Luxury Of Time

In the quest for my first 5,000-mile year I still have 250 miles to go.  That’s not much, but it is 21 miles more than I rode last year between October 19 and December 31.  And the clock is ticking on Daylight Saving Time, which expires in less than three weeks.  Weekday rides are about to become a near-impossibility.

But I’m not worried.  Unused vacation time is my trump card.  I will be on vacation all of next week, I have a four-day weekend planned for Thanksgiving, and I still have two weeks to schedule.  If push really comes to shove, I’ll drive myself to a place with warmer weather and reach my goal there.

For financial reasons I would prefer to reach my goal closer to home, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the familiar roads and trails of Washington County.  I don’t feel like I’ve gotten my money’s worth from my state trail pass, so next week may include a long rec trail adventure.

The remainder of this week looks dreadful.  Tomorrow and Thursday are probably off days due to rain and high winds.  That leaves Friday for a final pre-race workout … hopefully.  The current forecast is favorable for Saturday’s cyclocross race at Doyne Park in Milwaukee.  Originally the race was to be held at Kletzsch Park in Glendale, but a scheduling conflict within the county parks department forced the race to relocate.

Downtime

Sometimes real life intrudes on the cycling fantasy in which I like to spend most of my time.  Earlier this week I was burning out from too many consecutive days on the bike.  Now I’m dying to get back on the bike because I have been away too long.  Thursday was a day of family commitments.  Friday evening was all about yard work.  I raced against the setting sun, ridding the front yard of leaves and mowing the lawn just before dark.  Today we welcomed family and friends to the house for a birthday party, preparations for which dominated my day.  But honestly, I might have taken a pass on today anyway.  High winds would have made for frustrating riding.  And tomorrow doesn’t look much better, but tomorrow must be different.  I’m a week away from my next cyclocross race, and I should be building fitness rather than allowing it to leak away.

Early this morning I watched a webcast of the Giro di Lombardia, the last major road event of the professional calendar.  It’s a shame Versus no longer broadcasts this event, because it runs on some of the most scenic roads in Europe.  But throughout the year I recorded approximately 40 hours of televised coverage, starting with Paris-Nice and continuing through Paris-Tours.  Reliving the 2011 season on DVR will help me through the indoor trainer season that will be here soon enough.

30,000 Career Miles

Early in today’s ride I surpassed 30,000 career miles.  As I have been a cyclist only since 2004, I think that’s noteworthy.  Sure, there are several hundred undocumented miles in my past.  But that wasn’t cycling; that was just being a kid on a bike.

By the end of today’s ride I had surpassed 4,700 miles year-to-date, putting me less than 100 miles away from the personal record I set in 2009.  But, of course, I won’t be content to stop at 4,801.  This year I must reach 5,000.  That’s the magic number because I won’t feel compelled to better it.  The next plateau, 6,000 miles, is neither realistic nor attractive.

The relentless pursuit of miles can be counterproductive.  Sometimes I should be doing shorter, harder efforts.  Sometimes I should be taking more rest.  Today was my 12th straight day on the bike.  I’m OK physically but I’m not totally into it mentally.  I need a break but I won’t take one.  I’m still short of my mileage goal and the weather is still good.  But the weather will turn soon, so I want to wrap this up before the end of October.

At The Crossroads

This morning I went into the Grafton PumpkinCross race with plenty of confidence.  I had seen the race as a spectator in 2009 and 2010, so I knew the course wouldn’t be as technically challenging as last weekend’s courses.  Taking two practice laps before the start of the juniors race only served as further confirmation.  The outstanding feature of the course is one steep grinder of a hill at mid-lap, a real problem for many riders but not for me.

Just like last Sunday, I lined up with the series numbers of my main rivals taped to my stem.  But despite a decent start, I would not stay with them for long.  Lap 1 was congested as the fast men of my category caught the slower riders from Master 35+ Cat 4 who had started in the wave before us.  Several crashes slowed the overall progress of the race, allowing a handful of riders to break away.  As I reached the sand pit I dismounted and ran with the bike—I had ridden the sand pit in practice and would ride it cleanly on the remaining laps, but on Lap 1 there were too many riders stalling ahead of me.  At the big hill I climbed past a couple of slower riders and by the end of the lap I had moved up nicely.

Positions stabilized as riders settled in on Lap 2, now knowing that it would be a 4-lap race.  I had stayed close to George Brophy for much of the lap, but he was faster through the last barrier section.  In my haste to get back to his wheel before the end of the lap I took too much speed into a slightly-wet, off-camber, 180-degree corner and down I went.  Fortunately it was a tall grass surface so the bike and I escaped any real damage.  I remounted, but not before Jeff Wren and John Norman slipped by.

Very early in Lap 3 I retook my position from John, then I passed Jeff before we got to the sand pit.  By the top of the big hill I had firmly reestablished myself but Brophy was gone.  For the remainder of the race I followed a Masters 35+ guy, but there was little incentive to pass him as no other Masters 45+ guy appeared to be within my reach.  So, I finished 7th out of 18 in my category, one spot behind Brophy, one spot ahead of Jeff Wren, and two spots ahead of West Bend’s Troy Sable, who had finished just ahead of me last Saturday at Mitchell Park.

My approach to the big hill—into which only a little momentum could be taken—was different from that of most riders.  I remained seated on all four trips to the top, while most riders got out of the saddle.  Plenty of riders got off the bike altogether.  I didn’t lose any positions on the hill, but I gained a few.  And I was strong on the asphalt section, shifting into the big chainring and hammering a part of the course that some riders used to catch their breath.

But, it is what it is: 7th place today is a third-consecutive mid-pack finish.  I’m racing well enough to have fun, hard enough to put a little edge on my fitness that otherwise might not be there this late in the year.  I’m not racing well enough to contemplate a Top 3 overall finish in the series.  Tomorrow I will not be racing at Cam-Rock.  In fact, I probably will pass on all of the Madison-area races and concentrate only on the events that are close to home.  That still makes for a nice schedule, and with a mix of cyclocross, mountain biking and road bike time trials I have already done more racing this year than ever before.  It’s OK if I don’t race again until Kletzsch Park on Oct. 22.

Need More Cowbell

Don't fear the off-camber sweeper!

Cross The Domes

On Saturday I did my first-ever cyclocross race, Cross the Domes, at Mitchell Park in Milwaukee.  I got there early to warm up and to get familiar with the course.  Pre-riding provided me with valuable intelligence: watch out for the off-camber turns, take the run-up two steps at a time, don’t try to ride the sand pit, drop people on the biggest hill.  Unfortunately I didn’t position myself well at the starting line, so I spent much of Lap 1 getting around slower traffic.  Passing people is motivating, though, and I began to believe that I could have modest success.  Near the end of the first lap I saw Patrick Brock cheering for me from the sidelines.  At that moment I had just one word for him, “Hurts.”  And it didn’t stop hurting: I was fighting for breath almost the entire race.  But I kept moving up through the field, and I owned my pain.  If the race was hurting me, then it was positively killing a lot of the other guys.  I thought back to the Reforestation Ramble mountain bike race, when I trusted in my fitness to sustain me at an uncomfortable level of exertion for almost an hour.  Surely I could suffer for a mere 30 minutes on Saturday!

At the end I was 9th out of 18 in Masters 45+ Cat 4 and that was the result I deserved.  It was the product of a willingness to suffer, a reasonable amount of bike handling skill (the rear tire broke loose a few times, but I never went down), better-than-average performance going uphill and, on the negative side, a couple of slow transitions and a poor starting position.  My group raced at the same time as Masters 35+ Cat 4 and Masters 55+ Cat 4.  I picked off a lot of those guys along the way and I wish I knew my overall place within the combined field.  It was a very respectable first effort.

River Hill Park CX

I went into today’s race with considerably more confidence than I had at the start of yesterday’s.  I even had the race numbers of Saturday’s top five written on a piece of masking tape on my stem, as I was determined to start near them and to hang with them during the race.  Then Jeff Wren said, “You’re not going to like this course.”  I took off for a practice lap and immediately saw what he meant: lots of elevation change, lots of tricky off-camber stuff.  There also were two obstacles that clearly I wasn’t going to ride: a steep hill into which I would take little momentum, and a big sand pile—not a sand pit.  I had a marginally better start than yesterday’s but it wasn’t long before the top contenders—including Michael Meteyer, yesterday’s winner—were comfortably ahead.  I spent the first two laps moving up through the field, hot on the heels of Mr. Wren and his teammate John Senkerik.  As the third lap began, we were a somewhat isolated trio.  I was content to follow wheels until Jeff came to grief on the sand pile.  Early in the fourth and final lap, John crashed into the front barrier while I got away cleanly and Jeff moved up one spot.  The remainder of the lap was anticlimactic as the three of us preserved our positions all the way to the finish line: I took 8th in the 19-man Masters 45+ Cat 4 field, while Jeff and John finished 9th and 10th, respectively.  Meteyer won again.  Chris Tamborino of Hubertus took 2nd, so we had three Washington County residents in the top nine.

After the first two races of the WCA Crank Daddy’s Cyclocross Series, I’m in 7th place on points in my category and I’m feeling pretty good about things.  Grafton PumpkinCross is up next.  In the week ahead I need to keep training with intensity and continue to work on cyclocross-specific skills.

Crossed Paths

This evening I went down to Kletzsch Park in Glendale to join a group of about 25 cyclocross racers for a practice session that I badly needed.  The group included riders of widely-varying ages and abilities.  Because I’m still so new to the discipline, I spent most of my time with a group of about 7-8 others practicing on a dedicated barrier section: dismount, hurdle barriers, remount, repeat.

The rest of the riders took to the course—Kletzsch Park will be the site of a WCA Crank Brothers Cyclocross Series race on Oct. 22.  Unfortunately, two of those riders collided violently, resulting in facial injuries that needed First Aid from paramedics and then stitches at the emergency room.  The guys will be OK but the accident really sucked the enthusiasm out of the group.

In addition to the barrier section, I practiced my start (don’t expect me to win any holeshots) and my run-up technique: dismount, shoulder the bike, reach around the downtube and grab the handlebar, run, remount.  For me it was a good practice with several valuable tips and demonstrations from experienced racers.  I’ll try to attend more practices at Kletzsch in the future.

Today I didn’t literally “run into” anyone at practice, but figuratively I “ran into” Kyle Jacobson, one of the finest bike racers West Bend has ever produced.  It was cool to meet him, finally.  He’s a far more talented rider than I, but we do know many of the same people and it’s remarkable that we had never met before.

'Cross Purposes

From the home office in West Bend, Wisconsin ...

My cyclocross racing season starts next weekend and my goals for it are pretty modest.  I’ve never done a cyclocross race before and I have had very little practice, so I don’t have anything like mastery of the techniques that the good riders show off with such apparent ease.  What I hope to get out of the season is fun, fitness and racing experience on which I can build next year and beyond.  I don’t expect Results.  I don’t expect to challenge for the series championship in Masters 45+ Cat 4.  I don’t even know how many of the races I will enter.

Yesterday I joined USA Cycling, so I’m now a licensed bicycle racer.  That distinction doesn’t make me a better bicycle racer, but it does make me more likely to enter at least six races in the WCA Crank Daddy’s Cyclocross Series.  With six races I would recoup the cost of the license; anything less and I would have been better off buying the one-day license for each event.  Next year I should get my license early and use it for mountain bike and cyclocross races.

Today turned out to be the complete washout I feared.  Fortunately I was able to watch the UCI world championship road race from Denmark early in the morning and the USGP of Cyclocross from Sun Prairie in the afternoon.  That kept me entertained for a few hours but it was a poor substitute for my own ride.  Monday and Tuesday look bad too—we’re just in an awful weather pattern right now—and I might have to dust off the indoor trainer.  I haven’t used it since April 15 and would prefer to avoid it for a little longer, but I don’t want my fitness to slip from too much time off.

Sweet 16

Today I rode only 16 miles but they were 16 very important miles.  What made them important was the commitment it took to do them on such a dark, rainy, miserable day.  All day long I looked for an opportunity to ride and it didn’t come until almost 6 p.m., by which time I had only about an hour of daylight with which to work.  But I rode.  And these weren't garbage miles; after working myself up to the task mentally, I made a good effort physically.

In pursuit of my first 5,000-mile year, a 0-mile Saturday would have hurt.  The miles are getting harder to find and the expression 16 > 0 is both obvious and an understatement.  Shorter days are taking a toll.  So is cyclocross practice, but I need to work on those skills.  Tomorrow looks like another day of bad weather, and again I will need patience and the willingness to accept a shorter ride than my heart desires.  Just 19 miles tomorrow would get me to 600 for September, which was my target for the month.  Of course, that target assumed a 4,000-mile year.  Since 2007 I have averaged just 337 miles in October, and as of today I’m still 682 miles from 5,000, so there’s still work to be done.

Looking Ahead ... Way Ahead

Bite my shiny metal bike!

This week the UCI awarded the 2015 road racing world championships to Richmond VA.  The only other time the US hosted the world championships was back in 1986 at Colorado Springs, so this is a big deal for American cycling.  It’s still four years away but I’m already thinking about making the trip to watch the races—especially the time trials.

In February 2013 the cyclocross world championships will be in Louisville KY and I’m hoping to be there too.

I can contemplate such trips because (1) I travel on the cheap and (2) I have tons of vacation.  During each of these events my kids will be in school and my wife, employed by the school district, will have to work.  They won’t miss me for a few days … or a week.  And when I’m not watching the races I can be riding.  Richmond’s late-September weather should be sublime.  Louisville in early February should be, well, better than West Bend at any rate.  Daytime highs in the 40s would be normal, and that would be good enough for me.  A lot could happen in the months and years before these events, but my desire to see them is sincere.

The immediate future has its own ambiguity, as there is a significant chance of rain for each of the next five days.  That could wipe out the Washington County Bicycle Club ride in Hartford on Saturday.  Things look much better next week and that’s important: I intend to hit Kletzsch Park in Glendale for cyclocross practice next Wednesday.  The WCA cyclocross season begins next Saturday and Sunday with races in Milwaukee and Kewaskum.  I’m still unsure about my participation at the Mitchell Park race in Milwaukee, but Kewaskum is a must.

Expectations

This weekend was neither the best of times nor the worst of times.  I rode for two hours on Saturday but for only one hour today.  I intended today’s ride to be 2-3 hours but I was demoralized by the weather and simply unwilling to continue in the drizzle.  So, I’m calling today a rest day—I don’t need to recover from such a small effort—and tomorrow I will be back in the saddle.

It’s going to be a difficult week at work.  I will be busy tomorrow with an audit of some of my company’s business processes, then Tuesday through Friday I will attend online training for a complicated new software package.  The good news is that these duties begin early each morning and when they finish I will be free to ride.  So, I’m hoping for relatively high mileage on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.  On Wednesday evening I will attend another group cyclocross practice.  Friday may turn into a rest day … we’ll see.  There’s a Washington County Bicycle Club ride in Hartford on Saturday but I haven’t decided whether I will go.  Sunday’s plans are also unconfirmed but I expect next weekend to be my last high-mileage weekend this year.

The UCI World Championships start in Denmark tomorrow and I’m hoping to find streaming video on the Internet.  On Saturday and Sunday the USGP of Cyclocross Planet Bike Cup will be in Sun Prairie and I’m tempted to attend as a spectator but probably will stay closer to home to do some riding of my own.  Last year the Planet Bike Cup streamed at CyclingDirt and hopefully it will again.