I Want More Bela!

The Olympic coverage this year has been pretty good across the multiple channels (NBC, USA, CNBC, MSNBC). But for me one of the surprises of the games is not an athlete. It's Bela Karolyi.

Gymnastics is cool as they do stuff I could never dream of, but when the coverage cut to the color commentary of Bela, that was a defining moment for me. The passion this guy brings to his sport is unquestionably high.

I found a quote from him that seems pretty appropriate, "“My attitude is never to be satisfied, never enough, never.” The same can be said for his Olympic on-camera commentary. Bravo Bela!

Falling in Love Again

As I'm watching the Olympic USA v. China men's basketball game this morning I'm falling in love again with the game of basketball all over again. Call me old-school, but I love it when you see a group of great individuals play true team ball. It's nice to see it from the boys in the stars and bars. This makes me want to go out and shoot some hoops at halftime.

Patterson Pass RR M35+ 4/5

Having secured my upgrade at Fort Ord last week and wanting to give back to my fellow M35+ 4/5 teammates I lined up for this race and had one thing in mind. I wanted to push myself hard on the front and make sure Allen and Joseph stayed protected in the wind behind me.

I led our group up the first two-thirds of the climb and put in a very, very hard pace. Finally when I pulled off the guy behind me said, "Is somebody paying you to do this?!?". All I could do was smile and let him know there was more of where that came from. I stayed in the top 10 going over the top of the hill. The power data shows I was going about 7-8% above my threshold max for the 23 minutes of the climb. The wind was howling and it seemed that we didn't drop many folks on this first climb of Patterson.

On the descent I got back to the front and picked some fast lines. 38+mph for a few miles was fun, but then we turned right and headed up Flynn. I stayed at the front and pushed the pace again. At this point I was hoping that my teammates were finding good wheels to hide behind because this was starting to hurt. Near the top a group of climbers attacked and as we crested we were down to about 30 riders. I think this climb caught a lot of folks off guard and they were dropped.

The 90* left hand turn just past the top of Flynn caught quite a few guys off guard. Our lead group was ok, but from the stories and photos I've seen online it looks like it was tricky. On across and over Hwy 580 and down Carroll to Altamont.

I decided to get back to the front going down Carroll and when I hit Altamont the tailwind was a nice change. Good thing I thought about gearing as I dropped my chain into my 11t in the back and started to motor up the slight grade at 30+mph. With the wind on your back it's amazing how fast you can climb up the slight rise on Altamont before the long gradual descent.

I traded a few pulls with others at the front and as we came up to the right turn onto Midway, the pace slowed. Not wanting to take my finger off the "pain" button, I decided to get back to the front. As I moved forward I said to myself, "Here comes the pain!". Not sure if anybody else heard me say that, but if they did I'm sure they would have like to have slapped me silly.

The rollers on Midway hurt and I was not really looking forward to the second lap. As we came through the start/finish, I looked back and Allen was still with our group of about 15 guys. I rolled back to Allen and let him know that I was pretty spent and that I would just be following wheels on the second ascent of Patterson. The pace this time was a bit more realistic (only a 322 watt average, lap #1 was a 381 watt average).

Our group crested and we had only lost one guy on the climb. By this point my work on lap #1 had caught up to me and I was feeling pretty spent. On the last ascent of Flynn there was a slight acceleration near the bottom of the climb and I wasn't able to respond. Nothing left in the legs as they were about to cramp, the HR didn't want to respond either. My body had shut down. In looking over the data it's not too surprising. I had been on the front for almost an hour and a half going at 95% of my threshold with a ton of climbing.

I was hoping Allen was hanging on with the rest of the lead pack as they went out of sight. I held my place and rolled across the line looking dead (felt dead too). Given the effort and the course, this was the toughest race I've had this season. It was good to put in an effort like this as I think it will be the kind of work I'll need to do for my M35+ 1/2/3 teammates when I upgrade.

On the Mend

So my heavy week of 300 miles of training a week or so ago caught up to me after Fort Ord. I've come to learn over the past year that when my body is getting super fatigued I get head colds. On Sunday I felt the cold hit me like a brick while at a kids birthday party. Five days later and now it's finally passed. After a few kilos of Vitamin C/E and some meds, I'll be getting back on the bike.

At least this time I felt it come on, shut things down and didn't try to ride it out. Last time this happened I rode through it and eventually developed a sinus infections. The legs haven't felt this fresh in over a month so who knows what's going to happen at Patterson Pass RR tomorrow. Hopefully something better than green snoggers.

Long & Lean

6-week checkup for Taylor reveals the obvious: 50% percentile for weight 95% for height Hmm, go figure...

One serious turnaround

If you thought the turnarounds at Cantua RR might have been tight, check out this picture from Fort Ord on the second out and back turnaround. No way to carry speed through this corner...a good place to practice your track stands. Photo credits to Steve Anderson...thanks for sending this my way.

NCNCA (Fort Ord) RR M35+ 4/5 Race Report

Distance: 41 miles (each lap was ~10.2 miles)
Teammates: Allen Wulczynski, Jonathan Racine, Doug Aldrich, Jeff Farnsworth, Chris Soukup
Conditions: Perfect with 5-7mph wind from the WNW
Result: 2nd of 35?

I was on the hunt for my last remaining upgrade points after a near miss at Watsonville a few weeks ago. We had a very strong team of guys put together for this race and with the small field I had a hunch that we could tactically dominate this race. Since I hadn't done this race before the more experienced guys from the race team gave some great advice leading up to the event. This course is full of rollers which you can easily power over and one big climb that jacks up for the first 0.2 miles, then backs off a bit for the next 0.1 mile before jacking up again for the remaining 0.2 miles. This climb takes a little bit over 3 minutes in total to ascend. Jeff put in a nice little dig at the front to lead us up through a portion of the hill. A few guys burned a match or two responding to his attack.

The goal was to protect Chris and I with others attacking where possible. The first lap started out pretty slow. We had full road to race on except for the two out-and-back sections (which only encompassed about 3 miles of each lap). As the course was new to most racers, lap one was more like a recon ride...just seeing where the potholes were on the road. However, there was one incident on the descent from the big climb. A BBC rider (I think) somehow got tangled up near the front with somebody and hit the deck hard. Too bad for him, but lucky for me and a few others, he bounced to the left and everybody got around him safely to the right. Amazingly, he was able to get up, brush himself off and re-attach a few miles later.

All along this first lap, and subsequently on laps two and three, I kept a keen eye out for potential rollers where an attack might succeed. But I got a sense that the final climb would decide the race. Back to the action...

On lap two Allen and Jeff went to work attacking off the front, but we lost Doug to a flat. From my viewpoint at the back of a slowly attrition'ing lead group (we had lost Jonathan too along the way, but he was a trooper to stick it out with his injuries from yesterday's training ride) we were able to put in attack after attack with success. It was an SJBC yo-yo at the front! Our attackers never got too far out of reach, but those that bridged up definitely spent themselves and when Allen and Jeff would be caught, the did just enough work to make others riders spend themselves and those chasing in the lead group work hard to catch them.

At some point during the third lap I rolled up to Chris and he said he wasn't feeling too good. That put a bit of pressure on me, but I was starting to feel better as the race got longer. We climbed the hill again and somehow a Webcor guy rolled off the front. I didn't realize it, but he did have about 30-40 seconds on our group. SJBC didn't put in any effort to catch him which raised the frustration of one rider in particular. (I'll let Chris add more about this...).

Our lead group was now down to around 15 guys, and we were getting neutralized by different groups as we were descending to the big climb. We hit the climb, still not having caught the Webcor rider, but he was only 50 yards up the road. Our pace was definitely the hardest this time up and the race was on! I was in the top 5 and determined to hold that position. Out of nowhere around halfway up the climb I saw Chris coming up on my left. So much for him not feeling good. I let him roll by and allowed Russ (Family Center Cycling) to latch on. Chris was on fire and you could tell he wanted to catch the Webcor guy before the top of the hill. We poured on the watts and hammered up the remaining 0.2 miles of the climb. Webcor was caught just before the peak and he was toast.

As we crested and rode across a windy exposed false flat plateau before our downhill plunge back to the rollers, I put in my attack. I hadn't looked back on the climb to see what was happening behind, but I knew that if I took out my little hammer and went hard it might cause some chaos. With hammer in hand, I threw it down. A small group followed: Russ (who I had been marking the whole race), Jeremy from Eden Cycles who is very strong and Chris. I let up just a bit to let them latch on, then glanced back. We had separated ourselves and now were were going to kill it on the descent.

This was a fun descent as we had the whole road and the turns could be taken at full speed. I actually spun out my gearing (50 front, 12t in the rear...138rpm) going down the hill, but the damage was done. We had 4 very motivated guys and only 3 miles to go. We all worked hard over the remaining rollers to extend our break.

With 1km to go, we eased up a bit. Chris was pretty spent and I was just happy to be in the winning break since I knew just rolling across the line would give me my upgrade points. I let Jeremy and Russ lead us into the small climb at 200m to go. Jeremy jumped, and Russ looked back at me. I didn't respond, but when I saw that Russ wasn't going to go, I jumped. At this point Jeremy was too far up to be caught, but I was able to secure second without any issue. Chris rolled across in fourth.

The four of us congratulated each other after the race and debriefed. Apparently we just pulled away from folks on the climb. Nice to know I can lug my large frame up with some of these climbers.

Now for some power data:
Overall: Average power - 251 watts, Norm power - 325 watts

Lap 1/Lap 2/Lap 3/Lap 4

• Average power (watts) - 235/249/241/281
• Norm power (watts) - 323/323/308/344
• Big climb watts (average, not norm) - 464/444/452/473
• Big climb w/kg - 5.04/4.83/4.91/5.14
• The final climb was 10 seconds faster than our previous best up that hill