R13.05 - Race: Second Life Bicycles Roller Race #1

Alright, now that I have allowed sufficient time to forget all the unimportant - and half the important - information from this night, let's write the race report.

The night before was spent in typical friday night fashion with me not going to bed at a reasonable time.  This meant an also typical measly 4 hours of sleep before waking up for work.  I packed my track bike in the car with the plan of working until 2, closing the shop, eating some chinese food, taking a nap in the shop, and then heading off to new jersey.  Instead, Shane convinced me to head home to get my road bike so we could ride on sunday.  So I worked, closed, raced home, packed a second bike and a wide variety of winter clothing, ate a big plate of leftover meatloaf (delicious!), took a 15 minute nap and then drove off to NJ.

I got to Asbury Park around 6:30, got registered and changed, and waited for my team-mates to show up.  My brother and his wife also made the trip down, which was really nice to see.  Eventually Jen and Genisis showed up, with Genisis' boyfriend Aaron also coming.  We warmed up and then started the 500m seeding. These were done alphabetically, so I was the last to go for the men.  My first attempt I got very squirrelly and fell off, which was the first crash of the day.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/266453679

They allowed me a re-ride, so I checked over my bike, which seemed fine except for some bar tape that got burned off by the spinning roller.  This ride felt much more stable, and I came out with the fastest qualifying time of 16.8s.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/266453660

After the men's qualifiers was the womens, in which Jen and Genisis pulled out a 23.8 and 25.2 respectively.

The times were then organized in a typical match sprint bracket with first vs last, 2nd vs 2nd last, etc.  My first race was against Jeff M.  If memory serves me correctly, he crashed just a little bit after the first lap, but rather than re-ride, he just conceded to me, which I didn't really feel too good about.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/266453641

An interesting thing about this setup is that the riders were facing the dial this time, so you could actually see how you were doing in each race.  This means you can really pace yourself in the early rounds.  I don't know if that's a good thing or not.

The second heat was against Gorgi P.  At this point all the heats blend together, but I think this was the race where I tried a little dig just to see how quickly I could get accelerating again.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/266453630

It was around this point that I was really starting to feel the lack of sleep and partial lack of food.  I was a little dizzy and lightheaded, which isn't the best for roller racing.  My brother went out and got me a coffee and I ate a few bite-size snickers since I took too long to get some of the free pizza.  This helped ground me a bit.

Round three found me vs Chris G.  Again, don't really remember anything.  What I do remember is thinking that Andrew B looked like he was working a lot harder to get through his rounds than I was.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/266453621

The final round was the big show with me against Andrew B.  I took the early lead, but Andrew clawed it back around halfway through.  I saw this and put my head down and tried to lay on the leg speed.  This meant I wasn't looking at the dial anymore, but from what I've been told, I slowly slid my way back up into the lead.  Then Andrew crashed with maybe 25m to the finish or so.  He called me the winner, which was fine by me.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/266453600


Things of note:
-I rode the blue rollers each race.
-I used a 51x14 gear.

And here's some video of the final:

2013.09: Base 3.1 - 1/21 - 1/27

Sunday: I rode in the afternoon with shane aka the initiative.  We went to piermont only to find out that piermont bicycle connection was closed.  I settled for bunburry, even though the barista didn't know what a breve was.  buh.  Shane was beat up from doing real training.  I was just lazy, so I didn't mind.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/266783716
NP/IF/TSS: 156W/0.709/138

Saturday: Roller race.  See the race report.

Friday: I only had to be in to work at 1pm, so I figured I would ride beforehand.  I wanted to fit some 2x20s into this week at some point, but I just opted for spinbatas again.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/265805858
NP/IF/TSS: N/A

Thursday: It was colder than cold this morning, so no riding to work.  I worked until 9, so no riding after work.  This is how these things go.

Wednesday: There's a roller race on saturday, so I decided to do some spinbatas again to get back into shape.  They were just as painful as I remembered, with the added bonus of extra cold and dry air in the basement, which led to some mean track hack.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/265413707
NP/IF/TSS: N/A

Tuesday: I decided to go with my parents to kaffeeklatsch with some friends of my mom.  Apparently they know the distributor for shimano in germany, so that was interesting to learn about.  This meant I didn't have much time to ride, as I am lazy and can't get up early to ride.  I just ended up with a short mountain bike ride, which was fun but very cold.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/265070534
NP/IF/TSS: N/A

Monday: Rest day.  Rested.  I think it also snowed.

2013.08: Base 2.4 - 1/14 - 1/20

Rest Week!  Even though Base 2 was a little bit of a waste.

Sunday: Post team party hangover ride.  I woke up feeling bright eyed and bushy tailed, steve less so, jen far less so.  Eventually, we got out the door and met Dave a half hour late, which was already a half hour after we should have met, so we got across the GWB an hour after we were supposed to meet Brean and co.  They ended up riding ahead, but I think we saw them on the road.  We definitely saw Shane.  As for non-team people, I saw Sree, Amy, and Konrad.  The four of us stopped at the coffee shop inside piermont bicycles again, where I saw my photo in Peloton magazine, and we also talked to Mattie for a bit.  Dave had to get his hustle on, so we headed back, stopping for a second time at strictly bicycles.  After the ride, Jen, Steve and I got some sweet Indian food, and then I dropped Steve off at Grand Central.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/264358950
NP/IF/TSS: 149W/0.679/225

Saturday: No riding.  Work early, then I had to get to the team meeting/party.  The weather was great, though.

Friday: Rest again.  I don't really remember why I didn't ride in the morning.

Thursday: Despite generally doing absolutely nothing on rest weeks, I decided to ride for a second time.  I gave commuting to work a shot.  It was not too cold, but a stiff 10-15kt headwind the whole way.  It still felt pretty good, so I'll have to try to make this a weekly thing.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/263219456
NP/IF/TSS: 209W/0.950/110

Wednesday: Took it easy.

Tuesday: No work, limited motivation, but I got out eventually.  I couldn't really decide on a way to go, but eventually I settled on old town down to yaphank, then back along woodside.  I saw some fire department action coming into yaphank and again turning off river road.  Looking ahead, I saw a plume of smoke and figured I had a decent chance of seeing whatever was on fire from woodside.  As it turns out, it was something in a housing development right off woodside, but I couldn't tell what exactly.  Exciting stuff.  On a side note, my chamois was crushing my nuts on my ride today.  Not comfortable in the least.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/262487529
NP/IF/TSS: 170W/0.771/141

Monday: No riding.  Rest day.  I also replaced the batteries in my powertap today.  They only lasted 166 hours this time, instead of the 200 of the past few times, or the 400 hours that they are supposed to last.  Interestingly, one battery was at .25v, but the other was still at 1.6V.  Stupid technology.

2013.07: Base 2.3 - 1/7 - 1/13

Sunday: I wanted to ride with the team, but I got to bed late late late, so I got up late late late.  Instead, I lounged around waiting for the weather to turn less foggy, which it didn't really do, so I just gave up and went out.  Rather than go far from home, I just tried to ride as many hills as possible for a while.  On the way out, I also saw Ron and Jeremy drive by.  both times while I was trying to make left hand turns, so they might very well have been confused why I was always riding so slow and looking behind me.  There's the answer.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/261799787
NP/IF/TSS: N/A

Saturday: Just some roller work.  I didn't feel like doing single leg drills again, so I did some kind of over/under intervals.  I basically went hard for 5 minutes, then I would alternate 1 minute medium, 1 minute high intensity 5 times.  I don't really know if this was anything useful, but it got me on the rollers, so that has to count for something.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/261363455

Friday: No riding.  Work 'til late.  Rainy in the morning, I think.

Thursday: Rode for a bit before work.  I was hoping for 2 hours, but ended up going a little bit over.  Fortunately, I budgeted more time waiting at traffic lights, so I still got home right on time.  I'm trying to think if anything cool happened while I was riding, but I can't think of anything. EDIT: What a lie!  The google maps street view camera car drove past me as I was riding!  I'll have to wait and see if I am now in street view.  Also, my powertap seems to have stopped working again.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/260581343
NP/IF/TSS:

Wednesday: No riding.

Tuesday: Single leg drills again.  They felt hard today.  Maybe I was in a higher gear than last time.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/259925699

Monday: No riding.  Rest from yesterday.

2013.06: Base 2.2 - 12/31 - 1/6

My astute readership might notice that I have been writing the past three weekly synopses as 2012.XX.  Whoops.  I've changed them now.

Sunday: Team ride with Shane and then Jen.  We also rode for a short time with Hannah Trimble and someone else that I forgot the name of.  Stephanie, maybe?  Regardless, shane and I started with a lap of CP, then we waited for the others at the GWB, where we ran into Robert Marcus.  After that, we rode river road, then went up to piermont where we saw mattie, josh S, tomi, and a few others.  After a coffee break, we rode some hills up by nyack, then came back down.  From being sickish, I was having a hard time eating enough on the ride as no food was appealing.  This meant that I was pretty cooked by the end of the ride.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/258995752
NP/IF/TSS: N/A (no powertap)

Saturday: No riding.  Worked in the morning, family holiday party in the evening, went into the city at night.

Friday:  No riding.  Work.  I think maybe it was rainy or something, too?  I don't really remember.  Oh yeah, I was sick.

Thursday: No riding.  Work, I guess.  Probably getting over being sick.

Wednesday: Work, but I actually got on the bike for a little bit in the evening.  I just did some single leg drills.  1 minute per leg, 30 seconds spinning between legs, 5 times.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/257329224

Tuesday: I wanted to do a long ride with either Ron or Karl to start the year off right, but instead I slept in waaay late and then did a short ride.  It was for the best, because even this short, easy ride involved some knee pain.  The way out to the beach was fine, but turning back around it started to hurt.  I don't know if this is because this is when I finally started feeling really cold, or just coincidence.  On the way back, I stopped for a natural break and when I got back on the bike my knee stopped hurting for a while again.  What does it all mean?  I rode aria with the campy wheels, so no power data.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/256786835
NP/IF/TSS: N/A

Monday: Rest day.  Worked.  My replacement RD hanger came for the guru, so in the evening I put that on and finished the new cables and bar tape.  I think this was my best tape job to date.

R13.04 - Race: LICX / KPCX / Kreb Cyclocross #2

I'm going to make this short since there isn't much to write.  It snowed a bit the night before, so there was a dusting of snow on the ground that morning.  It was also incredibly cold and windy.  I got there around 9:30 to help set up the course, which was good, because it seemed like there were fewer volunteers in the cold.  The tape was blowing all over the place, which made things difficult.  With my foulies on, it felt like I was on an expedition in the russian tundra or something.  A lot of the road sections were still icy, so Gregory had to get created with the course.  This involved a lot of curb jumps, which took a little bit for me to get used to.

Equipment-wise, I put andy's wider and knobbier cx tire on the rear and I also gave this fake go-pro action cam a shot.  It's this polaroid camera that my parents got me for christmas.

I picked up my number and got dressed.  To combat the cold, I wore a base layer and a jersey under my long sleeve skinsuit, long wool socks, leg warmers, and pink rhino socks on the outside.  I also used my lightweight gloves which are slowly falling apart.

After lining up, but before the race itself started, we did one easy lap of the course so everyone knew what they were in for.  I didn't turn on the camera for this, which would have been smart.  Also, my garmin turned off 3/4 through the lap.  I don't know what's going on with that.  My knee hurt a little bit on the thick grass section, which didn't bode well for the actual race.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/256786860

We lined up again, Gregory counted us off, and we went.  I tried to get a good start, probably around 5ish or so.  I slid back and forth with one or two riders, but it was for the most part status quo.  I slammed my back wheel pretty good on the first curb jump, but no flat, though I did lose my camera.  As it turns out, I should have mounted it upside-down.  Or right side up as it would turn out.  My knee hurt even more this lap, which I realized wasn't going to go away any time soon, so I looked deep inside, and sat up.  I opted for the easier and healthier option of giving up and getting warm instead.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/256786850

I watched all the other riders tear it up, rang the bell for the last lap, and then helped tear down the course.  This actually went really quick this time.  I think more volunteers stayed to clean up.

And that's the race.  Long story short, nothing worth writing about.