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.

Here we go!

This Sunday marks the beginning of the season for most of us in Southwest Ohio. It's the first race of the OVR (Ohio Valley Racing) series. OVR is putting on eight races on the next nine Sundays as part of their annual spring series. New for this year is Germantown and Rabbit Hash as well as the standbys of Reily, Deer Creek, Vandervort's Corner, St. Leon, Hueston Woods and Lynchburg. It will be interesting to see who has done their homework over the winter. Good luck to everyone out there!

Tifosi Optics

My Tifosi Forza's arrived yesterday! It's necessary for me to wear prescription glasses when I ride so when the option to get a new pair of shades came around I jumped on it.

For the previous few years I have used Oakley prescription glasses exclusively (M-Frames and Valves). M-Frames have the Rx part integrated into a standard lens. You can look at pictures of Bobby Julich or Tyler Hamilton when he was with CSC to see what they looked like. Well, those glasses cracked on me twice and were repaired under warranty once. Then I bought a pair of Valves. Those have been nice since they have flown off my face in wrecks a few times and are still gold. The only bad thing about them is that the frame is pretty thick and it's hard to see what's behind you when you turn your head in a race.

Enter the Forza. The first thing I noticed was how light they are. Not light as in "it's built cheap", but light as in "wow, cool!". They seem like a solid pair of glasses. I'm not sure how they'll handle flying off my face at 25 miles per hour, but I can always hope to never find out. I tried them on our frigid training ride yesterday. Perfect! Great visability. There is one thing that bothers me about wearing some sunglasses while riding and that is the air flowing through and hitting the corner of my eyes. That's not the case with these. We did some rollers yesterday and hit over 40 mph with no problems.

Yaaargh

Race #4, Alexandria, was postponed until later due to the weather. That will make OVR's Germantown as the next race on my list. Frosty Toes is this Saturday, but it's been decided that previewing Germantown's course is better use of my time. It's probably best that I not race in my condition anyway...

This has been a bad training week. Yesterday's cruise interval workout was stopped short due to my inability to maintain wattage. Today I was able to manage 35 whole minutes on the trainer before cashing it in. I do plan to hook up the Orca and pedal around a bit while watching Hockey tonight though. My legs feel like sandbags and there's just no zip in my pedalling. Last week I pushed it hard through my intervals and I think it caught up with me.

On a good note, I actually rode on the road yesterday! Albeit a short ride, but since it was 44 degrees and sunny, I had to get out there.

Race #3 Mentor

Where did the sunshine go? Today's race was probably in the low 20's for temps. With a low turnout the 1/2/3 field was combined with the 3/4's. Three shirts, armwarmers, tights, leg warmers and shorts kept me sort of comfortable. Two gloves on each hand helped as well. My feet were bad off though. I opted for the lycra shoe covers and left the neoprene ones at home. Yeah, that was prett stupid.

My race started bad and got worse. One small hill on the course and I got dropped. It didn't help that I had to avoid a one man crash at the base of the hill, but that's no excuse, that's what I get for being behind him. Spent the rest of my race in an attempt to time trial my way back to the field. Thirsty, I reached for a drink to find both water bottles had frozen on me. That was it. Mentor is an out and back course so I made my own personal turnaround early and called it a day. 25 miles into the drive home I could actually feel my feet again.

Next up - Alexandria (if the weather cooperates!!)

Race #2 Indoor Time Trial

Race #2 of the season is in the bag. After my longest volume week (in miles) since last March, it was no surprise that I was pretty tired coming into Sunday's race. Since it wasn't an important race or anything, the best bet was to keep training through. This coming week is a "rest" week anyway.

A month ago my time was 16:05 with a Computrainer wattage of 305 average.
This week my time was 16:35 with an average of 297 watts. I am also 4 pounds lighter than a month ago, but I'm not sure that got factored into the system.

Next up (hopefully) Mentor! It's supposed to get warm late this week and by warm I mean 30 degrees. Anything above high 20's and I'll race.

Training on the trainer

Ride the trainer much? In the 20 rides I've done this year all of them have been on the trainer, including the first race of the year! When I bought my first trainer it was difficult to ride for even 30 minutes at a time due to boredom. Today, some of my scheduled rides call for riding up to 3 hours and with the weather as it is, it's necessary to ride the trainer. Getting over the boredom is a hot topic this time of year. Training plans get ditched for some simply because they can't handle long hours riding inside. Here are some of the tricks I've used to keep me riding:

-Have a scheduled, time based workout! Breaking up your workout into 1 to 20 minute chunks really helps the time go by. Just sitting there riding zone 2 for 2-3 hours will bore most people to death. Breaking up the workout into tempo, intervals, rest, ramps, etc will keep your eye on the clock but in a good way. Several sets of XX minute intervals with XX minutes of rest between really helps the time fly.

-Keep your mind occupied! I've spent time watching and rewatching the 2004 Tour that I have on DVD. If the workout calls for hills, I'd watch a hilly stage (stage 10 was my favorite), tempo I would watch a flat stage and sprint at the end for fun. Go to NBC's website and re-watch all the episodes of Heroes or ABC's site and re-watch LOST. At 45 minutes per episode, you can catch up on shows you missed AND get quality time on the bike. Watching TV doesn't really work with intervals though as it's hard to pay attention when your eyes are bleeding from your heart rate being way too high!

-Music! Listening to music is necessary for long inside riding at least to me.

-Virtual trainers! I have a Travel Trac RealAxiom V2 trainer that I got last June. Hooked up to my laptop, I can watch my heart rate, time, distance and wattage while riding a course that I programmed myself (it also comes with pre-programmed courses). It works great because I program courses to suit my necessary workouts. There are many different options out there for virtual riding, but I chose the RealAxiom mainly based on price, and I've not been disappointed with the quality of the unit.

Now there are no excuses not to do long rides on cold, crappy days (like today).

The jerseys are in!

Update - laundry is done...

The team jerseys arrived at my house last night, and it's still January! Pictures will come later as they are in the washing machine right now. The team chose Champion Systems as the jersey provider due to their low minimums, great prices and unlimited colors. They look great! Short sleeve jerseys, long sleeve winter jersey, arm warmers, leg warmers, shoe covers, winter AND summer gloves and a hat were all included in the package. A skinsuit was also in there.

We have the bikes (Orbea), the helmets (Bell Sweep) and now the kits in hand. Time to race hard!

Bags of sand and why you should care

Career Sandbaggers. We've all raced along side them. They've been our team mates and our competitors, the guys you hate to race against. Part of me couldn't care less about them, but another part of me hates them. Let me explain. When I race along side a sandbagger, it doesn't bother me personally. It forces me to train harder knowing that I'm along side guys who should be a category higher (in part, that's why I race masters category in a lot of crits). What I don't care for is lower category guys who refuse to upgrade. All that does is promote more animosity in a sport known for extreme snobbery. Whether it's ego or fear that keeps people from upgrading, I don't know, but being the highest rated guy in the lower categories would embarrass me personally.

1. It's not good for your team. If you are a team leader, you need to lead by example. Refusing to upgrade when you are past the "mandatory" point, is not being a leader. Getting wins for your team may or may not be important to your sponsors, but having a bad reputation is certainly worse for your sponsors.

2. It's not good for you. Reputations are hard to shake, for the good or bad. There's a small group of riders of riders in Ohio and whether or not we know everyone's name, people know other's by sight. If you have a reputation for being a good sprinter, people know it. Bad climber, people know it. Won't work in a break? People know it. Sandbagger? Everyone knows it.

3. It's not good for the system. That's why categorization exist.

It comes down to personal choice whether or not to upgrade as there has been no mandatory submission of race result and/or no forced upgrading. Hopefully the new Ohio Cycling Association will help fix this problem. Mandatory result submissions in my opinion is a great place to start.

I'm not saying to upgrade before you are ready, BUT if you are on the podium every week, it's time to move on up.