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I was not Tulsa Tough on Sunday at all. I warmed up and felt pretty good considering it was the third race of the weekend… we started and then charged up the hill…. I just couldn’t stay with them. I chased back on before the sharp hairpin and then proceeded to overestimate the field’s braking and ended up having to chase down a gap all the way through the start / finish. 2nd lap, repeat…gap grew…. by the 3rd lap, they were gone and my race was in countdown mode. Needless to say, it was a disappointing result since it has been a while since I have been left behind in a crit. This one was a bit unique that it featured a short (800ft) pitch at 7%, a small roller and another 5% short grade.

I got pulled after only 6 laps (14 minutes of racing). Man that was rough. When I got back and downloaded my power, I saw why it was so hard. It was so hard because it was so hard. Average power was nearly 300W despite the fact that 10-15% of the course was a no-pedal (steep downhill to corner) and the NP was 348W. Either I need to lose 20 lbs. or gain 20W… I guess I will need to work on the 20W.

I plan to take a non-race weekend this weekend. After that I will probably do 4 in a row:

1. Tour de Lousiane SR (Covington, La)
2. Avery Trace / Cookeville Crit (Tenn)
3. Smith & Newphew / Marx & Bensdorf GP (Memphis!)
4. Plein Air Classic (Oxford, Miss)

Then it is time for a mid season break!

Another day, another so-so result. 54th. I felt pretty good, but couldn’t move up far enough in the end and ended up in the back of the diminished field.

The race played out much like last year with a few random crashes thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately, Frogge was mixed in one with about 3 to go and that essentially ended his race (just a bit scuffed up). There isn’t much else to say about this race other than I just couldn’t get it done. Tomorrow’s race will be a first time course for me since the Sunday race was stormed-out last year for Cat 3. The hill will either be good for me or be the source of my demise. The average power numbers for the crit today were pretty low (compared to other races), so it wasn’t a lack of fitness, but just a lack of positioning and opportunity (or failure to take such opportunities).

Frogge and I made the 6 hour drive west to Tulsa to race the weekend with the Cat 3’s. Just as last year, the fields are over 100 strong, so the outcome is almost a matter of luck as it is skill/fitness. Lining up, we were both not in a great spot (it is surprising how fast 100 guys can line up). From go, I was hampered by some clip-in issues in front of me, but then settled in to try moving up.

For most of the race, I was towards the back of what was left of our field… Frogge was usually about 10-15 place ahead towards the middle. Getting up to him (or for him to move up further) was pretty tough, but it could be done in a few places. Like walking up a down escalator, whatever gains you made w.r.t. to the field, often would evaporate when any one of a number of things were to happen. Somebody would jam a corner ahead of you and have to brake… Or you would get behind the aftermath of any of the 4-5 crashes I saw out there. I was significantly held back by one at about 15 minutes (locked up brakes, went sideways, but stayed up and on the pedals somehow)…that put me to the back… another one up at the same corner (corner 6 at the top of the course) also hurt. The worst one was a pileup at the S/F line as they were showing 2 to go. I basically had to stop and get around several piles of riders and then chase. I was nearly back to the field, when the rang 1-to-go and then I was forced to chase (20′ off the back of the snaking lined out field). I was scored 59th. Well out of the money, it was not a great race for me. (To top that off, I left my Garmin in the hotel room so I can’t even get some good power data out of the ordeal). Anyway, that is racing.

After our race, we hung around for the rest of the races. Womens P12, Mens 1/2, and Pro/1 had racers on the course continousely after our race until well after 10p. The venue was a pocket of trendy bars (Blue Dome District) in a warehouse type part of town. The popularity of this as a spectactor sport clearly had grown year over year, with lots of people hanging around to watch. Most of the center parts of the course had people at least 1 deep, with a good bit standing in the diagonal part where the course came together (figure 8 style with 1 right – 3 lefts – 1 right – 3 lefts). Our race was pretty fast (Frogge reported 26.5 mph), the women’s race looked equally fast, the 1/2 race was a bit faster, and the P/1 race was a lot faster. Friday night is a potentially more sketchy course with the big fields and not much elevation to break up the field. Just as last year, I expect this year’s Saturday race to go down a bit differently.

Stage 3 of the West Feliciana Classic was another road race on the same roads as Stage 2, but run in the opposite direction. The way it played out and felt made this more of a change than I would have guessed.

Just as in stage 2, two riders were off the front early in the 1st lap and picked up the two hot spot at the KOM hill. Not too long after the KOM, we picked them up and then the attacking ensued. Since the race was longer (80 miles) and I used up all my long range FTP+ motor on Saturday, I was glad to see that race generally rode pretty easy for most of the miles due to dangling breaks and teams trying to keep their man up in the G.C. Since I was the lone Memphis Velo’er, this worked out well.

Just as was the case the day before, there was some wild surges that occurred whenever someone jumped out of the field. Mostly I covered, I only got in one surge that turned into a mini-break of about 3 minutes of duration. After several attacks where sent and recovered, Frank Moak (3rd G.C., Herring Gas) jumped and Matt Davis (the G.C. leader, La’sport) followed… Given that their positions were earned in the Stage 1 TT, they quickly built a gap. Since this put the 2nd man in jeopardy, Precision Bikes was forced to give chase. This meant some more free riding for the rest. When they were brought back, the attacks resumed… after several more miles, Frank and Matt got clear again. And the field let them off.

Matt and Frank for 1st and 2nd (photos by Andrea Wilson)

So we rode the last 15 miles for 3rd with no one willing or able to bring them back. As the miles remaining dwindled, the attacks become more frequent and serious with Herring in about all of them. As we got down to the last 2 miles, the pace slowed a bit and there was one Herring off, so I jumped. I closed the gap to him and we worked together, but were caught at the 200m flag. Pack finish. I think I ended up a few places up due to several no shows for the Sunday stage, but I basically got my money back (payout about equal to entry).

Sprint for 4th (3rd was just out of frame, young Jr rider in the middle was finishing up his race, not placing in the 1/2/3’s.). (photo by Andrea Wilson)

Finishing up a tough weekend at the back of the field after being caught at 200 to go. (photo by Andrea Wilson)

My major goals for the weekend were met. I didn’t lay up to hold my TT G.C. position – in the process I lost a few spots, but what is the difference between 15th and 17th? ($5 dollars?)

I didn’t lose focus or tactical awareness, I always knew who was up the road and got up the road myself several times. Last weekend at Rocky Mount, I failed to notice the winning break(s) leave the group. Just sloppy.

On the positive, Andrea finished her sweep of the women’s race by winning the road race again by soloing away.

The morning started out with a 5 mile TT over a rolling course. I ended up rolling an 11:23, which I was pretty happy with. I am starting to get pretty consistent with with my TT efforts, the times will come down with practice (which I need to do more of). This put me +1:17 off the leader and in 16th in the 1/2/3 field. Not quite as good as I hoped, but it was something to work on.

After only a few hours (3 to be exact), the 2nd stage was held on a rolling loop on the north side of town. The crit course was flooded out, so they ended up running the road course from Sunday in reverse and subtracting another lap for us to make it a 58 mile event (2 laps).

My plan was to lay low for the first lap… well, I ended up jumping with two guys pretty early in the race (maybe 4 miles out). We traded pulls for a while, but we were only in the clear for maybe 2-3 miles. For a while after that, I tried to conserve for the long gradient at the end of each of the laps up a twisty road. There would be no easy sitting in as numerous attacks were initiated, leaving two up the road. Even after they were clear, the attacks continued, but from other teams. Despite this at the start of the hill, the pace up the grade was pretty sedate, so I decided to take a flier. Pretty quickly, I was out of sight (not a straight road) and was closing in the two up the road. I was probably within 30 seconds of them when the field closed me down… Time to reset and recoop. The field ended up coming all together not too long after that, but the severity of the attacks really didn’t seem to change much.

For most of the second lap, I again tried to move up. In general, I felt much better on the second lap against the attacks. Either I was getting warmed up or the attacks were getting weaker. Probably a bit of both. So on the 2nd time up Jones-Vaughn Creek Rd, I decided for a repeat performance, this time a bit further up the hill and with 100% commitment this time.

I was rewarded with some of the hardest riding I have done in a long time. Almost all of this road is uphill or false flat so it was easy to keep the watts up. I made it to the end of the Jones Vaughn Creek Rd which never seemed to end. The first part of the next road was also uphill and I was starting to fade. Thankfully, the road started to roll and I was able to recover and keep my speed up. In the end, I only made it another couple of miles… about 22 minutes in total from mile 46 nearly to mile 55. The race was only 3 miles further.

(I also was able to demonstrate my FTP power to myself in an end of race situation. I haven’t been able to motivate myself enough to do it in “clinical” testing of a solo power test. Nothing like a field breathing down your neck to get you going.)

Not being a sprinter, I tried again with less than a mile to go, but my legs were dead. I suspect the outcome would been the same with or without this last ditch effort, ended up losing a handful of seconds to the field. I have zero regrets on making this move. I was throwing down the gauntlet and hoping to vault myself from the small money of the placings in the teens to a top 10 or even top 5 result. There is zero point in trying to defend 16th place.

As for the LAMBRA points, I might get some, but I doubt there is the 5 needed to have it score for the Cat 3. In any case, it doesn’t matter, I am racing the 1/2/3 field, not a couple Cat 3s. It will be interesting to see how I will do in a Cat 3 only field next weekend (Tulsa) or later at our hometown race (S&N/M&B Gran Prix).

Andrea soloed away at the mid-lap KOM to win her race adding to her lead she started by winning the time trial by over 30 seconds. Granted this isn’t a stacked regional field, but it is pretty awesome that she can be trail running and mountain biking, and other random stuff and still bring it on race day. I don’t think she is done road racing, just not as an all-consuming obsession (required to be successfully nationally).

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Update: my little escapade put me off the field by 13 seconds at the end, slipping my placing from 15th to 17th in G.C. overnight. But that is okay. It wouldn’t be racing if I just sat in until the sprint. The payout drops from $70 to $65 after 15th place down to 20th.

Fortunately last weekends spill didn’t really affect my ability to ride, so I haven’t really missed a beat. Other than my 2x day bandage maintenance, life has been pretty normal. I still have a bit of a shiner that has migrated from the right eye down to my cheek at this point. So, onward with the plan. Andrea and I will be heading back down to St. Francisville for the West Feliciana Classic S.R.

This is a first year race, but the payout for the 1/2/3 is pretty good and I like the area after seeing for the first time at Rouge Roubaix back in March. The weekend promises no gravel roads, but the high chance of T-storms might make the conditions epic anyway. The original plan for the race was a 5-mile TT, a 60 minute crit, and a 80 mile RR. The crit course is flooded out, so they modified the plan to do a similar RR on Saturday afternoon (reverse of Sunday). Same course, but 1 lap less (56 miles).

This week has been a pretty busy week, but I managed to get a bunch of bike related things done. First of all, my front tubular wheel. Looking at it, I clearly didn’t use enough glue in putting it on. Since the tire was in perfect condition, I put it back on the wheel with a glue job that I could rely on. I also deflated and checked my work, all looks good.

On my TT bike, the seatpost fail that occured the week before last, messed up my position. I was mostly focused on getting back together on the side of the road and didn’t really followup in adjusting the position. I didn’t notice, but my saddle was about 1 – 1.5″ back too far on the rails. Can’t quantify the effect, but I am sure it didn’t help last weekend. Whilst packing up for last weekend, one of the screws that hold the rear derailleur hanger in pace came out. The last thread on the hanger itself stripped out. Solution, take the bolt to Lowe’s and see if was a standard screw. Thankfully, it was a M4-0.7 and they had some short ones (8mm) so I could get it reattached (albeit a phillips head instead of 2mm allen).

Last night, finally got around to tearing down my FSA SRM crank to try to figure out why my crank creaks when in the small ring. It was a known issue last weekend, but I knew that I would stay in the 53 all weekend. The design of the SRM-FSA crank is strange that both chain rings are bolted in from the inside with five T-30 Torx bolts. I took it all apart and cleaned all the parts, and put it all back together to a torque spec of 100 in-lbs. The 53 chainring is 130 BCD and the 39 chainring is 110 BCD, so there was a total of 10 bolts to install. I didn’t see anything obviousely wrong on the crank or the rings, but one of the bolts sheared off when torqueing it down. That was probably the problem. I robbed a bolt from my other FSA crank K-Force light that uses standard bolting. I then put it all together using the following (which has worked)

• Clean all parts with a rag… including inside the BB bearings, etc
• Clean the splines and the spline insert with IPA (70%), let dry.
• Apply a light coating of grease (Phil Wood waterproof) to the inside of the outboard bearings
• Insert drive side crank – spindle (one piece)
• Wipe off the splines to make sure that no grease is on the splines
• Liberally apply (fill) the channels with Loctite 641 on both the splines and the spline insert on the non-drive crank arm
• Put it together making sure to have the crankarms at 180 degrees.
• Lightly grease the fixing bolt and the dust cap (extractor).
• TIghten the fixing bolt to a moderate torque.
• Reinstall the dust cap using needle nose pliers to hold it while you spin the cranks.
• Wait 24 hours to ride.

Unfortunately, I finished this procedure this morning, so I won’t want to test it out until tonight or tomorrow at the race. I hope the chainring bolt that was apparently cracked was the source of the creaking. I ran out of the Loctite 641 fixing compound, but expect to get my order in next week (ordered two bottles).

Now my only concern is my seasonal allegeries. I hope the fact we are going 350 miles south will help get me into a different allergen situation. I don’t have headaches, but only some congestion that clears when I ride.

The weekend, I will concluded my four weekend run of Friday vacation days and long weekend with Tulsa (before that Fayetteville, TN – Shreveport, LA – St. Francisville, LA). After that I am home a weekend then back to down to Convington / New Orleans, Lousiana for Tour de Louisiane. The end of June is our hometown race (Smith & Nephew / Marx & Bensdorf Gran Prix) and then a 4th of July weekend race in nearby Oxford, Miss. After all of that, it will be more than time for a mid-season break. Andrea and I once again plan to head up north to Michigan and Wisconsin to see my parents and my brother.

Went down to Shreveport with Dale and met Frogge down there. Frogge and I raced in the 1/2/3 race. The road race went pretty well, I felt pretty good and covered some attacks and initiated some others but didn’t get in the correct ones. Pack finish for both Frogge and me. A total of 9 riders were off the front or way off the front, leaving the field over 6 minutes behind.

The second stage was a time trial along the river in Shreveport. Had some issues with my TT bike lately (seat clamp fell apart the week before, derailleur hanger was being held in by the skewer, etc, but in general everything was all set). After my disappointing performance at MSGP (at least it was to me), I wanted to roll a good TT. I ended up at 10:46 a few seconds off the time Frogge posted. I don’t think it made much of a difference, but my saddle was way back from where I set it before the whole seat clamp issue. Eventually, I will get my TT bike setup correctly and keep it there! Our TT times put us 16th and 17th in the G.C. Okay, but not where we wanted to be.

The final stage was the circuit race down an underdeveloped industrial park that allowed the organizers to close off a L-shaped boulevard. The course was this L-shape with two 180 degree turns at either end. Seeing the course, I expected the accelerations were going to be tough, in that respect it didn’t disappoint. I felt pretty good after the first couple of laps and started to get a bit more active in the race… it might have lead to a few times when I got gapped off the field out of a turn-around. But I was able to recover and get back into the mix.

At just after 60 minutes of the 70 minute race… it happened…. I was headed around one of the 180 degree turns, maybe a bit more sharply than before as I got more bold….bam. I hit the ground. I rolled my front tire. Race over… nice gash on my forehead, a few other abrasions, but other-wise okay. DNF for me. Frogge finished with the field.

W.r.t. my tire…. This year I am learning to glue on tires after a 1-1/2 years of using Tufo Extreme Tape on my other wheelset. My concept was by gluing up all road season long, I would get practiced enough to glue on cyclo-cross tires. The procedure I used was the one on the Park tools website, but it is pretty much the same as others I have seen. 2-3 coats on the rim, 1 coat on the base tape, 1 fresh coat on the rim and you are done. Thin coats was the advice. The front tire and my first rear tire were glued using this procedure and probably (apparently) too little glue. I had since flatted out two rear tires and now I am on my third rear tire, each glued using more and more glue. The front is the same. At this point, I haven’t done the whole post-mortem, got back to Memphis just in time to get stitched up at a minor medical place before they closed.

Dale had a pretty good weekend and gained some great experience. He is just starting out racing (as a cat 5). He has done races but they have always been spread out over time. His circuit race turned out to be pretty epic with 50°F temperatures, wind, and driving rain. Everyone stayed up in his circuit race. If it wasn’t for my front tire, the 1/2/3 would have had a safe weekend. I am sure glad I didn’t take anyone else out.

I took photos of the Cat 5 race. Dale took a couple photos of the Cat 4 race and a bunch of the Cat 1/2/3 race.

Instead of heading west to race the Joe Martin Stage race, I went with Andrea for her first mountain bike race. Rather than go small, a little 2-3 hour jaunt, she wanted to start out at Dirt, Sweat, and Gears 12-hour race in Fayetteville, Tenn.

The plan was camp out and for Andrea to race DSG, solo on her new Niner Jet9. I brought my road bike along so I could go out on a road ride at some point during the day. I emailed Kevin Freeman (promoter of Beat the Freak cx series) and he sent me a good route. So we loaded up the car with all the gear and headed east.

Friday night was a bit windy, but otherwise the weather was good. In the pre-race fesitvities, they rigged up a road frame with 20″ wheels and had a time-trial contest over the grassy area where the start/finish would be the next day. Andrea lined up in the group right away and posted a pretty good early time (57 seconds?). The big issue was that bottom bracket height was so low that the pedals were constantly hitting the ground… I went a bit later and managed to post up a time in the high 40’s… The best time ended up being in the mid-30’s. It was all about technique and my start was less than awesome as I barely got going at first until I figured out how to make that bike go.

before

The next day, the weather was supposed to turn rainy… The prediction came true about 2 minutes before the shotgun lemans start. The first lap had the leaders coming around in about an hour, which was expected. The amateurs however, really ended up being stretched out… In fact, by the time Andrea came by the tent after completing lap 1 and doing a bike wash, 2:25 had passed.

It turned out the rain had turned the course to a muddy slog that involved a lot of pushing the bike along… The weather was improving and the sun came out. So after she started on her 2nd lap, I geared up and went out for a ride. It was sunny for the first two hours of my hilly road ride, and then it started raining again, this time for about an hour.

Out on course, the rain, then sun, and then rain again turned the course into sticky peanut butter mud. When I rolled back into the campsite (from my road ride), about 4 hours had passed and Andrea had not came through again… What she was doing was pushing, carrying, and dragging her 80-100# bike through the ups and downs of the 10 mile course…. After a while, she came back to the camp, but hadn’t yet completed the lap yet since it was slow going (one could leave the course as long as you went back to the same place).

Her bike was pretty well encased in mud.

She came back to get to get my road bike… She wasn’t allowed to just run the trail without a bike, but she could take a change and my Felt at ~17#, was much lighter than her 27# Jet9, and easier to shoulder.

Even with the road bike, it took her another hour or so to cover the rest of the course. A photographer got a photo of her riding across the finish line. She did it at the urging of the announcer….

Here are a bunch of photos from the start and a few from the middle of the race….

Well, sort of old.

Here is a scan of a print out of photo (thus the quality!) from either 2001 nationals (B-race) or the SuperCup the next day. This was at Patterson Park in Baltimore. I don’t remember who took the photo.

Andrea and I spent a rainy afternoon moving the stones. I turns out that 2 yards is quite a bit of stone (it was the minimum for delivery).

Anyway, here is the result:

The side yard in front the fence also doesn’t drain well, so we pretty much tore it up like a cyclocross race in the wet.

Even after changing the job scope to include a 3′ wide strip down to the bottom of the yard, we still ended up with 1/2 to 3/4 yard remaining. We consolidated it and decided to wait until it dries up before moving the rest somewhere? Other side yard? Maybe the side yard in front of the fence (muddy part shown above)?