Progression

Last night at the Driveway I could tell my legs were tired. The previous two days of workouts were still there in my legs. I warmed up and things felt loose, but I could still feel some tiredness.

The race started and I was in great position. The first time around the top corners (both > 90 degrees) I slipped back some (because I was being a scaredy cat), but was still okay. Then I got trapped in the middle down on the bottom of the course and slipped back a lot. I had a bad feeling.

I spent the rest of the race gaining ground on the bottom part of the course, and then slipping back around the top turns and down the corkscrew. Then moving back up again… repeat repeat. I could feel my legs were a little shaky going around some of the turns, but I kept asking them to push me forward, catch me back up, and they kept delivering. 

The lap cards came out and I knew that I was going to be finishing this race no problem. Now I actually started to think how can I crack the top 20. (Cracking the top 20 has been my goal at the Driveway since before my little heart-induced “vacation.”) I knew that moving up a ton on the last lap would probably be tricky, so I should try to move up after I see 2 to go and try to hold more position going around the top turns on the last lap. 

Well, I did do the first part, but I slipped back again. However, it being a 4/5 race, there is a lot of looking around going on. So when we came down the hill on the last lap the people in front literally sat up. And of course, this meant they slowed down. Excellent. I moved up front-middle, and waited for the inevitable acceleration. There was a little move going around the big sweeper at the bottom, but no biggy.

We get to the final straight, and some people go on the left, then on the right. Unfortunately, I look up to see that I’m behind 4 people in the middle of the road who have decided their night is done. Argh!

I see enough space, get around the roadblock and start trying to jump from wheel to wheel moving up. There aren’t that many people in front of me, so I figure top 20 may be possible. So I give it everything I have, passing people who are sitting up, and even a few who aren’t. I even get out of the saddle for the uphill finish… hehe, it always looks silly to see somebody sprinting for, you know, 20th.

The race was over, I stayed upright, and I had the best finish of the year (and of my bike racing life). When the results were posted this morning, I discovered that I was 19th! Woohoo! While 19th in a cat 4/5 race may seem completely insignificant to a lot of people, this is a big deal to me. It’s the first time my name has been on a results sheet for any race that I have done. I know I am not a super star, but I have gotten consistently better, and it gives me faith that if I keep training maybe I will be able to upgrade to a 3. Maybe I will be able to actually win a race at some point. I don’t mind slow improvement as long as it’s improvement.

Now, of course, I have to end this by saying, regardless of the race results, doing all the bike training has made me feel so much better about myself. I’ve lost weight, I feel good, I’m more relaxed… these are all good things. But stuff like this is just icing on the cake!

Happy Friday!

Not the Ending I was Looking For

So yeah. Tonight wasn’t going that well. I had moved up at on point, and I felt the effort from that for the next lap. It looked like I was getting dropped but then the pack slowed down. I figured, one good burst of effort and I’ll be back in contact. Okay, let’s do this. So I did. Unfortunately right as I was really getting back to everybody I went around a turn, stood up to sprint out of it and…

CLACK

Down I go, sliding across the pavement. I stopped decently fast, could feel that nothing was broken and hopped up. Luckily, I had been at the back of the pack so I didn’t take anybody else down with me.

I clipped a pedal. Ugh. My only consolation was that I did it because I wasn’t letting myself give up and just get dropped. Unfortunately I was also somewhat cooked, so I wasn’t being as careful as I should have been.

Don’t worry though, the bike is fine. Well, I think. I think the back wheel got knocked out of true. The handle bar tape is toast, but I needed to replace that anyway. Honestly, the bike needed a trip to Austinbikes for a once over/tune up, so now it’s definitely going.

Oh, and I’m okay. I have some raspberries on my right thigh, and my right elbow has two nice brushburns. The sting is starting to go down, and I have some tegaderm on the two ones on my elbow, as they are the worst. Sleeping tonight may be a little tricky, and I showering was a tad unpleasant. 

So my streak of getting caught up in wrecks and not going down has come to an end. Better tonight by myself then in a few weeks at the Tour of Austin in the middle of the pack. Unfortunately crashing in bike racing is a “when” not an “if” issue, so I’m sure it won’t be the last.

Well, this sort of changes my weekend riding plans. I need to take the bike in and get it fixed up. I’m hoping that I (and the bike) will be ready to go on a nice long ride on Sunday, but obviously until I get the bike working I’m sort of sidelined.

Oh well, road rash heals quickly, so no biggy. 

A good race gone bad

I threw out a tweet last night about this, but I wanted to break it down in more detail. I don’t know why, call it cathartic.

The course last night at the Driveway was very interesting. It had you going up the corkscrew, and then quickly afterwards taking a sharp, over-90-degree turn to the right. At the top of the corkscrew you turn to the left, so ideally you want to be on the inside of the turn at the top of the hill so that you can have the nicer line going into the sharp turn.

So while I felt great, even up and over the corkscrew, I let myself slip back in the group beyond halfway. I was maintaining that position with no problem. I just wasn’t working to get any closer to the front. Bad mistake.

Every time we went over the corkscrew I would line up early on the left side of the road. And every time I had to pull some maneuver to not get pushed off the course by some jackhole who decided he wanted to be where I was because he hadn’t thought fare enough ahead entering the corkscrew.

Then we were going up the hill, and I am looking ahead of me and see this group of people, and they all seem to be trying to get into one spot. I think to myself, those people aren’t all going to fit. 

CRACK CRACK BAHM SCRRAAPE

Yep, they didn’t fit. The pile of bodies and bikes continued to grow to the right. I squeeze my brakes enough to keep me from plowing into it. My job is to protect my front wheel. On that subject, my front wheel does role over or get hit by something on the ground, but I stay up no problem, though I come to basically a complete stop. The people further back all zoom past me.

Here is my fatal mistake. I didn’t instantly jump up out of the saddle and kill it. I got rolling and waited until we got around the two sharp corners and then started back down the hill to get on top of it. I chased like mad for a lap, slowly making ground, but when we came back up the corkscrew my legs popped for just a few seconds. 

I kept riding with an AT&T guy for several laps just getting some workout in. With a few laps left a side stitch cropped up. I am not sure why. I’m assuming the humidity had me sweating more than I thought, and that I didn’t hydrate enough pre-race. Who knows? I was able to fight it for a lap, but it got worse with like a couple laps left in the race I pulled out and spent some time spinning around the general area to cool down and get the stitch to go away.

So very frustrating. I mean, I really felt good. I felt comfortable in the pack, I didn’t feel nervous. I was able to keep up with the accelerations and never feel overexerted. My two mistakes were not staying near the front enough and not reacting fast enough after the crash to get back on. Oh well, live and learn. I was excited that I reacted fast enough to the crash itself to not go down. 

I am feeling great in my training, and the results are starting to show up in the race. I think this is the strongest I have ever felt. I am looking forward to the race next week before our cruise. I am hoping to actually come out of that with a solid finish.

Quick discussion of the paper. This paper, being about my dissertation work, is at times bringing me back to a weird place in my life. Finishing my dissertation wasn’t the happiest time ever. This paper, unfortunately, has occasionally brought back some weird ghosts of that time. I will be very glad to ship it out next Friday. That being said, cycling has been helping to keep me sane. Going out and riding my bike has helped me to focus and to let out some of the anxiety and frustration. While I have traded time working for riding, I find in the long run I have been more productive and more sane.

What a Growing Body Knee-ds

The pun is for Lynn.

Saturday did a great 70 miles out and back to Elgin. The nice thing about riding to Elgin is you get to get some barbecue to break up the ride. While my ride companions chowed down on brisket and sausage (oh, to be 22 again) I had the chicken. Still quite tasty, by the way.

Felt great the whole ride… except for the part on the way back when my knee started to feel a little catchy every now and then. I didn’t think much of it as it really didn’t hurt, it just was there. We stopped in Manor, and I stretched. But as we got closer to home I still felt it.

Then it started to really hurt. Not constantly, but anytime I stood up or did more of a forward mash than a supple spin, pain. And clipping in was unpleasant. 

When I got home I actually felt great. I felt like I could have kept riding. 

However, on Easter Sunday, I didn’t feel so hot. We got up to go to 9 AM Mass, as I was supposed to be riding three hours at some point. I also wanted to watch the Ronde on TV and we had to eat our celebratory Easter pizza. (We gave up cheese for Lent.) The ride didn’t happen, because I felt beaten down. I took two naps, and still went to bed early. After alerting Drew of the knee issues, it was decided to be careful and make this week extra resty.

So far, so good. I did an easy spin on Monday, and there was no pain. Today I did two hours in zones 1 and 2 and again there was no pain. It feels a little tight, but the painful catch has not come back. The inner quad right above my knee is tight and tender, so I have been hitting it with ice and the TP quad-rolller. 

Considering I went from sedentary to riding a lot pretty quickly, I am not surprised something eventually was annoyed. Saturday’s ride was also the longest ride I’ve done yet, and definitely the longest ride of “not my own pace.” I feel confident that this easy week will be good for things. I have the Driveway tomorrow (it’s the full two-mile course going down the corkscrew, should be interesting) and I am bringing the bike home with me to Baton Rouge for rides this weekend.

On that subject, we are going to Baton Rouge this weekend to celebrate my grandmother BeBe’s 100th birthday… crazy! It will be a quick trip and jam packed. Riding, family, friends… the camera is coming with me so I hope to have lots of pictures when I get back.

Finally, my experiments finally seem to be making some notion of sense (thanks Allen!). It sort of took one of those moments where you realize you were kind of an idiot, but you have gone so far down the rabbit hole it takes somebody else to snap you out of it to see it. But alas, the Lagniappe paper seems to finally be taking shape after all these years. Whew.

With that being said, I’m going to switch back over to my terminal windows and see how those experiments are going.

Not Getting Dropped

Last night at the Driveway an interesting thing happened. I completed a race in the pack, without getting dropped. This is really only the second time this has happened in all of the races that I have done. The first time it has happened in a non-collegiate race. Now, I didn’t win, and in fact I was in the back half of the group. But I wasn’t last, and I was still attached. It’s a big first for me, and it’s great to see the results of the work I have been putting in on the bike.

It was a good course layout for me. The little incline had the crazy wind blowing you up and over, so that was good, and the only other turn was a big 180 degree sweeper that is wide enough to pedal through easily. I was able to just focus on getting myself on a wheel and staying there. Get over the hill, power down it, get back into the group, and hang out until we were back to the little incline again. 

What was interesting was that getting up the hill wasn’t a problem, the hardest part was having to get out of the saddle to catch up to everybody. In the back half of the group we were slowing down so much getting over the incline and around the turn that the people in front were already on the downhill. But I wasn’t as concerned about that last night.

I had told myself that I was going to worry less about where I was and just that I was. Get on a wheel and stay attached. Recover as much energy as possible and get up and over the incline in contact with everybody. That was my game plan, and it seemed to work out.

When I made it to the lap cards, I was excited. I thought that was cool, but I figured something was going to happen, and I was still going to get dropped. At 3 to go, I really started to believe that I was actually going to make it. When the bell rang for the last lap, I knew I was going to finish the race. We got up and over the incline, and I knew that I could do whatever was necessary to stay attached at that point as we were done with the incline and it was all flat to the finish. And, I couldn’t believe, I finished.

All in all, I was pretty thrilled. But this is just a first step. I need to keep up the diet and keep up the riding to move myself up in that pack. Also, I still need to work on my comfort in the pack in general and going around corners in the middle of the group, specifically. Next Thursday I will get a chance to practice both of those.