The next level

It's time for me to step up to the next level of bicycle racing. This week I joined an Oregon bike racing team: Guinness Cycling Team. And also with the results this weekend, it's pretty convincing that I'm ready for the next level.

The Guinness Cycling Team should work out well for me. There are a few Cat 3s and a few Cat 1/2s that race, but not dozens so it will be possible to perform well without competing with a ton of teammates. Through brief encounters I've had with riders on the team I'm looking forward to the season. Last summer when I came down for some Crits, I saw Alex, a Cat 3 rider, do a solo breakaway at the Franz Bakery Crit for the win. And then down in Eugene I had a humorous encounter with a Guinness rider whose pre-hill-climb strategy was to chug a can of red bull - and it worked, he was 40+ seconds faster than me and I was 2nd in the 4/5s. This year, I met Cliff who was the guy who gave me a ride to the Capitol Crit last week. Cliff is a very chill and nice dude who races a lot. On Tuesday I met up with a group from the team for some drinks and it seemed like I would mesh well with the team. And another pro about this team is that it's cool if I still wear the Tacoma Bike jersey in my Washington races. However in Oregon I'll be wearing some white and green.

As for training, this week was a rest week. And it was a rest week where I was resting after coming off of a win streak that I was resenting resting and really wanted to get out and do some sprints. At work I was having trouble focusing because I wanted to race so badly. The weekend could not come soon enough for me.

The weekend finally came and I was excited. I had reserved a Zipcar for the first time and made my way up to the gloomy area by Centralia for the Independence Valley Road Race. On the way I was listening to the Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy so I was amped. I got to the race area and it was packed. It was so packed that the only parking spot left was in a huge puddle. I parked there and did a little dance of getting out on the passenger side and tiptoeing on some dry land. After putting together the bike, I barely made it to the start on time.

The race had a big field of 76 riders, however, I only saw a few sprinter threats and was really wondering if some climbers would make or break the day. The race began and I was playing the move up through the field game for a while. The first hill came and it was quite big. The field was going hard up it, but mostly stayed together. On the other side of the range I kept moving up when I could. Finally about 15 miles in I found a hole going up to the front so I attacked and didn't have enough to really go, so the field caught up.

Coming up on the 2nd climb of the big hill I was planning on attacking on the upper part of it, however when that point came, I was already at 188bpm, so I was not in a position to mount an attack. The field seemed to break up a bit and a few of us were trying to paceline away. However, this paceline of ours kept growing in number, so I stopped doing pulls and waited for the next small hill. The next hill came and it was again a big effort for us, but this breakaway field of us stuck together. At this point, I knew it would come down to a field sprint, so I focused on positioning. When the 1k came up I put myself at about 5th and made my sprint at the 200k mark. I flew past the 4 guys in front, but apparently gave a great leadout to the guy who won the race. I placed 2nd and that was fine by me since I have found it hard sometimes on the field sprints. I drove on back to PDX and got some good sleep.

Randy and I after IVRR

Sunday morning I headed out to Hagg Lake with Cliff again. The weather was quite dreary with rain nearly the whole race. The field was much smaller - maybe 25 guys. And the race had a bunch of small hills, but nothing major. There also weren't really any attacks either. I made a few but still felt like I couldn't keep them going. On the 4th lap my front derailleur started having issues and couldn't shift to the big ring. I decided that I would hold onto the pack for the field sprint since I could power up the 200m uphill finish in a big rear gear. However, with about 2k to go the chain randomly shifted up to the big ring. I thought "wow cool. ATTACK!!!" And I did, but again I didn't have enough juice to get away for good. At this point I was debating about downshifting again, but kept it in the big ring for the finish. I was in the 2nd row approaching the 200k and then went. The Banana Belt series leader made a good jump too and powered out for the win and some other guy managed to claim 2nd. Still though, a podium from the field was satisfactory for me.

After this I volunteered as a corner marshal to pay my race fee and hitchhiked with a masters guy back home. Whenever I can on Sundays I go to church and have lately been contemplating whether trying to be better than all these other bicyclists is really showing mercy and being nice and basically doing God's will as opposed to helping dig a well for some poor Malaysian tribe. One of my friends suggested that my rationalization process of saying: "ok I've been working since September on this bicycle racing thing and now I want to stop? I don't think so." might actually be the righteous thing to say. And in this week's message I randomly flipped in a pew Bible to Psalm 107 telling stories of how people desert God but then decide to come back. And the Sermon was about Hosea who I guess invited Israel to come back to God by naming his kids weird names. I'm still unsure about whether this means that this bicycling is the wrong thing, or this message was a warning from straying from my bicycle racing. I'm gambling that it's a warning to not stray away from bicycling so I'm going to keep pressing on.

And with that, it's time to upgrade and go to the next level: Cat 3. At this point, the only way to move up another category is to be good. It's possible in Cat 4 and 5 to simply do a lot of races and then you can upgrade, but in Cat 3, you must earn 30 points to get to the 2s. And then with the 2s you're racing with the 1s and Pros so it is quite hard. But I've proved myself out of the 4s and it's time to see how well I can do at this next level.

First 1st!

I am feeling pretty euphoric right now. On Saturday I got my first victory of the year.

This past weekend and week started out as a lot of weeks have with me trying to keep up with everything. And this week, I had to deal with losing my helmet and ulock somewhere between Tacoma and Portland. I made a bit of a dent in the dishes but that didn't last for long since I worked late on Thursday.

Friday night I decided I needed to alter my state of mind towards thinking about winning Saturday's bike race. So I downloaded this youtube video a repeatedly watched the finish like 7 times while thinking about tomorrow's race strategy.



Saturday the stress was added again when I realized that I had lost my OBRA Membership Card. I let it go and decided to pony up the extra for a one day license at registration.

I was quite excited since I had found a ride with someone to the races. This made the journey less lonely which was appreciated. I was in a good mood at the race site since it was sunny and the course was dry and very wide.

I warmed up with a few short sprints to get the body going and then rolled up right onto the line to start. The race was going well and some dude had shot off the front first lap. The group was making sure he didn't get too far away, but he did earn the first prime outright. The field caught him shortly after that.

The next prime came up and I decided to test out my legs. Nobody really chased me, but when I did see someone chasing I dropped down 2 gears and hammered it out for those hammer gels at stake. After this I was feeling good and got in the drops and kept going to see what would happen. Eventually the guy that blasted off the first lap bridged up to me and wanted to work with me. So we did just this and started riding away from the field with maybe 7 laps to go. At some point I thought I saw a group of 5 chasing us in short range. However, our gap kept widening and by the final lap we knew we had it. The final straightaway was really long. I had just let this guy take his turn pulling but about halfway down the straightaway I broke off to signal that it was on for 1st. We both sprinted hard for the line and neither of us knew who had got it.

Try to see for yourself who finished first in this race photo.

Both of us congratulated each other and were pretty stoked to have rode away like that. The guy I was working with told me "I'm from Salem, you better not have beaten me on my home turf!" in a half-jokingly way. I could only reply "what do I gotta do, it's a bike race?" At the finish line we were both trying to figure out who won and getting congratulated by a few people. Eventually, I made my way over to the result tent and was informed that I had in fact won the race. This was pretty awesome. There were no hard feelings for the guy in 2nd except that he had gotten 2nd. Such is bike racing.

After this I hung out with the guy who gave me a ride and then watched him race. It was like opposite race day at the Capitol Crit, the 4/5 field had a break that won, whereas both the 3s and 1/2s came down to a field sprint. And once I got back home I slept 9hours. Aw yeah. Also, I plugged in the result numbers and it now looks like I have earned 21 points in Cat 4. I'm going to see what my coach thinks about upgrading.

This next week my coach has me doing a rest week, but there are 2 races this coming weekend. I'm planning on doing IVRR and maybe even Banana Belt on Sunday.

Weekend of racing accomplished

Warning! This post will may be TL;DR for some people so here is a really quick summary:

seized pedal
Train
lost bag, with all my bike gear
Good party, not enough sleep
Early drive to Sequim
Fast race with wide shoulders
some breaks, but field sprint at end
held on for 8th
lunch in Sequim
drive home
Land Before Time
Too early, DST kicked my ass
too early to race
rainy
less intense
Attacked on lap 4, got away 2nd attack, TT all the way to 400m and then got enveloped by field
Lunch with Scott and Andrew
train home

Now for the details. I had been planning this weekend for a while. There were two races on WSBA's calendar (classic spring races of Sequim and Mason Lake) and only 1 race in Oregon. Seemd like a great opportunity to head up to Tacoma to spend some quality time with my sister and Tacoma friends while getting in some racing. On Thursday I had one of those 'glad that happened now and not in the race' mechanicals. My left pedal suddely seized itself after a grueling easy ride around Southeast Portland.

On Friday, I got on an earlier train that got into Tacoma at about 3pm at which point I proceeded directly to Tacoma Bike to get my pedal fixed. Turns out I had ridden this pedal to death and that since I hadn't been regularly greasing the pedal I had screwed myself over. Oh and that new chain and brake pads I had put on back in January were already shot. So turns out I had to buy some new speedplay pedals. Ouch.

At this point, Tony asked me whether my cleats were good or not since I'd be getting new cleats with the pedals. I said "yeah I think so, say, where's my duffle bag that has my biking shoes? Oops, I left it on the train!" I began calling Amtrak, but their line was completely busy and their website even said it was probably a better idea to go to the train station. So I did that on the sweet Civia that Mike B graciously loaned me while my bike was being fixed. I got down to the train station and a lady there made some phone calls, was able to find it and have it sent back down to Tacoma on the next train. Nice.

At this point, my sister Tracy Tracey and my sister had gotten down to Tacoma Bike so we all eventually carpooled over to the train station to pick up my bike bag I had forgotten. The drive was quite exciting as Tracy Tracey had some interesting news to share. We got to the house at which point I still had to go on my bike ride for the day. I got all kitted up and headed out for 1.5 hours. I was making some good headway and was definitely getting farther on the usual route than I was when I began training this year.

I got back to the house and a party for the newest housemate was already going on. I changed into my Irish theme and began to eat. The party was fun as I saw a bunch of Tacoma peeps. Most notably for me was Dean who referred me to my coach. When he saw me he was like "wow, you have really leaned up." That made me feel good. For a party it was good, but I got to sleep at maybe 11:30pm which was not so good for my bike racing.

The next day we got up at 5:45am to head out to Sequim. It was a bit of drive through a lot of rain. And then we hit the rainshadow of Sequim. The line to register was quite long and the I was busy changing and putting together all my bike stuff that I was finally ready to go once the race started. There were some good attacks and all that, but nothing stuck. It came down to a field sprint and I was fighting hard to get and stay up there. Randy made an attack on the final lap, but didn't realize we still had 4 miles to go or so, so he got swallowed up. We rounded the final corner and I held on for 8th place. I was satisfied with the result.

Photo courtesy of Karly Siroky

After this, Landon, Randy, my sister and I went out to a restaurant that Tracy Tracey recommended and we gorged ourselves with food. However, I still got hungry on the ride home. Once home, Karly and I just chilled, ate some stir-fry and watched Land Before Time and went to bed at 9. We got up at 6 which equated to only 8 hours of sleep due to daylight savings time. Zzzzzzz.

I got up, but really wanted to sleep more. My sister was hopeful about riding around Mason Lake instead of being bored standing around while I raced, so she brought her bike too. We got there super early at 7:45am. I thought the race was going to start at 9am, but no, it was at 9:30. It was also raining out there. I have been used to riding in the rain, but with fenders my nice rain jacket and not behind a bunch of dudes flying at 24mph. So it was slightly unpleasant. Also, the facemask I was wearing was starting to become a problem. As it was raining and then being splashed with a constant stream of water from whoever's wheel I was on, the facemask became so wet that at one point I slurped up a big splash of water from it. At that point I tried to keep it below my chin.

Photo courtesy of Karly Siroky

The race was much less intense than yesterdays and about half as many people in the field. Nobody was really attacking all that much which was kinda nice I guess. Eventually I felt like I had to get something started so I tried attacking the 4th lap. I made a move on a hill on the front stretch which didn't really stick. But then I made another daring move on some of the rollers on the backstretch and really got away from the field. I was really time trialing hard and at times didn't even see the peleton behind me. The facemask was now covering half of my left eyeball and I was feeling the meter on my gas tank decrease after each little hill. After a while I was starting to fade on some of the hills closer to the finish and finally the field caught me with 400 meters to go. I didn't have sprint speed or power in my legs so I had to give up and finish just off the back. I just did't have enough to stay away and I was disappointed in that. However, Randy did finish 2nd which was awesome.

Whatever. After this, sister and I headed back to Tacoma where she made some fantastic grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup. I had invited over Scott and Andrew who didn't know each other or even realize that they lived on the same street 5 blocks away from each other. This was quite fun. Then sister and I made our way to the train that I caught in my own personal style: just after I had finished my bicycle hauling contraption the train started to arrive. On the train I chatted with my coach and he applauded me on my effort at Mason Lake, and that made me feel a little better, but I want to WIN.

This next week I'm gonna hit it hard again and will do either Sequim again, or a crit down in Salem. On the horizon I'm really looking forward to the Cherry Blossom Cycling Classic, a 3 day stage race out in the Dalles April 1-3. There will be a road race, a time trial, a crit and then another road race. I'm really lookin forward to that.

DJStroky is back, watch out you lousy motorists!

So, here's an update.

Last weekend I was still feeling sick. Or was I? Whatever it was I felt a bit sinused up but really demotivated. I didn't feel like cranking the pedals around and didn't race over the weekend. Earlier in the week I went to see a doc who diagnosed me with a sinus infection and hustled me some antibiotics.

I took 'dem antibiotics and have been trying some other stuff too. Via a google search, I found this website www.earthclinic.com which says you should take Apple Cider Vinegar for every single ailment know to mankind. I tried it sporadically, but it tastes very bad. My coach is all about the garlic. He said I should work up to eating a bulb a day when I'm sick. I also tried this Emergen-C powder which has like 800% daily value Vitamin C and a bunch of Calcium and Vitamin D. Over the weekend I was doing ok in combating all this. Was drinking lots of water, taking the Emergen-C with a splash of ACV twice a day, eating maybe 1/2 bulb of garlic over the day and popping the pills.

It has finally seemed to work. Yesterday I had a good ride out to Sauvie Island and back and didn't cough up a storm. And today I did a bunch of hill intervals and felt like I did a bunch of hill intervals but not worse than that. However, I finally knew that I was back in it when my alleycatting blood shot through me. I was riding east on Burnside and have found that if I maintain a good pace, I can hit all green lights all the way from I-405 to the Burnside bridge. I was doing just so weaving in and out of traffic. I got down to Chinatown and there was some event with a bunch of people going on on the right.

Now in Portland, drivers almost always know how to deal with bicyclists - even at night. This means that if a bicyclist is on the right and a driver wants to turn right, the driver will wait - stopping in the road for the bicyclist to pass - it's pretty awesome. However, for whatever reason, this n00b normal anywhere except in Portland driver was clearly not paying attention to my presence to their right and was certainly not aware of my bold quest to hit all the green lights on Burnside. NO NO, that hoppin party with all the people on the right was far more important. So much so that they made a right turn in front of me slowly scouting out how awesome the hoppin party was and if there happened to be a parking spot exactly in front of the hoppin party. Well, my alleycatting blood shot up. I sprinted out in front of the car - while flipping them off (I'm not sure if I did it right since it was a balancing act) - and got back on the green wave and made it to the Burnside bridge with all greens! BOOSH!

At that point, I had one of those "I probably shouldn't have done that" moments. Anonymous driver, if you are reading this, I am sorry. But anyways, I realized that I'm back in the game and am looking forward to getting back on my training plan and race schedule.

This weekend I'm planning on going up to Tacoma to race with the Tacoma Bike team at Sequim and Mason Lake. Really looking forward to this.