Here we go

Lots of racing through the weekend.

The Chapel Crit is tonight. Since it's around a church parking lot, it's a closed course, and even though it's technical, it's pretty forgiving if you don't panic. If you overshoot a corner, you can breeze through the traffic cones, or just ride into the grass and hop back into the field.

I'm eager to test myself on the course this year to see how much improvement I made since last year. I'm 15 pounds thinner, plus my right quads are near normal strength. I've been racing on a regular basis since February 28th (Frosty Toes RR), and have been flogging lots of solo miles, two man pain fests with Chris, and group rides with da Club. The weekly Westlake "A" race beat-down has given me a steady boost in fitness.

The "B" field should be representative of other Cat IV races in the area, so for the first time this season, I'll be racing against my fitness peers instead of getting thrashed at Westlake, or sandbagging at Medina.

The race log comes in handy! From last year, I see it's a low average power effort, but there are several jumps per lap, so my heart rate should be high.

I'll be happy to just finish with the field and compete in the sprint. But my goals for the race are to ride efficiently, stay in the first 6 places start-to-finish, and to control any breakaway attempts. Also, I want to hone my pack riding skills and efficiently pass the slower traffic, which will be a challenge on the technical course.

The race should be a good tune up for the TOTV, which starts early Friday morning.

My biggest post-race challenge might be refueling and relaxing enough after the race to get a good night's sleep for the early morning wake-up call for the prologue.

Westlake #8

A wise singer/songwriter with a mullet once said:

You'll never say hello to you
Until you get it on the red line overload
You'll never know what you can do
Until you get it up as high as you can go

Since I'm going to be racing the Chapel Crit on Thursday, then the Tour of the Valley on Friday, my plan was to ride an intense hour at Westlake then shut it down and go home early.

It was Zipp Demo night and the weather was perfect, except for the stiff Northern breezes, so the fields were big. 50 A and about 20 B riders. Lots of primes were offered: Zipp merchandise, cash, and points. I wanted to go after an early prime from a long way out to get some pacing data for the Valley TT.

On the first lap, Bridgette rang the bell and held up a Zipp jersey. I thought that would be a good one to go for since nobody else seemed very interested. When we rolled through turn 1, I accelerated and jumped clear. By the time I hit turn 2, I had a clear view of the field. The gap was pretty big! I put my head down and settled into a hard tempo. S curves. Still clear. Turn 3. Still clear. Sweeper onto the finishing straight. Still clear. 100 meters to go. Then out of nowhere an RGF jersey (Cameron Jackson) went around me! Arghh. I didn't even see him coming.

The gap was still pretty big, so I decided to see how far I could go solo. I made it another half lap before the field ripped around me. Actually, I got caught on the most difficult part of the course. Next time I do that, I'll make sure to get caught before a turn, into the wind, or on a slight downhill. Instead, I got caught on Ranney Parkway in the crosswind after the field wound it up out of turn 2.

Accelerating from 25 mph to 30 mph hurt a little. A lot actually. I hung on for a while, then slipped off the back.

I decided to just hammer solo instead of waiting for the field to come around. I kept that up for a while, and eventually another solo rider, from Stark Velo, caught up with me, and we worked together. A two man TT effort is total misery.

We kept up a decent pace for 30 minutes until we got lapped. I hopped back in and did several more laps. Once my back started to get tight, I stopped. I still felt pretty fresh. Hopefully that was a good tune-up for Thursday.

I was bummed that I got dropped, but the good news is it felt really easy to ride in the field even when we hauled ass, and I have good pacing information for the Valley TT on Friday morning.

LeRoy TT Length

I got around to measuring the circumference of my front wheel: 2112 mm. The value I'd been using was 2096 mm. That's a difference of 16 mm or about 5/8 inch, or 0.763%.

The original value gives a length of 7.67 miles. The newly measured value would give a length of 7.72 miles.

However, after reading up on this subject here, I think the original value might be more accurate, since I didn't load the bike during the measurement.

I also measured the course using Google Earth. The start line is easy to spot, since it's marked by the edge of the fire station driveway. The turn around looks like a small smudge on the road when viewed from space, it's just north of the second driveway past the woods. Here's a view.

With Google Earth, the course length I measured is 7.65 miles. However, that number has some uncertainty. It's calculated using an idealized spheroid model of the Earth. That doesn't include the terrain and the relative roughness of the road. Also the path I marked using Google Earth is a rough approximation of the route that a cyclist would take on the road and is probably slightly shorter than an actual rider's path.

So after all that, I still don't know how long the route really is. In fact, there's probably not a way to answer it definitively. I'll stick with the original value.

Victory!

I was a little late leaving for Medina this morning for the Twin Sizzler, so I was harried when I rolled into the lot at 7:30AM, and saw Al, Dave, Mike, Chris and Rob (doing his first race!) roll out for their warm up. Thanks to the great organization of the TS, I breezed through registration and was ready to go before 8:00AM.

Chris entered the expert field race, everyone else did an age group race. I'm still a little too heavy to make it over the climbs on the course with the expert field, especially with the 35+ fast guys, so I decided to sandbag it and entered the 35-39 year old group.

Arguably, because of drafting and the wide range of fitness, age groups don't make sense for a bike race. Splitting it up as an expert A and expert B field, then age groups would probably make for a better race. That said, since the race is a local institution and is extremely well organized, the age group quirkiness adds character and makes it a unique event.

A couple guys attacked right from the start. I'm used to racing in the evening when my mental and physical energy level is at its peak, and was still pretty groggy at 8:15AM, so I watched them go for a while thinking the attack was probably adrenaline fueled and would only last about 30 seconds, but other riders started to bridge across, so I followed the wheels. They continued the hard pace for close to a minute. We settled down for a while, and a third rider put in a hard attack only about 2 minutes into the race! Once he was reeled in, the race settled into an easy tempo.

The field worked well and people were riding well. Several riders took turns at the front. I did some work over the first several miles to get warmed up. In the true spirit of the Medina Twin Sizzler race, a strong rider from Lake Effect was racing in our field with his daughter on a tandem. Drafting behind them was like motorpacing!

Since I've been struggling on climbs for a couple of years, I was a little concerned about the lumpiness of the course, so I sat in as we approached the first climb. It was an effort, just above my LT for a couple minutes but not a big deal. (I would have been shelled there or on the second set of rollers in the expert field.)

After that, I had no worries. The race often comes down to the last mile and the 90 degree left and right turns before the finish, so all I needed to do was wait. I took a few turns on the front, and chased a couple small attacks.

Finally our wheels were on the ridiculously bad pavement of Smith Road heading back into town. I thought about TTing away, but was soon too busy dodging cracks and potholes in the road to try anything.

Left, over lumpy train tracks, then right and the sprint. I was in good position at the end, about 4th wheel, and with lots of high speed cornering practice from Westlake, so I passed a couple of guys and wound it up. I accelerated to the line and passed several people. Due to the mixing of fields, I thought maybe I got third, so I was totally surprised to hear that I won!

Since I was recovering from my car accident in the 2008 season, and started riding the "A" race at Westlake this year, it's been a looooong time since I placed in a race, so it felt pretty good.

It gives me a little boost in confidence for the Cat 4 races I'll be doing over the next couple of weeks.

Margin of Error

How long is the Leroy TT course? Everyone I've asked has a different length. I've heard 7.67, 7.75 and 7.95 miles. I'll have to do a real measurement of my wheel circumference today instead of using the canned value and cross check with some topo map measurements. I'll feel much faster (well 5%) if it's closer to 8 miles than 7.6!

No Ducks No Glory

It was a windy, cool, overcast evening for the Leroy TT, and the flag at the firestation was pointing directly down the course. I went out for my warm up with Al who had already done one hard effort around the course. With the tailwind, it was easy to roll along at 20 mph and have a conversation.

Since the Leroy TT is a weekly event, everyone that rides there is familiar with every bump and ripple in the pavement, and picks out weird landmarks that drift by in the timeless fever dream of a time trial. I noticed the ducks that swim around in the ditch just before the turn onto Kniffen weren't there like they often are, but the friendly old lab that lives near the turn was out walking around on the road.

The crosswind on the climb was really noticable. That was going to hurt! I rode part way up the hill then swung around to head to the start. I was hoping there would be a little shelter on the finish from the trees, but it was like riding into a wind tunnel!

A big group turned up for the TT. I picked the #8 popsicle and waited my turn. The guys on the TT bikes went first, including Matt Weeks and Bill Marut. They looked pretty fast out of the gate. I was second or third of the Mercxx style riders, and the rider in front of me had his tail light going, so it was a target to chase through the gloomy evening.

I stuck with my normal routine of holding back a little at the start, and gradually accelerating across the field, and then making another gradual acceleration to the corner. With the tailwind, I was really cruising. I took a breather going through the corner and was at 27 mph before I leaned into the turn.

I tried a different routine on the hill. I wanted to hold back a little on the first half of the climb, and drill it on the second half all the way to the turn around. On the first half, I tried to recover a little bit, and on the second half I got out of the saddle and accelerated over the flat, then sprinted up the climb. Overall, it was actually a little slower.

I made a good turn and sprinted down the hill. I could see the light blinking in the distance, but wasn't making up any time on the rider in front of me, though the distance between us opened and closed as we made our way onto the different parts of the course.

I saw the 2 miles to go mark and started hammering. I wanted to keep the pressure on with a big effort over the last mile. I got into my pedal stroke counting routine and was half hypnotized when Larry Pandy drove up next to me on his BMW motorcycle to say hi.

I kept the pressure on to the line, but didn't manage to break 30 mph due to the wind.

I finished with a 20:24 versus 19:58 last week, only 317 Watts average power. I didn't feel sharp, but finally got over the fatigue I've been suffering with the last two weeks. I think I'll tweak my aero position a little bit over the weekend to see if I can gain a little more time.

I Need to See (that I'm old) to Ride

I've been dragging ass for a couple of weeks. I attributed it to riding, so I took a rest week. Usually after a couple of days of rest, I feel great, but I was still groggy. Maybe allergies? Took a little extra allergy stuff. Still groggy. Finally, using deductive logic that would make Sherlock Holmes or Dr. House proud, I realized my eyeglasses prescription was way out of date and eyestrain feels like a light case of the flu, so I scheduled an appointment and went in for my exam yesterday.

I explained my symptoms to Dr. Patton, so he put me though the paces with the magic viewer machine. "Is 3 or 4 better?", "3", "4 or 5", "5", etc... Finally, he sat down and gave me the diagnosis.

My prescrtipion is the same, and my vision isn't really that bad. The problem is I'm old (pushing 40) and focusing up close on the computer screen tires out my peepers. I've been working longer hours than I have for a while staring at the computer, so it started to bug me. The solution, a bigger monitor about 2 feet from my face and not wearing glasses while I work.

Even though Ian just told me about zennioptical.com where he got two pairs of glasses for like $12, my midlife diagnosis prompted me to cough up the benjamins for new glasses and a nice pair of prescription cycling sun glasses with carbon fiber frames. Maybe a convertible sports car and a twenty somthing girlfriend are in my immediate future.