Tour of Walla Walla 2012

I had a really fun weekend. Things really came together in all areas. I got a lot of thoughts, so let me try to go through them chronologically.

The weekend before.

I went out to King's Valley and got a flat on the first lap and had wheel change issues and dnf'ed. It sucked and it was hard to even force myself to do a second lap. The next day I went for a long ride out as far up Larch Mountain road I could with some new biking friends. That was a lot of fun and a nice day.

Things start clicking... literally

On Monday I went to a shop to have them glue on a new tire. While there I also was planning on putting on some new speedplay cleats - a task that was long overdue since I had not done any maintenance whatsoever to the cleats since I first bought the system in July of 2010. They were so bad that the screws attaching the cleat apparatus to the cleat mount were totally stuck if not fused together in a huge pile of rust. Luckily, a shop mechanic was able to drill out the cleat screws and then hacksaw off the apparatus.

Once the new cleats were on (and I had inserted the cleat anglers the right direction) my bike felt like a totally new bike. It was responding with seemingly no loss of power transfer to my every stroke. That night on some hillclimb intervals I easily got the farthest up the hill than ever before. Then at PIR, it felt easy to hang with the pack and even get onto Beardsley's or Ginsberg's wheel in a sprint. However, the wet track and my still slippery tires made things seem a little to sketchy to want to risk sprinting. At least a teammate got in a break so the team got 4th.

And now for the main event

The first stage race of the year for me! There really has not been a stage race that I've been to where it wasn't awesome and this one has been the most awesome yet. I feel like the Tour of Walla Walla is a really challenging regional stage race where doing well means far more than doing well in a local race or even a smaller stakes stage race.

Logistics

Getting there was definitely a battle and I was set on not camping this year. It was also tough to even find a ride out there again, but things worked out. Ted from Audi hooked me up with some other Spokanites (Spokanistanis?) that were renting out a house for the weekend. I slept on the couch the first night and managed to negotiate half of a bed the following evening just like last year. On a sad note, my housemate has been in India for a family emergency, but was gracious enough to loan me his car for the weekend. And off I went!

Friday

This year I have been trying to be a little smarter in choosing where I make my efforts. That means that I did not bury myself trying to breakaway on the first lap. I saved most of my efforts for the hill. The first time up was moderate and I was a wheel-length out of contention for a mountain prime, that was pretty cool though. After that, nobody wanted or could breakaway so I just waited up at the front for the hill again. It came and the pace got harder. Attacks came at 5k to go, but then the winner went at 3k and stayed away by 10 seconds. I came in 9th which I was quite satisfied with. And my mom had some homemade applesauce for me at the finish! Nice.

Saturday

It would seem as if I need to take on some better strategies for criterium riding. Namely not hammering on the front for 75% of the race. After the final prime I actually got away from the field, but then Team Bonehead Cycling sent a guy up to me who then proceeded to attack me and didn't get that far away. Ultimately the peleton caught us after a valiant imbecile pull from another Team Bonehead Cycling guy. I was amazed and then nervously pedaled on the back of the pack in anticipation of a crash that never materialized. Nice.

I took things to another level in the Time Trial. Compared to last year, there now wasn't any wind, I had carbon wheelz and I had a skinsuit. But moreover I again set speed targets for each section of the road. On the first section I didn't anticipate the very slight wind so was a little slower than I wanted to go, but then I crushed it over my target up the hill. On the long downhill I wasn't going as fast as I wanted, but I was still flying. Then I didn't really have a good sense of how far that last stretch was and probably could've pushed it harder. I passed one guy and only got passed by the TT winner which is fine by me, especially since it was Tim. He's all right. My time was 21:16 compared to 24:37 last year. I am pretty stoked about that improvement.

Sunday

Sunday was my day. This time all things came together in the Success Equation, but more importantly I added a dynamic element to the equation in that I adapted my strategy as the race played out. I was sitting 9th in GC, so I was going to breakaway, no question. Last year I attempted to breakaway on the long downhill backstretch on the first lap and then barely had enough energy to stay with the pack after getting caught. This year I was going to go either on the hill after the sharp left or the feedzone hill.

The race day weather was predicted to be 80 degrees with very little wind. So I took 3 water bottles with me. Just before the race I had to swap rear wheels after I had had enough with this valve extender that could not accept air. Right before the start I took a leak (in a port-o-potty) which was a good sign that I was staying hydrated.

As the race began nothing much was happening, except Audi was absolutely intent on getting a break going. They had a guy get away with some other people by the time we got to the backstretch. I was waiting for the GC guys and their teams to do the work to bring it back. Tim (2nd in GC), his teammate and #1 GC put in their time at the front. Eventually we caught them just before the long hill on the front stretch after the break just died completely perhaps due to someone getting a flat, not quite sure.

Now it was time for some counter-attacks. Another Audi guy went up the road along with 2 others. Then a pro-city rider (they had 2 guys in top 10 GC) started mashing his pedals like no other to bridge up. I decided I may as well jump on this free ride and see what happens. It was a little early and not according to my plan, but the effort to stay on that wheel didn't require a lot of exertion for me, so I gave it a shot. We got up to the break quite easily and then were joined by an HSP rider (also 2 of them in top 10 GC). The Audi guy and the Pro City guy fell off, but we still had a yellow jerseyed (not GC-leader yellow) Canadian who claimed he was about to explode due to lack of water.

And so it was 3 of us and we began working. Each of us seemed to be putting in our fair share of effort even despite me taking a break here and there at the back to eat some food. We motored down the long downhill backstretch and then tempo'ed up the feed zone hill. All of us grabbed a watter bottle, but then hammered it down that hill so hard that we almost ran into the lead car if it weren't for us yelling at it. Then up the final hill and we still had our gap. It was then an intense mental and physical battle for us all the way down the hill to the finish. We could see the peleton just dangling about 20-15 seconds behind us most of our descent. After each pull we would nervously look over our shoulder but still kept working. All in all we were quite lucky that the field didn't organize themselves.

We got to the 1k mark and this little 3-man break that could had the podium sealed. After having downed my remaining half a energy bar at 1.5k I was ready for the sprint. We knew yellow jersey wouldn't contest so HSP sat on his wheel and I on his. With 180 to go HSP made a slight move to the right and then I blasted off to the left and pounded it out. At first I was like, is this happening? Am I about to win? Did HSP somehow cross before me? Whoa, I crossed the line! I think I won! I WON!!! YEAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!! YEAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!! I actually screamed "YEEEAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" twice. First time as I pumped my left hand in the air. And the second time while pumping the right hand. YYYEEEAAHHHHHH!!! I just screamed that again in my apartment as I'm righting this, but not too loud, don't want to wake the neighbors. That was an amazing win for me and ranks up there as one of the hardest won and deserved wins given the challenge of the reputable Tour of Walla Walla. I have been so psyched and pumped since this win.

Me and Team Guinness really want to obtain a picture of me winning this stage. Please let me know if you or anyone you know has a picture. I am going to put it here in this blog.

Not Quite, but Almost

All right back to racing! Oh wait, blah blah blah training, lots of hill climbing intervals this 3rd intense week of a build. But wait wait!

An Important Announcement from My Employer

TrafficBug^® - The Commuter's Companion^SM was released to the public in both website (with Flash) and iApp format this week. TrafficBug helps commuters and travelers navigate through traffic finding the fastest route possible and alerting users about any traffic incidents along the way. TrafficBug has the ability to create personalized trips between any two locations (accessible by roads in the US, Mexico and Canada). Not only does TrafficBug have the ability to create personalized routes, but it also allows takes into account the historical and realtime traffic along the way based on the time of day of your trip. Leave the worrying about your commute to TrafficBug as it is constantly monitoring the roadways to give you the best advice on how to get to your destination quickly or even if you need to leave earlier in order to arrive by a specific time.

I've been working on parts of this app for a long time - over a year now and I am very happy that we finally have a product to sell. There are a whole lot of things I still want to improve, but at some point we have to have something to sell since nothing will ever be perfect. So, please download the app or go to the website and try it out and let us know what you think about it. We would love to hear your feedback and would be ecstatic if you purchased even a one-month subscription let alone a three-month or even yearly subscription.

Piece of Cake

Getting There

Now, it is a huge oxy-moron that I work for a company seemingly obsessed with auto-transportation yet bike nearly everywhere. But the bigger oxy-moron is that the only reason I get in a car these days is to go bicycling (at bike races of course). And now each time I travel to bike races I'm constantly checking our TrafficBug app to see what it actually is like using it in a car.

I had the pleasure of commuting to the Piece of Cake Road Race in anti-bike racing rural Amity, OR with the Guinness Cycling Team Leader extraordinaire Dave Klipper and the cool Cliff Heaberlin (another one of my teammates in Cat 2). Getting to Amity is an interesting task because there are numerous ways to get there and we had opinions from everyone on which route to take. Ultimately it was Dave driving which meant that we were using whichever navigation system he preferred at that moment in time. At first we were using his car's Navigation system which told us to go through Salem, so we headed towards Salem. TrafficBug said to go back-roads via McMinville, but later I found that the geocode result it got (from Google, yes I am blaming them) put the location about 6 miles north of where we actually needed to go.

Once we started driving over the Salem bridge we had a massive navigation breakdown. We had just exited the highway somewhat accidentally and were in a predicament. Cliff was suggesting we go north via backroads, the car navigation still thought we were on the highway and I couldn't press buttons fast enough to make TrafficBug recalculate. Eventually Dave decided to get back on the highway and asked a passing bicyclist how to get back on the highway - local knowledge trumps!

The race

All right, 3 laps with 3 miles of gravel per lap and a whole bunch of relatively flat countryside to spare. I started at the very back which was a bad idea because I had no idea that the gravel came at mile 3. So from the car horn we were rocking and rolling! And then we hit the gravel and people began shattering off with flats about every 20 seconds. Earlier in the week I bought some brand-new tires anticipating this, but it turns out that these tires were the absolute worst tires I have every bought because not only were they incredibly slick in any kind of rain but I flatted out 5/6ths of the way through the gravel on the first lap. These tires will go unnamed for now in the event that I can't return them to the store and need to sell them.

I got a wheel change but the support crew said it was sort of rubbing the brake pad - it was definitely out of true, but I was happy to have a thick 28c tire to support my heavy ass now. I suffered to just get back onto a flat tire chase group and caught them just as they caught the rest of the field which was thankfully going really slow. So now I made damn sure that I was close to the front before the gravel came again and I was 3rd wheel when it came. Just before the gravel, Kyle made his move and motored away from the field. I thought it was still a little early and waited for other moves since there was good representation from other teams. Eventually it became apparent that none of the other teams had any kind of arsenal or organization (except for Soraz's blocking abilities) to chase down Kyle and now Eric was running up the road solo.

The gravel was coming up again and I attacked and started bridging up to Eric and caught him just before the gravel. For the next 10 miles Eric totally put me in the gutter - especially when he was taking his pull! We were closing in on Kyle and riding away from the field, but I lost contact with Eric's wheel and it was all over for me at that point. Well, not all over because I rejoined the chase group and then got to watch the sprint which involved a spectacular crash which involved a guy that seemed to lose control of his bike and hit the ground and then the finish sign and then the ladder holding the finish results camera and finally the medic's car. But apparently he was ok and got 5th! Woohoo!

Meanwhile, in the P 1/2 race

The p12's had to do 5 laps and I was waiting for a long time for them to get back. It turns out that Dave had won it in the sprint by a handy 3 bike lengths! There was quite a story about the race and all the tactical battles and how Dave ultimately found that finish line before anyone else. Very well played.

Public Urination

Uh.. excuse me? Yes, this topic deserves a whole section whole blog post due to the circumstances and fine mannerisms of the bicycle racers on this day in Oregon bicycle racing. It is a wide-known fact that bicycle racers are douchebags and the epitome of the bike racing antics is our need to urinate. You see it is all a function of making sure our bodies stay hydrated during the race in order for the body to perform well. As a result, us bike races need to urinate often - sometimes even during the race - sometimes multiple times in the same race.

Due to the request from some specific people on this matter I unfortunately cannot provide the internet you with further details. I'll just say that there is a big difference between public urination and discrete public urination and also that I learned that I need to hydrate to the point where I should need to publicly urinate. Gosh, I really want to tell this story in greater detail, but I cannot.

Onwards

On Sunday I rode out to Estacada by myself since everybody else was too cool doing their own rides. I had a good time though since I had never biked out there before.

This coming week I've got a rest week, and I am going to try HARD to rest. Starting with publishing this blog post before 10:45pm any further errors be damned! So I've got a few goals that will help me rest.

#1 NO TRYING TO SCORE DATES WITH HOT BIKE RIDIGN CHICKS. I spent wayyy too much effort on this the last two rest weeks I had and probably ultimately drove them away for doing so.

#2 Do fun stuff that I like doing. I'm going to spin some records, work on a website or two and maybe even make this blog look a little prettier.

#3 clean up my messy apartment. I've been all home alone with my housemate being in India for over a month now to support his sick sister. Pray for her. But I need to clean a bunch of stuff since everything got disorganized due to lack of time this week.

Bike riding is fun

No racing this week, but riding as always. Some highlights:

Tuesday

Steep hillclimb intervals and then some more hillclimb intervals after that. Felt great.

Wednesday

Had a confrontation with a MAX fare inspector for being the 5th bike in the train car. He wanted to see my ID because I was supposedly blocking the walkway. I didn't comply and a bunch of other people argued against him too.

Thursday

More hillclimb intervals, but didn't feel as strong. Maybe it was because that by the end of the ride I had realized that my front deraileur cage had broken. The top metal holder had broken so now the right side of the cage was rubbing on the crank, but the left side was rubbing the chain no matter where I shifted to.

Saturday

Rode my own Ronde Von Flaanderen. Went up the SW hills via Terwilliger/Westwood then out Fairmount/Hewett, then up 59th, then out Skyline and down Old Germantown and then up North on Kaiser back to Skyline, back down Old Germantown again, then up Springville then down Thompson and I still hadn't had enough so I went out to 82nd/Glisan and then headed back on Burnside.

Sunday

Was trying to avoid the intense rains, but eventually made my way out to St. Johns then along Marine View where the fun started. There was an intense crosswind that was nearly blowing me off my bike all along the airport. Then I got a slow leak just after that on the front tire. I put in a new tube, stashed my bag with all my gear behind a tree and headed out for some intervals. Halfway out to Troutdale in the middle of interval 2 of 3 my rear tube exploded. I started walking back and eventually hitchhiked with a very nice old couple back to the I-205 path where I had left my bag. I put my slow leak tube back in and then attempted interval 3 up the 205 trail to Gateway Max. And then at the Gateway MAX I was threatened by another fare inspector with a $159 fine for not walking my bike on the platform - but by walking he meant that I couldn't even straddle my bike and stand up.

I need me some more racing to push myself though. Piece of Cake is coming up Saturday and I'm looking forward to it.