CCCX 2-Travel Camp- I can't drive

Weird rest week for me- every time I tried to go hard I felt crappy and turned it into a easy ride, even today I didn't feel particularly good or have any pop on the warmup.

Travel Camp- not my favorite course, just too mountainbikey for me to do well and my 185 lbs don't like the hills much.
I have been trying to learn to up the game in the skillz, but have so far to go- I must say the tubies really help a hack like me though.

Usual suspects at the SS A start line, we have had our own start this year which I really really like, with the A's together it get's jumbled and the game gets played differently, chasing geared bikes and getting pulled along.

This year we catch the stragglers in the A's but they don't affect the race.

START-

I stepped down into my pedal and promptly knocked the water bottle off and bent the cage into the crank while everyone rode away, had to bend it back and get my bottle back on the next lap from Jasmin's mom who helped out with the feeds, etc.
Caught back on remarkably and rode around with the three amigos for a lap until the next little stunt- driving into Tim Cannards' wheel repeatedly until taking a spill was required just to right the karmic balance of the world. Took my lumps and caught on again, I was having a few trubbles everytime we went around a corner and let the gap open and did the yo yo for a lap, thne I flipped into a bush, completely ass over tea kettle while bombing down some crap.
Took stock and noticed the red leaves all around me, graaaayte!
Gotta love Tecnu later :-)
Hopped back on and somehow caught on again, at this point I was kind of in disbelief and really wanted to stop crashing, so sat in for a lap or two and tried to drive right.
Heading up the gradual hill- I notice- two Buy Cell at the front with one pulling away while the other rides tempo. Next is Ruben who is spent apparently and cannot chase.
I am in the back in the singletrack now. This is bad. Now I cannot see Tim anymore and Cesar takes a bobble in the loose sand.
We hit the back road and Tim has a 30 second gap.
Putanelli Putanelli Putanelli.
I engage and chase, but have no help. I then try to attack Cesar, one time it looks good, but then I get dragged back. this goes on for three laps until AJM laps us.
The most frustrating thing about today- not understanding the lead lap rule and not realizing we were now on our last lap.
I just rode in for fourth behind those guys- just rode in.

Frustrating but eventually even this blockhead will get it.

Many fun and cool things today though, before this sounds too much like sour grapes and racer woulda shoulda coulda....

Lot's of peeps getting down with the suffer faces and ballet moves over the barriers- you know who you were and it was great to heckle/ cheer.

This year the SS bunch has been tactical all the way-very interesting racing and ton's of battles along the way.
Bring back that dude in the tight shorts, I say!

Crazy drive home with some crash I'm gonna guess at the flea market on 101- we took a detour through Watsonville and got home at 6:30, long day but fun times.

Not My Kid

Saturday whilst I was getting to know the House Of Pain ride a bit better and questioning the intelligence of echeloning over a center line on a open road...

Miz C and Little C did the Back To School run here in town, a little run that happens on the same course as the local triathlon the next day, not anything special, except for the goody bags.

This little gem is sponsored by Nob Hill Foods, and the goody bags are , well, full of goodies and specialty foods.

I came home from my happy hundred famished to find a entire kitchen table full of cool morsels, from green tea drinks to cocoa covered almonds, YUM!
A entire box of Minty electrolyte water in the hallway , and this story......

This run also has a great raffle, not as good as the Bidwell Park race, but pretty good.
Miz C had just broken her MP3 player and was in the hunt.
Some major visualization exercises later, the magic number was drawn and the spouse now has a sparkly green Shuffle, very sweet!

But wait, another number is still in the hat for the kiddo, and yes, she drew one too.

The wife sees some discussion up at the table, then she comes back sans Shuffle.

" I decided I already have one at home.... let someone else get a chance....."

another little girl won it and was ecstatic.

I have no idea where the kid gets that nice giving streak, I woulda traded it for bike parts in a minute :-)

Highly impressed.

Cyclocross Thoughts-

A e-mail sent to me from Jimbo- the boy draws a interesting parallel-

"You know I think the Catholics invented Cyclocross, never spending much time really seated always changing your position
it's all about the suffering and it's usually done on a Sunday."

I think some Jim Carroll may be appropriate for tommorrow's ride........

Sunday I join the Tubular Nation, not just for euro- cool dudes anymore I guess and the craze has filtered down to lil' old me, running Tufo Flexus on some NOS Wolber semi- deeps laced to WTB singlespeed hubs.

Let us pray for no flats, my friend.

You will not see these at old abandoned dumpsite races, I promise you.

The happy trails call, but how cool is it that there are THREE great races on Sunday- CCCX, Chicofest 2008, and Ride The World Cups down at Hellyer.
Fall cycling- just too cool.

LARPD 2 - the heatwave subsides

Much nicer weather this week in Livermore, the fall is my favorite time to ride.

I'm doing some hard blocks now and had my own little stage race with motorpacing Friday, racing Saturday in Livermore, and a hilly 3 hours and change on Sunday involving Sierra Road.

I barely got a blip up in the CTL from all that, though, stuck on the plateau and no matter how hard I hit it I'm kind of treading water fitness wise.

Anyway it's all good and any excuse to ride a bike, no?

A couple tidbits from the weekend-

I can't seem to willingly hit the roller on the motorcycle, I get close but chicken out a bit. I'll bet the next time I do, though.

Cesar is still the big Rott on the porch, I hung for 5 laps and screwed up a corner and away he went with one other guy.
Nice riding on his part with lot's of corner accelerations, slowly broke a couple of us down.
Silver lining the gap never went out of control beyond a minute or so and the only guy that lapped me was AJM on the last lap, that guy is flying already, where you gotta slow down and watch the riding from across the lawn it's so sweet :-)

Great seeing new riders coming out and sampling the racing, I saw some big smiles and some tuff scrapes from the Livermore gravel, good stuff.

Happy Fall!

Autumn Harvest

The last tree- the apples got picked last week, this weekend was the Kawakami pears.

Vegetables are still going strong, I have 10 tomatoes just waiting to be picked for the tomato/ mozzarella insalata....

I want more trees next year!

LARPD CX # 1

Started the day off doing a practice triathlon with roughly 150-200 newbie women triathletes- considering we were expecting 60 we held up well and didn't lose anyone- great enthusiasm out of new athletes is contagious, at one point while marking the run course with flour I realized I was running in a team jacket, helmet, and MTB shoes- such a dork, no wonder the joggers going the other way were snickering :-)
Marshaled the bike course and got in some good efforts chasing down wayward riders, then made my way from Shadow Cliffs to Robertson Park for the opener of the cross season.

Hot hot hot, but I liked the new location, some grass that was incredibly humid in the heat but in a good kind of jungle way, some long crosswind gravel sections, and Woodchip Alley.
This year I have decided to like woodchips and will not fear them.
I practiced my dismounts some before and in general just rode around before the start and practiced getting on and off without incident :-)
I had a big gear on my SS for the ride over and just rolled with it, the course lent itself to a continous effort on the pedals without much on-off.
Roughly 17-20 guys in the A's with 5 SS loons, I just rode my pace from the beginning, 102 degrees or so and a hour race gave me more caution than usual.
I tried to pair up with a geared guy every time over the open sections, thne take my turns on the chips and such, seemed to be fair and I got closer to the main pod after 3 laps, but then it splintered more and more and it turned into catching one guy after another.
Good drool/snot thing going, a hallmark of a good tuff effort and I just kept it on, made it up to probably 7th place or so, then got gapped off on the barriers when he hopped/ rode the uphill and couldn't make it back on, stupid crash with one to go on a gravelly turn that had me taking inventory for a second, but hopped back up and finished in good shape.
Long hot ride home with multiple stops for water along the way, got a chill while talking to Russell apres race and that caught my attention, got to take care of onesself in the heat.
Top step on the podium and that was way cool, anytime the big rottweiler on the porch known as Cesar ain't around us little scamps can play a bit :-)
Good stuff and fun seeing all the cross peeps!
J

Gracias

To the Veloshop bunch-

Handing me up a turbo bottle and a GU 10 miles out of the feedzone when I was spinning the little ring home after the mornings' work day done.....

Classy racers up north, loving the scene.

Eugene Celebration Cat 3

Finish stretch of the queen stage of the Eugene Celebration Stage race- 84 miles of hills and flats.

1k hill at the end saw Nome take the win and 2nd on GC.

Vickerator was en fuego and destroyed all in the ITT.

Wilson from SN helped immensely and the favor will not be forgotten.

The Willamette Valley has some beautiful cycling- a bit of rain in the crit but all good.

A bit of culture shock coming back home today.

Eugene Celebration

Good rides today by all in the first RR.
Nome up a minute with two other guys, I did my best to clean up after.
Good stuff.
J
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cut em off

It's silly, I know.

And obviously doesn't help with the bikin'

But sometimes gains and goals don't follow reason, just what makes you happy.

And repping the NFL combine weight for bench 7 times today before work gave me a smile all night.

Stronger and lighter than I was 15 years ago.

Yippee!

Middle Palisade

The walk in- you can see Middle Pal and Norman Clyde in the background

A closer view as we approached from the west side of Finger Lake- the glaciers are getting smaller every year.

Kyle ruminating on the value of a shortcut over the glacier while wearing approach shoes, hmmm.

The boys on the summit block, I was on the block to the north, I thought this was the summit till I climbed it and realized the south block was higher, oh well, a good place to shoot a few.

Kyle looking out north towards Norman Clyde and Polemonium and Sill in the background- I hope to go back for Poly and Sill next year.

Norman befits it's namesake and is a bad mo fo that is wayyy over my head.

A happy Seal. Dave handling it all with aplomb.

Bluebird weather, it was colder in the Bay Area tonight when I got home, just a sweet trip.

Welcome Back

Hot damn Carrera was fun- good to see my compadre back at it as well- both of us coming back and shaking the rust off....

I needed Tuesday's legs on Saturday....

but Carrera was a blast anyway!

Good to be back racing, the masters race was quite tuff but safe.

I mostly sat in and struggled to close gaps/not hit my pedal/hide from the headwind. No teammates so I got to watch the shenanigans a bit and learn a couple things .

With 1.5 to go a little lull after a break came back and I saw some daylight for a second and went for the low- percentage last lap flyer, I got gobbled with a half lap to go and got back in line like a little whipped puppy.....

Cat 3 race was definitely more brakes and ballooning than I would prefer, not a lot slower, though. Where I was trying to hang onto a wheel through turns 3 and 4 in the masters, I now was trying not to hit a wheel or just passing folks in the turn-
Not stupid bad but not as fun or smooth.
I also noticed this weird thing where the guys from the back would come up the side, then back off right at the front and not commit, this sucked for me hitching a ride up on their coattails and I would slide back again since 8 across into a corner just seemed like a bad idea to me. This happened a few times, but I was really pretty tired from the previous race and at the end realized I wouldn't know what to do if I did get up there for the inevitable sprint as my legs were about out of pop.

All in all a fun race and maybe more important the Vickerator joined me for the cat 3 race, welcome back, buddy!
That's a tuff first race back.

Locals Only- Shasta Region

Old men don't huck , I took the easy way down...
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Shasta Hillclimb

This is a nice little local race, a mix of guys up for the century the next day and the locals that ride the mountain everyday.

Oh yeah, and throw in about 40 of the DFL crew, makingtheir annual pilgrimage north for a weekend of doing their thing.....

OK, now I will never be accused of being a grimpeur, but the raffle looked like fun and while I am completely unsuited for activities that rely on allez and more allez and especially any venga, I do like to suffer and be timed while doing it.

Rode to the start from camp, my favorite way to go anytime I can, just makes things simpler at times.
My nod to the race? I ditched the frame pump and brought two CO2's and two tubes.
Roughly 70 folks line up in town, they make some announcements and we are off.
My plan was to stay on through town were it is relatively flat and then slip off the back, I figured this would be kind of like a cross start, and it was in ways without the singletrack. I immediately got a tighten up from the bronchial pathways, they haven't gone like this in a while and let me know it, but I just relaxed and tried to stay on for a while- it turns out I stayed on longer than planned and it made things very rough later on, as I rode solo from 15 minutes in.

I tried to hold my threshold all the way but I really blew on the early bits and had a time recovering.
I rode hard for a hour and shut it down to noodle speed, I still had a best one hour power, but ended up finishing 20 minutes back from the real racers- a kid from Army Cycling won, tough little dude that left the bus early, Cameron got second and looked to be having fun and getting his suffer on all weekend, the cross season is coming, boys and girls.

Good stuff.
Oh yeah, I won ( in the raffle) a cooler, a t-shirt, a pass to brewfest at the ski bowl, and a tube.

Gave the pass to a helpful brudda that gave me a ride back to camp and helped me jumpstart the landbarge after I left the back door open.
Sweet.

shasta super summit 08

Not so many pictures this year

, but this one was fun, taken with the old momma earth behind me...

The name of the game was conserve and conserve some more, my two riding partners were much stronger climbers than me and I had to be OK with letting them go from time to time.....

If you think a Powertap is a lame deal- I knocked 40 minutes off this years' time compared to last years and came in 5 lbs heavier.

But I paced well and ate tons of endurolytes.

One more data geek #- 497 TSS points for this day alone.

Gotta train to be able to train.

Thanks to the wife, kid and dawg for handing up a couple bottles and stashing a cooler in the woods. I heard the cowbells!

That's one old muh fuh

Damn this birthday I felt old- maybe it was the new drivers license and throwing the old one away with the picture from the Oakland DMV circa 1989, I'll have to white out some info and put em both up for perusal and some chuckles....

Anyway, I had a crap pre- birthday, 5 flats in a row and a wasted training day, never buy the skinny Velox tape, especially when your friend at the bike shop asks you if your sure you want that stuff, get the wide comfy shit, and don't spend your day in the sun patching things and calling the wife who's home sick to come rescue you....

I was so pissed I walked into the gym at work and just popped the bar up thinking there were only two wheels on each side, damn that's a bit much, but I got off three reps then the linebacking corps noted the extra dimes apiece, thats 245 cold off the street baby, not much to most but more than I've put up in a long long time, and yes, when your a old muh fuh, you have to be grateful and happy for small stoopid things at times.....

Anyhow, I got to sleep in the next morning after working late, and had myself a cool day where folks gave me lots of nice stuff, I got adjusted at the chiro, got some new rim strips and some general love, dropped off some vittles for the dudes that keep my pile of bikes rolling, and threw the track bike in the land barge for a night of this...

Superfast track action, good safe racing, Mike and I had a good time playing in the B's and Mike won, very cool, then we did the A/B points, where I rode majorly dumb and wasted tons of energy but stayed on, then mis-timed getting back onto the line which was hauling ass and got dropped, but it was all in good fun and I didn't kill anybody or myself, saw ton's of bloggers and old friends, got some good luck kisses from the missus who finally decided as nervous as she gets for me messing around down there in San Jose she would still come and support, and like I said I tried to not kill myself on her first visit and maybe she would like the picnic on the grass and the girls playing and it's all good.

Carrot Cake

Homemade Champagne and Grapefruit Sorbet

I really don't need to elaborate on that one, but wow and um, wow.

Oh, and maybe YUM.

Then a sleepover so the grownups could play house?

Very rare around here, it was like being on vacation already.

Sweet.

Now tommorrow we leave for some camping and fun, some crazy hillclimb on Saturday followed by this beast on Sunday.

Good times.

Twitchy

My leg muscles seem to be pretty much deciding when to fire at random right now, little buggers woke me up twice while watching the ITT on VS this afternoon.

They are entertaining to watch, though, squirming around of their own volition, as long as they don't get too crazy......

Sucked cramping all the way down Mines today- felt OK but the buggers had other plans and would kick my ass good if I so much as smelled the front of our little group.
That's my fookin' canyon and I don't like riding in the backseat.

But thanks for towing my sorry ass out of there.

93 is right for me

gear inches, that is......

I went to last Sundays' sprint tournament at the track- I'm a complete newbie which is very fun, actually.
My legs were pretty sore after a long couple days in the saddle on Friday and Saturday, but I really want to get my five starts in this year and get my cat 4 upgrade, so I figured I would ride a easier gear and try to work on some leg speed.

I warmed up and noticed people were pedaling some monster gears, as well as sporting disk wheels and funny helmets.
Hmmm, I'm running a 48 x 15 on my goofy Langster with some Weinmann clinchers, but I really didn't realize what was going on until I had the format explained to me as the first guys did their flying 200's.
I got some great advice on lines and strategies, and even was offered to have a extra minute or so in order to change my gear, but it takes me 10 minutes to get it right anyway, and I didn't want to be some prima donna a-hole holding the deal up so I could get 12th v 13th anyway, so I went with 86- something gear inches- sprinted for the first turn and ran out of gear to stand on, had to flop my ass down and hamster pedal all the way around as well as taking a obscenely bad line and doing a extra 50 meters or something, arggh!

So 13 seconds or so was the result and I got placed into a bracket, this is a fun style of racing where you race against everybody of the same speed and get in lots of racing, so way cool.

I got lots and lots of help and feedback from guys, this match sprinting has lots of permutations with strategies and counters, all in two laps.

I kept my gear on for one match, tried to use it to my advantage with a holeshot and controlling the pace up high, but he came around me on the homestretch and I think he got me.

Soooo I went to the little 14 tooth, plunked it on and was able to "step into" the gear again, kind of giving me a extra bit of umph.

Not fair to be in that bracket anymore, though.

I hate sandbagging and will give no excuses for it, it wasn't my intention to manipulate the dealie and I don't have that fragile of a ego, I just wanted to try some different things.

I liked the " go from the ringing of the bell move out of turn 4", that was fun and it's so early some folks were caught sleepin'...:-)

Things I practiced-
keeping my peripheral vision going and looking under me at the opponent

using the banking and diving like a zero for a carrier

riding the top of the pole lane to hold someone but keeping smooth, not too good on this one and some of it is the bike, when I borrowed my buddies real track machine I definitely noticed a difference in the precision

tuning up the instinct and reflex of when to go.

being willing to play a bit and see.

Loving it and I'll be down next Wednesday for the racing, taking a vacation night or two.....