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Today, I raced the A-race and ended up 4th of 4, but stayed on the lead lap at least. The 10 laps of the course took about 50 minutes. In retrospect, maybe I should have stayed in the B-race to get more racing in traffic. The A-race was spread all over the course. I did change my front chainring to 39, which was a big help. Unfortunately, my chain watcher wasn’t well adjusted for this change (I didn’t have the correct screwdriver to fix this) and I dropped my chain twice during the race. It is hard to shift it back on with no front derailleur! All-in-all, I am happy with my setup, it never dropped a chain with a lot of riding with my 42, I just need to adjust the guards for the smaller chain ring.

[Me on a easier part of the course]

[A photo of me that more represents my day, pushing the bike up the hill]

Andrea and Jarret raced for Memphis Velo in the B-race. Andrea won her first race in the women’s division. I was kind of out of it for the awards right after the A-race, so I don’t remember how Jarret did.

[Andrea hefting her 28# bike over the barriers]

[Jarret cresting the hill]

In any case, I took a lot of photos of the B-race and Andrea took some photos of the A-race. [photo pages]

Today, I went up to race the cyclocross race up in Jackson, Tenn. Jarret and I raced the B-race. I ended up 1st and Jarret 3rd in CX category 4. The course was sort of tough with a lot of up and down in parts. My single ring setup (42 x 12-27) was stretched to limit by the end of the 40 minute race and I started to run up the steep climb the last couple laps. All-in-all, I am happy with result and my effort, but my cross skills are really rusty. Serviceable, but rusty.

[This was early when this hill wasn't so bad....]

Andrea came along to take some photos.

Tomorrow, I plan to return to race (probably the A-race). Andrea will attempt her first race on her old mountain bike.

Last weekend I joined several other people from Memphis Velo and Memphis Motor Works at the Tour de Heart over in Marion, Ark. This is a pretty low key event, with the format (all racers in one field) making the first couple of miles interesting… The course is very very flat. The biggest challenge was the wind whipping over the farm fields.

The first 16 mile lap was uneventful for the most part. Somewhere near the middle of the 1st lap, I rolled off the front a little bit. I stayed out there for a few miles hoping for someone to jump across. No one did, so I dropped back to re-integrate since I had no interest in a 20 mile solo in the wind at this time of year.

At the start of the 2nd lap the eventual winner slipped away on his TT rig. This race is not USCF / USAC so there are no restrictions like that. The pace started to pick up in spurts. I went to the back of the field to see how many were left (a technique I would never recommend). Around mile 20 or so the field strung out with me on the wrong side of it. I didn’t want to just throw in the towel so I bridged up to the field (a hard 5 minute bridge) towing a handful of riders back up.

Fast forward a bit later and the field splinters again. I was caught out behind some riders and ended up getting gapped. I chased and chased solo for the last 6-7 miles but ended up behind the field and just 30 seconds ahead of the chase group behind of 5 or so riders. I ended up 12th. All in all a good workout but a poorly executed race on my part. I don’t think I was treating it seriously enough (which is to say I was treating it like a group ride).

Andrea ended up the first women in the race finishing up with the group that was just behind me. The winner of the race was MMW’s David Lacek who rode nearly the whole last lap solo out in the wind ahead of 10 in the main field at the end.

Anyway, time to talk about some real racing. I plan to race one or both of the races this weekend up in Jackson, Tenn. Jackson Spokes are putting on cyclocross races this weekend. Last weekend I took my cross bike out on the white & yellow trail at stanky creek after the Tour de Heart. My skills are still there and had no trouble with the trail itself, hurdling large logs barrier style, and running up embankments with my bike. I am about as ready as I can be while still focusing my off-season on road performance next year.

Well the weekend at the AT100 went well. Got up to Lake Sylvia campground Friday mid-day to set up camp. After setting up, Andrea and I headed back into Little Rock to check out downtown. We ended up going to the Clinton Presidential Library which is down on the river. The museum was interesting and dense with information…. although we went through it pretty fast.

The next day (Saturday), we joined a small crew of Warthogs (Memphis running club) to set up the Club Flamingo aid station. After helping setup the aid station, I took my cross bike out for a ride partially to check out some of the Forest Service Roads that I might drive on later take to bring Andrea out to her pacing start point.

I ended up riding the course out from Club Flamingo to Smith Mtn and then cutting over to Chili Pepper. From the there, I went up and around to FSR 114 following FSR961 and looped back through the turn around on FSR2. After that I looped back to Chili Pepper.

About 2-3 miles after going through that aid station, my luck ran out and I pinch flatted my rear tire on one of the numerous rocks on the road. When stopping to repair the tire, I found I had 2 tire levers, 2 tubes, 3 CO2 cartridges, and 0 inflators…. so I put a new tube in the tire and tried to inflate it some. That off course did not work. In order to give some more structure to the tire, I tore off the valve stem from the first tube and stuffed it in the tire. It was better, but still not good. On this setup, I limped back to Chili Pepper (3 miles?), hoping to find someone with a floor pump. Fortunately there was someone there with one and we used my last tube and inflated it. Back in business!

Knowing that I only had no more tubes or way to inflate one in any case, I decided to head directly back to Club Flamingo. About 3-4 miles from Chili Pepper, I had another flat. Now I had only one thing to do, ride it back… The road 961 is not bad, but turning on FSR2, the road goes up, way up. That 1.5 mile stretch is mostly straight up. It was tough going… when I finally got back to Club Flamingo, I was dead. All in all, I was gone for nearly 3 hours.

Getting back to the aid station, the aid station was jumping. Andrea was to pace a runner from about 54 miles to 78 miles (Chili Pepper to Club Flamingo), but he ended up withdrawing well before that point. She was ready to run, so she wanted to go on a run. We decided to go for a run out from Club Flamingo towards Pig Trail and further. At first, I did not think we would go all the way out to Lake Winona, but we ended up doing it. It got dark on the way back and we ran most of that with headlamps with the glow sticks put out for the racers coming the other way. We saw the leaders of the race pass us (going the other way) on the last couple miles after refilling our bottles at Pig Trail. Those last 3 miles to Flamingo are much more difficult in the dark with all the ruts and rocks to deal with, plus it is mostly uphill. That run was a 15 miles which we got done in 1:20 out, 0:10 at Winona, 1:35 back in the dark. All in all, we did it in 3:05, which was a bit better than the 3:30 we ran the 15 at the forest the weekend before last.

After the 3 hour cross ride and the 3 hour run, I was beat. We stayed and helped with the aid station until around midnight, but had to call it night after that. It was a long day.

Tomorrow I am going to hit the road with Andrea and go out to Ouachita mountains to check out the Arkansas Traveler 100 (AT100) race. I am not running this race or planning to run much at all, mostly just going along for the trip, some camping, and probably ride my cyclocross bike on some forest service roads…. The race is a 100 mile trail running race that starts Saturday morning. Andrea plans to pace one of the runners for 20 some miles. Allowed after about 50 miles which, for most will be in the dark by then, a pacer helps the runner stay on task and assists them in event. The fastest runners will be under 18 hours all the way up to 32 hours or so. I will be helping out at an aid stations that are spread out on the course every 3-5 miles. I really don’t know exactly what to expect, so it will be interesting. I probably will do a (shorter) trail race or two this winter.

On the other thread, I received the Polar CS600 bike computer in the mail yesterday. I installed on my bike without too much trouble. The main issue I had was the mounting bracket is designed for a round stem/handlebar and my steam is more square than round. I did get it on there and secure for a short ride this evening. On the ride, the speed sensor was rock solid during my short Cordova-Lakeland (suburban-residential) spin. The heart rate was all over the place. At one point early in the ride, I watched my HR start at 110 bpm and then climb up to and over 200 bpm and then bounce around in the high 160 bpm - 200 bpm range. It did not seem to be any correlation to nearby power lines, etc….  Maybe it is just an issue with the new strap… I will have to wait and see.  Hopefully it will come around and start working correctly.

Sunday, Andrea and I went out for an epic (for me) run. Considering I have been only doing runs in the 4-6 mile range (< 1 hour) at Shelby Farms (alt link), Stanky Creek, and Lakeland… it was a big step up to run the Shelby Forest trails. The distance is about 15 miles. We took 3 short breaks and walked a little bit, but we basically ran the whole thing in about 3.5 hours (course is the 25km Swamp Stomper course). Not that fast, but that is the longest I have ever walked or run ever in a day. I have run a couple of 10 milers on the street and hiked as long as 12 miles I think…(with a pack, no less).

The worst deal of the run was that my Polar 720i HRM watch laid down on me during the course of the run. The screen started to fade after hour 1 and was out completely at the nature center turn around. I sent it off to Polar for repair….I don’t know what the turn around will be, so I ordered one of the new CS600 computers. I hate to switch technology but it looks like Polar is phasing out the S-series watches.  If they can fix my 720i I will use to my non-primary bikes, running, etc.

The lower level CS computers were not interesting at all due to the requirement to upload only to the polar website. It is not so much that I won’t have access to the internet (I pretty much do all the time), it is that I don’t like to have all this data only on their website. It will be interesting to see if this will work better than the 720i which has been generally pretty reliable for me. I think the newer CS are using a different transmitter frequency.