Sunday, March 28, 2010

OKC Velo TT

Saturday was my first TT of the season. This post will be short because there is only so much to talk about regarding the TT itself -- It was hard. I tried to go fast. There you go...there is the race report.

Instead of focusing on the race itself, I decided I'd write a bit about the preparation I go through for an event like this.

Last week I inherited Sarah's old Cervelo P2SL when she upgraded to a P3C. My first step was to get a baseline fit. I was able to get a decent fit on my stationary trainer, but the real test was to get it out on the road. It took me up until the night before the race to get a fit I actually liked, although I'm not in love with it. I need to find a longer stem before the next TT.

Most of my time trials this year will be in the 8-9 mile range, so comfort definitely matters less to me than aerodynamics and power. I used my powertap, a stopwatch, and some cool software to help me figure out what looks fast as opposed to what IS fast.

I didn't have a chance to do an all-out practice TT, so I really didn't know how to gauge my power for the event. I decided to shoot for 10% less than my 20 min power on my roadbike. I ended up going quite a bit harder than that, but it felt right to go that hard. That's good news for the bike fit. Apparently it's powerful.

I ended up 2nd in the p/1/2/3 division, which was good enough for the 3rd fastest solo time of the day. I owe a lot of that to the powertap. I know that if I didn't have a little yellow box telling me to take it easy for the first 5 minutes, I would have blown up early and limped across the line.

The downside is, first place murdered me. His name is Will Gault. He's a very talented rider, so the fact that he beat me doesn't phase me. The fact that he beat me as bad as he did means that I need to make some pretty major changes to my bike in order to come close to him. My power alone won't get me there.

Joey finished just a few seconds slower than me, so that put 2 of us on the p/1/2/3 podium. He looked great on his TT bike. He hasn't been on that bike very much either, so we both will have a lot of room to grow.

Les Banta won his division. If you haven't seen his Giant TT bike, you need to check it out. It looks awesome, and with his motor it moves fast! Ryan Ellis and Dustin Sallee put down great times in the largest division of the day.

Our women's team took the top 4 spots. Very impressive! They had the 2nd largest field of the day. Sarah took 2nd place at her first TT ever on her new bike.

Tomorrow I'll have a write-up for NWA Spring Classic. I'm too tired to type all that tonight.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Salt Creek

My legs were shot going into Salt Creek. The effort on Saturday tore me up pretty good. It seems like a pretty good sign that I need more miles in my legs before Joe Martin.

The field included virtually all the heavy hitters from Cow Skin, plus Brad Huff and a few other fresh faces. Seeing a great bike handler like Brad zig and zag through guys in the field before shooting off the front is quite an experience. There were a few early moves but nothing substantial. It appeared as though a lot of guys were just as tired after Cow Skin as I was.

I was never very comfortable on the downhill sweeping left turn. It was rough, covered in gravel, and fast. For the first few laps I moved to the back in order to stay out of everyone's way. The wind was blowing in such a way that any gap would almost automatically get closed up at the bottom and it was easy to move into better position at just about any part of the course.

I took a few solo digs to see if the field would counter attack and help get a few of our guys off the front, but it didn't work. Joey Mesa went on a solo move and got quite the gap on the field. I told the rest of the team that I would jump when Joey was caught and we would just keep trying to have a guy off the front until the winning break got away.

It never came to that. Brad Huff and some others attacked. Joey, who was a good distance up the road from the main field still, was ready for them and he got in their group. The main pack got pretty close to the break at one point, which is when I should have crossed the gap. I honestly was still thinking that the break would get caught and that effort would be wasted. Plus I don't know if I had the legs for it. I think a few other guys were able to bridge into Joey's group, but I missed out on all the opportunities for a free ride.

Joey did a great job. The break included at least 10 of the fastest guys in the race and they kept trying to shell each other the entire time. Eventually a group of 3 got away from the rest of the break. Joey ended up finishing strong. That is 3 top 10 finishes in the first 3 p/1/2 races of the season for Undiscovered.

A group of about 6 got away from our group. We were racing for spots outside of the money, which is actually pretty fun this time of year because you have nothing to lose. It's all just about gaining fitness and experience. Brad Cox got away in a group of 6 or so. With a lap and a half to go his rear tire started going flat. I tried to bridge to their breakaway, but got their just as the guys were shutting it down. I decided to keep my momentum going to see how long I could hold the group off, so I just went on by them on one of the short climbs. I got caught with a little over 1k to go. I hung on as long as I could, but the solo effort blew me up. I think I ended up about 6th in the field sprint.

Total Time - 1:29:34
Time Not Pedaling - 29 minutes
Average Power - 241
Normalized Power - 297

My next race will be NWA Spring Classic. It should be a good race for our team. After that I'll be staying local until Joe Martin. Between skating and cycling last year it felt like I was sleeping in hotels as often as I was sleeping at home. I love racing, but I hate being away from my wife every weekend. It looks like there are a couple new races on the calendar for Oklahoma this spring, so it looks like I'll be able to race without traveling as much as last season.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Cow Skin RR

The Cowskin Road Race takes place in Mannford, OK, a small town east of Tulsa. This race was a special one for our team, because this marked the first time that all 5 of our Category 2 racers were in a race together.

The quality of riders was strong. Tradewind Energy had 3 guys in the race, including former world champ Steve Tilfod and former Jelly Belly pro Brian Jensen. Park Place Lexus had at least 4 riders. Tulsa Tough had probably had the most riders in the field, but I’m not sure how many.

The first few laps were pretty tame. I hung out near that back while my 4 teammates patrolled the front to make sure we would have a guy in any early breakaway. The big teams were letting 2 guys hang just off the front. Brian tried to bridge up to their group, but the field didn’t let him go.

The details are a little blurry from here because things happened quickly, but I think Chad Cagle of Park Place Lexus was the first to attack. Brian Jenson jumped and I went with him, with Jason Waddell on my wheel. The four of us caught the break and kept pressing on. Our lead on the field was small for a while, but we were only going at about 80%. It was an ideal breakaway for me to be in because the two toughest teams were up there so if anybody was going to pull us back it would have to be Tulsa or BMC.

I didn’t understand it at the time, but Jason kept telling Chad to take it easy to see what the field would do. We could have opened up the gap, but Jason was set on holding our pace. Come to find out, I think he was waiting for another teammate to bridge, because a short time later his teammate and Steve Tilford made it into our field. Great thinking by the Park Place guys. Now they had the break stacked. These are the kinds of things I need to keep picking up on. It’s what makes for a strong team. I think knowledge is even more important than fitness in most cases. At this point, the hammer was dropped.

The breakaway situation went from ideal to frightening. When it was 4 guys I knew I could hang. Now Park Place had 3 guys in the break and Tradewind had 2. I was definitely the least experienced guy in the break, the only guy who didn’t have a teammate there, and possibly the weakest as well.

It didn’t take long for 2 of the Park Place guys to start barking at me. I never skipped a pull, but I was only pulling through at about 80% and was getting off the front as quickly as I could. I wasn’t getting in the way. I wasn’t slowing down the break. I was just “racing my race” as I was told to do by a member of the break earlier.

First they told me my pulls needed to be longer. I laughed to myself, because I knew there was nothing they could do to make me pull longer. Then the next time I got to the front and pulled off one of the guys reached up and started pushing me forward. I guess that’s one way to keep me up there longer.

About 2 minutes later the guy who was griping at me got caught up in the rear derailleur of the guy who was pushing me. We were probably doing between 35-40 mph but miraculously nobody went down. I’ve had a mishap in a breakaway before, and it really sucks. I don’t wish stuff like that upon anyone obviously, but at the same time it really helped my chances in the breakaway. Thank goodness nobody got hurt though. It seriously could have been bad. Now it was just Jensen and TIlford from Tradewind and then Waddell and I.

My favorite conversation in the race took place here:
Waddell: “Hey Steve. Give me a second” (Jason was skipping a pull to recover from a hard effort)
Tilford: “ For a minute I thought you meant second place. That would be quite the gift.”

I knew that the steady pace wouldn’t last long, and with 3 laps (15 miles) to go, Jenson jumped. I got on his wheel quick, but my legs were pretty heavy. He slowed down and then Tilford attacked. I just let him go. I knew that they would keep taking turns until I blew up, so I figured I would settle for 2nd at best. It was that or end up back in the chase pack. Well, Jenson attacked and got up to Tilford. I was back with Waddell. Now I was in place to get 3rd at best. Jason and I kept it smooth and just made sure we wouldn’t get caught. With about 1k to go I told Jason we should drag race it out for kicks. He gave me the inside line. We joked about how much it would suck to wreck each other in the last couple hundred meters. He jumped at 150m to go. I couldn’t match his acceleration and he pulled a couple bike lengths on me quick.

I ended up 4th. That’s two top 5s in my first two pro/1/2 races of the season. More importantly, I got some great power data to show me where I’m strong and weak so that I keep improving through the season. Jeremy and Joey came in with the main field. We were all stoked about how the team rode.

Power Info:
28 minutes were spent not pedaling
Normalized power for the entire race (2:42): 291
Avg watts – 264
2hr power – 276
25.5 minutes spend in the supra-max zone
Max speed – 43mph

Monday, March 1, 2010

Froze Toes 2010

I picked Froze Toes as my season opener for multiple reasons. The first reason was that I didn’t want to race any earlier than the last week of February. My speed skating season extends until the middle of November and I need a mental break from all the traveling. Reason number 2 was that I wanted to have a race in my legs before the Salty Cow Extravaganza, which falls on the first weekend in March this year. These two reasons alone narrowed my choices down to Lago Vista or Froze Toes.

If I chose Lago, Brian Parks would have been my only teammate in the race. If I chose Froze Toes I would have Brian Parks, Bryan Zieglar and to some extent Adam Miller, a very talented cyclist from MO that skates on the same inline team as me. He rides for a different team, but I still consider him an ally.

When we picked Froze Toes, we assumed that Lago Vista would be a P/1/2 race. My year is setup so that these early season races are nothing more than a gauge to see where my fitness level is. I have no desire to attempt going toe to toe with the Kelly Benefits team, or whichever domestic pros/peaked Cat 1 Texans show up. The outcome of the race would have told me what I already know – I’m not in peak form in February. If I was, I’d be worried.

I’ll admit, Lago became pretty tempting when I found out it was a 2/3 field. I think Undiscovered could have had a great finish if we played our cards right. In the end, debating our fitness level to what went on in Texas this weekend is all pointless because we chose Missouri instead, and we’ll get to compare stem sizes this weekend at the Salty Cow. I ride a 120. That's a joke...but in all seriousness, I feel as though some other members of my team are stronger than I am, and I'm really looking forward to racing with/working for them this season.

Froze Toes had a larger field than what I expected. We signed up an hour before registration closed, and 61 people had already signed up before us. Zieglar had to cancel at the last minute, so Brian the Shark Parks and I were the only two Undiscovered riders there.

One thing I enjoyed about racing in MO is that I really don’t know who is strong. In Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and Arkansas I know most of the people I need to watch. Here, I had to make judgment calls on appearance and bike handling skill…oh and colors. It was tough for Brad Huff to stay under the radar in his Jelly Belly kit, and nearly as hard to miss Andy Chocha wearing his Armed Forces team colors.

The first hour was full of sketchy riding. I can’t count how many near wrecks I saw. My money says a lot of those guys spent the winter on their trainers. I know when I ride my trainer for a week straight and go back out on the road it takes me a few minutes to get used to holding a straight line. That’s what about half the field looked like…but multiplied by 10.

I went up front for a short time to get away from the bad bike handling, but it was just as ugly up there. The course was flat and the guys up front weren’t letting anybody get away, so I hung out in the rear for a while and chatted it up with some other guys. Brian stayed close to the front and made sure nothing got too far up the road without one of us there. He went off the front for a little while to see how the legs felt. The field picked up the pace but nobody would shoot up to him, so he went back into the field knowing that his legs felt good for a move a bit later in the race.

Average power of the first hour was only 206 watts. I think the only time I had to get above threshold was when some guys up front put it in the gutter in a crosswind section. I had to move up in the wind in order to make sure I didn’t get caught behind a gap. That was the first effort, and the legs felt good.

About 25 miles into the race I was talking to the Cannondale rep for Oklahoma (he races out of MO) and he said this race never ends in a field sprint and will probably explode soon. At about mile 30 we hit some crosswind, and I’d say about 20 guys disappeared.

Brian was with the group at this point, but put a nasty gash in his tubular and had to pull out.

Shortly after, a group of 7 guys went up the road. The pack was working pretty hard to catch them, so I wasn’t too worried. Then I noticed the big guys up front starting to lose their motivation. Andy Chocha put his head down like he was done pulling and everyone kind of sat up. I knew that if something didn’t happen right now, we’d never see those 7 guys again.

Just as I thought that, I see this big guy (probably 6’2, 190+ lbs) from Pennsylvania come weaving through the field. I watched him attack off the front earlier in the race and the dude looked like a monster. I latched onto his wheel, jumped with him, and the two of us were clear. Eleven minutes later, after averaging 357 watts, we were in the break. There were a couple scary moments where the break started to pull away from us, but in the end we closed it. While we were bridging, one guy popped off the lead group, so including ourselves it was now an 8 man break with 20 miles or so to go

We worked together well for a while. With about 10 miles to go, David Henderson, last year’s winner, attacked the break. It all came back together and I pleaded that we work together a little while longer. We didn’t know our time gaps, so it was no time to get sloppy. One guy flatted so now the break was down to 7.

With about 4 miles to go, people stopped pulling. That’s about what I expected. Now up until this point, I was riding a really patient race. Usually I burn about 50 matches trying to get away, but in this race I kept my cool, watched the race unfold, and made the right moves at the right time to get myself to the end in the breakaway.

I threw all of that away with about 1.5 miles to go when I decided to jump. In retrospect it was a bad move, but at the time it seemed smart. I knew there were still strong guys in the main field, and I definitely didn’t want to get caught. The guys in the break looked pretty tired and I was feeling fresh. I opened the gap quick and then kept it smooth. I was holding back because I knew a counter would come. I planned on jumping on the back, but only two guys went. One was David Henderson and the other was from Velotek. The rest of the guys basically just watched 1st and 2nd go up the road, and with about 150m to go, two came around me. The last few minutes of the race were recorded with an on-bike camera and posted on youtube. My attack is around 4:00 into the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDduesY3nzQ&feature=player_embedded

All-in-all, I was happy with 5th place. With the quality of field that was there (and with the amount of sketchy riders) I would have been pleased with a pack finish as long as I didn’t crash, so 5th was fine. Looking at my numbers from my jump, it would be interesting to see how the sprint would have played out. My skating teammate took 9th. I think one guy went off solo between our break and the main field, and Adam won the field sprint.

It’s nice to have this power data to look back on. It’s interesting how the specific training I’ve been doing is so similar to these race efforts. This is my first cycling season with a training plan and scheduled workouts, and I can already tell that my fitness will be at a new level come May.

Total Time: 2:26
Average Speed: 25.5 (the first lap was SLOW)
Distance: 62 miles
Average Watts – 231, including rolling back to my car
Normalized power – 273, including rolling back to my car
Time Spent Coasting – 29 min! That’s 20% of the race!
Time Spent above threshold – 41:02