the view from behind (of my behind)

A couple of weeks ago we had that really nice weather and were out riding in shirt sleeves and whatnot.

Here's a blurry shot of my butt from a ride on that day courtesy of D-Mark at MBM.

new tread

So far, I like 'em.

race report

Season opener. First Cat 3 race.

This weekend's race piggy-backed on the Univ. of Maryland collegiate race weekend. A sixty minute crit over this course:


All in all a pretty hairy course. You can't tell from the map, but turn one was really awkward. The curbs didn't allow for a wide, sweeping turn. I saw one wreck in each of the three races I watched or was in. The backside of the course (the road up to the S-curve) featured a pretty descent climb. The S-curve itself allowed for no mobility at all, and it was so tight that there was an awful lot of pedal scraping. The downhill section from the S-curve to the final turn was narrow and potholed.

Temps were in the mid 40s with a pretty ferocious wind—I’m guessing around 20mph, with gusts a bit stronger. The wind was blowing in the direction of the downhill.

I was parked and warming up right next to the course, so I watched the two previous fields (Cat 5 & Cat 4) get blown apart, both by the wind and hill, into unrecognizable fragments. In the Cat 5 field they didn’t pull anybody, and I didn’t see more than three riders grouped together at any time. The Cat 4 field did better for a while, but there were a lot of stragglers. The referee started pulling people and midway through less than half the starters remained. In the end the main pack was whittled down to probably less than 10 riders.

Our field started off with a crash in the first corner. I was right behind the wreck, but was fortunately able to clip out and keep from falling when someone slammed into my leg from behind. It took a couple of seconds to get around the carnage, then it was chase, chase, chase right from the get-go.

So the first three laps were spent chasing. Luckily the field was already getting pretty strung out so I could hop from wheel to wheel until I was back towards the main clump of riders in the front. I’m pretty sure we were shelling riders right from the beginning (there were 59 starters).

After a few laps at the back of the pack, having to sprint my guts out after some of the tight corners, I decided I had to move up or I was going to get all worn out just hanging on. Luckily things were starting to calm down a bit by this point, so on the hill I just swung out to the side and moved right on up to the front. I spent the next five laps or so amongst the top five riders or so, and it was SO much easier. I think the pace dipped a bit, but also not having to sprint out of all the corners was saving a lot of energy.

The attacks were coming pretty fast and furious on the backside hill. Sometimes one or two riders would get away, but they’d always get swallowed back in within a couple of laps. I attacked a few times too…hoping to get a group of five or six off the front with which to work. It was hard to see what was happening behind me, but I think we succeeded a few times, though eventually things would come back together. Through all this, though, I stayed right there amongst the race protagonists.

There were three primes. I pulled off the second. On the prime lap I attacked on the backside, let a guy pass me at the top of the hill, then just stayed on his wheel through the sketchy S-turn and down the hill. He sprinted out of the final turn and it was a simple matter to merely slip past him a few yards before the line. The prize? A little saddle bag:

On the second to last lap I attacked again on the hill hoping one or two guys would come with and we could put some distance on the rest of the group before the finish. Even though I led everyone up and over the hill at a pretty blistering pace, most were able to keep up and when the attacks came on the last lap I didn’t have quite enough to hold my position. I finished 10^th.

shorts & short sleeves

That's what I wore riding today, shorts and short sleeves and I wasn't even a tiny bit pushing it. Today was totally warm and it felt fantastic.

Even now, at 11pm, it's still 56 degrees outside. Tomorrow it will be even warmer.


Then a storm comes through and the temperature tanks--38 degrees forecast as the the high for Saturday. What a bummer.

why I am not (or never could have been) a professional bicycle racer

I can't remember if it was online or in the print edition of VeloNews, but I was recently reading about Saul Raisin, his return to health, and something about his return to form.

On form, Raisin recently reported that he pulled off 30 minutes of riding at an average of 400 watts; averaging 415 for 15 minutes.

I can't do that. Not even close.

My 30 minute TT power average is probably around 325 watts, give or take a few. Imagine training hard for a season and realizing a solid five percent increase in power output over a 30 minute TT. That would be a considerable improvement. But that considerable improvement would only raise my 30 minute TT output to around 341 watts, still a long, long way off Raisin's mark.

Crazy strong.

And he probably weighs 30-40 lbs less than me too.

That's why I am not (or never could have been) a professional bicycle racer.

post

Here is a list of things I've felt are post-worthy, but because the content of the posts would be greatly enhanced by pictures, and I've been too lazy to take pictures, I haven't made the posts.

(1) A few days ago I got a new saddle. One of those sexy little sella italia SLR numbers. (I'll let you know how it goes.)

(2) I bought a torque wrench. This move was immediately motivated by wanting to replace my current Ultegra crankset & BB with a new SRAM Rival crankset & BB (sitting in its package in my basement collecting dust). I understand that getting the tension just right on these new-fangled integrated bottom brackets is critical, thus the necessity of getting a torque wrench prior to installation. Also, my over-cranking the seatpost binder in the past likely contributed to this, an experience I'd rather not repeat when I get a new carbon seatpost.

Anyway, owning a torque wrench is pretty cool. If you're suffering from a mild sense of unmanliness, I recommend purchasing a torque wrench. It's a quick cure.

(3) As mentioned above, I thick I gotta replace the hard-as-a-rock aluminum seatpost I'm currently riding. That seatpost coupled with my super stiff compact aluminum frame is just too much for my tender arse. However, since I just put on the new saddle, I want to ride a bit with that change alone--isolating variables to get a better sense of how I feel about the changes.

See, all items whose discussion would have been significantly enhanced by a photo or two.

work blows...

...me outside.

This is last week, Feb 15th, after the big snow:


Rode five miles to the base of the canyon, skined up...


...then made my way up here:


Fresh tracks on the AT. (It wasn't that great.)

Actually, snow conditions were horrid. After the initial 4-5 inches of snow it warmed up a bit and what came next coated everything with a kind of free-on-impact rain/snow mix. So, you have to imagine this...


...as not pretty fresh snow with some tracks through it, but frozen white ice as hard as sculpture.

Later that week I tried to ride for a while on top of the snow's frozen crust. It worked okay...until my front wheel broke through the crust and I face-planted over the handlebars. That was the end of that.

As for riding with skis on my back... I'm not going to lie, I felt pretty hardcore riding through town with that get-up. But it was also windy, so besides nearly freezing my nads off (external genitalia...who came up with this stuff?) I was predictably, and dangerously, blown about the road. Especially when crossing freeway overpasses and that sort of thing...experiences which left me thinking the whole thing maybe wasn't such a good idea.

modeling the new kit

dee-lite-full

Today I rode, on my road bike, outside, for the first time since January 16th. That's a whopping 35 days.

Since January 16th I've spent 17 hrs and 22 minutes on the trainer plus 19 hrs and 13 minutes on the mountain bike. Those mountain hours have been and are enjoyable, but at heart I'm really a roadie, and today was a beautiful day to be on the road--

Temperatures topped 40 degrees for the first time since probably I last rode on the road, some wind, but not too bad, and just the right clothing choices to stay warm, dry, and comfortable. It all made for a delightful way to spend a couple hours of my day.

Dee-lite-full.

cold moutain riding II

There's no better way to end a rest week than with a 5.5 hr, flirt-with-hypothermia, cold mountain ride, minus the flirt-with-hypothermia part, and probably the 5.5 hr component as well.

Last Saturday's failure to make it all the way to Mt. Holly Springs has been gnawing at me all week. So with temperatures still in the 20s (I don't think it's been above 30 degrees in south-central PA for 10-14 days) I decided I'd give the ride another go.

This time I made it, but it turned out to be a rather looong ride; 61 miles in 5:33 with likely something between 3500 and 4500 feet of climbing. Plus I wasn't making tracks through fresh snow the whole way, which made the riding generally faster, but less idyllic. Descending on the south slopes, where the dirt roads were mostly clear, was certainly faster and safer, but descending on the north facing slopes (where the snow was compacted into road-width sheet of ice) was decidedly hairy.

In Mt. Holly Springs I stopped at this little Chinese restaurant to refuel on a shrimp & cashews dish with steamed white rice. Yummy. I was soaked from the effort to get there, so while I was waiting for my food I excused myself to the bathroom and changed my base layer. Afterwards, I spread out all the other stuff--hats, gloves, jacket--on chair backs to dry a bit while I was eating, but of course that wasn't near long enough to have made any real difference, and by time I began to pack on the layers again I realized I was in for an extremely wet, cold, and generally miserably ride back.

And then it came to me, this:


I got my change in quarters and followed the nice Chinese lady's directions (across the street) to Dolly's Wash House. I felt like a character in a TV commercial (absent an encounter with a beautiful woman) as I stripped down and threw all my wet stuff in the dryer. Even my socks.


(Can you see my eerie reflection in the window?)

Despite feeling a little uncomfortable with the looks I was getting from the crowd of motley middle-aged on-lookers, the kind of people frequenting a laundry mat in rural Pennsylvania outpost of a town on a Saturday afternoon, the idea proved a stroke of genius and I was feeling rather proud of myself. In less than 10 minutes I was dressed in dry, warm (if not clean) gear and on the road again.

The ride back was uneventful, only tremendously long. When back in Ship I was riding in the dark.

...

In other news, the new Vandy kits are in, and mine came in the mail Friday. (Thanks, Josh.) They are really pretty fantastic. Easily the best looking kit I've ridden in.

Here's a trail shot of my handlebars modeling the vest:

the 5th down

Since you can hardly not talk about the Super Bowl today, I'd like to share my favorite post-Super Bowl analysis/read/whatever--Virginia Heffernan's (isn't that the surname of the couple on King of Queens? is that intentional irony?) contribution to the The 5th Down.

Read it here. (Remember to start from the bottom.)

I read stuff like this and come to two realizations: (1) I'm a terrible writer and (2) I'm not even B-level culturally savvy enough to appreciate how clever this girl is.

It's a long way between Cumberland Co., PA and NYC, NY.

there used to be a post here

It had pictures. I hope it comes back.


(It did.)

cold moutain riding

The weather yesterday looked to be cold. It turned out to be. Here are yesterday's actual temps in the valley:

That's right, at 11am it was 24 degrees, with a wind chill that made it feel like eight. Ah yeah, time to go riding.

So I left my house a little before 10am and headed up towards the mountains. I battled the wind for about five miles, then got to the mouth of the canyon (Means Hollow) and started up the snow-packed dirt road...up, up, up about 1200 ft to Ridge Road, which looked like this:

Twelve hundred feet is my estimate. Shippensburg, PA is listed at 656 feet above sea level. The Birch Run Shelter on the Appalachian Trail, which one passes just a stone's throw away on Ridge Road, is 1795 feet above sea level, according to this site, and I'm fairly confident that Ridge Road, at it's highest point, sits a bit above the shelter. (Of course, the road doesn't just go straight up, so to get up 1200' you end up climbing quite a bit more.)

Here's the bike:


Me:


After the climb I rode several miles north on Ridge Road along the spine of South Mountain, planning to make my way as for as Mt. Holly Springs for lunch. Those mountain roads are tricky though, and I ended up making a wrong turn that brought me down to Pine Grove Furnace State Park (about 850' above sea level), which wasn't really where I wanted to be.

From there I considered taking route 233 north until I could get back on track, but the road was still icy/snow-packed on the shoulders, and there was enough traffic that I was made nervous by that combination of circumstances. Also, I'd already been out an hour and 54 minutes; making Mt Holly Springs by the route I had planned would take at least another hour, maybe more.

Also, my feet were cold! One of the most significant problems with cold weather riding is the negative energy transfer from your warm feet to the ice-cold metal pedals and crank arms. I was wearing two pairs of neoprene booties--enough to warm my feet right up when I got off the bike and danced around a bit--but booties don't insulate against the shoe-pedal contact point. I haven't figured out how to solve this problem yet.

Anyway, from Pine Grove Furnace I climbed back up to Ridge Road, then back to the Baltimore Road intersection (about 1900'). From there I opted to take a different route home, riding east on Baltimore (crossing the AT again) about a mile to Big Flat, where I caught Birch Run Road all the way down to Chambersburg Reservoir (about 1000'). Birch Run had been heavily traveled by both snowmobiles and four-wheelers, but I didn't see any out while I was on the road.

From the reservoir, I begin climbing back over the ridge again, but once more took a wrong turn and ended up climbing probably 200 - 300' feet more than I needed to, about 800' in total.

Finally back to the valley, though even at this point I took several wrong turns, on purpose this time, thinking I had found new, less traveled, more fun routes to make it back down. These efforts proved fruitless, and only resulted in my having to climb several more hundred feet as well as having to do quite a bit of walking.

Val took a couple of picture when I got home:


Including one showcasing the salt stains on my butt--tell-tell signs of a good long bike ride.


Total ride time: 4:55:23

Total miles: 51.3

Total climbing: 3500-4000'

Number of mud splats on goggles: 22

deathly hallows

July 21st.

You heard it here first. (Maybe.)

the monkey wrench gang...

...may finally make it to the big screen, or so reports the Deseret News.

Let's cross our fingers.

...

Haven't read The Monkey Wrench Gang? Here's a snapshot (or three) from abbeyweb.net: