May 4, Sonora Road Race squish squish squish

Well I'm just chalking up all kinds of "inaugural" races here lately. This race seems to have been put together in fairly quick order but was very well done. If only the weather had cooperated. The course was HILLY. Let me say that again. It was a course full of hills. Everytime I went up a hill, I went down a hill then went up another hill. It was like 55 miles of unrelenting hill intervals. In the rain. Yay.

There was no masters cat 5 so I raced with the children again (and for the 108th time wondered why did I cat down all the way to a 5 again???). We had four laps to do. Sadly, only 17 of us toed the line. This was a well run race on good roads and probably the hardest course I've ever done in California. When I say the course was just one hill after another, I'm not kidding. Most of the climbs were the stay-in-the-big-ring-grunt-it-out variety. But there were also a couple of slightly longer hills where the small ring was called into action. Not a sprinter's course, not a climbers course, more of a short stocky strong guy kind of a course.

Anyhoo. We rode out into the rain, all 17 of us. After two climbs I did a quick head count and we were down to 12 guys already. A couple of more climbs and I was really starting to worry about my survivability. Between the humid rainy air and my lack of power, I was going asthmatic and seriously draggin on the hills and not necessarily recovering well on the descents. A couple of hills later, I did another head count and we were down to nine of us. Then it was my turn to get dropped. Luckily, getting dropped made me just angry enough to catch back on. We hit the longest descent of the course (hit 45 mph there in the rain!) with a bridge and a 90 degree right hander at the bottom. MAJOR brake fade had me panicking but friction and heat yielded sticktion and gription so I managed to bind things up enough to corner safely - unlike the first guy through the turn who ended up on his lid all tied up in a knot with his bike. After that guy crashed and even more hills came, the pace seemed to relent and I stopped worrying about surviving. Oops. At the end of the first lap, we hit the finishing stairstep climb and the pace went back up again. Poop, out the back I went.

As I watched the "pack" disappear I did an inventory that I've unfortunately had to do in probably hundreds of races (okay, dozens, I haven't spent THAT much time shat out the back in my racing life)...
-will continuing kill me? - no
-is someone who can affect my paygrade telling me to quit? - no
-is my bike unreparable? - no
-am I a little girl? - no

Damn, gotta keep going. So I continued on into the rain going up and down hills at something less than the pace of the first lap but not exactly touring either. Halfway through the second lap, another cat 5 caught me and passed me. For the next FIFTEEN MILES, we did a silly rubberband maneuver. He would slow on the climbs, I would catch up then he would sprint over the top of the hills. I'd then hold the gap on the descent and he would hit the bottom of the next climb fast, slow way down, I'd start to catch up and we'd do it all over again. Everytime I'd catch up to him I'd try to reason with him that we should maybe help each other out. He'd suck my wheel until the next hill summit and then launch himself and build up that infernal 20 second gap again. Cat 5's. What are you going to do?

Finally on the fourth lap I caught up to him and for about 15 minutes, just glued myself to his wheel. Then I gave him a taste of what it feels like to drag someone up a hill and then have them launch away from you (rather than gently coming and taking their pull). That did it. He must have blown up like a can of coke left in your car on an August afternoon. The only problem was that three hours of going up and down hills had finally began to take its toll on me, too. I started to get quad cramps. I sat on the nose of the saddle for awhile and stretched on the downhills and that seemed to help me recover. When I finally reached the finish climb, I was so happy I could have wet myself. Only I didn't need to wet myself since I was already carrying an extra five pounds of water in my chamois.

So that was one hard-ass course. To make matters worse, I rode past the finish line and down another hill and had to do an extra six miles of hills since I lost track of how to get back to the staging area in Jamestown (ouch!). I drove home sitting funny and worrying that I threw my back out but, happily, my back feels great today and my legs aren't too trashed either. Bonus. I can recover. I certainly can't complain about my endurance right now. I just need to get some speed and power going.

Oh. And my balls started hurting about 30 miles in. Damn you vasectomy scar tissue!

Results haven't appeared on the net, yet so nothing to report. I think I was maybe 7th or 8th or 9th?

April 22, Tour De Ames "Kermesse"

For Earth Day they had a bike race and fun ride at work. Up until the morning of the "race" I was torn on whether or not to go. Getting taken out by a person pretending to race in something may not turn out to be an actual race would be a serious bummer. But at the last moment, I decided, "What the heck, it's free and when will I get another chance to bomb around Moffett Field ignoring all the stop signs?"

I showed up and found a ton of people there already. Some looked serious and some, well, they were set for having fun - good for them. The format was that the "racers" could go first and after the first five mile lap, the fun riders could begin. The race was only two five-mile laps (ten miles?! that's a warmup not a race!). Anyhoo, Pete Worden the Ames center director sent us off with a starting pistol (In years of doing hundreds of races I think that was the first time!) and away we went. It took a few minutes to sort out the slow pokes but there was -luckily- a guy with full on tri-geek setup hammering away at the front losing anyone who wasn't fast enough. After one lap, there were maybe twelve to fifteen folks left, still lined up behind tri-guy. There was only one double chicane corner that demanded any kind of bike handling skills so I attacked before that and went through on my own. I looked back and had a pretty big gap but didn't feel like I could solo away with the 15 mile per hour winds on that day so I sat up.

Going into the finish, two guys attacked and I waited for all the other wheel suckers to sprint. But they all just stayed behind the tri-dude. Eventually I got anxious and just went with a full 400 meters to go. I quickly caught one of the guys off the front and dug deep for my sprint but couldn't catch the other guy. So I took second.

Prize: braggin rites and no one cares!
Lesson Learned: Go for it! He who hesitates, loses. I'd probably rather have some guys come around me at the finish than just barely miss out on the win.
Other Lesson Learned: Don't judge the field by appearance. Despite expensive bikes and a few pretty fit looking guys, I could have easily won that race if I'd been a little more confident and a little less fearful of the appearances of guys who really had nothing when the hammer time came.

Back to familiar rhythms

Finally back on the bike! Of course now I have a lingering cough/cold/sinus infection to deal with but that's fine. Jasper's on Spring Break so I'm off work today and tomorrow and he and I are going to go stay down in Monterey for a few days. We're both looking forward to it and I think Kris is looking forward to a Saturday to herself. Win win win. And Sunday will be epic bicycle madness. Or a three hour ride on familiar roads at a base-building pace.

Ow My Ballz

I got a vasectomy last Friday.

After two days, my right nut was hurting like getting kicked in the ballz when I moved. That wasn't right.

By yesterday morning it was hurting bad enough that I called the doctor and went back in to see him.

Without buying me dinner or even offering me a coffee, he made me drop trow and fondled my aching nuts. He dismissed me with a "That's just a small infection" and a cycle of Cipro to clear me up.

I said thanks and left but what I really wanted to do was haul off and kick him right in the crotch. That would have been nice.

Oh well. It's starting to feel better but still hurts. Mostly I'm having cycling withdrawal. I'd much rather have a bike between my legs than a swollen nut.

Madera Followup

Final results were: Crit, 30th (same time as winner). TT, 26th (27:33). Road Race, 20th. Overall: 20th of 45. Not bad, not good, not horrible, not excellent. Just there. But that's fine. Check out them hairy gams!

Madera Stage Race, March 14 and 15, 2009

<--- Going through turn 1 third wheel. Just like old times!

The Madera Stage race is cool to me because A)I love stage races, B)It was the first race I did when I moved to California, C)It was the last race I did in 1998 and D)It's mostly flat and I don't have high intensity climbing legs... yet.

Criterium: The crit went pretty well. I have to admit I was pretty nervous as I warmed up on the trainer and tried to remember all the basic crit strategies. Move up, move up move up. Stay near the front. Don't allow a gap to form when it's strung out. Figure out the wind. If a guy is getting gapped ahead of you, get around him and don't get behind him again. Finally, the watch told me it was time to get off the trainer and get to the start. I lined up with 49 other guys. I sucked up my fears and chose a start place that would put me on the inside in turn one. We were off and there wasn't a mad dash for the hole shot so it was pretty easy to cruise the first five laps or so in the top three to ten riders. The wind was tricky but I soon figured the best places to hide and that made it easy to see where I could give a little and where I could move up. Unfortunately, the pace jacked up pretty high after the first prime and that was about the last time I saw the front of the pack. There was one really bad crash going down the front straight that I managed to avoid. Other than that, it was pretty uneventful. I have to say the work I've been doing with cornering and bike handling at speed is really paying off. I had no problem moving up through turns and it wasn't such a bad deal to get swarmed and have to go through corners with guys on both sides. That's always been a panic moment for me. I guess I just don't trust other people to ride smoothly and not take me out. I experienced a combination of not having the legs and lungs and not having the desire enough to move up in the final laps and was content to roll in with the pack and ended up 30th of 50 with no one escaping off the front (meaning no real impact on the general class).

TT: In 1998 I did very well on this stage. Unfortunately it was a points race back then so I didn't get any team support for my effort and didn't build on it for the overall classification. This year, however, it was just 27 minutes of pain. About three miles in my 60 second guy caught me. That was okay but I was a little discouraged. Then at about 7 miles my 90 second guy caught me. Again, not a show stopper but not super for the morale. Then at 9 miles my 30 second guy finally reeled me in. At this point I was going slightly cross-eyed and searching for the 1KM sign. Finally, it showed up and after riding the last 200M for what seemed like an hour, it was over. I heard another number called out as I crossed the line and that was my 120 second tail guy. Needless to say I was not too optimistic about my placing given all that. If I'd at least been able to reel in my 30 second guy I would have been happy but. He didn't get away from me but I never caught him either.

After the TT I spent about 30 minutes farting around with a stupidly simple tire change (my training wheel tire blew while sitting in the sun) and then went out for a 15 mile cool down ride to find my happy place and remind myself that it's just cool to even be racing right now, nevermind results. When I got back, I checked my result and found I was 26th of 50. Not bad, not good, not horrible, not excellent. Just middle of the pack.

Road Race: The road race was 51 miles of wind, bumpy roads and only one or two steep little rollers around the finish line. During the first lap, guys were being really ridiculous about fighting for position at the front of the pack given the length of the race. The pace was actually pretty high and at one point we had closed the five minute starting gap behind the Cat 3's to a coupld of minutes. On the first time through the rollers I was really feeling the previous day's efforts but I managed to stay in the pack. After that first lap, things really calmed down. I could tell everyone suddenly realized it was a much longer day and that they had to ride those hills two more times. On the second time over the rollers, I was zoning out and got stuck in a second group. I put my head down and closed the gap down and got back into the front group but then they slowed way down through the feed zone and the pack all came back together anyway. But that gave me confidence since I could tell I would be able to better at least half of the pack for the finish. The attrition was high on the last lap. A few guys never got back on after the rollers, several guys flatted out and I saw one guy's chain fly right off his bike (never seen that before!). The pace went up for the last three miles and I managed to hang onto the pack by a thread as a few more guys filtered off the back. First roller, about twenty guys stuck together while the rest of us sort of dropped off one by one. I just rode in as hard as I could and was only a couple of seconds off the back of the final sprinting pack. After the sprint, I did the usual "count how many guys you see" thing and only saw 17. So I possibly came in 18th but history has shown that counting method pretty innaccurate so I was probably 20-somethingthingth.

So overall it was a middle-of-the-pack experience. The road race was actually quite fun and I was happy to be that close in the finish. I'd really like to be doing better than this in a Cat. 5 race, however. The real dissappoinment was the time trial. I really thought I'd be faster. But I did ride it as well as I possibly could. It wasn't one of those tt's where you find yourself wondering where you could have squeezed out a few seconds better here or there.

MTB Challenge #2

This race was two weeks ago but I'm only feeling like any kind of recap now. The race was a disappointment. I went in not caring that it was raining and very wet and muddy because I had managed to convince myself it was an easy win. NOT. Instead it was a race marred by way too much clumsiness on my part that lead to two crashes and a third get-off. Ended race with both shins bloodied and dented. Oh well. It was still kind of fun. Nothing compares to bombing around the singletrack racing in the mud and rain. Ended up 5th of about 15 and the race series is over for me now. I'm not going to do the third race.