Syn-Fit Criterium

I didn't race very smart on Saturday, but I got a cool new pic out of it (above). Jim Wilson is really active with NCVC and works a lot with the Juniors. He also takes great pictures of the races and allows you to download the hi-resolution original. Above one is courtesy of his website. I think this photo is from the beginning of the race. I think the 3rd guy back is yawning at the pace I was setting.

Syn-Fit is raced on a .85 mile loop with only 2 turns and it's basically flat. Overall a safe course on smooth roads, but no section to make a selection.

I had my highest average heartrate in this race (172 bpm) out of the 3 practice and 2 regular races I've done this year. Jeff Cup was 168 bpm, but for an hour and 18 minutes. Syn-Fit lasted about 37 minutes.

I don't know what I was doing and I can't really remember the exact details, but I think I was mixing it up off the front and/or leading the pack during laps 2, 3 and 4. That was stupid (I admit when I'm stupid). I'm guessing at my fitness level, I don't have many matches to burn and I blew through too many in those first 4 laps. Looking back at my data, I can see a period of 4-5 minutes where my heart rate was over 180 bpm in the first 8-10 minutes of the race.

What was I doing?

It's my own fault, but I got about 15 minutes of warm-up for the race. I hopped out on the course at 9:10am for a 9:30am start. Stupid, again. I have yet to get to a race and get settled in time for an appropriate warm-up.

There was a bad crash somewhere between lap 6-8. It happened on a straight and open stretch of road. I don't know what happened, but I was able to slow down enough (stopped) to avoid the half dozen people that went down.

The chase on after that sucked. It took a good 2 or 3 laps. I think you can see this on the heart rate tab of my race file. If you look inbetween minutes 20-26, you can see 2 humps, the first being the bridge up to a rider and then subsequently recovering behind him (and heart rate dropping), then the second effort to go around that rider and make it back to the pack. That was probably the one smart thing I did during the race.

After my fun (read: horrible) experience with the Jeff Cup bunch (only about 15-20 people) sprint finish I had made up my mind not to contest the sprint in this race. I probably couldn't have anyway given the way I needlessly expended energy early on, but that was my mindset: no bunch sprint for me today (read: wimp). I don't think that mindset will last very long, hopefully.

I made one late attempt at a break during the 2nd to last lap. That was my (1) expend my remaining energy trying to break away for the win (.000052% chance of success) or (2) get swallowed up half a lap later and not contest the bunch sprint (99.999948% chance of happening) tactic. And the results are that I'm not Fabian Cancellara (big surprise there!). If only I had an aero frame....hmmm, that would have bought me about 6 more meters of break away.

My teammate and buddy Brian (below pic with Cezanne and I) said after the race that when I jumped on the 2nd to last lap he tried to jump on my wheel, but I jumped too hard for him to latch on. I wish I would have known because it would have been great if we both got in a last lap break away. I jumped so no one would latch on, but I probably went to hard and expended too much effort which made holding off the pack that much harder. You can see in the heart rate data that the blip towards the end started off at 187 bpm, that was my initial effort to get a gap and then you can see the trickle down.

Makes me wonder if I tried that move, but had "sit in" all race and not spent that 4-5 minutes in the beginning in the red or had to chase on. Reality is that I probably would have been able to stay away for a bit longer at the end, but ultimately not change the outcome.

It was definitely fun to come through the start/finish on the bell lap with a gap. The previous few laps I was at the back of the pack waving and smiling at Cezanne as we went through and then I came through the very next time in pain with a small gap, kind of funny.

I latched back on the back of the group after I was absorbed and then drifted off the back as everyone rounded the last turn. I drifted off enough to see a junior nail the outside curb of that turn, almost taking out Brian for the second time that race.

The lap data for the race is here.

There was a lot of traffic on the way back home. The Syn-Fit Crit was out near Dulles Airport. To top it off I got stuck behind a garbage truck in Georgetown on 33rd St. It was painstakingly slow, but in reality, these guys were very efficient. They didn't waste a single step. I found myself not being frustrated in the least for being held up.

I tried to take a nap on Saturday afternoon since Orthodox Easter service started at 11:30pm that night and we were driving to Annapolis for it. Most things I do are lame (title of the blog as I've mentioned before) and my normal bed time is definitely one of them. So, the 11:30pm start time is about an hour and a half later than the time I usually turn in given my usual 5:40am rise time during the week.

After having some of the left-over pizza we had the night before with Wick and Kyle for lunch, I tried to turn in from about 3:30pm-6pm. I think I may have gotten a little bit of sleep, mainly from 5:30-6pm and I woke up feeling totally drained and unrested. So, it was the nap I wish I didn't take.

We got to Church in Annapolis right on time and met my Dad and my brother Stephen and his girlfriend Natalie. We didn't stay for the full service, but longer than most. We left the Church at 1am and headed to my Dad's for a late night snack.

We got to bed around 2am and the plan was to sleep in until 10am... So, we were up around 7:30am and out of bed around 8-8:15am. We had showered, walked Bono, walked downtown to Hard Bean, had some coffee and a small breakfast and were back on my Dad's porch watching the world go by when the 10am alarm went off on my phone.

Bono was enjoying the porch too and watching people coming and going from downtown Annapolis (pic below).

Another view off the porch below. You can barely make out the Naval Academy behind and to the right of the hotel.

Easter lunch/dinner was great. We had the whole family there except for Jason who is in Djibouti in Africa. He was missed, but we'll get him next time! The food (leg of lamb, spanakopita, feta cheese, kalamata olives, bread, and baklava) were great. I was disgustingly stuffed afterwards, but that didn't stop me from playing uncle.

Jon and Jen's kids (those old enough to play) all went up stairs to jump on the spare bed and asked me to come with them. They jumped around and wrestled and hid in the closet. They like to "pile on" each other and the wrestling and kicking that comes with that makes me uncomfortable, although I'm sure it is tame compared to what I and my 4 brothers used to do. I have stitches (2 sets) to prove it. So, in an attempt to not let it escalate, it became "pile on uncle Chris" time.

After that we headed to the playground for a bit, then headed back to my Dad's where we all got ready to go. Overall a great weekend and the funnest racing I've done so far.

I'm "stupid" according to "anonymous" comment

This past February I wrote a blog post stating that I wasn't a big fan of the new Oakleys being sported by George Hincapie and Lance Armstrong (originally debuting on George and Thor at the 2008 Tour de France). I further stated that I had a pair of Oakley Radars and "love" them.

My finishing comment on that post was, "Who knows, maybe they'll grown on me...and I'll have a pair in a few months."

No, a new pair didn't magically show up at my door, something better and much more mature happened. You'll have to wait for it though.

Two days after that post, Velonews released an article on the new Oakley sunglasses, the "Jawbone." I subsequently wrote another blog post on the glasses because Velonews stated this in their article: "Hushovd, Hincapie, Armstrong and the rest of Oakley’s heavy hitters are set to formally release Jawbone to the public on Stage 6 of the Tour of California, February 20, which is the individual time trial." I wrote this post about a week before the Tour of California started.

I immediately thought it was a little odd to debut them at the ITT, since IN MY OPINION "these don't seem like TT sunglasses to me," which is what I posted in that blog entry. Maybe I should have clarified that with: there might not be sunglasses specifically made for TTs, but some obviously lend themselves (functionally) to TTs. Do you want to keep your head in a certain position for aerodynamics, just to look down at your computer and have it obscured by the bottom rim of your Jawbones? I don't think so.

Bottom line is that Oakley can do whatever they want to do and a TT debut probably made more sense because you have people milling around in the same area instead of spread out all over a 100 mile point to point route. That doesn't change my opinion about the functionality of the glasses.

So, this was the "anonymous" comment I got yesterday (April 15th) on my February 8th blog post: "Anonymous said...
there's no such thing as "tt" sunglasses stupid. have you designed something better??"


Wow, that was it, sweet!

So, number one, I'm stupid, and number two, have I designed something better? On number one, I may be stupid sometimes, but not at all on this topic (more to follow). On number two, give me about 7 minutes and I'll sketch something on the back of an envelope that's better.

Why are you angry anonymous? Why so immature? Did you design the Jawbones? I'm humbled that "anonymous" would seek out to comment on my opinion about these sunglasses and in general about the concept of TT sunglasses. Is it that when you "Google" Oakley Jawbone, my blog is about the 4th or 5th website listed? No, most likely it is because I am an absolute titan in the bicycling industry, countless stage wins, multiple national TT championships, million dollar sponsorships...and my opinion matters. I'm sure Lance and George are monitoring the situation and after I commented that I wasn't a huge fan, it was only a matter of time before they stopped wearing them.

Wait, that's not it at all, I'm a 31 year-old CAT 5 with 3 races under my belt. But guess what? Lance and George agree with me, "these don't seem like TT sunglasses." How do I know that?

Just look at the photos of the Tour of California. Both Lance and George chose specifically NOT to wear the Jawbone in the Stage 6 ITT, nor did they wear them in the Prologue. Hmmm...strange, I guess to them they just don't seem like TT sunglasses...EXACTLY what I said. For the TTs, they chose glasses more suited to a TT. In Lance's case, it looks like he wore Radars with the "Range" (the largest) lenses for both Tour of California TTs. He didn't wear those "specific" sunglasses on any other stage. So, those were his "TT specific" sunglasses. Fact. Big George wore the Radars as well for the TTs, I think with the "Path" lenses.

Big George loves the Jawbone, according to Velonews, he said: “the baddest racing glasses Oakley has made.” That is his opinion, a very valid one, but he still didn't wear them in the Tour of California TTs. Who knows, maybe he will in the future, but I can still have an opinion, which for the time is backed up by the 2 biggest names in American cycling.

There are no hard and fast rules for this, just opinions. For instance, a lot of riders use the Oakley Radars and Giro Havics for both road racing and their TT because they feel like they work fine in either discipline. Nothing wrong with that. Others, like most people who aren't sponsored, have one set of sunglasses that they use for ANY type of cycling and it's not a hindrance.

I seem to remember that Lance used to wear the Oakley Zero JUST for TTs. Another set of "TT specific" sunglasses for him. I could be wrong, but I don't think he ever wore them in a race when he wasn't riding a TT. That makes them pretty specific to him, but who is he?


So, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I had fun looking back at all the photos from the Tour of California to fact check this blog post. There are some links below to the pics.

Lance and George in the TTs, specifically not wearing their Oakley Jawbones (courtesy of Cyclingnews.com and Velonews.com):

Lance during TofC Stage 6 TT

Big George during TofC Stage 6 TT

Lance during the TofC Prologue

Big George during the TofC Prologue


Lance and George on other Stages, wearing the glasses they prefer for road racing, the Jawbone (courtesy of Velonews.com):

Lance Stage 4

Lance Stage 8

George Stage 7

I want to thank anonymous for giving me a topic for my blog, I hope you're doing okay today. I was on the verge of taking more pictures of my food and posting them and I think everyone, but me, can agree that that posting would have been a step in the wrong direction. Don't worry, that won't stop me in the future though...

In closing I want to say that the internet is a place where people feel emboldened to say what they want, get fired up, and insult people, like calling them stupid. In my former life, I was on a small show called "Oprah." My now ex-wife and I were one of 3 final couples that Oprah was going to give a Million Dollar Dream wedding to. During the show they did video clips of all the couples and during ours it mentioned my bilateral testicular cancer and our inability to have children "naturally" (without IVF). After the show people could make comments on the Oprah website for that show and what they said was awful and disturbing.

People were insulting me saying that I was no good because I couldn't impregnate my fiancee, nice. People made discriminatory comments because an African American couple won, like, "of course they won, that's who Oprah wanted to win!" It's weird that the audience, full of mostly white women, chose the winners and Oprah didn't have any say in it... I know, I was there.

So, people feel tough online, their true colors tend to come out, and they are typically wrong and/or misinformed or maybe they're trying to make up for their own multiple shortcomings by attacking others.

Soggy, Foggy and cold hill repeats

I found the following statement on Cyclingnews.com's write-up of Paris-Roubaix kind of amusing. It is in reference to Thor Hushovd crashing while he and Tom Boonen had a small lead on the remaining 4-5 people in the "winning" break-away:


"Hushovd's mistake cost him an excellent chance at victory, as he is undoubtedly the stronger sprinter of the two."


Really? I kept re-reading it to check if they were talking about Hushovd and Pozzato, but I don't think they were. Not a big deal, but in my humble opinion, Hushovd is not "undoubtedly" the stronger sprinter between him and Boonen. I don't even think he's the STRONGER sprinter of the two, but they're both pretty darn good. It just depends on the conditions and luck and either one of them could win a sprint. And they're both no Mark Cavendish...


That was a long lead-in to my new socks! Cezanne loves the argyle, I like them because they're a little different. They'd probably (definitely) look better with white or black shoes, but these are what I got!


Earlier in the week my teammate Brian emailed a couple of us asking if we wanted to go out to Skyline Drive this Saturday and do hill repeats along the first 4-5 miles of Skyline Drive. I was game. I kept checking the forecast as the week progressed. Side note: Cezanne likes to make fun of me because I check the weather so much on the iPhone. She likes to say something like: "did the weather forecast change in the last 10 minutes?" I deserve it and she does it in good fun. I just usually/always like to get a last minute update of the temp before I go riding.



So, all week the forecast was rain and high 40s. Towards the end of the week the forecast was rain Friday night and Saturday morning, then clearing. More promising... So, what kind of weather did we get? 47 degrees and raining.



The above pic is on the drive out to Skyline Drive (in Front Royal, VA), about 75 miles from home. It was absolutely pouring. The "this is going to be fun" thoughts ran through my mind, but didn't really prepare me for all the day's adventures.

Fog.

We got out to Skyline about 30-40 minutes behind schedule, so by the time we started riding it was probably 10am, not 9am...



The further we went up Skyline the worse the fog got. I wish the picture did it justice, but I should have taken another when we reached the visitor's center. You can barely make the car out in front of the one you can see clearly above and it got worse.



In packing up all my stuff last night, for some reason I decided to throw my rear light in the bag. I don't think I've ever put it on during the day. I usually throw it on if I'm riding in the evening and know I'll be wrapping up around sunset. I don't have any issues with the nerd factor of having a light, I'd rather be alive.


It actually came in handy...sort of. We parked about 4.5 miles into the park at the visitors center and got bundled up. For some reason (probably the rain and fog), it felt colder than 47 degrees. I'm glad I brought extra stuff I thought I wouldn't need (extra jacket, beanie, shoe covers). The ride down the hill was miserable, cold and wet and couldn't see very far in front of us. I was on the brakes a ton on the way down.



We got to the bottom and turned around for the ascent. Ahhh, that's better. We warmed up pretty quickly on the ascent and that made everything bearable. The fog was sitting above mile 2, so mile 0-2 had good visibility, just still cold and wet.



We made it to the top and were feeling good. Basically, the ascent gets you nice and warm which makes the cold descent bearable. Just as we pulled right into the visitors center to turn around, the park ranger blasted his sirens for a second. He was right behind us. He asked us if we had front lights on the bikes and we said no. He made a smart comment like, "do you think that's a smart idea?" Listen buddy, yes, having a front light would be the absolute safest given the fog conditions, but at the same time, I'm more likely to get hit from behind, not from a car that decides they not only want to cross the yellow line, they want to go two-thirds of the way into the other lane where I'm riding.



We didn't give an attitude and basically the law is if you're riding in fog, you have to have both, so that's why I said the rear light I brough and was using "sort of" came in handy. It got us 80% of the way to being the safest, but not all the way.



So, after mulling it over a bit, we had to decide what to do. It boiled down to 2 options: (1) go find another hill not in a state/national park to ride on or (2) go to Kmart and get cheap front headlights. What really complicated things was that Cezanne and I had this plan for her to drive out and meet us for lunch after the ride... Uh-oh. Brian was talking up this BBQ place (The Apple House) and it sounded good to us, although I think the last time I had BBQ was in San Diego about 2 years ago when my brother Jason visited and we went to Kansas City BBQ (famous for a part of Top Gun being filmed there).



Bike rides typically don't end right on time. There are a lot of different factors like weather, flats, speed, expected speed, who else is riding, cops telling you to go get a front light if you wanted to ride... So, I got an update on Cezanne and she was about 20 miles from the restaurant, and we were at Kmart. We decided to get the lights and ride. I told Cezanne it would be another 1.5 hours of riding (about 30 minutes per trip up and down the hill). Of course, I was only taking into account the ascent time. Cezanne defaulted to thinking it would probably be about 2 hours then and I agreed. That would put us ready to eat at 2pm. We were ready closer to 3pm... Sorry Cezanne! I felt awful and Cezanne was a good sport. She gave it to me a little bit when we got home and I totally agree with her.



She knew it wasn't going to be a solid meet-up time, but she wasn't expecting to drive an hour and 15 minutes just to wait around for 3 hours. I should have cut the 2nd ride short, only doing 2 ascents, but that's difficult when it's not just you that's out riding.



So, both rides combined for 33 miles and just over 5,000 ft of climbing. That's a lot of climbing for just 33 miles. The climb is actually really nice, not too steep, not too shallow and pretty constant gradient. Each climb wound up being about 4 miles and 1,200 ft of climbing with a gradient of 5.7%.



The first ride: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/3457799



The second ride: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/3457789


All in all it wound up being a good ride despite the weather and the stopping and going and buying a light and making poor Cezanne find a way to pass 3 hours in a small town where she had never been before. I'll make sure that doesn't happen again!

Good ride in Rock Creek Park

This is a fuzzy picture that I took a few days ago, but I wanted to get one of Bono sleeping while I was on the trainer. It's pretty noisy with the trainer, the fan, and the TV (louder than normal because of the trainer and fan), but he manages to nap away.

I rode my Rock Creek Park loop ride for the first time in a while last night. Sunset keeps getting later which is nice. I'm "on duty" this week (Wednesday to Wednesday), which consists of monitoring message traffic and calls on the "duty" blackberry and checking in with our Chief of Staff in the morning and before I leave the building for the day. We only have it once a year, so that aspect of it is nice. The downside is that I have to bring the blackberry with me on my rides.

I've never used a blackberry, but I have to say that my initial reaction is that I like the user interface of the iPhone much better (might just be because I'm used to it) and the typing on the iPhone is leaps and bounds better than the blackberry.

The fact that I left work later than I wanted to, started the ride later than I wanted to and had to stop in the middle of the ride for about 5-10 minutes to forward some "duty" messages on the blackberry, equated to a shorter ride, but not too bad. I would have liked to do 6-7 laps, but got in 5, 2 warm-up, 2 hard, and a cool-down.

I forgot to put on my heart-rate monitor and realized this about 4 minutes from home, but didn't want to waste time turning around. I starting storing it in a different (warmer) closet than my cycling stuff (in a cold closet) because I'm a wimp and don't like putting on a freezing heart-rate monitor. I would have liked to compare the HR data to some of my other park rides, but oh well.

Overall a good ride and feels really good to get off the trainer. My previous fastest lap on the loop was 10:54. This time out I did the first "hard" loop in 10:52, then the next one in 10:29. 23 seconds faster isn't bad. Real improvement? I guess I would know if I had a power meter...

Splits are here: http://connect.garmin.com/splits/3119923

Lap 1 is getting there, Lap 7 is because I crossed the lap point and turned around to go home and it created another lap when I crossed back over the lap point (based on GPS position where I initially pressed lap the first time). Lap 8 is getting home.

Ride overview is here: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/3119923

I signed up for the Tour de Ephrata, April 25-26. Saturday is a 26-mile road race. Sunday morning is an 8-mile, 1st half rolling, 2nd half climbing TT followed by a criterium around 11am.

It's kind of far to travel for a race (over 130 miles), but Cezanne will be in Philadelphia that weekend , which is about 65 miles away, and it will be good to get some more racing miles in my legs.

The weekend: long ride and cherry blossoms, nice!

On Sunday Cezanne and I headed down to see the Cherry Blossoms around downtown DC. We thought we'd see them this time in case we had other things to do next year. Sometimes we fall victim to only seeing a city's sites when visitors are in town, so we wanted to do it without any external prompting.

A side note to this story is that we ran out of Peets coffee on Friday morning. That's bad, very bad. Our local Giant carries it, but they were all out when I stopped by on Friday night, so I picked up some other stuff which wound up being really bad. No Peets (or other good coffee) = grumpy Chris. Some more Peets is currently on the way to us from Berkeley, but we were able to pic a small supply up at Harris Teeter after my road guarding duties at the Tysons Corner crit.

So, with no good coffee at home we hit Dean & Deluca in Georgetown on the way to see the Cherry Blossoms. From there we found some closed roads and eventually got directed across the Arlington Memorial bridge. We wound up parking near the Iwo Jima memorial and making the 25 minute walk over to the Cherry Blossoms. Given that we wanted to leave in the car at 11am to get to Tysons, that gave us 5 minutes with the Cherry Blossoms and the 25 minute walk back.

We took the above pic on the Arlington Memorial bridge. I'm doing my best Euro impression with my bright green "Italia" track jacket. I'm fresh from a new haircut from my buddy "Yash" who is an elderly Turkish man who KNOWS he is an awesome hair artist and isn't shy about telling you.

Above is the "must post" typical Cherry Blossom pic. Look Mom, I was there!

Now that's what I'm talking about! Got my big Cali glasses on and the bright green track jacket has given way (due mainly to my sweating on the walk over) to the DZ Captain America t-shirt courtesy of JW!

Thanks to Alan's gallery on Picasa, I was able to find a couple of Jeff Cup pics of myself. I think the above pic is of the final push to the line on the last lap, probably about 200-300 meters from the line. I'm on the right of the pic with my bright yellow shoes, green bar tape (which I've subsequently switched to white) and graphite color helmet (which is now out of commission with 3 large cracks and a bunch of smaller ones).

So, this pic was probably taken about 20-30 seconds before I wrecked horribly. You can see one of the guys that crashed right in front of me in the pic. He was taken to the hospital first. He had a lot of scrapes and bleeding. He's the guy to the left of me (when looking at the pic) in the ABRT/Latitude kit and orange sunglasses. I don't know who the other guy was who crashed with him right in front of me.

Above is a little better pic. You can see how well my shoes and handlebars go with my kit. It's quite nice... I'm not sure at what point in the race this pic was taken. I think it's near the start/finish during the 2nd lap. I guess we were lazy and let a small gap create before closing it.

It's no secret that I didn't race Walkersville or Tysons this weekend. I was really looking forward to them, but in the end I just didn't want to risk bumping my head again this soon after my "grade 2" concussion. Just not worth it. My next race is Syn-Fit on April 18th.

Walkersville actually had a ton of crashes with one person from our team being life-flighted to the Baltimore shock trauma center. He's doing okay now. I don't think the Tysons CAT 5 race had any crashes, but the CAT 4 had 2 bad ones, one in the first 3rd of the race causing a long delay and then the second accident in the sprint about 150 meters from the finish, which caused a delay to the start of the next race. Both involved ambulance trips to the hospital.

To take out my frustration of not racing I decided to do a long solo ride on Saturday. With respect to training for CAT 5 racing...probably not the most specific training I could do. Read that with sarcasm. Most CAT 5 races consist of an all out 30 minutes (not 30 miles, minutes) of racing, preceeded hopefully by 30-45 minutes of warmup and then some cool down after. 79 miles and 4.5 hours of riding probably isn't the ideal training I could be doing.

I headed out to the familiar Berryville Rd. (above pic), then instead of heading back I headed out to Poolesville to ride once around the Poolesville RR course (that my team NCVC puts on). I took a wrong turn on the course and wound up going down a rabbit hole. You can see it on the map of the Garmin file: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/2940908 Should be a nice loop out in Poolesville, but you can see where I headed due south then doubled back. Most of my ride was rolling, but I got in a good 5,200 feet of climbing.

I also made a 2nd wrong turn and missed a right turn which basically extended the loop North on the Northwest side of the loop and took me to a main road. I'm actually really glad I made that mistake. I was running out of water and happened upon downtown Poolesville and a gas station with Gatorade. There is nothing immediately around the course or in the first 15-20 miles on the way home.

The Poolesville Road Race is unique because it features a 1.5 mile (or so) section of packed dirt/gravel (above pic) which apparently is ripe with flat tires and expunged water bottles on race day.

I found it to be okay, but I wasn't doing it at race speed and being solo I could easily ride on the section hard-packed by vehicle tires. There is one spot (didn't take a pic of it) where there is a nasty pot-holed area on the left just before a bridge. Not sure if I'll have to keep that in mind because I don't think I'm racing Poolesville this year. It's the day before Reston, but I'm still deciding.

Don't know why, but I felt compelled to get a picture of the hay bale (bail?) and puddle.

So, that was the weekend. Hopefully I'll have a good week of training. My legs are still tired from Saturday's ride, mainly since I haven't ridden that far since last July. What I find supremely hilarious is that I had an average heartrate on this weekend's ride of 146 bpm for 4.5 hours and last Wednesday I did a half-a$$ed 1 hour indoor interval workout where my average hearrate was 141 bpm. There's just something lacking on the indoor trainer; that, coupled with the fact that as I mentioned, it was a half-hearted effort that I really wasn't into.

JW, you're in good company with the broken chain this weekend: http://www.velonews.com/photo/90206

New Setup

I got the bike back from the shop today. They did a "safety" inspection for me. I had already done mine, looking over every inch of the bike including the steerer tube. So, hopefully it's all set to go.

I decided to change out my carbon bars, kind of because I've had carbon bars break on me before, and kind of because I didn't like the bend in the drops and because the drop was 147mm. I put on the white FSA compact wing pro bars. I had these previously, but the size 42cm, was too skinny. These 44cm ones are perfect. I really like the drop bend and it's a lot more comfortable to have my fingers on the brake levers when I'm in the drops.

I don't have the white FSA stem (that matches the bars exactly) on anymore though. With the change in bars I had to increase the reach by using a 120mm stem instead of the 110mm one I had on. I bought this stem off of JW last year and up until about a month ago, I thought it was lost in the move.

I think I went into this on a previous post, but it's a little annoying that all the different manufacturers have different ways of measuring things. I'm convinced Specialized can't measure reach on handlebars. Mine were listed at 79mm. The new FSA bars I just put on were listed at 80mm. I measured the FSA...got 80mm, I measured the Specialized the same way...100mm...idiotic.

Before I switched out the bars I measured from the front of my saddle to a point on top of the brake hood to get an idea of what the real change in reach would be since I knew my front of saddle to middle of bars would increase by 10mm with the longer stem.

The net result of putting on a 10mm longer stem and a bar that was listed at 1mm more reach than my old bars was an actual decrease of 10mm (1cm) of reach to the hoods. It works though. The guy doing my retul fit said I was just a tad too bent over from the optimal angle, so a little less reach is not a bad thing.

I'm just rambling and I'm sure all these measurements and nitpicking might seem lame (hence the name of the blog) or not a big deal, but I guess it's a combination of a me thing and a cycling thing.

Gotta see if this low-grade headache I've had since, hmmmm....last Sunday gets any better tomorrow. If not, I'm off to see the Doc.

Jeff Cup - Crashed out...

This definitely isn't how I wanted to look after Jeff Cup. Sorry for the nudie magazine pic...

These are actually the least of my concerns when it came to this crash. My head hit the pavement at over 30 mph. I instantly knew that my head had absorbed most of the force of the impact with the pavement.

I'd be lying if I said I was excited about my next race. My last 2 races it's been 2 crashes, both with the guy right in front of me crashing and me unable to avoid it. I'm definitely risk averse when it comes to cycling, so that what makes this so disappointing. This is CAT 5 racing, we're not going for a Gold medal.

I had reduced my expectations for Jeff Cup, but in the back of my head was hoping that I would have a decent result. I have been under the weather since Thursday night. The first lap was tough and wound up being the fastest. The downhills were a little crazy for me. I tended to just hang at the back going down them and losing a little ground which was easily made up almost by coasting up the following hill or giving a few quick strong kicks to get back up to the group. I think the group thinned over each lap, but I'm not sure how many of the 50 were left at the end, maybe half?

My goal was to not work until the end and just see how it went. Every single break came back with seemingly little work from the group. There was a brief chance about 2/3 of the way through the last lap to get into a little break. One guy got a gap and I quickly bridged up to him, but I just stayed on his wheel, I guess hesitating because in my mind we were just going to expend ourselves so we had nothing left for the final. In this case, it would probably have meant no crash for me...so I'll have to rethink my strategy in the future.

As far as the crash goes...I think I was in about 5th place about 50 meters from the line and 2 guys right in front of me went down hard and I had no choice but to go into them. I basically went flying forward off my bike and tucked and rolled, landing first on my head, then my upper right back, then my right hip. I wasn't going to win, but definitely would have been top 10. I think I went just a tad early and was slightly fading when the crash happened.

My Garmin computer's last speed reading was 31.2 mph, so that's the speed I think the crash happened at. I didn't lose consciousness, but I knew my head hit hard. For about the first 45 minutes after the crash I couldn't stand up without feeling dizzy and like I was going to vomit.

That feeling eventually subsided and the ER visit wound up being really quick. They felt there was no need for a head CT scan to look for swelling since my symptoms were all getting better. They did advise that any increase in headache or vomiting was a signal to go to the ER.

Here is the race file. A lot more climbing that I thought it was going to be. There were no long, hard climbs, but some steep kickers and some false flats. Wound up being about 2,200 ft climbed in 30 miles. My heartrate got up to the mid 180s on some of the hills of each of the laps then I think topped out at 188 in the final push to the line. There was a definite lull halfway through the last lap, with folks saving themselves for the final.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/2840531

Here are the lap splits:

http://connect.garmin.com/splits/2840531

Above is a pic on our way home from Jeff Cup. It wound up being a beautiful day, actually got a little sunburn. The storm clouds were in the sky on the way home though, making for some nice scenery.

After the crash I saw that my helmet had cracked. On closer inspection I saw that there were 2 big cracks and multiple small cracks. The helmet did it's job really well and couldn't be more thankful.


Above is a pic of the other major crack at the back of my helmet. I've had this same helmet since I bought my first road bike back in April of 2005. Time for a new one. I'm going to stick with Giro and hopefully go with the Ionos model. Thanks for protecting my noggin Giro!


The bike went flying during crash, tumbling over itself repeatedly. I really wasn't expecting it to be intact, but there actually aren't many visible signs of the crash. The tops of the shifter hoods, the bent right hood (pic above) and my saddle (pic below) got it the worst.

The unfortunate thing about carbon fiber is that you typically can't accurately determine the extent of damage and you typically find out when it actually breaks on you.

The Zipp wheels actually look okay too.

I'll go over the entire frame and Zipp wheels with a little more detail, basically an inch-by-inch inspection to look for anything suspicious. Since the saddle got it so bad I'll have to check out the seat-post (I'm glad it's aluminum). At a minimum I'm going to replace the handlebars with an aluminum pair. I would imagine the ones I have on there now (Specialized carbon S-Works) got a good beating in the crash. Besides, at 250 grams, there won't be any weight penalty from switching to aluminum which generally weigh in at 250-260 grams.

I might try to bend the metal of my saddle back into place, but not sure how that will effect the carbon fiber shell. My brother Jon is going to put my Specialized Toupe in the mail today or tomorrow, so that'll be my new seat. I let him borrow it, but he wound up never needing it.

So, next weekend there is the Walkersville road race on Saturday and the Tyson's Corner crit on Sunday. The Walkersville race is a combined 4/5 .

JW mentioned that I need to upgrade as soon as I get the 10 mass starts to avoid the craziness and inexperience of CAT 5 racing. I definitely agree, but a recent recap of the CAT 4 Jeff Cup race from a teammate had this closing thought:

"Please everyone continue to practice cornering and riding in a
straight line. Terrifying might begin to describe the current general
standard of Cat 4 bike handling."

I might try the Dave Zabriskie route. He often says that the reason he became a good Time Trialist is the fact that he never wanted to get caught up in the crazy finishes, so he would TT away from the field at the end of the race, so he wouldn't have to worry about anyone else.

I noticed in our race that there were a few guys to watch out for with respect to their bike handling skills (I don't think they were involved in the end crash that took me out). On the climbs this one guy would get out of the saddle and then just randomly swing about 4-5 feet in one direction without checking over his shoulder. I think that's idiotic. Others would kind of wildly throw their bikes around when out of the saddle. It might "feel" cool to them, but it's not.

Bottom line is that I'm really thankful that this crash didn't leave things worse. Right now my head feels decent and the parts that are sore are: my jaw (mainly the right side), my right hip, my right elbow, my neck (the muscles), and my right palm. I have a small cut on my left eyebrow where my sunglasses dug into my head.

For me, this sort of thing makes me realize how lucky I am to be healthy and to have a beautiful and loving wife who would do anything for me. She was such a trooper through all of this and I just feel so bad that once she saw the crash and didn't see me come through the finish line, I knew she had this horrible pit in her stomach.

This has also given me a view into why some people probably switch from road racing to triathlons. I don't want to sound like a wimp, but I'm not too keen on having my brain bounce around inside my skull again, especially when it's not from something dumb I've done.