ride joe ride

There was beer (though not to be opened in the park). There was a robot. There was birthday cake for Kevin. How could that not set the stage for a good night of racing? I know I certainly wasn’t the only one of the ~30 people lining up thinking that the smaller field, and tired legs might lead to a friendly group ride with a 2 lap sprint at the end. In fact, I thought I had successfully campaigned for this as we were lining up. Alas, it was not to be. The evening was a mix of two of the three worst weather features of the week: it was cold (the PT conked out on the ride down) and there was a stiff breeze blowing directly from the west. As we’d learned earlier in the week, this wind meant that working in small groups was a serious pain in the ass — for the majority of the loop drafting did little. The really fast guys took advantage of this, and I wasn’t savvy enough to position myself near them at the start. Gotta practice that for sure.

The first lap was quick, the second quicker, and then the hammer really dropped. The field strung out and then splintered into several lead dudes who were causing the harm, two chase groups and people shelled off the back. I was in the second group and worked with some good guys to pull us back up to the first chasing group.  At this point, my legs were feeling okay and I was doing some goofy “let’s go get em” stuff. By the time we joined the lead chasing group the leaders had 10 seconds or so on us and they were pushing harder. We were working together pretty well, with Matt Stevenson of XXX taking the brunt of the work. Honestly, though, I didn’t see us defying the wind and clearing the distance to the five or so remaining lead guys. Things get a bit hazy, but with eight laps or so to go, our bunch picked it up again, and my legs announced that the week of abuse was officially at the end.

I sat up and pulled out of the pace line. I know now that I was in about 8th place at this point, and that the next nearest group was way back. I should have jumped on with that group when they came through 30 seconds later, but I was already thinking about the birthday cake waiting at the finish. In retrospect, I wish I’d worked back up, but that probably has to do with me not currently being at the end of a 35 minute sojourn in the pain cave. Ernesto Ciccolini pulled off the win to make it four for the week.

So the aftermath: my house looks like a mid-century modern version of a pro cyclist hotel room — bike stuff everywhere. I have some serious bike maintanance to do, and last night’s running the tank dry after a week of racing has left me pretty worn down. I’ve got to work out a plan this week for not going into the Hillsboro-Roubaix next weekend super trashed.

I’m working on a letter to the city peeps thanking them and Half Acre for all the work, but it bears repeating: this was one awesome event and Half Acre deserves serious kudos for bringing this kind of series to our backyard. Half Acre was assisted by a bunch of volunteers including Allison who worked as a course marshall (and rode with me to/from the races for the most riding we’ve done together in months!). Thanks to you all — it was a great week.

Something clicked last night down at the park in Calumet. I don’t know if it was the near-perfect weather, me finally starting to feel comfortable in the pack, knowing the week was almost over or what. I’ve been thinking a good bit about what a cool thing Half Acre has put together with this series, and last night I finally started to appreciate it while it was happening.

Anyway, the race was a good one. We started pretty slowly, but I missed my clip (again) and had to chase back on. I made a conscious attempt to put myself more inside the pack, and found myself getting more comfy with this. Several attacks went off and but the pack was having none of that and all were shut down pretty quickly. I was hanging around the back about 15 minutes in, just crossing the start/finish when I realized I was flatting. I was bummed as my legs were, surprisingly, feeling good. Fortunately, Liz, J, and Patrick had me rolling on Liz’s rear wheel in a few seconds as I took my free lap. Mental note: when you’re getting your push-start back post free lap, you probably don’t want to be in the same gearing you were at when you flatted (i.e. at 25mph).

I chased back on, recovered in the draft for a couple of laps and then started to try to spend more time up in the front of the group. I am starting to notice that staying further up in the pack is sort of not a static thing. Once you’re there, you have to continually keep your eye on your position or you gradually slide back. It’s different than riding the rear of the group where you’re always focusing on not falling off. At one point Francisco and Jesse went off the front, and I pulled my way up to the front to try to make a false chase. I was thinking that given my (new) UCVC kit, people would not have immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was in cahoots. That worked for approximately 30 seconds, and then I was told very politely (ha) that I needed to get on it.

Things fired up on the bell lap and the group shed a number of people. I managed to hold on as things strung out mostly because I wanted to get another close up view of the finishing sprint. I passed a couple of guys with my feeble sprint, and probably finished 18 or so back.

Learned:

I need to spend more time in my drops. Pack dynamics are something I’ll probably keep learning about as long as I do these things. Ideal race tires are not the same as ideal training/racing tires. The front of the pack is where you really want to be sitting.

Nice day at the park — very different from the previous two. Most significantly, the wind was weaker and had shifted directly from the west after two days of gusting from the south. The course is roughly an oval on a north/south axis, so this had the effect of making the vast majority of the race in a crosswind. It could have been this, or it could have been the fact that people are starting to get tired, but after settling in the main pack hung together. There were attacks, but for the most part the pace was consistent.

For my part, I did what I planned to: find a way to wheel suck and recover. After some early exuberance where I messed around at the front of the pack, I mostly sat in toward the back and enjoyed not drilling it. In a big group, the accordion effect is a real thing. I tried to watch the front of the group so I could see when they jumped so as to get moving before the people in front of me reacted. This sorta worked, but I was working harder than I would have if I were closer to the middle of the group, especially in the corners. On the upside, the whole race felt much, much easier than the last two and looking at the power graphs from day 2 and last night’s race, you can see why. Though my average speed, top speed, and top wattage are all higher on day 3, my average wattage is more than 30 watts lower. Not being right on your lactate threshold for 45 minutes (TT or cross style) has a way of making things seem a whole lot less bleak.

Learned:

1. Corners taken five people wide at 25mph are pretty scary.

2. Being toward the front of the pack in the middle is the sweet spot. I need to practice being there.

3. Field sprints are nuts. After a whole race of people behaving in an orderly fashion, all of a sudden everyone is trying to find a hole to thread. Maybe field sprints are for people who don’t have wives/kids/jobs they have to go to the next day.

4. Positioning leading up to the field sprint is really important (knowing this and actually experiencing it first hand are very different).

I’m beat, so this is super short and sweet. I’ll add on tomorrow after some sleep. Rainy, windy conditions at the start, but I managed to get off much better and was hanging with the mainish group for a few laps. A breakaway pulled off and I was working with one of the splintered groups when, with about 8 laps to go, I starting feeling like crap — the group dropped me and I soon realized I was flatting. Super bummed, but I got my first real laps at full(!) speed with the main group. From here, I can see what needs to be done. Time to do it.

Learned:

1. You don’t have to be the strongest. You have to be the person willing to suffer longer than the dude next to you. Eventually people pop off. Try not to be the one who pops off. The goal isn’t to win, it’s not to pop.

2. Quietly tucked into your group is much better than being the idiot out front yelling about getting the dudes in front of you (that would be me). When you blow up, the dudes you towed up won’t stop and pat you on the back.

3. When you go off the front of your group and nobody follows, they don’t think you’re gonna make it. It turns out that they are often right.

Edit:

So to complete the story, last night while fixing my damn flat I managed to strip my rear skewer. Many, many thanks go to Patrick for lending me his so I could ride home.

This morning dawned as clear and cool as last night was thick and rainy. I’m looking forward to tonight’s race, though I may take it easy tonight and practice the art of wheel sucking. My legs are not feeling overjoyed at the thought of three more nights of races.

My blogging fatal flaw is actually finishing posts. Three decent posts sit in the unfinished bin and are now sadly out of date — including a snazzy one in which I planned my approach to this week’s races using the (terribly implemented) predictive functionality in WKO+. Ah well – onward.

So here it is: spring is under way, I’m mid-way through the build phase, the first hill ride in Wisconsin is in the books, and the first race of the season has arrived. Given the format of Kevin’s Crits (5 days of racing in a row) there are some unique opportunities for learning present. Most obviously, by the end of the week I’ll have raced almost half as many times as I did during the entire cross season. Put your dork-sensitive glasses on, but if you remember the scene in the Matrix in which Trinity gets an upload of the “motorcycle driving like a badass skills” — I am imagining this will be something like that. Same course, many of the same people and back to back days of racing allow for plenty of experimentation. It will also be instructive to see how the bod holds up to days of short but intense efforts.

So I am not arriving here in the bestest of shape (hard week of riding last week leading to hill and beer reps in Wisconsin this weekend) but I am going to try to record some of what I see in my first 5 crits over the next few days.

Post Race:

First crit! Woohoo! Well the rain held off and after some logistical changes (we shifted the course to account for the lack of lights on the original roads, though we discovered that there were no lights on a leg of the second course either) we were off. I missed my clip-in and it turns out that somebody thought this was a cross race — when I looked up, the field was receding in the distance. I worked with a couple of guys to try to pull back up over a few laps, but then the main group really disintegrated and there was less of a target to move up toward. At this point it kinda turned into a cross race/time trial with a little more tactical/wind stuff and going around corners faster than you thought you could but seriously lacking in mud. Fun and totally good for building the cross chops. No clue where I finished, but that wasn’t the point, right? Learned tonight:

1. Don’t forget the coffee dumbass.

2. Don’t miss the clip dumbass (it’s as big of a deal as doing it in a cross race). Subsisting without the main pack hurts.

3. If the dudes around you don’t respond to encouraging prodding to organize, then at least use them until you drop them (i.e. you really shouldn’t sit there and pull for them until you get tired of it and take off).

4. My FTP is higher than I thought it was: WKO+ says my 20′ max was 304. Power graph for the race is here.

When I used to run intervals, I’d set out with a handful of pennies equal to the number of intervals I’d be doing. Invariably, I’d forget which interval I was on mid-way through the run. This, of course, was due to interval head — the condition of having your brain scrambled by the interval effort. This week I set up my pile of pennies beside my trainer and commenced the first set of VO2max intervals of the season. Five minutes at 107% of FTP done five times with the same period of rest between, and then some LV7 (all out) efforts in tempo rides on Thursdays. I’ve been pushing at the FTP from “underneath” and now comes the more fun (ha!) “pulling up” on it. And so the base period is officially brought to an end and the build begins. I used to complain about running intervals, but I secretly love the seconds after the intervals is done soft pedaling as my heart rate drops. I can’t wait to be doing them outside.

Just in time too, as the Chicago racing community was treated to an awesome chance to race, and do it soon. Half Acre cycling, the guys who brought us the awesome DeKalb cross race, are putting on a series of crits which will occur almost in my back yard. Five nights in a row, south Chicago will have a bunch of Cat 4/5ers riding laps around a park in the cold near dark. Sounds like lots of fun — I’m signed up.

Finally, I’ve been meaning to write about nutrition recently. I’ve been a big proponent of incorporating protein into replenishment and recovery drinks since my running days. Recently I ran out of Accelerade and cracked Joel Friel’s book, to find his recipe for a recovery beverage which I adapted into this: 2cps of milk, 2 tbls of cocoa, 3 tbs of sugar and a banana blended). This hits the 4:1 protein to sugar ratio which is supposed to be key to quick recovery. Google around if you haven’t read about it. As expected, I found that pounding one of these immediately after hard/long rides significantly reduced fatigue later in the day and increased recovery time by a whole lot. They’re also really damn tasty.

That worked so well that I tried to replicate Accelerade itself (so a replenishment drink for use while underway), and came up with a recipe I’ve been super happy with. I use 500ml bottles, so you’d have to adapt this to a 24oz bottle if you use those. Fill the bottle about 1/3 full of water. Add 2 tbs of sugar, whey powder, an individual pack of crystal light drink mix (fruit punch tastes the best in my opinion), a little pinch of salt (sodium) and a little pinch of salt substitute (potassium). Shake it and then fill it the rest of the way up. How much whey powder? However much yields 5g of protein, so read the label. This ended up being a really fat teaspoon or just over a half scoop for my brand. The resulting mixture is nutritionally almost identical to Accelerade. I’ve been using it on tempo rides and while doing the LV5 intervals, and it seems to sit on my stomach like Accelerade as well. Let me know if you try and/or improve upon it.