Goodbye Cat 5

Though I’ve only got 6 road races this year, I started thinking back on my junior racing and putting together results from 1994/1995 races when I was going to high school in Connecticut. Turns out I did have more than 10 races though not all in recent years. I wasn’t sure that would count for anything but I must’ve made a convincing argument since my upgrade request was approved!

Cat 4 here I come.

Maximal Aerobic Power test

I did Ric Stern’s Maximal Aerobic Power test (MAP) a few weeks ago. Not sure why I’m posting it now but I was cleaning the desktop and found my graphs.

MAP is an easily repeatable test which doesn’t destroy you yet really assesses your fitness quite well. You basically just ramp up the power gradually over a 10-15 minute period until you can’t hold it anymore. The average power of your final minute is your Max aerobic power.

I started at 150 watts and worked up 25 watts per minute until my final minute where I held 471 watts. Functional 1 hour threshold (FTP) is usually 75% of MAP which gives me an estimate of 353 watts, pretty close to the 345 watts I’ve estimated from other methods.

One of the neat parts about the indoor tests on the rollers is how “clean” the data is. It lets me really geek out! Here I calculate the HR-vs-power curve – check out the clear inflection point at 171 bpm which is my anaerobic threshold. Science rules!

Barry Wolfe Crit

Not much to talk about .. woke up early and drove to “the Valley” … warmed up on the rollers …. raced for 30 minutes and got somewhere in the top ten .. drove home.

Crits are kinda boring. Why am doing these again? Oh yeah.. need the races to upgrade. 4 more to go.

EDIT: Power meter readings for crits are absolutely crazy! Being a very “steady state” type of rider, i suppose the sprint-coast-sprint stochastic type riding is good for me.

Murrietta Divide ride

I was a bit roadied out this week and did a lot of mountain biking (including a nice 3.5 hour after work ride with Pete on wednesday). Did Romero twice this week out of mourning .. what was once a fantastic singletrack climb of 3000 ft is now a bulldozed fireroad But still a nice climb, great views and it will regain its glory soon.

Bob and John were down for some epic backcountry riding so we loaded up the camelbacks and tried to get an early start.. instead we ran into the Saturday road ride crowd. We rode the paceline out and peeled off to climb up Romero. Then we dropped to Jameson reservoir and climbed to Murrietta divide with a faint view of Ojai in the distance. Turned around and retraced our steps, adding in a run down Old Pueblo.

My garmin reads 62 miles and 8200 vertical feet. Just over 6 hours of riding. I am toasted … haven’t done a ride that long in a while. We all did fairly well and john got a taste of his first “real” mtb ride. It was a good steady effort the whole way. Good thing I signed up to race a crit tomorrow morning at 8:00. Brilliant, Matt. Here’s some photos…

Ventura Stage Race Day 2

First, a photo of Bob and I, looking particularly dejected, crossing the finish line in yesterdays crit. Thanks for the photos Steve:

Now Sunday’s race, the Circuit. 435 vertical, 5.8 miles X 5 laps. Nice early morning start at 7:10.

Chaos ensued right off the bat as the 2nd place guy and KOM leader took off and led the pack past the first turn .. there was no markings and no course marshall! Most of us turned around and got back on course but not the first two riders (who must’ve been ripping pissed – and rightfully so). And then we noticed that two jackasses lacking any sense of sportsmanship had taken the opportunity to make a break. They were a minute ahead of the field.

The climb was a killer. Bob and I made one attempt to stay away but it was futile. It was a race of attrition , not attacks. We slowly worked the group down to 7 or 8 guys, caught the two early breakers and hammered the final climb. I somehow managed to stick to within 10 wheels of the leaders at the KOM and then caught them on the descent. I had good position in the final straight and pulled off a 2nd place in the sprint. I think it was good for 4th 3rd overall in the GC.

Good times. Many lessons learned. To be successful in road racing I’m going to need to :

• Learn how to stick to people’s wheel and not waste energy bridging little gaps.
• Learn how to accelerate in the midst of a hard threshold effort then settle back into the threshold pace without “burning a match”.
• Learn how to sprint.. I can’t even break 900 watts on the final sprint of a RR and that’s not a very high number considering my size.
• Just general tactics, pacing, timing of sprints, etc.

Anyways, 5 more races to learn on before the Cat 4 upgrade!

Ventura Stage Race Day 1

Here’s a quick recap of the first day of the Ventura Stage Race.

The “crit” was absolutely brutal. This was no flat, four-corners, around the block type crit. The 0.7 mile course had one long gradual uphill through the start/finish area followed by a steep 50 ft vertical power climb, a flat straight then a steep downhill with a sharp corner sweeping us back to the climb again.

Bob and I took 7th and 8th in the final sprint. We let a gap open on the last lap and never quite closed it. Our mid-race time bonuses of 6 and 3 seconds were enough to put us in 4th and 5th respectively. And Bob pulled off a brave attack for the KOM jersey, missing it by a few cm.

It was the closest thing to pure anaerobic interval training I’ve done this season. I was hitting 600+ watts for 15-20 seconds at the top of the climb on every lap then just praying for recovery before I had to sprint out of the corner and do it all over again. One of the most brutal 40 minutes I’ve ever spent on a bike!

Tomorrow it’s day 2, the 28 mile circuit race, 5 laps with 435 feet of vertical per lap. With the time bonuses, hopefully Bob and I can make up our 17 second deficit and pull off a podium spot.

Jesusita fire

This is bad.

The fire is now expanded to many fronts. Thousands of acres. 30k people are evacuated. Air quality is horrible. But we are safe for now – despite homes being destroyed about a mile away. We are hoping that we are not getting evacuated but we’re packing up just in case.

In other news, Joselynes half marathon is tomorrow! Yay .. I for one, am looking forward to biking around in the clean air.

Here we go again…

Didn’t we just go through this a few months ago? Fire season started early this year.

The Jesusita fire started at around 2:00 in San Roque canyon, right along the Jesusita trail to Inspiration point. I had planned on joining the Multiuse Trails Coallition for a little maintainance party on that very trail this afternoon. Bummer – its my fav nearby mtb loop. Lets hope the fire gets contained quickly as I’ve got many friends living right below it!

The best place for updates : twitter of course (with the #jesusitafire tag).

Idyllwild 09

Another great weekend of racing, this time up in the unique socal mountain town of Idyllwild.

Friday we drove out to jos’ parents cabin in Idyllwild. As always we have a great time visiting them, as does Japhy who gets to play with his girlfriend Rosie the 9 pound poodle.

Saturday was the XC race and we had 55 degree slightly overcast weather .. my ideal conditions. I had never ridden the course or anywhere around Idyllwild/Hurkey Creek so this was all new to me. I studied the course maps and descriptions the best I could but its nothing like being there.

Suffice to say that these are probably some of the finest trails I have ever had the pleasure of riding of mountain bike on. They were softish hardpack, twisty, technical but smooth, steep grinding climbs, fast singletrack with tricky rock drop-offs. It was paradise for MTBs. I was half in race mode, and half thinking to myself how much I wanted these trails to just keep going forever. And from what many of the locals told me, they do! I’ve gotta get back here for some riding…

The top 4 Cat 1s (me, two guys from the younger age group and 1 guy from the 45-49) were neck and neck for the whole race. The fatigue in my legs was apparent as two of them gapped me at the super steep section of Southridge road and the other on the final climb up the “demoralizer”. No matter – still pulled off a 1st place in the 30-34. And the granite trophies and cash purse were prizes unrivaled in any MTB race I’ve seen to date!

Big Rob won his Cat 3 race. Dave L. pulled off 3rd place in his Cat 2 group despite the technical descents which threatened his sanity. And Aaron Olsen hung with the big dogs to pull off a 4th in the pros.

Sunday was the Super D. Though it started late, like 2 hours late, I was content to take a practice run and hang out and shoot the shit. I didn’t really know what to expect but I pulled off a pretty good performance – 16:04 for the 5 mile downhill. It was an intense experience – pure lung searing, leg burning, all out effort coupled with difficult technical challenges. I was flowing pretty well, didn’t screw up any lines but took it pretty conservatively as my 29er hardtail geometry is not suited to high speed carving. I’ve determined that my Mamasita likes going uphill much better than down. An awesome experience. A+++; would ride again. I think the Super D might be an event that I might really get into in the future .. we’ll have to see how it fits in. EDIT: Looks like I pulled of 4th place in a close race!

For now, I think I’ll rest. My recovery from Saturday’s XC was abysmal. I am coming down with some gnarly head cold that involves using my head as storage for large volumes of green mucus. And I am just wiped out and sick of traveling every weekend. Time for a break…. but i will not turn into some beer-swilling sloth over the next few weeks. Rather i plan on become a beer-swilling, cross-training, base-building machine. I’ll just see if I can build a nice base to peak for the 9/26 US Cup unification race.

Psyched about Idyllwild

Looking forward to this weekend … The course looks awesome with lots of technical climbing, 30 miles, nearly 3 hours and possibly just as epic as the counting coup. Assuming my string of bad bike luck is over (torn sidewall and broken spoke on two separate rides today), I am feeling good and ready to go.

Looks like a small but familiar group will be battling for the podium in the Cat 1 30-34…

Seeing as how you guys represent a large percentage of my total readership, i’ll just say good luck and see you up there!