roadcx.net

While Andrea was off digging ditches, I tackled the garage.

I ended up replacing the cardboard surface on our bike workbench with sheet PVC (shower stall liner).  It isn’t very thick, so I doubled it up and duct taped it down.  I also bought a set of bin organizers on a track.  It allowed me to get some more stuff off the workbench.   I left it as a big pile of tools (we will sort them into tool boxes soon).  As much as I would like to hang up everything, we need to pack up many of them for race or riding weekends away from home.  (Which if you keep up is most weekends for us).

New work surface

All the random stuff I moved to resurface the bench.

More or less the finished product.  Need to do some more sorting/putting up yet.

I would like to say that I keep the work area 5-S squared away.  In reality, it is a hobby and Andrea and I often have to make a repair in a hurry.  We both have different ideas about where each tool should go or don’t always put it up to even that place.  Since that is a big fail, I at least like to keep the floor clean, I use a shop vac.  Very often a small part will leap out of your hands and it will hard to find if there are bunch of cable ends and dirt clods all over.  With mountain bikes and CX bikes involved, that can be harder than it sounds.  (Also space is tight since, at this point, we do keep both our cars in the garage and fit bikes, wheels, and the work area around them.)

After last weekend performance at Cuba/Meridian, it was time to close the book on the 2010 road season.  I had some okay results, helped the team in a big way at a few races, and had a good time along the way.  I was running about 5 to 8 pounds heavier year-over-year compared to my 2009.  Between that and the training interruptions, I think it was a fair season.

So, it is time to pull back to start the ramp up to cyclocross.  The week started out by not doing anything… I took a day off on Monday to recover from the weekend.  Tuesday evening, I planned an hour run while Andrea had an hour moderate/easy mtb ride.  So we hit the Farms and both did our own thing.  I ended up getting about 6.5 miles running most of the way.  I had a feeling that I would pay for that later…  I would (I haven’t run > 5 miles in more than a year, maybe 2?).

Wednesday, we took the dogs to Shelby Farms for a little running around time (there is an off-leash area at the park).  Thursday, I went out for a little run with our Belgian Malinois.  It was a short run indeed, about 1.5 miles out, my knee started to hurt, so I walked and ran back towards the house.  About a mile out, I took off my shoes and ran back barefoot the rest of the way (mostly smooth sidewalk and not-as-smooth asphalt is around our house).  That ended up working better.

Tonight, I joined a local health club to start the other prong of my off-season assault… weight training.  This is something else that I have foregone since the winter before last, so my first session this evening was high rep and low weight.  I plan to go in pretty often for short sessions at first to get back in the swing of  things.  The gym is only a 1/2 mile from the house, so I can run (or walk) to/from.  Unfortunately the route there is sort of busy road/ no-shoulder.  It’s Memphis, so what else do you expect?

At this point, I haven’t ridden a bike since the road race on Sunday.  I may join Andrea and ride out moderately at Trinity tomorrow AM.  I did that last Saturday (morning before my race), the group was pretty feisty.  The group ride riders have hit peak form at the end of the season.  It always happens as we are ripping down Lenow Rd at 25+ mph.

I plan to keep incorporating running and weight training as I start to do some CX play riding / slow speed barrier drills (technique focused).  My 2010 road season was underperform (compared to 2009), I plan to make 2010-11 CX better than my 2009-10 CX season.

Andrea rewrapped the handlebars on my Ridley CrossBow (my “B” bike).  Now I have blue tape on my blue bike and red tape on my red bike (Ridley X-Fire).

On other notes, I am playing around trying to get Google AdSense to work on the sidebar.  It may not last long, but I am curious about it.  I plan to keep it out of the way and may take it out completely if it is too intrusive.

I also re-upped with AT&T and got an iPhone 4.  It doesn’t work well in my house, but neither did my iPhone 3G.  I have to put it by certain windows to get a good signal (and we live in a pretty built up / dense population area).  At work (in NE Memphis), I have no problems whatsoever even in metal buildings, etc.

I wondered how things would go after not riding my road bike for a while before late in the week.  I found out pretty quickly.

The crit started out pretty fast and stayed reasonably fast the whole time (as usual).  My legs took a while to wake up and I paid for it.  Ended up struggling to move up and finished in the back of the pack.  In general, it wasn’t a good race for us expect that Travis Sherman (who was guest riding with us) was in the break and got a 4th.  For several guys on the team, it was their first 1/2/3 race, and in general it was good to see the future of M-B team out there mixing it up.

On Saturday night, a bunch of us stayed at a the course as a guest of one of the promoters of the race.  Very nice indeed.  The location is pretty rural and we finished the evening out shooting off some tracer rounds on the shooting range (interesting since I am not normally a gun guy).

The next morning, we woke up and ate breakfast with the race registration right outside the house we were staying in (very convenient).  The road race went better for us as a team.  The race was a 1/2/3 race but the 3′s were scored separately and we had our our purse.

From the start, we were pretty much always with 2-3 of us near the front of the race.  We had a total of 6+1 (5 cat 3′s, 1 cat2, and one cat 2? guest rider).  Johnny Mac rolled off with the first break of the day from mile 2 or 3 (it seemed) and they dangled off the front for a while as we tried to keep things in order up front.  Eventually they rolled further out and out of sight by the end of the first lap.  Okay, things were looking good.

Attacks continued for a while, but they were normally short lived.  Most of the way though the 2nd lap, Travis (guest riding) jumped on a move that included the eventual race winner (Toone).  They move out quickly and out of site.  Even better.   At this point, I was thinking that there was another break to be had and was preparing to join it (or start it) at some point in the 3rd (and final) lap.

About 1/2 way through the 3rd lap, JMac came back.  Crap.  Okay we still have Travis up the road…  5 miles later, there comes Travis.  Not good.  So when in doubt, I attack.  I didn’t have much, but I was able to move up the grade a little bit.  A minute later, a few came up including Robbie (my teammate).  We sort of worked together for a while before things started to fall apart.  I wanted to keep things going and quickly found myself out there by myself again.  After a minute or so, I was joined by Frank Moak (Herring).  I thought that could work since he can motor along, but it was short lived as we were joined by the field.  Groupo Compacto with 3-4 miles to go.

Going into the final mile or so, John King, Ben Knoernschild, and myself were at the front of the field, with Robby Holdich and Scott Newberry not too far back.  Scott launched with a mile – 1.5 mile to go and Ben joined him with John and I holding pat watching for a reaction.  The reaction came and I followed a rider as he wound it up dropping me off with 300m to go or so.  At this point, I couldn’t do much but sprint early, and lead out whatever was behind.  That didn’t last long, but at least Robby finished it out with a Cat 3 win and Ben held on for a 2nd.  Result.

So with that, my road season is done.  It was  good weekend and I had a lot of fun and was glad to see the nouveaux Cat3′s in action.  It is going to be a good year next year for M-B.

Time to step back and then wind up for cyclocross.  I haven’t typed up a calender, but it will really start to hot up for Louisville (Oct 23/24), Memphis (Oct 30/31), McEwen (Nov 6/7) and Outdoors (Nov 14).  Time to glue the tubulars!

After leaving Copper Harbor we hit the Michigan Tech trails (my engineering degrees are from there) on the way to my mom’s house in Marquette, Michigan.  Andrea already blogged our ride, so here it is.

On Friday, we rested and went on the Cleveland Cliffs Iron mine tour.  Sort of long, but they have some pretty cool equipment.  Sorry, no photos are allowed, so you will have to just imagine a pit a mile across and 900 feet deep.  The processing plant is all about large rotating equipment and iron ore dust everywhere.  After the tour, we did a bit of a tune up ride and along the way stopped by the Ore to Shore registration.

On the race morning, we got there early (around 8:20a or so) for a 9:45a start.  People already were putting bikes down in the start grid (except those with a preferred start at the front.  We setup in the 2:50 or under group (expected time) and then walked around to warm up (since we didn’t bring another bike).

The start was fairly fast, but not too bad.  I sort of laid up a little to make sure that Andrea was making good progress (first two miles are generally uphill and on pavement).  Once we hit the trail, we separated and I avoided a few crashes (most were guys lying in a puddle or hung up in the sand).  I continued on and then thought I should wait for Andrea.  Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did.  About 40 people passed as I slowed up and then stopped for a minute.  Once she passed, I caught up and then I lost her again.  At this point, I decided to hammer and improve my placing. I repassed everyone that I let go by the Misery Hill feature (loose rock powerline climb).

After this point, it was taking longer and longer to bridge up to the next group, but I continued to pass people until maybe 5 miles to go. I had my only “crash” of the day which wasn’t a real crash, just a near miss.  I dove into a steep sand pit (I took the wrong line) and had to suddenly stop to avoid the endo.

Along the way, I ended up working with one guy for a while (one of the photos below is us at the finish line).  He ended up missing a turn and finished a minute or so after me.  By the end of the race, I was spent, my arms were getting weak and I was ready to be done on the last mile or so of pavement to Lakeside Arena.  Towards the end we started to overtake some of the back markers on the Soft Rock (28 mile version that started 45 minutes before ours).  So I wasn’t getting bested by someone’s grandma…

In the end I finished 1 second over 2:55 for 86th place.  I probably wasted 5 minutes with waiting for Andrea (and about 40 places), but I certainly didn’t have anything left after my efforts the last 40 miles.  I don’t have power data, but almost 60% of my race was in the threshold heart rate zone.

My mom took some photos at the start and the finish.  She was out on course, bu didn’t get a chance to take any photos.

Been pretty busy since returning from Colorado..  Got in some good rides and some days didn’t have time to ride.  On Wednesday, the Marx-Bensdorf team showed up in force for the Metro Moto training crit in Collierville.  With 3 new Cat 3 members (2 of which were racing), we had 10 (I think) in the field of about 20.  With half the field, I liked the scenario better than the first training crit (2 of us versus 5-6 Memphis Velo).  The format was also different, race 30 minutes then miss-and-out (dropping 2 at-a-time until down to 6, then 1-at-a-time).

We were active on the front with people heading up the road, dropping back to chase pairs, etc.  In the end we took 5 of the top 6 placings.  I was around 10th based on my elimination (survived 5-6 sprints until I “missed” and was “out”).

I have poached some the better shots Dale Sanford (sitting out due to an upcoming Ironman tri…).  These have been through the Facebook photo destroyer, so keep that in mind.

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With that I am headed for a forced break off the bike.  I am headed to China tomorrow for a week (work trip).  Despite the millions of bicycles, both personal safety and lack of time will keep me off the bike for the duration (maybe ride exercise bike at the hotel?).  When I get back, I will make one more push with Ore to Shore (8/14), Meridian-Cuba (8/21-8/22), and maybe River Gorge (8/28-8/29) on the menu.

Today was the day.  Race day for Andrea.  The Firecracker 50 is a big event for Breckenridge and adding to it is the fact that is the Marathon National Championships (long distance / endurance mountain biking).  Since I didn’t register for the race (it fills up months before), I decided to go off in the other direction (away from the race) after they started.

My ride, started off with heading back to camp to get my helmet (left it in the tent).  It felt weird to ride without a helmet, but I didn’t think driving back to camp was smart (and would lose our parking spot).  That ride is pretty much down 500 feet over 5 miles on the rec-path.  And then up those same 500 feet on the road (5-6% grade) and then drop down 500 feet again to the campsite (Prospector Campground).  I picked up my helmet and filled a bottle and headed back over the hill back to the rec-path.

The single track ride I planned was to ride up Colorado trail (up 1200′ in 2.5 miles) and ride the Peaks Trail back to Breck.  The Colorado trail starts off up at a moderate grade (and fairly non-technical).  After getting up past 10,000′ the trail turns nasty with lots of rocks, roots, and much steeper pitches.  Several times I would charge into a section (3-5″ ledges to pop over) and just run out of gas, stall and have to stop for a moment to catch my breath.  Damn thin air.  Once over this, it bombs down to the Peaks trail (photo first photos of the sign and the trail photo).

The Peaks trail is pretty varied from pretty rocky, some steep stuff, and some fast singletrack.  As I got closer to Breck, there was much more foot traffic (4th of July hikers).  When I got to a cross-roads, I stopped and looked at map and decided to add to my journey going up the right fork of Siberian Trail.  This is pretty much a gravel road that climbs up to 10,600′.  Some great views (some of the other photos are from there).  After out-and-backing that trail, headed down to Breckenridge via various trails (and dodging more and more hikers/dog walkers).

By the time I got back, 4 hours had went by.  Andrea was estimating a time for herself of 7 hours, but there seemed to be a lot of finishers (pro men and women).  I tried to find a lap sheet to see how fast she got her first one done, but I didn’t see that anywhere.  Hung around and drank a beer (Frisco brewery Backcountry Brewery was there with free pints).  Ate a sandwich and decided to get a shower at the Ice Rink.  When I got back, I tried to figure out if she was finishing…  Maybe 10 minutes later, I hear Dave Towle announcing my name.  Andrea had finished, saw me, but in the crowds around the finishing chute, decided to just have Dave call me.  Once I met up with her, she thought she was top 3, but wasn’t sure.

The podium presentation wasn’t until 5, she went to shower and I waited around to see if the results were posted.  Not long after she left, they were put up and indeed she was 3rd in Singlespeed Women.   Podium and apres-podium beer shots are in the gallery below.

Right now, we are headed further west to Fruita, Colorado.   After 3 nights outside at 9500′, with overnight lows in the low 30′s, Andrea wants to get some warmth.  Fruita is around 4000′, so it should be a bit closer to home and is supposed to have some good trails.  It would be nice to explore more of the trails of Summit County (Breckenridge/Frisco), we only covered a small percentage in our 3 days of riding.  I would definitely recommend it to anyone despite the amount of people in town and on the rec-path.  Get off into the single track and it is like your own little world.

After another short week of work, I flew out to Denver on Thursday afternoon where Andrea picked me (she is on a longer road trip this month).  I was pretty tired from meeting out with some friends on Wednesday night and getting up early (as normal).  I also think my racing schedule was catching up with me right at the perfect time since I am not planning on racing anytime soon.  By the time I got to Denver, Andrea was running behind and I had to kill 2 hours at the airport.  Unfortunately, I started feeling worse and worse, probably a combination of tiredness, maybe something I ate, and I am sure the elevation change.

When she picked me up, we headed straight through Denver and out to Frisco, Colorado.  It was getting dark and I was not really in the mood to camp, so we got a room at the Snowshoe Inn there.  Pretty basic, but it worked.  We had a quick dinner and afterwards all I wanted to do is lay down.  I fell out right after we got back.  The good news is that woke up feeling much, much better.

We headed down the street to the Log Cabin for some excellent breakfast.  After reorganizing our gear some, we headed out to find a place to camp.  The national forest campground next to Frisco was fairly full.  The nicer part was absolutely full and the next part looked like a boat launch parking lot.  We ended up going to the next one down the road.  We were settling into one part when I noticed that they had no water.  The sites were $21/night with electricity (which we don’t really need).  The other part of the campground also didn’t have water, but since it was more basic (no electricity), it was $16/night.  So we set up her small one man tent (for storage) and planned to sleep in her Element.   By then, we needed to get going, so we headed to Breckenridge for our ride.

We started off trying to find a good bike shop.  She saw two guys headed down the street looking like they knew what there were talking about and asked for a shop recommendation.  Andrea wanted to top off the Stan’s in a few of her wheels.  We headed down to the shop Elevation for this.  It was going to take him an hour or so, so had some time to kill.

We started to think about how much of a pain it would be to move out all the stuff out of the Element every night, so we decided to buy a larger tent.  We were pretty close to an outdoors store (Mountain Outfitters).  We went there and found what we were looking for right away.  The shop employee was super cool and we setup up the tent in the shop to have a look at it.  We bought it.

After dropping off the tent, we were hungry, so we hit a Japanese restaurant.  By then, her bikes were ready so we went to get them and got ready for our ride.  Our plan was to ride the short cut lap of about 15 miles from town (just like her race would start).  The first part of the ride is asphalt (3 miles or so) and a few more miles of gravel.  Most of the time it was just heading up at various pitches from 2% to 10%+.  The single track picks up after that….  here are two photos that pretty much sum up most of the trail, pine forest and old mines.

After our ride, we came back and set up our new tent…

All in all, it was a good day.  We will tackle some other riding tomorrow, some it on miles of paved bike path since Andrea doesn’t want to ride too hard the day before her race.  I still need to figure out where I will ride when she is racing… Probably will use the bike paths to get to some single track away from the race course.  On Monday, we will head to Fruita (at least that is our plan) and ride out there for 2 days before she has to take me back to Denver for my flight back to Memphis.

On Sunday, I had a long drive back from Wisconsin ahead of me… The drive back to Memphis is something along the lines of 11.5 hours or so with stops… As I was driving back, I was sort of lamenting that I felt good and the lack of racing in my immediate future…so when I stopped for gas in Rockville, I used my iPhone to search out the possibilities….  A  crit in Peoria, but it was at 4 pm and too far from home….  Searched on MOBRA, and found what I was looking for, a criterium in St. Louis at 4pm.  I hammered it in as the new destination on my GPS and saw my ETA was 2:30 pm…  perfect.  I checked the weather and it said rainy, but it is summer and that sort of forecast doesn’t always hold up.  I took the I-55 path and headed on down the road towards StL.

At Bloomington, Illinois, I made my lunch stop.  Had a footlong ham sub built up at Subway… Somewhere along the line the guy behind me and my sub got mixed up and I had one of his.  A meatball sub on white.  Yuk!  I was hungry and about 15 miles down the road, so I ate it….

Over the bridge, I missed the exit to I-44, so I had to take a cutover route from I-64 to get back to where I needed to go… I took the exit off 44, it suggested and followed the signs to the College… and ran into the course.  Success!

After registering, I geared up and started to ride around.  I ran into some local riders and followed them for a warmup.  My crank arm on my SRM was noisy (it was noisy on the ToAD races as well).  I decided it wasn’t getting worse, although it made it obvious when I was coming.  The field lined up with about 40 or so in the Cat 1/2/3 race.  The course had a power climb on one side and a bombing decent on the other.  Fairly non-technical, it was a fun race.  The race was full of local St. Louis teams.

The couse was fluid and and there were plenty of places to advance (and therefore to fall back if you weren’t careful).  There was a break of several that got off, but I wasn’t in position to get to up to it clear.  I tried a few moves, but they were either covered right away or I saw jammed up trying to attack the side around the corner.  With 2 laps to go, I heard the race announcer say something about the break lapping the field (or about to).  On a lark, I attacked hoping that the 2-to-go would turn into 1-to-go for the field with me clear…  I stayed clear, but there was still a lap to go when I came around.  I was caught up the hill and could barely hang onto the back of the field (nearly puking up that stupid meatball sub)… 32nd.  Oh well, it was worth a shot.

And then I drove the 4.5 hours to Memphis.  The race got the blood pumping so I was in good shape until the last hour or so, when I needed a little truck stop coffee to finish it out.

Tonight I took a closer look at my SRM..  The FSA non-drive side crank arm is failing.  Another one!  It took it off and dashed off an email to SRM.  Hopefully they have more NDS arms.  I put Andrea’s SRAM Quarq powermeter on my bike.  It is acting up (that is why she took it off her bike), I hope I can get it to work.

The second of the two race that I planned on racing up here in Wisconsin this trip was the Fond du Lac crit installment of Tour of America’s Dairyland.  The course is a nearly flat rectangle.  The wind was a brisk southern wind so the back stretch was a power alley and the finishing stretch was fast.  The strong wind made a pretty good place for reorganizing and even attacking as the field slowed into that wind every short lap.

My brother, sister-in-law, their daughter, and my mom were in attendance lined up on the finishing straight and the crowds were generally good for a Friday afternoon in downtown FdL.  I did a few laps of the course between the races, one too many as I was forced to line up nearly back row.

The first couple laps were about moving up and jumping across gaps that would form as surges and the head wind on the back stretch would split the field.  About 15 minutes in a rider had a small lead over the field and the field slowed up, so I attacked.  Jumping laterly into the headwind (wide road), I was clear in no time… (that headwind did hurt)

I ended up chasing him for 3 laps or so, before we both were coming back to the field.  Slid to the back, recovered, and moved back up.

There were a few short attempts at getting clear, but a good one went at about 30 minutes in.  A few minutes later, I jumped just after turn 2 (into the wind again) and caught the two riders a half-lap later.

two turns before I jumped again to the break

break, first iteration

The group added a few more (up to 7) and lost one.  We worked well together and gained big time over the field.  There were some primes thrown in, one of which was $50/$40 two-placer… I jumped after a guy going for it, and took the 2nd place on that one.  We soon folded back and knocked out the final 10 laps to the end.

separation after a prime.

On the last back stretch, I wasn’t sure how we were doing (never look back) and did a hard pull finishing the backstretch.  This and the other stuff before cost me and I ended up at the back of the group to finish 6th.   My brother and my mom took a bunch of photos which I will put up later, for now I just put a few good ones in this post.

On Wednesday, I made the 11+ hour drive up from Memphis to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.  The idea was to get up and visit my brother and race two stages of the Tour of America’s Dairyland…two stages of which are within 20 miles of his house.

The first up was the Greenbush road race stage.   The course was a rolling course with a few longish hills and a some long twisty descents.  Other than a few (well-marked) bad pavement section it was a perfect course.

The race started out up a hill and there was an attack straight away.  Another rider bridged up and they had a quite a gap heading down the descent.  The course turned up and I pushed a bit harder than the field and found myself between the field and the break…. I motored for a while but it looked like I was coming back to the field faster than I was going up to the leaders, so I pretty much sat up and dropped into the field.  One of the two came back and there were numerous other attacks.  I covered some and initiated some, but ended up that there was a break of 5 (?) that stayed away.  I tried some things to move up and attacked some later in the race, but ended up with the field leading to the end of the race.  I was a bit further back that I would have liked as we headed into Greenbush the last time and was moving up.   I had to let up when a rider crashed (hooked bars?) in the final stretch.  I was moving up on the uphill finish, but was really out of the places anyway.  I swerved around him and finished it out.  The field had thinned a little bit, so I probably ended up in the upper 20′s -th place in an original field of nearly 40?   Not a great result, but I did try to get into the move and it ended up that I couldn’t get into the right one.

Tomorrow is the Fond du Lac crit.  Should a fairly fast, flat crit.