Race 15: Tour of the Catskills Prologue

Well...

2 mile uphill time trial.

Expected a bit over 8 minutes of complete hell.

I was utterly ready to go for it when we arrived at 10:30 ... however ... my start wasn't until 4:44:30. (I arrived early, because my carpool included a rider with a 12:04:00 start).

I am not good at 'sit around a wait'.

I spent too much time standing up and walking around.

I spent too much time in the sun.

I did not put on sun screen early enough.

I allowed myself to get too nervous.

My focus was minimal.

When it came down to an hour to go I got on the bike and took her for a spin up and out of the town the TT was staged from. Up I went and down and down and down and then back up and to the staging area for yet another bathroom break and more water to drink and then back out of town in a different directions and then paranoid about a missed start back to staging 20 minutes early and just stood there in the sun.

The legs had no snap in the warm up - despite a few hard out of the saddle climbing efforts and some high cadence efforts. I felt great on Wednesday. I felt good commuting on Monday and Tuesday and Thursday. Not in my warm up on Friday though.

And not in my race.

I had a stable and balanced held start. Accelerated the 20 yards to the 90 degree right turn and tried to kick it up that steep pitch. I felt like I was going about 2 miles and hour. The heart rate went up and I kept it there but the legs felt filled with lead. I crossed the line at 9 minutes exactly by my computer. I have no idea how that stacked up in the 54 strong women's field. Maybe not last but not likely in the top half of the field.

They routed us back to the parking area via a different set of roads and that turned out to be a pretty good warm down - except my chest hurt like crazy and about 10 minutes into the warm down I started coughing and barely stopped long enough to catch occasional breaths for at least 15 minutes after that. Still coughing now about 6 hours later.

I guess I worked hard, but I am a little bummed that I had no spark in the legs.

Saturday is a new day, and based on the course (we drove it today) it will be a tough one.

Bed time.

Race 14: Empire State Games: day 4 team time trial

It really isn't all that often one has the chance to compete in a team time trial. The smoothest way to ride one is to practice with your teammates a fair bit so everyone is comfortable with each other and riding close on a wheel while stretched out in an aero position. (There is a reason aero bars are not permitted in mass start events!)

Our Central coach, Andrew Ross, arranged for a team time trial practice before the games. Most of the team was able to make it out, and we all went in one big group. The advantage of a large group is more rest. The disadvantage is we varied widely in strength and comfort riding close on wheels and that made it very difficult to ride smoothly. But we got the chance to see how it felt.

Satruday after the crit we had a team meeting and talked a bit about the TTT - and the men were divied up into their two teams. Poor guys had it rough - most regions fielded 10 men and thus had two teams of 5. We only had 8 and thus we could either field one 5 man team that was equal in numbers and one 3 man team (at a huge disadvantage in the numbers game but also dangerous should one man have a mechanical because for the men the clock stopped after the 3rd rider crossed the line). Or, we could field two teams four. They decided two teams of 4 was the safest and strongest bet. For the women there were no decisions to make - we had a full compliment with three of us and the clock stopped on the second rider. We did discuss some strategy for how to play it because Vanessa and I were fairly equally matched on flats and Heather was newer to the sport and was really nervous about riding fast in a tight paceline.

Sunday morning we got out there fairly early and the three of us ladies decided to work on our paceline technique and try out different speeds. Our goal was to ride at Heather's threshold for as long as she could hold on and then have the remaining two kick it up as high as we could go for the whatever distance was left of the 20 or so miles. We did our "slow" work on a side road and our "at speed" work on the course, working in a few turns to get the feel of those when trying to keep our line tight. The course was pretty much hot dog shaped - two parallel roads with several connectors. We went up one, crossed to the other on the connector and back down the other. We started in the middle of the hotdog, and did two complete laps so we had 4 turns to maneuver. The turns felt a bit tighter than the curves on a 400 meter track, but not quite as tight as on a 200 meter track. On a regular bike it was possible to peddal through the turns. Time trial bikes handle differently though and feel much less stable in the curves. We finished our warm up and found the start with 5 - 10 minutes to spare. The men started half a lap away from the finish (and women's start) and were doing 3.5 laps to our 2. The first women's team to start (Adirondack) was going to go off a minute after the last men's B team went by the finish.

Adirondack went off. Then NY. We were the 3rd out of 4 teams to start (Western only had one woman, and Hudson Valley didn't have any). We were glad to be done waiting - the nerves are always worst while waiting and they tend to decrease dramatically as soon as the pedals start turning. We had a smooth gradual increase in pace that allowed everyone to clip in and line up according to our preplanned order. Then it was head down and ride. We negotiated the first turn and were coming back into the headwind at mile 6 or so. Heather was feeling the strain and was debating when to pull out and say "Go!" when we passed someone at the side of the road in a Central jersey with what looked like a bloody face. I couldn't tell who it was (didn't see his bike) but it was definitely one of our guys. That sobered all of us up and Heather decided that she could not focus on riding close on someone's wheel while in areo bars after seeing that when she was so winded, so she told us to go for it. Heather kept riding in case one of us had a mechanical and her time would be needed to stop the clock. Vanessa and I continued to put our heads down and do the work. We all three of us left everything out on that course. Vanessa and I kicked it up to 30 for the flat spint across the line and we finished right together.

The Adirondack coach saw us out there riding and he told us he was hurting just watching us bury ourselves out there. He gave us kudos for putting so much effort in. Despite that effort, we were 20 seconds out of first place and took the silver. Adirondack had a great team this year and really cleaned up.

20 seconds!!! Over just 22 miles!!! Aaaargh!! So close and yet so far. As is typical with these things you spend way too much post race energy trying to determine just where those 20 seconds could have been made up. In our case I think it was the corners. We were coasting in and out of them and had we been able to pedal out and not lose quite as much momentum on them we could have made up that time. However, if we had pushed the envelope too much in those corners, a fall would have been a lot slower than coasting in and out. Everywhere else on the course we were really giving it our all.

Results are up at the Empire State Games website.

I have found several photographs of the cycling events they are at:

Drew Zinck Photography

Py's digital trail and road eyes

FlickRiver and

Terry Wherry

Race 14: Empire State Games: day 3 the dreaded crit

My fear of crits is alive and well. Nerves started building Friday night and all morning Saturday. David didn't need the jaws of life to extract me from his truck the way Chris did at GMSR, but he did get the evil eye more than once when being kind and supportive. Sorry Dave - really, I wasn't giving you a dirty look every time I rode by... I was just giving the crit in general a dirty look....

Anyway. As has become my pre-crit routine, after getting to the venue I walked the course, taking note of corner 1 being very close to the start line, corner 2 was up hill so should be safe, corner three was from a narrow road onto a wide road with a tail wind. Corner 4 looked like the place for the spatula brigade, and was the corner with the pit on it. That corner went from super wide road onto very narrow road, a grate on the inside, a little gravel on the outside and about a city block from the start/finish line. A fairly strait forward square course. All left turns.

I attempted to warm up on the trainer and it wasn't happening. I did a lap of the course. that wasn't so bad. At 15mph the corners were quite tame.Then it was hurry up and wait for the masters group before us to finish.

After they finished we got sent around for two laps while they waited for the next lead car to show up. Once the car was in place we were given our instructions: This was being scored as a points race using track racing scoring. Every 5 laps around the 0.8 mile course there would be a sprint for points. Points went 4 deep. If a rider lapped the field they got 20 points. If the field lapped a rider, they got -20 points. A lapped rider getting lapped a second time would be pulled. A lapped rider was eligible to compete in sprint points again in the next sprint lap after they got lapped. Free lap for incidents up until the second to last sprint lap. Any incidents after that the rider would be pulled but keep their points. As we found out later (though was not clear from pre-race instructions) on the final lap (the final sprint) over all place was also important as points were somehow awarded all the way down, rather than just to the top four as with the other sprints. After that confusing crash course in track scoring, we were sent on our way.

I tried to sit 4th or 5th wheel back but found there were a few ladies who drifted laterally in places that made no sense. I got pinched against curbs. I got run over rough spots. I decided I didn't want any part of that so after 6 laps (after the first sprint where since I was technically in a great lead out spot I should have managed a point or two, but where I was 6th) I took the front and pushed hard... for way too many laps. Sprint two came up and I started increasing my speed right out of corner 3 and continued to increase through corner 4 and tried like mad to hold the other ladies off for the points. I managed 4th and 1 point for my team. Whoo hoo! I moved off the front at that point and into the pack for a lap or two but again lost patience with the slowing and weaving going on "back there" and took the front again. Heck. I won a point the last time... So I led for what was I think 3 laps, into the sprint again. Everything according to plan increasing pace out of turn three and keeping it high into turn four... when someone came around and then cut my line and I went inside. AJ, one of the Central pit guys says it looked like my back wheel hit the grate on turn four, came off the ground and then came down a little sideways to the direction of travel leading to a skid. All I know is the bike was skidding and I was thinking "I hope they have their spatulas" and then I was going forward again and people were sprinting and I hit it... but came in 5th by just a fraction of a bike. I lost my nerve a bit after that and hung out mid field/ on the back... seeing a few moves I should have made, seeing some moves others should have made. Just wanting the race to be done. The last 10 laps were pretty uneventful. I failed to give it my all in the sprint on the last lap since I knew I was not in contention for 1 - 4 and maybe lost a place or two and the associated finish points due to that.

I survived.

My overall place in the crit was 6th.

Race 14: Empire State Games: day 2 road race

After a poor nights sleep (thank you hormone swamped teen aged girls!) we got up bright and early to head to breakfast and then the course. The road race course looked great for me when we pre-drove it - well great except for the super fast descent - that just looked scary. Again we got there with plenty of time to get ready and warm up despite me missing our exit and taking us the long slow way around.

Having time to warm up and warming up are two different things. I did head up the road a bit and then back down, but not far enough to actually get a warm up out of it. I was uncharacteristically nervous about the race too. I guess I was feeling pressure. On Thursday, the central women carried the combined team for points and I didn't want to let either my female or male team mates down with a lackluster race.

As it turns out, I had both a good and a frustrating race. We ended up doing 4.25 laps of a 10 mile loop. So we finished at the top of a big hill (1.5 mile climb) and we started a mile or two shy of it. From other races, I knew my lady to mark - Jenny Ives. She is a stronger rider than I am but also a wicked smart rider. My hope was to stick with her.

From the start to the first hill my team mate was on the front. On the climb I moved up to warn her not to pull too much and let others work. She promptly fell in behind me and I ended up setting pace. Not my plan but it did mean I got to ride the hill at a super comfy pace for me. I was not breathing hard, my legs were not feeling stressed at all, and my hear rate was not too high. Jenny glued herself to my wheel. I kept the bike in the big ring and right there probably psychologically scored against several riders.

Anyway, at the top I looked back and saw i'd split the field in two. 7 in my group (two central, two Adirondack, two Long Island, and 1 Western. I liked that split. (There are 6 regions and each region can field up to 10 men and 3 women.) From the top we had some descending and flat terrain and a lot of wind before a hard right up a fairly short but steep gut buster of a climb.

Jenny went for it on that climb on lap 1 and after a false start or two being blocked by two other riders I grabbed her wheel. At the top we had 10 bike lengths and we looked at each other and said "let's work it!". We drilled it from then on, and we stuck together for 3 full laps from that point. At the same spot on the last lap (5 miles from the finish) she punched it and I couldn't hang. From the top of the pitch it was false flat up and then a screaming descent and then a little flat before that 1.5 mile climb to the finish. With Jenny I hit 50 (she was sitting up for me a little) on the downhill.

My last lap, after Jenny had dropped me, I topped out at 47. At the bottom when it started to level out I felt and heard that I had a rear flat! With 3 miles to go! When Jenny and I went, the wheel car did not go with us. I kept riding and at each corner I asked the marshalls to send up a wheel car if they saw one. I slowed a little, but kept pushing since I had no idea what our gap to the rest of the riders was. The wheel car came up when I had 0.5 miles to go and I said I would keep my momentum and ride it out over a wheel chamge from a non- cycling volunteer. I doubt I would have made up enough time on Jenny to win had I not had a flat and I finished 2.5 minutes behind her and 4.75 minutes ahead of 3rd.

They are scoring this as an omnium, so how far back on Jenny I was won't end up mattering. It was a bit frustrating not to have the wheel car, but if I were to be able to choose my flat in a race, this is the one I would take because it did not change the outcome at all, and the rim is OK. Riding the wheel on a totally flat tire chewed the tire up a bit, but that tire was done anyway - I've ridden and raced on it since early April. New tires were put on that night (I had brought a brand new pair with me just in case). My pretty blue and white and black bike now has matching blue walled tires instead of the "ugly" yellow ones. I kind of miss the yellow ones though... Go figure.

We parked next to a bend in a river and after the race the four of us who swam in Lake Erie the day before took cold dip in the river. My legs felt really good on Friday - almost as if I hadn't raced on Thursday. I figured the cold water would help with recovery for Saturday's Crit.

Race 14: Empire State Games: preamble and day 1

This pas week was Empire State Games summer games in which athletes in a whole array of sports from track to cycling to wrestling to synchronized swimming converge in a given city and compete against athletes from other regions. Many of the sports have scholastic, open, and masters divisions. For cycling to compete in open we had to compete in a regional qualifier and raced for our region if we qualified. Masters cycling did not require a try out and also did not come with an assigned uniform that comes in ridiculous sizing. The games are heavily subsidized and part of the package is a dorm room and mean plan that covered breakfasts and dinners. Most of the riders on the central team opted for this dorm and dining option. In past years they roomed all the cyclists together so the whole teams were together. This year, as we found out on the way up to Buffalo it was different. The men were in one dorm and the women in another... all the way across campus. That meant we were in the same dorms as lightly chaperoned minors... giggle and shrieking and carrying on pretty darned late. Us ladies got a bit grumpy with the teenie bopper girls over this, but ultimately we all survived the experience.

Day 1... The time trial. What can one say about a time trial? They hold you up, you clip in both pedals. The start guys says go and the holder lets go of your bike and you are on your way. You make it hurt so good, or stay above a target heart rate, or at a specific wattage you think you can hold for the distance.

We got there in plenty of time to warm up. It was hot. It was humid. The sun was glaring down. And it was hot. I warmed up a bit on the course. A bit on the trainer. I tried to find a piece of shade to hide in while waiting to start. I tried not to focus on how much TT bling was on display. It seemed like the majority of the riders had time trial specific bikes and time trial helmets and shoe covers and they all looked super fast. I had clipped aero bars onto M'Lady. I was offered a pre-warmed up (read pre sweated in) TT helmet on the start line, but declined. They held me up. I clipped in both feet barely. I was as unbalanced as always. I had a very wobbly start though probably still a little faster than starting with one foot down. I went hard. It hurt. I kept going hard. It kept hurting. It took a couple 3 of the 10 almost completely flat miles for me to find a rhythm. The wind was cross but more tail going out and more head coming back. I hit the turn around in a good time. The wind on the return trip nipped at my concentration. It still hurt, but not as good. I gave it my all. but that wasn't quite enough. I was 4th; 1 minute off my team mate from Central who won the gold, and just under 30 seconds out of bronze.

Post race we warmed down a bit, coughed up a few lungs, found lunch (theme for the weekend: eating in places where due to random circumstance service was super slow) and then found a beach on Lake Erie where we became Hamburgers for the afternoon and soaked in the cool water. Then it was off to drive the next day's course and back to the dorms for dinner and rest.

Race 13: Citizens race: A.V.R.E. Race for Sight

It felt good to take a few weeks off the race scene, and I had a wonderful week with the Rognlie family. We went birding at Finger Lakes Land Trust Preserves that are new since I last lived in Ithaca, we visited some parks (Robert H. Treman, and Taughannock Falls State Parks) that I have no been to since i was in grade school. Miriam took her binocs everywhere and Allison a camera. It was a lot of fun watching Miriam count off the new to her birds and Allison go nuts with her camera and my 100-400 zoom lens. She and I traded the lens back and forth. They now understand the "Ithaca is Gorges" slogan. :-) We managed to have a lot of fun despite the high 90's and humid weather.

The little race hiatus came to an end this weekend with a citizen's race I learned about fairly last minute. There have been several fairly close to Ithaca, but this is the first one I decided to do. They had two fields: the B group for those who do not have a USAC license and an A field for those who do. The course was very gently rolling with a hill top finish - the A's did 2 laps around the loop for 40 miles.

I figured the A group would be mostly Cat 4 and 5 men and was a little nervous about riding in a 55 person field of beginners. I need not have worried. It became fairly clear early on that there were some (a lot of) strong riders in the group. We pulled out of the little town of Windsor at the start at a pace that ranged between 25 and 28 mph. That never really dropped much.

As is typical for me (and bad), I drifted towards the back of the pack. The group spent the first 10 miles or so finding its rhythm. We had a bit of surging and slowing and a few near wrecks while waiting for things to settle in. Things strung out and bunched up and slowly I started moving forward on all the "hills" as small gaps formed between the tail of the peloton and the main pack. As could be expected we accelerated out of every corner, and up most of the slight inclines and it felt like there were surges on some of the slight down hills too. Despite the attempts of those driving the peloton to thin the ranks by stepping up the pace anytime we settled in too much, things at the back smoothed out relatively quickly. At that point I began to relax and really started to have fun. The pace was high compared to the typical women's race, yet I was not working all that hard. At several points it really felt like some of the legs only shots of TV coverage of Le Tour look - that is everyone riding in sync with high cadence and a smooth stroke. It was almost surreal.

By the time we were part way through the second lap the riders at the front had managed to shell close to 20 riders with their high pace. Despite their best efforts though, the short race and the lack of significant climbs led to a 37 person group making the narrow turn to up the finish hill together. That made for a bit of a bottle neck. I ended up having to brake near the bottom, losing all my momentum. I still made it past several folks on the climb. Overall I did a terrible job positioning myself in the field, I should have tried to place myself/stay in the front third of the pack for the whole race, or at the very least followed the guy who actually won the race when he moved forward with under 2km to go. He spent most of the race near me. I saw him move forward and if I had hopped on his wheel he would have opened the holes for me.

My results were good for 3rd woman, and 31st overall, 24 seconds back from the winner. We had chip timing by Yellow Jacket racing and they had the results posted before I got home from the race. After the race I hung out with some Tioga Valley folks before heading home to take care of the bugs and mow my parent's lawn (yes Laura the house is fine, the lawn mowed, your plants thriving). There is an official A.V.R.E. Race for Sight YouTube video posted. You can watch it here.

Up next is Empire State Games up in Buffalo. The opening ceremonies are Wednesday evening and competition starts with the individual time trial on Thursday, the road race Friday, a crit Saturday, and a team time trial on Sunday the 25th. Then back for a few days and then Thursday the 29th or very early Friday the 30th it is off to Hunter/Windham NY for Tour of the Catskills stage race... an uphill time trial prolog (average % grade = 4%, maximum grade = 11%) on Friday, the Catskill Epic Rd Race on Saturday (51.6 miles), and the Mountaintop Classic on Sunday, a 56 mile race "featuring the assault on Devils Kitchen" (with a max % grade of 22%).

After that the schedule thins out tremendously - maybe I will switch some focus to the 'Dale. I have been sorely neglecting my second "child" and do miss riding in the woods - and hey, there's no poison oak for me to fall into here. :-) I'm not sure I can picture a summer mountain biking without the ever present super nasty poison oak rash weeping all over the place.

Race 12: Doing NASCAR on a bike

Otherwise known as the Corning Circuit Race. This was raced on the NASCAR course down at the Watkins Glen International Race Track Saturday evening. The racer guide has a map of the course including one that shows the elevation changes fairly well.

But I am getting ahead of myself. This was a weekend with only one race that happens to be just an hour away... at the south end of Seneca Lake, the next finger lake to the west of Cayuga Lake. The race was also an evening event since the track was being used for the motor sports it was designed for earlier in the day. All that meant that I didn't have to actually get off my duff to do anything race related until 4PM. I was all set to sleep in, and woke up nice and late at 7:45 AM. Then it was off to work for a couple of hours before becoming one with my camp chair in the shade of my back "patio" with a book for company. I can't remember the last time I just sat and read all day. It was quite relaxing (almost too much so) and felt much needed. I almost decided not to go to the race I was having such a pleasant read. But up to the race I went. Ruth and LiLynn commented that I was looking too relaxed to actually race my bike. I felt that way, but I did a few openers on the roads around the track during my warm up and started to feel the blood pumping as I lined up with 18 other open women.

We started in the grand stand in the pit lane. That met up with the main track as we started screaming down around "the 90" and up through the "esses". Down the back stretch we were into the wind and then it was super fast down into the Boot - in the women's field we hit 37 around that down hill curve in "the boot" (the men were up around 42). That was doing almost a 180 at 37 with no need to hit the brakes. Whew that was fun! 10 degree banking helps a lot with that :-). The climb out of the boot had a short steep pitch and then it deceptively kept on climbing. It was false flat up after the boot before flattening out for the sprint back into the grandstand area.

The women's race was 45 minutes and we did 5 laps around the 3.4 mile course. In the first lap I was a little unprepared for the 90 and dropped back (unnecessarily) and then had to move up again climbing through the esses. I again dropped back going into the boot (we did not get a chance to preview a loop so I was being a bit cautious). Climbing out of that first turn though I moved to the front and pushed the pace pretty hard all the way out of the boot and back through to the grandstand - hoping to drop some of the women, but everyone stuck strong.

In lap two I did better with not dropping back on the downhills - no need with the banking :-) and I also decided not to lead up the hill, just sat second wheel. Lap two was a Prime lap and the sprint was pretty fierce. It caught me a little off guard, but I hung with so it was OK. Going into lap three they told us it was another prime lap so after leading on the back stretch and sitting second wheel on the climb out of the boot, I was ready for the acceleration but did not contest it. Going into lap 4 I knew we had one lap left and they told us it was ANOTHER prime lap. So off we went. I think I sat 2nd - 4th wheel most of the way around but came forward out on the climb and stayed there out of the boot. I was on the front coming around towards the strait away into the grandstand. Not a great place to be if you want to contest a sprint, but I also know my acceleration limitations... knowing I take longer to accelerate than I should for a "sprint" but that I can hold a fairly high speed for a while. So I decided to try starting the sprint my style... that is to say ramp it up slowly and keep on ramping. I started pretty darned early and I think the rest of the field thought I would burn up and fall to the side... but I just kept pouring on the gas and by the time they needed to do something about it I was still going. I actually managed to take the prime by a bike length! I almost fell off the bike in shock. The last lap was tough - probably our fastest yet and the field finally split coming up out of the esses and into the back stretch. I made the front group and did find on the climb in the boot, but felt the loss of all the matches I burned in the sprint for the prime (maybe none of the others were sprinting because they didn't want to empty the tank in time for the last lap... that would explain me being able to win a sprint at all, much less one from the front). I lost focus and contact on the top part so finished several seconds off the front 5. I still managed a 6th place and some cash (almost my entry fee back) and a nice saddle bag and t-shirt for my prime. Results are posted. The photos above are courtesy of Dave Heck. Jim Danvers was out shooting pictures but I have not seen any posted thus far. I will keep an eye out. Michael Zollo was also out shooting the races and he has a few separate galleries of the women's race. I am not in the warm-up gallery, however i am in the other three.

I don't know anything about NASCAR, but I was surprised by how much elevation change there was on the course. The pavement was very nice and the whole course plenty wide and the curves banked. So very easy to do at speed. There was no need to hit the brakes at any point on the course at all.

The week after the race was busy training my new employee (Yay I am no longer going to be the only person there!) and getting ready for the Rognlie family to visit :-) they came east from Bozeman for a music event in DC (where they spent their first week) and then to see some of the Ithaca institutions of higher education. More on that soon - we have spent some good time out birding and taking pictures.