Musings from the Livestrong Ride

This past weekend San Jose hosted the Livestrong Challenge ride. I'm not typically a fundraiser type of guy, but for some reason I felt motivated to join in and do my part. Here are some interesting things I took note of during the 100 mile ride.

Kudos to those raising money for Susan over at Fat Cyclist. They did a great job at raising a ton of money for the cause and they were duly rewarded with being up front for the neutralized rollout from downtown. Thankfully for them the day didn't get too hot since those black kits looked like they could have been pretty warm.

Now here's where things get interesting. While I support and respect everybody who was fundraising, I do have to question whether or not everybody was on board with Fat Cyclist. In my heart I hope they are on board for the right reasons. But here's where I deviate and let the skeptic in me take over.

I saw quite a few overweight cyclists sporting the Fat Cyclist jersey. I really should have approached some of these people at the rest stops, but didn't. I should have asked if they were supporting Susan's cause, and if they weren't, then I'd educate them and let them know the wonderful story behind the Fat Cyclist work. However, part of me thinks these riders realized that they were overweight, and found a jersey that mockingly made fun of their physical condition, so they decided to buy the jersey. Heck, I could be wrong, and I hope that I am, but it would be like me buying a jersey that said Tall Cyclist when I didn't know that the proceeds of the sale of the jersey went to help research for people who had lost their legs from amputations.

Hmm, what else caught my eye. Oh yeah, these rides are more dangerous than a Cat 5 crit at the early birds when everybody thinks they can corner like a pro. About three miles into the ride we're making a nice mellow right hand turn and I'm holding my line through the corner. Out of nowhere a guy on a hybrid bike comes sweeping across my front wheel and almost takes me out. I pedaled up next to him, looked over to see if he would at least acknowledge the fact that he nearly took me out, but his face was as stoic as an executioner. No reaction. None. He was completely oblivious to what he had done. From then on I made sure to be more aware of these kind of riders.

Soon after this incident we crossed the Hamilton Avenue/Leigh Avenue intersection. Somebody about 10 meters in front of me had a Powertap. Or at least they used to have a Powertap. The head unit on their stem came flying off and was ping-pong'ing between riders. The owner probably didn't know what happened because I didn't see anybody slowing down and turning around. Poor cyclist, they probably didn't realize they lost it until they were halfway through their ride.

Incidentally, having a full road closure and escort through San Jose, Saratoga, Los Gatos is nice, but it's a bit of a new experience for us who routinely ride these roads on our bikes. I for one know where all the potholes and hazards are on these roads...when I'm in the bike lane! Being out in the middle of the road was a bit nerve racking because I wasn't familiar with when and where I'd encounter a hole large enough to send me flying. I made it through safely, but I did hear some people hit some of these hazards head on.

Safety needs to be a given when riding in events like these, but please, and this goes out to the other riders, don't put yourself in a position of being unsafe when you think you're being "safe". What do I mean? I mean if we're coming up on a section of road that's bad, you don't need to call it to half the world by taking your hand off the handlebars and making obvious pointing gestures. On more than one occasion I saw a few riders to this, and then with only one hand on the bars they'd hit some road hazard and about lose it. I made sure not to follow these people as they were more of a harm to themselves.

When I showed my wife the route, her first reaction was how were all these people going to handle Metcalf. Well, it was ugly, just ugly. I don't know if the casual weekend rider is prepared for Metcalf, but somebody could have made a killing if they had a van and a bike rack. Probably 75% of the riders I saw on the hill were doing the following:

1. Walking their bikes up the hill
2. Searching for the lung they just coughed up on the side of the road
3. Realizing that the pain cave is really does hurt
   
4. Zig-zagging back and forth across the road
5. Wishing they were like the smart lady who had a triple crank and a MTB cassette

The highlight of the hill was the guy in the devil suit. He first made his presence know on the climb up Shannon, and then motored over to Metcalf. He was gracious enough to cheer people on and pour cold water on our heads as we passed by. Now on the my favorite Metcalf story...

We're pacelining up Santa Teresa into the headwind. We probably snagged up 5-7 riders and I was on the front putting down a nice hard tempo. I wasn't expecting people to pull through and I didn't care. I wanted to get in some solid training. We turn onto Bailey and start to make our way towards Metcalf. At this point the crosswinds caused people to get gapped. As we came over the Hwy 101/Bailey intersection, one of the guys behind me comes ups next to me. He notices the climb immediately in front of us and asks, "Hey, is that Metcalf?". Oh, young Jedi, you have much to learn. I told him he'd know Metcalf well in about 2 miles and he'd know it when he saw it.

I let him get a gap going up the hill and decide to suck his wheel for a while as we approach Metcalf. At the base of the climb as I unzip my jersey getting ready for the hard effort (average watts was 370), I let him go up the road. About 3 minutes into the climb I come by him. He glances over with pain written all over his face, and I say, "This is Metcalf. Pretty fun, huh?!?". He was having no fun. Sorry bud.

Help me raise donations for the San Jose Livestrong ride

I'm not typically the fundraising type, but this year I decided to give it a shot. I'm doing the 100 mile loop of the San Jose Livestrong Challenge fundraising ride. Ok, I'll admit to the fact that riding a 100 mile loop with supported food stops is a pretty cush way of getting in a nice hard training ride, but at least the funds raised will go toward furthering cancer research.

If you're interested in donating $5 or $50 (friendship won't be based on how much you give), go here to donate:

http://bit.ly/KmL1W

District TT Race Report

As many of you know, my season has been geared toward TT's and specifically this past weekend of the District race. It's only been since October that I've had a dedicated TT bike and though I've come a long way, you'll find that I've still got a ways to go. Sattley proved to be an enormous learning experience on several fronts.

It's the little things that make race reports interesting to me. That being said, I took the advice of many as I prepped for the race. I spoke earlier in the week with Dave Stockwell and drew upon his 17 previous years of knowledge around District TT events to get a feel for how this race would go down. Dave's knowledge of the route was spot on!

I also worked with my coach and discussed how my body didn't react well to the taper we had been doing. Leading up to Dunlap last week I felt good, but the power numbers were way down. My belief was that it was due to be "too fresh"; I need a bit more fatigue in the legs to perform well. Being too fresh killed me a few years ago when I was a cat 5 and took a few days off leading up to the Mt. Hamilton RR. That was a bad day. But the decision was to stick with the taper plan and to see how my body responded. At worse my coach and I would walk away with a much better understanding of how I react to tapering.

One point of advice that Dave mentioned was how necessary it was to tighten every bolt on your bike before the race. The expansion cracks in the road will take a toll on equipment. More on this later...

I drove up Saturday to my brother-in-law's place in Granite Bay (near Roseville). Upon arriving I realized I forgot my water bottle. I thought about snagging a bottle cage from one of the bikes in the garage, but after a bit more thinking I realized that having the bottle probably didn't matter too much. Plus, with all the potential jarring on the bike, the bottle might fly off like it did to me on one of the Winter Series TT's.

I checked, and re-checked everything on the bike. Tightened down bolts, re-taped some loose bar tape and made sure there was no brake rub. Everything was good to go. The plan was to wake up at 4:45am, grab a bite to eat and hit the road with plenty of time to spare. I checked my alarm on the iPhone to make sure it was working properly, then set it for the early wake up. Ah, sleep...

Rolling over in the morning I realized it was getting light out. Sometimes my internal alarm clock wakes me up a few minutes before I need to get up. Today, I was very lucky. The night before after testing the alarm I had forgot to switch the alarm setting from "PM" to "AM". I woke up at 5:05AM!

Yikes, late already! Well, my HR was spiked and I probably could have ridden a pretty good 40k TT right then and there given how amped I was. Luckily the night before I had pre-packed everything and it only took me 15 minutes to get out the door and on the road.

While driving I saw that Clark had texted me 2:53AM letting me know he had just left Los Gatos. I figured he had to be in the area so I gave him a ring as I was coming up toward Auburn. Come to find out he was just about to hit the road after getting his coffee IV hit at Starbucks. No coffee necessary for me...I was doing 80+mph and already in TT mode. Clark made mention that I'd probably catch him on the road a few minutes past Auburn. Chase on!

There have been two times in my life where I've absolutely flown up Hwy 80 toward Tahoe. The first was about 8 years ago when I cut out of work early and jetted up there for a bachelor party. I had the radar detector on and was amazed how much fun the BMW V-8 could boggie up the hill. This morning was the second time.

I was flying by cars left and right. Not much traffic on the road except for a few random vehicles. Even a small red Prius that decided to flash it's lights at me while I smoked it. I was on the hunt for Clark and his Land Rover. About twenty minutes up the road I thought to myself that Clark must really be pushing that Land Rover hard. But then again, Clark wouldn't do that as he's got a different car in the garage for just that purpose. Then I remembered that Prius that flashed me. It was Clark! Later in the day we got a good laugh out of the situation...

Making it to Sattley in record time, I realized I had almost two hours before my start time. Just what I like. In prepping for the race I had changed my PT CPU to read out KM's instead of miles. I wanted to easily break out the race into quarters. The strategy was to go out in the first 5k and just get up to speed, then ramp it up from there.

The sun had come out and there was only a slight hint of wind. Perfect conditions! As I warmed up on the trainer I could feel the effects of the altitude. My HR didn't want to get above 170 without a huge anaerobic effort and my power was down about 30 watts. I knew this was going to be the case going into the race so it wasn't a surprise.

The last bike adjustment I made was to take off the water bottle holder and tape down the PT wires. With the lack of wind the 1080 front wheel was the perfect choice. I ran about 120psi in both wheels to lessen the effects of the poor pavement (rumor has it that the course will be repaved soon...that will make it even faster). With Clark's help to get my number on I was ready to go.

Jonathan Sinclair was my 30 second rabbit. I told him my strategy for not starting too hard; he was going to give me a thorough yelling if I passed him too soon on the course. With my watts being impacted from the altitude, I figured I'd start out at 300 watts for the first 5k, then ramp it up to 315 there after and try for more in the last 10k.

I start out and the cracks in the road weren't that bad. Sure, they were annoying, but I had mentally prepared myself for much worse. Things were going to plan until about 7k into the race I realize that my CPU on the aerobars seemed a little too far away from my face. Then I noticed that the aerobars had slowly dropped down toward the front tire as I had been jarred over all the cracks in the road. Not the position you want to be in, so I did the only thing I could think of in that situation. I gave a nice hard yank on the aerobars to bring them back up into position. That worked, but over the course of the race I'd have to do this about every 5k due to the slippage.

I passed Jonathan around the 9k mark and felt good. As I entered the short little forested area and hit the slight rise in the road my power went up and I thought it might be sustainable as the road hit the false flat. However, this wasn't to be the case. For some reason my body didn't want to do any more than 315 watts. I kept on the gas. During this time my legs would alternate between feeling good and bad. Weird, but it was like somebody was turning them on and off like a light bulb.

At the 19k mark Michael Buckley of Morgan Stanley passed me. He's a super strong TT and I was able to up the power a bit and stick 30 yards behind him for a while. I made the turn and Michael put down some serious power and slowly pulled away.

Nothing spectacular happened between the 20k and 30k mark. The wind didn't seem to be of any specific assistance or hindrance, so I just tucked my head down as low as I could and tried to find speed.

With 10k to go I ramped things up to around 325 watts and my world really began to hurt. This was uncommon territory for me as Dunlap was 10k shorter and this was a new area of the pain cave for me. And to make it more painful, the cracks in the road were back (they're most prominent in the first 10k and last 10k of this course). At this point it felt like I was a WWII pilot trying to land a battered P-51 Mustang onto an aircraft carrier (imagine flying at high speed and parts of the plane coming off or getting loose...). The aerobars were acting up and now it felt like my saddle was starting to get loose (post-race inspection showed that it wasn't loose, it was just that my hamstrings and glutes had gone to gel).

Over the last 5k I put down around 335 watts and crossed the line completely gassed. I finished at 54:36.7! I felt much better about my pacing compared to Dunlap. I viewed that as a small personal victory. I kept riding and spent the next 25 minutes cooling down and actually taking in the spectacular scenery.

After reviewing the results I came in 6th. 1.8 seconds out of 5th place which was my goal. I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get a top five placing, but I came away from the race with a ton of personal knowledge on what I need to improve going forward. Innes won with a time of 51:32.3; pretty impressive as he won by over thirty seconds.

On the way home I treated myself to In'n'Out burgers and a milkshake. Gotta love that!

Wife vs. Coach

Yesterday was supposed to be a rest day according to the training plan, but then the wife spoke up and said, "Wouldn't your legs feel better if you just went out for an easy spin?".

Wife - 1
Coach - 0

And yes, my legs felt much better after the ride.

Falling Apart at Dunlap

This was my first time doing this TT and I was looking forward to it, but perhaps not too much since it was 30k and I haven't done any TT effort that long since our last Winter Series race. Arrived with plenty of time to scope out a good parking spot with shade, chat with friends and generally be able to take my time and not feel rushed.

While on the trainer I felt great. I've been tapering for this and Districts next week, and while tapering is something new for me (it makes me feel like a caged beast), I felt like I could conquer the course when I was warming up. My back had been bothering me for the past day after I pulled a small muscle on Saturday from bending down to pump up my tires, but with the heat of the day everything felt fine. The wind was up, but I decided to run the 1080 front anyways (more on that later).

My goal was to hit between 350-360 watts for the entire ride. I started out into the headwind and found myself having to throttle back my effort just a bit as it was easy to go too hard. Through the first left hand turn and now a long crosswind slog. I was finding that holding 350 was really starting to hurt.

After that stretch and the subsequent right turn, I knew it wasn't going to be my day. I glanced down at the powermeter and saw 290. Pretty disappointing! There was nothing I could do about it. I guess that's why they call it the race of truth.

At this point the 1-minute man behind me (Craig Roemer) passes me and we've got the tailwind section left. My power was able to come up into the 320 range for the last 10k, but my day was over by that time.

Overall it was a tough day. The wind was stronger than I thought and I should have gone with a less deep front wheel. I was fine with my pacing strategy, but in retrospect the middle 10k was were I fell apart and cracked. The first and last 10k were ok, but the power just wasn't there.

I have some theories about how my body is reacting during the taper period, and we'll see how they play out again next week at Districts. I have a hunch that I don't perform well when I'm so "fresh" and that I need more fatigue in my legs (perhaps a bit more volume and intensity than what I'm currently going through). I'm sticking with the current plan leading into Districts this year. Learning more about how I react to a taper is hopefully going to help me out more next year which is my real goal (2010 Districts TT).

Crazy Dream

I don't have all the details, but here's a summary:

• Clint Eastwood is a bad man. Being his sidekick was awesome.
• Living large in a penthouse high in a San Francisco skyscraper is pretty cool, especially on the 120th floor where you can see the fog roll into the city beneath your feet.
• Tyra Banks in my dream looks the same as she does on America's Next Top Model
• I have no idea why Prince decided to be there too. He's still pretty damn short

I wonder what tonight will hold?

Guardian Angel on the Bike

I've been meaning to write about this for some time, but it's been one of those topics that has escaped when I've sat down to type. Not this time...

My upbringing was Christian, and I consider myself to be a Christian (ok, I'm not going to be an advocate and try to force anything religious down your throat, so bear with me and keep reading). As I've aged, my view of organized religion has changed. I view it more as a "system" of beliefs, and depending on where you were born or who your parents were, your system might be different. And to me, different is good and what makes us unique.


The concept of a guardian angel is unique to Christianity (I think...haven't really researched if this concept applies to Islam or Hindu's). You grow up being taught that there's an angel looking after you, making sure not too much harm comes your way. Some harm will come, but enough to help shape your live. I mean, come on, as a kid, your guardian angel isn't going to stop you from touching the hot stove, let's be real about it.

How does this apply to biking? It's a stretch, but this has happened to me on several occasions. Typically it occurs at least once every two to three months. It always happens under nearly the same circumstances, albeit on different roads. I'll be riding solo out in the country with no one around. No cars, no distractions. Just me and my bike and my thoughts. Sounds like a lot of us who routinely put in the long training miles.

And then, out of the corner of my eye, I get a very brief glimpse of a cyclist going the other way in my peripheral vision. I look back over my shoulder and realize that there wasn't any cyclist there at all. But I swear my mind saw a cyclist going the other way. As this has happened more and more, the idea has formed in my mind that perhaps this is my guardian angel.

Apparently my guardian angel like to cycle too! He usually is wearing a darker color kit, probably to soak in the rays of light to keep him warm during the ride because he's so fast. And he's always in the drops. And he's hammering hard. Funny to think that I know so much by just catching glimpses of him (or it could be a her...don't know yet) out of the corner of my eye. The bike has low profile wheels and the frame as a classic flat top tube. No sloping stuff for this angel.

I don't know when I'll see my guardian angel next, but I'll try to see if he trains with a power meter. I'm sure he's got some insane capabilities!

Photo credit goes to Ken Conley at kwc.org. His pics are top quality and amazing.