ironclm's world

44 to 14, and a MERCO Report

44 training hours in January.

14 training hours in February.

Week 1 post-crash: Zero training at all. 

Week 2 post-crash: 2 hours of bike, mostly very easy trainer time, no intensity. 

Week 3 post-crash: 2 hours bike, still limited intensity. 

Week 4 post-crash (this week): I've ridden a little bit every day this week, slowly upping the intensity, but still not that much and with work super busy, all the rides have been short.

So, not the best lead-up to the MERCO weekend. MERCO is race weekend in Merced, CA, sponsored by the MERCO Credit Union and it's the first big race weekend of the season. Last year both Kristy Gough and my teammate Matt Peterson won their respective crits on the Saturday and then 8 days later, both were gone. So, this weekend is kind of special to our team. I'd signed up for the Saturday crit and the Sunday road race weeks ago so I was at least going to at least start the race and see how I felt, both physically and mentally, as last weekend I still had a little nervousness about people riding close to me. What better way to test that out but in a crit with 40 women and lots of tight turns.

The race was a Cat. 3/4 race, so that meant it would probably be pretty fast. The Mice had 7 women on the start line and I lined up in the 3rd row. At the whistle, I couldn't get my right foot clipped in. Damn! So immediately, I was at the back of the pack. There was a long straightway with the start/finish about 3/4s of the way down, then a 90 degree left, another left then through a chicane, then a hard 90 degree right, then a 90 degree left, then a straightaway (about 3/4 of the other), then a 90 degree left into a head wind, then the last 90 degree left to the straightaway. So it was hammer, ease up, hammer, ease up, etc. I lasted about 5 laps (of a 25 lap race) and then the lack of training caught up with me and I got popped off the back.

From then on, it was some good time trialing practice. In the back of my mind, I wanted to quit about 10 laps in but thought neither Matt nor Kristy would have quit, so decided I'd ride hard until the head referee pulled me. I looked at him every time I came through the start/finish, but he never did pull me from the race. The highlight of the day was seeing another rider who had also gotten spit out the back up the road in front of me. I stood up and sprinted and rode as hard as I could and caught her. The only time the entire race I rode easy was in the last turn and then the finishing straight when the final sprint came around. When the motor came by, I pulled over to the side and eased up and let the field go by. The Mice were 2nd and 3rd overall and 1st and 2nd in their category!

The road race is tomorrow. It will be a training day for me.

Merced Weekend #1

Spending three of the next four weekends in the Central Valley. Woo hoo!

Snelling Road Race on Saturday. Women's Cat. 4A (50 women). Note: There were two fields of Cat. 4 women, 50 each. 100 women Cat. 4 racers. A first in the history of the race and totally fantastic. Over 900 people raced on Saturday, I think they said.

OMC (Original Merced Crit) on Sunday. Much smaller fields and some passing showers (after raining all night).

Lessons learned from the weekend:

1. Fill your registration form (hard copy or online) out correctly and fully.*

2. ALWAYS check the results and do it within the 15 minute time period so if you need to file a protest, you can.*

3. Get to know your fellow racers from all the teams. But factor in extra time if you know lots of people and everyone wants to inquire as to how you are feeling.*

4. Eight days totally off the bike and 3 weeks of very limited training leaves one with no hard miles in the legs. Not the best way to do a road race. **

5. Start position is important in a road race with a large field.**

6. Plan to get to a race early, but if there are any last minute changes or new things, get there even earlier than you think you should.**

7. Teammate's family rocks. Don is the best soigner! He even has the beer ready and open. The Chaney boys and Allie were super good kids all weekend.

8. It was fun to watch two friends WIN races!! Yea Elliott and Scottie!! And it was great to see all the Mice get great results and to cheer on all the first-time racers!

9. If you have SOs who are not racers and they come out to the middle of no where to cheer you on and take pictures, you owe them.

10. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow and regroup and revise your goals.

** They threw the whole timing chip thing in at Snelling and we got there early, but definitely not early enough since the chip line was about 200 people long (they could learn some things from triathlon about registration), so that left about 5 minutes for a warm up and then rush to the line up and I had to go through the B field and teammates Katy, Izumi and I were clear at the back of the A field (plus 4 or 5 other teammates were in the field) and when the motor pulled off and the front of the field took off, we were caught out behind some people and got gapped and that was it. Plus, I had nothing in my legs and on the uphills, I could feel some pain in my back/sacrum, so I just rode it steady for the most part and dropped after the right hand turn after the finish line. I did one of three laps. I tried to hammer enough to get Izumi up to the little group in front of us, but couldn't quite do it. Plus, from the start I was still a little leery of riding in a group. There was one crash in the A group due to an inattentive rider, so I guess I was OK to be in the back. Glad I did take the start at least.

* Sunday was the crit and damn, I wish I could have done it, but I was good and didn't race (Doctor had said, "No way"). They put all the women cats together and there were about 13 or so to start (6 P,1,2s; 5 Cat. 3s, 2 Cat. 4s, I think). From the gun it broke up pretty quickly as the P,1,2s wanted to break up the pack. On the line it was noted that in the 4s, they had 3 starters, but looking at the results, the person who they had as first Cat. 4 was actually a Cat. 2. That left Lark and Rebecca as the only 4s. A protest was lodged and they changed the results. Why did they have the Cat. 2 as a 4? She didn't put a category down on her registration so they just assumed she was a 4 (huh??). We'd been wondering all race why she'd had a different number than all the other P12s.

Anyway, it was a fun weekend and my team had multiple top 10s in the races, including two 2nds. I got some riding in and now know where I am, recovery-wise. Time to get back to it.

Tour of California Stage 1 and 2

Sunny California? Not yesterday or this morning. 

Stage 1:  Went up to finishing town Santa Rosa with teammates Katy, Allie and Rebecca and met up with Emily, Carrie and Emma. Katy, Rebecca, Carrie and Emma did Gold Sprints and we got there early to watch the women's crit. It rained pretty much the entire day and was cold. We were in layers and I had a waterproof jacket on, but no waterproof gloves. I could have used more layers. 

The women's race looked miserable and probably half the field dropped. Those who finished put in a very hard day. Yea Karla for her top 5 finish against the pros!

The Mice gals did quite well in the Gold Sprints and looked FABULOUS (gold lame even). Beth won and Maurice won the men's GS. We watched the end of the race come through and then it was to Chevys for dinner and a drive home. Still raining!

Today I woke up and it was, well, raining. After some procrastination, I decided to get on the bike and ride out in the rain to the Golden Gate Bridge or the Presidio and watch the stage roll through. It was my first time on the bike outside since the crash and with the rain, I was a bit nervous, so I rode pretty cautiously. I got out to the Bridge and there were a lot of people there, so I decided to ride over to the crest of the hill they come up after they came off the Bridge. It was pouring rain, but there were quite a few people there too! I ran into Jason and Scott and once the race went by, I rode home and jumped in the shower. Still cold!

Tour of California Prologue

I drove up to Sacramento today with my teammate Noe to watch the prologue. We got rained on a few times driving up, but when we got there, no rain and patches of blue sky. Windy and cold though. We walked around to get the lay of the land and found where some of the team buses were, so we walked around and took pictures of bike. We got over to the Columbia/High Road bus and Bob Stapleton was outside of it talking to people, signing autographs and answering questions. Pretty much making himself totally available to the public. We talked to him about their bikes and checked out Cavendish and Hincapie's TT machines and he said to come back at 12:30 when the riders would be there. As Noe said, how many sports will you find the owner of a team on the street talking to the fans. 

More walking around and taking pictures of bikes. We stopped at the Saxo Bank bus to ask if my friend Inaki had made the trip (he's one of their mechanics and was at last year's ToC), but no, he was in Spain. Over to the expo and we walked around there and checked out more bikes. A stop at the Look tent, a stop at the Felt tent (no SuperDave), chatted with Ian from Specialized, then we walked over to get camera batteries and coffee. More walking around and we found the Cervelo Test Team and talked to Phil White. Next to them was Rock Racing. By this time riders were there and we saw Victor Hugo Pena and Oscar Sevilla at RR. 

Oh, there's LiquiGas! What, Basso will be back shortly? Well, we'll just wait. Basso came back and we got pictures of him. Jimmy Riccotello is in town for a couple of stages, so we met up with him and then walked over on the course to watch some of the prologue. Lots of people there, but they had a really nice course where you could stand in the middle of Capitol Mall and see them going down one side and then coming back up the other. The only places that were super crowded and hard to see anything was right at the start house and right at the finish and on the turn around. 

We decided that we'd head back over to Saxo Bank (aka SexyBank) to check out Fabian Cancellara, so we ended up having front row spots right outside their bus and had a chance to talk to Bobby Julich. It was pretty interesting and very enlightening to watch them go through a full warm up. All of the SB riders warmed up on their road bikes, except for Fabian and he was on his second TT rig. Bobby said they each do about an hour warm up with specific wattage intervals, then 15 minutes before their start time, they get off, go get into their skin suit, then back on the bike to keep the legs loose. We were right in front of JJ Haedo and he was dripping sweat by the end of the warm up. Every rider had ear phones in their ears and blocked out the crowd. On their cool down rides, they were more than happy to chat with the fans, pose for pictures and sign autographs. Especially Jens Voigt and Gustav Larsson. Larsson was explaining watts and the SRM to a lady and her young son. Voigt was talking to everyone. 

Oh yeah, this year's Hollywood cycling fan is actor Patrick Dempsey from that medical show (forget what it's called as I've never seen it). He stopped by the Saxo Bank bus.

Cancellara did his warm up and someone in the crowd said, "What's that burning rubber smell?" Bobby Julich laughed and said, "That's the smell of Cancellara power!" He was doing one-legged drills in his biggest gearing! Totally cool to watch. And his gold Oakleys were total fly. The other interesting thing was to notice how skinny the climber types are, like Andy Schleck. He was standing next to Stuey O'Grady and Stuey isn't big, compared to the normal population, but Andy S. is a beanpole, and really thin. Stuey was a lot thicker through the torso. 

Once it was getting close to the time for the top riders to ride, we walked over near the Astana bus and tent and it was a zoo! When Lance left to go to the start house, the crowd literally ran over to the start, so we had a front row view of Levi warming up, talking to my ex-favorite rider (and still #2 on my all-time list), Ekimov. We then walked over to the course and saw a bunch of riders go by and then it was over to just past the finish line. We saw the last 10 or so riders come through and a guy with UCI CHAPERONE in 12-inch letters on his coat was standing in the middle of the blocked off street, just waiting for Lance. When Lance came through, it was off to drug testing. Like they couldn't have made it more obvious as there weren't any other dudes in the UCI CHAPERONE coats standing in the middle of the course.

Once the race was over it was time for burritos and a coffee, then back to find Jimmy R. and make plans for tomorrow, then to the truck and a quick drive home. Super fun day. Thanks to Noe for going up with me. It was a total blast to talk cycling all day.

All pictures from the day are here: 

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=221908&id=595830044&l=f8b66

A Little Progress

Sunday: Crash

Monday: Could barely walk around, get in/out of bed, sit. Stayed home from work.

Tuesday: Went to work for a few hours, Loren picked me up and drove me and the bike to the shop. Wiped out after that.

Wednesday: Follow-up visit to ortho and more x-rays, all negative. Started physical therapy. Left butt cheek is turning black/blue/purple.

Thursday: Got to the YMCA early, coached the swim, sat in the hot tub. Worked a full day, plus. Walked 2 miles. Got Chinese liniment.

Friday: More physical therapy. More Chinese liniment.

Saturday: Slept in. Walked 4.3 miles and swam 500 meters. Swimming feels good but the pool was crowded and I was concerned about getting kicked. I'll go to swim squad tomorrow. Might even try to ride the stationary bike. More Chinese liniment.

Today: Heading up to Napa to watch the boys race the Cherry Pie crit. Looking forward to getting out and seeing some good racing! More Chinese liniment.

Return Doctor Trip

The urgent care doctor said to get a re-check in a few days, either back there or with my doctor and since I have an ortho doc here (two of them actually), I sent to see Dr. Lewis today as a follow-up. I've been wearing the splint most of the time since Sunday, but yesterday having it on at work was extremely frustrating as I couldn't type or write or hardly even eat. I thought I was going to have to ask one of the attorneys cut my chicken at the lunch yesterday!!

Anyway, my elbow was still pretty sore and my butt has been killing me--both in the muscle, where it's really bruised up, but also in the joint, which had me a bit concerned. Dr. Lewis just shook her head (you bike racers) and sent me down for more x-rays, a re-do of the elbow and some pictures of the hip. Back upstairs and good news--no fractures! So no more splint and immediate physical therapy. I went over and they put some electrical stim and ice on my glutes and I'll be going back on Friday for a further evaluation and more therapy. 

The bad news--no riding outdoors for now. Trainer or exercise bike is fine, though she didn't think I could sit on a saddle right now. Maybe wait a few more days to try it out. Walking is good. Swimming is fine as long as the elbow gash isn't oozing. So tomorrow I'll hit the treadmill and see how that feels. I don't think I could even drive right now (picking up the foot/leg is pretty painful in the butt). 

After a fantastic month of training in January, I'm pretty bummed to be starting out February like this. Especially with a race coming up in 2.5 weeks.

RR: Early Bird Crit and Urgent Care Report

Yesterday was the last Early Bird mentoring session and then the real race. Places given, upgrade points awarded, the real deal. My teammate Izumi and I drove down to the advanced mentoring session which was about half discussion and then some riding. Double pacelines to warm up, then we split our group into 3--solo sprinter, 2 people working together to sprint, then a 7-person paceline leading out the last person to sprint against solo and the designated sprinter of the 2. Who wanted to sprint in the group of 7. No one said anything so I said I'd do it. We got started and when we ramped up, my foot clipped out! CRAP! A sprinter's nightmare. I yelled at James, who was #6 in line and he waited up but the other 5 were long gone. So I got to do a leadout from James. Fun. We didn't have much more time, so Rebecca, Izumi and I went to ride for about 20 minutes until it was time to do the beginner session.

Beginner session--focus was moving up through the pack and we did it by doing 3-abreast with the middle line moving up through the outside two lines. I dropped out of this early since I needed to shed some clothes and wanted to hit the bathrooms and in the past weeks, they'd run right up to the starting time for the race and you'd almost be late for the line up. Shed the leg and arm warmers, kept on the base layer and then the bibs and jersey and it was off to the line. Well, it seems that lots of people didn't do the mentoring session since they were already lined up so I lined up in the back. Plus, a number of teammates who had done the entire mentoring session almost missed the start since they let them go late. Need to deal with that next year. Anyway, we had quite a few Mice women in the race and had somewhat of a plan. They announced there were 60-some women in the field. WHAT? That is huge. And there were quite a few people I didn't recognize. Where had they been the past 4 weeks?

I just swapped out my old Look pedals for the newer Look Keos and I'm not sure I like them for crits as I had a hard time getting clipped in, so I'm starting in the back, plus can't get clipped in, so I'm sprinting up to the field, but get tucked in OK. Turn 1 and the front goes through the turn OK (major problems with this the past weeks); turn 2 OK; turn 3 and we are hauling and either the first or second lap, you hear some metal on metal or metal on asphalt and people are looking around. "KEEP PEDALING! DON'T LOOK BACK!" 

Towards the back, mentor Javier was there and he and I chatted and he kept telling one person to relax, don't ride stiff-armed, don't swerve around, etc. I made a mental note to stay away from her. At one point, I glanced at my speedo and we were doing over 25 mph. Good grief, we're barely out of January! I was staying towards the outside since they'd started pinching the inside corners, and we were about 20 minutes in (of a 40 minute race). We came out of curve 4 (it's not really a turn, move a big sweeping curve) and we are going along where the finishing straight is and the entire group of 60+ was still pretty much together. I was moving up on the outside (the left) and all of a sudden, someone comes careening into my right side. SHIT SHIT SHIT! I don't give way and lean into her and I'm thinking that I'm going to keep us upright and ride out of this (I swear this seemed like forever), but then all of a sudden, she jerked back right, hit the girl on her right and came back into me and I'm guessing she lost control of her front wheel and it went sideways and took my front wheel out and the next thing I know I'm on the ground, curled up. I hit my head but didn't got out, though I did see stars for a second! Holy crap, my butt hurts. Since we were almost at the start/finish, there were a bunch of people there and I was able to get up and move over into the grass and laid down. Mentor Alan was there and asked me a bunch of questions, then Kit Kat (the EMT) checked me out and another mentor checked out my bike. That I was concerned about since I just spent a bunch of money getting it tuned up and new tires!!! It seems to be OK but I'll be taking it in to see Stef at the shop this week.

After Kit Kat determined that I didn't need an ambulance, I said I could walk back to the truck. She said I definitely needed to go to the ER or urgent care and needed a tetanus shot (NO!!!!!!!! I freak at needles!) and Izumi said she'd take me. I said, we need to watch the finish of the race as there was only 5 laps to go. I think I also said some choice words about the whole thing. Adrenaline talking?

We watched the finish of the race (which included yet another crash on the last lap) and then started the slow, very slow, walk back to the truck. A stop at the EMT tent to have Scott clean out my elbows, then we loaded up and Izumi and I headed over to Palo Alto Urgent Care to get some x-rays, fully intending to go from there to Emily's Super Bowl party. Yeah, right.

Palo Alto Urgent Care: VERY HIGH RECOMMENDATION!!! 

We got there and got signed in and I got into a room fairly quickly and Izumi walked over to get something to eat. I change into the lovely blue gown and out of the chamois and get the vitals and all that, then talk to the doctor, who is also a cyclist (but a touring cyclist, not a racer). Super nice guy. He said he wanted some x-rays of my head/neck and elbow. OK. And a tetanus shot. NO! Crap. The x-ray tech comes and she says to follow her and I'm shuffling like a 100 year old down the hall as she walks away. What the hell! Get to the x-ray room and she starts doing the x-rays and I'm standing there and all of a sudden I start to get tunnel vision and ringing in my ears and I say, "I need to sit down RIGHT NOW!" I sit down (painfully!) and she calls the nurse and the nurse and doctor come running, but once I lay down and bend my knees, I feel much better. Take the blood pressure and it was a little low, but not too bad. We shoot the rest of the x-rays with me sitting on a stool and the nurse in the room and the nurse wheels me back in a wheelchair. Her comment, "She (x-ray tech) didn't wheel you down here?????" "No, I walked." "Grrrr." The doctor said later that they were a bit concerned. I said I just wanted to sit down. 

Back in the room and another nurse comes in (Anthony--a murse, as he called himself) to give me the tetanus shot. And, Izumi comes back. And the doctor comes in, so it's one big party as I get the shot. I do have to give Murse A credit as he was very good with the needle. The doctor then says he wants me to have a CT scan since something looks not right on the x-rays, so they will have to call someone in so it will be a while. Izumi and I are laughing and talking and I'm sure we were quite loud. And I'd had no pain drugs yet! After the x-rays, the first nurse puts on one of those neck collars. Did not like that!

Murse A comes back and we all (me, Murse, Izumi) all take a trip downstairs to the CT room where the CT tech is waiting. Oy, it is painful to get onto the table, trying to be graceful with the blue gown. Then, there are the photos! Izumi did a very good job in documenting the entire experience. At least we will have something to look at and laugh about. 

CT scan done, and back to the room. More waiting, more laughing. The doctor comes in and says the elbow x-ray looks funny (not broken, but not right), so he wants to put a splint on it and then I go for a follow-up in a few days. He says, "WHY do you race?"  Man, for the excitement and the high!  He leaves and in comes the ortho tech, a woman totally devoid of personality. She suggests that I wear the blue gown home. Hell no!! I have sweat pants in my bag and I can put the Sheila Moon base layer on since it's sleeveless and then put one arm in my jacket and wrap it around me. 

Yeah for Sheila Moon! I love her base layers and have two of them. Well, just one now since my jersey was shredded as was the base layer. Those double layers probably saved a lot of skin on my back. 

More photos, then I get dressed and we get final instructions and the doctor calls in a prescription for pain meds (only 4 or 5 hours after this happened!) and we go to the car and head up to San Mateo to the 24-hour pharmacy Walgreens. Which isn't 24 hours anymore. Which means we have to drive all the way back to SF to get the prescription. Then home, unload all my stuff and Izumi takes my car home. 

A huge, huge thanks to Izumi for staying with me and missing the party and carting my crap around and making me laugh and yes, even for the pictures. 

Scorecard:

one ruined jersey

one ruined base layer

one cracked pink helmet

bibs have a little rip in the upper, but seem to be ok

one smacked head and stiff neck today

tmj joint is sore. I know there are things I can't chew right now. Mashed potatoes for dinner tonight--no chewing!

one sore upper arm from the tetanus shot

one ripped up left elbow which has puffed up and my have a fracture in the radial head (but I'm thinking positive that it's not)

one less ripped up right elbow, not puffed up

3rd and 4th knuckles on the right hand are black and blue and very sore

right side lower back muscles seize up at times

right lower leg over the fibular head is pretty sore

left groin/quad very sore

left butt cheek looks like someone took a cheese grater to it and it's swollen up and is turning black/purple/blue. Sitting is not fun.

right shoulder muscles sore on some movements

neck and upper shoulders pretty sore

I took today off work and didn't get much sleep last night--not from the pain, but more from my body still racing at a million rpms. Kind of like Ironman...you go to sleep after midnight and expect to sleep in the next morning but by 7:00 AM everyone is already sitting down for coffee. Maybe tonight I'll sleep a little more.

And it's bike racing...shit happens. I narrowly avoided two crashes last year in races, so it was my time.  Another huge thanks goes to Matt for all the times at the track when he forced me to do the bumping/leaning drill. I honestly think that being able to keep us up for a little bit kept things from being worse than they could have been. Teammate Renee was riding behind me when it happened and she was able to see what was happening and adjust and do an emergency stop (just like we learned at Laurel's clinic!) and even though she went down, she was able to get back into the race. Good job Renee!

Numbers from the abbreviated race:

20 minutes

22+ mph avg. speed

27 mph max speed

If the saying below is right, I should have a hell of a lot of weakness leaving!

Pain is the feeling of weakness leaving the body.___USAF Pararescue motto

Saturday Track, Sunday Early Birds

A great weekend on the bike!

Saturday track.

The Saturday morning track session was cancelled since it had rained over night and the track was still wet. So, I went to coffee with someone down there and then did a Target trip. By noon, the track had dried out and the afternoon session was on. Keith put on his low-key races and about 13 or 14 people showed up, including two other women. We all started out with a 40 lap warm-up which got a little fast early. I really hate the saddle on the track bike and Katy gave me another one to try out so we had swapped it out prior to the warm-up and towards the end, I had to put the original back on. Not good.

The first race we did was a 20 lap scratch race with everyone, even though there was some serious speed differential. The group split into about three different groups, but Keith was able to divide us up after that. We next did a team sprint with 3 people and the 3 women rode together. ITeam sprint is where you ride one behind each other, and after one lap the first person peels off, after two laps, the second person peels off and then the third person does a solo lap. Normally, women have teams of 2 with one person riding one lap and the second person doing 2 laps. It's a very fun race. Anyway, we lined up on the rail and I went second. Rode hard and it was fun to go fast.

After the groups got divided,we also did a 20 lap point race, points every 5. In our group, we had 7 people, 3 women and 4 men. After about 3 laps, we began to string out and two guys got a gap and I stuck with one of the other guys and was 4th across the line for the first 2 point laps. Very psyched about that.

We did another team sprint, and this time I led out the other two. Then maybe one more race. I forget. Once everyone started to cool down, I asked Keith if he'd time me in a flying 200. So we did. Twice. It was good to get a baseline for this early in the season and now I know where I need to go. Lots of work to be done.

Sunday and the Early Birds.

Got up and it wasn't raining, but it was overcast and windy. And cold! I picked up Alice and we headed down to Fremont. We got there and it was extremely windy which made it even colder. Sitting in the car and drinking hot coffee was sounding better and better. But no, we got ready and did the advanced clinic. Today's lesson was attacking and we practiced solo attacks, dual attacks and lead-outs. A good session and then 9 of the Mice went to ride. After the ride it was time to get ready for the beginner clinic. The beginner clinic was basically the same and my legs felt surprisingly good. After the clinic there was no time to do anything but shed the jacket and go line up. They again split the women's 4s into two groups. As my legs were tired and it was pretty cold (which means possible asthma issues going hard), I started with the second group. We took off and after the first corner, I tried an attack. My intent was to practice an attack, sit up and get back in the group, then maybe do it again later. Since these are practice races, the more things you can practice, the better.

So, I attack and get a gap and I slow up some and look back and Pacific Bikes gal has jumped too and bridges up to me. She said, "I'm here!" Nuts! I was going to drop back, but instead said, OK, let's keep working. Another gal bridges up but she just sits in and I think I don't want to do all the work for someone not willing to work, so I sit up and we pick up two more, so now we have a group of 5 and we sort of start working together. For about 30 minutes we have a gap and we are going at a pretty good pace and with 3 laps to go, my asthma kicks up and I start to cough and you can't cough and pedal hard, so I dropped back and sat up and when the other part of my original group came by, I hopped in with them and rode the last 3 laps with them. On the last lap, I got to work on a lead-out for Elaine and Taylor and then rode it in. A very fun time and everyone stayed upright.

For the week:

S: 2,100 m

B: 112.2 mi

R: 1.4 mi

Tr: 1:10

Wts: 1x

Time: 11:00

This year v. last year.

I went through my log for last year and looked at my time on bike for the first 3.5 weeks of January 2009 v. the first 3 weeks of January 2008 and I have about 3 times more volume this year, so I'm happy with that.

Goldsprints and a Race Report

Last night was our cycling team party and we had Goldsprints.  What are Goldsprints?

• Two bikes are placed on rollers side by side, the rollers are connected to a large clock with two hands. Each hand represents the progress being made by one of the two cyclists and the first cyclist to get their hand to go all the way around the clock (representing 500m) wins the race.
  

Oh man, what crazy fun! 

I'd never done them before and I had to go up against Brooke, our team brewer, in a beer sprint. [On "GO", you must chug a cup of beer and throw the cup down before starting sprinting.] Damn! I used to be able to chug quite well in college, but doing it and then trying to sprint 500 meters on a fixed gear bike was just a little hard. Ever try burping when you are spinning 120 rpms at max effort? Doesn't work so well and I was thinking for a minute that the beer might come back up, but it didn't. Brooke had her beer downed before me and I couldn't make up the time on the bike. I definitely want a rematch. Just not on the night before a cross race! Plus, sprinting in jeans and tennis shoes isn't the most comfortable or aerodynamic! Oh yeah, I'd done a long ride Saturday afternoon too, so my legs were a little tired.

Today was the last cyclocross race for the CCCX series. In order to place in the series (7 races), you had to race and finish the finale. Low score (or a missed race) from races 1-6 was thrown out. I was sitting in 3rd place in the women's +45 division, so I had to finish. Where I finished didn't really matter as 4th was too far behind, unless I got a zero for the day. That's a good thing since I woke up with TIRED legs! But hey, it's cross! Suck it up and race.

I left SF and it was nice and sunny, but cold (50F?) I got down to Ft. Ord and got ready. Ren and I did the first couple of laps in base layer, jersey and arm warmers, but as it got closer to race time, the temperature shot up and we started stripping clothes. Later the news said it was 75F. Just a beautiful day! 

The course was the reverse of the other two times we'd raced there, with a lot of turns, lots and lots of turns. We started on the road, so it was a sprint to start, then a hard left turn onto the dirt. Ren and I went to pre-ride the course before the race and the first part was fine--back and forth and a couple of 180 degree turns, nothing too difficult. We then went up on the field where people were parked, so a crowd at the first set of barriers. Over them and then a short, steep downhill and a bumpy, loose dirt uphill to a barrier, then a short steep runup. Back on the bike and then a long uphill in the dirt. I was in my smallest gear and not going too fast. Up this hill six times and I was able to ride it four times. Twice I got into the really loose dirt and all of a sudden, wasn't going anywhere.

At the top of the hill there was a bit of a downhill (loose dirt and sand!), then another long uphill, though not as steep, so this one was OK. Then it was back down the hill and there were some ruts and loose dirt, so a couple of times going down this section I had a bit of a high heart rate from skidding around. And quick two 180 degree turns, then another downhill on the gravel and a left turn/right/left turn off camber combo and the last left was a bit of a drop. On the pre-ride, Ren was behind me and it's probably good since if I'd been by myself, I might have stopped and freaked out. Instead, I said, "OH S&#!" to myself and just went for it. I made it through OK five of the six times. The third (of four) time through in the race, my bike just didn't want to make the left at the bottom of the hill and I went straight through the tape, heading right for the EMTs and their truck. They jumped up and helped me get untangled and said they'd tie the tape back up and I was on my way. Around the picnic area, downhill, over another barrier, slight uphill past the finish line, another 180 turn and another slight downhill, off camber, up, more turns, down, up, over the double downed telephone poles, lots more turns and back up the hill to the road for another lap.

I finished, which meant 3rd place in the series. A big plaque, a t-shirt and and IOU for a bunch of strawberries. Rod and Keith are the best race directors and their races are a blast. They put on mountain bike races, so I might have to try one this spring. The Mice had all three women on the podium today in three separate categories, so it was a good day!

Now, it's time to focus on the road and the track. And a little run and swim training too.

RR: Early Birds #1

What a difference a year makes! Last year for the Early Birds, I raced in the "haven't raced bikes before" group. And got dropped in most of the races. This year I lined up with the "have raced at least 10 times" group and my goal was to stick with the group as long as possible before I got popped off the back. Well, I didn't get popped! Got gapped a couple of times out of the corners, but all the track riding kicked in and I got up out of the saddle and was able to get back in the group. I tried various positions within the pack and even took a flyer with two laps to go (this was more a "I really don't like the position I'm in and there's a gap so I'm out of here" jump rather than a full attack). I'd decided coming across the start/finish on the last lap to not contest the sprint as at that point people were already started to move around too much and coming around turn 4, I was at the back of the pack, but in the very long finishing straight I was able to pass a number of people and ended up about mid-pack. Super happy with the effort, especially considering I've only ridden the road bike on the road three times since October. Riding the rollers just doesn't cut it. I need to get some hard miles in my legs.

2008 Racing

It was a year of firsts: First bike races, first time to ride the track, first time to be on a team. What a fun year it was! Though no running races. I'll have to remedy that in 2009. And do more than one tri!

9 cyclocross races: CCCX Finale, Santa Rosa CCX, both last January/February. Then this fall, CCCX #1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and BASP Candlestick and BASP Golden Gate Park.

1 cycling TT: Dunlap TT

1 half IM: Kansas 70.3 (though I only did 2/3rds of it)

10 crits: Early Bird training races #1, 2, 3; Early Bird Crit; Menlo Park; Santa Cruz; Wente; EMC; ICC Dash for Cash; Davis

1 Road Race: Snelling RR (cycling, not running)

Madera Stage Race: crit, TT and RR

37 track racing days: 

Get Ready for Summer

Low-key TTs

10 Tuesday night races

11 Wednesday night races

4 Friday night races

Proman Omnium

Masters States (2 days)

Beat the Clock TTs

Sprint Tourney

Masters Nationals (4 race days)

Elite States

Total race days: 62

2008

-What one word describes your 2008 season? Does it match what you said last December in anticipation of this year?

CHANGE

Last year I said:

Excited.  A new team, trying bike racing, writing my own schedule (with the coach's oversight). Should be interesting.

-What one word comes to mind when you think about your 2009 season?

REVERT or CONSISTENT

Both came to mind about the same time.

Revert back to more training. Add back running, some swimming too.

Consistency I let lapse. I'd train well for a bit, then not.

-Did you race any new distance this year or try any new type of racing

or sport?

That's ALL I did!  I did my first ever road bike racing--crits, road races, even a stage race. Then there was the track. I think I rode my tri bike about 3 times all year and the two races I did on it were individual cycling TTs, not a tri.

-What was your greatest thrill or joy this year from training or racing?

Finding my true love--the velodrome!

For actual racing? Two different occasions. The first was a Friday night in August at the track when it was the fast girls and me and I rode so hard I thought my eyeballs would pop. I got dropped, but I'd jump right back in and try to hang a little longer each time. It was a great learning experience.

The other was the last day of Track Masters Nationals when Donna and I got 3rd in the Team Sprint and taking 4 seconds off our previous time. The entire Masters experience was pretty damned fun.

-What was your biggest disappointment this year from training or racing?

Not being as fit or trained or prepared as I should have been. The first road race was a big bummer for me since I didn't have the hard miles in my legs and I didn't really know about this bike racing thing. I was ready to give it (bike racing) up right then and there. Glad I stuck it out.

I also really missed having a coach. But since the year was about trying new things, I definitely think I can say the year was a success.

-What was your favorite race in 2008?

The Wednesday and Friday night races at the track. Wednesday was more casual, but you got to race multiple times. Fridays were a bigger deal and a little more high profile with a crowd watching and food and drink. But both were very fun and almost always involved driving down and back with teammates and a trip to the taco truck afterwards. The Madera Stage Race weekend was also fun. The actual racing was maybe not so fun, but the trip was great.

So one more race in 2008 this weekend, and then it will be on to 2009. Can't wait!

It Starts Out So Innocently...

One nice bike to ride.

But you want to race faster and different events and maybe go to France and ride around and drink wine with crazy Australians, so you need bike #2. You love them both so much and have so many adventures, traveling the world.

But then that crazy cross dude catches your eye, so you are sucked in for bike #3. Then, someone tells you repeatedly that, "You ~really~ should go race on the track." So you take his advice and go to check it out. They rent bikes for $5.00! A cheap fun! But three times and three different bikes to ride and you are a one-woman bike rider, so you drive straight to the bike shop and put the track boy on order (bike #4). Hey--we get a team discount!

And then you think you are good and the house is getting a little crowded (no way do any of my bikes live outside or in the garage!), and then some PUSHER on an email list mentions he has a single speed mountain bike which is too small for him that he wants to sell. Mention bike and specs to mountain bike part of race team. They freak, "BUY IT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Welcome bike #5.

My name is clm and I'm a bike addict.

BASP GGP Video

Golden Gate Park Cyclocross 2008 from Lloyd ranola on Vimeo.

The New Guy

Yes, I have a new guy in the house....a single speed mountain bike, a Bianchi M.U.S.S. that I got from a triathlete guy I know. It's FUN! I figure that I need to work on my off-road skills and this is just the thing to do it. I picked it up at the shop this afternoon and headed over to Golden Gate Park to try it out. Like I said, FUN! It was drizzling rain, so I got to ride in the mud and through puddles and see how the disc brakes work (really well!) and just get used to it. I got 30 minutes in before it got dark, but I'll be riding it more this weekend. Thanks Greg!

Well, hell.

Physical therapy began on my foot this week and the consensus is that I have a micro-fracture in it! Damn! That ultrasound hurt like a #@*@&! when she ran it over the top of my foot. So, no running or jumping for me, but I can ride the bike as much as I want. And lift weights. And swim (though I'm really not feeling the swim love right now for some reason).

I've started back up Michael McCormack's spin sessions and am going to do a 10 week rotation. I'll go one a week, either Tuesday evenings or Tuesday mornings, but 6:15 AM is EARLY! Luckily the Starbucks down the street is open at 5:30 AM so I can walk down there, get a coffee and walk to m2revolution.

The sessions are on bikes with power and cadence read-outs, so I like that a lot. Plus, I get a solid hour of riding in. I'm using the sessions to work on increasing my cadence and I do a bunch of spin ups and can now hold 115 rpms for a good minute at a time. When I did Michael's sessions about a year and a half ago, my normal cadence was 75-85 and hitting 90 rpms would just kill me and jack my heart rate sky high. Now, a warm up is at 90. The goal is to hold higher cadence at bigger gearing.

SInce standing up on the pedals makes my foot hurt, I treat the session as how you'd do 200 meter efforts on the track....get in a good warm up, then do the effort (max cadence holding it as long as possible), then spin easy for a couple of minutes, then build back up for another effort, and repeat about 10 times.

Last week my max cadence was 137 rpms, but I couldn't hold it very long (like just a few seconds). This week I hit 144 rpms!! I also hit 134 a few times and for these efforts, I could only hold it 10 seconds or so.

It's also fun to watch the power numbers and see how they respond to different cadence and gearing. On Tuesday, my max power was 409 watts, but  that was with a bigger gear and about 115 cadence. I think I hit 380-something at the higher cadence.

It's definitely a better workout than sitting at home spinning on the rollers (but that workout has it's place too.) 

Crazy thing though is that I now have the urge to go run. Figures that I want to when I can't!

Saturday Track

Saturday was track day. I went to the beginner session in the morning and got some good riding in, plus, the weather was fantastic! Nearly 80F and sunny, very slight breeze. In November!!! Love love love it. For the winter, I'm supposed to be riding small gears and working on base and learning to spin, so I have 47x17 gears on the bike right now which is 74.6 inches. (This means that if you are pedaling 100 rpms, you are only going to go 22 mph compared to 90 inches which is what I used for sprinting later this year and 100 rpms = +27 mph.) In basic terms, I could spin like a hamster and not go that fast, but it's good practice. The morning session was a lot of fun with a good group. We did the usual paceline warm up, then divided up into groups of 4 and did pursuit. The idea was to learn about holding onto a wheel, making exchanges, and riding together, so the pace wasn't hammering, but rather, good and steady. We did it three different times, changing order and working on different things. Good exercise. After that, we did flying 200s and we were timed. Anyway, doing a 200 with that gearing was interesting. I was at top end speed and my legs were flying so fast that I couldn't stand up. I was able to keep pedaling fast for most of the 200 and ended up with a good baseline time for the off season. The last thing we did was the Australian pursuit (everyone lines up at one of the light poles at the rail and then on the whistle, you take off and try to pass people in front of you and not be passed by anyone behind you. Once you are passed, you're out. I lasted longer than usual which was nice. After that, it was a quick trip to Starbucks and then back and some more warm up for the afternoon racing. I hadn't planned to race, but just do the warm up, but then Taylor, Andrew and Kira, my juniors that I raced with all summer, showed up, plus teammate Ashley, so I decided to race. The extended warm up was nice as you could ride around and chat with people you hadn't seen for a month or two! And did I mention how nice it was at the track? The racing was a fund raiser for Shelley Olds, who is aiming for the 2012 Olympics and needs to travel to the World Cup races to compete. She was just 8th in the world in the scratch race last month in Manchester, England and she's off to Sydney as we speak to race down there. For Saturday, Frankie Andreu was in town and at the track and he did color commentary for the races. That was a lot of fun. It was cool to see how quick he picked up people's names and able to do a running commentary. Very nice guy. The As raced first and there were some really fast people there (a guy from Bissell and Daniel Holloway who rides for Garmin/Chipolte) and they had a pretty big field. Fun to watch them race. The Bs were next and there were three Mice in that race. Finally, it was the Cs turn. It was nearly all women, plus Peter who always races with us and junior Andrew and maybe one or two other guys. Our race started out pretty fast and ramped up from there. 25 lap points race, points every 5. I was able to stick with the pack for a few laps, but then someone took off and my legs couldn't move fast enough to keep up. Junior Taylor and I rode together trading pulls, then when Ashley popped off, we picked up her for a few laps, but she dropped off and Taylor and I ended up riding the rest together. Pretty good effort and I was able to get some good time in with the smaller gearing. After that race, I had two hours in, so I called it a day and took pictures, had some food and a beer and watched the other races. Once the track racing was over, it was hop into the car and drive back to SF to watch the night time cyclocross racing. I think Lance had it wrong....it ~is~ about the bike.

Catching Up and A Race and Foot Report

A little time off, but I'm back. Work has been crazy busy, plus, there was a little trip to Hawaii and a break after Masters Nationals was needed. Man, Hawaii was FUN! And it was a chance to see my Portuguese pals again! I'm already planning next year's trip.

So, after taking most of October off, last weekend I got back on the bike. The plan is to do more base training than last year and less cross racing. Last year I raced pretty much every weekend in the fall/winter, many times, both days, so not much base training got done.

The race team had a recruiting ride a week ago, so that +3 hour ride was the longest ride I'd done since about June. I felt great and on the Sunday, went down near Santa Cruz to maybe do PsychoCross. I went down with 3 teammates, one to race, one to work as an official and the third, to spectate, cheer and give feeds during the races. After pre-riding the course, I decided not to race since the course had some big downhills and I'm not so good on those and I don't think that during a race is the best time to learn how to ride them. So, I drank beer, heckled and had fun. 

The week of 27 October started the real off-season training and I had a good week--training every day. On Saturday I headed out to the park behind Candlestick Park to help build Sunday's cyclocross course (Candlestick Point park). It wasn't raining when we started, but within 30 minutes, it started to rain, and for the next 5 hours while we were building the course and doing some landscaping, it rained. At times, it poured. At least the winds were from the south, so it wasn't that cold. But we were drenched. There was supposed to be a clinic at 3:00 PM after we finished building the course, but about 2:15 PM when we finished, it was just pouring, so Paule sent us home. Home, hot shower, pack for the next day, eat, change clocks, bed.

Sunday I got to the venue early since I gave teammate Hank a ride and he raced in the first race. That was fine since I was in the second race, so I got to check out the course on the bike and see how it was after the big rain. (It had kept raining most of the day/night.) The course started out on the flat on the road, then a left turn and through a big mud puddle (standing water across the entire road/path), up a slight hill and bypassing the first part of the course until the next lap, in order to spread the fields out.

When we were laying out the course, I kept thinking that there were a lot of hills...mostly short, but steep and in the mud. My goals for the race were to (1) actually race and not freak out, (2) ride all of the downhills and (3) attempt the uphills. One thing that happens when you build the course is that you know where all the big holes are and that was actually a little disconcerting since I wanted to stay away from those areas. It might be better to not know.

They called for the Women's C group to line up and the field was about 25 people and Team Roaring Mouse had 6 or 7 women in the race. It was nice to see all of the yellow and black. I lined up in the back since I'd not raced in 5 weeks and on the gun, we were off. The older junior boys started in front of us and the younger junior boys started after us. I took off and rode through the mud/water puddle--fun! Off to the right on the first lap modified course, a left and over to the first set of barriers. I got over them fine and back on the bike, passing a gal on a mountain bike, then she'd pass me back. The second set of barriers and again, got over them OK, then down the sidewalk, passing a couple of people, then off the bike and carry the bike up the steep, muddy hill. The day before, we'd seen how slick this hill was when Brooke went sliding down it on her backside. So, I picked a line up the right side in the grass, but that was still pretty slick. To the top and through the muddy path and I was able to ride the mud OK. 

Though the section of turns and short, steep uphills and downhills and some of the uphills I was able to ride and others, I got partway up and had to get off and run. Through the last downhill and a sweeping right and onto the gravel and to the parking lot and the road. On the road I hammered it and rode like heck and then it was back through the start/finish and back to the mud puddle. All the remaining laps we had a hard left and uphill right after the mud puddle and on the warm-up, I wasn't able to ride the hill, but during the race, I made myself COMMIT and rode up each time. The same thing happened on a couple of the other hills on the front side. 

For the first and second lap, I could hear Paule yelling at Brooke, so I knew she wasn't that far behind me. Plus, mountain bike gal and I kept trading places. She'd get ahead of me on the uphills in the mud and I'd pass her back on the flats. By the last lap, she and I were neck-to-neck about halfway through and she got ahead of me on a really muddy uphill. I was able to pass her back and I heard her husband yelling at her to "Get up there and catch her!" so I powered up the next hill and down and onto the the gravel. I put the hammer down since there was no way that I was going to let her catch me on the road. I got off the gravel and onto the road and put it into the big chain ring and rode as hard as I could. I could see someone just up ahead and right before the gate to the last finishing straight, I got up out of the saddle and rode even harder and caught the person in front of me before the line....Emily Mc! (Sorry Em)  

I ended up 19th out of 22 or 23, and beat mountain bike gal by nearly 2 minutes. I was happy with my race and very happy about riding all the downhills! 

Post-race:  I went for a cool-down ride with Webcor Gail, then changed and got something to eat. I walked out on the course to watch the A men go up the big hill (which by this time had dried out a lot and they were riding right up the hill). There was a mini-party going on out there, so I chatted with everyone and then walked back to the Mouse tent. On the way back, my right foot and a cement sidewalk slab had a very hard head-on collision and I fell down and #*@&@#@!(! that hurt! Damn!!! But, after the initial shock, it didn't feel too bad and I walked around some more and then when the racing was over, I packed up the truck and drove home. I'd planned to go to the BAWC shindig, but after I got the truck unloaded and parked, then showered, my foot/big toe was hurting a lot and I laid on the couch and put it up and iced it, but it was THROBBING!!! A 500 mg. Motrin helped a little, but not a lot. I finally went to bed with the foot propped up and the next morning, it was still hurting a lot. 

A visit to St. Francis Sports Medicine and the hospital and a number of x-rays later, I was in a boot. No fracture, but some serious bruising and sprained. I go back to see the doctor in about a week, so I guess I'll be swimming and riding the trainer. Damn! Just when I was getting back into the swing of training!

I have a race planned in two weeks and I'm thinking positive on being there.

Bike Weekend

Saturday was a session at the track. I've decided that I'll get down there once a month this fall/winter just to keep a feel for the fixed gear. Plus, I love it down there. It was a perfect day--sunny, not to hot early, light wind. Great for just riding around. I did the beginner session and helped out with that. There were probably 20 people, so we did a lot of paceline work, focusing on transitions--pulling off the front of the line and using the banking to get on to the end of the line. We did a few efforts, including one 200m effort, but not timed. Afterwards, Ruggie swapped out my cog for me so I'll be running a 47x17 for the off-season. That's pretty small, but I need to pick up a 46 chain ring to go even smaller. I guess I'm going to learn how to spin. And yes Matt, I will get a whip tool thing and learn how to swap out my own cogs.

Since I was racing the CCCX cross race on Sunday in Monterey, I just stayed down in San Jose to lessen the amount of driving. Katy asked if I could babysit Allie Saturday night, so she came and stayed with me and we went swimming and then out to dinner. Allie was also racing cross on Sunday, so she and I drove down to Ft. Ord this morning and met up with the rest of the Mice contingent (Ryan, Hank, Julie, Paulie, Brooke, Bev and the Chaney boys, Ren and Katy).

Well, I know my schedule for getting ready. I mis-scheduled adding a 9 year old into the mix and she and I got there a little late and I didn't get a good warm up in. This was the second week in a row at Ft. Ord, though today's race was more on the interior of the old base which meant lots of hills and lots of sand. Sand -- I really don't deal with sand too well and add downhill to the sand and most of the course was pretty much terror for me. There was lots of stopping and waiting for the fast people to go by me (shoot-even the not fast people lapped me), lots of foot down and going real slow on the downhills.

Take the lack of warm-up, a lack of sleep, lots of dust and an uphill start and add in an asthma attack which my inhaler didn't work on, meant only two laps for me (versus 4 laps for the other gals in my category). I got to visit the nice EMT lady for the second week in a row, this time with teammate Julie who slid out in the sand and wiped out her ankle. The next two weekends I'm swimming and running and drinking beer in Hawaii and taking a little time off the bike.

At least the post-race Mexican food and beer and company was good! And I'm still the coolest Auntie Cathy.

Help Shelley get to the World Cup!

Ride the World Cups

Hello Everyone,

Niki and I are at it again.  The World Cup Track Season is just around the corner and we are getting ready for what should be a very successful year for the PROMAN Racing Team.  The team this year is going to be much smaller.  In fact, I am the team. 

The World Cup Season starts this year in Manchester, England on October 31st.  Tickets for the event are already sold out.  Great Britain had huge success in the Olympics this year and they hope to carry on the tradition at the first world cup event.  However, I am looking to spoil thier hopes for success in the Women's Points and Scratch Race events.  The goal for me this year is to earn my ticket to the World Championships by scoring enough UCI points throughout the course of the season to earn a spot at Worlds. I would also like to be invited by the National Team to at least one World Cup this season, either by winning the Points Race at Nationals, or by racing my butt off at the first two world cups and giving them no other choice but to select me as a member of the National Team.

Last year, I was so fortunate to have the support of so many amazing people.  I feel that we all came together for the cause and that I was not only racing for myself, but for all of you as well.  This year, I am going to need your help again.  We have already confirmed the dates for the first three Ride the World Cup Track Fundraisers.  The dates are as follows:

Sunday, September 21st
Saturday, October 18th
Saturday, November 8th.

Please come out and share this experience with me in whatever way you can.  I need to be prepared for the level of talent in the women's fields at the world cups and racing with the locals at Hellyer is just what I need to whip myself into shape.  Ben Jaques-Maynes, if you are out there, please come make me chase you down.  If I can only hold your wheel for a half a lap, that's good enough for me. 

The first event is right around the corner, so I apologize for the late announcement.  We are hoping this race will be a great opportunity for those riders still gearing up for Elite Nationals to get some solid racing.  The event will be the same format as last year and the party will be just as fun.  If you cannot race, please come and hang out and cheer us on.  We will have great food, beer, drinks, music, and raffle prizes. 

I have attached a flyer for you to pass on to your teammates and friends.  The flyer should have all of the information you need, but if not, we have created a website that has all of the information as well and will be updated throughout the course of the season.

http://www.ridetheworldcups.com/

I thank you all in advance for being a part of my dream.  I couldn't do any of this without you. 

Shelley Olds
PROMAN Racing

Easy Day

Today it was back to work for one day. I'm headed to the East Coast next week so I had to wrap some things up for that trip. A long day after not getting a lot of sleep last night, then worked late until I got everything out. I did come home and ride the rollers a little bit and the big news is that I moved the rollers out of the doorway for the first time! Woo hoo!! Though letting go of the mantle took at little bit of time, but I finally did. No direct TV watching though!

RR: Masters Nats 2K Pursuit

OK, it's 6 hours after my race and I am STILL jacked up! And no, I haven't had any caffeine!

Tonight's race was the 2K pursuit--6 laps of the track, just you against the clock. Well, there is someone else on the opposite side of the track against their clock.

10 women in the age group.

bike set up was 47x15 again with Mateo's disk wheel and I added Ben's clip-on aerobars. Thanks boys! I went to the track about noon and Donna wasn't going to race for about an hour, so I took the road bike and went out for about 30 minutes down the trail just to wake my legs up a bit. It was hot and sunny but the trail was actually mostly tree-lined, so it wasn't too hot.

Back to the track to watch Donna and Libby race (2nd and 3rd). Before their race, Harvey took my bike over to the UCI measuring device to measure it with the aerobars. Legal on the bars, but the saddle was too far forward by a couple of centimeters. He said they'd put me on it to see if I got an anatomical exception, but since I wasn't short (and have longer legs v. torso, not likely). CRAP! That was the end of the morning session which really was nearly 2:45 PM! Better get something to eat and drink, then back to the track. Got back to the track about 4:00 and weather.com said 94F and 16% humidity. Larry later said his car read 101F. I think that was closer to it. Got changed and got out on the track and did about 10 minutes and spent some time in the aerobars and didn't like how they were angled, so I got Kevin to help me change them and while we were at it, move the saddle back. That actually worked out better since I like to ride out on the end of the saddle when I'm in the aero position and I felt almost like I was on the TT bike. I got Johnny to pin my number, then it was back on the track for another 10 minutes of warmup, then off. Dire need of fluids. Man, it was hot and dry. Last bit of warm up on the trainer, just to keep my legs loose.

I was in Heat 1 of the first race of the evening session and I was paired with Karen Brems (again!) She's the one who is an Olympian and former world champion that I had to ride against a couple of weeks ago. She passed me 3 laps into the race and had a blazing time that day. Let's see when she would pass me today.

Goal: Ride faster than I even have. (Which would be anything under 3:19).

My start was on the start/finish side and my holder was Bob P. While I was waiting in the chair, Leo came up to tell me good luck and don't go too hard on lap 2. He'd had a 9 second improvement earlier in the day. Nine (9) seconds????!!!! Leo, did you skip a lap?? ha I rubbed his leg for good luck and then it was onto the bike. A different count than the day before---15 seconds start, then beep at 10 seconds, then beep for 5-4-3-2-1 and long beep, GO. I took off and I think I had a lot of nerves and wasn't fully paying attention to the start so my start wasn't too good (I think). But luck for me, Karen false-started. Mark A. was in the curve and he was shouting to shut it down. Ride around and line up again and this time I was totally in the moment and got a good start. Up out of the saddle, arms straight, power forward, not down, out of the saddle all the way out of turn 2, down into the aerobars before turn 3--yes!

I was going pretty hard the first lap, but on the second lap I told myself, "Float the pedals", two laps down and then coming out of turn 4 on the third lap, Karen goes by me. This was almost the same place that she passed me two weeks ago, so my thought was that we were doing about the same times as two weeks ago. If that's the case, don't die off and maintain and I'd likely have a PR. I usually get a big slow down in lap 4, but today I didn't slow as much. I felt pretty good and then in lap 5 I maintained and lap 6 I tried to pick it up. Johnny was on the other side of the track as the holder over there, so every time by him he would shout, plus everyone else was yelling so it was nice to have a lot of support. I made a final push across the finish line and had no clue what my time was. The announcer gave Karen's time (2:35!) and then mine.....3:10. NO FREAKING WAY! That was a 9 second PR!!!!!! I was totally jacked and have spent pretty much every minute since then with a huge smile on my face.

I got in a cool down spin (ending the spin with Glenn handing me a beer--that's the way to do a cool down spin!) and immediately started thinking about how I can go faster. I know I can break 3:00 next year!

My first 2K was in May this year and my time was 3:27.32, so I've taken off 17 seconds this year. Not bad!

Karen's 2:35 won. I was 10th of 10, but that doesn't matter.

Track Masters Nationals, Day 1

Written Monday night: Nats begin tomorrow. I'm going to get schooled. But it will be a good experience and so far, everyone has been very nice and helpful. There are some wicked fast people here--world champions and just fast, fast folks. I went to watch the women's 4 crit this morning before driving down, then got to the track and did a short warm up. The track was super busy, so I changed and worked registration for a couple of hours, then once things had slowed down some, went back and finished my workout. Change into street clothes, sit around and talk, then it was time for dinner--grilled burgers and the fixins' and beer and wine, then put the bike in the truck and over to Casa Harrington, where I am now. A glass of wine with Mr. Harrington and now it's time for bed. Tomorrow is the 500 meter time trial. Goal is to ride a personal best. 8 or 10 gals in my age group. The biggest age group of all the women. Should be a fun day.

Today's report:

Showing up yesterday at the track to register and get in a short workout was a little intimidating. Lots of very fast people wearing State Champion jerseys or with world champion stripes on their sleeves. The track crowd is very nice and very, very helpful and friendly and working registration for a few hours helped take away some of the nerves. As did drinking a beer with Mike and Mark and listening to their tips for the match sprint.

Today was the 500 meters. Race against the clock. 11 women in the 45-49 age group.
Riding Mateo's disk wheel, 47x15 gearing.
Goal was to ride a personal best.

I got to the track this morning and those intimidation thoughts came right back. Talking later to Holly, I wasn't the only one. At least we had a fun tent with Donna, Gio and Holly and right next to the Webcor tent with the Webcor folks. I got on the track and did a warm up and a couple of good efforts and felt pretty good. It was then time to get the bike check (official UCI measurement) and then watch the kilo and see how the timing mechanism worked (30 second light, 15 second light, 10 second beep, then countdown beeps from 5-4-3-2-1 and long beep--GO). Roll around once the 500s started, get some Gu and water, cheer on Leo, Libby and Donna, then it was time to get on the bike and over to the holding area (and have the bike looked at again).

I was in the second heat and started on the front side with Metromint Mike as my holder. Ready from the official, yes. 5-4-3-2-1 GO. The start was kind of a blur. Everyone said it looked good, but I don't think I was looking down the track enough. Gio had false started in his race, so that was in the back of my mind too. Up out of the saddle and drive the pedals forward, stay up until out of turn two, then sit down and pedal faster. Got around one lap and only a half lap left, pick it up! I tried and my legs were screaming. Push past the finish line, then ease up. I tried to hear what the announcer said for my time, 47-something. OK, but what was the something???? The first thought in my head was, "I need to work on leg speed this winter." Second thought was that I didn't biff the start, fall over, or do something stupid. Yea! The first ride was in the books.

Result: 11th of 11, but a 47.051 which was a full 0.2 second faster than two weeks ago and over 2 seconds faster than I've ever gone. GOAL MET!! Very happy about the ride, but a better start might have seen me going 46.9! Since May I've taken 2.37 seconds off my 500 time, so I can't complain. But next year I plan to take even more off.

T-Minus 2 Days

Tomorrow is registration for Masters Track Nationals, then racing begins in Tuesday morning. I'll be racing the 500 meters on Tuesday, the 2K pursuit on Wednesday, the sprints on Saturday and the team sprint with Donna next Sunday. And volunteering a couple or three shifts along the way during the week. Since this is the first season of riding (and racing) on the track, it will be a learning experience and to have fun. There are some pretty fast gals coming in my age group and the 40-49 group has a lot more women than the 30-39 women. Nice to see!

Friday night my friend Betty flew up from Los Angeles and stayed with me. She and five of our friends are riding San Francisco to San Diego over the next week. We went out to dinner Friday night and drank a little wine, then yesterday we got up and drove down to the track since Betty had never seen a velodrome nor people riding on one. I had "warm-up then 3 efforts" on my schedule, plus, I wanted to try out the disk wheel that Mateo loaned me. We met Pete from South Carolina in the parking lot....67 or 68 years old and he'd driven out to race. There were already quite a few people there and I did about 20 minutes and a couple of efforts, then came off the track and put the aero bars on, then went out and did another 10 minutes and an effort in the aero bars. Legs felt good, aero bars worked well, disk worked well. Sunny and warm and a little breeze, but otherwise, a perfect morning.

The rest of the day was spent picking up Dave, Jo, Rap and Sharon's bike boxes at the airport and dropping them off, then picking up Betty's bike at Bespoke, lunch, home to shower, then off to sit in the coffee shop for awhile. Dinner at ZA Pizza and a couple of beers, then home.

Safe roads and tail winds to Betty, Dave, Jo, Sharon, Rap and Al.

RR: Tuesday Night Points Racing

Mice: clm and Liam in the Cs; Mateo in the Bs.

Goal: do some hard efforts and drop out. Short and hard were the intructions.

9-10 people in the Cs, coed.

Race 1 (36 laps):
At the whistle I took off and sprinted and got a gap. A couple of laps and I'm off the front with Liam and "new guy" (tonight was his first time racing). We start doing a rotating paceline until I fall off, but Liam and new guy gain a lap on the field. I do 8 very hard laps and then sit up and spin easy and then drop out. Liam wins race. Woo hoo!

Race 2 (30 laps):
Decide to sit in for this race and not kill myself on the sprints. New guy goes off the front and no one seemed to want to chase. Things get strung out and I'm riding with "other new guy" and Mike and on the bell Mike picks it up. I stick to his wheel and come around him out of turn 4 and hammer it to the line. Yes!!! The 2nd place points are Mine!! Content to sit in and ride easy the rest of the way.

Liam won brownies, so it was brownies and the taco truck for dinner. A very fun night.

Yes, Back To The Track

Since fog and cold in August makes me cranky and Ren said she was going to be there and Gio was going to be the supervisor and had said come on down, plus, I needed to try out the aero bars if I'm going to be using them in the 2K pursuit in a week, I headed down to the velodrome Saturday morning for the beginner session. And, yes, I love it there, riding in circles. Neil sent me a message saying they were going to take up a collection to rent me an apartment next to the track. Teammate Jay said I could just put a cot in one of the containers and live there. Either would work!

There were quite a few people there for the beginner session, which was great! Gio and Glenn took the first-timers to a fixed gear bike over to the warm-up circle and I took the rest out for a 40-lap warm up. After that, I took the pure beginners out for their warm up. It was a lot of fun as I can remember back to February when I was scared $*&$less to get closer than about 6 feet from the wheel in front of me. And, by the end of the session, at least one person said she was hooked.

After the warm up we did some drills and some pursuits and maybe something else, I forget. I got the legs loosened up after Friday night's racing and got a few hard efforts in, so that was perfect. I dropped out of the last couple of things they were doing in the session and put on the aero bars and after the beginners' session was over I got back on the track to try out the aero bars. It was mostly like riding the tri bike, but at speed (90% of race pace), going around the curves did feel a bit different and getting from a start, up to speed and then getting into the aero bars at speed was a little tricky. I'll get down to the track next weekend and give then another try, but I think they'll be great for the 2K. For the 500m, I think I'll leave the regular bars on.

Post-ride I went and picked up burritos for me, Gio and Glenn, and then sat in the sun and watched the Ready-to-Race clinic and worked on my suntan. That was followed by a trip to Target, then over to Ren and Tiff's house for wine and a catering tasting. They needed Gio's and my palates and we were more than happy to help (tri tip, pasta salad, quiche, red wine). A very fun day and evening spent in the South Bay.

RR: Friday Night Races

Friday nights = FAST people. And me.

There were 3 women's races.

15 lap scratch race 10 lap snowball (where the points increase every lap, so really, a 10 lap sprint) 30 lap points race, sprints every 5 laps

10 women-5 of the Proman gals, super fast Karla, super fast Julie, fast Beth W., fast Donna, fast Lisa, and me. I was going to get drilled.

Scratch race: Things start out civilized, but then someone puts the hammer down. Donna, Lisa and I get spit out the back. Try to jump back in when the group comes around again. Suffer the rest of the way.

Snowball: Donna and Lisa were out so I'd be suffering by myself. See scratch race report and instead of going civilized for a lap or so, the pace was drilled pretty much from the whistle. Some serious heavy breathing. You know when you redline and can taste blood in your mouth? Yes, that was the snowball.

I'd thought about bailing on the points race (it was going to be A LOT of suffering), but Ben, Larry and Beth all said to do it. Race til you puke or drink free beer?? Yea, I succumbed to peer pressure. Well, I thought that by the end my eyeballs would pop out. I hung in until the first sprint but couldn't match the acceleration so I went up to the rail and jumped back in when they came through again and held on as long as I could. Repeat. Towards the end, my legs and lungs were screaming at me. But, I finished.

And, surprised myself (and Ben).

Changed clothes, drank a beer, watched the rest of the racing and afterwards, the boys and I went to the taco truck. Got back to SF and found a parking place 1 block from my house at midnight. Perfect night!

RR: Tuesday Night Points Racing

I SCORED POINTS IN THE POINTS RACE!!!!!!!!!!!!! TWICE!!!!!!!!!!! Totally jacked about that since it's the first time all year I've done so.

C Race, 36 laps, points every 6
Field of 10, coed, warm and quite windy
Mice: clm, Liam and Lindy in the Cs

Rolled out and the pace was decent and at the first sprint, the field went nuts and everything kind of split up after the sprint into little groups of twos and threes. Two gals got off the front and when they came around, I hopped on their wheel. I picked the right time to do that since the next lap was a sprint lap and I stayed with them and coming out of turn 4, I was third behind them and then I could tell someone was coming up on my right side, so I pedaled like mad to cross the line in front of that person. I wasn't sure if I'd get the points since I was down a lap, but just in case.....

Come to find out, I did get the points and got points again on another bell lap, but I don't remember when that was. So I was very happy. Finished up that race and changed clothes and became lap card/bell ringer gal for the rest of the night. The plan was to do 4 hard efforts, which coincided nicely with the sprint laps, then ride the rest of the race and call it a day. Had some practice on transitions with Lindy and then another gal doing 1/2 lap pulls. Good practice for the Team Sprint. This is a rest/recovery taper week, so tonight was perfect.

Weekend At The Track

Registration for track masters nationals begins two weeks from tomorrow and my first race is the next day. After a hard 5 days earlier in the month and some easier stuff during this week, I headed down to San Jose both days this weekend for a day of time trials and a day of match sprints.

Saturday was the Beat the Clock time trials, a fund raiser for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. It's a series of TTs, all on the road, except this one, the last. It was on the velodrome and they had categories for track bikes and road bikes. I took the track bike and decided to do the 500 meters and 2K, since that's what I'll be racing at nationals. But before the TTs, I did the beginners' session as that was a good warm up. Towards the end of the beginners' session, I pulled off the track and swapped out gears, putting on bigger gears for the shorter races. I've only run a 90 inch gear (47x14) once, so it would be a good test.

Saturday's weather: Sunny and hot; light winds early but picked up a lot later.

500m: For the 500 you start from a standing start, then 1.5 laps, and you can lose a lot of time getting a bad start. We practice starts at the camp, so I was hoping to get a better start, but, with the bigger gear, that might be a challenge. I asked Gio to watch my start and let me know after how it looked. 10...5.4.3.2.1.GO. Deep breath on 3 and then put force into the pedals on GO. Force forward, not down, straight arms, forward, forward, forward, BREATHE! Turning over the bigger gear was a bit harder, but I got rolling and got up to top speed and tried to hold it. Finished strong and checking my time, it was over a second personal best, and over 2 seconds since the beginning of the year. Checking in with Gio, he (and the rest of the crew in the tent) said it was a very good start. Very psyched about this. 4th place for the track bike category though I still would like to take another 5 seconds off. Next year for sure.

Lots of waiting around and it was late afternoon before we got to the 2K. I geared down to 88 inches (47x15) and had never ridden that combination before. It's a little bigger than I usually ride, so I wasn't sure how it would go.

2K: 6 laps. The wind had picked up by this time and these were 2-ups, one person starting and finishing on one side of the track and the other person s/f on the other side. They did the seeding by when you signed up, so I was in the second group and riding against a gal who had about zero % body fat and had world champion rainbow stripes on her jersey. Well, my ass was going to get kicked, but hey, you are going against the clock anyway. This is also a held, standing start, but it's not quite as important as you start hard and don't want to lose time, but it's not as important as the 500. Same count, look down the track, 10....5.4.3.2.1.GO and I'm off, up out of the saddle all the way through the curve and then sit down and settle in. The trick is to ride hard, but not too hard where you blow up. I made it nearly 3 laps when a jet roared by me. Damn, she was moving FAST! I started to lag a bit on lap 4, but picked it up a little on lap 5 and picked it up even more on lap 6. Time was 3:20.85 and this was only the 4th time I've done the race. I've taken off nearly 7 seconds since May, so I was pretty happy about that. Goal for next year is to get down to 3:10 or lower.

Called it a day and got some food and drove home.

Sunday was the last sprint tournament and I went down to the track with teammate Ashley. Match sprinting is like a chess match, with speed. Coming from a triathlon background (and especially Ironman training), I have no sprint form and it's definitely something that takes a lot of practice and training. But it's been fun to learn something different.

We left San Francisco having to use the windshield wipers due to the heavy fog and mist (and cold) and got to San Jose to sun and warm weather, not as hot as Saturday, but pretty warm. Quite a few BBQs going in the park, so there was a lot of smoke in the air--not great for asthma. I warmed up (definitely not long enough), changed gears (90") and got ready to go. You start out by doing a flying 200 meters (3 laps, the last 200m timed, so you want to be going full throttle when you hit the timing line). I probably could have been going a little faster when I hit the line, but I rode closer to the rail than I have been (this is good) and took a pretty good line and tried to keep the pedaling cadence high. Time was 15.23, which is good for me. Goal for next year is to get down in the 14s).

Once everyone had done their 200, we were all seeded into brackets according to 200 time and then we did three (or was it 4?) match sprints, rotating between people within our bracket. All of mine were 3-ups, meaning 3 people, instead of 2. Since we didn't know many of the people we were riding against, it was a little hard to predict what they might do or what their strengths were. Changed the gear back to the 88" since I wasn't sure I could jump with the 90" gear.

#1: me, Ashley, Mike. Mike took off like a shot and Ashley and I got caught out and had to chase for two laps. Good move by the wily veteran!

#2: me, Ashley, gal we didn't know: OK, we'll put one of us in front at the start to maybe better control things. Which we did....for awhile. I was in front and I rolled off with gal X behind me and Ashley down track a little just behind X. I took it clear up to the rail and kept both of them behind me and on the second lap, picked it up just a bit and I was getting ready to jump when X shot off like a bullet! Neither Ashley nor I could jump quick enough to catch her. Come to find out later, she used to race a lot about 7 years ago and sprinting was her specialty. No kidding.

#3: me, Mike, other veteran dude: Now I know Mike's little plan, I'm rolling off the line a lot faster and sitting on his wheel. Both guys jump in the middle of the first turn in the last lap and I am able to go with them most of the way, but they pull away at the end. Probably my best effort.

I think we did one more (which would be between #2 and 3 above, but I forget the details).

Match sprinting sure takes a lot of practice, but it's fun (though frustrating!) We are bummed that we only made one of the tournaments and plan to attend regularly next year.

Track Masters' Nationals--Volunteer Opp!

Message from the Masters' Nats organizers. Fun time in the sunshine! And if you are there M/Tu/W/Sa/Su, you can see me race.   ;-)

Master Nationals is just three weeks away. Please help us put on an exceptional master nationals. Elite and juniors riders please consider volunteering at these championship events. Volunteer early and often. We welcome all volunteers not just Masters. Great way for a spouse or teenager to help.

?Questions, email Rick Adams, [email protected]

Task Time Needed Name 

Monday 9/1    

Prepare Rider Packet 10am-Noon 4  

Velodrome set-up Noon-4pm 2  

Registration support Noon-4pm 3  

Shirt sales Noon-4pm 1  

Track Supervisor 10am-noon 1 Mark Rodamaker 

Track Supervisors 2pm-4:30pm 1  

Track Supervisors 7pm-9pm 1 Larry Nolan 

Back Crossing guard 3pm-5pm 1  

Barbeque set-up 3pm-5pm 4  

Barbeque service 5pm-8pm 4  

Barbeque clean-up 7pm-9pm 4  

    

Tuesday 9/2    

Back Crossing guard 10 am to 3 1  

Back Crossing guard 5:30-9:30 pm 1  

Velodrome set-up 8am-9:30am 1  

Track Supervisor 8am-10am 1 Peter Bohl 

500m, Kilo Holders 10am-Noon 3  

500m, Kilo Holders Noon-3pm 3  

Awards Presentations 2pm-3pm 1  

Track Supervisors 3:30pm-5:30pm 1  

500m, Kilo Holders 5:30pm-8pm 3  

Shirt sales 5:00pm-7pm 1  

Awards Presentations 7:30pm-8pm 1  

Velodrome clean-up 8:30pm-9:30pm 2  

    

Wednesday 9/3    

Back Crossing guard 9 am to 3 1  

Back Crossing guard 5:30-9:30 pm 1  

Velodrome set-up 8:00am-9:00am 1  

Track Supervisor 7:30am-9am 1 Peter Bohl 

3k, 2k holders 10am-Noon 3  

3k, 2k holders Noon-3pm 3  

Awards Presentations 2pm-3pm 1  

Track Supervisors 3:30pm-5:30pm 1  

3k, 2k holders 5:30pm-8pm 3  

Shirt sales 5:00pm-7pm 1  

Awards Presentations 8:30pm-9:30pm 1  

Velodrome clean-up 8:30pm-9:30pm 2  

    

Thursday 9/4    

Back Crossing guard 9 am to 3 1  

Back Crossing guard 5:30-9:30 pm 1  

Velodrome set-up 8:00am-9:00am 1  

Track Supervisors 7:30am-9am 1 Peter Bohl 

Sprint holders 11am-2pm 1  

Track Supervisors 3:30pm-5:30pm 1  

Sprint holders 5:30pm-8pm 1  

Shirt sales 5:00pm-7pm 1  

Awards Presentations 8:30pm-9:30pm 1  

Velodrome clean-up 8:30pm-9:30pm 2  

    

Friday 9/5    

Back Crossing guard 9 am to 3 1  

Back Crossing guard 5:30-9:30 pm 1  

Velodrome set-up 8:00am-9:00am 1  

Track Supervisors 7:30am-9am 1 Peter Bohl 

Sprint holders 11am-2pm 1  

Track Supervisors 3:30pm-5:30pm 1  

Sprint holders 5:30pm-8pm 1  

Shirt sales 5:00pm-7pm 1  

Awards Presentations 8:30pm-9:30pm 1  

Velodrome clean-up 8:30pm-9:30pm 2  

    

Saturday 9/6    

Back Crossing guard 9 am to 3 1  

Back Crossing guard 5:30-9:30 pm 1  

Velodrome set-up 8:30am-9:30am 1  

Track Supervisors 7:30am-9am 1 Peter Bohl 

Sprint holders 9am-11am 1  

Sprint holders 11am-2pm 1  

Awards Presentations 2:00-3:00pm 1  

Track Supervisors 3:30pm-5:30pm 1  

Sprint holders 5:30pm-8pm 2  

Shirt sales 5:00pm-7pm 1  

Awards Presentations 8:30pm-9:30pm 1  

Event party buy beer & food 1  

Event party helper 7 to 10pm 2  

Velodrome clean-up 8:30pm-9:30pm 4  

    

Sunday 9/7    

Back Crossing guard 9 am to 3 1  

Back Crossing guard 5:30-9:30 pm 1  

Velodrome set-up 8:30am-9:30am 1  

Track Supervisors 7:30am-9am 1 Peter Bohl 

Team event holders 10am-Noon 6  

Awards Presentations Noon-1pm 1  

Awards Presentations 2:30pm-3:30pm 1  

Velodrome clean-up 3:00pm-4:30pm 2  

    

Incentives    

Commitment for 8+ hours = one embroidered polo shirt  

Commitment for 16+ hours = two embroidered polo shirts

Wednesday Night Velodrome

Wednesday evening teammate Ashley and I headed down to the track last night for the Wednesday night races. There were about 12 people in the Cs, including a couple of guys who are fast, but don't have a lot of pack riding experience.

15 lap points

10 lap scratch

miss and out

10 lap snowball

My training and recovery has been the subject of conversation lately (a few people I've solicited, most others have offered up their opinions unsolicited--but I'm taking it all in so if you have an opinion, feel free to offer it.) After Tuesday night's session when I couldn't turn the pedals, I was curious to see how I'd feel on Wednesday. I talked to Rick about how I felt (as he had been at the Masters' States and then the camp with me and was coming off a few easy days) and I was glad to hear that he'd been feeling similar with about a 20% power decrease the day before in his training session. I decided to leave the 81 inches on and race with that so as to not blast my legs, but to also work on spinning faster.

15 lap points/sprints every 5

I told junior Andrew B. that I was going to stick to his wheel, but the little devil took off like a shot and that was it. With only 4 women (me, Ashley, SJBC gal, new younger gal), the fast guys dictated the race and I got spit out the back spinning like mad. Max speed hit 28 mph and I couldn't move my legs any faster. Re-integrated with the pack and tried to hold on again.

Legs definitely felt better than the night before.

10 lap scratch

Pretty much a repeat of the first race. Fast. Hung in a little longer, working on spin.

Miss and out-11 riders

Ashley and I were a little leery about this race due to who was there. I wasn't going to get caught up in crazy sprinting for the line with people who don't have good pack skills. I was first out, just pipped by Andrew. We were riding the same gearing and he can pedal faster than I can.

10 lap snowball

aka a 10-lap sprint

I just rode tempo and hooked up with Andrew towards the end of the race and traded pulls with him and led him out in the final lap for him to work on his sprint.

Highlight of the night: Ashley and I were the lap-card/bell ringing gals for one race.

Lowlight of the night: No good wheels at all, except mine and Ashley's, but I can't follow my own wheel and with tired legs, I wasn't any help at all for Ashley. One particular rider nearly took people out in 3 separate races and got a chat by the supervisor afterwards. The other rider we are leery of nearly put me into the rail.

Finishing the night rubber side down is always good.  Yes, taco truck for us afterwards.

Tuesday Night Velodrome

"Poor leg day" must have been going around this week! No training at all on Sunday or Monday (bad idea), so during the warm up Tuesday night I could barely turn the pedals. In the Women's race (10 women, about half were road Cat. 2s so the pace was faster than a C race), I really felt like crap and dropped out and swapped out gears to something even smaller. Except I did something when trying to put the chain back on and couldn't get it right, so Talbott helped put it back on for me.

Did the second women's race and could actually turn the pedals, but got spit out and ended up riding with Specialized Molly and outsprint her in the last lap (her idea...."last lap, let's sprint it out").

Track hack was bad Tuesday night. A lot of crap in the air. But, it's always a pleasure to be at the track. Yes, taco truck after with Mice Sam, Mateo and Liam.

Track Camp, Day 3 and Wednesday Nite RR

Day 3: Mass start racing and strategy. Skills to be worked on: Tactics, gear selection positioning and timing of sprints.

I woke up Wednesday morning tired. Even a lot of coffee couldn't shake the "tired" from my legs, shoot, my entire body. Loaded up the truck and headed to the track and once I got on the bike, I felt a little better. We did the paceline warmup and the legs felt pretty good, but it took a long time to get the blood flowing.

After a little points race discussion, we split into two groups (guys/gals) to do a controlled points race. Twenty laps, sprint/points every 5th lap (or was is 4?) We had 5 girls since my riding partner Taylor had headed off to Junior Nationals, so I was the slowest of the group. Kenny controlled the pace at the front and when we got to the sprint lap, everyone was to sprint then we'd regroup. The first 4 laps we were riding at 25 mph and I was close to the limit, so when it was time to sprint, I was gassed and no sprint. The pace then came down to a more civilized 21-22 mph and I was able to sprint. It was good since we could try going early, or waiting a bit and then going and trying to chase down everyone else. A good hard effort for sure.

After the guys did their race, it was back to discuss what had gone on, then it was time for some drills. The first drill (though we may have done this before the points race, I forget) was to divide everyone into two groups, one on each side of the track. Each group rides around in a paceline at about 15 mph and when Kenny blew the whistle, the front person in each line had to sprint to get to the back of the opposite line. We did three times through each and this was a pretty good effort!

The other drill we did was to divide up into pairs and rider 1 would lead and rider 2 on their wheel for a lap. When you came around again, rider 1 picks up the pace (close to 200m pace) and rider 2 backs off a couple of bike lengths out of turn 2 and then heading into turn 3, rider 2 sprints to bridge up to rider 1 and runs up on them to get in the slipstream, then shoots off around rider 1 coming out of turn 4 (and hopefully beats them to the line). Since Taylor wasn't there, I got to partner with Kenny, so it was very easy to ride close to his wheel. We did this drill a number of times--hard but very beneficial.

After this it was Q&A time and by then, everyone was pretty gassed so no more riding, unless you wanted to roll around. A number of us stuck around to race in the Wednesday night races, but since we had some time, I laid in the grass on the infield in the sun and took a rest, then went to get some caffeine.

The Wednesday night races were to be points race, scratch race, miss-n-out and longer points race. The juniors weren't there (except for Andrew), so it was Ashley and I and a bunch of men. Usually in the points race, I get dropped on the first sprint, then spend the rest of the time trying to catch back on or just rolling around. Well, last night it was a 12 lap points race, sprint every 3 laps, and I was able to hang on for 9 of the 12 laps. And the pace was much higher than it usually is. About lap 8, I was starting to go cross-eyed, but I was jacked about hanging in that long, and on really tired legs! I saw that my max speed during the race was 29.5 mph. That is moving! The 10-lap scratch race was a little more civilized, but not that much slower. In that, I hung in for 9 laps, but when they went on the bell lap, I got gapped coming out of the first turn and didn't have any "oomph" in my legs to stand up and try to go with, but I was pretty happy at hanging in for 9 laps.

After that race, I called it a day and ran down to the store to pick up some "fluid replacement beverages" aka Tecate. Those of us who were finished racing sat around and drank a beer and once everyone was finished racing, the Mice hit the road and made a stop at the taco truck, then it was back to SF and back to the real world.

The camp was very much worth the time and money and I'll do it again for sure. My teammate Nole said last night, "I can tell you are riding way better....the confidence in your riding really shows." Good to hear.

Track Camp, Day 2

Day 2, Sprints: Skills to be worked on: 200 meter line, gear selection, tactics and drills to increase speed.

The day started out the same.....paceline warm-up which ended up about 24 mph and I was working hard at the end. We then changed out of warm-up gears, went over how to ride the 200 and the two different lines you can take and then we lined up to do timed 200s. My warm-up gearing is 81 inches (48x16) and my other gear is about 86 inches (48x15), but for today, we swapped out everything and put on 90 inches (47x14). Wow! That's the biggest gear I've ridden and there was definitely a difference.

My first 200 was 15.22 seconds. That's a full 1/2 second faster than I went in the race on Saturday. A couple of comments from Kenny on how I was taking my approach and then later a second effort. The second effort was 15.13 seconds and I felt a lot better on that one. Very happy with this progression!

We then took a short break to refuel and Kenny described the drill we were going to do. You ride in groups of 4 (for as long as you can stay together, or if the group broke up, finish on your own) around the rail (top up by the wall/rail) as close as you could and when you hit the beginning of turn 1, do a seated sprint through the turn and ease up out of turn 2, then the rest of the lap to recover. Repeat x 8 laps. Man, the seated sprints were hard on the legs! Especially in the 90 inch gear!

Another break, and then we did the same thing, but instead of seated sprints, you were to stand up and sprint and the goal was to stand up the entire curve. I started out and could only stand and pedal fast a few pedal strokes, but my legs finally came around and by the last 3 laps, I was able to stand the entire curve. A big break-through for me!

Another break for fluids (warm and humid all day), then it was the "Russian" drill. This one you are in groups of 3 with rider #1 as the rabbit, rider #2 as the motor and rider #3 as the chase. Rider #1 does a normal flying 200, rider #2 follows right behind until #1 starts the sprint and #2 then lays off a bike length or 2 or 3 (depending on speed of riders #1 and #3). Rider #3 is right on the wheel of #2 as close as possible and when #2 gets to turn 3, he/she pulls up track and #3 shoots through to try to catch #1 and come up on #1's wheel as close as possible, then try to go around. Really good exercise! I did it with junior rider Taylor (who is heading to Nationals today--GO TAYLOR!) with Rick being rider #2 for both efforts. When I was rider #1, I got to the finishing straight and could hear everyone yelling at Taylor to catch me so I peeked back to make sure she wasn't coming up on me and pedaled a little harder to stay in front of her. When I was rider #3, I was able to shoot through and get on her wheel and come around her. Good efforts by both of us and I can see where this would be a very beneficial exercise to do on a regular basis.

After that, it was the cool-down. Again a pretty fast cool-down (average of 19-20 mph with surges up to 22+). Those of us who were staying for the Tuesday night racing had a little to eat/drink then it was time to warm up again. Last night was points racing, so that means fast and furious with sprints. I had 6 of my teammates come down from SF to race and that was super nice! I wasn't sure how my legs would feel but the plan was to do the first race and then help Larry with the scoring for the other races. I think we had 10 or 12 in our race and I hung on for a few laps but then sat up and rolled around easy for a few laps and then jumped back in and worked with another rider for the rest of the race. That was enough. It was then time for birthday brownies and birthday cupcakes. About 35 miles for the day, most as very high intensity.

A big thanks to Neil for the use of his gear bag and gears, and for the place to stay for two days! Made it much better not having to drive back to SF each night.

Track Camp, Day 1

At the velodrome there is a 3-day track camp put on by Kenny Williams, a World Cup racer and multiple Master World and national title holder. I thought, happy birthday to me, so I signed up for it, since I need all the track time I can get. Yesterday was the first day and there are 18 of us, ranging from 15 year old Taylor (whom Ashley and I race with on Wednesday nights) to 66 year old world champion (and total pistol) Leo. Abilities/speed are across the board, but there are some fast guys here, including a bunch from the Webcor team.

Day 1: Intro to the track and work on timed events, including standing starts, pace setting and gear selection.

Well, I pretty much have paid for the cost of the camp as I have learned how to change my gearing and put the wheel back on and get my chain sorted out. There's a lot of technical stuff involved considering you ride only one gear at a time!

Yesterday started out with a pace line warm up, then we did a timed 500 meters. My time was 1/2 a second faster than the day before at the race, so I was pretty happy with that. And, my legs felt pretty good after two days of racing. We next went over some stuff about starts and other information, then we did a few standing starts with timed 100 meters. My first attempt I about went over since I overcompensated a bit on the move back then forward, so my time was slow--15.xx seconds. The next attempt I better got the hang of it and went 13.3. Everyone swapped out gearing and went to a higher gear for the last attempt. This one I was much smoother and I was down to 12.6, so I'm happy with the progression. Just need to do a lot more practicing.

We then divided up into group of 4-5 and did 10-lap team pursuit. I was with two gals from Seattle, Taylor and one other guy who is new to the track and racing. We started out pretty mellow and built into it and the last couple of laps really picked it up. I led out the last lap and fired it up and at the end, Jane said, "Damn, you can motor!" Thanks! After two times through people again upped their gearing if they had it, but since I only have two cogs, I stayed at the same gearing. I was riding 85-86 inches and Jane had on 90 or 92. Third time through was good, faster than the previous two, but still within my effort levels. The last one we shed off Taylor pretty quick and continued on with 4 of us. With about 2 laps to go, I peeled off the front and there was a surge and I got gapped just a bit trying to get on the end of the line and I was pedaling like hell through turns 3 and 4 and almost caught on, but the gap grew and the three pulled away. Kenny said great job on fighting to close the gap, though by this time, my legs were starting to get a little tired.

After that, we did a cool down (at 20 mph!), then it was time to pack up and hit the road. Drove over to Webcor Neil H's house for a quick shower and then we went to dinner. Mexican food. MMMMMM! A big thanks to Neil for the hospitality. It's great not having to drive all the way back to SF each day.

NCNCA Masters State Track Championships, Day 2

500m TT
Points race
Team Sprint
Team Pursuit

Damn, I love this sport! Every single thing about it.

Got to the track and was only entered into two events, the 500 TT and the points race. I was looking to better my time in the 500 maybe and just to hang on as long as possible in the points race. I hate that race, but you should do what you don't like/aren't good at in order to improve, so I was entered. A month ago, I was going to be doing the team pursuit, but a crash 3 weeks ago wiped out 2 of the pursuit team, so no team events for me. Except someone forgot to tell Donna that. She was in the hospital a couple of days with broken ribs and other injuries, but she showed up Saturday and rode the 2K pursuit and brought her tent and food and drinks and cheered everyone on. She got there Sunday and said, team sprint? Let's do it! Oh yeah, she's also in the 55-59 age group and tough as nails. So we entered the team sprint. We then got talking to Anne and Libby (two more gals in Donna's AG) and they were up for trying the team pursuit, so we ended up entered in that.

500m TT:
One and a half laps of the track as hard as you could go, standing start. I got a good warm up and my legs felt pretty good. I still need to work on my starts as I was thinking more about the quick count instead of pulling back (and not pushing down), but once I got rolling, I felt pretty good, pedaling fast as I was still in the small gear. 48-something, about the same as my other effort in July (riding the bigger gear). Ended up 4th out of 5.

Points race, 30 laps, points every 6:
They combined all the women into one race but were going to score each age group separately. Luckily we all knew each other so you knew who you were racing against. My goal for the race was to hang on as long as possible and gain experience. No thoughts about points, except for trying to limit the negative points (you get negative points each time you are lapped). The field was full of some pretty fast gals, including 3 from the Proman team. I hung in for a bit on the first sprint, then spent the rest of the race jumping back on and trying to hang on, but mostly just keeping my legs loose.

Team Sprint:
Two laps as hard as you can go. Standing start and one leads out and the other slots in behind. First person hammers as hard as possible with your teammate on your wheel and then #1 peels off (in a pre-determined zone) and #2 does a second lap as hard as possible. Pure speed. DAMN FUN!!!!!! I was rider #1 and pedaled as hard as I could go. Donna's saddle slipped downward when she sat down on it, so that slowed her a bit, but we still did OK. 2nd place.

Team Pursuit:
4 riders, 7 laps (3K)
This weekend was Anne's first time to ever race, though she's been riding at the track for a while. Libby has been to nationals. Both are in Donna's age group. And the four of us have never ridden together, so this was just for fun and the experience. For the team pursuit, you ride in a paceline and the fastest generally is to rotate off the front every half lap, but since we've not ridden together and you can lose time if you drop a rider off the back (which can be done if the exchanges aren't good, we decided to do one-lap exchanges. Also, you can drop off a rider since the time is on the first 3 across the line, but if you drop one off too soon, the rest just have to work harder. After deciding on rider order, it was time to ride. Libby took us out with a good start, not too fast, with a nice ramp up. I was sitting in the third spot behind Anne and after the 4th lap, Anne started to fall off a bit so I slotted in and the pace picked up a bit and Anne fell off, so we were down to three riders. We picked it up on lap 6 and really picked it up on lap 7, finishing strong. There was just one big category for the women (+30) so we were riding against the fast young gals. 4th place.

After that, it was time to crack a beer, pack up and drive back to SF. A totally fun weekend and I now know what I have to work on for nationals, which begin 4 weeks from tomorrow. One interesting thing from the weekend is the largest women's age group was the 45-49 AG. We rock.

NCNCA Masters State Track Championships, Day 1

Flying 200m
Match sprints
2k pursuit

This weekend is the NCNCA Masters State Championships (Northern California/Nevada) on our track. Saturday morning was the flying 200 meters, which gave you a time to seed in the match sprints. In the afternoon was the 2,000 meter pursuit.

I've done a number of flying 200s, and my best time was 14.8 seconds (I think), but lately I've been over 15 seconds. Just this week I switched out gears, going to a smaller gear to work on my spinning and leg speed, so since this was just a training weekend and the chance to get some race experience, I left the smaller gear on. I had been riding 85 inches but went down to 81 inches which is a pretty big jump. As a comparison, Donna, whom I can generally stick with in the training races was riding 90 inches.

For the flying 200, you roll out from the start/finish area and do a very easy lap ("floating on the bike"), then you pick it up the next lap and by the end of the second lap, you want to be moving pretty well since the clock starts at the 200 start line and then you haul ass to the finish and they take your time for the 200 meters. My legs were flying and I thought I had a pretty good time, but 15.7 wasn't very good. Not happy with that. But not the slowest gal of the day.

They then seed everyone for the match sprints (best of 3) and there was only one other person in my age group--a Cat. 2 who is pretty darned fast. After the coin flip, she got the low position and I got the high position. My holder was John and he was very helpful in giving me some tips on what to do and how to approach the race. For the first one, I was able to get right behind her and stuck to her wheel like glue, moving up and down, whichever way she would go. She slowed way down and I did too and was able to stay right behind her. She jumped and I jumped right behind her and held her wheel but wasn't able to come around her and she beat me to the line by about 1-2 bike lengths. I was jacked--this was WAY better than I thought I would do!!!.

Second sprint we switched spots so I was high and she was low and I ended up leading her out. John had told me to jump early and try to gap her, so I picked the speed up about one lap in and coming out of turn 2 I jumped hard and got a gap, but she was able to catch me and go by me and beat me. 2-0, game over. But hey, I was second and got to stand on the podium! And won two pounds of coffee and two boxes of energy bars. Mmmm, coffee!! John told me that I had a very good, hard jump and did a good job, so I'm happy. [2nd place in the match sprints, 2nd place in the timed 200]

A long wait while all the sprints finished, then about a 45 minute break with open track. Sat around, ate, drank, rode a bit every 20 minutes to keep the legs loose and then it was time to start the 3K and 2K. They did the 3Ks first, so we had another hour to wait. They finally got to the 2K (just you against the clock, but there are two people on the track--one starting on one side, the other on the other side), 6 laps. By this time it was pretty warm and the wind had picked up a lot. There were two scratches in my age group, so I ended up riding solo. I got a good start, but probably went out too fast. I'd like to see the lap times because I think I slowed down on laps 3-4 and tried to pick it up on lap 5 and definitely picked it up on the last lap. My hamstrings started to twitch and I didn't really want them to fully cramp up. I finished and had to wait until everything was over to see how I did. Did a cool down ride, then got a massage, then we drank a beer and ate some more food. Once all the 2K races were over, they got to the awards and I ended up 3rd in 3:20. Not my fastest time, but not my slowest. I was pretty happy with that. Won another pound of coffee and another box of bars. Yeah!

A number of people told me how well I rode, so that was nice to hear. Today is two more races, so more fun!

Track Tuesday/Wednesday

TUESDAY

Goal/purpose: None. I was just so happy to be going to the track, I didn't really have a goal. Bad planning.

Race 1--30 lap points:

On the first sprint, my legs felt like jello and I got popped off the back. And then I let the mental affect me.

Between race coaching consultation: "Just pedal faster"; "It's much easier to go from track to triathlon versus triathlon to track"; "There is a learning curve to this and you need to put in the time"; "You're warming up in too big of a gear and then your legs are toast"; and "Get on your bike and ride!" Damn him, he's right.

Race 2--36 lap points:

Decided to lead out the first 6 laps and get some pursuit practice in. Sprint came and I got popped off. Then, with about 10 laps to go, the bike made a funny noise and I came off the track. Not sure what that was.

Attitude adjustment: Decided Tuesday nights will be for training only. Don't even think about the racing, just ride in the pack. Concentrate on the sprints. Told Larry that I'd help him with scoring the A races on the Tuesdays that I'm there after I ride the C races. This season is for learning.

Equipment adjustment: Going to see Nole to get another cog and put it on and move down some inches for the time being and see if that helps.

WEDNESDAY

Would you give up your flesh and blood for a teammate? Well, yesterday Nole did for me. A little 'issue' with the track whip and a tight cog and Nole was minus two fingernails. (Track can sound so kinky!) Sorry Nole!!! Hope your fingers aren't too sore.

So, what a difference a day (and 5.4 inches) makes! After being told that I was warming up and trying to ride in too big of a gear, I went from a 48x15 (86.4 inches) to a 48x16 (81.0) and what do you know, I was riding easier in the warm-up at a faster speed. I did a couple of 100 meter sprints and my legs were flying. I got in a good 30 minutes of warm up since Ashley and I left SF at 4PM and got down there in time to go get coffee and still get to the track before anyone else was there. Nice not to rush the warm-up.

Races were (1) points, (2) scratch, (3) miss and out, and (4) combined points. There were 18 C riders there, so they split us into two groups, C1--the faster C riders and C2--me, Ashley, three of the junior girls, junior Andrew and four other guys.

Goal: Try the new gearing. Don't worry about results. Pedal faster/ride my bike!

12 lap points race (pts every 3)

I started out right in the pack and hung pretty well until the sprint went. I was towards the front and didn't react quick enough, so got gapped, but not as quickly as the night before. I need to work on riding more at the back and see how that works out.

6 (I think) lap scratch race:

Started towards the back and rotated through and with three laps to go, the pole opened up went through next to Ashley and planned to sit on the front and lead her out, but junior gal stole my wheel and Ashley behind her.

Miss-and-out, 9 riders:

Goal is always: DON'T BE THE FIRST RIDER OUT.

Met goal. Ended up 6th.

Got stuck behind dude whose foot came out of the pedal (!) and his bike started wiggling all over the place and off went the first three riders and then Ashley and then dude. Note to dude: Mountain bike shoes/pedals probably aren't the best idea for the track.

Combined non-scoring B riders and all C riders 20 lap points race (pts every 5th lap):

Damn, this race was FAST!

After the first sprint lap, things just blew apart. I ended up riding the middle part of the race solo and towards the end, latched onto a group for about 3/4 of a lap, but then lost them. I then caught on with a couple of the juniors and finished up with them. My max speed during this race was 28 mph. That's fast pedaling!

Next up: Masters States this weekend!

RR: Proman Omnium Track Event

"People ask what we do - you say you are on the track for two-and-a-half hours and you did four efforts that lasted five seconds, and it's hard to grasp,"__from an article about the British track team that someone forwarded.

Boy is that the truth! Today it was more like 10 hours at the track for 5 races. But I wouldn't have wanted to be any other place in the world.

Friday was the Davis Crit, which was a hard 45 minute effort in the heat. Saturday was a sprint clinic at the track. I probably rode only 10-12 miles, but only did 2 flying 200s and two match sprints. So some very hard efforts and a lot of warm up and cool down. Spent the night down in San Jose Saturday night so I didn't have to drive back to SF and then be able sleep in before today's race.

Proman Omnium (5 races per group and only 3 groups)

Masters Men (+45)

Elite Men (including pro Ben Jacques Maynes)

Elite Women (and our ages ranged from about 18 to 60 and included the USA U23 champion in the 500m and a few Cat. 2s, with the rest being Cat. 3s and 4s)

The women's races were (1) flying 200 meters; (2) 10 lap scratch race; (3) 2K TT; (4) 30 lap points race (which became a 20 lap points race due to time issues, with points every 5 laps); and (5) 500m TT. Scoring was like a cross-country race, lowest total wins. You had to race all 5 races for omnium consideration.

Yesterday at the sprint clinic, my 200 times had been slow and I was not at all happy with them (15.98 and 16.10). Today's time was 15.36 (I think). It was a big drop. Not sure what I did different, but I felt a lot better today. Still, I was about 11th out of 12.

Scratch race: Roll off the rail and after half a lap, the bell rings and we are racing. And the speed ramped up fast and the pack was tight and I was right in there in the middle of it! We went around turn 2 and I remember thinking, "We are going FAST and this is aggressive!" It stayed that way for 10 laps and I was able to stick with the pack the entire 10 laps, which is a first. Got out sprinted by everyone in the last 50 meters, but I finished with a huge smile since I was able to hang! It was damned hard, but a total adrenaline rush. DAMN!

Then followed a LONG break to sort out the scores and do the pursuit rankings. Way too long of a break. Finally, we got things going again and I was first up in the 2K against Doritt. The 2K is a time trial from a dead stop with a holder. I'd asked my friend Gio how to ride this one and he said the main thing is, don't start out too fast. Six laps of pain--don't think about your legs, just your breathing. "You can suffer." Hmm, OK. I started out and settled in and felt pretty good for 3 laps. Passed the start/finish line and timer Peter yelled, "halfway". Crap! There's a lot left! Had a little lag in lap 4 but picked it back up in lap 5 and rode as hard as I could in lap 6. Finished and thought I was going to fall off my bike. Super tired and hot and I went to the tent and laid down on the grass in the shade. Was really dreading the points race and was really happy to hear that it had been shorted from 30 to 20 laps. Not sure of my time but am curious to compare it to the one other 2K that I've done.

Points race: Roll off the rail and half a lap, the bell rings and we are racing. The speed was OK for about 3 laps, but then Beth W. takes off like a shot! The two junior girls get caught off guard (since it's about a lap early to go for the points) and then they take off and pretty much everyone else does and I fall off the wheel, but then Sabine and Doritt fall off the pack and I hop on Sabine's wheel until she pops, so I go around her with Doritt on my wheel and I hammer as hard as I can since I can see Donna, who is in no-man's-land, having fallen off the front group. I pull Doritt up to Donna and we spend the rest of the race working on a 3-gal paceline (since this might be 3/4 of the pursuit team at Districts). We kept up a good pace and worked OK together, so that was good. On the final sprint I got third out of our group of three, but wasn't far behind Doritt. Finished that race JACKED and like I could ride another 5 races! Not sure why I felt so much better with the difference of one race. But during the race, man, were my legs screaming.

500m TT: One and a half laps from a standing start. Plan was to just hammer it as hard as possible the entire way. Didn't get a very good start, but ramped it up and held on to the pace the rest of the way. Didn't get the time, so again, I'll be curious to see what it was and compare it to the one other 500 I've done. Talked to Gio afterwards and he said it looked like I was soft-pedaling the start. He then figured out that I was using my body weight on the pedals (like when you climb) and that's not the way to track start. So, something else to work on.

Finished the 500 and felt fantastic! Like, let's keep riding!!!! Instead, I changed out of my bibs and stripped off the jersey and went straight for the cooler and had a nice cold Fat Tire Ale. Actually, I had two. Watched the elite men do their 2 lap, standing start TT to get some tips on starting and the top 4 were FLYING!!! Pretty amazing.

I finished 10th and last (2 gals dropped out during the day), but felt I took a pretty good jump today in both confidence and the ability to suffer and hang on, plus, I got to ride my bike fast and hang with friends and spend the day in the heat and sunshine (instead of complaining about the summer weather in SF), so it was a pretty darned good day.

RR: Davis Crit

I've been neglect in updating, but have been busy with work and training. Yesterday was a crit up in Davis which was a lot of fun.

Women's 3/4
40 minutes
Mice: Me, Marissa and Rebecca
Field was probably 50 riders--largest field I've been in.
Downtown crit in Davis, CA on the 4th of July. Temps were in the mid-70s to start and up in the 80s by the end. Sunny and a bit of a breeze.

I haven't done a crit since Dash for Cash in late May, but I've raced a number of times on the track and have been working on sitting in the pack and getting more comfortable with that. Which I have, but on the track, you have the same people pretty much every week so you know how they ride. The Davis crit, especially towards the back of the pack, had quite a few gals who couldn't take a turn without diving into the corners or hold a line (lots of jerking left and right). With 6 turns ("L" shaped course), this could be a problem.

Started in about the third row and the first lap on every turn there were lots of shouts of "hold your line", "pedal!" and other choice terms. Lots of dive bombing into the corners and since this was a training effort for Sunday's track races, I was in no mood for some dumb chick to take me out and after about 10 minutes, the back of the field got gapped. I was with three other gals, including Julia from Dolce Vita whom I worked with at Dash for Cash, and we tried to get something going with the other two gals, but they were pretty clueless. Once the front of the field came around again, we got in and then lost them again and towards the end of the race, Julia and I worked together and tried to pick up some other stragglers, but that didn't work out.

So, finished rubber side down, about 6th from last and got a lot of sprinting out of the saddle out of the corners practice. Looking forward to Sunday at the track.

American Velodrome Challenge

Damn that was fun!! Hot weather and hot racing. I had a blast spectating Friday night and volunteering all day Saturday. Here are a few photos from the weekend.

Another Party At the Velodrome!

Sunday, July 6, 11:00 AM

For complete information, see www.ridethetrack.com. Velodrome link

American Velodrome Challenge - June 20/21

It's going to be a blast!

Tuesday Night Velodrome

Tuesday track is about endurance training. There were two scratch races (crits) for each category. If 10 women/juniors, we get our own race. I think we had about 9, so Larry made it a women's race and let the Cat. C guys race too, but told them they couldn't dictate the race, i.e., sit in and do not attack. 30 laps. I thought it was going to be 15 so a quick mental adjustment.                                                                                                                                                                  

Roll off the line and I felt OK. Goals for the race were to sit in the pack more and try to hold a wheel, not laying off 4-5 feet. The first about 10 laps I did OK, staying with the main pack (a Proman gal and two guys had rode off the front pretty quickly), but after about 10 laps, I fell off the pace as my legs were TIRED. Sat up and rolled around the rail waiting for someone who had fallen off earlier and then we picked up a gal who has been racing for years. We got a paceline going but one person couldn't quite hold on and then we picked up junior boy and tried to pick up new guy in white (please, not a good look), but he was a little clueless on pulling off on the corners, then Donna picked up the pace and after about a lap or two, I couldn't hang. With a few laps to go, the main pack came by and I got on with them to the finish.                                                                                                

Bailed on the second race since my legs were toast and we are going back tonight. Got to chat with friends and watch the As and Bs race. Two cookie prime laps in Ben's races and he won both, so post-race it was a trip to the taco truck and 2 carne asada tacos and cookies for dessert. Fun night and met my goals of trying to stay on a wheel instead of riding 30 laps solo.

RR: Sugar/CRM Memorial Day Crit

Yeah, this about says it all. Head not in the game and did about 4 laps and then pulled myself and went on an hour's nice solo ride. Some days ya just have to do that.

Rules of the Track....Update

I went to the track on Monday night for the beginners' session and Gerry was there. And he had encouraging news about Paige. As he said, the positives were coming around and the negatives were not increasing. Still, please keep the healing thoughts and prayers coming.

A webpage has been set-up about Paige and how she's doing.

Please check out the "Guestbook" link too. http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/paigeconnard

Friday Night Track...It's A Party!

The Velo Girls are puttin' on a party!!!!!!!!! If you want to check out the track scene and have a blast, come on down. I can't wait.

http://velogirlscoaching.blogspot.com/2008/05/hellyer-hoedown-dance-er-race-schedule.html

Hellyer Hoedown Dance (er Race) Schedule

There's lots of fun on hand for Friday's Hellyer Hoedown at Hellyer Velodrome. Make sure to come early and socialize, listen to the great rocking country tunes, and have some beer and Armadillo Willy's BBQ. Gates open at 6:00 for all the fun.

Then, at 7:00pm all the racing action begins. This just in from Hernando, race director and head cowppoke:

if you're a category 3 or 4 racer, come and play with us. there will be races for you.

if you're a category 1/2/3 racer, come and play with us, there will be races for you.

if you're a woman racer, there will be Celebrity Death Match Chariot races like last week ... only more of them. It was too much fun not to do that again.

if you're a woman racer, there will be WOMEN ONLY KIEREN races all night long. fun, safe, crowd pleasing.

if you're a MATCH SPRINTER - the sprints are on, but back to the first night's format of 12 racers. If you'd like to sprint, please email me. Thus far on the lineup: Gio, Matias, Hatfield, Marzio, Hartner, Kieran, Nolan, and Millar. 4 open spots only.

The 40+ Scratch race will be the only masters event of the night. All 40+ riders are invited to race their category the rest of the evening.

There will be surprises.

And don't forget the Kiddie Kilo -- fun for the younguns, too! If your child wants to race, bring their bike and helmet (mandatory).

Thanks again to our friends at La Dolce Velo for sponsoring this event and helping Velo Girls provide you with fun, fun, fun!

Schedule:

1. Sprints - Round 1

2. 40+ Scratch Race, 25 laps

3. Women's Points Race, 30 laps @ every 5

4. Sprints - Round 2

5. Women's Kierin - Round 1 (OMNIUM!!! Points = placing in each round

[1st = 1 pt, 2nd = 2pts, etc]. Rider who competes in all Kierens AND

Chariots with lowest point total of night wins glory and riches.)

6. p1,2,3 Scratch Race, 30 laps

7. 3,4 Scratch Race, 25 laps

8. Women's Celebrity Death Match Chariot Race - Round 1

9. Kiddie Kilo

10. Sprints - Round 3

11. Women's Celebrity Death Match Chariot Race - Round 2 

12. p1,2,3 SNOWBALL, 15 laps

13. 3,4 SNOWBALL, 12 laps

14. Women's Kierin - Round 2

15. Sprint Final

16. p1/2/3 Miss-n-Out

17. 3,4 Miss-n-Out 

18. Women's Miss-n-Out

RR: 05/28/08 Track - Wednesday Night Races

I headed down to the track last night with one of my teammates for the Wednesday night races. There were a lot of very fast guys there last night racing in the A group (including AJM, one of the Bissell pro riders), so watching them was very fun.

Goal for the evening: Work on (1) not getting dropped so soon each race and (2) really work on fear of getting on a wheel. Still spinning the 81 inch training wheels.

Race 1: Snowball (a points race with increasing number of points each lap) (10 laps for Cs, I think)

Roll off from the rail and ride together until turn 4 and the whistle, then racing begins. One lap of no points, then after that, points increase each lap an only the first person across the line gets them. We had somewhere around 10-11 riders (5 gals). Once the points began, the speed ramped way up and it was flat out sprinting for the rest of the time. I got popped off somewhere around the 6th or 7th lap, just dangling behind two gals, but couldn't quite bridge up to them. I'd get closer out of turn 4 and on the finishing straight, but a stiff wind in turns 2-3 and the back side would cause me to lose what I'd gained. Finished upright and last. Had fun.

Race 2: Scratch (crit on the track) (12 laps?)

Roll off from the rail and ride together until turn 4 and the whistle, then racing begins. Racing began and this one was much more civilized--fast but not flat out, with surges like you see on the road. I made myself get on the pole (inside lane) and get surrounded. I was behind a junior gal an she was a little weavy, back and forth, so that made me nervous, but she moved up track with about 3 to go and I shot through and led out the pack for about half a lap. Much more fun riding on the front! Sprint in the last lap and a half and I couldn't go with it so just rode it in. Finished upright and last. Had fun, except for a couple of "ay-yi-yi" moments in the pack.

Race 3: Miss & Out (last one across the line each lap is out; last three sprint for the win) (don’t know how many laps)

About 10 people in the Cs race, including dude who rolled in late that I recognized from some of the Saturday sessions who rides like crap. Great. Rolled off the rail and one neutral lap and it was on. Pace picked up and my legs were a little tired. Sitting at the back of the pack, oh no! Still at the back of the pack out of turn 4 and found another gear to move up and not be last. Goal met (not be the first one out)!!! Next lap on the back side going in to turn 3, late dude rides crazy and about takes me out. F#&@!! Sat up and was out. Finished upright, not so fun.

Race 4: Scratch race--bailed on that since I'm racing Fri/Sat/Sun.

Goal 1: Definitely did better on this. Didn't get dropped on the first couple of laps, but instead, was able to hang in longer.

Goal 2: Improving, I think. I used to be about 5 feet away from people and now it's less. Yes, I know I need to be closer. I'm working on it!

We loaded up the bikes and hit the taco truck, then cruised on home. Very fun night, thanks Ben. Looking forward to racing on Friday night!

Hellyer Friday Night

Some great bike racing last night at the velodrome! Five of us drove down from SF to watch the racing and Nole raced. There were lots of people there to spectate and some really fast racing with a few pros and at least one or two national and world champions. Nole did well and Gio won the match sprint. Mo and I drank beer and had a grand old time. On the way home, it was a stop at the taco truck for tacos before heading back to SF.

Hellyer Velodrome info

Thanks to Lorri for the pictures.

Rules of the Track

1. DO NOT STOP PEDALING. EVER.

2. See Rule 1.

3. See Rules 1. and 2 and ingrain this into your brain.

Damn! Gal at the track this morning (road rider, but not a racer, first time on track) stopped pedaling at speed (probably 17-20 mph; luckily not 30+ as some of us had been going) and went off in the ambulance. Out cold. Hopefully she'll be OK.

Subtitle: We've Hooked Another One!

This morning I had just gotten up and was drinking coffee and teammate Mo called to ask if I wanted to go to the track this morning to the beginnner session (in addition to the afternoon session that I was already planning to go to). I'm easy...yes, I'll go. I knew Matt would be the supervisor so he wouldn't mind if we were late (since we'd talked to him last night about coming), plus, we might be doing flying 200s (my favorite!) So we headed down and I was nervous about the "heavy fog" that I had to use my windshield wipers for (rain/wet track = no ride). But, the session was on with a total of 17 people. Yea!

Mo did great, once she got the hang of getting onto the bike and getting clipped in and going. Lots of drills and yes, we did get to do the flying 200 (too small gearing for me still, but I worked on spinning, spinning, spinning a high cadence). We were doing some leadouts towards the end of the session when the crash happened and that pretty much ended the morning session. Once the ambulance had gone and the park rangers started to disperse, we did some easy riding, then Matt told Mo she could stay for the afternoon session. It ended up being just four of us---me, Mo, a guy, Paul, and Megan, one of the young Proman team gals. More drills, including the dreaded bumping drill and a number of hard efforts. It was starting to spit rain every once in a while, so about 2:00, we called it a day and Mo, Matt and I went and had Mexican/Salvadorian food.

Fun day. I'm planning on Monday, Wednesday and Friday next week. In case it's not obvious, I"m hooked.