an ode to winter training and new toys

well winter training is still... just winter training. I've been able to make my hours every week so far since the end of race season, but the weather has been pretty cooperative so it's not too difficult to make 20 hours. Since the time change, however, it has been harder to get rides in after work because the sun sets at around 4:30 and usually by then it's pretty cold anyways. Guess it's time to consider getting out the trainer and watching long epic movies that make me forget how much i'm sweating and hurting.

In other news, next year i'll be racing for the vitamin cottage 3's team (hopefully not for long as i move up into the 2's and onto their elite team), but it's been good so far. i've gone on 3 or 4 rides with the team and they all seem like real nice guys, i just have to get to know them a little more. riding for an actual team will be really nice, unlike just riding with steve and i last year with evergreen (more of a club team than a racing team).

In even more news, winter training means bike toys. winter seems like a good time to buy stuff because with all of the long miles and no racing means i'll have time to get used to new stuff without the stress of racing. with the money i got from selling my moped, i bought shifters, derailleurs, and brakes from the sram rival group. so far i'm liking it way more than the ultegra i've used for a long time, with the wider hoods and longer, flatter tops, it's a lot more comfortable and less frustrating than ultegra was. The sram rival also looks a lot nicer, with the hidden cables run underneath the bar tape, and the black anodised aluminum parts, it all matches my bike much nicer and just looks a lot faster overall.

the much cleaner front end of my bike

carbon wrapped brake lever and white hood

hed stinger 90's (before debadging)

cyclocross and winter training

well winter training is going well so far. I've made it through my first 4 weeks of training (10, 12, 15, and 12 hours respectively), and i've loved it so far. A few days up on peak to peak highway during the time when the aspen leaves were changing (which was beautiful), a few flat days, and a few days on the cross bike.
Cyclocross racing has been so much fun. Even though i've only done one race so far (the 2nd in the Boulder cyclocross series), I loved it and I've loved the training. My mounts and dismounts could use some work, but my riding is really good. The bike i'm riding is a Kona Jake (which i've renamed the Jimmy because it's way more cool) with a 39-48 double instead of the heavy and useless triple it came with. It performed just as well as i was hoping during the race. No missed shifts or any problems at all with the drivetrain even in all of the mud.
i finished 42nd out of around 65 starters, which isn't bad for my first race considering all i was goinig for was a good time and to see if i liked it or not. The only improvements i'd go for on my bike would be a different fork (mine is a super stiff steel, straight blade fork that doesn't soak up ANY hard hits at all) and maybe different pedals for some better mud-shedding pedals, although muddy races in Colorado are few and far between. Below are a few more photos from the race:

End of a season, Beginning of a career

Well this road season is over. Was over a few weeks ago actually. I just finished up my 2 week hiatus from riding and am getting back into training, which is pretty tough. I'm starting my first ramp up to some 20 hour weeks in November (which are gonna be tough), but I have to do it. This winter is going to make my next season what it is, and if i'm going to be basing my decision to either go on as a cyclist or become an engineer on next season, i have to give it all that i've got for 6 months to see just how fast i can possibly get next season.

This season was a good one. I had a bunch of great finishes in the collegiate season, then upgraded to the 3's towards the end of the collegiate season. During the middle of the summer i had a few bad injuries and illnesses that kept me off the bike for a couple of weeks, so my late summer wasn't that great. What i did gain this season that is more valuable than any upgrade points was experience, and there's no replacement for race experience. I had a few fun races with some pro guys (A few garmin chipotle guys). Even though racing next season is 6 months away, i'm already so pumped to enter my first race of next season.

track racing

So yesterday was my first day racing on the track! I went down to the 7-11 velodrome in Colorado Springs with Nate Schwartz and Steve H. and did their thursday night race series. The way they do it is they have different catagories (A, B, and C, and a women's category) although women could race in any category they wanted to. Katie Compton was there racing in the A category and i wasn't watching too closely, but i'm pretty sure she did pretty well. Since it was my first time at the track, i headed out with Nate after registering to do a few warm up laps and get used to riding on a track with 30 degree banked corners (!). They don't seem that steep in the above picture, but riding around the track slowly, i was seriously worried about sliding down or clipping my pedal. After that, my first race was an 11 lap points race (just over 1k) with points given every 4 laps. Needless to say, my first track race ever didn't go so well with me finishing 3rd out of 4. Next race came after all of the other categories raced that same race was a 1 mile (just over 4 laps) scratch race, which meant that the first person over the line won the race. I got 3rd out of 4 in this race as well, but had a little better feel for riding on the track. The third race was a 5 mile scratch race and they combined the B's and C's categories so there were about 25 guys on the track racing. I placed 6th in this race, which was awesome and i got a much better feel for track racing. We had a pretty good pace line going for most of the laps of the race, which was really fun working with some other guys and really whipping around the track. I figure we probably were doing almost 45-50km/h for this race, and it was really tiring. During the A's race, it started raining a little bit so they called it off and we went home.

All in all, it was a super fun time and i'm going to try to go back next week if i can trade my shift at work for a morning shift. I'll post some pictures as soon as i get them from steve.

sweet ride and sweeter training plan

today me, steven, and herron did the good ol' boulder-lyons-peak to peak-ward-lefthand-backside of lee hill route today (About 65 miles of climbing and descending) and it rocked. I was aiming for a "hard" day today and i definitely got it. I churned through about 2600 kJ (roughly 3200 kCal), and averaged 275-300 watts for the hardest parts of the climb while pulling Herron via my right shoulder because he was too tired or too out of shape or too fat or some other nonsense to keep up with me. Anyways, i ended up bonking right as we were getting to Ward, then had a painful descent down lefthand. there were so many bugs out it was like getting sand thrown in my face the whole time we were doing 40-50mph, and i even managed to squish a few on my legs, face, and helmet (gross!). All in all it was an awesome ride, and was exactly what i needed.

In other news, I've come up with the perfect training plan to have me be at my strongest right at the Manhattan Beach Grand Prix which is going to be such an awesome race, it makes my teeth hurt. I can't divulge on it because it's so effective, but basically i'm going to win on the 29th, so get ready to hear about it. That's all for now. I'm tired.

another missed race

so due to both me not having a car and my roommate's car not starting, i missed another race this evening. i was all excited to get the power data from a real race, but no luck. not sure why racing this season isn't working out at all, but it's getting really REALLY annoying being constantly disappointed by things that i have no control over that are affecting my racing. oh well.

graduation money = bike toys

well first of all, a little picture of the bike carnage from my crash a few weeks ago (the one in the race, not from the car wreck)
too bad. that was a good wheel. i've since bought and am racing on a set of ROL race SL's. ROL is a wheel company based in Denver and they sponsor Team Evergreen, the team i race for. They're a pretty seriously awesome wheelset, and i like them as much as the Ksyrium SL's that I destroyed.

In other news, i got a fair amount of money for graduation, and instead of doing the "wise" thing and putting into savings (BORING!!), i immediately started shopping for and comparing power meters. Some say that training with power is the most effective way to train, and i'd have to agree. Naysayers will try to point out that training with power "takes all of the fun out of riding a bike" but... all you have to do is put the computer in your pocket and forget about it and voila! you're not training with power anymore. I opted for the Powertap SL2.4 because of its light weight and wireless transmission. I was torn between going with a wired version for a little bit less money, but figured what the heck, i never buy nice things, so i might as well buy something nice for the first time in my life. Here it is on my bike:
you'll have to excuse the bazillion spokes behind my bike in the picture, i had it set up next to my townie and mtb. I also bought myself a nicer set of Northwave Aerlite 3 shoes. Compared to the Shimano R-099's i was riding on (which were made for "sport/fitness", and certainly not racing), these are waaaay stiffer, better fitting, and much better looking:
That's all for now.

Upcoming Races:
-Table Mt. Criterium (Tuesday)
-Record Racer TT (Wednesday)
-Glenwood Springs RR (Saturday, hopefully)
-Glenwood Springs Criterium (Sunday)

what a past couple of months it has been

well well, where do i even start. I guess i'll start out by saying that since my last post, i've had an intense case of the flu that took me out of commission (and off the bike) for nearly 2 weeks. I had a horrible crash in a criterium, and ran into the side of a car that cut me off going about 30mph. I'm still recovering from that one. Needless to say, my summer of racing hasn't exactly gone the way that I had envisioned it some time ago. It's ok though, because i've still been training like a madman inbetween being injured and sick, and am now much faster than i was at the beginning of the season.

Since graduation, my only plans have been (in order):
1. Work enough to pay the bills
2. Hang out with awesome people
3. Ride my bike

That's it. No homework, no tests, no projects, no boss, no deadlines, just good times and hard work. My next race is next tuesday evening where i'll ride in the table mountain crit series and hopefully come back with some results to show for my 4 weeks of training without a race inbetween. yuck! I'm off to go climb to ward, descend to lyons, and come back into boulder on 75th. 70 miles in 4 hours? why not.

oh yeah! one last thing... my powertap should be here soooooooon!

Graduation = pain in the butt

This semester has gotten a little bit crazy in the past few weeks, and as a result i haven't been able to ride very much, and the only race I've ridden in I had a huge crash (for which i'll post some pictures in the upcoming days). The summer race schedule is about to kick off pretty seriously next week, and i'm totally ready for it.

the koppenburg!

So this weekend was both the mine's hill climb and circuit race, and the koppenburg circuit race in superior. I didn't race on saturday at the hill climb because it just seems silly to me to pay $20 to ride for 20 minutes up a hill. i can do that for free in boulder, so i rode about 35 easy miles including a pre-ride of the koppenburg course. The race takes its name from a pretty rediculous climb in the Tour of Flanders because this race is a course built around a 200 foot, 17% rutted dirt climb.

the real koppenberg

our koppenburg

Sunday morning was a little chilly (in the low 40's) and very windy. The 3's race started at 11:15am, and the first 2 laps were probably some of the hardest riding i've ever done. my hr spiked at 208bpm during the 2nd lap, and shortly after that, there was a big crash in one of the corners and i got stuck behind it and lost the main group. during the next group i fought my way up to a little group of about 5 other guys and rode with them until halfway through the 6th lap when i worked a little too hard up the climb and couldn't hang on with them, so i finished the last half lap by myself, and finished in 30th place. Not a bad finish for a course that hard, after a week off of training, and my second race in the 3's.

I did make it onto the WM team, but they stuck me on the "club" squad. I'm not sure exactly what that means or what it's going to take to get onto their developmental team, but whatever it takes, i'm willing to do. I'm guessing i'm going to have to get a couple of good finishes before they will give me free stuff, and i'm willing to do that work for them. Definitely good news though that they want me on their team. not that TER isn't a good team, but there's just no future in it other than getting my race fees comped once i'm racing in the 2's. Oh well. the weather is supposed to be snowy and wet all this week, so i guess i'll be doing more trainer rides. when is the weather finally going to let me just ride my bike???

UNC crit and spring break

well last weekend was the UNC crit up in Greeley and it went pretty well. Again, my problem was placement on the last lap, and that I worked too much during the race. My pack skills are getting to be really good, i just work too hard during the race. Like my friend dave says, i need to be greedier during the race. I finished 8th, which isn't bad at all, but i would've liked to have done much better. I was also saving myself because later on in the day was the 1,2,3 crit and i wanted to do well in that one with some pro riders to get a feel for that group. Unfortunately i found out i had to work later on that day so i wasn't going to have time to ride a 75 minute crit, go home and shower, and make it to work on time. =( oh well. More important than my finish was how i felt during the race, and knowing that i was never farther back than 10th place is very important for crit racing, and if i can just bump my fitness up another 5%, i can start winning races instead of just having a ton of top 10 finishes.

this past week was spring break, and i didn't get to ride at all, which is kind of scary for me. I'm gonna ramp up my efforts this week and race crazy hard next weekend to get back into the swing of things. maybe a week off will serve me well as i've been training and racing hard up until now, and my peak race isn't until the first weekend in july.

In other news, even though i just got my team kit from Team Evergreen, I'm applying for a spot on the Waste Management team, which is the feeder team for Jelly Belly, which means that i'd be racing for a team which could place me on a pro team in a couple of years if i work hard enough. Pretty exciting stuff, but i'm going for the hope for the best and expect the worst attitude towards getting on that team. I'm willing to work hard to race fast, but i just don't know if i'm fast enough yet to race on a team like that. Here's hoping! That's about it. Gotta ride lots this week and get my legs back.

century and a rest day

so since i couldn't make it to durango this weekend to race there, i decided to try to put in some pretty serious miles this weekend. Yesterday i headed out with several guys from the CU team for a century. the weather wasn't too favorable when we started, around 35 degrees, but it warmed up to around 45-50 during the ride, which was nice. The "course" took us on all roads that i've ridden on before, which is something i'll have to make changes to the next time i want to do a long ride. we rode north to lyons, then east and north to carter lake, through berthoud (where we stopped for some amazing carrot cake), back into town on county line road, then scott (my roommate) and i continued on to finish off the 105 miles with a lap of the koppenburg circuit.

today i wanted to ride, but didn't sleep much last night, so i napped and hung around the apartment instead. This week i'm gonna put in some hard hours (intervals and otherwise), and try to race at least 2 races next weekend so i can feel like i've deserved the whole of spring break off the bike. yikes! just the notion of not being able to ride for a whole week scares me. maybe i'll go for a little ride while i'm home some afternoon, or i'll hit up the stationary at one of the hotels in vegas some morning just to keep the legs moving. stupid snow...

first cat 3 race... success

so another race weekend come and gone. This weekend was a big deal though, since i just got my cat 3 upgrade not too long ago and i knew i was going to be testing my legs against much bigger, faster, more skilled guys now. saturday's race was a difficult uphill/downhill/curvy time trial in bear creek lake park in morrison. the course was about 9.5 mi long and we pre-rode it on friday afternoon so we would know what to expect. last year i placed 3rd in this time trial (probably due the the fact that by this time last year i was almost at my fitness peak... no good) so i had some confidence going into it. i was the first to register on saturday morning, so i had to be the first one off on the course. little did i know that this was going be a very difficult time trial without somebody to follow and without a power meter. i went off, and got caught by herron about 7 miles into the course, then stayed close behind him (because at that point i could gage how hard to go), and finished about 38 seconds behind him, which was good enough for another 6th place finish. not bad.

sunday's race was a criterium in denver's city park. the course was tough, with 3 roundabouts, and one hard right hand turn coming out of a left hand turn that was a different experience every time i went around it. sometimes sketchy, sometimes really smooth, always fast. The b's race was early in the morning, but luckily the weather had warmed up a little bit, so by the time i was racing it was about 45 degrees. i decided to race with fingerless gloves, which turned out to be a HORRIBLE plan because my hands went numb about 10 minutes into the race, and i ended up squirming on the ground in pain after the race while my hands were gaining feeling again. seriously some of the most pain i've ever been in in my whole life. anyways the race went well, with only one crash in the middle of the race from someone unclipping from their pedal to chase down an attack. i ended up finishing 13th due to a fast and hard last lap and me having trouble moving up during the final lap from all of the hard corners and crazy roundabouts. after that i went and got some lunch and hung around for a while, then the 3's race started at around 230. the average speed during the b race was about 22 mph, and the average speed during the 3's race was about 25mph. a 3 mph increase over the course of 45 minutes is hard, especially with all of the attacking that was going on in that race and the constant acceleration involved. with about 2 to go i worked my way up the field from the back to somewhere near the front, then there was a huge acceleration out of the last corner and i moved back a couple spots to finish somewhere around 15th place. not bad for my first 3's race.

i'm not going to durango for the collegiate race that's going on down there because i have job orientation at the cheesecake factory this weekend, and it's going to be an expensive trip. i've also been racing really hard and it's still early in the season so i could use a week off to put on some more base mileage and work some more on technique. here are some pictures from this weekend.

warming up and talking with chris stockburger (former Toyota-United Pro) about some strategy

flying up towards the finish line

chasing andy down

3rd of 3 roundabouts

here we go!

So racing season officially kicked off this past weekend with the collegiate race in New Mexico. After a 9 hour ride in the Jeep (ass) Commander, we got into the Super 8 motel and checked in. Since it was already almost 11 and we had to be up by 7 to race in the morning, i just hit the hay.

We woke up at around 730 on saturday morning to head over to the time trial. We had to ride through our little truck stop town a little ways to registration, which was a complete joke with like 300 people inside a small coffee shop trying to pay and find out start times and all kinds of nonsense. After that, we rode down to the start, and were followed with the team cars that brought trainers and all kinds of stuff. Since we couldn't get our start times at the coffee shop, we all just kind of milled around the starting area until they brought out the start times. Mine was at 12:21:30pm, so i hung around for a half hour or so until11:20ish because i wanted to get at least a 1hr warmup after sitting in the cars for so long the night before. After my warmup, i headed down to the start line and waited until i was up, then i was off! Right away the course was fairly flat, and headed slightly uphill after that. Before the top of that slight uphill, i had already almost caught my :30 man, and i caught him at the crest of the hill. I shifted into my 55x11 and shot down this sweeping downhill right hand turn, topping out near 45mph, then came to the bottom of the hill and started going uphill. I didn't want to shift down into the small ring because i've been having some shifting problems, so i went into my 55x23 and hammered up the uphill part, and just after the top of that hill, i caught my 1:00 man, and could see the turnaround and my 1:30 man just taking the corner. After flying around the turnaround, i started hammering back towards the finish line with my only intent to catch my 1:30 man. he was fast, and knew i was on his tail so he was giving it all he had to stay away, but i overtook him on the last climb, and flew back down to the start line back in the 55x11 going about 40mph on flat road. After finishing, i knew i had to have done well after catching 3 people, and i ended up getting 6th place.

After the TT, i had a little while to cool down and hang around before the TTT. Our start time for the TTT was something like 1:45pm, so i started to warm up again at around 1. We started out pretty strong, each of us taking good pulls. my team was Alex Hauger, Steven Herzfeld, Herron Kennedy, and myself. The order was Herron, Me, Steven, Alex. we all climbed the first hill well, and kept taking constant pulls. There was another CU team in front of us, and when we got to the turnaround, we could see that they were well inside of the 2 minutes they had on us from the start, so we all made it our goal to catch them. After the turnaround, it took at least 2 minutes before we saw the team which was behind us, meaning that we were more than 4 minutes in front of them. On the way back to the finish line, Herron was in front of me and all of a sudden he yelled "CRASH!!" and i looked around him and John, one of the CU riders had crashed going about 30mph when he crossed up wheels from a wind gust. We steered around them and continued on, knowing that if we stopped to help, we'd just be more in the way for the team behind us. We finished the course a little shaken up both from the crash and from having to dodge a few extraneous people on the course and an oncoming team, but still managed to place 1st.

The next day was crit day. Saturday's weather was in the mid 70's all day, and sunday was somewhere in the mid to high 40's. I started where i usually start, on the outside in the front, and from the start was on the front right away. The first couple of laps went slowly as everyone was getting their footing and getting used to the course. After a few laps and a few attacks off the front by Peter O'Donnell, i decided i needed to do my share of the work, and on the uphill, tailwind part of the course, i made a huge effort to try to get away from the pack. I kept driving without looking back, and soon enough, when i did look back, i had pulled 3 riders away from the pack with me. It was me, Conor, and 2 guys from CC. We held off the pack for 20 minutes on the course, and after picking up a few more guys who bridged from the pack, Conor got 1st, i got 4th, and we all got some pretty good prime points for being in the front for so long.

getting ready for the TTT

before the TT

killing the break

driving on the front

all in all a great race weekend with some great results. hopefully i can do just as well this weekend, and i'm going to be racing my first cat 3 race on sunday afternoon, so we'll see how that goes.

new year, new approach to this thing

well i'm not usually a new years resolution kinda guy, so i'm not going to make one this year. however, i am going to try to write more creative nonsense in this blog so someday maybe someone... (trail off)

anyways with today being the first of the year, i have about 2 more weeks to relax and take things easy before i have to get my butt in gear training hard for the season. my first race is on march 1st in new mexico, so i have a month and a half of really hard training to do before that race. last year i peaked way too early (sometime in april, not in mayish where i wanted to) so this year i'm trying to peak later so i can focus more on my ACA races and late season USCF races. i'm also planning on travelling to california a few times during the summer to race once in the manhattan beach grand prix and the USCF national championships. I'm also planning on going to collegiate national track championships in may sometime. this racing season is going to be brutal, but crazy fun! For christmas i got a new bike computer where i can record everything my old one recorded as well as heart rate and some heart rate functions (Calorie expenditure, etc.) so i should be able to train more effectively this year than last. we'll see how that goes. i'm still in winter training mode, riding slow and working on my cadence and different muscle strength in my legs to help round out my pedal stroke to get more power out of each stroke. 'tis all.