The time since Aaron Shafer road race has been pretty non-stop… In the meantime, I have been working in a bunch of new things like commuting to work via bike a few times to date, a bit of traveling for work, and trying to work in some rides in between. I am feeling pretty good for the upcoming Syllamo’s Revenge 50 mile mountain bike race next weekend. After that, I am not sure when I will get to race again, or feel like it is a good use of time. June promises to even busier (work travel). August, I guess.
On the brewing front, I have made progressively more difficult batches since the beginning of the year as follows:
A few Mr. Beer’s kit brews (Hopped Malt Extract, partial boil, 2 gallons)
Five gallon batches
- Nut Brown. Hopped malt extract, late addition hops. Partial boil (3 gals / 5 gal) into bucket fermenter.
- Amber Bock. HME, late addition hops. First full boil in 7.5 gallon pot (stovetop) and stainless tubing immersion wort chiller. Transferred into bucket.
- California Common. Steeped specialty grains. Malt Extract, full boil, early and late hops (stovetop boil) into 6.5 gallon glass carboy.
- Cascade Pale Ale. Partial Mash (5# of grain) + extract. Full boil. Drained/rinsed grains with plastic colander over pot (not recommended). Fermented in 6.5 gal carboy.
- Classic ESB> Extract. First use of outside propane burner. Full boil, a bit of burned material on bottom of kettle. Boiled down to only 4 gallons.
- Berlin Wheat. Partial mash, used new drink cooler mash tun. Used refrigerator for hot rinse water, counter for mash tun, and floor for kettle.
- Belgian Tripel. First all grain batch with lots of grain and candy sugar to bring up the gravity.
At this point, I actually have an empty fermenter, but lack time to make another brew yet. Probably will do another one Memorial Day weekend.
It was a late week decision to join six other Cat 3 teammates and race the Aaron Shafer RR/TT yesterday. I raced this race two years ago and it is an excellent, challenging course. I wasn’t sure how I would be doing, but it turned out pretty okay.
The 70 mile track is two loop course that is pretty much consistently rolling and this year, featured a nice headwind on the flatter parts. About half way through the first lap, two Hub Endurance riders were off together, so I jumped off the front of the field and made up about half the distance (I heard 1 minute up, 45 seconds back), but wasn’t really closing down the gap.. After the decent, I glanced back to see the field about 20 seconds back, so I sat up and rejoined to rest and then help some with the chase. We did bring it back and the attacks ensued for the next part of the race. By the second time up the longer grade we had Scott off the front solo but the wind took its toll and it was brought back within the last 5-7 miles of the race. Somewhere in there, two riders (a Krystal and a Hub) jumped off and stayed clear. I was pretty spent by that point and we were not successful at bringing it back leaving us (Marx-Bensdorf) to take 3rd and 4th in the race. I was too far back in the field and advanced up in the last 1k to just get in the money with a 10th place finish.
After the race, I was paying the price for the hard race, slowly rehydrating and finding a half-way decent something to eat in the small town of Sparta. Most of that time was spent wondering how I would get down in my TT position since my back was pretty well jacked up from the road race. Some stretching and some on-bike easing into it allowed me to get aero on the maiden-race of the Trek Speed Concept. The TT pretty much went horribly with my legs never really allowing me get up the hills and netting a really, really horrible time.
Overall, our team had a lot of good results in the P1/2, womens, and Cat 3 races. Enough to take home the team competition lamp for the day. Not a bad day at all.
After the race, a few of us made the long drive back to Memphis. A long day indeed.
I am not sure what the next few month will hold w.r.t. racing. My guess it that it will be pretty limited. I might come out of the woodwork in August. In the meantime, I might be able to squeeze in another road race, a few local crits, and hopefully head to Mountain View for my 3rd attempt at Syllamo’s Revenge.
I say half, because I am still trying to train… I had some lingering back issues through the cross-season that I had to nurse along and now, I have must have re-aggravated it on my trip to the tarmac a few weeks ago in Little Rock. This and the later training start due to the extra long cyclocross season lead me to skip Rouge Roubaix (first time after 3 years in a row), to skip Tuscaloosa (I had been to all 5 previous versions), and maybe skip my now non-transferable Ouchita Challenge entry next weekend. This might change, but at this point, I am probably not going to make the trek to Oden, AR.
At this point, I need to sort out how to keep reasonably fit without extending the time of this issue. The wierd thing is that I can normally ride okay (that position) and I am okay for the most part in normal life. I normally have the biggest issue stopping and straddling a bike after riding. It pretty much messes me up for a few minutes when I get going.
The injury it pretty localized to one side of my lower back.. pretty much where I landed on Thanksgiving day when a hanging branch tossed me off the bike on the Red Trail at Syllamo. So for now, I will get out and ride and try to increase my flexibility (which is a root cause of this all I am sure).
For a month or so, I have been playing around with Mr. Beer’s kits (2 gallons in a plastic fermenter keg). Last week, I upgraded to the 5 gallon brew pails and secondary fermenter glass carboys. I racked (transferred) batch #1 to the glass carboy. In my normal post style of late, here is a 4 pack of photos…
Even though I am well behind where I normally am this time of year in terms of training…. I decided to head out the flat season opener race on the west side of Little Rock. The Cat 3 race was a 5 lap trip around a 13 mile course that featured generally good pavement, no hills, and a moderate amount of wind. The weather was a balmy 60-65F and sunny. Sort of strange for February 25th.
The Marx-Bensdorf cycling team lined up with six, which was a good number in the field of about 40 riders. From the start, we were active with riders off the front in small groups, preventing non-represented groups from saying out, etc. On a flat course, that is about all you can do, other than just sit in. I put in some decent work and assumed a role that matched my current fitness. Others made more aggressive / longer moves. In the end, we ended up with the results, with the win coming out of a small group (Danny) and the field sprint for 4th (Dale). Unfortunately, I didn’t see that last lap.
Just as we started the 5th and final lap, we negotiated a right hand turn off of US70 (two-lane to two-lane) and we straighten out after the turn, the rider in front and to the side moved over into my wheel. A few bounces of their wheel and I almost thought I could save it, but the 3rd or 4th hit was the death blow… to the ground. I landed on my right side and scored the usual trinity of wounds (hip, knee, and forearm). When I was taken down I was probably about 10 or 15th wheel, so that meant a few were behind. Fortunately, most of the field avoided me on the ground, but a few including a teammate weren’t so lucky. Most of those involved rode off right away and (probably) caught the field. I hung for a minute stopped with my teammate Phil. His bike was messed up and was also a bit beat up. After seeing that he was generally alright and also wasn’t planning on continuing, I decided to complete the race. I finished my training day by chasing after the field in vain for the last 10 miles or so. I didn’t catch them, but I got a good workout in. My bike was rideable with maybe some shifting issues…. when looking at it the next morning, discovered that the RD hanger was bent inward by about 10 degrees… It shifted fairly wheel despite that.
It has been a long time since I have been in road crash. I would say it goes back to 2009? I have been saving my crashing for mountain and cyclocross.
I have busier than usual and gone more, but at least I am getting back to binge riding. Last weekend was the first 3-day dose at Marx-Bensdorf team camp held this year down in Pelham (south of Birmingham, Ala.) Lots of climbing, but I survived okay…
This is the Saturday group, or at least half of it, with a similar number from the Cat 4/5 feeder team BPC cycling.
After getting back on Sunday, I had a couple nights at home, and then headed up to St. Louis for a few days. Thursday, I drove down to Mountain View, Ar to meet Andrea who had been there for a few days already. Today was day 1. It rained this morning, so we hit a small subset of the hundreds of miles or gravel forest roads. Just a much climbing, but much less of a break between them due to the fast descents. We only rode 2.5 hours, but it was plenty.
In other news, a month or so ago, I bought a Mr. Beer’s brew kit. Smaller batches and predone malt extract. It is a short cut, but all I have time for right now. First batch all the way done, second one is carbonating, the third is due to bottle next week. The first one was one of the two that came with it (Cowboy Ale) and it turned out pretty well. Might have to do a post on this at some point.
On other news, Andrea was a guest on the XXC Magazine podcast.
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.
