Bier en modder

I’m continually fascinated by people who answer the cellphone while they’re on the shitter.  It just blows me away.  Hey, can I put you down for a sec, I’ve got a double-wiper here.

If I were on the other end, I’d be a little irritated.  I mean, your mind is clearly not on the conversation I’m having with you.  There’s very, very few situations – basically life or death – where I’d interrupt my few minutes of solitude to talk with someone.  a) it’s just not that important and b) that’s what voice mail is for.

Still getting over the cold.  Just a stuffed and runny nose right now.  It shouldn’t in any way affect my aerobic capacity tomorrow, right?.  Who knows, I may immerse myself in a vat of Vicks Vapo-Rub.

What’s that?  No, I’m not holding my breath, I just needed to pinch one off here.  (I can have a lot of fun with this).

I caved in and went over to the Holiday Ale Fest yesterday for a couple tasters.  Made the mistake of having Hair of the Dog Jim early on.  With a cold, only the strong flavors were showing up.  Felt like I had a mouthful of oak chips and chewing tobacco in my mouth for the next hour.  I like the beer but it needs to be the last one you order for the day.  I immediately regretted getting it.

After a week of milling it over, I’ve got one more race left in me for 2008.  I was seriously on the fence about throwing in the towel for USGP – tired, banged up, cut up, and a very uncomfortable feeling that I wasn’t having fun.  I don’t want to say that I was dreading racing at USGP but for the first few days after Hillsboro, I certainly wasn’t looking forward to it.  To me, that’s a pretty good warning sign right there.

However, by Thursday I began to feel a little snap in my legs just on the ride to and from work and I gave some objective thought towards the rest of the year.  I’ve wanted to race through USGP since the spring when I set plans and goals in motion.  So I’ll compromise with myself here and do one of them.  I’m certain I have one good race left in me.

So back to the plan…this week, whether I was racing or not, was an off week and I’ve tried to rest as efficiently as I can.  Next week is a busy week anyway.  I’ll try to sneak a few hard rides in there just to stay sharp.  Then the following week will be mostly easy with a few bursts here and there.  That should just about do it.  The USGP races are mercifully shorter (45 min).

Odds are that the race will fill up, or at least come close to it.  If the rule about start order holds, there’s the top 8 or so from the USGP (if they’re all there), then the top 8 locals (most likely), and then the rest of us based on registration order.  Last I checked, I was 50th.  Who knows where that’ll put me -  6-8 rows from the front?  If I can start around 50th (give or take) and move up in the 20 to 30s, I’ll be very happy with that.  I’m sure there will be some ringers coming in from out of town; Bay area, the barrier-skipping Seattleites, and I’m sure some from Colorado on west.  On the other hand, with the elimination of the B/35+ group, some will be moving up.

What does that mean?…who the hell knows, and at this point, who cares.  I have enough issues of my own to deal with during a race (e.g. staying upright), without worrying about placement or what other rider to keep in check.  There’s enough people from the Crusade series registered for me to get a strong sense of where I am in the overall picture.  If I keep in sight a few familiar faces (or asses for that matter) I’ll do just fine.

Basically, I just want to have a solid race, start to finish.  Something to get me thinking about next year already.  I felt I haven’t had one this year with the exception of Barton, and my finish there was great (14th).  I’m still trying to go over in my head what was different about that race than the others but I haven’t been able to put my finger on it yet.  Each of the other races, some part of the big picture didn’t seem 100%; be it mechanical, skills, fitness, or just having my head in the right spot.  I need to turn this around.

Over the next weeks, I hope to summarize the season and other related thoughts that have been milling around since early October.  It has been an eye-opening experience moving up through the levels over the past 4 years to reach the A’s.  Without question, no upgrade between levels has been harder than this one.

“You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit…”

A reasonably appropriate saying from Ingrid & Owen’s old day care…You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit…Most people that have been racing long enough probably have some idea of what constitutes a ‘good’ or ‘ideal’ course for them.  Without getting into specifics (hills, mud, whatever), I think most of us prefer a course that challenges skills and fitness without being frustrating.

I firmly believe that the race organizers/course designers do their best to squeeze the most they can out of a particular venue.  Some are fairly constrained; Alpenrose & Rainier come to mind.  But others, like Barton and Estacata seemed to always change just enough for the better.  Similar to riders taking a lap or two to find the best lines during a race, I think it takes organizers a year or two to get feedback on making a course fit the venue.

That said, the immediate general consensus on Hillsboro seems more negative than positive.  Comments seem to range from being a little boring to having to navigate the E Coli arena.  A small percentage of responses have been of the “shut up and ride it” type, which I disagree with a little.  Surprising at it seems, it’s ok to not like a course.  It s even more appropriate to voice it (without sounding like a whiny b____) so the organizers can act on it…or not.

During warm-up, I thought that I’d get a strong chance to finish well.  The long, soft straight-aways, even the bumpy ones, felt like stuff I could power through.  I think I tend to race like a time-trialer.  The less interruption to rhythm I get during a race, the better…or so it seems.

The start got off well with a fairly quick pace around to the back section.  I’ve got people I want to finish near just ahead and I’m not struggling to hang on at all.  So far so good.

Then the turns.  Oh, the turns.  If I never see another 180° turn on mud-covered pavement or gravel again, it’ll be too soon.  Let’s be clear: I’m tall.  My bike frame is technically a 66 cm.  I’m also on the heavier side (for cyclists) at 200#.  So my center of gravity is substantially higher than most others out there.  To be blunt, tight turns on loose material turn my bowels to water.  As I worked my way though this section of the course, gaps start opening up.

On the 2nd lap, heading into the last horse stall barn, the tires give out and I’m down hard in a flash.  The front chainring opens up a 3 inch gash my right front leg.  Oh good, the liquid shit arena is just ahead.  Just what the doctor ordered.

And then there was the arena.  Pretty well frayed from crashing, I couldn’t get it together enough to ride it well.  I ended up running it the rest of the race.

The rest of the race for me played out like this; hammer the flats to catch up with or stay with a group, lose them through the turns at the stables, run through the arena, wash, lather, rinse, repeat.

Preliminary results have me near DFL but I’m certain the scorers missed me on some of the laps.  I heard from people in the pits that my number was completely covered in mud, making it unreadable.  I’m guessing it got missed.  Plus, the results look a little funny anyway.  I think some lap counts got mixed up.  I’m sure it’ll get fixed.

I need to take a day or to to take a personal inventory on what I have left for the year.  Right now, I feel totally cashed and have felt worse and worse each race since Barton.  I’m incredibly happy with this first year in the A’s but I’m also contemplating pulling the plug on the rest of the year.  More on that later.

From what I can see on the City’s rain gages, SoPo got the bulk of the rain thie week.  For example, the Harney gage down in Sellwood got a solid 1.32 inches yesterday but the Skyline School gage only got 0.61 – less than half.  In contrast, the Hillsboro gage only has 1.19 inches over the past 72 hours, at least according to NOAA 0.69 for yesterday).  Not quite the drenching I was hoping for.

Here is a map of the rainfall depths for the past 72-hours (as of yesterday morning).  As you can see, the heaviest rains were to the east.  I didn’t have time to track down more gages outside the city’s network.  I should try to set that up some time in the future.

What’s this mean?  Who really knows.  The forecast for the rest of the week looks dry and possibly even a little sunny.  3 days is a decent amount of time to dry out but I doubt it’ll get any drier than a few inches down.  Most soil in the area has a fair amount of clay which means it’ll stay wet until, say, next July.  By the first couple races, my guess is that the course will be pretty chewed up.

Personally, I’m hoping for the mud from Hillsboro of last year as opposed to the stuff we had last weekend at PIR.  I was able to motor through that looser, soupier stuff easier (relatively, of course).  The stiffer mud that has a higher potential to kick your front tire around gives me trouble.

Fairly quiet here.  Busy but quiet.  I’m a big ‘list’ person.  I like to make lists.  Things to do, etc.  I’ll even add “make a list” on my list just to check it off.  Feels good.  After a few weeks, the list is finally getting smaller instead of growing each day.

Up and down week of riding so far.  Some good workouts, some bad ones.  Trying to stay focused.  It’s near the end of the year so a quantum leap in speed or power isn’t all that likely.  But I do still need to keep working at it.  If I do nothing or go light, I lose what I’ve built up over the summer and fall.  That’d suck.

Still no definiative word from Schwalbe on the Ralph tubular.  I should probably start annoying them with e-mails.  Regardless, I’m not likely to get a replacement or even a repair for that matter in time for this season.  I have a Fango on the way which I’ll get glued up next week.  I probably could have gotten it ready for Barton this week but I figured that it wouldn’t rain, thereby jinxing it.  If it’s delightfully muddy this weekend, you have me to thank.

Ordered my conical fermenter, or unitank, as beer nerds like to call it.  The first 6 of my late fall/early winter beers are planned.  I’ll send my order in when the conical arrives, probably in a couple weeks.  I also need to get a dead chest freezer to the dump and get a replacement upright freezer on craigslist this weekend or next.  Very exciting…all of it.  New beer on tap.  A very convenient fermenter.  Moving back up to 10 gallon batches.  Good stuff.

Should also be ready to press cider next weekend too.  I’ve got the food disposal bought and I need to clean it out and make a mounting plate.  My in-laws have a press which I’ll try to get and clean this weekend.  That should be a fun time with the kids.

As a final reminder, as if you didn’t need one, vote early and vote often.  We got our ballots in early last week and the phone & doorbell have been blissfully quiet.

Few blog issues earlier today.  Did an upgrade.  Hopefully it’ll stick.  Might have been issues with the posts I pasted in from Word.  I’ll try to keep an eye on it.

Some days I feel like Unfrozen Caveman Blogger.  Oh no – did the Internets eat my blog?  I don’t know.  Because I’m a caveman, that’s just the way I think.

What started off as a relatively quiet and restful weekend slowly and gradually built up to a crazy pace by race time Sunday. Took off for the coast this weekend. The in-laws took the kids a day early in the MoHo which left Rach and I free until Saturday. The ride out was great, especially at rush hour. Rach drove for a change which gave me a little time to zone out on the road to Tillamook. Once we got there, we just sat around and read for the rest of the night.

Saturday we got up and headed over to Cape Lookout where Dan and I were going to take Owen crabbing. The weather was iffy but luckily it held out for the 3 hours we were out there. Took an hour or so to find out where the crabs were but once we did, we caught our limit. Owen was ridiculously excited about it. Good fun. We ate a few that night and I stripped the rest for crab cakes tonight. I can’t wait.

Sunday I wanted to leave the coast by 11 to get back in town by 1-ish. If I left for the race by then, I’d have enough pre-race time to take care of everything.

Well, that didn’t happen. We left a little later and I felt rushed the whole way back. By the time I dropped everyone off at home and got to the course, I had barely 25 minutes to warm-up. Crap.

Squeezed in an abbreviated warm-up in and headed over to the start. Found myself about 8 rows back (each about 7 wide). Slight drizzle at the start and it was starting to get a little colder. I’m glad I kept the arm warmers on.

Don’t need to get into a ton of details here. The course was slick, especially the downhill sections. You didn’t so much ride it but held on for a controlled slide down the hill. The back stretch by the parking area was bumpy as hell. You could have either picked your way through the ruts or just held on tight and powered through. The velodrome…ugh. Lets say I’m glad I grew up on the east coast where I learned to ride my bike on ice.

With this course, the field gets strung out pretty fast. Start position is huge for this race. Passing isn’t impossible but the course is narrow so you usually need to burn a little energy taking a less than ideal line to do it. I felt I was in the front half of the pack by the time we got to the velodrome.

I felt pretty good. The bike held up. The wheels were the shit. I’m sold on the Racing Ralphs. At 35 psi, they hardly slipped at all. Got a little chain suck on the last lap but it held off.

I spent most of the race slowly moving up. I had a pattern where I’d see a group up ahead, catch up, stick with them for a quarter lap or so and then eventually pass. I was working hard but not killing myself. Had I been up in the pack a little more around faster riders, I would have been able to hold a higher pace. But I wasn’t.

Got caught by the A’s with about a lap to go. That’s going to be a minor goal of mine this year: don’t get caught.

Still, I’m settling in to the 60 minute race. I ended up 26th out of 73 or so. Not bad but not great either. Nice to know I still have a little bit left in the tank.

Did the usual post-race stuff at home; cleaned up, etc. There was grass everywhere.  Went for a nice hour spin ride this morning on the way into work which felt great. Got the kinks out and I’ll be ready to get back to it tomorrow morning.

As a postscript – there were hecklers by the pits, somewhere around or in between the Ironclad group and the bicycleattorney.com tents. You should go back to heckling school. Better yet, stay in the shallow end by heckling the beginners or the C’s. You have no business trying to work the A race. Really. It was embarrassing listening to you

Excerpts from today’s NOAA forecast:

AN ACTIVE WEATHER PATTERN WILL DOMINATE THE LATTER HALF OF THE WEEK
AND THE WEEKEND AS A SERIES OF PACIFIC FRONTS MOVE INLAND.

What a wonderful sentence.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a wet Alpenrose race.  I’m having a hard time remembering when it was.

With the exception of Barlow, last year started out (and stayed) dry until mid-November.  Granted, it went out with a bang but when 6 out of 8 race weekends are dry, it’s a little bit of a letdown.

The year before was dry too.  Same with the Stumptown race in ‘05.  I think 2004 was the last really good wet one we had there.

I raced Beginner that year.  A big fat DNF (busted chain) at Blue Lake and in the 20’s at Barton.  That was my first year racing cross.  Talk about fun.

Back to the mud…

Little sore this morning from Barlow yesterday; right hip, right shoulder, and my hands…oh, my hands. There was a few slight downhill and very bumpy stretches in there where you were holding on for dear life. Good stuff.Got to the race with plenty of time to get ready and warm up. During the warm up I had a hard time getting things moving, but after about 20 minutes or so I loosened up. Could have been the blistering sun too.

I was a little surprised by the numbers at the start. 57 in the A’s and 35(?) in the Master A’s. I may be off. Seemed like a lot though. We lined up 4 or 5 wide on a doubletrack road for the start. Something about it didn’t feel right. I had a sense that there would be some ugly bottlenecking right after the start. Despite people not being able to clip in, it went fine though.

I ran the new Racing Ralphs and dropped the pressure a bit to get some grip on the off-camber stuff. Maybe 35 or so. Zipping around the paved section behind the school, I felt a little bit of a rollover. Better ease up and take the corners a little more upright. Once I got a sense of how the tires acted, they were ridiculously solid. Didn’t feel even the remotest possibility of a slip anywhere. I could probably go 36 on firmer stuff but keep it at 35, maybe 34 when it gets softer.

Anyway, I’d never raced Barlow before. It’s a good course but the highlight was the run-up in the woods.

It’d be near impossible to accurately describe the railroad tie run-up. Screaming fast approach which was halted by 2 downhill barriers. Short downhill run, over the bridge to a run-up that was 30 feet (?) tall. 30? Shit, it seemed like 50. 8 to 12 never-ending steps, with an irregular 2 to 3 foot rise and run. Difficult to find a rhythm up.

You could make an argument that with my legs (36″ inseam), that I would have had an easier time in this section than most. That’s probably true, especially compared to those stuck in the <a title=”Pony Class” href=”http://www.veloreview.com/obra3/2008/09/new-cross-category-announced.html/” target=”_blank”>Pony Class</a>. I’d like to think I gained ground up the hill on a number of people I was around. Still…it burns like hell and I spend about 20 meters after the run-up spinning the acid out. There’s nothing easy about run-ups like this for anyone.

My main focus for the race was to clean up my act. Pain on the Peak was an abysmally sloppy race. I wanted this race to help get things back in order. From that aspect, the race was a huge success. Much cleaner dismounts. Remounts need a little more work but otherwise they were better. Bike carrying, especially up the hill, was better. Cornering was much, much improved since I really focused on 2 things: pedaling through the turn and, more importantly, looking where I wanted to go through the turn.

I’ll consider this a fantastic final tune-up before Alpenrose next weekend. I finished a solid 10th, feeling like I got stronger throughout the race. I remembered how to race again. Just plain fun.

After a rest week, it time to get back to the grind. We’re heading out to the coast for the weekend and I’ll head straight to the race Sunday. That means I’ll need to get everything in order before we leave Friday.

Looks like rain is in the forecast for the tail end of the week. That’d be nice. I’m so over the hot and dusty cross races. It feels like it’s been a while since we’ve had a wet Alpenrose race.

About halfway in to laying another coat of mastik on the new rims and tires, I was thinking that it would be nice if tubular glue came in different scents.  Patchouli, Luscious Lavender, Outrageous Orange and of course, Minty Fresh!

How many layers of glue do you want on? 8? 9?

Then I opened the door to air the garage out and it all went away.

Final bits of work on the bike.  I’ll finish up with the 3rd glue coat tonight and mount tomorrow.  I’m anxious to get them out to the park to try them out.

Also got a new shifter cable set and bar tape.  Couple slices in the tape from last fall that I just let go.  Might as well get a new roll on.

The rear derailleur has been shifting like hell.  I haven’t been able to solve this.  Whenever I shift in in an opposite direction (up to down or vice versa), it seems to take an extra primer shift before it’ll move.  After that, it works fine.  No amount of barrel adjustment will get it to work.  Strange.  I changed the cable only this summer when it first started but that didn’t affect it.  Also took off the rear derailleur, cleaned it thoroughly, and re-lubed.  Still no change.  That leaves a few possibilities: dirty/fouled cable housing (possible), broken shifter (unlikely), or broken derailleur (also unlikely).  Other than that, I’m out of ideas.

I’m finally rested up.  Got some drills planned today during lunch at a nearby park.  Mostly dismounts and remounts.  I was hopping up and slamming down way too hard on the rear wheel at the Peak race.  Need to clean that up.  I’m not really near anywhere I can do decent off-camber and uphill work.  Those are at a park closer to home.