This is the start of a 4-part blog post about watching the Tour de France. These posts share the experiences I had while watching le Tour for 3 days in the Alps during 2015. This first post sums up the preparations and getting to France, and the course, etc.
Our Motive
Laurel and I decided to do a huge Europe trip for 5 weeks. This was sort of our honeymoon and time inbetween jobs and time inbetween moving to Santa Cruz as well. Laurel and I (mainly Laurel) decided that we needed to move to Santa Cruz. But before that we had decided to go to Europe for at least 2 weeks in the summer. Once we decided to move, I decided it'd be a good idea to take lots of time off in between jobs, etc. Our lease expired at the end of June, so we bought tickets to go to Europe on July 3rd and fly back August 7th. We put all our belongings in storage back in Portland until we'd make the move to Santa Cruz.
Credit Card Churning
In January I discovered the concept of Credit Card Churning. The idea is that most credit cards offer a huge signup bonus (usually after spending a few thousand dollars), but after that, the rewards suck in comparison. Therefore, the best way to maximize the accumulation of points is to get new credit cards and then downgrade or cancel them just before the second year annual fee kicks in. Then maybe a year later you apply for the same credit card again to get the bonus all over again. So, unfortunately that whole thing is a 3 year cycle, so I was unable to truly take advantage of that to the extent of getting free airline tickets to and from Europe.
Nonetheless, I did apply for and get a Barclaycard Arrival plus and the Amex Starwood Prefferred Guest cards. The Barclaycard has been very helpful for buying rail tickets and Airbnb's. I get to redeem travel expenses at a rate of 100 points per dollar. With the signup bonus of 40,000 points and earning 2 points per dollar spent, I've been reimbursed for over $800 in travel expenses. The Amex SPG card was also helpful for booking a hotel, although we decided to do more airbnb's than hotels which had it's pluses and minuses being on a honeymoon and all. We got a hotel in Barcelona with the points from the signup bonuses. After that I'm planning on transferring points to airline miles for the upcoming airline trips to/from PDX to visit family. To sum it up, if you plan on travelling, getting credit cards oriented towards travel will save you a lot of money.
Flights
I sort of wished I would've searched a little harder for cheap airlines to/from Europe. My Frat Bro wrote up a good article about Norweigan Airlines and their cheap flights to Europe. This might have saved us a little bit of money, but we would've had to fly PDX > SFO > ARN > PRG which would've been a bit of a hassle. Instead I found out about Condor airlines which had a direct flight from PDX to Frankfurt. It was only on certain days of the week, so I had to choose the tickets carefully. I thought I would try to be smart and pay for the trip with my Amex card, but at the time it didn't waive foreign transaction fees, so I paid 1% more or so. Oh well. We ended up getting tickets for PDX > FRA > PRG and then OPO > FRA > PDX.
The non-TDF part of the trip
Our trip's plan was to go fly to Prague where my parents would pick us up and drive to Křivoklát where we'd stay for a week. After that our parents would drive us back to the Prague airport where we'd fly to Zürich then take trains from the Airport > Bern > Interlaken > Lauterbrunnen > Wengen. We did an Airbnb in Wengen for 3 nights then had our biggest train day. We went Wengen > Lauterbrunnen > Interlaken > Spiez > Visp > Martigny > Vallorcine > Chamonix > Les Pèlerins. We stayed at a hostel/airbnb in Chamonix 3 nights. Then train from Les Pèlerins > Saint Gervais > Annecy where we airbnb'ed it for 2 nights. Then a train to Lyon for 1 night where the next morning we started our TDF adventure.
After the TDF we'd do Lyon > Barcelona on the train. In a hotel in Barcelona for 3 nights. Then train to Madrid staying with Laurel's friends for 4 nights. Then fly to Porto and stay for 4 nights. Then finally fly back home.
Campervan
I started planning intently for everything in March. The first thing I sought to do was try to reserve a campervan. It was kind of hard trusting a lot of places because I could find very little if any online reviews of the van renting outfits. I did find a few that had vans with showers and toilets, but they all appeared to be reserved already for the time of the Tour. Eventually I found an outfit called WeVan. We reserved a van with a bed for 2 people without bathrooms and figured we'd just wing it from there and park somewhere along the Col du Glandon. Laurel did express concerns about not having a bathroom/shower, etc. Once the Tour was diverted to do the Col de la Croix de Fer a 2nd time, I looked along the course for something, anything that might allow us to reserve a spot for campervans that had bathrooms. Fortunately we found a campground where we reserved a parking spot for our van. Good to go! The place at WeVan rented us a bike rack for the van.
Bike Rentals
I definitely wanted to have a bike for the Tour, but we decided that it would be best to not fly over a huge bike box because of all our other travels. I found a place called RentMyBike which offered a variety of bike rentals in the place where we planned to stay. I got a carbon bike, but we decided to get Laurel a not so awesome bike which ended up being a big mistake. We had good communication with the rental agency and met them on the side of the road in a small town just before Bourg d'Oisans.
Showing posts with label logistics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label logistics. Show all posts
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
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 ofTracy'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 mysuckiness 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 actuallyracing 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 fromveloshop 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:
TrafficBug® - The Commuter's CompanionSM (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
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
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
21:00 Drove home. Showered, ate some food.
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
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
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 CompanionSM (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 tookAll 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
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
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 avaliant 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.
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
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.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
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 CompanionSM 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 awhole 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 providethe 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.
An Important Announcement from My Employer
TrafficBug® - The Commuter's CompanionSM 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
Due to the request from some specific people on this matter I unfortunately cannot provide
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.
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