Hellyer Sprint Tournament

Teammates: Rick Adams, Rob Jensen, Gene Ragan
Friendly rivals: 38 other people...
Used the best cRR tire, Vredestein piste tire in the rear (wore out the current speedmax during the winter on the trainer and forgot to change the tire until I got to Hellyer) and one of the worst cRR tires, a Ritchey Speedmax in the front. Had the Velocity Deep rim training wheels with a CH Aero ghetto cover on the rear wheel. Since the wheel cover is meant to be used on a wheel with dish and track wheels do not have dish, I had to cut one side of the cover to fold the material over to change the angle of the cone and use a lot of electrical tape to make the cover sit flush with the spokes.

Flying 200 meter time trial
13.53

Actually tried to pace myself for a flying 200 meter with my powermeter. :)
My internal perceived exertion meter stinks. I kept it at L4 for the first two laps, ramped it up to L5 in the front straight, went to L6 in turn 1 and jumped a bit early in turn 2. This is my best time but only by 0.02 seconds so that's within the precision of hand timing. I am happy I was able to get a higher max peak for a few seconds for the flying 200 than in prior attempts but mistimed the jump a bit. Also, my effort in the match sprint was better but that could be because I jumped from 5mph versus 25mph with in the flying 200. 130 rpm seems kinda of tame for a max as well. I may have to try a slightly bigger gear, but on the other hand, not really doing a lot of L6 or L7 workouts right now which is my weakness.


This time was actually good enough to put me somewhere in the middle of the pack. The most surprising thing to me was that the range of gearing in was 78 to 98 gear inches for the fastest qualifiers - 13.1 and under.



Match Sprint versus Kevin Worley
Kevin was not looking back at me from the start, so I attacked entering turn one of the first lap, died in back stretch of last lap, Kevin blew past me quite easily as I was fading near the pursuit line in the backstretch. Hit 15.4 w/kg for 5 seconds during the initial acceleration which is my high for the year (even taking into account the SRM/PowerTap differences). This would make me a strong sprinter for a cat 4, unfortunately I am a cat 3 on the track so that puts me in the low end of the scale.

CCCX MTB #4

Category: 35-44 Beginner
6/17
Three laps of a 5.5 mile course. Many shallow hills. Never considered using the granny gear. The cyclocross bike perhaps could be optimal for this course. This is the fastest average speed I have ever done a mountain bike race and is faster than I do most cyclocross races. I think I am not allergic to poison oak as this course is notorious for that and I went off course multiple times and have no rashes to speak of yet.

Teammates: Mike Schaller in Sport
Friendly rivals: Curt Ferguson
The heart rate receiver in the PowerTap CPU is broken so no heart rate data.
Used semi-slicks in the rear and a cut down directional knobby in the front, 40psi each.
Total TSS warmup/cooldown/race:138
Race only
NP: 234
IF: 0.95
D: 16.9 miles
S: 14.7 mph
C: 78
First time to wear a skinsuit. These things make it awkward to go to the bathroom and the long sleeve arms are not quite as comfy as a good armwarmer. Plus with armwarmers I can always use multiple layers - may have to put a thin one on prior to the skinsuit if it's really cold, today I felt OK once we started racing but too cold at the start and after the race. Also for a race of this length, probably should consider going without any water or tools and just DNF if there is a mechanical as I took only a couple sips of water, mainly to wash out the mud.

Curt gave me a very helpful guided tour of the first mile of the course. We started uphill on pavement for about 3/4 of a mile then went offroad. Most of the hills are pretty short and take less than five minutes so my goal was to go up all of the hills at close to V02Max power and see what happened, I also wanted to do the track sprint tournament in the afternoon so I wanted to avoid going above that too much to save something for that later event. Curt took off like a rocket at the gun which is impressive considering he is the largest rider in the field. A group of seven of us worked hard to hold his wheel, separating us from the rest of the 18-34/35-44 beginners, after looking back and seeing a huge gap I noticed our speed was about 20mph going uphill. At one point on the hill I was having trouble keeping up and not going over VO2Max and still there was no one close behind me so I eased up a bit to go at my own pace. Since I have not ridden my mountain bike that fast since the one race I did last year, I was tentative in some of the turns and managed to biff almost every technical turn by braking too much, and had to accelerate hard out of them to keep up with the riders I was catching on the uphills. After a full lap, I finally caught back up to Curt and the riders that were with him. I tried to encourage him to go as hard as he had gone on the first lap but he was not up to it so I had to push hard to keep the pace up since a few people were on my tail and lost Curt on a short climb. A couple of riders stuck with me so we constantly traded position until it was just me and one other rider ( and the four others off the front). I attacked once on the second long paved climb since he had difficulty there the first lap but he came back to me on the following descent. He let me lead until the last hard short climb about a mile from the finish. He pushed it really hard and keeping up was forcing me into L6 so I eased up a bit. He stayed 20 meters ahead until the finishing stretch - this was a bit technical and downhill so it was hard to make up any ground here and I got within a couple of bike lengths by the end but that was it.

Alameda Crit

35+ 4/5 pack/75
Teammates:none
Friendly rivals: Mark Nakamura-san
The forecast called for 25-35 mph winds with gusts to 55 and rain. On the plus side, it did not start raining until midway through the second race I did. I chose to use the Hed 60 and this gave me a lot of trouble in a couple of the cross wind sections even with both hands in the drops during a few warm up laps. A few riders attacked at the gun so I just eased in behind them. Some folks did not want to keep this up and let a gap open up - at one point it was about 50 meters. I bridged up but when I checked under my arm, one of the teammates of the guys in the break had followed and dragged the rest of the field up to the break behind me... Since this had taken about nine laps I sat in and rested up for a bit. Managed to stay mid pack for a pretty long time which is good for me and only got to the back when we got the eight laps to go sign. Worked my way up to 20th by 2 laps to go, then there was a crash in the middle of the top 20 which required me to slow a lot. I was able to bridge up to the pack by 3/4 of a lap to go but that pretty much ended my race there. As we were cruising about 100 meters from the finish line I could see one of the leaders fall near the finish line with his bike falling away from him so we had to ease up to avoid the carnage.

M 68 kg

P 185
S 24.1
C 75
H 174
NP 209
IF 0.85



4 dnf/50
Teammates:David Porter
Friendly rivals: Kelyn, Elliot and Rory.

I had about fifteen minutes to get ready for the next race. I am not sure if it was the wind picking up or smaller field leading to less shelter or fatigue or dropping my ClifBar and unwillingness to eat it for nutrition or what but even when I was six inches behind the rider in front of me it felt like I was not getting a lot of relief from the wind. Steve Ryan's suggestion of echelon is what I should have been doing, doh. Since the field was much smaller it seems like it strung out right away and a lot of people got dropped each lap. I was not feeling so hot so when it started sprinkling and Tom Simonson announced that the halfway point had been reached, I decided to call it a day.

P 206
S 23.6
C 77
H 178
NP 222
IF 0.90