roadcx.net

Well, I failed to meet my time goal for the state TT…but for good reason. The course was a lot harder than I imagined it would be. For the 40 km out-and-back course, we ended up doing just over a 1000 feet of climbing. The longest flat stretch of road was probably only about 0.5 mile long. (See profile below for what it looked like.)

I ended up running a 61:10 which was good enough for a 5th of 9 cat 3’s. The winner ran in the 57’s, which was my original goal. My legs were so sore all week leading up to the race, I guess from the last two weeks of training, so I will take this result.

The funniest thing is that on the start which was uphill, I was under-geared (53×19, I think) so I popped a wheelie and had to unclip to recover, but the hills were the real reason for my time, not a couple seconds lost at the start. The eventual winner started 30 seconds behind me and passed me 2.5 miles in. He would be the last to overtake me thankfully. At the end, I started passing the later starting Cat IV’s and was held up a little by one (there was a car that waiting behind them to pass as I approached… this probably only meant a few seconds delay).

Next weekend is the Allanti RR/TT + crit. The road race is the Tennessee state RR, so I hope to do well on the course. The course looks to be just a rolling as the terrain of the TT (the start is only about 10 miles away).

—

Bill Parsons took some photos at the State TT, here are two that I got of me…

Well, I am less than 24 hours away from my first serious run at a 40 km time trial. Although I don’t expect to win (cat 3), I hope that I can post a respectable time much less than an hour (which I have never done). Most of the reasons why I never have had to do with fitness/conditioning, lack of interest (in TT), and lack of equipment.

2001 Maryland / D20 Sr. TT

• Bike: Trek 1200 with old Scott clip-ons. Regular wheels. Skinsuit, regular helmet.
• 40 km. I think I ran about 60-61 minutes for 9th place.

2004 Tennessee State TT

• Bike: Trek 5200 with old Scott clip-ons. Regular wheels. Regular team kit, reg. helmet.
• 40 km (short), 63:55 (missed start by about 3 minutes!) ~61 actual, <24 mph average.

2007 Tennessee state time trial

• Bike: Kuota Kebel / Force (road setup) with clip-on bars.
• Wheels: Zero 038 carbon wheels
• Helmet: standard road (Bell Sweep)
• Kit: road (bibs and jersey)
• Result: 24.1 mph over 17.3 miles (30 km). (43:02) 5th/5 in 30-39, would have been 8th/9 in Cat 3 last year.
• Condition: felt I never could turn over pedals, legs were stiff.

Tomorrow (2008 Tennessee State TT)

• Bike: Kuota Kebel / Force (TT setup)
• Wheels: Zero 038 carbon front, Zipp 900 disc
• Helmet: Rudy Project TT helmet/visor
• Kit: skinsuit
• Goal: 26 mph over 24.86 miles. (57:36) [have averaged 25mph this year on a 21 mile TT several hours after mountain climb road stage at Tour of Arkansas]
• Condition: we’ll see, but legs are feeling stiff this week (after a tough weekend). Rode TT bike moderate/easy on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

Which looks faster?

versus

I am also expecting Andrea to run a hot time trial. She has a legitimate shot at winning the Tennessee State time trial for Cat 1-3 women. She has a new bike (maybe too new-she rode it for the first time yesterday) and, like me, is much faster at all her time trials this year. The defending champ (K. Sass) beat her by 3:35 on a 30 km course. I would expect a similar performance out of Kirsten, we’ll see how much improved Andrea is this year (both equipment and power). Also of note, is the return of Lori Jug to Tennessee (also on Team Kenda Tire), who ran similar times to Kirsten in the past (2005). I predict it will be close.

I was looking at some photographs that Mark Allen took of me out on CD Smith Rd. during the 4 mile TT (part of the Smith & Nephew / Marx & Bensdorf Gran Prix). He was down by the start and the finish, so I have two photos to compare. My start photo is pretty good showing more or less that I was settling into the correct position (although I am looking down change gears in this photo).

At the end of the 4 miles, I have obviously poured it on at the end up the slight grade to the finish, but it clear that I have let my position slip.

The state 40 km TT is this Saturday, and I can see that I need to lower my stem some, but it sort of late to make big changes. I might try to move the 25 mm aero spacer to the top of the bar on Wednesday to see if I could tolerate it. That would put my integrated bar right down on the headset. I would need to get a different, probably TT specific frame to go any lower…

Another sort of annoying problem is the Vision Tech brake caps. They started to pop off on me (I had to chase one down on a busy road a few weeks back). I ended up just using a bit of electrical tape to keep them on the bike…

Well, it has been a while since I have posted up anything, but it has been a busy time since I got back. Work had a bunch of things going on & visitors, etc. And my training has entered a higher volume phase. The last two weeks I have logged about 15 hours each week with 273 and 252 miles for the last two (Monday to Sunday) weeks. The plan was to get some volume in before doing a couple of races.

Next weekend is the Tennessee state TT. This will be my 2nd long time trial on my Kuota Kebel TT rig. The first was the day 1 afternoon TT at Tour of Arkansas (22 miles), but this was only hours after the Mt. Magazine road race stage. The state TT (40 km) will be by itself, so it will be a good test. I was able to average 25 mph at ToA, so I should be sub-60 if the distance is a true 40 km.

The next week (August 2nd-3rd) is the Tenn. state RR (Allanti RR). The course is a new one this year that looks to be slightly easier in terms of hills, but I haven’t looked it at too hard. The weekend includes at 10 mile TT and a Sunday parking lot crit (uses the large parking lot at Titan’s stadium).

After those weekend, I will be headed to Estonia for a work trip, so I will miss the Meridian / Cuba challenge down in Mississippi / Alabama. I am coming back about a week before River Gorge / BMW Omnium in Chattanooga. I think I can carry most of my fitness through my 10 day trip if I pick up running and maybe finding a rental bike to ride some. After the BMW Omnium, I will probably race out a Oak Ridge (September 6th/7th) and then do the Pepper Place crit (Sept 13th). The Pepper Place crit has picked up a common sponsor (Smith & Nephew), so this race went from a race I was going to do to one that I am really going to do. They even set it up to allow a Cat 3 to double up doing both the Cat 3 and the Cat 1/2/3 race.

Today was a good cap to long hot weekend. Andrea and I joined a large group at RB’s on Saturday to do the B-ride (easier pace, but more like the A ride of this description), to knock out a total of nearly 88 miles in the heat. We didn’t roll back to my apt until almost 2 pm. Today, it was the usual… from Germantown to the Outdoor’s ride and back (70+ miles).

After getting back and eating lunch, we went out to catch the end of the Trek factory demo at Herb Parsons. They had all sorts of bikes there (including road), but we went to ride some full suspension bikes. Both of us had never ridden a suspension bike, let alone a full suspension. I took out an aluminum Gary Fisher 29′er, while Andrea road a pricey Trek carbon bike. We both pretty much don’t know what we are doing out there, but at least these bikes are pretty forgiving. I might have to reconsider my plan about getting a fixed gear bike and instead get a mountain bike for winter training.

Last night Andrea and I were talking about the return trip to Memphis. We decided to see if we could make it all the way home in one shot… Since she is flying out for a conference on Thursday morning, we wanted to get back early on Wednesday… so that meant driving Wednesday morning from Fond du Lac wouldn’t work. Our original idea was to go down about 12-13 hours and then get a room. With 2 dogs and bikes on the back of the car, it is sort of a hassle…

We left this morning about 7:50 am (eastern) and headed south. Stopped in Escanaba and grabbed some Baroni’s spaghetti sauce (made up in Calumet, sort of a taste of the U.P. thing). On the way down we stopped by Fond du Lac to pickup some water bottles we left at my brothers (only 2 miles off our route) and get some New Glarus beer to take back (three 6-packs). Somewhere just south of Normal, IL we hit the rain… about 150 miles of it.. lightning and all. We drove out of it probably 40 minutes before St. Louis. There we stopped to eat south of St. Louis around 7pm and the tail of it caught up with us… it only took about 20 minutes to clear that part of it. The worst part of any trip is usually the end. The last 100 miles up I-55 to West Memphis took the both of us to knock off without falling asleep. We ended up rolling into Andrea’s around midnight. 975 miles. 17:15. 56.5 mph.. probably close to 50 gallons of fuel.

View Larger Map

I am glad I have tomorrow to recover from this trip. Vacation is a very good thing.

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 passed 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.