Back from San Francisco

We spent 4 days walking around the town and eating sushi, just as anticipated. There is a great sushi place in Japantown called Isobune where plates of sushi are placed on little boats that are floating in front of customers.



Take all you want! We ate there twice.

All the walking justified all the eating so luckily my weight is the same as it was before the trip. Walking up Lombard street felt like it burned 1,000 calories by itself!


My first ride back was the Team Dayton Tuesday crit. Unfortunately for me the grass at the park was just mowed. Last year just after the mowing, I couldn't breathe and had to leave the park asap. Same thing happened last night as I lasted 10 minutes of racing until I felt like my chest was going to explode. Ouch.

Next up is a 4 am drive to the other side of Indianapolis on Saturday for the Monrovia time trial. This is my last (and only!) shot at a 40k prior to the state championships.

#17 Tuesday crit #4

Due to it being a really nice day in the area, there was probably the best turnout I've seen in three years at the Tuesday training crit. There were 25 or so people in the A race, and probably that many in the B race. Team mate Dave showed up and was the instigator the whole time. Dude is strong, taking off constantly. I spent time all over the peloton, covering, chasing, recovering, bridging. Probably the best I've felt all year.

I had a couple of near misses where I nearly hit a kid walking on the course. I swerved only to nearly take out another team mate. On the final lap, some knucklehead dove corner number 1 on me to nearly take ME out. After killing myself to catch back up with the group, I had nothing for the sprint. All in all, it was a good effort and I finished mid field.

22.02mi
55:36
TSS 86.5 (0.966)
Norm PWR 271
Pwr 0 1028 234
HR 109 188 173
Sp 7.8 33.7 23.8

No more updates for a few days as we're off to San Francisco to eat sushi over the holiday weekend!

Next up - Monrovia TT on June 2nd.

#16 Lancaster

Going in with hopes high after a couple of good weeks at the training crit, I end up OTB in relative short order. Within about a minute of the start of the race, I had 2 efforts over 900 watts.

31:36 minutes that I was in it
12.47mi
Norm Pwr 288
TSS 55.7 (1.028 if)
Power 0 927 267
Hr 110 184 173
Sp 9.2 30.3 23.7

Leaving the race with relative depression, I'm grasping at straws to find something positive out of the experience. At least it was a nice day out.

The Powertap/cycling peaks software combo has been a humbling experience so far. Of the four watts/kg (1 sec, 1 min, 5 min, ft) entries on the power profile, I "all the way up" to cat 4 on just one of them (5 minute). That means I need to get stronger and lose weight!

Race #15 - AKA training crit #3

The wind out of the south took it's toll on the fastest part of the course, hence my top speed of 30.0mph. A two man break went early - 2nd lap early. I was getting ready to bridge up and thought "nah, it's way too early to waste that kind of energy'. D'oh - they stayed out the whole race.

Distance - 21.29m
Time - 56:09
Power 0 940 246
HR - stopped working after my warm up...?
Speed 8.7 30 22.7
TSS 90.6 (0.984)
Normalized Power 275

Yesterday I had my 2nd highest 20 minute power reading since I've had the Powertap.

Next up - Lancaster Grand Prix, my first real crit of the season. I'll be in the 3/4 race.

Race #14 Tuesday Crit #2

This week's crit was much nicer than last week. Just a slight breeze and warm temperatures. The A group had about 20 people at the start. This week I fell OTB a few times but was able to make my way back to the field each time. I tried for a prime not realizing that a guy way ahead of me was in my race (two races are run at the same time). The pack came flying by and I thought that was the end of my day but I was able to make it back. Finished in 6th as I mistakenly led the 2nd to last lap and ended up cramping on the last lap a little.

55:21
power 0 1041 238
HR 101 191 172
Sp 8.7 35.6 24.8 (now that's more like it)
TSS 89 (0983)
Norm power 275

Race #13 Wilkesville to Wilkesville

When I got home, thanks to the Powertap and Cycling Peaks software, I was able to pinpoint exactly what was going on when I got dropped. I spent 5 minutes averaging too high of a wattage and that jacked my heart rate to LT and my legs blew up. I was blaming bad finishes on this and or that, but the simple fact is that I'm not fit enough to hang.

Pictures from the last time trial

Warm up

Hurting!

Spoils!

Credit goes to Noah Hutson
Other pictures at the address below.
http://s205.photobucket.com/albums/bb150/colavitaohiocycling/

Race #12 Tuesday crit

Last night was the first Tuesday crit of the season put on by Team Dayton. Although there were only about 8-10 guys in the 1/2/3 race it didn't mean it wasn't a good workout. There was a strong wind from the south that made half of the 0.8mi course pretty rough.

50 minutes +2 laps

56:09
Power 0 943 228
HR 103 187 173
Sp 7.4 30.9 20.8 (low!)
TSS 81.7 (0.934)
Norm PWR 261

Now I need to figure out what this all means.

Race #11 Colavita TT #2

I'll have to wait until the official times are posted until I know what it was, but it was close to the time I had last month. Due to Scott Spees not being there I improved one place to 2nd. Won a silver medal and some pasta.

Monday update - I beat my previous time by all of 3 seconds. 30 minutes, 28 seconds.

The headwind going out was depressing and near demoralizing. I found myself in my 21 gear (lowest on the cassette, but still on the bi ring) doing 18mph at one point. Ouch! Coming back was nice and fun where I hit 34mph on one stretch with the tailwind.

It looks like next week the pain really starts as I head to Monrovia for a 40k test run. Double ouch!

Race #10, Vandervort's Corner

Too much like every other road race this year so far. However, this was my first race with the powertap. Now I know exactly how much energy I waste (and it's a ton)

Next up is the 2nd Greenville TT of the year.

My bike

Here it is! Just installed is the new back wheel (American Classic Sprint 350), Powertap and my time trial front wheel (HED Alps).

A little different

Owning my own design service business has opened my eyes even wider than I thought they could be. Back in my heyday of being a "CAD drafter" I took pride in that my projects were done on time, with as few billable hours possible. It was a contest for a few of us old schoolers to see how few hours it would take us to complete a full set of construction drawings. Every now and then, we would have to work in someone else's drawing and 99.9% of the time it would be EXACTLY how I would have drawn it.

It seems that a shift happened in the last several years. Good drafting practices are the exception now. More often, it's up to engineers to "lower" themselves to drafter status and the end result is (usually) shoddy work. Why do Pipeworks when you can just draw it by hand, take 10x longer to do it, and have the data be "dumb", when you can just bill the client for the length of time it takes? Sorry if you don't know what my reference to Pipeworks means, it's a Land Desktop application to draw storm or sanitary pipes in a plan & profile sheet.

That's just one of many examples of what happens when people simply don't care about the work. Pride in having your drawing correct and to standard is gone. CEO's and Presidents have a misconception that a $10/hr employee will either care about his job or produce good work just to avoid paying a more experienced drafter $20/hr+. What they fail to realize is if a $10/hr clock watcher takes 10x longer to do the work, the budget goes out the window.

It seems pretty simple to me sitting over here. Is there something I'm missing?

Race #9 Deer Creek

It was windy, ok? At one point after getting dropped I was pushing as hard as I could only to see 10mph on the computer. Stupid computer!

Big ups to Alex for taking the cat 3 win!

Ohio Cup races announced

http://ohiocycling.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=12


I'm looking at the Masters 3/4/5 races as I'm certainly not ready for the 1/2/3. Hopefully this goes well for the newly formed Ohio Cycling Association.

Race #8 OVR Lynchburg

Today saw one of our guys hit the pavement hard in the 1/2/3's. Racing in the rain on a curving course with 40 people in one 12 foot lane scares me. There, I said it. I gave up. Luckily, no cramping!

Race #7 - Colavita Time Trial

3rd place - I won a medal and some pasta. More to come when I wake up. Need coffee. Lynchburg tomorrow. The results are in and I finished 5th overall out of 22. I liked that course. A little rolling but nothing major. The chip/seal sucked and I stayed real close to the yellow line where there was standard asphalt pavement. Luckily, there was not much traffic.

Race #6 the other Hueston woods, or was it?

OVR ran the race clockwise, just like Tym the week before. Result? I get dropped in the exact same place. 2nd climb of the 2nd lap. I need to fix my leg asap.

The good news is that Allen won the cat 3 race for us!

Next up - Greenville TT (Saturday) and Lynchburg (Sunday).

Race #5 Heuston Woods

Another chilly day in this part of the world. Team Columbus put on this week's Heuston Woods race and OVR's version will be next week. This time around we did the course clockwise which I've never done before. I think that way is actually harder. The rollers aren't as steep, but they seem longer. It looked like about 30 or so riders started the 3/4 race. I felt really good up until one of the rollers on the 2nd lap (of 6) where I cramped, yet again. I'm not understanding this. I'm cramping in places where I've never cramped before, as well as all the usual places! Not wanting to DNF like last week, I kept going and eventually hooked up with Bret of Darkhorse and a MOB Squad rider and we short pulled our way around the loop a couple more times. The MOB rider stopped with one lap to go and Bret and myself finished the race pulling each other along. I'm glad he was there or else I probably would have ditched from the cramping.

Another day, another called off race. Today's St Leon race was cancelled due to "miscommunication" whatever that means. That makes three races so far this year that I've scheduled that has been cancelled (well, I self cancelled one time trial due to freezing rain!)

Next up, Heuston Woods....AGAIN!

Race #4 Reily

The weather was perfect and the fields were large for this early in the year. It was so nice that I actually got a bit of a sunburn on my face. I didn't expect that! The cat 3 race had 40 people with 5 of those being Project Velo riders. Several Anthem and Team Dayton riders were out there as well. The Reily course only had one little climb per loop. The fourth time up it I realized that I didn't take my Enduralytes as my whole lower body cramped up. I was able to make back to the field, but right after the first train tracks there was an accelleration and having just caught back up, I was toast. I finished the lap limping slowly back to the parking lot.

Next up - Acton Lake on Saturday and St Leon Sunday (ouch!)

There we go....

Snowed out! Apparently, it decided to snow ONLY on the race course and no where else in the county. Everything was ok at my house except the cold, but there was snow on road in Germantown. One road was closed due to high water, that was actually a mud pit. After driving through that section I was wishing I had my wife's cross bike. Yuck. Then I found out that the race has been cancelled. Ended up spending three hours on the trainer Sunday - yeehaa.

Let's hope the conditions are better this Sunday in Reily. It's supposed to be 50 and raining. Great.