There's work to be done

What a whirlwind of a past few days. I did ok facing a logistical nightmare for this weekend. Unfortunately, I did not setup my two new bikes in time for Enumclaw, but things are in the works for them. Even still I had a whole lot of work to get done and used a lot of cool tools to make sure I had everything planned out in an accomplish-able manner. Most of the weekend it seemed like I was either completely busy or had wayy too much time to kill.

Friday:

6:30: Woke up, prepared today's and tomorrow's breakfast. Prepared my race bike for transport by strapping my American Classic Wheels to the bike so I could have Amtrak take a bike with four wheels. Walked and caught the MAX with my big red suitcase, wheelbags with my carbon American Classic 58s, my backpack and my race bike with four wheels.
8:00 Train to Tacoma. Ate breakfast on train and did some work which included booking airline tickets for an upcoming 2 week trip to Austin, TX.
11:00 Arrived in Tacoma and picked up Karly's car at Tacoma Dome Station. Went back to the train station to pick up the rest of my luggage. Drove to Seattle to pick up a TT frame and Disc that my teammate Todd Gallaher sold to me.
13:00 Picked up my frat bro Gianpaolo and chose a restaurant to eat at in Little Saigon that had a direct view of Karly's car. Food wasn't so great, but the conversation about women was.
14:30 Drove to Tacoma Bike and picked up a trainer that Mike Brown graciously loaned to me for the weekend. It was rather strange this time in Tacoma Bike since I knew nobody that worked there. And furthermore, compared to my new bike shop of choice of Athlete's Lounge in Portland it didn't seem all that race-worthy as it used to. Also picked up a bike box and had to put the TT Frame and disc inside of it and remove the headrests of both front seats in order to fit everything into the car.

16:30 Met the newest housemate of Tracy's no... Karly's no... umm that house on South 7th. And she was a cute Christian chic who was about to go on a bike ride! Zing! I kitted up really quick and rode with her out as far as 19th and Jackson and then did some intervals around the 5 mile drive.
19:00 Took a shower and then biked out to a Taco Truck. Saw Gary (a guy who I used to be cool and ride fixed around Tacoma with) walk by and chatted a bit.
20:00 Bike conversion to TT setup and then in bed just after 9pm!

Saturday:

6:00 Woke up, packed all stuff for the day into the car and drove out to Enumclaw.
7:30 Setup and warmup for the TT.
9:54:00 TT Start
10:08:30 Finished TT. Was not happy with that time. A number of things were not right for this. Firstly, I didn't have a TT bike. I now have the frame so I am solving this issue. Also, my heart rate monitor wasn't working. And I was riding the course for the first time, but man I was hoping to have rode that faster.
12:00 Terriyaki lunch with Todd G.
13:00 Killing a lot of time.
15:00 Decided to go do some work in the Enumclaw library. Did that and then watched the last stage of the Tour of California that another racer was watching via internet feed in the library.
18:30 Sort of warming up for Crit.
19:40 All of the Cat 3s had lined up for the crit that the tech guide said was actually starting at 7:50. I still managed to get a good starting position on the line. In this crit I really realized that I have a lot to work on in my cornering abilities. The only places to move up were on the long straightaways or the corners, but using the corners right meant everything. I just could not find a good line through the final corner and despite being 6th wheel going into the finish I didn't make the top 10.
20:40 Talking to my coach and Klipper about my suckiness averageness in the TT and Crit.
21:00 Drove home. Showered, ate some food.

Sunday The Day that Cycling BC utterly dominated the Mutual of Enumclaw:

7:00 Woke up. Biked to the Hilltop Safeway, cooked breakfast, setup the bikes and headed out.
11:00 Let a borderline hypothermic Andrew Austin warm up in the idling car. He was waiting for his dad to finish the masters race so didn't have any spare clothes. But even then I had to pretty much yell at him to take off his damn soaking-wet kit and change into some dry clothes I borrowed to him.

I also checked out the Cat 3 GC standing at the moment. It read as follows:
1. Apex
2. Apex
3. HSP
4. Cycling BC
5. Olympia Ortho
6. Apex
7. HSP
8. Apex
9. HSP
10. Team Stanley

And I was sitting 29th. At 1:42 back.

13:00ish The Cat 3 Men begins. Weather is wet, but there are still perhaps 50ish riders at the start. On the corner to 456th a Cycling BC kid takes it too hard and crashes himself, but that is the last thing that goes wrong for that team today. Next an obligatory early break starts off with what appears to be an Apex guy and someone else. I try to position myself towards to front to see what this hill is like. The hill is pretty good, nice and long with a few steep sections. Then a long downhill where I was either braking to go the speed of the pack or nearly hoverplaning over the rumble strips.

OK, I'm now just as bored with writing this race summary as I was with actually racing going on a fun ride up until the final 2 laps. Basically mostly HSP and Apex set a pathetic pace that had my heart rate dipping into z1 territory. I made some attacks, but then they just sat on my damn wheel so hard that I literally had to stop pedaling entirely for them to pull through. On lap 3 there was some action going on with the climbs and I was up there with the attackers, but the field kept in contact.

Lap 4 is where things got interesting. Right before the hill, a Cycling BC guy kindly asks me "do you want to go on the hill?" I reply "If I have it". Cycling BC attacks hard with 2 of their guys on the 2nd steep section on the beginning of the climb. Nobody responds. I myself at that point thought "eh, that part is too steep." But then I didn't even go on the false flat. And nobody went! When we got to the downhill we could see Cycling BC catching the day-long break up the road that was 1:40 away at the last random-voice-from-the-road.

At this point the field was reduced to perhaps 20 riders, but it was seriously only 2 guys working and again lots of braking on the downhill. My breakaway tactics had no success on the flats and after seeing Cemanski and Tim pull - if you can call it that - a good distance to the bottom of the climb I knew I was going to attack on that climb. Shortly after the two steep sections there is this little bump and I went there and nobody except another Cycling BC guy followed so we started breaking away from the field. And we worked together until we reached the break up the road which was not the other two Cycling BC guys from the previous lap, but one Cycling BC guy and an HSP guy which really surprised me. Me and my breakmate were pulling hard still, but then his teammate yelled at him "No! We have a man up the road!", to which at first he replied "No, c'mon we can do this!", but his teammate insisted on not going. Also me hammering my ass off on the downhill probably convinced him to let up as well.

I was just trying to breakaway and get any seconds or at least 5th in the race so I kept going hard downhill. HSP dude didn't pull through until we got to a flat section of the downhill and it was quite clear - clear due more to his speed of pulling through than his constant ranting of "I dunno if I can keep this up, I think I'm going to die any moment!" - that he wasn't going to keep a strong pace. Cycling BC didn't pull once in our break. And then when we turned right onto 284th, both guys from Cycling BC laid down an unmatchable attack up the little riser. It was then a left onto 440th and the field was closing in. HSP was now even more ferverent in his predictions of imminent explosion. I kept pedaling past the 1k and it was gonna be close. Left onto Railroad and I started getting out of the saddle and got passed only by 1 person from the field for 5th place.

Race post mortem

In this race, Cycling BC took 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. 1st place solo'ed away to put 1:40 ONE MINUTE AND FORTY SECONDS!!! on the field plus a 10 second time bonus to take 1st in GC. And this wasn't the Cycling BC's guy who was 4th GC going into the race - he was right around the exact time back I was! Cycling BC's 4th place GC going into the race got 2nd place, had 10 seconds gap and added 6 seconds bonus which put him in 2nd in GC. The GC leader going into the race came in nearly 7 minutes behind, but only one Apex guy held onto the pack to salvage 3rd GC and the only final top 10 GC from Apex after beginning the day with 4 members in top 10 GC. HSP pretty much held their spots, but then the 3rd place Cycling BC guy launched himself up 2 spots in GC into the top 10 at 9th.

I personally am asking myself some serious questions like "why didn't I follow the race-winning attack on the hill?" or "should I have tried harder to mess with the minds of my breakmates when I did breakaway?" or even "should I have been yelling at the field for being a bunch of sandbaggers?" Whatever the case, it is still clear that my road racing tactics are not perfect and need more work. And for the other teams out there, I'm not going to go into any more detail, but I hope you all realized how badly you got your asses whooped. If you don't realize this then I would be happy to explain it to you.

And onwards

16:30 Changed in my car, packed everything, called in an order to go at El Camino, checked race results, picked up fajitas to go, drove to Tacoma Amtrak and had about a half an hour to spare.
18:00 It now was really dawning on me how bad Cycling BC beat us and I was explaining in detail the situation to a long-lost friend-of-my-sister, Becky that was taking the train too. I ate a bunch of food on the train.
21:00 Transported my race bike, bike box and suitcase with the help of Becky back home.

23:00 Losing sleep thinking about Cycling BC's domination.

Monday

8:00 Packing for trip to Austin.
12:00 Lunch with family.
13:00 Struggling to fit 3 wheels and race bike into a bike box. Had to call Brent from veloshop Portland Bicycle Studio to figure out that I was a total moron and was twisting my pedals the wrong way as hard as possible in trying to get them off.
15:00 At PDX.
00:30 (Central) In AUS.
01:00 Rolling in a rental Jeep through massive Texas interchanges.

And with that publish post button I'm off the bike for this week. I'm planning on doing Austin's version of PIR next Thursday and then driving for 5 hours to get to a road race that Saturday just to drive back to San Antonio for a crit the next day. And then I'm flying back just in time for Mt. Hood where if any of you poser Cat 3 racers from Washington come down you're probably in for an even worse ass-beating unless you all learn real quickly how to climb hills and protect your GC leaders. Actually, I look forward to seeing you in all honesty. :)

Thanks to the following people/entities for their support:

My sister Karly for going out of her way to loan me her car and to let me use her dwelling place.

My employer Mygistics for being very flexible with my racing schedule

TrafficBug^® - The Commuter's Companion^SM (ok, I helped myself with this) for being such an awesome traffic app that provided realistic travel times for driving and thus scheduling my weekend.

Tacoma Bike for letting me borrow a trainer for the weekend.

The residents of the house on S 7th for good company and some garlic I took

All of the volunteers and coordinators who made the MOE happen

Becky for helping me haul all of my bike equipment back home on the MAX

My family for delivering me to the Airport

Roller Coaster

Guess I better update this blog. Last time I wrote, I was high off of the stage win and ultimate 6th in GC at the Tour of Walla Walla. So clearly, I was back on track towards a future pro career in racing, just like I may have believed last year. Not!

Next up was winning the Washington State road champs of course up at Olympic Valley. Now, all right, this year I think I have a little different perspective on racing. At this point perhaps I have given up on being the next Lance Armstrong overnight, but I have not given up on improving my aptitude and fitness as a bike racer. I approach races considering what the course is like and learning from mistakes which always happen, but the fewer, the better.

Olympic Valley

Honestly, Olympic Valley wasn't much of an event to write home about. Apex and Olympia Ortho sent some guys out on an early break and then proceeded to sit on the front. At one point, an Olympia Ortho rider went to the front and seemed to be actually doing some work. A douchebag concerned Apex rider thought out loud, "gosh does that OO rider know he has a breakmate off the front? I better go up and tell him." At this point, I just got so pissed off at this lack of racing and put in a hard attack and closed about half of the distance to the break with Apex sitting on my damn wheel and no other teams doing anything. The race after that was rather boring except for all the pointless crashes and slow-speed jockeying for position towards the end. It came to a field sprint and I ended up following a dumb move at about 200m meter sign which was actually 500m. Once the real 200m actually came, the actual sprinters sprinted past me. However, on the plus side, I still rode hard enough to avoid getting rammed into from behind.

PIR

Again at PIR, it became apparent that I have to work on my field sprint. I tried to breakaway a lot and didn't have much of positioning or sprinting abilities. Good thing this race is every Tuesday and there are hot spots which makes for lots of practicing opportunities.

Vance Creek

And now for a course that isn't mostly flat! As I drove to the course, I noticed that the finish line was moved about 200m further west than last year so it was a false flat followed by very slight uphill immediately after the big hill. A finish very suited for me. This turned out to be a really fun race for me. The weather was really interesting in that it was dry on the western half of the course, but then rainy on the east side. We were going to do 6 laps, but on the first lap a big breakaway with all kinds of teams got away. Another highlight from the first lap was that there was another random pointless crash that I nearly missed - in fact there was a wheel of a bike flying in the air that I nudged out of the way with my right hand. There were perhaps 7 riders in the break so I decided that I should try and get in on that break since although it was really early, it may have a chance of surviving. So me and an Olympia Ortho rider attacked the filed and took about 2/3 of a lap to catch the break. But when I got to the break, it became apparent that the pace was a little too relaxed. It was so weird, there were like 9 of us - all from different teams - and on lap 4 we lost the entire 1:40 gap.

Well, back to the drawing board. There were some attacks after that, I can't really remember, but nothing was sticking. On the final lap Alex from Old Town made a good move for his abilities by attacking right before the farm road. He held a good gap, but lost it on the rollers. It was going to be a field sprint again. I positioned myself on the right and kept following wheels and scooting around people getting dropped. By the time we got to the top, I was third wheel and then Matt attacked. The wheel I was following jumped out and I had to give him some room to not take me out, then I followed that wheel, jumped around it and sprinted for 2nd! Woot Woot!

Montinore

On the way home from Vance Creek, I ended up getting to bed later than desired and not sleeping as much for the 9am race start the next day at Montinore. The course was really cool with lots of corners and a long power hill. The Klipper-mobile came by and we all got to the race with less than an hour to prep which is usually not enough for me I have found out. I kind of need to do everything before the race. Change, go to the bathroom, get the carbon wheelz ready, get my food ready, get my numbers ready. Perhaps I'm just slow at this prep work, but I got to the start line barely before the race started without having made as much use as desired out of the bathroom.

The pace was fast from the beginning and I was already getting slinkied off the back due to no warmup. The first time we went up the hill I knew I was in trouble. I was moving backwards in the pack and had to chase on the downhill. I also really had to go to the bathroom. The 3rd lap I had managed to get to the front and figured that since I was probably going to get dropped anyways, I might as well put in a good pull since not many other teams were racing. Just before the hill, I used some sharp corners and speed up and really strung out the field going into the hill. And then I proceeded to drop back through the field and ended up off the back at the top. I had to chase with a few other people for a while on the flats to get back on all while being in pain in the groin area at that point. Next lap I was dropped for good and detoured to the porto-potties at the staging area. But I still went for some riding after that and paced the women's field up the climb again. However, on the descent I noticed that my rear wheel was noticeably flat, so now I just called it quits altogether.

Rest Week

I'm pretty sure I still have not figured out how to execute on a getting a good rest week. The afternoon of the Montinore race I hung out with Klipper originally intending to hangout and help him with some yardwork. Instead, that turned into drinking 5 beers, watching the Giro, then watching Rugby 7s, then watching the Giro again and me finally biking home slightly intoxicated at about 11pm.

Two days so far this week I have gotten 9+ hours of sleep which were immensely needed, but the rest of the days have been around 7 hours and I am now grumpy. And I'm probably going to not do the OBRA champs tomorrow cause I'm grumpy due to lack of sleep. And now something smells in my apartment which is probably due to me not cleaning it. Right now I am in such a grumpy mode that I just want to yell "SHUTUP" to those little children nextdoor; I am entertaining going on another Facebook unfriending rampage against some people for really petty crap; and I want to even further highlight how disgusting some of my friends are for eating ice cream with a topping that had - I am not making this up - lactic acid as one of its ingredients. But I know all these things are counter-productive. Kids are actually very positive and fun, I regret unfriending some people from previous rampages and now it'll be weird if they ever find out, and there is actually debate as to whether lactic acid is as bad as it is made out to be.

Next rest week I seriously need to start it out right with going to bed at 9pm the first night. All this unpreparedness and lack of sleep I'm blaming on myself not getting a good start of getting to bed early enough and then not starting my day right enough the next day. I feel like a bike chain that hasn't been lubed in a while right now.

Coming up on DJStroky Racing...

1. Mutual of Enumclaw is going to be a serious race for me next weekend.
2. I'm getting a new race bike
3. I'm getting a TT bike
4. I'm not upgrading to the 2s yet, however I calculated all my upgrade points and I am still in the zone where I have enough to upgrade, but not enough for a forced upgrade! So all you people calling me 'sandbagger' can ponder that info. I actually don't have anywhere near enough points to upgrade if only my Oregon races are counted. My plan is to upgrade after Mt. Hood.