roadcx.net

We (Andrea and I) went out for a longer ride today out of Marquette.  We choose a hybrid route looking at numerous roads on my mapmyride.com.  The route wasn’t bad, but started out on small highways with too many double (and single) dump trucks.

After winding around to the open pit mining area south of Ispheming, we got on some smaller county roads.  Unfortunately, they were pretty rough.  Right away on one of the hills, I spotted “feed zone” and then we started to count down the kilometers from 5k to go…  at the end, we sprinted for the finish line… well sort of……

I am 50% Finnish by blood, so I felt right at home leading attacking and winning that sprint.  Andrea won her share out there including the all important final city limit sign… for the City of Marquette.  The cool thing is that right after that city limit sign was one of those speed measuring signs… we ramped it up again and I saw 35 before we past the sign.  Not too fast, but we were just putting along on the ride, so it wasn’t too bad.

And finally, as Andrea has already blogged, we ran across a historical landmark.  The county road we rode on used to be the US-41 highway.  This was first use of a roadway centerline.  This concept is familiar to all road racers…the centerline rule.

This morning Andrea and I are prepping to leave Wisconsin and progress further north. We got up here Wednesday night (as planned) and have spent two full days with my brother and his wife. During that time we have gotten out to ride twice in the rolling hills & farm land around Fond du Lac. The day one ride was very hilly up and down heading out east to large bank of wind turbines. The economics of turbines don’t really work in west Tennessee that I have seen (I am guessing it is wind speed and probably cheap TVA power). In any case, it was cool to ride along a road in the middle of a wind farm. We even stopped and rode up to the base of one. The day was clear and sound the blades made was very quiet and peaceful.

That night we went down to SummerFest down in Milwaukee. It was a good time in general, but the crowds and drunk kids +/- a couple years of 21 were a bit annoying. The lineup on Thursday night was just okay and we saw a couple of bands playing their one or two hits. I guess that means I am getting old that I don’t know many of them.

Yesterday we went out for a ride down more south and east from Fond du Lac. No wind farms, but more good rolling roads and some nice looking lakes (Kettle Moriane State Forest). I brought my camera and took some photos of Andrea riding (and she of me). Here are the best ones.

We had the requisite cheese curds… but they apparently are not fresh enough to squeak. We need to get those on way out of the state.

The other good things about Wiscosin is the New Glarus brewery. I think we have tried maybe 5 or 6 types and they are all good. The Road Slush Stout is particularly good.

Michigan is next. Marquette and the Copper Country.

Well, this morning I looked my calender and decided that if were to get up north this summer it would have to be soon. I looked at the airfares to northern Michigan…ugly. So given the break in the race schedule, we (Andrea and I) decided to pack up car with the bikes and her dogs and head north. My family is distributed around Lake Michigan, so I had to make some choices. My brother lives in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin…only about 700 miles away (yikes!). My mother lives up in Marquette, Mich (a further 250 miles).

My dad lives in Midland, Mich (my hometown) on the west side of the lake… I had to make some choices. Even though it had been years since I had been back to Midland, my dad was just down here in May, so the trip will be up to Fond du Lac, and then on to Marquette (with a side trip to my grandparents in South Range, Mich). All in all, there will be two mega driving days involved and about 2,250 miles in total probably. With gas running $4+ up north, it will be a pricey trip.

What will be good is getting a chance to ride up north… Taking the dogs will definitely make the trip interesting…

Another race in the bag. Our race criterium is basically flat with three non-technical corners (the other “corner” is a bend in the road). The race started out reasonably fast, with a few early attacks…all were brought back.

I wanted to try to jump and I managed to find a chance about 25 minutes in. I shot to the left and accelerated around the wide-laned backside of the course. Stealing glances back, I could see only one with me, in red. As we turned the corner to the finishing stretch, I pulled aside to let him pull through. It turned out to be an OKC rider. We had a pretty good jump and traded pulls for two laps (photo below is from after one lap).

By the point where I made the jump, looking back I could see M&B riders at the front pulling back only 30-40 feet back…so we sat up for the closure which was iminent. Back in the field, I continued the never ending process of moving up as the field would surge all over the road, slow down, and then repeat. With 3 to go, they put up a good prime (Rudy Project glasses) and two guys up the road looked catchable, so I jumped again on the back side of the course. I had pretty much the field with me (albeit strung out) as we turned the corner… the “catchable” guys ahead we obviously thinking about the glasses, so they were still to far out.. reabsorbed.

The next couple of laps we sped up quite a bit (as is usual). As we did, the skill of various riders in the corners become painfully apparent (I was too far back as well after losing ground on a surge). Anyway, the field lined out and I ended up strung out going into the last corner into the headwind sprint. There was easily 20 ahead, so I didn’t sprint all the way… I was done.

I am still not where I need to be in terms of criteriums, but I am getting better.  I am really happy with the jumps I was able to do.  I still have a ways to go…and I haven’t really done anything specific on this yet.

This weekend turned out alright, but I am glad to take a few weeks off from racing. I probably will return to Huntsville (one of my favorite crits) in the later part of July, but other wise it is back to a bit of endurance riding and then transitioning to some intensity in 2 weeks. I want to recuperate a bit before tackling the last half of the season (and subsequent ‘cross season).

As for photos, Andrea shot the photos above and the rest of the Cat 3 photos. I shot some of the Womens race, the Cat 4, and few other photos from other races.

[Women] [Cat 4] [Cat 3] [Jrs / Cat5 / M50-60]

Today was our club’s race (Smith & Nephew / Marx & Bensdorf Gran Prix). As usual, I raced Cat 3, but today was joined by the entire contigent of Cat 3’s for Memphis Velo (Aaron, Bryan, David, Jarrett, and John). The road race had a better turn out that in years past…with about 30 starting the race. During the course of the race, there we a few attacks during the first and part of the second lap, but none stuck. I attacked the corner-hill on the long-course connector and got a good sized gap for a 2 miles or so… a group of 6 caught me, but I had overdone it so I couldn’t hang. I had to drop back to the pack and everyone was collected after a mile or so. The effort put me in the back to rest for a while, so I missed the key break which occurred not too long after.

Initially we didn’t chase very hard (or at all), which in retrospect we should have done that work to pull back the break. Later on the third lap, we did do some pulls on the front, but the damage was done, we were now racing for 5th. About 1/2 mile from the finish we were moving along at pretty good clip jammed across the road 4-5 wide when there was some commotion on the right side of the field…. the chain reaction took out about 8 riders including David and Aaron. Bryan and I managed to get through on the left side and finished up probably 11th & 13th in the road race. I know it was a bit of a shock to both Bryan and I when we saw (and in his case felt) riders go down and our placings reflect this break in concentration.

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In the afternoon, the CD Smith Rd time trial was held. The forecast rain stayed away, which was good given the narrow two-lane road turn-around that is part of the course. I self-timed an 8:40-8:42 (official time was 8:40) which is somewhat better than the 9:18 that I ran last year. My TT placing was 10th of the 28 cat3’s.

Here are some photos Mark Allen took of me:

[at about 100 feet]                      [and after 3.7 miles]

The good roads of the road race yesterday were replaced by bad pavement today. The course was so rough my speed sensor fell off in a jarring pothole! But the weird thing is that I kind of liked it. We kicked up so much gravel that we broke out a shop window on the course.

I tried to move up by jumping the hot spot bonus but was overtaken. Other efforts were also swallowed up. In the end I finished with the field to sew up a 13th place for the weekend.

Good news on the polar speed sensor someone found it, which saved me 50 bucks it would take to replace it!

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Coming back to Covington represents coming full circle for me in the last year [results 2007]. I raced terribly last year as a Cat 4 with a bad TT (38th of 40), an okay RR (15th), and getting lapped in the crit for 26th. This year, I felt reasonably comfortable in a tougher, longer race (and did not just sit in). I know that Andrea’s improvement from getting 6th place by seconds to coming back and winning convincingly represented how far she has come in the last year.

Results for this year are here.

I took photos of the womens (and juniors race). Andrea took some of the Cat 1/2/3 race.

The Tour de Louisiane (Covington, La.) starts out with a 3 mile tt. It is basically a flat one way tt. Last year I rode a horrible 7:58 due to bad legs and a bad warm-up. That is only about 22 mph!

This year I have been blowing the doors off the previous year’s tt times. Today was no different. I started off fast and held on for a self timed 6:45. Last year 6:13 was the fastest time. The defending champion had race number 1, I was first at number pickup so I drew no. 2. That meant I had a good rabbit to chase 30 seconds up the road. I didn’t catch him…..

This afternoon I have an 80 mile road race. Yikes. Hope to find a way to gain time, but finishing with the pack might be hard enough!

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afternoon update

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Well, I made it. Even better than that I tried to get away several times, but in the end it was a pack finish for me. The winner of the stage got away from the lead group during one of the driving rain storms that made this long race bearable. At the start it was about 90 and sunny.

The cooling rains came in three big stretches as we made the 5 laps. Every time we did, the visibility would drop to feet as the rain hammered down. And they would absolutely drill it at 30 mph into that. When the field was split it was easy to tell which teams were represented in the lead pack. Once we reintegrated it was clear that La’sport was up the road but the rest was unclear. We would work together pretty well for a while and then the speed would drop (despite this the average for 80 miles was 24.9 mph, so it wasn’t that slow…). This got worse and worse as the laps counted off.

No one was talking about the break. It turned out to be just one guy that put about 1 minute on everyone. By the time we were counting down the final miles, I was pretty spent, but managed a mid pack finish. Same time as most.

My TT effort was good for 16th place out of 28. Most riders were in the range 6:40 to 6:50. Best time was 6:07 this year.

At this point I have a slight chance to improve my position in the Sunday crit to get in the money. I am pretty sure I am still in 16th. Payout is 15 deep.

Went to the Abita Springs brew house last night. Always been a fan. Good fresh beer! We also popped down to the city yesterday.

Andrea won her TT with a time of 6:52 (She smokes these short TT’s. She is always nipping at my heels. Don’t laugh, she will probably beat you next Saturday if you don’t bring your A game.) She expanded her lead with a win in the RR this afternoon.

Today, we had a descent showing at the wide-open crit at Maryland Farms.  Memphis Velo was well represented in the 3’s by David Jones, Aaron Parker, Bryan Marshall, and myself.  We generally stayed up towards the front of the race.  In the end we didn’t get the great result we were looking for, but it was probably the first time we all were racing together.

I ended up getting caged in on the part of the course I needed to be moving up in on the last lap… (after betting sorted back too far with 2-3 to go anyway).  I ended up behind the leading group as it split and chased them hard in the sprint and closed to the back of that group for 25th.  The way the race developed today was a constant battle to gain and keep field position… in that I felt I learned a lot.   I finally feel that I am getting where I need to be in terms of race difficultly (during the race) matching my strengths.   I have been working on my sprint, but that is still my weak point.

I plan to go down to Covington once again this year and race the Tour of Lousiane.   Last year I did pretty bad in the TT and crit as a category 4.  This year I hope to run a good race as a cat 3 in the 1/2/3 field.

As for photos. no photos of the Cat 3 race, but I took some photos of some other races:

• Cat 4
• Women P/1/2/3
• Pro/1/2

The Saturday evening crit used the same downtown Nashville course as stage 3 of the 2007 Soto stage race. Last year I was in a bad training place (only a few weeks back from 2 weeks off the bike in early May). I didn’t make the cut… My fitness is a lot better this year…

I lined up 2nd row, but I flubbed the start… that meant fighting for position from the start. The course featured a incline (grade) up one side and a matching descent on the other. The hill meant it was easy to move up early on and I spent most of the race about 20 back. About 2/3rds of the way through the 50 minute crit, there was a crash that put two bike down in front of me…it was going up the hill (3rd street) so it was a lower speed crash where I basically tumbled over the other bikes. After extracting my bike from the other two…I put the chain back on an rode back to the pit. After getting started, my rear wheel felt funny so I spent about 2-3 laps at the back trying to safely adjust my brakes… I am not sure if I did anything…but it seemed to get better. (My front wheel which was fresh from the shop is now once again out of true due to the crash. I only suffered a few minor abrasions and a scuff on my skinsuit).

As the laps ticked off, I tried to advance every lap…mostly going up the hill. But in the end, I only ended up in 26th place. Sort of disappointing since I felt pretty good for the race. I wish I would have been a little more aggressive moving up… picking off 3-4 / lap was not good enough to really move up after the crash. Criteriums have never really been my strength, but I am changing that.

During the race, I know I was using my teammate Aaron Parker as a marker to move up at times… in the end he was better positioned and moved up in the sprint to get a 6th place.

The photos above were taken by Matt West (Andrea was busy getting ready for her race, Women P/1/2/3…which she won!). I plan to post up albums when I get home.

• Cat 4 (Ryan)
• Cat 3 (Matt)
• Women 1/2/3 (Ryan)

The 2 year old Edgar Soto stage race was retooled as a criterium weekend this year. The Saturday and Sunday races are the 2007 and 2006 Soto stage race criteriums. Friday night was remade with two different format races.

The Friday night events were held at the Music City Motorplex at the State Fairgrounds in Nashville, Tenn. The first event was a 1 kilometer time trial on the track. I managed a time of 1:23.69 (17th Cat3 of 30). I could have done some things differently with respect to pacing, but I suspect I wasn’t alone in that. (And maybe more importantly, I decided to roll with my road bike instead of my TT bike …although it looked that most left their TT rig at home).

Here are the overall results sheets (part1)(part2). Andrea got some photos of me out there….

The second event was a heat-based race. They divided up the Cat 3’s (odds and evens)… We only ran two laps (about 1.3 miles) in a very short and fast race (27mph average). I didn’t make the cut (top 5)…probably about 9th or 10th in the heat of ~15.  So I was done…. now it is time to focus on the weekend ahead.

These are some shots I took from the stands late in the evening. They turned out better than I thought.