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Well, I raced the Masters World Championship….  I was glad I went, but definitely was not happy with my performance.  There were were a few reasons for it, mostly with inconsistency in training due some random work travel in the weeks leading up to the race.  Well, at least is done.  I am not sure if I want to keep the situation going into late January in 2013 with the combined Masters/ Elite UCI worlds occurring at the end of the month.

So on Sunday, Andrea and I drove back to Memphis (unfortunately separately due to my trip to St. Louis in the days leading to the race).  I spend Monday at home/the office and then flew up to Kansas City.  Flew up to a head cold.  Traveling is never restful and I would say the colder weather and other stresses didn’t help.  So I was still sick coming back to Memphis on Friday.

Saturday was spent being lazy and probably advanced back to healthy by about half.  A little store brand Nyquil and a 11-hour sleep, I woke up on Sunday a bit better.  I decided to get a workout in for the first time since Monday when I did an easy trainer ride before leaving to KC.  Joined Andrea and Matt for an easy 2 hours, not that bad in the warm weather (~50F).  Hope to get back into the swing of things this week.  With the road season starting only a few weeks out, I might have to rethink my normal participation in Rouge Roubaix.  Long drive, may not be worth it this year.

Well, the conditions did change, but the result was more or less the same.  The temperature was around freezing for the race, but the afternoon sun started to melt some of the ruts making for a pretty sloppy course (and whole new lines).

At the start, I was lined up 34th (based on my 17th in one of the heat races).  I held my position during the start but probably lost a few with an early crash causing a bit of a reroute.  A few fumbles later, I was well behind where I wanted to be.  Fortunately, some of it was recoverable by just powering the straight ahead sections.  Part way through the first lap, my shifting was a bit wonky with the mud accumulation, so I took a change.  On the second pit of the 2nd lap, I was back on my main bike and started to pull people back more.  Unfortunately as I concluded my 3rd lap, they shunted me off course.  The guys I was chasing down continued on as I was the first to be cut off.  I was marked two down which I thought was a bit much, but that is how it looks.  I was scored 34th.  Pretty disappointing result, but not that surprising given my recent schedule which has had me not training on the bike much due to work and/or travel.

On the brighter side, Andrea had a better race.  She ended up earning a bronze in her race (womens 30-34).

Here a few photos that I took when Andrea and I walked the course this afternoon.  The stakes have been moved out at some points to cut down on the amount of ice rut running/crashing.

In case you are wondering these ruts are hard like fiber-glassed resin.  The strands are grass, the binder is ice.

After spending the beginning of the week in St. Louis for a work training class, I drove east to Louisville on Wednesday night and Thursday morning (over-nighted near Evansville, Indiana).  I arrived at the venue around 10:30 am and scoped out the place and later prepared to pre-ride the course.  Unlike the last time I was at this venue (October 2010), the course was muddy pretty much along its entire length.  By the time, I got out ont the course mid-day, some of the off camber stuff was nearly (effectively) unrideable.  The rest of it was a mud slog power course.  So I rode around for 2 laps which ended up taking about 30 minutes at the pace I was going.  Then came the power wash.  The cleanup continued back at the hotel after checking in and I probably put about 2 pounds of mud/sand down the drain cleaning off my kit.   By the time I left, it had started snowing, but was staying a bit above freezing and it was not icy anywhere.

Andrea arrived that afternoon after fighting her way up I-65 in near white-out conditions.  The only thing that was visible at times was the still bare pavement.  Anyway, we went down to pick up our numbers and used the rest of our parking meter time to have some Mediterranean food at a restaurant near the host hotel.  The temperature continued to drop into the 20′s and in the high teens overnight….  pretty much exactly how it went @ 2007 CX nationals at Kansas City (KS).  The result was the same.  Icy ruts.

My heat race was the second of the day with a bit of open course before the first race.  So I used this time to get from abject terror riding to some way of getting around this course in one piece (and hopefully faster than a few).   My start draw (done at registration) was #79.  Which meant dead last in my heat of 29.  Great.

The start stretch was a straight piece of road with a left hander at the end down a hill where the fun began.  I am not sure why I started in small ring, but I did and wasn’t able to improve my position much/at all on that section.  Once we hit the ruts, I passed a handful and then suddenly it felt like I was alone.  The gaps between the riders were pretty significant as riders white-knuckled and crashed around the course.  I took out at least 3 step in stakes.  The first one I slowed, which was a mistake.  After that I just kept trucking along breaking the stake in 3-4 pieces as parts of it were chopped up by the bike.  (What is the difference between a stake that is broke in half and 3-4 pieces…  probably easier to stuff in a trash bag in smaller pieces).  Generally, I felt like I was getting better riding in those conditions but there wasn’t much time for that, 2 laps and done.  17th out of 21 that toed the line.  Yikes.  Not good at all.

Probably the biggest issue that slowed me up is not really having a good feel for how fast I could go.  Every time I pushed it (either during pre-ride and during the short race), I would end up flying through the course tape or crashing.  During the pre-ride, one was a bad one that sent me to the ground on my left knee and my left hip (crash was when I playing around with keeping weight off the front tire, probably over did it.  This is probably the right technique and just hoping for the best).  EXACTLY the same places that I tore up last Saturday.  They were mostly healed, but now they are reopened.  Nice.

My race tomorrow is at 3pm.  The forecast is for above freezing temperatures.  The exact timing of how that “warm” front comes in could mean more of the same (or worse, if it is just wet ice!) or back to Thursday’s conditions.  Probably a bit of both or no change if the 25F temperatures hold through the day.  The weather forecast has missed the mark today with actual temperatures about 5 degrees colder than expected so far.

During Thursday’s pre-ride, I must have injected mud into my bottom bracket.  Andrea, always the good wife and a great mechanic, was checking over my A-bike when she noticed that the BB was frozen.  She commandeered a BB tool and swapped it out for hers so I could race my carbon bike/carbon wheels.  That bike was running Challenge Fango’s 33 at 23/25 psig.  I had the same pressure in my B-bike with Challenge Grifo’s 32 when I crashed hard.  I am not sure that made a difference, but maybe it did.   Andrea swapped back the BB’s after rehabbing mine.  It probably was just literally frozen with water + 20F temperatures.

Short post,

#1.  Today was the maiden voyage for my new Trek Speed Concept time trial bike.  Nothing like taking it out for a first ride of 65 miles or so.  Initial take is that I like it.  It is vast improvement over my Kuota time-trial conversion, which was full of compromises and not nearly as adjustable as this bike.

#2.  Also this was the first full day at the house in a long time (early December?), so I moved the pot rack that I previously installed over the stove.  Now, it is over the sink (and doesn’t hang down in front of the cabinets).

That is all.

This dialog came up as I was installing Dropbox on one of my computers.  It ended up sounding really funny.

Yo Dawg, I heard you like Dropbox, so I put a Dropbox in your Dropbox folder, so you can be Dropboxing when you are Dropboxing.   Yo Dawg indeed.

I decided to pop up north for a quick hit trip to see family up north for Christmas.  A week or so ago, I booked a 4-night trip up to Wisconsin to meet up with my brother, his wife & daughter as well as my parents.  Andrea was to work most of it and the high $$ airfare meant that I was to make the trip solo.  I would say that the holiday is not hugely significant to either one of us, so all was good.  Fast forward to a week ago when a sudden work trip came up to Muskegon, Michigan.  4 days becomes 7 days off the bike and away from Andrea.  We definitely have had longer stretches apart for this and that, but some how it seems to feel a bit longer when not occupied totally with work and/or training.

Master’s worlds is only a few weeks away in mid-January up in Louisville.  The schedule has been posted with a lot of possible events for my age group (35-39).  Since there is already over 40, signed up, they will have short 3 lap / 20 minute races who start order is set by random draw.  If there are more than 80, they might have a repecharge (2nd chance to get to the final) and a consolation final in addition to the heat start ordered final race.  At this point, I need to sharpen my fitness once again before heading up to Louisville to make sure that the only races I have to run are the heat race and the final.  That may the only ones that can be done if there are <80 total, but the heat race will remain key for start position in the final.  For the most part, I do my best work in the 25-50 minute part of the race, so I need to have a good start to make sure that I am not in the bottom of the pile.

Life has been pretty busy for me lately, so I am a bit late on this report.  Andrea and I day-tripped to Nasvhille for the state championship race up at Lock 4.   The course was out on the peninsula of the park and featured a lot of up and down and tight turns around the 3 sides of the road to the end of the peninsula.  The day started off pretty well with Andrea delivering a commanding win in the Womens 1/2/3 race.   The CX 1/2 race was larger than the typical TBRA affair with 11 starters.

I got off to a slower start (not that unusual) and was chasing everyone through the tight course.  By the 3rd lap or so, I started to overtake some riders that were falling off.  In the end, I was only able to improve my position to 8th.  Not a great show.

Here are a couple photos that Andrea took of me racing….  We have a bunch of photos that I will work through at some point next week…  Did have time to compile the albums yet.

After getting back from Nashville around 8:30 pm or so, I had to pack for business trip into a heading up to see family in Wisconsin.  The business trip came up pretty suddenly (on Friday), but it ended up working out okay since it was heading up to SW Michigan (Muskegon).  The only bad part is that the trip is going to limit my training options heading into Master’s Worlds in a few weeks.  At this point, it is looking like I might have to spend the beginning of that week in St. Louis.  I guess being busy can be a virtue.

Andrea and I live in Tennessee, but the timing was right so we headed to Little Rock to get a bit more cyclocross action in before the Tennessee State CX race next weekend.  Format of the race was A/B with subcategories for medals.  Since the B-race had no payout, Andrea decided to race the A-race with (or against?) me.

We got to the venue at Burns Park in time to preride the course.  The front section of the course was pretty “normal” cyclocrossing with tight turns and some pavement.  The backside was the dreaded  singeltrack.  The recent weather meant the clay soil was pretty slick.  I rode it enough to figure out which places I could drift and which place I had to hold back / slow down to not hit a tree.  The good news is the field was small, so the singletrack didn’t make it too bad to pass after first lap or two and most of it had set up / dried out by the time the A-race started.

The start was on pavement and the field started out as normal.  I was about midfield as we hit the barriers, which was not where I needed to be.  I moved up a bit, but lost it a bit when a stick or something jumped up into my rear wheel.  This meant I hit the woods behind a bunch of people and a place or two behind Andrea.  Either on the 1st or 2nd lap, I got a little loose in the soupy mud off of a small bridge and I had to bail over a log.  I remounted and then proceeded to claw my back one-by-one until I passed Andrea on probably to the 4th lap or so.  I actually caught her and then proceeded to miss my remount (landing on the tire)… it took another 1/2 lap to get back.  At that point, I was in 3rd and couldn’t make up the balance of the gap to the 2 leaders and I ended up finishing in 3rd.  Andrea held off the rest and ended up a bit behind in 4th.

Overall, it was not my best race, but I managed to recover something from a mistake filled adventure.  We ended up netting $32 over entry which pretty much covered the gas from Memphis.  Break even day.

Here are some photos that Cliff Li put up on the series FB page…

A win.  Finally.

After my T-giving day tumble on the red trial at Syllamo, I have been nursing a lingering deep muscle bruise on my lower left side.  It has meant no drilling and trying to train around it.  By the end of this week, things started to feel a bit better and I decided to go through with the plan to race today @ Cordova and tomorrow at Little Rock (Arkansas Championships).  Anyway, the Cordova Cross race was about 4 miles from the house, so Andrea and I rode to the race.  The temperature was about 30-31F when we left, but at least it was sunny.  The course was a varied course around a church property with some soggy grass, some short mud sections and a decent amount of elevation.

At the start, it was clear who my competition was.  Hart and Boomer have beaten me all year, sometimes by a little, sometimes by more.  We got off to a good start as a group.  Two of the early barriers were singles and could be hopped if one were good at that.  I am not, so I dismounted.  The first one put me at a disadvantage due to the amount of hill remaining after, the 2nd was pretty neutral because you could get around the 180 turn after it a bit better.

The way the race played out it is that I was able to use the power sections to get past Boomer and Hart and then keep extending the lead.  Not much to say about it.  I am trying to be in prime shape for next weekend and Louisville in a few weeks.  The plan is coming together.

I am really happy with my ride and hope that I can hit it hard for both the Tennessee State Championship and the Masters Worlds.   All of this prime shape in January will probably mean that I will get a slower start for the road season that starts in March.

Perry was out there taking photos, I’ll put up what I find when he does.

Andrea rocked her race as well.  She easily was the first woman finisher and was 4th overall a few minutes back.  It was a very profitable day and we got these trophies to boot…

In other news, I unexpectantely received plaques for the last two years of cyclocross.  For the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 I was 2nd in TBAR point for cyclocross (to Jeremy Chandler both years I believe).  In 2011-2012, I am currently ranked 2nd as well in CX1/2 (behind Bert Hull).  Not sure I can hold it, but I am planning on racing the BAR finale which is the state championships next weekend.  There is a race tomorrow that I am not doing way over in Kingsport (about a 8 hour drive).