Bier en modder

Tabor a couple nights ago.  Thought I’d get one last hard ride in before TOE 50 this Sunday.  Seemed to fit in well with a moderate taper-down.  I’m trying not to underestimate TOE so I’d rather be too rested and lose a little time than too tired and blow up halfway through.  From what I can tell, there’s an ass-load of climbing to be done.

Anyway…back to Tabor.

It’s a quick ride from home over there.  So I headed out, got there & signed in, and then took off to continue warming up.  This race is probably the exact opposite of PIR - it starts fast and furious up the hill and usually stays intense throughout the 8 laps.  There’s no 1 or 2 laps to get your legs going.  Getting to the start fully warmed up is important if you don’t want to get dropped off the back.

I skipped dinner with the family before heading over so I was a little hungry.  I made things infinitely worse by riding near Flying Pie on Washington St.  For the next hour, all I could think of was bacon pizza.

Got to the start and lined up with a few laps to go in the Masters race.  Seemed like the 4’s had a smaller field this year.  I can’t say how fantastic it is that the 4’s and 5’s are split into 2 races.

The first couple laps were pretty good.  I took off up the hill on lap 2.  I don’t know why.  There wasn’t a preme.  I just felt like it.  It didn’t cook me but it took a few laps of sitting in to get my legs back.  Once that happened, things started getting ugly.

In the lower categories, I think Tabor is pretty ruthless in exposing and exploiting ability and fitness.  There tends to be yo-yoing of riders from the front of the pack to the back during the climb and descent.  I’ve alwads found it important, and safer, to stay up sort of near the front.

Heading up the hill by the speed bump on Lap 6, I saw a space between a couple riders and took it.  The one on my left, probably near the seam between the pavement and the gutter, moved over into me.  Once he made contact, he leaned in and pushed me out of the way HARD.  I then bumped the rider to my right.  Nothign got out of hand.  A couple WTFs! but no one went down.  The rider to my right who I bumped into checked in with me once we got to the top.  No harm, no foul.  It’s all good.

Now for the last lap, it’s even more important to be somewhere up near the front.  If you’re not in the top 10-12 or so when the bell lap goes off, forget it.  The pack moves pretty fast from that point on and it’s tough to move up.  Maybe on the downhill but I don’t think that’s a strategy you want to count on.

I was up there but boxed in about 2 deep in every direction, which is not a good thing.  Heading down and around the reservoir things got squirrley again with another bump and run.  It’s been a fast race and it’s getting tense.  As we went by the gate and up the hill, all hell broke loose.

There’s always a few riders who take off way too early, pop halfway up the hill, and slow to half speed trying to hold on.  Then there’s people who got caught 20 spots back trying to aggressively weave their way up through the pack.  No one’s checking their shoulder for space.  It’s a flippin’ free for all.

If you’re smart and patient, you *can* find a few seams there as the pack opens up a bit.  Winning is out of the question but you can get a respectable finish out of it.  The dangerous part is that, in my opinion, those people who took off way too early do not seem like experienced riders.  Yes, we’re 4’s but I think a majority of the pack knows how far out to start an attack.  So as the pack starts to swallow them up, a few of the people moving up pass pretty close on the left (for example).  A knee-jerk reaction is to swerve a little out of the way…into the rider that is passing them hard on the right.

I got caught in one of these.  More bumping.  More swerving.  Elbows getting thrown.  I think at one point I had to put the brakes on so it was here that I checked my right shoulder, got out of the way, and shut it down.  I don’t need to get hurt over this, especially sprinting for 15th.

That’s Tabor for you.  Pretty intense night, more so than I remember from year’s past.  I wonder if it’s just that the 4’s and 5’s are split up.  I don’t know.

So TOE 50 this weekend.  I’ll finish prepping the bike tonight and pack up for an early Sunday drive down.  I’m hoping for a 5 to 5:15 time.  I’ve put some great workouts in over the past couple months so I’m optimistic.

Monday PIR last night.  I don’t do many road races anymore.  There’s a number of reasons I guess but it generally boils down to I just like off-road a little more.   I think it’s the challenge of seeing what I can do by myself.  My results are largely dependent on my fitness and ability to ride the terrain, unlike road which does require fitness but frequently takes team tactics, and a small amount of luck.  So late last year, I decided to upgrade one of my bikes and it was a no-brainer to go with a new MTB.

One of the other primary reasons I shy away from road is that I dislike road crashes.  You’re usually going fast.  The ground is ridiculously hard and unforgiving.  And it seems like there’s better than even odds that it won’t even be your fault.

It’s interesting though to see the perspective on crashes in the two (or three) disciplines: MTB, cross, and road.  In the first two, it almost seems like an accepted part of the sport.  It’s tough to push the envelope in uneven and unstable terrain without going down.  It’s almost a given.  Yes, you can get hurt.  Stitches, contusions, rashes, sprains, broken bones, whatever.  But we take our lumps and come back for more.

Without question, road is different.  I hate going down.  I hate seeing anyone go down.  I don’t even like hearing about it because odds are it ended badly.

So 11 laps into a 14 lap race, I found myself in the front after making a very poor choice to not attack on the tail end of a few other unsuccessful ones by other riders.  I surged up to the front with the energy but lost confidence at the last second.  With a ’shit or get off the pot’ choice, I busted out the Sunday crossword puzzle and stayed put.  We/I rounded corner 11 where we started getting waved down.  It looked like 3 or 4 women were down right outside of the corner.

With 3 laps to go, we neutralled for the lap.  By the look of it, I wasn’t optimistic they’d be up any time soon, but at best we’d have a 2 lap sprint to the finish.  Coming around the same spot again, we heard the ambulance in the distance and knew we were done for the night.  One woman from Ironclad, Kristin, was still down.

Rolling back in to the pit, one guy in our field seemed a little bitchy that we couldn’t keep racing.  I don’t know, maybe I’m reading too much into it.  Then again, maybe not.  I was a little tired and, admittedly, a little frustrated at the race being cut short.  But I also found myself slightly angry that someone got hurt doing something that is supposed to be fun.  So hearing some dickhole complain about not getting his 13 bucks worth didn’t help.

Relatively quietly, all of us got our shit and went home.

Ironclad has an update here.  Good luck to her and her family.  I hope she recovers soon.

Heading out for a lunch ride to take out some frustration on my bike.  It’s overcast and about 65 out.  I’m no weatherman but it doesn’t look like 79 and mostly sunny like the forecast said.

I dislike power testing.  Yeah, the best power data you can get is from a race but sometimes the timing and schedule doesn’t always work out that way.  So yesterday’s ride, and one later today, is for a quick test.

Yesterday was the 5 and 20 min intervals.  For me, the 5 minute one is the suckiest one of all.  Right around the 2 minute mark it feels like you’re Hammy on a Red Bull in Over the Hedge - time slows down to a crawl while you suffer away.  Ugh.

I tried something different yesterday by taping over the power portion of the head unit, leaving just the speed and time visible.  I’ve had this feeling that seeing the power value, especially during the longer tests, could prejudice you one way or the other in your effort.

For example, heading out with a preconcieved notion that since your last test was at x watts, then after a month or two of hard work of course you should be at least at x + 15, or whatever.  But if you get this realtime feedback during the test that you’re not quite there…then what? These flippin’ tests are hard enough without getting a proverbial sucker-punch to the gut that you haven’t improved.

So yesterday, with the power value blanked out, the test seemed a little different.  Instead of checking in at a number, it felt easier just to ask myself - ‘is this the hardest I can ride for the next x minutes’ and then adjust effort based on that.

Anyway, the tests I did yesterday showed a solid improvement in the 5 min and a return to the 20 min effort I was in at the peak of last season.  Seeing as I’m barely getting into the rough stuff, it’s all good.

Whats next…PIR next Monday.  TOE 50, hopefully as part of a 35+ team, at the end of the month.  Then short track.

Mid-May update here.  I swear I thought things would have gotten easier after taxes…but they didn’t.  It’s more work than anything else.  It’s really sucking my will to live here.  But I’d be a fool to say that out loud.  It’s a job.  A good job.  And a secure one at that too.  So I’ll just shut my piehole, be thankful for what I’ve got, and move on.

My knee is 95% healed up by now.  Knee?  What knee?  An ugly crash at Bear Springs caused my knee to get ripped open by the top of the front fork hydraulic cylinder.  Somewhere in the neighborhood of 8-12 internal stitches.  Plus another 11 to close it up.  Like I said, ugly.

BTW, is it a crash if you never fall off the bike?  Something strange happened.  I think the bottom of my right crank arm hit a stump or rock at the perfectly angle to stop me dead cold.  Ok, not me but my bike.  I kept going into the front of the bike, sacrificing my right knee against the fork instead of my bits and pieces against the stem.  I managed to hold on long enough to stop the bike by my own power.  So is it a Crash?  Incident?  Implosion?  I still don’t know how to describe it.  Whatever it was, it sucked.

Anyway, enough has been written about the snow at Bear Springs that I don’t need to pigpile on the topic any more.  I finished right at the top of the bell curve (11th out of 23/24)…as usual.  The new Giant Anthem X2 is as dreamy as I could want.  I’d only make 2 modifications:

1 - I wrapped 1 course of cork handlebar tape around the grips to make them bigger.  My hands cramped up during Hornings because the grips were too small.  The extra layer of tape is a little cushier and much bigger.  Bueno.

2 - I have a longer set of 180mm XT cranks on order.  Yes, the 5 mm makes a difference.

There were other substantial effects from the crash.  I’m just going to say that Rachel wasn’t all that amused.  I’m also only add that I need to rethink my MTB riding style.  I can’t keep getting banged up like this.  Sore?  Yes.  Exhausted?  Certainly.  But physically injured?  Um, not so much.

Moving on.  The crash caused me to move a rest week up a week.  Other than that, things are moving along right on schedule for short-track PIR.  I feel really good so far.

Looks like Tabor is in limbo, which I’m kind of ok with.  I like Tabor but don’t love it.  I feel like you need to train in a very specific way to be consistent at Tabor.

No road races yet.  I think about Monday PIR but haven’t gotten my shit together.  Perhaps next week.  The rest of my (older) teammates have been doing the 40+ races with decent numbers and organization.  At 39, I’ve got a year to go.  Honestly, I’m looking forward to it.

Not sure about the rest of the MTB season yet either.  I’d like to get out to Bend fo Picketts Charge, but I haven’t brought that up with Rach yet.  Same with Test of Endurance.

That’s all for bike-related things right now.  Hopefully I’ll have  PIR report early next week.

Time for what is turning into monthly updates.  I hope to return to a more regular posting frequency soon.  Tax season is almost over and I’m just getting settled into a reasonable training routine.  And honestly, there only so many posts you can put up over the winter/early season about cycling that don’t say

2.5 hours on trainer in L2/Endurance

or

3 x 30′ x 5′ in L3/Tempo.

Not unlike those workouts, it gets a little stale after a while.  It’s not that I didn’t need it though.  I ended last year in what felt like a spectacular flame-out.  After reviewing my training workouts for last year, I quickly realized that around August and September I tried heaping a ton of threshold and VO2 work on…nothing.  I did token base work but nothing that a 38 year old (relatively) novice cyclist should try to load 12+ weeks of high intensity intervals and racing on.

Looking back, I believe I technically peaked at the Larch Mt Hillclimb in early August with an average power of 375w for 1:10.  Everything went to shit after that and I never got that close to that number for extended periods of time the rest of the year.

This year I’ve started earlier and much, much slower and more gradual.  If I want to make it to early December in one piece, this is how it has to be.  I still feel new at this.

3+ months into this year, I still don’t feel fast but very, very fit.  It was after another solid 3 week block of tempo work that I went out for the first test: Hornings.

Hornings is notoriously a mud bog.  Spring rains + clay = mud. That’s just the way it goes around here.  But the weather turned silly-good at the tail end of the week.  Maybe there’s hope.

For the Cat 1’s, it was 4 - 5 mile laps.  I tried this race last year with disastrous results.  This year, however, felt different.  I was ready with a new full suspension ride and ridiculously aggressive tires  - Mullet style…business up front (20 year old Panaracer Dart), party out back (new Conti 26×1.5″ CrossCountry).  Good times.

At the start, I wanted to keep in mind that I’d done zero high intensity training thus far this year.  Nada.  Getting into a pissing match on the first lap trying to hold position or pass people wouldn’t be good.  I want to ride the full race.

So off we go…and straight up the entrance road for the longest stretch of both smooth trail and climbing for the day.  My first lap mantra?  Be cool.

Up we went for about 5 min. to the top where we started a quick downhill through the woods and…disc golf course?  It had a bit of a cross course feel to it; lots of quick, sharp turns and short up and downs.  Active riding.  We came out of the woods to a climb through the parking lot, the figure 8 crossover and up some more the the back stretch to where the bad mud was last year.  It was surprisingly dry(er).  Ridable by some, but not all.

Blast through the river crossing, by (but not through) the start area to a new section of loose singletrack up the side of a hill.  I tried riding it once and gave up.  It was faster and took less energy to run it.  Plus it felt good to get off the bike.  Continue snaking through the trees on singletrack for another 5 minutes, back to the start and up the hill again.

So that’s your 5 mile loop.  You were either going up hard or down fast.  There wasn’t any in between.  Kind of relentless actually, but in a good way.  It took my body one lap to get revved up and used to going anaerobic up the little hills.  After that I settled in and felt like I got faster each lap.  I missed getting lapped by Carl Decker with maybe 20 yards to spare.  This earned me another 35 minute lap.  Yay.

Decker screamed through the 4 laps in about 1:45 or so - 25 minute laps.  I finished around 2:20 - 35 minute laps - and 6th out of 11 Cat 1/35-45’s.  I had David Diviney in view for some of that last stretch of singletrack but I just didn’t have another match to burn to try and catch up.  Still - not getting lapped by Carl Decker on a fast course and getting within striking range of someone as fast as Diviney is pretty good.

So I’ve got an off week this week then it’s time to start bringing threshold work in.  For races, Bear Springs is at the end of the month.  I’ll skip Spring Thaw and probably Musdlinger.  Pickets is a possibility.  TOE 50 is almost a lock.  I’m not sure about anything after that with the exception of Tabor and PIR STXC.  I’m still a little road race-phobic primarily because of the lousy condition my road bike is in.  New Giant next year.

In the meantime, I will continue to slog through my taxes…right up to the deadline.  I hate taxes.  I don’t mind paying them - I mean, shit has to get paid for - I just hate doing them.

It’s my 11 year anniversary since moving out here.  Loaded up the Civic, pointed the car west and just drove until I got here.  Considering I’d never been out here and that (looking back now) I relied heavily on my parents, it was a big move.  A lot of things popped up after I moved that could have easily derailed me and sent me back east.  I’m obviously glad I stayed so I try to recignize it each year.

Feels like a month of Sundays since I was here last.  Vacation.  Joining Crackbook.  Birthdays.  Family Illnesses.  Tax season.  A little stress from Rachel’s work (mortgage industry…which currently is in shambles).  And the general chaos that goes with a 5 and 8 year old.

Spent a week in Hawaii in mid February.  We made a concerted effort not to ‘do’ anything.  Our daily schedule was as follows:

• get up whenever,
• drink coffee on the veranda,
• go the beach to read/ swim/ snorkel/ make sand castles,
• have lunch,
• make a pitcher of rum punch/mojitos,
• go to the pool until dinner,
• eat dinner
• read a bit until bedtime

That was basically about it.  Pretty rough.  The post-vacation bump didn’t last that long as we got back to the grind fairly quickly.

Rachel is an appraiser and is finding herself between a rock and a hard place in terms of doing work.  I think it was Greenspan who coined the term “Irrational Exuberance”.  I believe a new term is afflicting mortgage brokers and underwriters - “Irrational Retardedness”.  Seriously.  Everyone is losing it.

The homeowners are pissed becasue their house isn’t appreciating at the 20% it was 2 years ago.  In many areas, the value is down.  The lenders are stressed because the low interest rates has everyone going in for a refi.  The underwriters are freaking out because the loans their lenders approved are getting more and more difficult to sell.  And the appraisers are panicking because the underwriters keep coming back for more information, particularly nearby supporting house sales (which there aren’t any).

It’ll all settle out eventually but basically they good times from the early 00’s are so over.

Rach and I have 3 grandparents left; one for me, and two for her.  Once of hers, on her Dad’s side, fell and broke her hip a few years back and has been deteriorating since.  We learned after we got back from Hawaii that her kidneys are failing.  So a couple weeks ago we brought the kids by essentially for one last visit.  That wasn’t very pleasant.  Then my grandmother, on my mom’s side, is also aging.  She’s had some heart problems pop up over the past couple months which has my mom up there as a psuedo live-in nurse.  At 65, my mom’s no spring chicken.  I can tell it’s wearing her down pretty hard.

It’s tax time too.  With her self-employed business and our new rental house, I’m up to my ass in receipts, bills, statements, and records.

It’s all relatively under control but I realize now that I’m always doing ’something’ from the minute I get up to when I go to bed.  I think if all of this happened last fall during cross season, I’d have cracked.

Luckily, training hasn’t really ramped up hard yet.   I’m just about to start mid-base work next week.  Up until now, I’ve been keeping a fairly steady 6-8 hour a week pace of endurance/tempo work.  ‘Solid’ is a good way to describe how I feel now.  ‘Fast’ is not.  I’m in no shape to go fast right now but I’m in great shape to start training to go fast.  I’m more optimistic about the start of this season than last.

Hornings is coming up fairly soon.  Last year I raced that a day after I had a 24 hour stomach bug.  I don’t ever, ever, ever, ever want to do that again.  Plus it was a slopfest.  I could have possibly enjoyed it but I was incredibly tired and irritable.  Probably the stomach bug talking though.

Anyway, then there’s mudslinger, bear springs trap, and chainbreaker, which I’ll pass on.  A race on Mother’s Day?  Really?  Mmmm, I think I like being married better than racing.

Hopefully with cycling ramping up and perhaps other things settling down, I can return to more normal postings.  We’ll see.

It’s not often I do this, but today’s NY Times had some fantastic stuff in it.  Kind of the Good, The Bad, and The Ugly-type of stuff.

First the Good:

Without question, I cannot believe that this hasn’t been pointed out to me before.

Bacon!

2 pounds of sausage wrapped by 2 pounds of interlaced bacon.  Be still my beating heart!!!

I’ve done some relatively over-the-top stuff with pork products over the years:  I grind and stuff my own sausage from time to time, have a bacon fat and lard “bank” in the fridge, and most recently deep-fried Scotch Eggs.  But this…this…I’m speechless.

Then the Bad:

8 babies?  8?  Really?

And lastly…the Ugly:

I’m a public employee.  There are certainly pros and cons to working private versus public.  I’ve tried both and seem to be happier and do better work on the public side.  So many (ok, all) of the perks and bonuses that come along with private work are, frankly, foreign to me.

However, given these times, the public sector is looking pretty good.  I’m certainly not having the issues that private employees do.

Taking this a step further, while no job sector has gone untouched (even certain parts of public, like development-related services), the financial section has particularly taken it raw.  A support group has popped up in NYC, not for the workers…but for their girlfriends who no longer are living the lifestyle they used to.  This article is a pretty decent and slightly funny (in a sad way) read.

Nothing earth-shattering here.  Indoor rides are humming along.  Hour here.  Couple hours there.  It all adds up.  I’m keeping things in the 6-8 hours a week range right now.  That’ll last until mid February when I get back from Hawaii.  Doesn’t seem to make a ton of sense to start increasing time or intensity when I’m going to be taking a full week off.  I’ll also order the new MTB when I get back too.  Exciting.

In the meantime, I’ve been riding some, brewing some, and trying to chase down some of those mildly irritating household fix-its that have been coming up.  First, an electrical line got a short circuit somewhere during the big that we had in late Dec. after the snowstorm.  It’s an outdoor/basement line.  I’ve chased it down to either the outside walkway lights or the outside outlet.  Haven’t taken it any further than that.  Next, a hose in the hot tub spring a leak.  That took a little time to get a new hose and replace it.  There’s others but I must be mentally blocking them right now.

Got a couple brews in the works right now.  One was a double alt I made around x-mas.  Looks like the yeast pooped out and it failed to finish fermenting.  I’ve gon through various phases with it; begging, pleading, bribing, cursing - but it still won’t finish.  Threw in some champaigne yeast but that hardly budged it.  Right now, it’s in the basement in a 10 gal. keg just sitting there.  I should try to pick up a bunch of yeast from Hopworks to finish it out.  If that doesn’t work, then there’s not much more I can do.  Drink it I guess, but I’m not a fan of sweeter beers.  The second beer I just made Sunday, an ESB, turned out good.  It’s in the basement too, bubbling away.

Have I mentioned that a week in Hawaii is just 12 days away.  I can almost taste the rum punch already.  A second trip this year, possibly to Disneyworld (whatever the FL one is), is being worked out with my side of the family for late August.  Still hammering out the details with the rest of my family.

OK, 2 quick movie reviews. Continue Reading »

Not a ton of posting lately.  A mix of ‘I’m too busy’ and ‘I have nothing going on’.  The 2008-9 Holiday Cocktail Season is over.  I’d like to say that with the snow days, it went exceptionally well.  Moving on though…

I’m hearing and reading of others who are hitting the trainers right around now.  For me at least, I’m in the pre-base or early base or whatever you want to call it where you just ride for a while with a couple intervals of moderate effort.  Nothing big.  Enough to break a sweat but not enough to feel it hours or days later.

Most of the shorter efforts I’ll just pop in a spinervals and go with it.  For the longer ones, I need something different.  Don’t get me wrong, I like Coach Troy, but a hour’s my limit.  Anything over an hour needs a movie or something like that.

So what makes a good movie to ride to?  An action flick is good, sci-fi would be a close second.  With noisy trainers, something with limited amounts of down-time or soft dialog.  A relatively obvious plot would help.  Basically, I’d like to not think about the fact that I’m on a trainer but I don’t want to get too lost or else I’ll end up soft-pedaling.

So here is the inaugural trainer movie review….

Continue Reading »

With the end of cross season, the onslaught of both the holidays and over a foot of snow, I’ve been a little busy and scattered.  Doing what?  Let’s see;

• last-minute shopping - because UPS and the USPS were running behind, and I’d be a certified turd if my wife didn’t have something to open, not to mention I’d be sleeping on the couch for the foreseeable future,
• a little brewing - double Altbier,
• work - I didn’t really take any time off, saving it up for Hawaii (February) and something in the summer,
• scrambling around trying to keep 4 chickens from becoming poultry popsicles,
• most of the driving and car maintenance - Rachel is from Portland…I’m from the northeast.  That’s all we need to add about that,
• rooting out a tripping breaker at home,
• planning next year’s bike season,
• reading, playing Civ 4…

What was that?  Next year’s season?  Yes.  I’ve been thinking off and on about this past year and how things never really seemed to come together like I’d hoped.  Looking over the few cycling training books I have from the library, I’ve come to the sobering conclusion that I was likely overtrained during most of the cross season.  Well over 60% of the symptoms listed fit fairly well.  After reviewing my training files, it was September that did it for me.  I thought, at the time, that it was manageable but that month clearly stands out in terms of training load.

So I’m rethinking my process.  Ordinarily, I’d check out until late winter/early spring.  Basically nothing but weight training.  This year I am going to make a more concerted effort towards base building over the winter.  I don’t want to have a sense of urgency when September and October rolls around.  I’m certain I tried to stack a heavy load on a fairly weak base.

Anyway, I’ve got 20 or so races planned; 8 or so cross, 8 - 10 mtb/short track, and the rest filling in with PIR, Tabor, or whatever else seems good at the time.  I’d like to enjoy this year more as opposed to feeling slightly frustrated.

So I started this week, getting some easy rides in on the trainer.  Personally, I don’t mind the trainer that much.  It’s in the garage where I can set up the laptop to ride to a Spinerval or any of the tv series I have from the library.  Not very exciting but it seems like you can get a little more efficient workout inside than out.  Talk to me in a month or so and see how I feel.

Otherwise, New Year’s coming up.  We’ve got a family thing over our house with bowling that night.  Rach has an old friend from U of O coming up from teh Bay Area with her family.  Should be fun.  I’m going to roast a turkey for the next day.  I’ve got that double Alt that I’m just willing to finish fermenting so I can keg it up soon.  Very exciting.  And lastly, college b-ball season is just getting started.  My favorite.

That’s about it for now.