Sunday, January 25, 2009

charlotte short track #2 - race report

hello loyal blog readers

so today marked my first bike race in months. its also my first race under a new team: BOONE VELO. charlotte short track. event #2 of 5 in the series. last night darcy, lindsey and i rolled out to rock hill, SC. we stayed at darsey lingle's house. thanks again!!! so we got to the race course this morning around 10am and i got registered, got my number plate installed, and i got changed. darcy, lindsey, and darsey (my cheering section) found a table to hang out at and i got to warming up. i got two laps on the course and tried to get my heart rate way up high and get my legs to burn and then i spun around until they called our class to the line. we sat around long enough to make another trip to the boys room... a trip that i could have used. and then its all about racing:

riders ready.

go.

the punk kid in front of me (the same one that won sport mens 19-29 serc last may) missed clipping into his pedal and by the time we got moving some other guy was trying to elbow me into the fence at the end of the sidewalk. bull-schniekies!! so a hard right and its sprinting for position entering the woods. i got in about 7th place and we're cruising through and i'm thinking gosh i have to work on my warm-up since i never seemed 'warmed up' and then there's a little crash involving philicia marion. yes, this IS the MEN's sport 19-39 race and well, maybe.... you never know...

and so anyways... i don't really remember what happened, but after the crash i got into 4th or 5th position. we make our way through the wooded section, up the rock step-up, and then onto the gravel and up the grassy hill toward the sidewalk and start/finish area.

lap 1. the pain has already started... so cruising down the sidewalk, through the parking area and i'm sitting in like, 4th. we enter the woods and i'm feeling good and the lap goes by and i'm going through the start finish again. lap 2. more pain. so this time through the parking lot the three guys in front of me all sort of sit up and i dart to the right to miss a rear wheel and there's still enough space before the singletrack. shift two gears. stand. i'm in the lead. what?!?

the guys behind me say:

'who is this guy? do you know him?'

i reply

'i'm just some slow guy.'
'people who wear skinsuits aren't slow'
'oh, no. i just forgot my shorts and had to borrow this.'
laughter abides.
heads down.

i lead through the singletrack. through the berms. through the old creek crossing that is now dry. along the newly fresh bench cut. over a rickety sideways wooden bridge. BIG RING. i stand, climb. cross the rock step-up. gravel road time. ouch. it hurts.

so i'm still in my big ring. legs are on fire. my pedals don't want to turn. the three guys i've been riding with come around me and i can't stick anyone's wheel. i look back and there's no one. we gapped them?!? maybe my pace was too high. oh well. so through the start/finish and i hear 'these riders have been racing for 15 minutes...' and i'm like, there is no way to keep it red-lined for 30 more minutes. i watch the group of three roll away. i kept about a 10 second gap for a few laps and then some Kenda-KMC girl (not philicia. another one) showed up in my rear view mirror and i worked to stay in front. after another lap or so she came around on the gravel and i fell into 5th or so.

i held 5th position for a while and soon we all caught lapped traffic. i decided to pass todd wells and JHK just before entering the woods to leave some work for the Kenda-KMC lady:

that made things a bit more interesting and passing other riders in the woods was quite fun. a columbian fellow from greenville came around while we were on the gravel again and i was in my middle ring. what? my big ring stopped working.

somewhere in all of this another guy (or two, although i think he had a flat and we lapped him but he got counted on OUR same lap) managed to pass me and i finished up in 8th place. RESULTS HERE

it was a fun race. i got a crappy start, made my way to the lead group. THEN to the FRONT. then slowly faded back to 8th. i think if i would have sat in 4th instead of going around the guys that maybe i could have finished in the top 5. or at least top 7... before the race i told myself i wanted a top 5 but i would be happy with top 10 and well, i got it. BOONE VELO represent. we got some noodles from NOTHING BUT NOODLES (title sponsor) and then headed back to rock hill, SC for some peanut butter sandwiches and coffee.

after all the racing was said and done we stopped at the trail for darcy and lindsey to do some laps and decide if they wanted to race next week. Darcy's lap times were impressive and she wants to do her first MTB race. updates to follow. wish us luck.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

trainer riding. the big red S & stan's. quick days

today went by quickly. first thing 10:00am, dirk brown walks in and sam and i look at each other and call/email shaw to let him know we're in the process of getting dirked (wikipedia explanation here). 11:29am rolls around and dirk leaves. i start checking out my to-do list and putting UPC labels on things and doing other exciting tasks and soon its 1:30pm and i'm eating yummy yummy yummy chick-fil-a grilled chicken sandwich and waffle fries. yum fried food. you have to have it once in a while...

okay, so now its 4:00pm. official stick-boy time. come back to work. eat some free treats (pecan bars and red velvet cake) and sip some coffee. now its 6:00pm. closing the doors and now its time to ride the trainer:

that's me, to the left side of the photo...

so i do
5min warmup
10min just below LT
3x 1min power interval 1min recov
5min zone 3
3x 1min power interval 1min recov
5min cool-down

and go home for some soup. then comes perhaps the most exciting part of my day, other than watching BACK-to-BACK grey's anatomy and private practice, i find dan.gerous's blog post about specialized getting sued:

"...I hope Stan wins but I also hope he knows what he got into, Specialized take their name because there are two things they do very well, they are specialized in marketing and legal court bullshiting. That could end up in a few different scenarios:

1: Specialized do what they've done in the past: buying Notubes to shut them up and steal their ideas and technologies.

2: Specialized drag the court process for so long and multiply the legal fees to the point NoTubes are out of money and are forced to shut down.

3: NoTubes wins, get a chunk of cash, start giving away wheelsets to racers in need and a movie is made about the thing with a 'from the heart' message: even the small guys can win against the big bad evil. Sinyard will be played by Jack Nicholson... or maybe Malcolm McDowell.

4: The rest of the cycling industry secretly finance Stan's defense to make sure Specialized get a well deserved lesson.

5: Specialized lose the case, pay up, then sue NoTubes because they use red and white on their decals, getting back all the money they paid and then some..."

for the whole post, please see the dan.gerous.net post here

so that was my day. currently we're looking forward to seeing our friend frank from georgia. he was one of my groomsmen. he's coming up for the weekend. yep. charlotte short track in two point five weeks...

Monday, January 05, 2009

2009 goals.

i've seen that its popular in the blog world of appstate-ers to talk about goals for 2009. so. well. i'm old and not a cool appstate cycling team member or anything but i thought i can try to be cool like them so i'll list out some goals(cycling and other):

1. race consistently on the xc cat 2 (makes sport sound like we're fast or something) circuit and get some top 5's.

2. using said race results and some bribing usa cycling officials to get my CAT 1 (expert) upgrade. or at least keep my top spot as North Carolina Sport MTB 19-29 rankings leader

3. do a 180 on my snowboard. fakie stalefish

4. consistently write blog posts. basically, make sure to always have n + 1 posts where n = # on noah niwinski's blog.

5. use the word 'belgium' more times than J-Flo

6. finish top 7 at the BURN24 hour SOLO race. yes. top 7. top 10 seems too broad. top 5, well, they're all pro guys

7. beat shaw brown at any mountain bike races he does this year

8. be a good husband and continue taking out the trash.

9. beat sam hutchens at any and all, yes all, races we do together this year. unless he's my pit crew, then we'll finish top 7 (see goal # 6)

10. dream up some cool training plans and actually stick with em. like with intervals and zone 3 tempo and zone 5 vo2 and... you get the idea. and blog about EACH and EVERY training session with graphs and charts from my powertap. well, if i had a powertap... =(

so. those are my goals. you have problems with them?? well, write your own blog and leave some comment here and i will come over to your blog and well, talk trash about your goals. or lack thereof. welp, thanks for reading and go ride your bike

Sunday, January 04, 2009

old 421, drakes creek, bulldog, mtn dale, georges gap.

today i awoke to rain and clouds. determined to go for a bike ride i suited up for the 45 degree rainy slop and texted andy to let him know i was headed to old cove creek school. he agreed to meet me there for ~2 hours and off i went. too bad when i arrived in sugar grove it was 55 degrees and sunny and... NOT RAINING. here's our route:



our route was 27 miles rather than 25.something. we took 1hour 56minutes total time. andy had to wait for me at the top of all the hills, and there was a little time stopped to hydrate. drakes creek was a nice addition to my library of known roads, and it was nice to be on mountain dale road again. now... on to exploring locust gap rd. thanks for reading.