Time Trial - 8 miles.  The event was an out and back TT on Bethel Valley Road which is actually a closed road within the secure complex in Oak Ridge.  This meant the road had little traffic and good pavement.   The original distance was 14 miles, but they shortened it to start at the Portal (guard shack) and use a roundabout as the turn around.  I was pretty tired (we rolled into Oak Ridge after midnight the night before and my TT start was 8:20am).   Despite this, I managed to roll a pretty good TT (for me) which was good enough for 3rd of 7 (small field).

Road Race - 66 miles.  The lack of sleep Friday night was my big concern acoming into the hilly road course.  Because of the small Cat 3 and P12 fields, they combined us for the road race.   As expected, this increased the pain.  Right out of the neutral zone, a group of 7 to 8 (mostly 3’s) jumped off the front.  The rest of the field chased and I tried to save my strength for the two big hills on each lap.   As we hit the bigger one about 10 miles in there was some hard attacks and the field strung out and I was put off the back.  I chased and chased, but the rear of the field was chasing hard and I was losing time to the chase.  By the second hill I caught up with a dropped rider.  We worked together and pulled in another a bit later.  By the start of the 2nd lap, we were 4.  After the big hills on the 2nd lap, one dropped off quickly, so we continued on as 3.  We lost another that pulled out of the race at the end of the 2nd lap, so it was two.  After the descent of the big hill on the last lap, I rode away from the last guy (he must just sat up, I had 300 feet when I noticed that I was alone) and finished out the lap alone.  The main reason I bothered to ride it out, is that omnium scoring was 20 deep (and double points for the TT & RR), so even the 11th place was worth getting.  This puts me in 5th place for the omnium going into the crit (only single points).

This is what I moved from my for sale page… and the nice photos Andrea took of it when I decided to list it.

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Trek 5200 bicycle

• 2001 Trek 5200 (size: 62 cm)
• Crank: SRAM Rival (like new, <1000 miles)
• Drivetrain: Shimano Ultegra 10 speed (53-39 x 11-23). About 1.5 seasons of use.
• Brakeset: Shimano Ult 9 (not really different than the 10 speed)
• Wheels: Shimano Ult hubs, 32 spoke, Mavic Open Pro CD rims

Geometry

• Head angle: 74 degrees
• Seat angle: 72.5 degrees
• Top tube length: 23.3″ (592 mm)
• Chain stay: 16.2″ (412 mm)
• Bottom bracket height off ground: 10.6″ (269 mm)
• Offset: 1.8″ (45mm)
• Wheel base: 39.7″ (1008 mm)
• Trail: 2″ (50 mm)
• Standover height: 33.2″ (844 mm)

Photos:

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Here is my bike only a few month old….30 minutes after taking the 2001 Cat 4 Maryland state road race.

To the last race, the 2007 Racoon Mtn RR in Chattanooga last April.

I wasn’t so bold as to use one of these open-air urinals.  I guess these are more popular in the evening.

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Andrea put in a great effort to solo lap the field in wet conditions (it started to rain again in her crit, it was basically dry for the M30+)..

The long course was a tough, tough course.  In the Masters 30+ race, a break of about 6-7 rolled off the front in the first 10 miles… somewhere in there part of it came back… I was near the front on the transition from first pitches.  Crossing I-24 the first time, I was in a group of 4 off the front 5-10 seconds.  We were pulled back on the minor climb of Ladd Mtn….  I slid back as we came over Ladd and was near the back as dropped down the other side.  On Sand Mtn, i was able to move up near the front in early part of the climb, but couldn’t stay with the main group as the road continued upward.  So the rest of my race was all about chase groups…  we collected to about 8 or so starting on US41.  Up the stair step and across the valley road, we got down to 5.  On the final climb, all 4 ended up climbing better that me.  I ended up 24th overall (of 38 finishers).  11th 30+ racer (TBRA) and got 3 omnium points (13th ominium rider).

For context, the race was 59.3 miles and featured 4715′ ascent / 3652′ descent.  I averaged 19.0 mph and climbed Raccoon Mtn in 22 minutes (which is 3 minutes worse than I did last year in the short course as a Cat 4 last year).  I was in pretty bad shape going up Raccoon Mtn!

As for the TT, I did a lot better than my 9:30 last year and rolled a time of 8:55 (26.3 mph).  That was good enough for 13th place in M30+.  The course is a short 3.9 miles that is actually mostly downhill.  The uphill section (about 0.5 mile @ 6%) is a bit rough after this morning, but at least it is followed by nice high speed downhill.

TT: 3.9 miles, 144′ ascent / 312′ descent.

Tomorrow, I need to get some omnium points to get into the money (top 10) for M30+.  I think I am right at 9th-10th right now.

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Andrea continues her march towards winning the TBAR jersey.  With her RR result today (6th) and her TT win today, she moved to within 1 point of 1st place.  The TBAR system is best of 5 RR’s, 5 TT’s, and 6 crits–this is a pretty good system in that it does not reward someone who just races everywhere and helps to reduce the east Tennessee bias of TBRA to some degree in that us West Tennessee riders can skip races up in the Tri-Cities and still be competitive in the series.  (Or also in Andrea’s case, skip TBRA races to do big races out of district.)

But the feature event is not the crit or the time trial….it is the road course:

I really wish I felt up to racing with the big boys this weekend, but really, I don’t. So I won’t.

Andrea had a better day on Saturday, taking 25th in the non champ race (P/1/2 women). The big event was a lot longer and faster and she wasn’t able to hang with the group. All-in-all, it was an exercise in humility, for me it is that you cannot race a big race with the wrong leadup and for her, a reminder of the gap between her and the top level pros. Not an unmanageable gap, but something that will take some time.

I took a bunch of photos of the women’s elite race and cut it down to 120 or so… here is the album.

Go back a few days, Andrea gets a message from her team manager that he wants her to do Downers Grove / US Crit championship.  This is a huge deal, this is the race that Tina Pic has won 7 of the last 8 years or something like that.  Now Andrea doesn’t expect to win, but a top 20 placing (or even a field finish) would be a victory for her.

Now, I usually fly back from Estonia via Chicago (on Scandinavian Airlines) which would have been perfect, but this time I am flying back on Northwest right to Memphis.  I did some fare shopping and came up with a good price to fly up there to watch.  She is racing both Saturday and Sunday, but I can get up there Saturday night to see the race big event on Sunday.

Then, I get to thinking… she is driving up… and she could bring my bike.  And there is a cat 3 race at 10am on Sunday.  So in the end I made the maybe foolish choice to race the next morning after flying back from Europe.  The good news it that it is in the morning…  in the late afternoon will be the problem.

So to recap.
Saturday:

7am (eastern european time) to 4:50 pm (Memphis time) fly via Amsterdam to Memphis
drop off back at my car in the parking lot… or put it in left luggage if time is short.
6:35 pm (Memphis) to 8:20 pm (Chicago).

Sunday:

10am, race the Cat 3 crit championship in Downers Grove
noon, watch Andrea tough it out against the best crit women in the country
after that…watch the pro men?

oh, and drive back at some point… not sure on those details yet.  So this whole thing will cap off a pretty crazy week.

Did I mention that I have been off my bike since last Saturday (the morning before I left)….?  Although I have been running some…

IdaVirumaa

From this experience and because I haven’t been in over a year, I have some loose fun goals to fit in during this trip out side of the work week. These are not necessarily in order.

• Drink on bottle of Saku Originaal and one bottle of A Le Coq premium. [done]
• Eat shashlok, marinated pork chunks cooked over a wood fire [done]
• Prepare shashlok [planned]
• Take saunas at Toila Spa hotel [done].
• Drink a Bar Alex, take bus to Nightlife (or as I mostly knew it Joy), stay way too late…. [not going to do this one, not there on the weekend anyway. Also don't have all the friends that made those sort of nights fun.]
• Take a mining tour at Kohtla-Nomme [again, no time. but you haven’t really done a tour of mine without immenent danger. Witness powerful rock moving equipment operating inches from you,… also bare 3-phase overhead lines within easy reach.

That was really short and not nearly 10 items, but again I am tired. Time to publish…

Steepest stairs…nearly a ladder.

Saka Mois (Manor House). A bit rough around the edges…

copper wire anyone…?

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Old marker… from the CCCP days….

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Barbed wire on top of this pill box looking thing…. I don’t know if this is a set-up or something crafted by the Soviet army.

Random trench

Random shelter….

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That’s it for now…