A few weeks back I picked up a new clincher wheelset. I ended up choosing the Dura Ace carbon reinforced aluminum wheels. The version I got is tubeless ready which should open up some interesting options in the future. For now, I really like these wheels and they roll great, as they should at over a grand for the wheelset.
Our adopted cat hanging out between my road bikes. Chunky Monkey Ninja Kitty. She is settling in well with the dogs and showing them who is boss.
Well, it is not as bad as all of that, I haven’t raced out of town since the Oxford July 4th weekend. I had an unusually long racing break in the middle of the season. I started off heading up north to Wisconsin and Michigan and generally recharged my mental batteries. Once I got back, I started to ramp up intensity and volume in the sort of stochastic way that I do. Thankfully I got through most of it with my SRM in working order.
Right after the training race at the beginning of the month, my FSA SRM crank decided to start to fail on the drive-side crankarm. Having been experienced with this issue (non-drive arm failed in April), I spotted it right away and stopped using the crank before it got scary. I mailed it off to Colorado and I hope I will get something back before too long.
In the meantime, I have been riding on the road, for the first time in 8-9 months, without a power meter. I put my super light FSA K-Force Light crank that I got on closeout earlier this spring (and which has been collecting dust since then). I ended up capping off my training ramp up with a moderately heavy week with lots of group rides (as I like). I only rode 5 days, but all were at least 50 mile days.
Part of the reason that I rode only 5 days was that, on Wednesday, I attended a new officials clinic put on by Vicki Mackzum to get my USAC class-C officials license. I am not sure when I will use it right off, but it was worth it just for the perspective in understanding how races are judged. Also, I will know which official I should talk to at a particular event when there is a problem.
With all of this time at home (relatively speaking anyway), I have been working on various projects around the house. I have replaced most of the light switches in the house with rocker switches (removing the standard toggle switches) and added countdown timers to the bathroom fans. Is it strange that I find electrical work sort of relaxing? Maybe it is so relatively easier to understand compared to chemical interactions at work or physiological changes w.r.t. to training for cycling.
Another quick project to finally trim out the 2 yards of stone project is installing the loose landscape timbers that have more or less kept the stone and lawn apart. Not really hard, but just time consuming to level the ground and then nail them down (I used 10″ galvanized spikes driven through a hole I drilled in the timbers).
On the bike front, other than shuffling around cranksets on my road bike (SRM / regular crank swap out), I started to mess around with my Polar power meter on my TT rig. On my Sunday ride (previous Sunday), I was getting pretty annoyed at the power readings cutting in and out when I rode my TT bike with Andrea (after riding my creaking SRM / FSA crank about 2 miles before returning to do a bike change).
When I first got the WIND power meter, I had problem with chainline over the pickup, but this problem seemed to be related to the cadence magnet. The magnet that came with was pretty thin and I found out why. I took a magnet from my bin of parts and found that when in the biggest gears, the magnet would lodge in the chainwheel teeth (fun!). I put on a thinner one and made that work. The next day (Monday) I did a long solo ride (3×20 min intervals). The first two went well, but the 3rd one was plagued with constant cadence/power cutouts. It got to the point that had to just ignore it and finish the workout.
On Sunday, I spent a few minutes putting the original Polar magnet back on and this time putting it out past the pedal spindle. A quick run down the street showed the difference… night and day. The power picked up right away and gave reasonable numbers. I will give it a go on a ride on Wednesday night.
With that, I will conclude the post with a quick CX preview. I have my Ridley X-Fire that I build up last January and my CrossBow (flipped over) which I am going to upgrade to SRAM Force (and retire the Dura Ace 9). Does anyone need a DA 9 drivetrain?
My biggest question at this point is whether to continue to just run tubeless or to take the tubular leap for CX this year?
Races…. Meridan/Cuba (1/2/3), then State RR/Oak Ridge (3), and finishing up at BMW Omn./River Gorge in Chattanooga (30+? or 1/2/3?).
Yesterday, the Marx & Bensdorf cycling team hosted another training race up on the short 5 mile loop north of Arlington. The course is lightly rolling with a 3/4 mile or so hill up to the finish. For us in the 1/2/3, it meant going up it 10 times for a total of just over 50 miles.
The field was fairly small with 12-13 starting. M&B had 6 at the start and Memphis Velo, we had 2 of the racers in the field. The rest of the field was made up of lone riders from various teams from the region.
I knew that with so many riders, M&B would be looking to put someone up the road and if I could do anything about it, I needed to be one of them. The first lap saw some attacks from various teams but nothing got very far. On the second lap Robby from M&B rolled off a bit and bridged up to him and past him hoping to get something going…. When he didn’t pull through I suspected that it was a no go, but I waited up at a corner by taking it pretty slow. The second time not coming through (or even staying with me) made me realize that it wasn’t the proper break so I shouldn’t expect any help … I rode it out up the hill at my own pace and was back with the rest over the top.
On the third time up the hill, there was an attack (not sure exactly who started it), but it ended up with a TriStar (Tower), Herring (Moak), and two M&B (Parker and Funston) getting clear. Aaron ended up dropping back after a 1/2 lap or so, leaving the rest to gain time. The time checks were pretty random, but the gap grew to about a minute by 5th or 6th lap. Then the rains came. I expected that given the radar and forecast, but it usually takes a few minutes to sort it out and get soaked before you can just get on with racing.
Onward we pushed into the driving rain and started to get serious about pulling the break back in laps 6 or 7, when we heard the gap was at 30 seconds. When it is raining hard, I would much rather pull into it than be trying to draft and not run into back wheel of another with fogging glasses and road spray. I think it was on the 8th time up the hill we caught up with Funston dropping back from the other two leaders. This meant that for at least for a while, we were off the hook and putting M&B at the front to chase. And they did. We caught the two leaders at the top of the 9th time up the hill leaving us all together (albeit with a smaller group by then – we were down to 7).
On one of the smaller hills about a third of the way around the final lap, a Kodak Galleries rider (no name, sorry) attacked off solo. We pretty much didn’t give it much chance and let him build up a gap. Funston and then me did some pulls late in the lap, but he was not to be caught. The other 4 riders in between powered up the hill leaving Bryant and me behind for 6th and 7th. I am pretty sure that Matt ended up in 5th position.
As for the race, we didn’t get a real great result, but I was pleased how Matt and I worked together to change the way the race played out. Should we have pulled earlier and harder on the last lap? Sure, in hindsight that is clear, but we didn’t, so the solo rider was able to take the “W”. And we ended up going home with slightly more $$ than we put in ($70 for 5th overall and 3rd/4th in Cat3 versus the $60 in entry fees). Just a little gas money for the trouble.
After my race, I stayed and took some photos of the Category 5, Masters 50+, and women’s races. They are in a mixed (chronological) order, but it is pretty much self evident which are which. Andrea ended up taking second after a good hill leadout for Casey. Their race was sort of odd that it was completely an intrasquad race for the recently formed M&B women’s cycling team.
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