool bridge!) into St. Johns.  I made my first bike shop stop there, and then headed over through North Portland into NE, stopping at various points along the way.  From Northeast I cut across towards the Rose Quarter for a couple stops, then into Southeast.  I headed as far south as Sellwood, then took the riverside bke bath (more like bike freeway) back to downtown.

After marveling at how close the downtown bike shops are to each other compared to the rest, I picked a particularly steep road to go up into the West Hills in SW Portland.  (12th to 16th to Washington – probably 20-25% grades at times).  From there the rest of the ride featured a really nice downhill run into Beaverton, where I distributed the rest of the flyers before returning home.

Before the trip, I wasn’t particularly concerned about riding in a big city that I’m only slightly familiar with, but I was curious how stressful it might be with traffic.  Turned out to be a non-issue.  Part of it is that I’m very used to riding with traffic, but biking in Portland is exceedingly easy.  I now have a good understanding why it’s one of the best cities for biking in the country.  Bike lanes everywhere, lots of wide roads, and designated bike routes that you can’t possibly miss even if you weren’t looking for them.  I used my iPhone and general sense of direction to navigate between stops, but finding good roads to get between A and B was a breeze.  People seem to think that biking downtown is best left to crazy bike messengers, but that was probably one of the easiest parts – you can keep up with traffic!

I also got a good feel for North, NE, and SE Portland, areas where I haven’t spent much time.  They’re all really nice areas, and I reconfirmed the fact that I’d like to live in pretty much any part of Portland.  North or Northeast are probably even better than I thought for biking, because the ride out of town across the St. Johns Bridge is fairly quick, and then you’ve got access to all kinds of open roads.

All in all, lots of fun exploring and getting a good workout in at the same time.

Here’s the list of shops I stopped by:

Weir’s Cyclery – 8247 N. Lombard, Portland
Revolver Bikes – 6509-11 N Interstate Ave, Portland
Cascade Cycling – 122 N Killingsworth St, Portland
Upper Echelon Fitness – 4829 NE Martin Luther King Blvd, Portland
Community Cycling Center – 1700 NE Alberta, Portland
Bike Gallery Hollywood – 5329 NE Sandy Blvd, Portland
Cyclepath – 2436 NE. MLK Jr. Blvd, Portland
Metropolis Cycle Repair – 2249 N Williams Ave, Portland
Bicycle Repair Collective – 4438 SE Belmont St, Portland
Joe Bike – 3953 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland
Veloce Bicycle – 3202 SE hawthorne, Portland
A Better Cycle – 2324 SE Division, Portland
Seven Corners Cycle – 3218 SE 21st Ave, Portland
Sellwood Cycle Repair – 7639 SE Milwaukie Ave, Portland
Bike ‘n Hike – 400 S.E. Grand Ave, Portland
Bike Central Co-op – 220 SW 1st Ave, Portland
Veloshop – 211 SW 9th Avenue, Portland
Bike Gallery Downtown – 1001 SW 10th Ave, Portland
Bike ‘n Hike Beaverton – 10120 S.W. Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy, Beaverton
Bike Gallery Beaverton – 12345 SW Canyon Road, Beaverton
Performance Bike Beaverton – 3850 SW Hall Blvd, Beaverton

I raced Kings Valley Road Race yesterday.  The team had a good day.  We raced tactically and either had a team member in every break attempt or chased down breaks without team members.  Once it became obvious the race was going to come down to an uphill bunch sprint, we rested up a bit.  In the sprint I came to the front about 100 meters too early and had to struggle to hold on, but I took 5th overall.  I’m happy with that.

This next weekend I’ve got two racing options: Eugene Roubaix Saturday or Table Rock Road Race Sunday.  I don’t plan on doing both, and Eugene is closer, but I think Table Rock might suit me better.  It’s all the way down in medford, so if I was to do that I’d go down with Pat on Saturday.

Then the following weekend is Willammette Stage Race, which I’ve always wanted to do, but in the past collegiate racing has conflicted with the dates.  The race is a road race Friday south of Eugene, a road race Saturday near Philomath, and a time trial Sunday on what turns out to be a course that includes the hill I recently did hill repeats on while in Corvallis.  The main problem currently is I haven’t found a teammate in my category that wants to race and has transportation.  Still working on that.

After that, the road race schedule slows down for a while before picking up again towards the end of may into June.  In May I plan to get into the weekly race series that takes place at Portland International Raceway, and I’m going to have to finally try out riding a velodrome considering track classes are cheap ($5 for the class and $5 for bike rental).

Then road season picks up again with some of the most important road races and biggest stage races of the season.  I hope to be a Cat 3 by that point, and depending on my employment situation at that point I may try to do a longer 4-5 day stage race such as Mt. Hood Cycling Classic or Cascade Classic.

Then after the road season comes cyclocross season, which at this point I’m severely tempted to try out.  I realized I could use most of the parts off my winter bike and swap them out onto a cheap cyclocross frame with a good set of wheels and tires and have a cross-ready bike for fairly cheap.  I’ll look into this further as fall approaches.  That’s still a long way off.

Here are some various photos I’ve come across from the stage race this weekend.

Here’s one from teammate Justin:

Cornering in the criterium

And a few from Ironclad:

At the front in the criterium

The view from the top of the big climb. We came from all the way down at the bottom.

A couple from Crystal David-Ross:

Up near the front in the criterium

Heading into a corner

And a bunch from Jon Prettyman:

Top 10 GC called to the line before the criterium

And everyone else filling in behind. Big field.

Leading into a corner. Guys on the outside need to do some work on finding lines through the corner.

I think that's me flying by.

Up near the front, chasing down something or another

Taking a corner tight to the curb

Holding on to come in 4th in the final stage

The GC podium

First off, this is a ridiculously long post filled with recaps from a long weekend including four bike races.  If you’re into bike racing, you’ll probably enjoy it.  If you don’t know a ton about the sport, you may wonder what on earth I’m talking about.

So, let’s get the basics out of the way:  I took third place in the general classification (overall standings) for my category out of 80 riders!  Now the details.

(more…)

Tomorrow I’ll head out to Hood River, where I’ll be staying with teammates for the Cherry Blossom Cycling Classic, a 3 day, 4 stage race.  I’m excited about the race.  I’ve done lots of omniums and 1 day races, but this will be my first stage race ever, surprisingly enough.

The blog will probably be light on updates over the weekend, but I’ll get a good recap up of how things go.  That or I may try out my new WordPress iPhone application.

Here’s a rundown:

Getting there on Thursday afternoon will give us a chance to get settled in, pick up race packets, and explore the area a bit.

Stage 1 on Friday is a relatively short (just under 40 miles) road race with one decently large climb per lap (2 laps).  The thing that could make this course interesting is the wind.  Pat sent this out earlier today:

This means the race could potentially be slow, or fast, or dangerous (in the case of gusting 54MPH sidewinds).  The course is to the east of the Dalles, so hopefully it’ll be more sheltered than the city itself and the area in the Gorge.

Stage 2 on Saturday is an 8 mile individual time trial.  It’ll be me and my aero gear versus the clock.  This will be my first time trial of the year.  Always painful, but one of my favorite type of events.

Stage 3, also on Saturday, is a criterium in The Dalles right downtown.  It sounds like it’s a nice flat wide-open 4 corner course, so it should be fast.  This will be my first criterium of the year, which I’m guessing will be the case for much of the rest of the field as well.

Stage 4 on Sunday will be the final stage, and without a doubt the most epic.  It’s a 55 mile road race that includes two laps up 7 mile hill (a 5+ mile climb gaining some 1700 feet in elevation) and part of historic highway 30 in the Gorge.  Wind could once again be a factor, and by my guess anything could happen in this stage.  The group could stay together the entire time as many cat 4 fields do, or there’s a good chance it could get completely blown apart by the climbs and weather.  Either way, I’m stoked.

Here are few snapshots of the many bits and pieces that will be used in racing this weekend.

A cassette off the horribly untrue and low-tension wheel I’ve been riding on.  As much as Joel and I tried to save it, It’s about done.  Definitely no more racing to be had on this one.  The cassette, however, will find a new home on…

This wheel.  It was my primary racing wheel until the hub got all gunky and less than smooth.  It’s now the best I’ve got in spite of it’s shortcomings in the hub (found out today it’s in the freehub bearings, actually), and it’ll be my primary race wheel this weekend.  The new race wheels will be here soon, but not soon enough.  It’s still a fast wheel, though not quite as fast as that wheel lurking behind it.

Then there’s the new race tires.  These will replace the ones I’ve currently got that are getting low on tread, have plenty of cuts, and have encountered their fair share of glass and pointy rocks.

Finally as far as wheels go, there’s this pair, snagged off my training bike.  With a little cleaning, truing, and some new tubes they’ll make a great backup set of wheels.  If I flat in the race, I’ll have a good wheel to use this time.  No more of that nonsense from the second Banana Belt.

And the training bike.  I’ve been fairly merciless in tearing this bike limb from limb in order to keep the race bike in working order.  This one is very close to working order, but may continue to lose components over time.  There is a plan hatching in the back of my mind to take everything off it in favor of building up a cyclocross bike.

There’s the trainer that Phil very graciously lent me for the weekend.  This will be handy if not essential for warming up for the time trial and criterium.

And why not add some flair?  I replaced my other bottle cages (one had cracked at a weld seam) with some lightweight metallic blue ones I had sitting around.  Sure, they don’t match anything else on the bike, but who cares?

Seven rides in the last nine days.  Nearly 300 miles.  Thousands and more thousands of calories.  It’s no wonder my metabolism is going crazy.  Take today, for instance:

I woke up about 8:30 and had a bowl of leftover pasta.

An hour and a half later, I was hungry again.  I had some bread with jam and some yoghurt.

About 1PM, I was starving again and had lunch – more pasta and a banana.

Then I went for a ride.  Hill repeats today. 10 of them on a 1.5 mile climb with an average grade of 7 Percent.  Fifteen miles uphill at an increasingly harder pace, with the last one going all out.  Ow.

I got back about 5:30 starving and ate the remainder of the pasta (I was cooking large packages and simply reheating leftovers) when I got back, plus I had some eggs and milk.

About 8:30, I couldn’t stand the growing in my stomach, so I made a box of mac & cheese for dinner number 2.

It’s now 10:20, and my stomach is growling at me again. Enough already!