August 15 Dunnigan Hills Road Race 35+4/5 A

CTL: 121
TSB: 8.5

Today I am to just relax and sit in and come out to play at the end. It's helpful to have the teammates to make that easy! Many attacks go repeatedly in the gently rolling hills until finally one sticks with a teammate, which takes off a lot of performance pressure because he is guaranteed a podium spot for finishing.

Now all I have to do is wait for the end game. Still seven Davis riders in what is left of the pack and they hammer on the rollers before the final flat sections. It's fun going this fast, though I should have taken it easier and not followed each acceleration so closely, and just let gravity do most of the work. The final straightway doesn't got exactly as planned, got a lot of help, but used up the leadout too early. Then I misjudged the distance to the finish from the final corner. Entered the turn in fourth position, got passed by one rider, then the two riders directly in front of me were so big I did not notice the gap had gotten quite large to the other two riders. This would not have been a problem except for the fact that the final straight of 200+ meters was up an overpass and down, and I noticed this on the downhill and my advantage against these much larger riders was behind me on the uphill... Salvaged what I could and got third in the field sprint. The last overpass is so close to the finish line I should have just gone with every single attack at that point, hesitated and relied on using the draft too much. Also, with a 50 front chain ring need an 11 for the 40+mph downhill sprint since I don't practice sprints over 120 rpm.

The last fifteen minutes of the race -

2009 Dunnigan Hills Road Race 35+ 4/5 A, main field finish from Steven Woo on Vimeo.

T: 2:01:18
D: 68.4 km
S: 33.8 kph
C: 93
Pavg: 154
Pnorm: 196

2009 Patterson Pass Road Race 35+ 4/5 A

CTL: 122
TSB: 1

My third time doing this race, and got better results each time, hoping for a charm the third time, too.


Just was not to be, made a lot of mistakes. First off, conditions were harder for me than in past years, and I needed to bring a lot more hydration and neglected this during the race, might have gotten dehydrated while staging. Next, went with the surges up Patterson Pass. That was probably the silliest because the leaders went over the top in about the same time as they have the past two years when I was with the group. This time I got popped off with about one or two kilometers to go. When I got dropped and could see the pack of twenty five up the road, resolved to catch on or blow, and settled into a rhythm, concentrating intently on the white line. A little too intently as I didn't look far up the road and when the white painted line turned into a four inch curb I veered off into the deep gravel on the right. The smart thing to do at this point would have been to stop and just get back on the road but of course, I didn't do this, I tried to bunny hop from the gravel, over the curb, back into the road and I didn't clear it and took a tumble at five miles per hour. Doh. Duanefrom VC Monterey kindly asked if I was OK, mostly just embarrassed and set to work with Duane and another rider to try and catch folks after the descent.

Then, after we caught one rider, I felt a thump, thump for a short time from my front tire, almost stopped but when my tire stayed inflated I kept going. Then I could have sworn the same thing happened on the rear.

Did not put two and two together at this point, but my legs started feeling like lead going through the parking area and almost quit but I was only a few minutes back after one lap.

Then I totally blew the second time up Patterson and could not even hold tempo the rest of the race. By Midway I could feel my front and rear tires getting squishy. Now I just wanted to finish upright. Thankfully Anthony came along from a different field and shared some extra water with me. Then to add insult to injury, my left inner quad cramped on the last hill and I stopped to massage it out, got started again, and was thinking I could finish by just pedaling my right leg and then my right leg cramped. A few more minutes passed before I could get started again, and barely finish the race on two tires with only about ten PSI each,thanks to a couple of goathead thorns.



T: 2:41:53
S: 26.6
C:: 82
Pavg: 155
Pnorm: 195
D: 71.9 km

2009 Timpani Criterium E4

CTL: 122
TSB: -9

The four corner industrial park course with two long and wide front and back stretch and shorter, narrower straights between turns one and two and bewteen turns three and four.

Very big field. I'm supposed to sit in and help out at the end. This goes well except for a few unfortunate accidents along the way, including one which requires an ambulance so we neutralize for a few laps and finally have the officals stop and restart us for the last nine laps. Everyone on the team is still in it. At one point I mistake Darren for Josh and offer to help him move up, oops, at least I helped a teammate! Then with 1.5 laps to go, the rider I was there to help out has to stop for a crash but I miss this and have to improvise. I can see a train of teammates on the front about four rows ahead so just sit back and watch. Then they get swarmed and it's a bit chaotic - at this point I just want to finish upright and am closer to the front than the back so just start moving up.

With two turns to go, Eddie from SJBC goes for it. The last part of the race is just foobar because I can see I have to ride the brakes but can't move up because it's rider to rider around me, so we have a little more chaos to top off the day as one rider clips a pedal and the rider behind him start tumbling across the road in the corner. I have to tap the brakes and start steering away - this is enough to separate the front eighteen from us that are caught behind the accident and that's the race. Start sprinting just to get back up to speed and finish the race.

2009 Fort Ord Road Race 35+ 4/5

CTL: 124
TSB: 1

A little less fitness and am coming in about three kilos heavier versus 2008. Oddly, I end up with almost same final result. I would do anything to have that fitness again, well anything except eat and drink less and train more. I kid. A little.

Temps are very cool due to overcast skies, and even a little fog/rain. The course is a little bit different than previous years, instead of one out and back there are now two out and backs, the first out and back is more of a circle and back, and the second doesn't go almost to the end ( guess the whole road wasn't available ) but the one three to four minute hill is still the main defining feature.

Last year blew up on the one big climb, and was able to go pretty hard each time on the climb, not so much on the other parts. This year, tried to meter out the effort on the climb, and about about fifteen guys rode away very gradually. Then it was Ernie, Mike, some other guy and I, ten seconds back of the pack and figured we wold catch them no problem after the top, but Ernie and the other guy killed it on the undulating section before the finish and bridged up, and I could only watch. Worked with Mike and TT'ed and we got within 50 meters after Mike took a long pull and I didn't want to jump and leave Mike behind so I tried to TT both of us up and could not do it, so close. We ended up losing about 30 seconds for each 10.5 mile lap so with two turn arounds, we could see the group for about twenty five miles of chasing which was a very tiny carrot. We only catch one of the about fifteen riders in front of us, Ernie, who despite a thirty pound weight advantage stayed with the group longer than Mike or I. We end up going into match sprint mode for the finish with Ernie leading us out for fun.
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T: 1:57:28
C: 92
S: 30.3
Pavg: 182
Pnorm: 226
D: 59.5 km