Wow, so after all my whining about my back on Friday….I had a great Friday, Saturday, Sunday’s worth of riding and racing.

As mysteriously as the back pain came, it just as mysteriously went away.

Friday night, sometime after I had composed the previous post, I slipped out for a ride with Jon S and CJ over at Hains Point, just to loosen up the legs for Saturday’s race.  It was the perfect pace, just toodling around chatting, nothing extraordinary about the ride until the very end.  For most of the ride, the sky was unusually dark and ominously cloudy, but sometimes a dark cloudy sky is just a dark cloudy sky and passes by harmlessly….so until it starts sprinkling, I don’t even think too much of it (except to always have a little ziploc baggie to stash my iphone in).  Anyway, after peeling off from the other two guys and heading home, I noticed the wind started to pick up and I ended up with the craziest little tailwind heading from the 395 bridge along the Mt Vernon trail up toward the airport.  As I was riding along effortlessly at 23-4mph, I looked over my shoulder and saw black and brown tornado-like clouds.  I was clearly on the leading edge of the storm.  It was just as though I was trying to outrun it.  As I neared the airport, a jet slowly descended in to land (the bike path comes within 50 feet of the runway with only a little chain link fence in between, so the jets literally fly less than 100ft above your head when they land)….but, just he passed over my head, maybe 80-100ft up, his wings started rocking back and forth like crazy and seconds later, the pilot gunned the engines full on and pulled back hard up into the sky.  It was actually pretty cool to see.  Probably not for the passengers who probably felt like they were on a roller coaster ride…but it was cool for me.  So after seeing this pilot respond to the storm that was pushing me home, I figured it’d be a matter of just a few minutes before I’d get blasted by hail and driving rain.  I crossed my fingers and started hammering as much as I could….watching the dust blow around the bike path and the brown clouds bear down on Crystal City.  I kept waiting for that first little pitter patter of drops before the merciless wind and sideways rain…..hoping I’d have just a minute more.  I got within 100 meters of my building and felt those first few drops…..and after really gassing it to get in under the awning of my building…..the rain started to pour, and sure enough…an absolutely brutal maelstrom raged for the next 30 minutes.  I looked out my apartment window at the tree limbs snapping and the crazy wind howling….so grateful I didn’t have s soaked bike to prep for the next day’s race.

So besides escaping Mom nature’s fury, I was also very very happy with the way my back felt on Friday.  After being achy all day at work and feeling 90, I went for that ride and felt more like the [slightly less than] 30 year old I am.  That gave me a lot of confidence for the following day’s race…..not so much in terms of fitness, but at least in terms of pain-free competition.  I still found a reason to self medicate with a few Belgian ales before bedtime however….

….which of course meant that I woke up at 5am on Saturday extremely dehydrated and not all that enthused about the 2.5hr drive I had ahead of me.  Its always those first 10 minutes out of bed that are the hardest.  I can’t help but ask myself: why am I about to spend my Saturday morning in the car?  Oh that’s right, I’m driving 200 miles each way so I can pay to ride my bike 25 miles…..that’s why.  So I got in the car and made the tired drive up to Lancaster county.  I have to say, I really dig the Lancaster area.  Its basically like a mini-Belgium.  Its got the same kind of rolling topography, epic farm field vistas (not the boring flat Indiana corn field vistas, but more the Belgian kind that rationalize my pilgrimages).  To top it off, the sky was a perfect blue mixed with cumulonimbus clouds….the kind that would make for a great generic desktop wallpaper landscape.  I also got the timing down. I wasn’t there 2 hours early and sitting around on my hands (like previous races), instead I was a perfect 1 hour early, just enough time to get my registration packet, chug some more water and coffee, and do my 30 minutes of warm-up on the trainer.  I lined up at the start and realized that the field was unusually large for a Cat 5-Only race - there were nearly 50 of us.  So right from the start, I knew it’d be a challenge to stay in a good position for the finish.  With a strict center line rule, the entire race was a fight to stay mid-pack or better.  There were 4, 6 mile laps with lots of twists and turns and a finish that opened up into 2 lanes for the last 1km.

The first two laps were pretty mellow and I tried as hard as possible to stay really really conservative.  I saved as much energy as possible and tucked in behind people with the least sketchy bike handling.  Mid-way through the 3rd lap, I started to work toward the front.  I jumped on the outside and launched myself up to the top 5-6 guys and started to ride pretty aggressively to secure a spot in the top 10.  Toward the end of the 3rd lap, 3 riders on a local team made a coordinated break and I jumped in with them.  Being without any teammates, I figured if I just mooched off them and refused to do any work, it’d maybe get us caught earlier than if I pitched in, but I’d at least be toward the front of the peleton on the final lap when we’d most likely get caught.  Well, we got caught pretty quickly going into the last lap, and so I was left fighting pretty hard for position in the last 3-4 miles of that lap.  Just before the finish, about 1.5km out, there was a little hill that spread out the field on every lap…..every lap except the last one that is.  I was really hoping that the hill would enable me (sitting somewhere around 15-20th wheel at that point) to jump on a strong rider’s wheel and leech myself a lead-out.  On every other lap, it looked like that would be a perfectly viable strategy.  Unfortunately, the field remained much too clustered for me shoot into a good position and instead, the top 20-25 riders (top half of the field) just went nuts into a totally chaotic and extended sprint about 1km out.   Keep in mind that 1km is where folks like Cavendish and Pettachi start sprinting for the line….NOT Cat 5 racers.  It was a really weird finish because nobody appeared to have coordinated anything with anyone else, on behalf of themselves or otherwise.  It was just this long drawn out sprint with everyone for themselves from whatever position they were in after the hill about 1km out.  So I sprinted my balls off and managed to move up to 11th place, totally fighting the wind, with presumably horrible form.  If there were 2 or 3 riders working together well, they probably could have delivered the world’s worst Cat 5 sprinter to the line for the win.  95% of my team was busy running a Maryland race that our club sponsors and so wanted to race, this was my only last minute option - hence the lack of any team to coordinate with.  So anyway, I can live with 11th out of 47-8 riders.  Not my best day, but not my worst either.  One thing is clear though.  I really “need” to get a race bike if I’m to make this a regular thing.  The Lemond, as money as it is on nice long training rides (i.e. super cushy and compliant), it felt like a wet noodle in the sprint on Saturday.  It was the first time that I ran the bike through a 110% effort at peak power and it wasn’t pretty.  Since Saturday, I have been poking around on eBay for a cheap used carbon or aluminum frame - something really basic, not a long term frame by any stretch…..I’m thinking a Fuji Team or something on that order.  Just something to race the rest of 09 and maybe the spring of 2010.  I’ll post up some possible frames this week, maybe tomorrow’s post

oh and yesterday was indeed Ride 126, and was pretty much just a recovery spin around D.C.  Ok, enough blogging for now….more on the pending frame swap soon!

Race day.

My foray into the road racing scene began on Sunday morning.  After years of training on the road in one capacity or another (usually preparing for mountain bike race-season), I finally got myself to the start line for a legit road race.

My first impression?  I had more fun in my first small town crit than I’ve had in 90% of the mountain races I’ve done (big and small) over the past few years.  That being said, its really really hard to compare the two styles since they are just so different.  Its also pretty hard to top 12/24hr mtn races where you have a team format….any race where you can hang out and drink beer during the race, well that’s just unbeatable.

I had gone out on a limb registering for a race located 3.5 hours from Arlington with a 9am start, so Oksana and I decided to just make a weekend of it so I could avoid the ridiculously early drive on Sunday morning.  Instead we drove down to Virginia beach on Saturday morning, did the “walk on the beach” thing despite the abnormally low temperatures, and basically just hung out all day.  We had some pretty solid seafood at a little grill on the beach Saturday night and then got to bed early in a hotel just 3 miles from the course in Suffolk, VA.  I couldn’t help but feel slightly ridiculous for staying in a hotel for a Cat 5 crit…..but whatever.

I’d like to say that I wasn’t really that nervous, but I woke up before the alarm went off at 6:30 and had some serious butterflies going on.  I suppose if I had a more casual approach to the race and didn’t expect to be at least a little bit competitive, I would have been able to relax.  But for whatever reason, I was putting a lot of pressure on myself and didn’t enjoy my continental breakfast at all.

There were about 30 racers lining up at 9am, and it felt like a good number for how small the course was (about 1/2 mile).  The race was only 45 minutes long, so it felt like the time was flying by.  I had read so many posts on various forums about proper strategy and how to properly conserve energy and so forth, but despite all the info floating around in my head….I somehow found a way to justify chasing down several breakaways even though they were very early on and posted virtually no threat (no primes) on the small flat course.  I was flying around the course with my face in the wind at 28mph and my heart rate absolutely jacked.   Yeah, not so smart.  After the second time sprinting out from the pack and making a spectacle of myself, I decided to play it cool and just hang back.

I was pleasantly surprised at how well the pack was navigating the corners.   Even though the course was small, and there wasn’t much room to setup for the corners, the yo-yo effect was pretty minimal, even when I found myself toward the back.  Most times I looked down at my computer, I was seeing mid 20s - even in the corners - so the pace was decent.

Here are a couple race shots:

The above is a stretch just after the finish where it would thin out a bit before the sharpest turn.

Notice the yellow dudes, they were on one of the teams that had 3-4 guys in the race, among several teams.  Green guy is one of the 5-6 “fat frogs” racers (I gotta say I have to question the seat pack thing in a race, let alone a crit….wtf????)

Here’s another pic of me again, trying to look cool.

So, I watched the laps tick down, and when we were at 4, then 3, then 2, I started to move up behind one of the stronger guys paired up with one of his teammates.

We had already gone around damn near 40 times, so I had the turns really dialed by the time the last few laps started ticking down.  I knew that with the minimal distance between the finish line and the last corner, it was gonna be key to be one of the first through that last turn.

That thinking was my undoing.

Before that last corner, I sprinted around the “Fat Frogs” riders (2 teammates I was drafting on the last lap) and went into the final turn in the lead.  I had this really sweet surge of confidence that came about 11 seconds too soon.  I actually thought to myself “holy shit, I have this thing locked up,” “no way they can carry the same kind of speed I just did through that corner”.

I was wrong.

Here I am about 20 meters from the finish line, you can see the fat frogs guy passing me on my left (I had some pretty shoddy sprint form as well)

I ended up taking 4th.  The fact that 3 guys on local teams caught me at the line was no coincidence.  I both, A) laid off the gas in my moment of self glory and B) had no chance of out sprinting the #2 fat frog that probably had 1/2 the distance in the wind that I did.

Anyway, I learned some pretty huge lessons, and have never been more excited for the next race (this Saturday in Lancaster, PA).  Race report #2 to follow soon thereafter.