Bier en modder

At the end of the final gunfight of Clint Eastwood’s The Unforgiven, William Munny (Eastwood) stands over a wounded Little Bill (Gene Hackman) getting ready to end it.  “I don’t deserve this”, begs Little Bill.  “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it”, mumbles Munny, pulling the trigger.

A lot of shit happens during races, a lot of which feels like it’s way beyond our control; flats, crashes, mechanicals, weather, course conditions, the list goes on.  How much of this do we ‘deserve’?  I’m don’t know.  Most of it for sure.  We certainly make a choice to line up for it week in and week out.  No one’s paying me to get out there.  So in a way we’re severely compromising our right to bitch about it.

Did we deserve Wilsonville?  I’d say yes.  It’s good to get kicked in the ass once in a while.  I didn’t like the course at all but I’ll race it just the same if it shows up on the schedule next year.

Rough course this week.  Wilsonville will probably divide people the same way Barton does – you either like it or you don’t.  Less than 24 hours later, I’ve read and heard of enough comparisons to a MTB short track course.  I can agree with that.  Technical.  Very punishing.  Minimal passing room.  Relentless.  Yeah, that fits; relentless.

I got there in time to get the kids to the Kiddie Cross.  That’s always fun.  Just on the edge of chaos but the kids love it.  I’d like to start lobbying for a ribbon when I finish but I’ll just let it go for now.  While we were waiting for the kids race to start, the B/SS race was finishing up.  Hmm, there’s a lot of people carrying their bikes.

Didn’t get a pre-ride in.  I haven’t pre-ridden in 5 years – why start now?  Set up the trainer instead and got a great warmup in, hearing about the course from Kurt and Rich.  Once that was done, I decided on adding another 5# to the tires, moving them up to 40-41 psi.

Lined up and shortly after that, the race started.  Wow, this is like singletrack.  In a fairly short amount of time, the field strung out.  I picked my spots to pass (the short, bouncy uphills) and waited them out.  Many of the corners were dicey and had only one line.  Not too many places to pass.  I found myself waiting in traffic a few times until I could pass.

Dropped a chain twice, especially after the barriers, both times cost me about 5-7 spots.  I must be putting my bike down too hard.  Anyway, the first time it took about a lap to get those spots back.  The second time I only recovered one, maybe 2 spots.  That sucked.

With a couple laps to go, the course was wearing me down.  A little less snap out of the corners.  I’m sitting back on the bumpy uphills and getting thrown around.  My hands are raw and slightly numb.  I finish the race out and find the rear wheel is slowly getting flat.  Crap.  A brand new tubular.

Preliminary results have me at 23rd out of 72.  A slight improvement from last week but a little disappointing because of the lost spots getting my chain back on.  I don’t even want to talk about the tubular.

Got home and cleaned up.  Picked out Hair of the Dog – Fred From The Wood as a post-race beer.  Seemed to be appropriate.

Got an easy hour spin into work this morning.  I feel it in my legs and especially my shoulders.  Ouch.  Could be a day or so until this wears off.

Little brisk out there in the early AM these days.  I really like fall.

Got a great break Tuesday night to shut the garden down.  With the forecasts calling for overnight temps in the low 40’s, any summer veggies needed to go.  So I picked what was left and into the compost the plants went.  Despite the cool start to the summer, we managed to get a decent harvest this year, the crown jewel being the 25# pumpkin.  I’ll try to snap a picture & post it later.  That’s a fine lookin’ pumpkin.

So with the cover crops planted and the garlic (130 heads) in, we’re pretty much done for the year.  The only thing left is the apples.

Felt pretty good after the race Sunday.  Still had a lingering feeling that I could have pushed it harder.  I also remember violating the Cardinal Sin of Alpenrose by getting a poor start position.  There’s only so many spots you can make up over the whole course.  Anyway, I had some solid workouts over the week, leaving me with a warm & fuzzy feeling that I’m still getting faster.

I’m mostly an AM workout person.  Up at 6, add a 90 minute workout of some type in before work, and I’m good to go.  A couple of days a week I tack on a 60 min. spin class for a second workout.

I’m not exactly sure what the general consensus on spin classes are among ’serious’ cyclists.  I can’t say I’d care but I never hear about it much.   I’m not sure if others do spin classes or care to admit it.  But if I can spend an hour on a bike at or near race intensity and get off feeling completely worked, I’m ok with that.

I tend to approach them as Fartlek or over/under workouts.  After a quick warm-up, I try to spend as much of the class in, about, or around threshold effort.  You can stand & climb, play with resistance/cadence, sprint a bit, whatever, as long as I’m pushing myself near race-pace, it’s all good.

My only issue with the classes are the instructors.  Like anything, some are good, some not so good.  I think it’s all about a) how you present the work to the class, b) keeping people motivated, and c) having a realistic workout planned.  Finding one(s) that you are comfortable with takes a little experimentation and trial & error.  Some motivate me.  Some don’t.  Some have a clear plan for how the class will go.  Some don’t.  Everyone’s different.

Wilsonville this weekend.  Alpenrose wore the rear brake pads down to the metal so those need to go.  The drivetrain needs to be super-cleaned of all the grass bits still in there.  Double-check the tire glue job and we should be good to go.

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.

Happy fall solstice. Equinox (thanks for the correction).

Got an off-week this week.  Very much needed.  Saunas and hot tubs galore.  Time to get things in order before October.

Team picnic yesterday.  Picked up the new Castelli kit.  New colors (no more ‘Laker Girls’ comments).  New graphics.  New team car.  We got totally pimped out.  Sweet.  The Castelli stuff feels a bit weird walking around in it but once you get in riding position on the bike, everything fits like it should.  The shorts are, um, shorter.  Lots of moderately unsightly tan lines visible.  All in all, pretty excellent gear.  I appreciate that they left a black panel in front so we don’t have the sausage-fest appearance colored shorts can get.

Also picked up the new wheels and Schwalbe Racing Ralph tubulars.  Now these are worth getting excited about.  35mm size with a fair amount of volume in the tube.  I’m hoping it’ll give my fat ass a little more cushion on the bumpier sections.  Tread looks good, seems a little tight for shedding mud though.  We’ll see.  I hope to have them ready for this weekend.  It’d be great if the ground got softened up a bit over the week.

I’ve already set aside my post-race beers for the season.  It’s a mix of Hair of the Dog (Doggie Claws ‘04, ‘05, ‘06, ‘07 and Fred from the Wood ‘07), Sierra Nevada Bogfoot ‘05, ‘06, ‘07, and Deschutes (Abyss ‘07 and Black Butte XX).  I don’t know in what order I’ll have them but I’m sure it’ll all work itself out.  Sometimes I’ll stand in front of them and the right beer magically appears in my hand.  You can call me the Beer Whisperer.

Starcrossed was this weekend.  From what I heard and read, it got a little slick up there.  It brings me back to the ugly lessons of last weekend – be prepared for anything.

Spent the past few days getting things back in order; mentally, physically, and mechanically.  Saturday’s race was a little like taking a rather large band-aid off.  I wasn’t sure how bad it would hurt (it did) but it needed to be done.

With a few days to let it all sink in, I’m left with a little sore and irritable feeling from it all.  That wasn’t my best race.  It’s fair to say that it was arguably one of my worst.  I didn’t plan on doing that well.  I had a fairly heavy training load the past few weeks so my legs weren’t that sharp.  That’s ok.  I have my focus further on down in November and December.

But I didn’t anticipate letting myself get mentally beat down.  That stings a bit more.

I took a step back and looked at my plan for the rest of the season.  Fitness-wise, I don’t feel that far off, which is good.  Aside from focusing and making every workout count, there’s not much more I can do.  I can’t train that much more than I already am.  My bike handling needs serious attention.  I need to dedicate more time towards dismounting/remounting and cornering drills.  I’m not going to win a race with good skills but I sure as shit will lose time without them.

I shouldn’t be worried.  It’s still September and there’s plenty of racing left this year.  Other than showing up and being ready to race, nothing happened last Saturday that concerned me that much.  I’m confident that I’ll get some decent results later on.

Pain on the Peak last Saturday.  It was dry.  It was hot, and shit, was it dusty.

I’d seen the pre-race stuff that Portland Velo put out and hit my usual GIS sites to get a better look.  I was wondering how they’d make a course out of it.  But they did.  And it was hard.  Real hard.

It didn’t help that I came in there, well, casual isn’t a good description.  Rushed.  Not focused.  I’m not sure.  But whatever it was, I didn’t mentally have my shit together for a 60 minute race in the A’s.  And it showed.  I am not good enough to just “show up” and race.

Lined up at the start next to Chris Tauscher.  We joked a bit on what the over-under would be for getting lapped by Trebon.  He had ±3.  Previous groups were getting lap times of around 5 minutes.  For a 60 min race, I was thinking 3 would be optimistic.

The A’s go off.  Usually by now I’m kind of dialing in.  Getting focused and ready to push it for an hour.  Instead?  Nothin’.  I got nothin’.

Whistle goes off.  We head down the chute and make a right turn…and I’m down in a cloud of dust.  Whether it was a cause or effect, my rear tire rolled off about 3 inches.  I jam it back on and now have to chase the group.  59 minutes to go.

By the time we get to the logs in the back of the course, I’d caught up to the rear third of the group.  Mentally, I’m a bit rattled.  I need to settle in and get it back.  The dust of the pack kicked up enough where you were riding blind – no visibility below 2 feet above ground.  Sketchy.  Hit the path through the woods and up the run-up.  I pass by the pit and make a split-second decision not to swap rear wheels and keep going.

I stuck with about 6-8 others for a lap or 2, slowly picking up spots.  Physically, I feel good.  I’m starting to get into a groove.  Approaching the run-up through the woods the rear wheel slides off again, this time for good.  100 yards to the pit.  Uphill.  I shoulder the bike and start running/shuffling back.

The March of Death

I’m officially DFL by now.

The middle third of the race didn’t go so well.  I came unraveled mentally and physically:  Sloppy riding.  Couple spills.  Terrible dismounts and remounts.  Bad shouldering form (which I’ve already been heckled on by teammates).  Blisters forming on my right hand.  Cottonmouth I hadn’t experienced since UConn Spring Break of ‘93.  I was basically hanging on but there was no way I was giving up.

Got my shit together to rally the last few laps, getting a little mojo back.  I need to finish with a little dignity here.  Rode up the run-up once and came close a couple other times.  Managed to hang with a couple of the A’s that passed me for half a lap or so.

Jeff Standish caught up on the last lap and we finished the race out.  With that, I managed to only get passed by Bannick (riding very strong) and Jeff (ditto), which kept me within 5 minutes of the field.

Between the mechanicals, the fact that I completely forgot how to race a cross race, and a tough course, I can live with the result (18th out of 24).  I don’t like it but I can live with it.

One more preseason race – Barlow – to get the kinks out and then it’s time for the Crusade season.  I’ll work on my wheels probably next week when the new ones get in.  I also need to go straight to the park – without passing go – to work more on skills.