Race and recover

 Its funny how no matter how long you've been racing you still get nervous before a race.  I find myself constantly checking my watch to make sure I get to the start on time, and from that constant checking comes constant verification of my pre-race schedule of warm-up, nutrition, clothing and bike prep. 
Anyway, the Knobscorcher always has a good turnout and the PRO field ended up with about 25 guys all intent on being first into the single track after a short gravel road climb.  I got a reasonable start and pulled a bit of a maneuver to get into said single track in a respectable position but paid for it on the first longer grinding climb.  Knowing that there were still 2 hours of racing to do I eased off a bit and rode within myself and was not too proud to use my 27t front ring instead of grinding away in the 40t.  This paid off towards the end of the race because I could stay on the skinny climbers' wheels then dig deep towards the top and use my size and technical skills to drop said climbers on the rooted out descents.  After all was said and done, I ended up 8th which, if I'm not mistaken, is my best result in a regional PRO race.  Nice!

Today's plan was to get up, clean bikes then take a recovery ride out to Caesar's Head just across the border into South Carolina.  I say recovery ride, but even if the hills are longer and not as steep they're still hills.  Regardless, it was an easier day, unlike what we have planned for the rest of the week so it was welcome.  I can already see the color returning to my legs after a long winter of leg warmers and tights, so this week of 80s and sun will be very much appreciated.  Oh yeah, and there is no shortage of sweet riding around.  The pic is about half way up the SC side of the climb to Caesar's.  At least I'm not the only one with pasty white legs.

So anyway, I probably ought to get ready to eat or something.

later.

-the Mexler

....and Resume

I uncharacteristically started my 2010 racing season on the road, but since I bailed on the Chickasaw Classic (100% glad I did, BTW) such is life.  I'd never done a proper cat 1/2 road race, just a couple of crits here and there, until I picked up an Ohio Valley Spring Series race last weekend.  I was a little disappointed with my result only because I have to relearn this whole nutrition thing when it comes to a 3 hour road race and having less of a calorie deficit is key.  Alas, I failed at my attempt and got dropped on the climb on the 5th of 7 laps due to, uh, upset stomach.  Anyway, I still finished the race and almost bridged back up on L6 but just couldn't close.  Regardless, I got in a great 3 hour race effort at a much higher effort that I would have been able to do otherwise, and then I did some hard MTB efforts on Sunday to test my efforts after recovery. 
As a result of some no-go planning that fell through for work trips out to Arizona (and the resulting mini-training camp that would have followed), I was able to plan on attending my team's full on training camp in North Carolina.  So here I am.  To start things off, we're all racing the Knobscorcher at Tsali so I'll kick off my MTB racing season against some heavy hitters on a climb heavy course, so I should definitely get a good result.  I do have to say I feel like this year I've been able to ride better technically and push myself more into corners so who knows, maybe I will actually get a good result.  In any event, I'll give it the ole college try regardless.

OK, I'm out.

-the Mexler

Pause

I decided to hit pause on my race season start... call me smart, call me a sissy - either way I'm NOT racing my MTB today in 50 degree pissing rain and mud.  I usually open my racing season with the Chickasaw Classic an hour south of Nashville, TN but the weather forecast for race day was a consistent 70% chance of rain throughout the week.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to a sloppy and/or cold race; anybody who races cyclocross in the late fall will at some point have a nasty race.  I raced cyclocross last November in North Carolina in 40 and rain, which ended up taking about 2 hours in the car with the heat cranked and 4 layers of clothes to stop shivering.  Hell, I even did Chickasaw a few years back in sub-par conditions.  The day before saw torrential rain, and race day was overcast and maybe 45 degrees.  The course was a non-stop peanut butter mess, but I had already made the 5 hour trek so I toed the line.  It worked out well for me since I ended up with the win. 

Still eager to race this weekend, I even looked into driving 6 hours North to hit up Barry-Roubaix, but I would have been severely time crunched to work a mostly full day, come home to pack, and leave early enough not to make it another post-midnight bedtime.  That, and it was supposed to be about 30 degrees at the start of the race.  Again, somewhat sissy-ish but at this point in my racing career I think I benefit more from not beating myself down early in the season for a training race.  This will pay dividends in spades come November when I am driving to New Jersey for the USGP, and still have the motivation to do so.  It's always way better to want to race but not than to force yourself to look for motivation and half-ass your effort.

Soooooo, I'm sitting at my desk, enjoying my second pot of coffee on the day getting a laundry list of things done that would have otherwise put yet another time crunch on me - boxing up eBay sales, paying bills, watching Ghent-Wevelgem, downloading training data.  OH, and blogging.  Can't forget about that.

later.
 
-the Mexler

A pain that I'm used to

As cyclists, we tend to have a high threshold for pain.  It always ends up the same - "What will it take to get me back on the bike?" or better still, we just push through the pain and deal with it.  That second part really encompasses a wide range of pains; from the mundane dull pain from a hard effort, to the more acute pains associated with crashes and missing chunks of skin and flesh.

Most of us have a number of stories of pushing ourselves to our body's limits to give up and suffer a far worse pain: the pain of regret.  This typically manifests itself in any number of ways such as self-loathing, doubt, questions and maybe even resignation.  Happily I haven't come close to resignation, but have definitely danced with questions, doubt and self-loathing many times over the years.  My typical pattern is a period of self-disgust, then after stewing about the events for some time I doubt myself and the work that I put in to get where I am (this passes quickly), then questions of motivation arise.  Most of the time, if after a race I'm back to normal around half way home.  Of course, it could be because at this point I've stuffed my face with some type of comfort food but I try not to pay attention to those things because they bring on a whole other subset of regret.

Anybody who has turned a pedal in anger for any length of time has almost certainly had some incident happen to cause some type of physical pain.  I've had a few road rash incidents that have resulted in a few weeks of pants stained from wound seepage around the knee.  Not trying to sound too modest, but those are injuries where you just double wrap the gauze, walk slowly and with a limp, then carry on about your way.
It's said that, on average, we'll have a bad crash once every 7 years or so. Since I had two crashes happen one month (31 days exactly) apart I figure I'm good for at least 14, maybe even 21 if I play my cards right.

The first is, to date, my worst crash ever.  Not really in terms of bandages and tape, but out-and-out pain.  It was the first mountain bike race of the year and I was on a completely new bike and didn't have my position on the bike quite right (grossly wrong, as it turns out!).  Long story short, my long-time friend and teammate, who was directly behind me summed it up best "Well, once your face hit the ground, your body just kinda went limp."  I have to rely on his account since I really don't remember anything from about 10 seconds prior to 30 minutes after when I woke up in the ambulance. 

  

So the end result was a few scrapes and scratches, a bent rim, a concussion and a good story.  I wouldn't really find out the worst of the damage, though, until about a month later which dovetails nicely with my road crash a month later.

That one resulted from me decelerating from 30 mph to about zero by way of a 90 pound dog in the road.  I tried everything short of riding into the ditch to avoid the dog, but the dipshit kept running towards where I was going to be.  With 5 other guys directly behind me not able to see the dog, standing on the brakes was not an option so I hit the dog, went ass over elbows and landed in the ditch.

Again, scrapes and bruises, but I also got 25 stitches in my shin from where my cassette scraped my shin.  Believe me, I've tried to work out the physics of how that could happen but there is no other thing on a bike that can provide 7 equally spaced slices.  Not surprisingly, stitching skin that doesn't really have any meat underneath it is pretty hard to do.  Painful, too.  In line with pushing through the pain, I remounted my bike and rode the 10 miles home, but did have a friend drop me off at the ER.  Thanks, Terry.

Throughout the previous month I had shrugged off a lingering back pain that I figured would just go away.  Alas, no.  After being head over heels for all the wrong reasons twice in a month, I decided to push through the pain no more.  X-ray film at the chiropractor showed the signs of a hyper-extended back that I can only guess was the result of feet touching ground over my head when my face stopped forward progress in my mountain bike crash the month prior (think situp except bend the opposite way).  Fast forward a few years and I still get knots in my back that usually take a few days of deep stretching to remedy.

So anyway, that's the long way around of saying I've had some pains in my day, but I've gotten used to because I love it.  As I type I'm still dealing with a nagging pain from about a month ago that feels like it could be a pinched sciatic nerve resulting from a forgot-to-account-for-suspension-sag incorrect saddle position.  I guess the only thing to say is don't crash, always stretch and don't ever get old.  The wisdom you gain from living and growing older does not fully compensate for the pains you gain.  Trust me.

later-

the ATM

A sign the Apocalypse is nigh

You'd have to know me to understand the gravity of the above picture. When I first started riding a road bike I chose Campagnolo components not only because they had a great reputation, but also because service parts are readily available. This appealed to my 'do it myself' approach that had served me so well in the past (and still serves me well to this day). For about $15 in parts, you can have a functionally brand new set of shifters. Sign me up. In fact, I still have that entire gruppo I bought almost 10 years ago. The last few years the parts have served well on various iterations of cyclocross bikes to good effect.

In addition, once I find something I really like I stick with it with a passion - not unlike what most people know Italians to have. In line with my do it myself strategy, staying with one brand longer allows me to 'get to know' a company and their design and product philosophy in the same way one gets to know a person. This is a huge time saver because one doesn't have to invest scads of time to re-learn subtle nuances for any given thing.

Anyway, back to Shimano. People I ride with regularly know me as a Shimano hater. In part that still holds true; I really don't like the Shimano mountain bike gruppos. To me they feel mushy and generally not positive. Ever since I switched to SRAM 4 or 5 years ago, I've become ever more used to the flat out solid gear engagement and not only audible, but tactile clicks for each gear change. Don't get me wrong - Shimano make good mountain components or they would not be as well known as they are. I even have a Shimano front derailleur on my mountain rigs.

All that being said, there are a few annoyances with Campy gear that got me to thinking it wouldn't be bad to try something else. They're really not that big of a deal but they stayed in the back of my mind over the years. For example, freehub bodies. Of course Campy has to have a different style than Shimano because they believe it to be better, but this makes it difficult to test out a change if you've got a good number of wheels. Since I'm a wheel whore, I fall into that difficult-to-change category. This leads into cassettes. Shimano (and SRAM) cassettes are generally 1/2 to 1/3 what Campy cassettes cost. This makes outfitting wheels with cassettes an expensive proposition when you're the aforementioned wheel whore. There are a few other things but they're really not important enough to merit attention, but they do add up to plant a seed of doubt.

On to the actual riding. I've had the gruppo on my road bike for just over a week and I finally was able to log some solid miles on the road (trainer miles don't count in this case). As expected, it took about half the ride to purge my Campy shifting habits. I expected no less, but the shifting is quality. The ergonomics are good, as well. Different, naturally, but just fine. The different hand positions I've come to use with Campy ergonomics will mostly not work on the Shimano so I'll have to come up with new ones. Such is life.

So a week in I'm not in love, or even smitten for that matter, but I'm confident it will always do the task required without fuss. Since I'm ever increasingly looking for ways to have free time, that alone may mean the gruppo finds favor with me.

But let's be honest: What Italian man hasn't had a mistress at some point in his life? Maybe this is mine. They are a passionate people, you know.

Later.

-the ATM

...and with that, I'm out!

Another season in the books. I didn't have near the season ending race that I wanted to have, but as they say, it is what it is.
After nearly wishing for more work emails to arrive just so I could have something to do, race day finally came. The course had thawed nicely, so it was a sloppy, muddy mess, not the frozen mess of the past few days. The soil around Bend is all volcanic ash, so everything was gritty. Traction wasn't really an issue, but there were still plenty of ruts to avoid, and there were also a few sections of loose mud that were somewhat treacherous.
Because of the atrocious sign-up protocol from USA Cycling, I drew a 7th row starting position. As per my typical shitty starting position protocol, I had to aggressively force my position without taking people out. After 3/4 of a lap I was in about 25th, so that worked out. Over the next few laps I picked a few more people off, and was just about ready to make contact with a group for 18th when my front wheel washed out in one of the aforementioned ruts. It wasn't really a bad crash, but I lost a bit of mojo and it took a bit to get it back. In the mean time we were still picking off some guys that had gone out too hard. I think the highest I got was up to 14th but then with 1/4 of a lap to go I had a blow out and had to run/creep to the finish without letting too many people pass me. All told, I ended up 20th. Not nearly where I wanted to be but unless I would have made it up to 8th or better (callups for next year) it didn't really matter.
So now I'm getting all my stuff packed for the trip back to Portland tomorrow after Ryan's race, then jump on a plane Monday morning and back to the real world. Ugh.

A few parting thoughts on my week here:
-Oregonians, or at least those from Portland and Bend pretty much all stop for bikes and pedestrians. All the time. Crazy.
-Once you get past the tragically hip-ness, everybody is pretty cool. Alas, an occasional shower wouldn't hurt though.
-As I pretty much already knew, Jeremy Powers is quite possibly the nicest guy out there. At the number party for the USGP, I flagged him down just to say hey, and he ended up talking with us for about 10 minutes and was engaged in the conversation the entire time. Class... Pure class.


So anyway, yeah. I'm out.

-the ATM

Wrapping up in Oregon

As silly as it sounds, I haven't had time to post a new entry even though I'm smack dab in the middle of a ten day vacation. To catch you all up, day 2 of the NCGP was, as it turns out, an introduction to Nats - but more on that in a sec. After day 1's not stellar result I moved up one spot to 15th. The real story was the weather though, in that it was 40 and rain. It took me two hours to stop shivering even with the heat cranked in the toasty warm car!
Fast forward through a week of work and I was on a plane heading out to Portland to finish out the USGP series, then a week of chillaxin between Portland and Bend, where the 2009 Nats are being held.
First, I'll hit on last weekend's racing at the final stop of the USGP that had me galavanting across the country in search of glory and race schwag. After a mixup with numbers I found myself with #107 and no callup. Calling on some modified J-Pow ninja skills, I finagled my rightful spot on the front row and knocked out the hole shot,
and after clawing back from a flat tire back up to the lead, I lost the sprint for the win. Dummy.
Day two was a little less hectic at the start only because I asked anybody and everybody how to make sure I was on the front row. I was a little off and ended up third on the day, but that was good enough to lock up third for the series, which is nice.
So after hitting a few local bike shops, we headed back to our host housing to get in a day-after-race ride and stumbled onto an awesome twisty couple mile climb. Can't find that in Indiana.
Now I find myself holed up in a hotel room in Bend, dodging the 20 degree weather waiting for Saturday to come so I can put the wraps on my season. Not that I'm wishing it away - I'm not - but I am anxious to see how the good form I'm on stacks up against others' good form. I'm sure the course will be interesting - it's frozen now but after a few degrees higher tomorrow, coupled with a shit-pile of racers to mangle it up means it's gonna be sloppy. This means I've got my work cut out for me since I'll line up in the 7th row. Eh well, it wouldn't be a race otherwise.

Game on.

-the ATM