Yah I thought that was an original name. Little race yesterday in St MArtine. Not a bad team effort, we put 3 guys in the break, we should have had it, but it's early, as long as everyone knows that it should have been a no brainer. Such is racing. I was in the chase group, hit it hard with 5km and got that "racing" feeling, ride it like you stole it. Ah yah...Looked at the digits after the matter and "it's good". We've been working on going hard later into training and it's defiantly given me a little more "umph".
I thought I had some allergies or something, but today I think I have a touch of Laryngitis.Ouch! Can't talk, well I can but it's pretty hoarse sounding. It's probably a nice break for everyone around here. SO I been burning the keys on my blackberry and emailing everyone.
Lately I 've been hitting the Elctro beats on the I pod...in Particular Brad Miller's Podcast Push th eNight episode 26, the best track is Lusine, a track called Two Dots, there's also a really good track by Massive Attack. Check it out. If you need something harder check out anything by Gareth Emery or Matt Darey -Nocturnal Sunshine 234/236 Paul Van Dykes VONYC sessions Episode 5 is also great, ok maybe the last one is more techy house, but it's good. That's the one side effect of lots of riding, lots of good tune music. Keep the music fresh keeps the rides fresh. Plus they are all free on itunes, so can't go wrong with that
Ok last thing check this out
http://www.highroadsports.com/images/uploads/media_articles/attachments/151.pdf
I don't usually read a lot of cycling stuff, but I had a lot of down time for once today.
DSJ
Monday, April 26, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Tour of the Batenkill
Alright, now I'm almost in the mood to write a race report. Almost.
Not sure if you know much about this race, but I'll give you the skinny, 200km, UCI 1.2, single day classic, 2 laps of 100 km each through paved roads and gravel/dirt road sections in hills of the Batnkill NY region.
The previous years that I have done this race it has been dry as a bone, a rather hot day for April and loose gravel. The dynamic of this race was a complete paradox to years past, 5 degrees cold, wet windy and the dirt sections were sandy and almost muddy.
My prediction on the day was that the 2nd break of the day would stick and sure as shit it was.
I definitely felt a little rust on the wheels as with the exception of last weeks race, I have just been training really hard and although everything physically seemed good, you just don't really know until you mix it up. I was maybe a little too confident at the start and got behind a split and had to pedal like stink to get back onto the bunch early in the race. After all the goal was a top 5 result. I knew it was going to take a somewhat conservative approach to not burn too many bullets early on for this, but you gotta have a plan and stick with it, otherwise your just riding around with your head cut off.
One of the hardest things was to figure out exactly what to wear, I hate wearing legs to race and a thermal jersey can be downright awful, but so can hypothermia as evidence by Tash's and I hypothermic escapade in Maine during Cross season. So I did undershirt, thick jersey, thin jersey, vest, wool socks, cap, long finger gloves, and about 6 pounds of XXX sauce on my legs for that feeling like you are standing too close to the camp fire.
So about 100 km into the race I got cold, right after they ring the bell, one lap remaining, you mean we have to do the whole thing over...man. Slightly demoralizing. MY teammate JS said at about 101 km in..."you ok", "yah", "I'm cold"...just as he said that my elbows started to lock up and my fingers went numb, the old pins and needles in the arms. The worse part is a break went up the road with 12 guys and I was just a little too far back to get across to it, and it gained 1 minute...so there's a little feeling in the back of my throat thinking...shoot, I missed the break now I gotta roll around in this misery for another 3 hours for 14th place and the race is up the road, great...this is awesome. Good thing I actually remembered that this is actually the moment when a lot of people fade back, cause they think it's over, but you actually have to use this to eat drink and stay at the front cause 30% of the time, the break that "should" work, doesn't.
Funny as the day went on I felt better and better, guess the endurance training is paying off.
I mean I still didn't have a perfect race, my positioning was not the greatest here and there and I payed for it, I saw the winning move of 5guys go up the road and I was too far back and not only that there was a reason it was only 5 guys...
So coming into the last 10 km, we absorbed one guy who fell off, so the group had been whittled down from 170 to about 40 guys, with 5km to go I felt awful so I followed an attack and we almost slipped away, it left me a little gassed for the sprint, but I actually had a good position until the last corner and had to check my speed into the corner as I got chopped and lost some ground, rolled in for 23rd place. Funny how a good time to attck is when you are not well...
Doesn't sound like a stellar result but races like this are a bit of man makers, you gotta have your head screwed on right cause loose focus for more than 1 minute and it over.
I'm happy that I went for it with a few km to go, it's a good move that sometimes work if your fighting for table scraps, as they let you float away. We had a Czech guy Pavel riding with us, when I got caught with 1.5 km to go, I told him to go, but I think he thought I was insane, he rolled in for 15th place I think. This kid is tough though, that's for sure.
It's hard to compare it to last years result which on paper looks similar, but it was completely different, the conditions themselves for enough to make you want to throw your bike in the ditch.
There was definitely a little self talk here and there...good news is the voices are saying push harder...don't stop...it's not really that painful...things like that. That's why training is easy.
Funniest thing..I'm not gonna name names, but there was this guy in the race, he won this race called the Tour de France, lets call him "Loyd".... at about 165 km into race it warm up a little, well relatively, it's still pretty cold. He sits up, takes his vest off, throws it in the ditch, takes his gloves off and throws them in the ditch, as if to say "it's time to start racing"...seriously it wasn't that warm but whatever. I started laughing...man I thought that was funny then I look over at Aaron and I say this is kind of like a really hard group ride...he was covered in mud and had this look on his face as if to say he wasn't really having fun eating mud for 200km's in the rain.
As long as you only remeber the funny parts it doesn't really feel like you suffered that much, it felt really hard yeasterday but as the day goes on, it starts to feel easier and you hope that next time it will hurt even more.
Ahhhh...got love it. So I gotta foot long sub and 3 cookies and called it day.
Time to go ride.
DSJ
Not sure if you know much about this race, but I'll give you the skinny, 200km, UCI 1.2, single day classic, 2 laps of 100 km each through paved roads and gravel/dirt road sections in hills of the Batnkill NY region.
The previous years that I have done this race it has been dry as a bone, a rather hot day for April and loose gravel. The dynamic of this race was a complete paradox to years past, 5 degrees cold, wet windy and the dirt sections were sandy and almost muddy.
My prediction on the day was that the 2nd break of the day would stick and sure as shit it was.
I definitely felt a little rust on the wheels as with the exception of last weeks race, I have just been training really hard and although everything physically seemed good, you just don't really know until you mix it up. I was maybe a little too confident at the start and got behind a split and had to pedal like stink to get back onto the bunch early in the race. After all the goal was a top 5 result. I knew it was going to take a somewhat conservative approach to not burn too many bullets early on for this, but you gotta have a plan and stick with it, otherwise your just riding around with your head cut off.
One of the hardest things was to figure out exactly what to wear, I hate wearing legs to race and a thermal jersey can be downright awful, but so can hypothermia as evidence by Tash's and I hypothermic escapade in Maine during Cross season. So I did undershirt, thick jersey, thin jersey, vest, wool socks, cap, long finger gloves, and about 6 pounds of XXX sauce on my legs for that feeling like you are standing too close to the camp fire.
So about 100 km into the race I got cold, right after they ring the bell, one lap remaining, you mean we have to do the whole thing over...man. Slightly demoralizing. MY teammate JS said at about 101 km in..."you ok", "yah", "I'm cold"...just as he said that my elbows started to lock up and my fingers went numb, the old pins and needles in the arms. The worse part is a break went up the road with 12 guys and I was just a little too far back to get across to it, and it gained 1 minute...so there's a little feeling in the back of my throat thinking...shoot, I missed the break now I gotta roll around in this misery for another 3 hours for 14th place and the race is up the road, great...this is awesome. Good thing I actually remembered that this is actually the moment when a lot of people fade back, cause they think it's over, but you actually have to use this to eat drink and stay at the front cause 30% of the time, the break that "should" work, doesn't.
Funny as the day went on I felt better and better, guess the endurance training is paying off.
I mean I still didn't have a perfect race, my positioning was not the greatest here and there and I payed for it, I saw the winning move of 5guys go up the road and I was too far back and not only that there was a reason it was only 5 guys...
So coming into the last 10 km, we absorbed one guy who fell off, so the group had been whittled down from 170 to about 40 guys, with 5km to go I felt awful so I followed an attack and we almost slipped away, it left me a little gassed for the sprint, but I actually had a good position until the last corner and had to check my speed into the corner as I got chopped and lost some ground, rolled in for 23rd place. Funny how a good time to attck is when you are not well...
Doesn't sound like a stellar result but races like this are a bit of man makers, you gotta have your head screwed on right cause loose focus for more than 1 minute and it over.
I'm happy that I went for it with a few km to go, it's a good move that sometimes work if your fighting for table scraps, as they let you float away. We had a Czech guy Pavel riding with us, when I got caught with 1.5 km to go, I told him to go, but I think he thought I was insane, he rolled in for 15th place I think. This kid is tough though, that's for sure.
It's hard to compare it to last years result which on paper looks similar, but it was completely different, the conditions themselves for enough to make you want to throw your bike in the ditch.
There was definitely a little self talk here and there...good news is the voices are saying push harder...don't stop...it's not really that painful...things like that. That's why training is easy.
Funniest thing..I'm not gonna name names, but there was this guy in the race, he won this race called the Tour de France, lets call him "Loyd".... at about 165 km into race it warm up a little, well relatively, it's still pretty cold. He sits up, takes his vest off, throws it in the ditch, takes his gloves off and throws them in the ditch, as if to say "it's time to start racing"...seriously it wasn't that warm but whatever. I started laughing...man I thought that was funny then I look over at Aaron and I say this is kind of like a really hard group ride...he was covered in mud and had this look on his face as if to say he wasn't really having fun eating mud for 200km's in the rain.
As long as you only remeber the funny parts it doesn't really feel like you suffered that much, it felt really hard yeasterday but as the day goes on, it starts to feel easier and you hope that next time it will hurt even more.
Ahhhh...got love it. So I gotta foot long sub and 3 cookies and called it day.
Time to go ride.
DSJ
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Clearance Rockland CLASSIC
Gotta love spring races, cool weather bad roads, lots of gravel. Glen put on a great race today, just South of Ottawa, the conditions were tough, the race was only 90 km, but it's not an easy 90km, let me tell you.
I probably made my day a little tougher than it had to be by performing a new sport I invented...it's called gravel bike skating. I invented this today...what you do is during a race, go hard, get your heart rate high...not max, but about 80%, then go through a gravel corner, take a bad line, change lines through the corner to avoid a pot hole...now here is the tricky part....as you are doing this unclip one foot from the pedal...the right, as you unclip it, skate it along the gravel a good rate of speed, then do a sort of cyclocross dismount while trying to keep the bike up right, smash one knee on the gravel, do not let go of the bike, hit the deck briefly, then do not loose any momentum and run and remount on to you r bike...ok maybe not such a good idea, but it will give you a little bit of a sore knee, some gravel in your butt and sheer the plastic off your cleats.
So that being said, things were gong pretty good, it was a hard race, the local guys include Two thirds of the Nationals podium from last year so...we try to rip each others legs off, pretty much.
We had a nice little break going and Aaron attack with about 20 km to go...we were a little slow to respond, I saw the gap growing to about 20 seconds and I was pretty concerned, as on gravel roads the draft isn't all it's cracked up to be, I told the guys if we had any hope to catch him we had to do it now, just as we went over the next hill, I flatted, so that was my race, I got a wheel a few minutes later, but it was over, I rode to the finish and called it a day.
Funny enough my knee didn't really hurt during the race, but it was pretty stiff after and after I looked at what I did to my cleat, pedal and shorts it all made sense.
I'm not really sure if we would have caught Aaron as he ended up putting 2.5 minutes in the next guys, but I was most surprised to see Casey Roth up in the front group with us. This guy has come a long way in a year, strong as an ox. He ended up finishing fourth on the day, just missing out on the podium, barely. So good on him.
It's a little ironic that I often have a little misfortune in early season Ottawa races, but that's racing. Training gets you prepared physically, but mentally it's just not the same thing.
The thing is the more stock you put into a race, the more disappointed you can become if you don't win. I forgot about that part...I mean have a bad day training, well it's not that bad, no one really knows or sees it, you get over it about 20 minutes after the workout.
Good thing about a blog is you get to jot it down, get it out and then it's over. That's why for every trophy on the shelf there are 6 bibs with would have should have could have's all over them. It's a 6:1 thing.
So my real excuse for not winning today.... I was hurried this morning and I had Tasha pin my numbers to a jersey I left in the car. This was bad as I always put pins in the same direction and put a certain number of pins according to size of the numbers...lesson learned.
DSJ
I probably made my day a little tougher than it had to be by performing a new sport I invented...it's called gravel bike skating. I invented this today...what you do is during a race, go hard, get your heart rate high...not max, but about 80%, then go through a gravel corner, take a bad line, change lines through the corner to avoid a pot hole...now here is the tricky part....as you are doing this unclip one foot from the pedal...the right, as you unclip it, skate it along the gravel a good rate of speed, then do a sort of cyclocross dismount while trying to keep the bike up right, smash one knee on the gravel, do not let go of the bike, hit the deck briefly, then do not loose any momentum and run and remount on to you r bike...ok maybe not such a good idea, but it will give you a little bit of a sore knee, some gravel in your butt and sheer the plastic off your cleats.
So that being said, things were gong pretty good, it was a hard race, the local guys include Two thirds of the Nationals podium from last year so...we try to rip each others legs off, pretty much.
We had a nice little break going and Aaron attack with about 20 km to go...we were a little slow to respond, I saw the gap growing to about 20 seconds and I was pretty concerned, as on gravel roads the draft isn't all it's cracked up to be, I told the guys if we had any hope to catch him we had to do it now, just as we went over the next hill, I flatted, so that was my race, I got a wheel a few minutes later, but it was over, I rode to the finish and called it a day.
Funny enough my knee didn't really hurt during the race, but it was pretty stiff after and after I looked at what I did to my cleat, pedal and shorts it all made sense.
I'm not really sure if we would have caught Aaron as he ended up putting 2.5 minutes in the next guys, but I was most surprised to see Casey Roth up in the front group with us. This guy has come a long way in a year, strong as an ox. He ended up finishing fourth on the day, just missing out on the podium, barely. So good on him.
It's a little ironic that I often have a little misfortune in early season Ottawa races, but that's racing. Training gets you prepared physically, but mentally it's just not the same thing.
The thing is the more stock you put into a race, the more disappointed you can become if you don't win. I forgot about that part...I mean have a bad day training, well it's not that bad, no one really knows or sees it, you get over it about 20 minutes after the workout.
Good thing about a blog is you get to jot it down, get it out and then it's over. That's why for every trophy on the shelf there are 6 bibs with would have should have could have's all over them. It's a 6:1 thing.
So my real excuse for not winning today.... I was hurried this morning and I had Tasha pin my numbers to a jersey I left in the car. This was bad as I always put pins in the same direction and put a certain number of pins according to size of the numbers...lesson learned.
DSJ
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