Alternate Realities

The only world that exists and matters is mine. And more to the point my world that I live in involves me exercising my incredible talent at bicycle racing such that my glory is overbearing on my fellow inferior bicycle racing competitors.

In fact, this season was going to be the one in which I truly became a formidable racer upgrading to Cat 1 in a matter of 4 races and subsequently starting to be noticed by pro teams scouting for good riders for next year. My sprinting would make people wonder why they even race and my climbing would be such a spectacle to watch that people from the countryside would come out to watch my seemingly supernatural ability as pictured below:

The ladies would hardly be able to contain themselves due to my irresistible physique and bicycle race winning ability. They would come out in droves and go to lengths once thought only the realm of obsessive stalkers just to catch a glimpse of my race number or even the scent of my fragrant pheromone. Shown below is an example of what would happen at a typical race happening at a velodrome I was racing in:

The world as it were would be completely serving of my bicycle racing lifestyle and would not cease to do my will at a whim. However, this season so far has taken an incredible nose dive into a displeasing reality that has me questioning if I may actually be wrong in my judgement about future and current events.

Portland Plaza Bicycle Policy - The Final Word

One of the most absurd questioning I have had to do is whether I am being reasonable with the Portland Plaza Homeowners Association in asking them to allow bicycle owners and thus me to be able to bring my bicycle up to my unit. Could it be that I am unreasonable in the amount of bicycles that I own and am opening a pandora's box to hordes of second-class-residents (aka renters and bike owners) to completely scratch up the elevators worse than the likes of a men's bathroom wall in a dive bar? Apparently yes, I am an unreasonable activist - the HOA did not change the rules that prohibiting residents from bringing a bicycle up to their unit.

The Portland Plaza is like a hot chic at first impression. Looks great, is from a desirable part of town and is rich. However, once you get to know her and her family a little bit more, things start going south. First you find out that parents are obsessed with rules and etiquette, grilling you for every minute detail you have done wrong. Her brother says he thinks it is reasonable for her sister to date, but thinks you have no business with the family's way of doing things since you aren't part of the country club (since you're a renter). The worst of all things is that you ultimately find out that this hot chic won't let you put your bicycle in her elevator. And with that you know that the relationship just won't work out for the long-term.

Back to my Dominant Racing Season

Every once in a while I do take a little time off crushing and ripping other bicycle racer's legs off and beating them with them to hang out. And to ensure that my hanging out is equal opportunity, I chose to attend ethnic fest with Karly's friend. And then we chatted a little bit about how Jordan had unknowingly solved the world's traffic problems.

You see it is a really simple equation. Time = Distance/Speed. In Jordan's equation he drastically reduced the distance factor of his commute by moving to within 2 miles of work instead of 25. Although I am working on the world's most intuitive traffic information model I know right from the start that reducing the distance one has to drive (aka moving somewhere close to your daily activities) they will save much more time than what a traffic app will save them.

wait a second, racing!!!!

Tonight was the Tacoma Twilight Criterium, the race that I would conclusively win to the delight and admiration of all of my Tacoma friends. They would all be awestruck at how effortlessly I would lap the field that they would begin to dig into the prize money of the Cat 1/2 field and even consider giving me the pacecar as well (of course I would turn around and sell it, cars suck).

And I was ready. This photo below perfectly encapsulates my sheer focus even before the race started on how steadfast I would be in winning the race for Tacoma Bike. Nevermind Tony who is doing his own thing with his aviators. Little does he know the amount of ass-whooping I am about to unleash on the streets. You see I was on a mission for a position at the top of the podium.

As the race began I immediately felt challenged to battle through the harsh wind on the backside. Nonetheless I got myself into a break which had trouble organizing itself. And then it got too big - 12 riders or so. I tried attacking to actually get a small one going again, but ultimately it all got swallowed and Sofa King won it again after I barely had enough to stay with the pack in the sprint. What an utter disappointment for me. I drowned my sorrows with a my prime winnings of a plate of pasta and a beer which then kept me awake after trying to get to bed early. At the restaurant some friendly locals impressed with racing in general asked me if I'd rather win a race or win a girl and I said win a race. Nothing matters more to me as I have lost sight of the rest of what normal people seek for fulfillment in life.

Vancouver

And on again to another race. I peacefully rode over to the other state thinking about race strategy and was relaxed when I got there. However, as the race went along I got a slow leak and bailed instead of going too fast through the 7-corner course on 40psi in the rear. As a result, Culpepper now has 3 wins in a row in Cat 3 men OBRA land.

And it continues at PIR

I was super focused on my strategy of winning a hot spot and then the final sprint and thus the race. However, I heard an imaginary bell and crushed the field from 300 meters for no reason at all. After that the winning break got away and I was off the back in the field sprint and super hungry.

Wednesday I ate a cucumber that was actually a zucchini.

And now Thursday I'm going to do hill sprints up Tabor, but Tabor racing is already over and it's Thursday. Whatever, I live in my own world anyways!

Well, that went well

This past weekend was the Capitol Stage Race. Clearly, the race organizers had designed it especially for guys like me. There were long road races, no epic climbs, a very short time trial and the event was low-profile enough to keep the Canadians and other hot-shot racers away. Also, it was close to Tacoma which made lodging at Hotel Karly an option.

Thursday

I trained it up on Thursday afternoon just in time to join a ladies night Fight Club where the dudes of us hammered it off to Steilacoom and back. I may have exerted myself a bit too much, but it was fun to go on a fight club ride again.

Friday

I headed out to the boonies of Olympia for stage 1: a 70 mile road race. It was an interesting course: one decent puncher and then a whole lot of flat or false flats. Some breaks were breaking away, but none sticking. That is not until the final lap (each lap is 10 miles) when a bunch of us finally got it together and ended up putting a minute on the field. In the sprint, it was really only a 3 person sprint since two guys were just in it for GC. So I ended up picking the best and winning wheel, but just didn't have the last bit to get around it. Still though, a 2nd place finish was great.

Also, I got to meet another fellow racer that also blogs about his adventures over at the Billy Goat Chronicles. Sean was a real nice dude, I've raced with him a few times and now he's riding with the 2s, which is nice because that's one less threat in the 3s field for me! He also produced some water (that I begged for due to being unprepared) from his RACESHIP!! I don't know what all else is inside there (trauma center? rocket boosters?), but holy smokes this is the proper way to roll to a bike race.



Saturday

The morning had a time trial which had the start times change twice. Once from the original tech guide, then again from the times posted online last night. I ended up warming up a half-hour early. Still though, I went out there and rode hard on my bike equipped with a front Zipp wheel that Scott let me borrow. Thanks! I ended up getting 20th, but only losing 40 seconds in GC holding it solidly in 5th place.

I hung out with an Olympia friend and killed some time before the crit. I was warming up on the crit course and was a bit scared for a little bit because they had stopped the warmups earlier than I had expected and thus I wasn't right on the line at the start. Lucky for me though, there were call-ups for the top 5 in GC. The race seemed to be going really well for me - I got a time prime and was generally staying at the front. But then I just started losing wheels and didn't make a good enough effort to get back so I ended up off the back in the field sprint.

However, I did fare better than two other GC leaders. The race leader got dropped! Within the first few laps! And then 4th place in GC crashed hard on the final sprint. He'll be all right, but that still sucks.

Sunday

Now before we get into the racing, I made it over to Dean Burke's neighborhood breakfast. I had some delicious eggs and hashbrowns, saw some friends and chilled out. Thanks! That was nice.

OK, on to racing!

Today was the day to make it or break it in the stage. It was a 90 mile race of mostly flat, but then some hills in two other popular courses in the area. Olympia Ortho now had the GC leader so a whole lot of protecting that leader was to be expected. The second guy in GC was 2 seconds behind and then there was me 20 seconds back followed by 4th place at 34 seconds back.

We had a smaller field than before and also the pro/1/2 women were riding with us. I have to say, these women were stealing my nice wheels like pros! Did they know who I was? Anywho, basically nothing happened and the pace was super easy, like zone 2 easy. With all the protection and inability of enough serious to stick, I knew that I had to try to make the field crack on the hills. At a little past the halfway point, there was a decent hill. A climber dude broke off hard from the field. I almost went with him, but had to feed at that point. Once we got to the top I noticed that Olympia had lost it's support and since the medium break wasn't doing anything they caught right back on.

Olympia was having a blast of a race. Right after the feed one of their guys was taunting others. He had two cages and tri cages for a total of 4 water bottles. He asked some guys "hey anybody want some water?" and then he proceeded to dump it out on the road as we were racing. I thought it was hilarious. However, they got their share of pain since hillclimber dude had put two minutes on the field, so the water-dumping taunter then had to bust his nuts to chase down hillclimber dude which he eventually did.

I was waiting for the next series of hills at about the 75 and 85 mile mark and they weren't long enough! The second to last hill, about 8 of us broke off, but then the field got it back together. The last chance of the race was the final hill where 5 of us got away with a good margin from the field. Unfortunately it was the GC leader, 2nd place, me, 4th place in GC and 7th place in GC that were in this break. So of course every one of us except for the GC leader wanted to gap the rest of us in the 4 miles to the finish. It was attack and cat and mouse and attack and cat and mouse and then the chase group swallowed us up since we weren't cooperating with each other at all. Someone from the chase won the sprint so GC didn't change.

Kudos to Olympia for playing all your cards right and winning on your home turf. Well done. So I ended up 3rd overall. I concluded that I could have played it better by having a $5,000 time trial bike since I was only 20 seconds back in GC. And with my performance this weekend I may or may not be close to having points to upgrade to the 2s. But I don't want to know if I do yet. I don't want to do Elkhorn as a 2 just yet.

On the way home, I had a crappy recovery as in not eating a crap-ton of food. I only had some bars and a measly plate of pasta. As I'm writing this, I'm eating another batch of pasta at 1am and I think it's not going to be enough either.

We Brought the Rain With Us (lots of pictures and videos edition)

So, this week was the Wenatchee Omnium. Last year I did this race it was typical Wenatchee weather (absolutely gorgeous and warm). But this year it was only normal weather on Friday and then a Western-Washington-style storm blew in from the southeast of all places and inundated the valley with rain close to monsoon levels.

I'm thinking that the Wenatchee Omnium is going to be a yearly event for me in large part because my parents live over here and love to spoil me when I come over for a while. My dad also loves to take lots and lots of pictures and videos, so this blog post will have a bunch of photos that he took. This year, I got Randy from Tacoma Bike and Andrew from Old Town to come stay over at our family's house. Karly even made it over too!

Getting There

But first a bit about my Friday travels. I was packing up in the morning only to realize I had left my racing license at my office. I realized this at 7am when I had to catch an 8:30am train. I had actually forgot my license at last year's Wenatchee and had to buy day licenses for cat 5. But now I'm a Cat 3 so I needed it. I headed out of my apartment at 7:27 to try to catch a 7:30 Max to my office. I made it on that Max with 3 seconds to spare. I biked to the office got my license and caught the 7:46 train back downtown. At this point I decided the only way I'd make the 8:30 Amtrak would be if I put my big duffel bag on my aero bars and biked to the train station. I did so hitting the green wave down Everett with one hand on the handlebars, the other hand holding the bag and clamping it all together with my chin. Got to the station at 8:10 and found a nice train friend to chat with.

Next up Randy and I drove over to Wenatchee from Tacoma. We got there and went for a ride around the loop trail to the crit course. On the way I managed to get 2 flats and remembered that that was why I hadn't gotten more into cycling when I was younger - along with competitive cycling not being that popular in general. Randy and I rode the crit course and Randy was in disbelief about how technical it was. Due to impending rain expected tomorrow Randy was confident in his decision to bail on riding in the crit.

Time Trial

There was a bit of confusion on when my actual start time was going to be, so I ended up arriving at the sign-in 3 minutes after my start time. After enough arguing with the organizer and officials, they gave me a new start time that happened to be 30 seconds after Ian Mensher (an utter beast of a rider). Ian didn't have a 30 second guy, he didn't have a minute man and he still passed at least 5 riders. At mile 1 he was 15 seconds ahead of me, mile 1.5 he was 40 seconds ahead and then I only saw him again after the turnaround.



I was really eying this TT with great importance since it was the first TT I would do that I had also done last year and thus compare my times. Well, I ended up 48 seconds slower than last year and was VERY disappointed until I saw that even Ian Mensher was about a minute slower than his time last year. The Cat 3 winner was 90 seconds slower than last year. So maybe I did do better given the circumstances.

Crit

Randy and I were hanging out for a while watching the other fields race. I also got to meet smack-talker-extraordinaire Michael Pruitt (aka PruDog). It was pretty chill watching the other racers and also watching Randy do his thing trying to hand a beer off to the KR Masters:

By the time my crit started it was raining and slippery. I made it a point to be near the front in order to avoid the inevitable crashes the first few laps. After a while 2 guys broke away and I was holding on to the chase group of about 8 people.



The rest of the crit consisted mostly of trying to hang onto the pack. I could hear Randy at corner 3 yelling "Sit in Evan" everytime, and with the way my chest felt I was content with doing so. When the final sprint came and I didn't have one and took 8th.



Road Race

Next up was the road race and I was getting hopeful that the rain would let up since it appeared like it would do so according to the weather radar. WRONG! It got worse while the radar showed no rain at all.



My pre-race strategy was to try to commit suicide and gap the field so much before the hills that I'd make it up by the time they did. This worked well until 1/5th of the way up the climb at which point I was caught and by the time I summited I was close to last. At this point I could see other people riding back down the hill just giving up. So I decided that maybe if I stuck it out I could sneak into the omnium points.

So I stuck it out. On the climb of lap 2 I got passed by the masters field, on lap 3 I got passed by the ladies field and barely held off Trish until the 4th lap when the 1/2s passed me. Talk about demoralizing! Adding to the excitement was that the corner at the bottom of the hill got so flooded that we all had to ride thru 2 inches of water.



On the final straightaway I called out another 3 for drafting off a 1/2 and then decisevely put him in his place in our dueling sprint for 20th or something. Unfortunately, 15 other masochists in the 3s stuck it out, so no omnium points for me in the road race.



Here is an open smack-talking message to all you climber twigs:

Haha, very nice job in the hillclimb you little rats! Good thing that is the only true hillclimber's race in the northwest for the whole season. I will crush all of you so hard in the crits that you will go crying home to your wife or mommy, request a downgrade and wonder why you even started racing in the first place!

And to show that I mean business I am taking this whole next week off the bike to recover my strength just in time to go kick some butt down at the Umpqua crit at the end of May.

Accidental Mullet

After I wrote last week's post, I realized that I left out a funny story from the Eugene Roubaix. There was a side competition for the best euro-mullet. At least a month back I had gotten a haircut and it was admittedly quite bad and seemed really long in the back. But whatever, I just rolled with it. Fast forward to Eugene Roubaix and I'm chatting with the volunteer coordinator who asks me, "so have you entered the mullet competiton?" And I say "wow, this really looks like a mullet?" And then another lady racer chimes in "that's like asking a fat lady if she is pregnant!" Whatever tho, if there is a competition that I feel like I have a shot in, I'll enter it and thus I present my euro-mullet pose (I did not win the competition):

This week I had been feeling pretty good except for a nagging sore throat. I speculate it has something to do with my uncleanliness. I don't clean my water bottles enough or my apartment enough. In fact this week I told my landlord that I was moving out partly due to the fact that I wanted a fresh start at trying to be somewhat clean.

Friday I took the train up to Tacomaland, had a nice bike ride down Yakima to PLU and then slept in Karly's bed. No Karly was not in her bed, she was down in Ashland with Tacoma Bike's spring training camp.

Saturday I headed out to Ravensdale. I might as well had been racing for bullseye cycling team after last week's performance. Any and every break I tried was chased to good effect. So it came down to a field sprint. I was strategizing on when to sprint and decided to go just after the final crest. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't on anybody's wheel when I started going at the crest and the crest was about 400 meters from the finish line. I ended up 11th after giving a killer leadout for 1st and 2nd place. I was mad at myself for making these two mistakes, but knew I had to try to put a positive spin on it and just take the experience with me to the next race. So on the post-race call with my coach, I told him "I am the best leadout man ever!"

After this I showered and went down to Tacoma Bike where Tony fitted me with my aero bars. I got to see a lot of characters down there including Micah who I got to say "DRILL BABY! DRILL! Everyday all the time everywhere!" He was quite happy to be back up in the northwest.

Originally I had thought that I may just go back home, but then Scott wanted to hangout and Tony wanted to ride next morning. I decided to stay. I went over to Scott's and heard his Ravensdale story that went something like this (sorry Scott for stealing your thunder): "me and a new Tacoma Bike rider were in the 5s race and I was totally dicking around at the back of the pack. The new guy asked: what should we try to do? I told him: see that guy right there? He's going to win the race, just sit back here for a while. Then on the final lap, I saw a hole on the left and told him to go now! And he went and ended up getting 2nd while I got 5th". And then Scott had a good laugh after telling his story. We then hungout with Jenn's sister and talked about a bunch of Tacoma locals' lives were going.

I headed back to Karlys, slept and then woke up to ride with Tony. We did a great loop of Gig Harbor including the LWV course where I got 4th last year. It was fun to relive that race. I hopped on the train heading back to pdx and made it back in time to catch my first church service since March. The service was Mother's day themed of course and then a plea for more volunteers because apparently their membership has a problem of making too many babies. Volunteering to take care of a bunch of kids with a set time limit sounds fun to me, but I can't reliably do that. But I was able to catch up on my tithing, so at least I can help out in some way!

Next week is Wenatchee. Who wants to give me a ride there and back? I can offer lodging at my parents in exchange!

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.