Docile

The missus likes it when a hard ride knocks me down a rung or two, says it keeps me out of mischief.

Between the heavy weights, which I am getting more dubious about every year, some decent miles, and grinding at work 4 out of five nights for weeks now, I barely can read e-mails at 4 am.

Still I managed to get out for a good solo ride today, 3 and a half hours, 251 TSS points for those of you who drink that WKO koolaid, and some solid avg wattage.

I prefer the solo miles right now anyway, my ego can only take getting dropped on the group tussle so many times. Nothing like the cool wind blowing from the side, a nasty climb, a couple extra pounds just to make things tougher, and some freeking Judas Priest cranking sideways into the eardrums, just makes me so pleased.

Much preparation for our race tommorrow, a parked car had me sweating a bit and going back every couple of hours, but he's gone now and the course is in great shape, the pavement is perfecto and the wind is cracking just a bit on the backside, excellent for the faster races to make a long line of pain tommorrow........

This is Sparta!!! - Dramatic Lemur

After a long day on Mines, this is all I got.....

I heart the suffer

6 water bottles in four hours.

200 avg watts.

3,280 kilojoules.

Sierra road was involved.

YUM.

Yardwork and dogwalkin'

Qualify as cross training.

A new rule.

Letting the excitement build to get after it again, and it's brewing up good, but for now it's some small runs with the pup, a few sessions on the rowing machine, and some early strength work.

The most interesting thing going on has been checking out some new restaurants we've been wanting to try, we hit a double today, with Brown Sugar Kitchen for breakfast.
We got in a dogwalk down Mandela Parkway before we were seated, yes, a dogwalk down Cypress, the world changes a lot over 20 years, lot's of hipster coolio fixie bikes out front, and lot's of hipster coolios eatin' fried chicken and waffles inside.
Big thumbs up for this one, don't miss the cider syrup on the waffles.
I'm coming back for lunch before work at least one time a week, especially since it's two blocks from the salt mines.Soul food is just so good for you inside, it nourishes the heart sometimes more than the tummy.
In a good mood afterwards, and needing more exercise, we cruised to the dog park in El Cerrito, where my dude promptly found the nastiest mud to crawl through, being low tide.
He was happy though, and it was good to get him out with other dogs, he still looks for the old girl sometimes when he goes into the garage, but today he forgot a bit, and it was good to see.
I have a typical bike racer lawn, ignored for six months out of the year, and now looking like the Gobi desert, so I did some long overdue work on the trimmins, then we headed down the street to Eddie Papa's, a new joint with upscale American food, lot's of Niman Ranch and applewood bacon, as well as some fish and salad. Better than I expected, honestly, the partners have been around for a while in the business with several area restaraunts and were very attentive to detail, a great place to go after our crit coming up.
Buy your leadout man the chicken club and a brew and he'll be your love slave for life.

Madera Cat 3

I just wrote this RR for the team list and thought I would share...

It's taken me a few days to get cooled off and able to actually think clearly, man, those first few hot days of the year always seem to come around as the Madera festivities begin...

Camping was a blast, good spots, great company, the second time this year I've had teammates at a race with our busy schedules and etc., so it was fun to scheme and plan a bit around the dinner table.

My goals were simple, to hopefully TT well and have fun while helping a teammate do well.

Sharon TT- 10:30 a.m. start- moved back that morning- already hot.
We warmed up riding the course, a good way to go and much nicer than the folks riding trainers in the heat.
I took off and was going well at first, but watching my HR, which responded to the heat poorly all weekend.
The legs felt ok, then better, but I did make a conscious effort to slow down a bit and control the HR around my threshold, even though it was a shorter TT, I wanted to keep a bit in reserve.
I gave it more gas around 4 miles to go, then went more gas around 2 miles to go, speeding up from 40-41 kph to 43-44, but finished feeling like I could have gone harder. 24:30 was my time I believe, a midpack result but without any real matches burned.
We headed back to camp then scurried for Madera, where we found our crit start had been moved up by 30 minutes, thanks, Velo Promo!

Team plan for the crit was conservation and a attempt to get the primes for time, Ron was up there on GC somewhere, we didn't get results till the next morning, but we protected him.
Mo and I were supposed to get the primes and let the other fellas watch the moves and ride tempo.
That is the nastiest crit I have ever personally done, hot, large, tracks, and slow, like 21 mph avg slow.
Some wind but not enough to really factor into things, and a hour long.

Big props to the Team Swift juniors, excellent teamwork on their part setting up their sprinter for the primes, we missed them both times, I went with them on the second one and got the door shut on me inadvertently by somebody who was bumped as they rolled by, by the time I came around his other side, they were in full jam and no soup for me, but I did ride some wheels over to a nice split that developed out of the prime sprint, we had probably 5 guys all fairly committed, I was a bit on the fence and watched the gap to the mob behind, figuring this could only be good for us either way if it came back together for a counter by a teammate or not I felt comfortable outsprinting my breakmates if we somehow lucked out and stayed away, but no sirree, we had some bridging as we got to 6 to go, then the next prime sprint made us gruppo compacto.
Galluppo suffered mightily to ride a last bit of tempo on the front and bring a straggler back, much appreciated, dude!
With 5 to go the jockeying and surging that only 65 field sprinters can bring began, I would get myself to a decent spot only to get churned around by the next lap and have to do it again, last lap I went up the right side by the RR crossing and came out ok onto the final stretch, but all that previous goofing around took a hard toll and I was resigned to rolling in safe in the pack.

We escaped Madera alive and went back to the lake for a nice dinner and BS session under the stars, no race till 11 for us, so we could afford to stay up a bit.

Sunday was a hard one, 97 on my mirror as I left town that afternoon, I brought 2 bottles and stuffed a small bottle in my jersey, but I was probably dehydrated to start the race.

Ron was sitting 13th, I believe, so we were going to need a solid break or split to do well.

The early plan was just to see what the race would give us and protect Ron until the field split, which was our guess at the most likely scenario with the bumps and the rollers and heat.
About 400 meters into the race
I followed a fellow up the side just looking for a better position, then saw the quiet clicking of the cassette and followed him right out of the pack, along with a few other fortune seekers, one notably a representative from one of the largest teams there with a man high on GC.
No Z-team, they had a couple guys high on GC- which in my eyes probably doomed things a bit, but also meant they would be working harder back there, hopefully softening things up some for later.
A good break, and two riders then bridged who at least one of them was very motivated for success, I was again on the fence a bit, but took quite a few pulls and also took a fair amount of crap when I wouldn't, deservedly so and I would harass and cajole someone too but that was my teams' hand and I felt comfortable with it, figuring if we could stay away for a while it would pressure the other GC riders and set up a higher percentage move by Ron or Dave A.
We got a decent gap on the bumps even with arguing a bit, then on the rollers IMHO we made a crucial mistake by dropping the blue and gold fella who had 6 teamies blocking, my take was he took tons of hard pulls on the flats even if he was suffering a bit on the hills he would have continued to help, but more importantly the 6 guys back would influence things greatly with 51 miles to go and a one minute gap....



When he went back they went to the front and we were home after a one hour adventure out in front...

My next job was to try to get the HR down and eat/ drink more, the entire time in the break the HR was running 7-10 beats over threshold and I could see how the heat was affecting me, we were riding ridiculously hard from time to time but even so the watts didn't correspond, nice to use the powermeter during a race and get a good idea of what's happening inside.

We had to chase out of the feedzone, but the entire team needed bottles and it was a bit of a fiasco, but we made it.
I moved back onto patrol for lap 3 and went with a bitty move OTF again that contained two of the previous breakmates who were driving it before, DA was there eating a gel when it went, I think we both wished he had drawn it instead of me, I got a vicious cramp while crossing to the lead guy and had to pull up and skulk back to safety, then, while trying to eat Clif Blocks in the peloton and drink all remaining fluids on board, I at first thought I was getting dizzy, as the front of my bike was wiggling around, only to realize I had a front flat, crap!
I rolled backwards like lots of folks that day, my teamies resting back there offered a wheel, but realistically with the cramps my chance to affect things was over.

Rode it in and admired the snowy peaks off in the distance, framed by the wildflowers in the pastures, all the stuff Inever see when bouncing along on a crap road trying not to hit the wheel in front of me TOO HARD.

Anyway, some good racing, I think we had a good time as a team, rose to the challenge ,and played the hand we were dealt.

Johnny

.

RV club or cycling team- you decide

Either way we had fun, raced hard and bluffed a bit, but definitely raced like a team.



Time for this stuff to be retired for a couple weeks, then some gym time for this old man and let the threshold/ tempo work begin....

Yin to the Yang

I started with a nice day at the track Sunday, my first open session on my new quasi- track bike cobbled together from spare parts and craigslist OPJ- other peoples' junk.

Big fun, some hard efforts interspersed with wrenching a bit, then zoomed down the 880 to the salt mines of Oakland... then headed east.

This was my afternoon in Lafayette- "a little smoke behind the truck on the freeway, oooh, better pull over somewheres safe out of traffic, oh my, that's a lot of smoke, better stop here and grab whatever I can carry".

Note- those little fire extinguishers you carry around in a car only piss off a real fire, it was like shooting a grizzly with a squirt gun..

This is the aftermath-

Damn, my old copies of Road, a old training log, and all my spare clothes were incinerated.

It was a cold rest of a night with only one sweatshirt....

Just happy to still be here, hopefully the karma wagon has gone full circle now......

Non cycling materiel

Some poetry from the skater girl....

Nightfall

The diamond moon slowly rises to it’s throne in the deep sky.

A slow majestic sight.

The sky is its kingdom.

The stars, his subjects.

Glistening faintly, for their king of the sky.

The moon is the life of the dark sky.

Spreading, churning, it causes the light we see now.

If you look up in the sky, you see a kingdom.

The kingdom of the moon.

Good thing I got the hot tub running this week.....

cause after Hanford I definitely needed to mellow out in some bubbles under the stars.

No real race report, I raced over my head and harder than my legs would allow, but had a good time and in a small progression of strength from a couple of weeks ago, got to the final sprint in good position. Unfortunately, everyone else had so much better legs and I went backwards in the last 175, but I was still happy and had the nice track hack all evening to prove it :-)

Good times and I'm always happy to go to Hanford, especially with buddies like these :-)

Anytime middle aged dads can escape for a overnight and ride around in the Central Valley with three matching bikes with stickers and stuff like we're cool racers is a lucky day.

See the mouse

A well- deserved short vacation down south- too much eatin' and not enough ridin', but it's all good.

The biggest A & F store I have ever seen. Welcome to the Grove center in West LA.

More beautiful people in one place on a Tuesday afternoon than is humanly possible.

No one eats anything round these parts.

Quite a contrast from Disneyland, where a true cross section of America was on display.

Any drug maker with a diabetes drug in the pipeline is going to make a mint in ten more years.

I eat too many cookies and tri tip to take HTFU very seriously, the whole thing is getting kind of Die Trying if you ask me.

But I think I can go for some of this WTFU!

It's not Cole, but it'll do.

An entire store of sauces, and a entire wall of hot sauces.

Many of them with completely unprintable labels.

I ignored the No Photo signs until I was done taking pictures.

But I did buy a few things.

Afternoon luncheon at American Girl Los Angeles, mmmm, Dad likes those cookies!

Being West LA, I had a salad.

Your doll gets lunch too, in her own seat.

This was a loaner doll, Little C's doll was getting her hair done and a skin cleanser downstairs at the doll spa.
Yes you read that correctly.

Disneyland California Adventure- the cousins having fun.

The whole family rode this bad boy- even bought the ridiculous picture afterwards.

Do not eat cotton candy before riding this, you drop roughly 5 stories several times.

Not enough time sitting by the pool, but still it was just what the doctor ordered.

Some serious Easter egg making went down at Aunties' house.

Bike racing commentary coming back soon.

"Touch The Deck"

... and other innuendos for crashing,

just another mechanism of denial we use to keep ourselves pedaling forward when the hill gets steep/ the turn gets tight/ the pack gets squirrelly.

You have to ignore it at the present, channel it beforehand, and laugh about it after.

OR it will own your ass.

I'm not hatin' about it, I'm as hooked as the next guy.

Something I was thinking about all week before I heard about the Vickerator repaving the roads outside of Chico today....

Heal up soon,
brutha!

Suavecito

Sprint number 9- time to go home. Really, number 8 not looking too good either. I'd really like to pop off twelve of these with no drop off in power before the season ends in April .


Good times in the headwind with a buddy that needed to just ride fast and let a few things go....

400 meters can be a long long ways sometimes.

Grullense- a style of cooking

Kind of funny when even the latinos I know don't know what that word means, and the internet is no help at all... but somebody asked someone who asked someone and that's the answer.

What style that is I have no idea- but jerk chicken breasts and jasmine rice tucked into fresh tortillas cooked on our little gas BBQ on our work truck- now that hit the spot last night!

Well that was fun...... Exeter and Visalia

Nice weekend down south ,

We showed up a little late for the TT and I got in about a 20 minute warmup, not the best for the violent effort to come, but whatever.

I love the Snowflake, my old tri-TT, whatever bike- probably the only 650c bike still running around, I did the touch up paint with white nail polish, running some old Zipp 400's with a straight block of gears and a 56 big cookie, but she's my baby and my first real bike someone actually gave me her since they felt sorry for me doing triathlons on a Bianchi Squadra with downtube shifters, she fits like a dream, though.

They made the hills taller since we came down and checked things out last month, or so it seemed.

Good ride for me despite technical difficulties- pedals, chains, shifting, a ongoing theme of my weekend on both bikes.

Hard hard hard on the hills and moving along on the flats, a little bit of hail, but I ignored it inside my comfy TT helmet anyway. Sold out on the final climb and the ride into town hurt deeply, and what was up with the 20 mph headwind all of a sudden?

We came home with 4th, 6th, and 8th(me) in the cat 3's so good stuff.

Excellent meal and crashed early, only to toss and turn most of the night, some snoozing would have been good, as we got up at oh-dark-thirty to make the first race at 9:10.

Cruising along roughly 5 minutes in, good course for us, and I drop my chain off the bike. In hindsight, I know the rule about basically only crashes and flats get a free lap, I should have grabbed it while rolling and stuck it on, but I was in front of the pit, so I stop to see my favorite mechanic, the Shimano neutral support. We stick it back on, and then the blue shirt get's involved;

him- no free lap for you!

me- yeah, I know, I just drove for three hours and we're 5 minutes in, but I get it.

him- well, get back in!

Me- I'll wait for my teamies on the next lap, please. I already TTed for a hour yesterday.

Him, turning to referee, wanting to DQ me- can we pull him?

Referee- it's a small field, let him back in down a lap.

that solved, I jump back in and notify Nome and the Vick I won't be of any use to them come the sprint, but will do whatever I can for the remainder to help them escape the clutches, but no soup for us...

M123 right after, we do the superman in the phone booth trick with the jerseys pre-pinned, then head back out.

Shimano looks at my bike beforehand and we seem to get the shifting solved, I did just build it up this week, so more than a few glitches..

Bigger field with 45 plus in there too and some quality guys, MS, SP, VOS, ya'll know the deal.- we just covered moves and hoped to be in the right place at the right time.
I felt pretty good and was finding a second wind, starting to recognize the players a bit as the season goes along.
I chased a sweet move that double clutched in the corner, I tried to keep the power down to reach em and skipped my pedal hard, hopping over about a foot, landing upright but tearing the tire off, then riding a degrading rim down from 28 or so, big fun.
Back to my buddy in the pit, I was just about his only customer, but still kept him busy.

Shimano 10 fits Campy 10 no problem, BTW.

No static from the blue shirt this time and I'm off, albeit a little nervous about skipping a pedal again, but it was race on there again for a while, till I sucked and gave in to all the excitement.
pulled the ripcord with one to go and got out of their way, tough race, with no one really going away, but with hard endless attacks, it never really lulled up to recover.

I took the bike off the truck tonight and the crankarm swung down like a power cranks commercial- I can't find any damage and took it apart, my guess is just not tight enough and when I hit the ground with it I loosened it, not too sure, but that's why bikes and cars get raced, to find out what works and survives, seems a-ok now though.

Having to file the rim a tiny bit where I skidded, some pockmarks, and the pedal has a little more clearance now :-)

Il Grullense- a nice chain, I never have gone wrong with stopping at a Grullense, even though I can't figure out what a grullense is, perhaps a mariachi style?


Edit- I just heard about the womens' pro crash, ouch!

Hope everyones' ok- those ladies don't exactly back down when it gets going- pure aggression.

Thin Mints Es Aqui! ---- and CVC images

Kids' got a eye with the camera

The owls are watching the racing intently.

Criterium Cheering Section- feel the joy.

We are Sierra Pac, and we have complete control.....

Escape is futile.....

Well,
I wanted to post about chile verde, 20 dollar primes, a new camera, and general bike racing blather, then I heard about Kristy while driving back home.
news link here



Just so sad when people in the prime of their lives are suddenly gone.

Kristy was a old friend and someone who let old out of shape guys grovel while hanging onto her wheel.

When said guys would begin blabbing about staying in their prescribed HR zones as the reason they couldn't pull around, a small chuckle would emanate and the speed would slowly ramp up until it was time to let go of the wheel and go for cookies at Sweet Affair in Alamo while Kristy continued her training ride.

Always kind to me and my family, she will be missed.

I've been hoping to catch this place open for a couple years now since I read about it while hiding in a motel room during the monsoon/hail/tornado that was the 2005 CVC.

We will see.....

CVC crit- just about one of my favorite races- kind of like a cross race with all those turns and a great crowd, eat some lunch and watch some great pro racing afterwards.

Mystifies me why more people don't make the trek from the Bay Area/ Sac- too bad, the TT in the orange groves went away this year,my guess due to low numbers, and the race through the park for 90 miles of flats in 2005 was IMHO a very interesting race, especially in driving hail, although most of the time the weather this time of year is spectacular in the valley.

Hopefully I found a quiet hotel this year, Fresburg seems to have a hex on me with 2 am phone calls, Mcdonalds' drive thrus next to my room, full-on Gulag architecture that feels like I'm walking the green mile when I go for some broken ice.....

I've been pumped up since Tuesday when I saw the POO ride rolling through Broadway, all those healthy little spandexed creatures flitting down the mean streets of the Big O like sardines with headlights, and me wrestling a fire hose away from a drunken denizen of Third St before he blasted em..... they had no idea how close they came.......

Not a Bike Racing Dumb Comment

From Little C's perspective.......

The Garden of Beauty

There is a garden of beauty

So light, but dark

Safire Sunflowers crowd on the hill

Emerald leaves stand still

Topaz tulips glimmer in the light

Ruby roses shine so bright

These treasures all shine,In this beautiful garden of mine!

I think I have Trac Sac.

Took a few newbies to the track today, what a ball.

Big crowd and a mix of abilities, as usual.

Lots of pursuit and team sprint stuff today, with a couple of small scratch races thrown in, I think the pursuits are a bit safer with lots of people.

My favorite moment, seeing one of our new juniors completely grasp it and take second in the last Aussie pursuit that lasted a solid 10 laps.
Just sweet.

Apres-ride-
TJ's vegan trail mix cookies, a cup of black coffee, and Het Volk Omloop on the internet,
life is good,
Slipstream in the moves early, the boys are here to play and are rolling with some heavy hitters.

Gilbert showing some big stones and staying away for like 49k, the traffic furniture monsters that live in every town in europe got a few bites of spandex and collarbones down the gullet today, makes Merced look like cake, frankly.

Merco stories, please.

Time to toughen up

Snelling M 123- my goals were modest, and luckily so- to stay on for one lap out of five.

The first lap went by quickly, but nothing too crazy, I stayed sheltered on the lee side and tried to avoid mishap.I must say, the masters ride exceedingly smooth considering 100 guys in a headwind on a 15 foot roadway, a couple of small kerbumpity- bumps, but a big difference from the cat 4's.
We turned onto Keyes and I could see the lead fellows jumping hard up the hill, one unfortunate fellow dropped his chain, causing a bit of swerve and such and needing a sprint to get back right there over the hill, where I found a long single line of pain awaiting me.

I moved up about 20 spots in the line following wheels, but then felt like I was in a good spot and hung on, looks like I should have moved up more, I came off with the rest of the bunch from behind by the feed zone and was screwed sixteen different ways to Sunday.

Rode for a couple more laps, then just lost interest when a rain drop hit me and I turned left for the car.

Monday morning quarterbacking-
for someone that is reasonably strong in the wind I certainly have been riding poorly in it since I jumped in with the big fish.

I need to just hang it out there a bit more, push for the front of the race harder and let the natural aggression fly, a little less smarts and more legs would have kept me on for oh, I dunno, maybe another few miles?

Sunday I went out with Jimbo in the pouring rain for three hours,fenders, jackets, and bad attitudes a' bristling.... I think I speak for both of us when I say we will stew about this one for a while and hopefully learn our lesson....

On the flip side, the team rode well as a whole, several victories in different categories was very cool to see, and the juniors raced way hard, two of them taking falls and getting up and finishing very well, great stuff!