The Longest 100 Meters

Powertap bearing went crap today on the ride home.

Cost for 6901RS bearing: $5.95

Cost for Saris to replace said bearing? $300

Absolute insanity.

Donate to Team4Mil or the WWP?

So whassup? Yeah. It’s been a month and a half since I posted last, not much has changed.

Here’s the vitals:
Riding - yep, back into the 17+ hour weeks and loving it. Fitness is running as good as I can hope for at any time of the year and I’ll take it. Recovery isn’t exactly where I would normally want it to be for this time of year, but with no stage racing until August (Thanks Ephrata), I don’t really need to worry too much about that.

Racing - I rolled out to Chantilly Crit last weekend. Race #1 was a 35+ 1/2/3/4 working for a teammate. Work, work, work and had a good time doing it. WWVC is rolling a nice, strong masters team this year and we’re having fun riding/racing hard together. Second race was the 35+ 3/4 race. My only real racing goal for this year is to upgrade to Cat 2. I ended last season 1 point shy, thanks to Lance Lacy blowing my race at Lancaster County. (Inside joke) So, this year I needed more or less a top 5 placing somewhere. The 35+ 3/4 race was a perfect place. No one wanted to ride hard in the wind, so I figured I might as well. I spent 20 of the 23 laps off the front of the field. The first time out was a solo foray, but the wind was crushing my recovery. So I eased up into the pack looking for someone to venture out with me. Ron Barry was nice enough to roll out with me and even drag me around for a lap while I recovered somewhere in the middle of our break. We stuck that bad boy right to the end, I was pleased with a second place finish and working with the powerhouse that is Ron Barry into the 1st place finish. The team worked their tails off to protect our break. Scored 5 (or 6?) upgrade points. Depends on what you call the field size that day. 39 finishers, but the official list showed 50 starters. No matter, it was more than 1. Upgrade request went in right away and that wraps up my season goals. Now comes that excruciating wait for the upgrade request approval and the debate about when to contact promoters for races I’ve already registered in.

That might sound a little lame, but now I get to really bury myself for teammates for the rest of the year. When I get back to Japan, my racing will be almost exclusively solo in masters style fields. So it’ll be fun racing the rest of the year mostly for others or for a team strategy.

RAAM: This weekend we head out in the rain to the roads of PA/MD/WV and do some training for RAAM with Team4Mil folks. We’ll work on rider exchanges, follow vehicle procedures, and all of the logistics that make RAAM what it is. It’s so different from anything else I’ll do this year. The rules are extensive and the last thing we want to do is penalize ourselves for stupid mistakes. It’ll be a fun weekend if you consider doing 30-45 minute intervals (every 2 hrs) in the rain a good time.

We also have some opportunities for press and excitement. This last week we got to do a shoot with Coach Troy and the Spinervals crew. We did a solid 45 minute threshold workout that included warmup, 3×10 @ 100-105%, and cool down. I’ve pretty much determined that all of my bike friends get a Spinervals DVD this winter so they can do threshold training with…. ME! Plus, Spinervals is putting 10% of their proceeds to the Wounded Warrior Project, so that’s mega-cool of them.

Team 4 Mil RAAM (DONATE)

Most folks know that I’m an active duty US Marine of almost 16 years. I’ve had the pleasure of serving the Marine Corps on both coasts and overseas. I’ve had the opportunity to serve in Iraq twice and work with some of the finest and bravest people in the world. When I signed up for the military, I never envisioned I’d spend my career there, but I’ve been blessed with a love for the service and a love for my fellow Marines.

Most folks know that I’m also an avid cyclist. I rode a bike a lot as a kid, but that was just getting around the small town I grew up in. It wasn’t until I found myself in my 20’s, putting on weight fast, that I switched to cycling as a lifestyle. Since 1999, cycling has been a part of my life in some form or fashion. In 2005, cycling really became a passion and - my wife would say - almost a part time job. I’m happy to have a “hobby” that puts me around some fantastic people in racing and touring, as well as keeps me in great physical condition.

Rarely do we get to combine our hobbies and careers, but I’ve been offered just such the opportunity this year. A racing teammate dropped me the opportunity to take part in the Team 4 Mil (www.team4mil.org) RAAM effort. For those that don’t know, RAAM stands for Race Across American (www.raceacrossamerica.org). It’s the world’s premiere endurance cycling challenge, happening annually in June. It’s over 3000 miles, across 14 states and over 100,000 feet of climbing. It will take teams less than 9 days to complete, with riders on the bike 24 hrs/day. (It also has solo competitions, but I’m not THAT crazy). Yes, it’s longer than the Tour de France in less than half the time with no rest days!

This year, RAAM has opened up an Armed Forces Cup and Team 4 Mil is intent on winning it. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg really. Team 4 Mil’s mission also extends to supporting a charity close to our hearts, the Wounded Warrior Project. The Wounded Warrior Project supports our fellow service members that have made enormous sacrifices in the service of our country.

The Wounded Warrior Project (www.woundedwarriorproject.org) supports troops in everything from advocacy, mentoring, career assistance, to rehabilitation support and an almost endless array of other services. They’re there from the moment a warrior goes into recovery with their Wounded Warrior Backpacks and onward into the transition to life beyond the military. These service members are the heritage of our nation, and we have an opportunity to showcase our support for them through our dedication of this RAAM competition to their cause.

The nitty gritty - how can you help?

First and foremost, help us in supporting the Wounded Warrior Program and reaching our team goal of raising $100,000 for their cause. You can donate through our site, http://www.team4mil.org, by clicking “Donate” on the navigation bar. We have an aggressive goal, but we’re aggressive people. In the Marine Corps, we have the leadership standards of “Mission Accomplishment” and “Troop Welfare.” Rarely do we get the opportunity to do both so clearly at the same time. Please assist us there - no donation is too small, and of course - none is too big either!

Second, you can help support us with the financial needs to actual race the event. The support and logistics of racing across the country are pretty sizable. If you’d like to help us accomplish that, we certainly welcome that help. You can contact me directly via e-mail (tom@cycleanywhere.com) and I will point you at our team point of contact for donations to make sure the money gets in the right place.

You’ll all undoubtedly see more from me on this over the next couple months as we finalize all the preparation necessary to get from Oceanside, California to Annapolis, Maryland, and be the first military team to finish this year!

Well, that’s it. The season is officially over. The road racing season was over with a Turkey Day double up for fun racing. The plan that day was to race hard, be a factor, get in some moves and have fun. That was accomplished. With that in the bag, I rolled to my final event of the season.

Couple months ago, I ponied up to do the bike leg of the Chesapeake Man Ultra Triathlon. (It’s not a “sanctioned” Ironman, but it’s an Ironman distance). When I heard about it, I thought - sure, I can turn in 4 hr 30 min for 112 miles, why not? After the fall Church Creek and Millersburg TT, I did some reassessment and figured I’d be pretty stoked to be under 5 hrs for that distance and made 4 hr 45 min as my goal.

That sort of distance was going to be new on the TT bike. It’s not really something I felt comfortable pacing solely off power. Fortunately, I’m really comfortable on a bike out at that time so I just knew what I could hold power wise, and planned to pace more based on speed. As it came out, I blew that pacing plan too - just like I have in every TT I’ve done this year. This time it worked in my favor though.

The team swimmer got out of the water and put me on the bike in about 15-18th, I’d guess. There were a handful more swimmers out of the water first, but they were doing the swim only. So off I rolled. I settled in quick and got out on a short 15ish mile spur that you have to complete before heading out onto the two laps of the course. I was flying by folks pretty fast, comfortable over the 40kph mark for a while. I counted 10 riders in front of me at the turn around there and started counting as I went.

From that point, it was nothing exciting. Spin, spin, spin, pass someone. Before got to the 65 mile mark I was down to one rider out in front by ~2 minutes. I passed him about 10 miles later and pretty quickly pulled away from him.

The power file shows me really starting to suffer as I rolled into about the 3 hr 45 min mark. Cadence started to get choppy with a lot more stops/starts in pedaling. By that point things like bumps in the road were starting to kick into my shoulders. A good stretch of ~10 miles of straight on head wind followed by another 3-4 miles of absolutely horrendous road conditions were no fun.

Those cruddy road conditions were followed up with some stretches of really great roads - except the tide had rolled in over the road in 3 low spots, so had to slow down to a crawl to get through that. As a road cyclist, I’m also a little more used to good clean water bottle hand offs, but bless the volunteers that were out there on the road - you couldn’t take any chances and roll fast through the feed zones or you were not going to get a bottle. It was much better off slowing to a crawl and making sure you got a bottle and a banana, otherwise you were going to suffer soon.

On the good notes - there was really pretty good organization. Things moved along well, there was tons of schwag to go around and the roads were well monitored and policed. It looked like the community was really out in force in some places - especially when I got to my second lap and I was rolling along passing folks that were still on their first lap. My first lap got awfully lonely for about 2 hrs, not seeing anyone but the locals mowing their lawns.

Final result: My bike time, 112 miles - 4 hrs 33 min 8 sec. Avg speed 39.6 kph from chip mat (off the bike) to chip mat (off the bike).

Powertap shows 4 hr 32 min and change with an avg speed of 39.6 kph. My first 3 hrs were over the 40 kph range, and I had two separate (non-overlapping) 42 kph hours. From ~3 hr 15 min to 4 hrs was the worst at 37.5 kph.

This helped our team to a total time of just over 9 hours to win the relay category by over 2 hrs, and the fastest time of the day overall as well. Pretty stoked with my bike time as well. It’s the fastest bike
time they’ve had on this course in the 5 yrs they’ve been running the event for any individual or combination of relays. A little disappointed after the fact that I didn’t get under the 4 hr 30 min mark. But I’ll admit to being pretty stinking spent at the end of the day.

And with that, the season ends. 2 weeks of some serious long miles for fun before rolling into two weeks completely off the bike. Then, we start looking at the 2010 plan.

First, Tour de Millersburg is a fabulous event. It has almost everything you could want out of a PA stage race. The only challenge to the weekend was finding a hotel nearby to stay in. The race organizers did enlist the help of the locals in their “Adopt-a-racer” program, but I’m thinking I was going to have a hard time finding a family to put up me, my wife, and four kids.

The volunteers were fantastic. The community really made me feel - as a racer - like I was wanted there. Most races I go to, I get the feeling from the community that they’re doing us a favor (which they are). Millersburg folk make you feel like you’re doing them a favor (which.. well - we are. It’s called $$ for businesses)

If my impending 2010 move happens late enough in the summer - or keeps me close enough for the drive, I’d be anxious to go do this race again. This absolutely is one of the best races I’ve done all year, even if it didn’t pan out like I wanted it to. And with that.. the race reports.

Stage 1, TT:
I like the TT first format. It gives a good change to the weekend’s tactics. I was so stoked for this TT. I drove the course the night before and it lived up to its “flat and fast” advertisement. I fixed some things on the TT position last week that changed the leg sensations a lot, and I was really looking forward to putting some race proof to it.

I flatted - front wheel puncture - 4 minutes into the TT. I rode the snot out of the clincher front until I couldn’t any more without jeopardizing bike, carbon rim and myself on the busy road. Suckage.

Stage 2, Crit:
This crit course rocks. It’s like tabata intervals in a race. You climb for a minute and 10-15 seconds, and descend for a minute or just over through the turns.

Going into the crit, we were sitting 1st and 3rd on GC. So, my task was to keep attacks down and deliver my guys to the descent on the last lap. After we hit the descent on the first lap, I rolled to the front and started moving the pace. The word from previous years was “this always comes back together on the descents.” My mission was to not let that happen.

For the first 8 laps I kept the pace hot on the climb, letting the pack stay within spitting distance of me so they kept their tempo up and then stay on the front for the descent to get my own line through the turns and back to the hill. Carnage ensued immediately on lap 2, and by lap 7-8 we were a seriously smaller field than the 52 starters. Post-race video shows us down to ~20-21 riders. (Thanks to Igda for taping and Pete for editing!)

Tour de Millersburg 3/4 criterium 08/15/2009 from Peter Warner on Vimeo.

The rest of the race was keeping attacks from happening. I certainly got my share of dirty looks from riders when I got on their wheel trying to get away. A couple guys got some distance and looked for me to work, but unless they were going to drag me 15-20 seconds away from the field, I needed to be prepared to get Pete to the front at the end. As a guy who relishes in some seriously suicidal break attempts, it took some serious restraint staying back. For the guys that looked at me to pull through, sorry guys - but for another day or a day I don’t puncture on the TT.

The final solo attack attempt lasted until the base of the final lap’s climb, and we were hauling up that hill. I gave everything I had to get Pete to the top in position in the pack and made it about 3/4 of the way up before hollering to the field “I’m blown” and dropping anchor. I had barely enough to latch on near the tail end of the “peloton” and finish in… well.. not DFL - because I was 18th of 52 starters. I was, however, the last guy of the finishing field.

If you’ve never pummeled yourself for the sole intent of making others suffer and the defense of your teammate’s position, you should try it. It was way fun.

Stage 3, Road Race
I woke up with good legs, and happy for it. I recovered well from an excruciating crit and planned to find the right break and make it stick. Word on the course was “nothing ever stays away.” But, I was sure we could get the right people in the break with the GC standings the way they were and get something away.

I knew Lance Anderson/Bike Rack was feeling good (we dropped him in the crit yesterday – which came down to cornering skills). Racing Lancaster two weeks ago was a huge plus because some of the faces of the strong riders I recognized.

We rolled out of the “neutral” start and got a move on. A little bit of little stuff got going and when Anderson went, I went across. We had a group of 5 or 6 at one point early in the first lap but the pack was still too fresh and the leash was very short. Too many people don’t get the notion of committing to the break. It takes a long time to break the will of the peloton. They’re going to stay in sight for a while. Just put your head down and stinking work.

We settled back and waited for the next chance. I lost count of the number of break attempts that tried to get started, and to be honest – I was burning matches with a quickness.

Early in the second lap, we managed to get Pete into what I thought would be the break that stuck when he had a break of 7-8 guys going. Each team was represented and we started working to slow the pace of the peloton. We got the break numbers up to 10 (all solo representation) and I thought for sure this had legs. Unfortunately, some of the teams started getting greedy and tried to get two guys up into the break and that caused a sizeable chase again, and that break came back fast.

Second lap coming to a close and Gould moved up the road when Lance Anderson rolled off the front to join an existing two up break attempt. Anderson’s climbing put Gould over the limit coming back into town though and we caught him back. Now Lance Anderson was off the front with 2 others heading into the start of lap 3. When we came out of the town for lap 3, I got the sense the pack was going to let this thing stick, so I took off to make chase. They let me go and I started to bury myself to make the break. On the rollers I saw the break kinda peeling apart – one of the riders was going backwards already. I debated sitting up then. But this video was coming to mind: (Particularly from 1 min 20 sec -> 2 min 10 sec)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UncELpyKQLU

My body was saying “I must quit now!” But my mind said, “No, no body! You must keep going.” So push on I did. I made the bridge and after a couple rotations sitting on to recover, we got moving. We were well out of sight of the peloton and I thought for sure we were good. Rider #3 was skipping rotations really often. I assumed he was just suffering cause we were working hard. I was in some serious hurt and yesterday’s crit started to catch up.

Coming back to the flat, long stretch back to town the pack was coming back to us. I gave Lance Anderson the nod and we sat up. As soon as we did, Rider #3 jumped to attack. Uhh… dude? Teammate Flanagan was coming across fast, so they went up the road. Reality was that they were never going to get more than 5-10 seconds now. The pack moves too fast on that road. You need a good minute or so from the turn onto the main road to make it to the finish ahead of the chase.

If it hadn’t been Flanagan in the new 2-up break, I would have shut that friggin attack down fast. Had that knucklehead been rotating through with us with that kind of energy, there’s no telling if we could have made the break stick to the end – but it sure as heck woulda had a better chance than the two-man effort Anderson and I were putting out. (*rant over*)

We did catch them as the pack “rolled” through the hills and they were working hard. They came through the pack fast and I tossed the comment over to Rider #3 “Maybe you shoulda worked harder earlier, eh?” I mighta thrown an expletive in there – I don’t really remember. I was pretty ticked off at such a bone-headed move.

From there it was basically a pack chase to a 1 man solo attempt that was doomed to failure. They let him dangle till the climb back into town and we ate him up fast there. We started the descent into the right turn into town and guys were getting all sorts of crazy, so with blasted legs, I sat up and grabbed the tail end of the peloton.

End of the weekend:
This was not how I planned the weekend! My legs are blasted and this was the first race of the year that I had my wife drive most of the way home from. I’m toast.

Church Creek is my TT redemption next week, with a little Wakefield angst in between. This will be a recovery week of sorts because I can feel some crazy exhaustion setting in.

So as I felt I was kinda tipping off form for the year, I backed off on my race plans for the season and am opting for stage races so I can get time on the TT bike in race mode. The plan is to prep for Church Creek this month and then the bike leg of an Ironman tri at the end of September. Now that the ING Capital Crit is cancelled, the season really lost excitement for me. On top of that, looks like the Marine Corps will likely move me next summer so I might shift to race hard in the spring next year so my planning is just kinda rolling around. I haven’t looked at my performance management chart in a month or more. I download my power files once a week at most and I’m just kinda training like I know I should without a lot of pressure.

So, on the calendar was Tour of Lancaster County and its “flat and fast” TT. Next is Millersburg and another “flat and fast” TT. I’ll slide Turkey Day on the calendar in September and finish the season off with that 112 mile “TT” in September.

Road Race:
I rolled up to Lancaster County this last weekend feeling “okay.” I had a good recovery/pre-race day spin on the TT bike. Driving up to the race I had those sorta “butterflies” in the stomach like - I’ve got good legs, question is how good? I like those kinda races. No pressure really, so let’s see what happens. Teammate Pete Warner - arguably one of the strongest 4’s in the district rolled up there as well, so it was a small WWVC contingent. We did a little chatting pre-race and both kinda did a “ah, we’ll just see what happens” with the plan that I’d lead him out to the hill at the end if we were all together.

Off we went on the neutral roll out. We rolled to the base of the hill and hung a right. Immediate a guy started rolling off the front. I chuckled and said to someone something like, “Doesn’t he realize we got 50 miles to go?” Did some chatting with one of the NCVC duo about not knowing the course and planning to sit in for a lap to see the layout. While we were talking two more guys just sorta rolled off the front. No real attack, just rolling. The course was fast along the creek bed and easy to move through the pack. I saw Lance Anderson roll up the left side so I rolled up the right to keep an eye on him. He got to the front, and momentum carried him 10-15 feet away. Alrighty, time to roll then… wait.. this is the first break of the day. No chance this is sticking. Ah well.. I’m just here to TT tomorrow anyway, what the heck. I pushed, Lance hopped on my wheel and we started rotating smoothly across the gap.

We got the break 8 minutes later. They dropped one of theirs, so our two plus their two made 4. A lap later we had a 2 minute gap to the peloton. 3 riders coming across 30 seconds back, so we sat easier and let them come through. We still dropped one of our fellas and the chase dropped one of theirs. So their 2 plus our 3 and we had 5. Off we set. End of the story, we stuck the break to the end. My legs were toast on the finishing climb and cramping so I came in 5th. Good day for not planning on it.

TT:
“Flat and fast with some pitches” was the advertisement. Uh.. yah right. Not sure if there was anything really “flat” on the course. On the other hand, I’m comparing it to Church Creek. I squeezed my TT in between torrential rain out of sheer luck. Not a great ride for me, but was good enough for second. I still have some work to do on the TT position and power differences. More time in the bars… I just have to get better. The difference between me and the good guys is just too big.

Crit:
I rolled into the crit in 1st place on the GC. I looked at the stats and looked at who was close. Lance Lacy showed to do the crit only and was just looking for some fun, so between him, PeteW and the NCVC folks, we just figured we’d make it a MABRA crushing at the end keeping the other GC guys out of contention.

This course was WICKED fun. Lance was crushing it on the freshest legs of the day (being that he was a major wuss and only raced the crit!) - but he was seriously crushing it and every time he pulled off the front the pack was strung out. Did I mention the course was WAY fun?

Finally a break of 5 went up the road and I started marking the #2 and #3 guys on GC. They tried to get away a couple times and I was able to easily take their wheels and keep them from going away. The plan was to get to 5 to go, bring Pete to the front to pick up the pace and keep the attacks down. Lance takes it from a lap to go and finishes the deal.

We got to 5 to go and Pete was pooped. You could see it in his eyes - but it worked out fine because the rest of the pack seemed pretty whooped. The #2 guy from Shirks racing had leadout guys settle in and I just surfed their wheels staying 2-3 wheels back. I felt fantastic hopping wheels and total control of the bike. Me and the Blue were one machine.

We started the turn in to the finish and the Shirks guy started to go. He cut the corner hard so I Oscar Freire’d the grass on his inside. I saw out of the right eye the #2 GC guy rolling hard and at the same time NCVC Greg go down hard. Still not sure what happened there. The tall Shirks racing guy almost made it worse as he looked over his shoulder - IN TURN, IN THE SPRINT. Dude! He looked right and guess what…. leaned left on top of me. I leaned back in to him bringing us both upright and took off.

His guy got pinched and the #3 GC guy was too far down to scoop me on GC. Phew!

But wait… there’s MORE! Filip Capella, strong 3… yah. He won from the break. His 27 points took him to 56 points for the day. My 11 points… that took me to 55. Yep.. I didn’t check the results deep enough. And a guy 10 places down on GC took the win. Ahhh… cruddos.

S’all right though. Final results: RR 5th, TT 2nd, Crit 10th, GC 2nd. Maxed the stage race points at 15. Difference between 1st GC and 2nd GC was 10 bucks, so that’s really all I missed out on.

I felt way comfortable all weekend on the bike and all around. This laid back thing may be working out well.

Kudos to Lance Anderson on his road race finish. He was clearly the best rider on the road race. He was climbing really well all day. He might have been able to solo the last half of the last lap, but there was clearly no need to. Shame he wasn’t there for the crit and to protest his DNS on the TT. The crit would have been way fun with him in it.

Kudos to Lance Lacy - looking way strong. He’s obviously putting some serious steady state stuff in and he’s going to be a guy to watch on the upcoming TTs.

Kudos to Pete Warner in his first 3/4 race. Looking strong and took 4th in the TT. He’ll should be out of the 4’s fast early next season if he comes in to the next season on some form.

BIG Kudos to Rich and Allthatisgood.org racing folks. I don’t know what happened last year with the politics up there in the PA area with his races. But he clearly puts on great races, well organized, on awesome courses. Hey, did I mention that crit course was really, really fun? The road races are challenging.

Kudos to Capella. Now upgrade already dude! We all see your results man.

Hope to see more folks at Millersburg. Reg’d last night and got the hotel today.

Last couple weeks have been off for me. I finished up with ToWC thinking I was moving into some good form. I took a trip up to the Adirondacks and managed an injury to.. well.. we can call them “tender parts.” I spent three days on Motrin just to walk around. On day 4 I could move with tolerable pain sans motrin. So, it ended up being a 7 day stretch completely off the bike. Great.

Got back into DC on the 12th of July and first hard efforts back on the bike these last two weeks have been miserable. I’m starting to feel stronger now and feel like there’s some kick in there. I don’t think I’ll recover the uppermost kick I felt like I had in June, so I can focus on good steady state intervals and plan to crush TT’s the rest of the season.

Giro di Coppi Report:
Either this race was exceptionally easy, or I’m getting more fitness back than I expected. The Cat 3 race was pretty much a bore and centerline rule was a typically key player on the MABRA road races. I made some critical mistakes on positioning on the run in to the finish and by the time we hit the feed zone there was no room left to move up. No clue what place I got - wasn’t really an objective for the day.

Two thoughts on Giro di Coppi:
1. The EDS guy that felt the need to nudge every rider in the peloton has issues. I’ve never seen someone take their hands off the bars to let the guy next to them know they’re there. I get the occasional tap, we all do that. But this guy was incessant. It actually became comical as he gave me a nudge over to move around on to the second wheel and proceed to go backwards when the road tipped upwards.

2. The guy on my wheel telling me to “Slot right Whole Wheel” so he could move by was dumb. I’m riding the yellow line. There’s space at my handlebars where sure - if I wanted to go right, I probably could have. But I knew there was a 540 rider with his front wheel abeam my rear wheel. I finally got fed up with hearing “Slot right Whole Wheel” and told the guy as much. His response was “Well, if his front wheel is overlapped, that’s his fault!”

Yeah, so sure - I could “slot right” and put my derailleur in his spokes and say “well, that was his fault.” But it ain’t happening.

So, this is the synopsis.

I flew out to San Diego last week to get some good work done. I got that done, and am glad I did. I think it was important work to get underway and sets the USMC air traffic control community up for greater success and training in the future. Ok… that being said.

I loved riding on Camp Pendleton. What great roads and HUMUNGOUS road shoulders. I did some fantastic 2×20’s on the road bike on Monday and thought, man … this rocks. Interval 1, avg 342, normalized 349. (sweeping downhill I wasn’t sure what was around the corner - no need to run in to a tank!). Second interval was coming back on the same roads and rock solid, avg 349, normalized 350. Easy enough, but only 90 minutes on the bike.

The plan was to get in 2½ hours on Tuesday, but that fell through when a fire on base trashed the traffic flow and I didn’t get on the bike until almost 6pm. I got a 90 minute hard tempo ride in. Hoped to get to Palomar Wed night, but still out of work to late to make it. Wed and Thursday were basically both a wash with nothing better than 90 minutes of recovery rides. Friday was set to fly out, so no riding. Flew in to Chicago Friday on time, and left Chicago Friday some 4 hours late. Landed in DCA at almost 2am Sat morning, home around 4am Sat morning. In bed at 4:30am, and up at 9am to get to the race. EXHAUSTED.

So… in performance management chart speak, I went from CTL of 125 to a CTL of 116, a nice tapered TSB of ~-5 (ideally aiming for about +8-10 for stage 1 of ToWC), to a TSB of 39.89 - totally overrested. I knew this was happening so I didn’t even look at power files all week in San Diego.

Stage 1: Nice road race, fun course and eye bleeding power climbs. First few laps felt fine and the “jump” in the legs was there for the climbs. Even when Matt and company turned the screws on Lap 4 at a steady pace, I was good. Unfortunately even when the break looked like it could have gone, two of our 6 sat up and blew that. If I was going to be in a break on Saturday (or Sunday, really), it needed to be one that I didn’t have to attack really hard to get in - and I hoped this would have been in.

Lap 6 in the tailwind section, an NCVC fella was going backwards through the pack and rather than go backwards on his wheel, I avoided left to let him go by. Moto-ref saw me cross yellow line and relegated me back to the back. Nice - so.. well.. me and Lance go to the rear in absolutely the wrong time. Yeah, the point where Sacawa & Co took the bridging group I wanted to be in. Climb 1 - ouch. Pace was blazing on the descent through the intersection. Climb 2 - did I mention I was over-rested? Yeah… no snap for climb two and I am pretty sure I saw stars. Rusty caught up at the top and super-motivated me to finish the stage instead of collapsing right there so I pushed through. WAY down on the GC @ 26th. Time for home and bed.

Stage 2: TT
The good news is my position makes up for everything I lack in freshness. I did a solid job pacing what I thought was the best case for me. I eased on the descents so I could give it full gas in the TT position on the climbs. The tailwind outbound allowed you to basically take the climb to the turn around out of the saddle, so I did. Marc Warner blitzed the course, nice job there. I squeezed a second place - and contrary to results being 30 seconds skewed for at least the whole Cat 3 field (not sure how early the “slide” happened, but it seems pretty consistent to what people thought they finished in and what was posted) - I finished in 27:28. (Power files don’t lie) 2nd in the TT took me from 26th to 6th on the GC. Even though I did 2×20’s at 350 5 days prior, was WAY lower than that for the TT - unacceptably way lower. I can only dream at how much faster my TT would have been at 340-350 watts.

Stage 3: Crit
3 seconds separated 6, 7, and 8. We needed to make some bonus seconds if I wanted to get to 5th. Rusty and I worked out the details pre-race and just didn’t execute cleanly. I need to do a better job communicating pre/mid race with the teammates and I think we’ll make some serious headway.

About 8 or 9 minutes into the race I nailed that nice pothole/manhole on the descent. It pushed the bars forward which tightened the rear brakes. It also slid the rear wheel slightly out of the derailleur hanger. I figured this out after I took the turn to the start finish line and the chain wouldn’t settle in anything smaller than the 53×13. So for two more laps I was doing some serious mashing to stay with the field. This wasn’t going to work so I pulled into the pit, explained I needed to reskewer the wheel, but they gave me a fresh wheel anyway. I took that and hopped back in.

For all the talk about this course I’d heard before the race, I didn’t think it was nearly as dangerous as I was thinking it was going to be. In fact, this was by far one of the most fun crit courses I’ve done around here. It certainly beats the Ephrata “four corner turn left” course hands down.

Marc Simpson gobbled up the early bonus seconds to slide forward but I managed to keep Lance behind me for the bulk of the race and held on for 7th in the GC. Absolutely awesome course and really fun crit.

End of the day, I came home, went to bed and slept for 10 hours last night. Bed early again tonight and back to the training routine. Me and the TT bike are going to get crazy acquainted over the next two months to see if I can sort out my issues there.

Thanks to the guys on the team for the support. We’ve got some serious racing to get done the rest of the summer and I look forward to better legs than I had this weekend. This was an awesome stage race.

Anyway… I was gonna post some charts and numbers and stuff, but my MS Excel is really ticking me off, so I shall digress.

Ride hard, ride lots!
VW

I got out here to San Diego on Sunday afternoon. I did get 2×20’s in on Sunday and hoped to get it out to one of the local group rides yesterday. Unfortunately, a wild fire on the base hosed up the traffic and a late departure from work left me unable to get there. I backed off the intensity then and got in 90 minutes of riding.

Today’s plan was to make it out to Palomar and ride the mountain, but that too was thwarted by a longer work day and I wouldn’t have made it out there in time to get up and down the mountain so I just hopped on and did 90 minutes of recovery.

This whole week was planned to taper into the Tour of Washington County after I get back in town Friday night. The taper isn’t going at all like I’d hoped, but if nothing else, I’ll be fresh!

I’m out here on Camp Pendleton, and I’ve gotta say I’m envious. I did 2×20’s on the base on Monday with NO traffic interruptions. I spun yesterday and today and barely ever had to stop pedaling. Riding on this base is AWESOME. It helps that the base is enormous. It also REALLY helps that it’s pretty much sunny and 65° from sunrise to sunset. So, while my team is back in DC dealing with this:

I’m dealing with this:

Any chance monsoon season will end before I fly back to DC on Friday night?

There’s nothing you can blame on anyone but yourself in the TT. The formula is easy. It’s MIND + BODY + AERODYNAMICS = TIME.

Aerodynamics are easy - not necessarily cheap, but they’re reasonably objective. TT bike (bars, wheels, frame, all that stuff), check. Aero helmet, check. Skin suit, check. Position, check. At the end of the day, there’s a “fastest case” for this stuff. I’m pretty convinced I’m right about there. I hope there were photogs out there at Church Creek - not sure if there were because I was pretty tunnel visioned for most of it. I really want to see myself in the TT position.

Body - wow.. this is the work part. I blew my pacing plan out the door, and suffered for it. My first 15 minutes were 20 watts above my plan, and my next 40 minutes were 20 watts below as a result. This resulted in power 15 watts below my theoretical pacing plan, and 30 watts below ideal. I will fix this. I will stop making excuses about interval courses and traffic and all the other crap that keeps me from getting long steady state intervals in and I’m moving TT to the trainer for now. No traffic, no lights, no interrupts. Me, the position, the TT bike and training. At the 20-25km mark I knew I was struggling and I knew I was beyond the “standard interval length” that I get. My power file shows it.

Mind - ahhhh… focus Daniel-son. Hoooooooooly smokes. For the first real 40km TT on a course I’ve never ridden before, focusing and not getting beat up in the mind was rough. The mind will follow the body if the body is prepared. (see above)

Results? My goal was 55 minutes. I finished in 55:27.0 at 15-20 watts below my power pacing plan - good enough for second in the Cat 3’s. Goal for the fall Church Creek? 54:00.

Alrighty.. back to work.

PS> Parting shot - the course was nice, flat EXCEPT that middle stretch was a … well.. it was something else. There was NO smooth line on that road, cause I looked for it. If someone out there found the smooth line, please comment and tell me where it was. That road beat the living snot out of my legs for 20 km. I felt like I added a kilometer to the course trying to find a good line. Ah well.. had to have something to gripe about mentally when things started to fall apart physically, right?

Ride safe, ride hard, ride lots!
VW