roadcx.net

This spring has been a mix of work travel and training whenever (and where-ever) I could fit it in.  Early last week, I was gone all day and came back home and was going to go out for a short ride with Andrea on the WRT (Wolf River Trails).  The weather lately has been wet, so we were going to stick to the sandy yellow trail which actually rides better in the wet season.

Anyway, we were moving along, nothing too fast, but not poking along.   Most of the way through the trial on a downhill sweeper, I caught a pedal on a root ball or something I didn’t see.  When you strike a pedal on something like that, the bike will stop and you don’t.  I ended up flying and landing hard on my right shoulder.

I got up right away and it I knew it hurt badly, but it was hard to sort out what sort of injury it was.  I sucked it up and rode back the 5-6 miles to the house (mix of trail and mostly road).  I couldn’t get into the doctor until the day after the next.  What I found out is that I had a slight fracture in the outside (distal) end of the collarbone.  It location and the nature of it meant that I did not need to be in a sling or other brace, but it did put some restrictions on my movement (pain regulates that pretty well when I move past where I should).

At this point, a week on, I am much better, but I am still limited in my ability to extend and use my right arm.  I can do limited things within a certain range which is increasing all the time.  It also means that I have been riding the bike trainer at the house for the last week or so.  At this point, I can get in the correct position to ride and mostly it is a question of risk.  In the coming week, I will probably try to get outside, but stick to solo rides, etc.

I may be back into for our team’s race the first weekend of June.  I got back for evaluation at the end of the month to see how things are going.

After skipping a year, I went down to Brookhaven to join our 3/4 team at the Mississippi Gran Prix.  The primary goal was get good results in individual stages and the overall for two of our Cat 3 riders that are close to making the leap to Cat 2.  We are pretty Cat 3 heavy team, so we want to get a few more up to the Cat 2 level.  (My own thoughts of upgrading are not looking promising, but I am going to try to get back to the point where I can start really thinking about it again.)

Anyway, Scott and Will were our protected riders and we had 5 other Cat 3′s and a few Cat 4′s to help in the effort.  I didn’t attend last year’s MSGP, so the road course south of Brookhaven was new to me.  The course is not that bad, but it less challenging than the course used for a years before that (most years anyway).  Unlike the 1/2/3 race that I have raced last 4 times I raced (2008-2011), the road race was only about 50 miles.  The goal of our team was too keep the pace up when it slowed on the first lap, start to animate into the 2nd lap (of 2) and help establish and maintain a break containing Will and/or Scott.  Well, after a confusing time as we prepared to overtake the M40+ field at the end of the 1st lap (too slow), we moved back enough to get some running room.

It starts like all good breaks, with a hard effort and then a launch out of that effort when everyone is nearing their limit / are not as fresh.  Unfortunately, the break and the field moving through the M40+ field caused some confusion / disorder in both fields because of the way the speeds of each were similar enough to each other and changing in response to breaks starting to establish themselves on last 10-15 miles of the RR.  Anyway, when things cleared up, the break sat 10-15 seconds up the road leaving us little choice other than to place defensive (chasing down) tempered by not riling up the field to close down the small gap and moderate inference with the chase.  They way that I (and our team approached) was not blocking up merely taking up space in the rotation, not pulling through as hard, and if the field would let (which they did), pulling the field at a more civilized tempo to let the gap widen.

Ultimately the gap did widen out of a corner due to a combination of the field not charging the corner and the break starting to work together more.  By the end there were 9 or so in the break netting Scott a 2nd place, Will a 4th, and one of Cat 4 / BPC riders, Cody, a 9th about a minute up on the field.  I ended up towards the front of that field sprint for 10th, getting a 13th after some dubious early yellow line jumping (I think).  Anyway, it was a sprint for 10th, a minute down.

That result put Scott and Will in good shape in the GC heading into the afternoon 3 mile TT.  Scott stormed the TT and took over the top position in the TT.  Will remained in 4th place after the TT.   Even though I have had my Trek Speed Concept for over a year, this only the 2nd time I have raced it (last year at Aaron Shaffer TT) and this weekend.  I was really happy with result of 8th place given that I just got that bike off the computrainer on Monday to ride it easy and really haven’t even trained on it.  Good stuff.  I probably should ride that bike once and a while maybe.

Overnight on Saturday night, it rained.  A lot.  The rain continued on into the morning circuit races.  The organizers/officials delayed the 4/5 race @ 7 am by any hour and started to chop out laps out the other races to make up time.  Generally, it was pretty miserable compared to the nice day 12 hours earlier.  We started a few minutes late and faced a 13 mile, 2 lap circuit race on a course was “varied” road terrain.  Some of the course was smooth and nice, some was pretty much bombed out.  This sort of thing doesn’t bother me, maybe more so that I have the Domane, but I was comfortable bombing this course on the Madone just the same.

The goal for the team in the circuit race was to preserve Scott’s lead and via hot-spot and finish time bonuses, get Will up to 2nd place G.C.  Again, and probably more so, we needed to keep the pace up.  By the time I got to the start line, I was at the back, so I needed a few miles to move up and then joined my team in applying the pressure and pulling back those that were trying to get clear.  At the end of the 1st lap, I was preparing to push it up the finishing hill, when someone else started the lead up making it a bit easier to get Will pointed at the finish line to pick up the 6 seconds on offer for the hot spot.  Coming over the hill, the group was starting to crack apart a little bit and we kept the pressure up.  After I did a good pull, I dropped back through the field (or rather they charged around me, banging into my bars as they passed).  As we moved into the short little hills in the bad pavement, I was gapped off by a retreating teammate.  Unfortunately, I was off the field and was forced to time trial back the last 3 miles.  By 1 km to go, I was actually catching the field and almost made the junction at 500m before the field started the sprint.  I lost 15 seconds on heavy legs.  Will ended up taking 2nd in the circuit race which did put him in 2nd in the G.C.

In the end the 15 seconds that I lost due not having the snap to not get gapped cost me a lot of places in the tightly packed G.C.  I ended up in 15th place (+1.43) instead of 12th place….

Tomorrow in the 2nd Tiger Lane and the last two days I have bike-commuted to work (12 miles each way).  Not a lot of prep in the legs this week, maybe it will improve by tomorrow evening.

This year my schedule should allow me to race a bit more than the small number of times I lined up last year.  After this weekend, I will have started more races that I did all last year.

Anyway, here goes a sort of summary.  Last Saturday (4/6), I raced my team’s race, the JJ the Rooster Memorial Road Race.  It featured a short loop out near the Shelby Forrest General Store where JJ (the Rooster) strutted around for as long as I been kicking around Memphis (back to 2006, for me) as group rides heading up that spent way too long on the deck outside.   I am sure the history is longer, but I don’t know about that.

As a local race (and as our race), we had a good fraction of the field for the 1/2/3 race.  In general, my role was limited to surviving and I was able to do a few small things that slightly affected the race.  In the end, it was a good showing for our team although we did not take the win.  I was able to witness the carnage, because I was shelled off around the 8th (or 13 4-mile laps).  I put in a good chase for a bit, but decided to bag it after 10 laps (2 laps solo).  I was thinking about racing the next day, which ended up happening.

The next day, Will and I drove up to Nashville to race the 3/4 and the Elite Masters (1/2/3 – 30+ age) categories at Cedar Hill.  Even with my shorted race, I was feeling the effort of Saturday, but my legs came around and I was able to stay active throughout the race around the hilly loop ending up in 17th place in the end (50-55 starters).  The hill wasn’t steep, but combine with the two corners, there was a lot of 30 second pretty hard efforts to stay with and move up.  The Elite Master’s race, only 45 minutes later, was a tougher race and I only really just managed to hold on falling off the field in the last 1/2 lap for 30th of 55 or so starters.   Neither of these results are much to brag about as results, but the race was hard enough that I felt that it was a good training day and got me a lot of good race time after effectively taking a year nearly off from road.

(The back story behind the race weekend last weekend actually started on Thursday night before.  I had pre-registered for Ouachita Challenge 60 mile MTB race again this year.  This race fills up in hours when it opens, so I paid up months ago and I was sort of looking forward to it, sort of not.   In any case, when I got back from out of town on Thursday evening, I was going to replace the failed harddrive in my Apple Time Capsule.  Basically, the Time Capsule is a white box that works with your computer to keep a time indexed backup of your computer.  Anyway, the harddrive had died, so I ordered a replacement.   I went bigger (1 TB to 3 TB) because, why not?   Anyway, the bottom of said device has a rubber covering glued on over where the screws are.  I was using a knife to remove this cover and the knife slipped and I stabbed myself.  It wasn’t pretty.  After the bleeding stopped, etc, I was left with a thumb that was not good for down-shifting Shimano XT mountain…. and Ouachita is hilly and bumpy.  Time to bail on that, again.)

So this week, I actually worked an entire week at home, so I was able to recover and race the Memphis spring crit series, Tiger Lane Crits at the Liberty Bowl Stadium.  The weather looked foul on Wednesday morning, but turned out okay, albeit windy.  Again, Marx-Bensdorf showed up with numbers in the 1/2/3 race.  I am not sure of the exact count, but lets say 13 of 22 racers (guess).  My legs were still not pretty from Sunday, but riding from Cordova as a pre-warmup did help (15 miles or so).   Andrea and Matt came down in the car to watch and take me back.  As for the race, it was pretty much together for the first 10-15 minutes, but then it started to splinter and splinter again.  I was left in the pack with 4-5 teammates up the road ultimately resulting in a 1-2 for our team and some more good training for me.  I don’t know my final placing but it was towards the back of the remains of the field, probably 13th?

As I write this, I am waiting at the hotel for my teammates to come back from the 1/2/3 crit at Mississippi Gran Prix in Brookhaven, MS.  I got a later start, arriving at the hotel when the crit was half over, so I didn’t go down.  Also, for the first time in a while, I am not racing the 1/2/3 crit.  I think I have done it maybe 3 times (didn’t race MSGP last year, so it was 2011, 2010, 2009).  In 2008, my first year as a Cat3, it was rained out.  The choice to race 3/4 is align with team goals to race some in 1/2/3 and some in 3/4.  Overall, it works out as a better match for my state right, now coming out of a heavy travel fall/winter, a late cx season (master’s worlds), and lost season last year.  Thing are coming around and I’ll get back.

Road race 1 is in the books.  The race was a short day tripper from Memphis, so we brought the numbers.  Marx-Bensdorf Cycling fielded 9 in the Cat 3 race.  I was coming off a week down in my 2nd (work) home, Columbus, MS.  So, I wasn’t feeling awesome at the start.

Thankfully, we kept it animated from the start and I was able to help out a little bit mid-race.  The last part of the race, we had a man off the front with another and it almost stayed gone.  Unfortunately, the field organized enough to drag Will back by 1k to go..  so it came down to a field sprint.  The field sprint was sort of nuts in that it ended up being pretty spread out.  The last last few hundred yards, I was flying by some riders as the front of the field surged forward.  In the end, I was mid-pack at 18th.   The good news is that we managed to get 2nd and 3rd place out of the race.

This is the same race that put me out for a bit last year when a rider swept across my front wheel on the last lap.  No one went down (as far as I know) this race.  I had a close call when a rider decided to try to cut back over in front of me / through my torso.  Anyway, all worked out okay, just got a little dicey for a second.

Overall, it wasn’t a terrible start for the year.  Only a few weeks on from the end of last season, I don’t feel too bad about wrapping it around without a “break”.   I never really got going, only just muddled through, so I don’t really feel that I need to come down from anything.

Here are couple photos from Arkansas Outside

It has been a few weeks since Louisville.  My final race at UCI Masters CX worlds was pretty much like last year.  Bib number #51 yielded a 51st result.  Like last year, a hard freeze overnight iced over the course, but it quickly melted back despite the sub freezing temperatures all day (ground was still warm).  The cold air temperatures meant that the mud froze to the bike and made Andrea’s day pretty interesting in the pits.

After Louisville, my life has been a swirl of work travel and riding when I can / on the weekend mostly.   This is technically a post, all for now.

Day 1.  Andrea and I drove to Louisville, rode down to the course and to registration.  Drew number #11, which is 4th call up in Heat #2 for Masters 35-39.    Ate a good dinner at Against the Grain microbrew/gastropub.

Day 2.  Relaxed in the morning.  Rode down to the course for open course mid-day.  Rode one lap which was plenty.  Energy sapping mud on most of the course after the big rain event overnight into the morning.

Masters 35-39 Heat #2 was at the end of the day (4 pm).  The mud became more energy sapping or at least seemed that way due to race speed.  I was reasonably happy with my start and was probably in about 15th or so place in the first of two laps (26 starters).  I moved up a few places, but started to get repetitive chain-suck in the mud, so ended up running 100 yards to the pit the last type by to take a change.  Lost 4-5 places with that and couldn’t make it up by the finish.  17th place.  This is mostly a seeding placing because it ended up being that everyone moved on to the final anyway… will be 5-6th row in the final (50th called up probably).

The big drama in the race happened when I got caught in some barrier tape on the first lap and went down.  It wasn’t even a crash, just a stall with my handlebars tied up in the tape, but when remounting, I found my seat was cocked to the side.  I easily moved it back and remounted and the seat didn’t drop.  Weird, ride on.  I intended to finish the race on my carbon bike (Ridley X-Fire), but with the chainsuck, I finished the last few minutes of the race on the Crosswind.  It tuned out that what happened is that the aluminum insert had cracked and remained attached to the seat collar.

At this point, I plan to race it again on Friday.  My seat just has float.

Day 3 will be an off-day from racing (my final is Frdiay).  Tomorrow is all about Andrea repeating and hopefully improving on her bronze in Women’s 30-34 category last year.

Oh yeah, I am racing this week..   It almost seems like an afterthought.  Masters World Championship for Cyclocross in Louisville.   Has a good ring to it, but no expectations for me.  Andrea, will have a tough battle to reclaim a medal, but I know how hard she has been working, so I bet she will improve it.  I will be watching from the pits holding her other bike.

Not much else to say.  I did get a new mountain bike.  Upgrading my aluminum Titus F/S 29er for a carbon Niner (Jet 9 Carbon F/S).  Also going to 2×10 (Deore XT).  I have only had a shot to ride it once really, but I like it a lot.

Once I get over the final cyclocross race it will be time to start thinking about the road season with a few mtb event mixed in.  The good thing about not training much (lately) is that I don’t really feel I need a break.  Hopefully, my travel will get back in control enough to get back to being a respectable Cat 3 instead of pack fill.

Here is hasty photo of the new rig…

And a random photo of Andrea giving Thor a bath.

Since I last added a post, I have managed to toe the line for two more cross races.

The first was a local race (nearly) in my backyard… Journey Cross in Cordova, TN.    The day before Andrea and I rode out to take a look at how things were developing and were disappointed by the unnecessary inclusion of a section of singletrack.   I don’t doubt that that it was a lot of work, but the course had enough traditional cyclocross elements (corners, hills, run-ups, and mud) to make picking through a new cut trail.  Anyway, I raced the A-race and managed to not hack up too much (I was coming over a cold).  90% of the course was a slippery muddy course where you had to pick lines along the course tape and power through.  I ended up 7th (I think).   Here is a good shot of the 4 of us from M&B post race taken by Rick.

A week later, Andrea and I headed up to Gallatin (Lock 4) just north of Nashville.  It ends up being a stupid long day trip, but we decided to get it done that way.   The course, like last year was in great shape with just enough mud to make for some drama.   I decided to race just the Masters 35+ race (not being completely over that cold and not really training enough this fall to double up to the CX1/2 race.  Plus we wanted to get on the road to get in time for dinner (Sunday was my birthday).  My A-bike (Ridley X-Fire) performed well until about 2/3rd of the way through the race where it started to occasionally make the most horrific screeching noises.   I opted to not pit on the fast side and rode it around another 1/2 lap (I gotta love dual sided pits).  I believe I ended up 7th again in that race.   Need to make up my mind if I want to race 35-39 at Masters Worlds at the end of January or just go and support Andrea quest to better her bronze from last year.

Another day on the cx course brings to light a few things.  Number one, I am not where as fit as last year.  There are reasons, blah, blah.  Number two.  Who cares.

Anyway, Andrea and I packed up our bikes and head up the road to Jonesboro, AR for the 2nd Gearhead Outfitters race this morning.  I was feeling the not-really-that-long-or-that-hard-ride of the day before as I got loosened up.  In general, I don’t think it hurt me, just the #1 above.  The A-race started off in a big group and quickly sort itself out.   The was a lead group that walked away from Andrea and I pretty quickly.  And Andrea stayed just ahead of me the entire race.  So I finished up in 4th place out of maybe twice as many.  Good course, good weather.    Finished out the money by a place, but Andrea was all in the money with her first place.

Well, I managed to knock out a few cyclocross races.   My schedule has been pretty random lately, but I ended up being home the weekend before last to race both the Cross-roads Classic Race (pretty much Spooky CX @ Shelby Farms, with new organization) and a Gearhead race near Wynne, AR.  Both races were partially successful.  Overall, I have to be resigned to the fact that training all year at about half the volume of previous years means that I don’t get to be good at racing cyclocross.  It is just not that forgiving of a sport, especially on a power course (but aren’t they all power courses?).

Yesterday, I also found myself in Memphis to race the Outdoor’s race for the 6th? (maybe 7th?) time..  Of course, I wasn’t racing the front, but had my own little battle with Daniel (Los Locos).   I just couldn’t drop him (and I did try a few times).  In the end we finished together (him slightly ahead).  In any case, I secured 3rd (or 3) in the CX1/2 group.  Not much to be proud of, but a good race nevertheless.

This week, I am up in St. Louis doing some (work) training.  The colder temperatures (and lack of daylight hours) means trainer rides.  I have been resisting, but it is time.

After I get back, I plan to hit the 2nd Gearhead race in Jonesboro, AR.  Need to focus on just racing and not worrying about the results because they aren’t likely to magically appear.

As just because our house is full of animals and random bike stuff….  Thor is so awkward.