CCC 2013

And that CCC this year stood for Cretinous Crazy Crashes!

This year I decided that I'd prefer racing with teammates and was able to guest ride for Team Oregon.  I got up all bright and early on Friday and Eric Gushurst was nice enough to pick up me, my two bikes, 2.5 wheelsets and red monster suitcase.  Going over to the race with Eric and Chris Dubois put me in a good mood with the near-constant bike race talking and wisecracking from those two.  Oh and watching the tdf on Jorge's phone was an added bonus.

Cascade Lakes

The plan for the race was for someone to get in the early break and then Chris and Eric and I would help Dillon get in a good spot for the final climb.  Oh and Scott Gray and Adam Artner would just be out playing bikes with us too.  So to start things off we all flew down the Sunriver cutoff and then turned right onto FS Road 40/Upper Deschutes.  Then of course the breakaways started and eventually Andrew Boone was off the front.

Then it was time to wait.  The next somewhat exciting thing to happen was perhaps the first stupid crash of the weekend which happened at the feed zone.  A little later I then dropped my chain and pulled over to fix it.  I didn't really notice, but apparently as I was standing on the side and as I leaned down to fix my chain I swung one of my legs directly into the peleton and nearly caused a few crashes.

Anywho I caught on after the chain drop and then made sure I was towards the front to cover any breakaway attempts that may happen before we got to the hill.  We could still see a few guys from the break up there but nobody really wanted to give it a go.  So as we approached the final climb I was trying to get Dillon to get to the front and was looking back to make sure he was on my wheel, but he didn't quite make it on my wheel for some reason.  So I did make it to the front and figured I'd just sit on the lead group and wait for Dillon to get up there too.

As we went up the hill suddenly it was just 6 of us as I glanced back.  I knew this was the move, but I also knew that it's nearly impossible for anyone to bridge to that move so I just sat in expecting to get dropped shortly.  I was pegged at my top end the whole way up the hill, but once we made it past the final steep section I knew I had made the selection.  I didn't do any work until we got to the parking lot road where I sat on Max O'Neal's wheel.  Max covered two gnarly attacks from this kid (hot tubes I think) and then made his own move at 200m.  I waited a little more, but once I heard a guy yelling out "right! right!" I knew he was going for the sprint so I took the long way around the left but it ended up that I had enough speed to get the win.

After the race we drove over to Dillon's soon to be new neighborhood and had dinner at the clubhouse.  Spaghetti and fruit and good scenery.

High Desert TT

I really don't have much to say about the TT except that I was pleased that despite my lack of practice, etc that I managed to get a good enough time to keep me in 3rd GC.  Actually I was thinking about sprinting for the line on the final straight but didn't and in the end the winner of the TT got a time good enough to get 1 second ahead of me in GC, so note to self: always sprint for the line in a TT.

Crit

Since I was 3rd GC and there were no intermediate time bonuses this was a 40 minute trial of avoiding crashes for me.  I sat in and numerous times had to brake fairly hard because of either a real crash but quite often an almost-crash which was causing almost-crashes behind me.  Sorry!  Our team plan was for Adam Artner to win, but he went too early and was a little hard on himself after the race.  He later consoled himself with some avocados and yams (inside joke).

Awbrey Butte

Going into Awbrey Butte our team had a plan to not let a break get away too far and then attack on the way up and through Awbrey Butte on the 3rd lap and then maybe Dillon could get away and place better.  The parts of making it a hard race sounded good to me.

When the race started there was yet another crash at mile 2 that I actually got tangled up in.  I narrowly avoid I think Max O'Neal who was on the pavement and then my front wheel got stuck in someone in front of me and I skidded to a stop somehow remaining upright the whole time.  I checked my wheels and noticed that the front wheel was just a little out of true so I released my brake pads a bit and decided to go chase without a wheel change.

I caught up fairly quickly and I think I noticed Andrew Boone get in the break yet again so it was time to wait.  We went through the feed zone grabbing these neutral water bottles that were only useful for pouring on your back as the caps made you choke when you tried to drink it.  Then we got neutralized twice as the Masters 1/2 passed us twice.  Then the break's 4 minute advantage suddenly went to 0 minutes as we approached the climb on lap 3 - weird, but game on!

Scott Gray starting hammering up the hill and we dropped a fair amount of people, but Kaler Marshal and Ben Thompson were still up there.  The 4th time around our team was planning on keeping the pace tough.  Eric told me he wasn't sure how much more oomph he had and so I asked him, "so how about you string it out right now!"  And he did!  And then he took a wrong turn.  And then I spoke with Adam and told him I wanted him to come one a breakaway attempt with me on the backstretch.  However, Dillon was already in a favorable position so he found himself in a break which looked pretty good.  Adam then countered a few moves and I hung out with the GC leaders.

The final time up Archie Briggs we caught that breakaway that Dillon was in and then it was gruppo clusterfracko.  I was sandwiched at one point between Dwayne Farr and Brian Hitchcock and was making contact with both of them until I decided to relinquish my not-a-spot.  We headed through the roundabout and then I was on Dillon's wheel but then I somehow ended up on the right and was on Adam's wheel.

With 50 meters before the final roundabout Adam punched it into the inside of the corner which was a dangerous move even with us riding thru the roundabout beforehand to know that the inside was clean of any obstacles.  I hesitated and couldn't follow Adam's wheel but also took the inside hard.  Adam then opened up his sprint and completely crushed it while I sprinted for a top 10 after hearing the final gnarly crash of the weekend happening to the rear left of me.

It was then a tense few minutes afterwards as I surveyed the carnage that HSP went through over the weekend but also as I awaited results to see if I kept my 3rd overall GC.  One of the GC contenders got 3rd, but it was barely not enough time bonus that I kept the podium spot.  Adam really saved it for me by winning the 10 second time bonus.

After all that we headed home and made wisecracks the whole way back about bike racing, over-protective cops in the town of Mill City and whatever else passed the time.  Aside from all the crashes this was the funnest weekend of bike racing I had had the whole year, not to mention the best result too.  Having teammates along the likes of those I had over the weekend put me in a great mood which had to have contributed towards my success.

Two more important things worth noting:

1.  After 3 years of Randy's domination, I have finally won the Tacoma mini-league in Tour de France fantasy!
2.  I have yet to receive my prize money in the mail, but when I do I will be sure to split it up.

On the Verge

This past week, I have felt like I'm nearly at the point where I feel like I know enough about what I'm doing in a bike race that if I play it all right, I can win. And this week's update has enough material for being on par with the year's longest stage race for me (plus two weekly races as well!).

Tuesday at PIR

I made it out to PIR, and all was kinda normal until after the 2nd hot spot. I was still struggling to position with the main field, but followed some wheels to stay up front and before we knew it, there was about a 9-man breakaway. I didn't think it would last long since it was PIR, but held on nonetheless. The pace was brutal and we eventually shed it down to 6 riders. I was saving it all up for the final sprint so didn't contest for any hot spots. When the final lap came around there was a bit of cat and mouse. The winner made an epic jump at the overhead walkway (maybe 500 meters out). The rest started going hard on the left, so I latched on after being on the right side and made a good enough sprint at the end for 2nd place in that sprint, but 4th overall due to the hot spots. I was very satisfied since I had excellent timing on my jump for 2nd.

Here's two sprint photos: at about 50m and just after.

Wednesday at Tabor

Tabor was a different story. It was my first time doing the course and I was really trying to figure out where to hit the gas pedal. Should I try to break away? Should I hit it at the bottom of the hill or maybe the 2nd-to-last wind? I couldn't quite figure it out and got close, but never got a prime and was altogether dropped on the last climb. Inside I was kind of laughing at myself thinking that my tactics are so off that it's kind of funny.

Thursday

Today was kind of a prep day for Elkhorn. I did my ride a bit later in the evening and then decided that not only would I pack everything the night before, but I would also clean my room since I couldn't find everything anyways. So I ended up getting to bed at 2am, but with a clean room I am really on a roll towards being more organized.

Elkhorn Stage 1

Now before one even does the Elkhorn Stage Race, one has to actually make arrangements to get there. Sure I could just zipcar it and then book my own hotel room, but if I did that every race I'd be broke. Furthermore, I get to meet some interesting characters to pass the time on the 300+ mile journey to Baker City.

I scored a ride with a masters racer and woke up at 5am to get ready to catch my ride at 6am. I somewhat slept in the car all the way until about where I-84 leaves the Columbia. Then I drove the rest of the way. The scenery was gorgeous.



The first stage was a 75 miler with a good climb in the middle followed by what appeared to be some easier hills. A break made a jump at 7 miles in. I did some fake attacks and just dangled myself off the front a few times but then got scolded advised by Ted from Audi that I should just chill out and wait until the climb like the climber I was. I considered this for a moment. Was I really a climber, could I hang with the climbers? I had also considered what Erik from Recycled was able to pull off on day 3 of Mt Hood. This was the guy who broke away with me on day 1 and then exploded on the climb. However, he hung right up there with the climbers on the final day and he wasn't all that lighter than me. Furthermore, after last week's performance of dropping riders after hills, I did wonder if I could in fact hang with the climbers.

So I just sat in and made it over the top with the climbing field. The hill wasn't drastically steep and my heart rate was only just above my threshold, which come to think of it - I don't really know what my threshold hr is. Anyways, we had dropped most of the field and then we didn't really work much after this. I'm used to breaking away and trying maintain breaks so I was getting a bit flustered with how slow these climbers were going after the climb and descent was over. Nonetheless, I still sat in knowing that there were some kind of hills remaining before the finish. The last set of hills were sort of a mirage - it always appeared that whatever hill we were going up was going to be the last, but this continued for like 10-15 miles. Again, I stuck with the lead group.

The finish was perfect for me and I should have won it. It was slightly downhill and after all the previous climbs, I was one of the more powerful guys left. The finish line was visible for a while, but still far away. I picked the wheel that got 2nd place, but if I had been where that guy was I would've won the sprint. Instead I got 3rd. My mistake was not having enough perception of where the finish line was.

After this, we all rode back to town. I had arranged to share a hotel room with none other than OBRA-celebrity Jake Hansen. At the time of writing this blog post, he is on the front page of the OBRA website and the Oregon Cup leader:

Jake is quite possibly the sweetest racer I've yet to meet despite his intimidating race record. He says he's a part-time caretaker, part-time youth worker and of course part-time bike racer. He's featured often over at this blog about his team Word-RCB.

Saturday

As usual I wasn't looking forward to getting my ass whooped in the time trial, but gave it a go anyways. I did better than normal finishing 17th. In this race in particular I was noticing that my heart rate was nowhere close to the heart rate I observed climbing up the hills yesterday for the duration of the TT. I think I've got to work on truly trying to kill myself to get a better time.

The crit was really successful for me. The previous three races were cancelled due to rain on the abnormally slippery course, but it was dry enough for the 3s to race. Since I hadn't a clue yesterday where the finish line was, I warmed up on the course and practiced sprinting for the line from a few different places to gauge how I felt. This helped me a lot. I knew exactly where in the field I wanted to be coming up on these primes. For two primes I was in that sweet spot and then busted out two awesome sprints that earned me $50 and a $10 gift certificate to an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. I was more stoked about the breakfast buffet prize. The second prime was with 3 laps to go and a dangerous move by 3rd in GC went off the prime sprint. I was really gassed and could not chase that. The field did and barely caught it. In the final sprint we were going really fast to begin with and I couldn't pull out a better result than 6th.

After the race, Jake cooked up some mean spaghetti and pasta. It was well needed and both of us jammed it down because tomorrow we'd need it.



Dooley Mountain

Today's race was something to be intimidated about. 102 miles with a 8 mile hilltop finish. And with the way Baker City was surrounded by snowy mountains, it seemed as though it would make for a good challenge. Jake and I biked over to Sumpter Junction to redeem our prime gift certificates for an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. We ate with a bunch of people from the Ironclad team which were the only other bike racers there, surprisingly.

At the race, the entire team of Bob's bikes broke away at about 6 miles into the race. The rest of the field concluded that that move was ridiculous and proceeded to ride at paces that got my heart rate down into zone 1. We would push it up the hills, but by the time we hit mile 45, our support car said the break had 10 minutes on us! At this point, only a few people were trying to chase and basically Vergari set the pace nearly all the way to the final climb. On the way there, I tried a number of futile breakaway attempts and it was just laughable each time I went. I don't know if I ever became a rabbit for the peleton to chase, but it seemed kind of ridiculous in hindsight.

As we neared the climb, my rear wheel really started acting up. I knew it was slightly untrue so was sort of ignoring other people advising me that my wheel was messed up - something always seems to be a bit wrong with my bike, so it's cool I thought. Just before the climb I was fumbling around trying to feed myself and got dropped and then my rear wheel really became a problem. I couldn't tell what was wrong. It seemed like I had broken a spoke, but there wasn't any broken-spoke clanging around on the wheel. Eventually I got off the bike, adjusted the rear brake to the maximum gap and the wheel was still rubbing both sides! Finally, I was able to bring myself to request another wheel from the masters field that was passing me and that helped, but at a point that was too late in time. Once I got back to Baker City I identified the problem:



Well, that damned wheel cost me the race and my GC position of 8th went down into the 20s. I really wanted to see what I could've done on that final climb. And after that drama, I'm kind of in a limbo on the verge of upgrading to Cat 2. I'm wondering if I've got what it takes to compete directly with pros. However, I'm also wondering that if I don't keep challenging myself that I may not learn as quickly as I want.

Getting Home

After this, the final process of getting home begun. I had biked back to Baker City with Jake and another guy (this was another 18 miles of riding after the 102). I went straight to Safeway and loaded up on some rich chocolate milk, perrier, two bowls of deli pasta, but then realized my wallet was back in my jeans in my suitcase.

I biked back to the high school where everyone was packing up. My ride wasn't headed back for a while, so I decided to take a shower while I could. I was hungry and wanting to go back to Safeway as soon as possible. Once we got all our stuff jammed into the car, we drove over to Safeway, but this time the Baker City Safeway was SLAMMED with customers. There were at least 12 people including 5 of us bike racers. They could barely handle the crowd and I was growing impatient nearly yanking my chocolate milk back out of the checkout line as each clerk had to not only check out the items of each people, but also catch up on the daily lives of the locals in line. When my credit card finally processed I grabbed the chocolate milk and started chugging it right beside the checkout stand. aaaaahhh. But I didn't chug the whole thing at once - gotta pace myself.

After having satisfied my immediate hunger we got back on the road and begun to discuss our race stories. I felt a little bad about having such a focused desire on my chocolate milk that I was kind of ignoring the circumstances of my driving buddy. Turns out he had won his race and category! That was really cool, and I learned more about this guy - turns out he used to ride with David Millar over in Hong Kong before David went pro. We made excellent time and got back to Portland before 10pm!

Monday

On Monday, I worked as usual and then when I got home at about 7pm I was tired and took a little nap. However, I woke up at 1am and decided that I still needed more sleep and finally got up again at 7am.

And beyond...

Well, now that I've finished my grand moderate tour of three stage races over three weekends plus weekly races I've got a rest week where I may race as many as 3 days. I'm looking forward to the Franz Bakery crit on Saturday. It's got an awesome corkscrew set of corners and gives $5 for the winner of each lap. Should be fun! And this time, there is no traveling required, the Franz crit is in Portland and then there's another race on Sunday that I may or may not do in Salem which is close enough.