Dave’s Drop

Longer races I can handle. But more technical, too?

This year’s Subaru Cup was a completely different experience than last year’s. In 2012 I drove to Mt. Morris early on Sunday morning, did a 1-lap pre-ride of the Cat 3 (Citizens) course, then raced to 2nd place in my age group and drove home. This year as a Cat 2 (Sport), I was in for a much more demanding weekend.

Legacy Cross Country

I arrived at the Nordic Mountain ski area late on Friday afternoon and rode what I thought was a full lap of the Cat 2 course. But I was misled by some of the course markings (I wouldn’t be the only one) and in reality did a much shorter lap. Realizing the mistake, I scrambled to preview the rest of the lap with what remained of the daylight. Most of the course was familiar from last year, but moving up to Cat 2 meant moving on to some more challenging trail sections. I was able to handle everything except “Dave’s Drop,” a sharp left turn followed immediately by a tight, rocky descent. I tried it again and again but couldn’t figure it out.

“Dave’s Drop” was in my head as a lay awake in my tent on Friday night. I fell asleep with no resolution. On Saturday morning I returned to that section of the course and watched other riders conquer it in practice. But every time I tried I got the same result, and I’m lucky I didn’t crash. At last I resolved simply to dismount and run through that section. I needed to stop worrying about it and get on with my warmup.

Subaru Cup combines all Cat 2 men—Sport and Comp—in the same race, and I knew that I wouldn’t keep up with the Comp guys for long. I climbed pretty well throughout the race and handled the flat stuff well enough; the descents were my momentum killers. But, funny enough, “Dave’s Drop” didn’t cost me anything. I stuck to my plan of running that section while lots of other riders crashed or lost so much speed that there wasn’t an appreciable difference between riding and running. Much like my races last month at Wausau and Suamico, on Saturday I lost nearly all the ground I was going to lose in the early miles. By the final lap I was feeling pretty good. On the finishing loop—a strange and unwelcome addition to the race—I dropped my chain three times and lost a good 30 seconds, but the overall result was an honest reflection of my mountain biking abilities at this point in time. I finished 28th out of 37 in my age group and 165th out of 227 overall.

Last year I missed the pro cross country race altogether. This year I got to watch the best American professionals (and a few guests from outside the USA) take on an even more technically demanding cross country course than mine. Lea Davison won the women’s race after a long fight with Katerina Nash that left all the other competitors far behind. Todd Wells rode away from the field to win a confused and controversial men’s race.

Impreza Short Track

You could say that my cyclocross season began on Sunday in the short track mountain bike race … and you could say that I still haven’t fixed the problem that keeps me from better results in nearly all of my racing efforts. My warmups are insufficient, so the early moments of my races are compromised and I don’t hit my stride until I’m hopelessly far behind. On Sunday I was still in a reasonable position as the group returned to the start/finish after the ½-lap prologue, but by the end of the first full lap I was surely not going to see the leaders again. I held my position fairly well during the next lap, then had a brief power outage on my third full lap and gave up a couple of spots. On my fourth lap I was starting to feel much better but I got pulled from the race to give the leaders a clear shot at the finish line. If I had been allowed to complete the race I might have recovered one spot in my age group and perhaps one more overall, but I almost certainly would have been lapped by the leaders and the race organizers didn’t want that. I wasn’t the only rider to be pulled, and I got the impression that most of my fellow sufferers weren’t too disappointed to be done. I finished 15th out of 17 in my age group and 65th of 75 overall.

In the pro short track races, both Todd Wells and Lea Davison did the double: winning on Sunday after their impressive cross country wins on Saturday. Ben Forbes and Abby Strigel won Sunday’s pro Super D races. As badly as I descend on technical terrain, I wasn’t tempted to enter the Cat 2 Super D. The pros now move on to the national championships in Macungie PA later this week. I have a three-week break before the Sunburst Showdown on Aug. 4.

Waiting For My WORS Results

Subaru Cup races are part of a national series and part of WORS. Eventually, WORS will go through the results to separate the Comp and Sport finishers. My lowly placings will look a little better and I'll get the series points I deserve. But so far my 2013 season is playing out just as I predicted: I'm taking my lumps at a higher level of competition and I don't have any expectations of a high finish in the final standings. Keep watching this page for updated results.

Mark Cavendish Is Full Of Shit

If you watched today’s stage of the Tour de France, then you saw a bunch sprint in which Mark Cavendish is credited with a third-place finish. How he is allowed to keep that finish—and the important Green Jersey points that go with it—needs to be questioned. To say that Cavendish’s sprint was irregular would be an understatement, and Tom Veelers is the guy who had to pay for Cav’s mistake.

Veelers’ job was done: he had contributed to the leadout for teammate Marcel Kittel, who went on to win the stage. Cavendish had run out of teammates and was immediately behind Veelers as the Argos-Shimano rider began to slow down. In this picture, Cavendish has just popped out of Veelers’ slipstream:

Did Cav simply underestimate the speed at which Veelers was still traveling? In the picture below, Veelers is still on his line but Cavendish already is leaning to his left. Cav is moving so fast at this moment that a collision is inevitable.

Veelers then moves slightly to his right, but it is Cav’s abrupt swing to the left that causes the contact. Even if Veelers holds his line perfectly, Cav probably takes out his front wheel.

In the picture above, that’s Peter Sagan right behind Cavendish at the moment of impact. In the picture below, we see Sagan much farther to the right and out of harm’s way:

And that’s significant because Cavendish later contended that the road was bearing to the left and that he needed to move left to avoid hitting the barriers. But Sagan, heading for the same finish line, was never in danger of hitting the barriers.

Cavendish screwed up and now his ego won’t allow him to admit it. Race officials might have relegated him, but that would have cost Cavendish 30 sprint points and effectively ended his Green Jersey hopes. Cav’s a big star and it’s good for the Tour to have him battling with Sagan, Kittel, and André Greipel all the way to Paris. Veelers, meanwhile, is a domestique and, on this occasion, a sacrificial lamb.

Ask yourself how Cavendish would have reacted if the situation were reversed, and what fate would have befallen Veelers. Cycling still takes care of its big stars. Everyone else is pack fodder.

Pleasant Valley Sunday

New mountain bike trails are going into Pleasant Valley Park in Ozaukee County. On Sunday evening I took my 29er out for a couple of laps on the just-opened beginner loop. More advanced trails are under construction or still in the planning stages. When the new trail system is complete it should be a lot like New Fane. Don’t be fooled by the absence of rocks and roots on the flat beginner loop; Pleasant Valley will be a fun place to ride.

But what about the park’s suitability for cyclocross? With the 2013 WCA season now less than nine weeks away, it’s time to think about cyclocross practice. Last year West Bend’s Royal Oaks Park turned out to be a very good practice venue. It might still be the best spot, but Pleasant Valley deserves consideration.

By following existing turf trails and the gravel park road, it’s easy to design a 1-mile loop through Pleasant Valley for ’cross practice. That would make its laps just as long as Royal Oaks’ laps, but still on the short side when compared to actual race courses in the WCA series. I experimented with a starting chute concept that would add a little distance to Lap 1. In the picture below, imagine starting at the green marker and then joining the course at the red marker where a sharp right-hand turn sends you around the pavilion, over a set of barriers, and then out on a big counter-clockwise loop.

“My thoughts all seem to stray to places far away. I need a change of scenery.”

As you can see, the course would have a short section of two-way traffic … just like Royal Oaks. But that section is essentially a gravel road with enough width to accommodate riders moving in opposite directions. The big loop itself is not very interesting. Imagine a set of barriers somewhere on the loop to break up what otherwise would be just a fast, flat section.

In the aerial photo there appears to be open land to the east of the pavilion, but much of that now is in use by the beginner loop of the new mountain bike trails. There also appears to be an open area west of the big loop, but that’s off limits too. Pleasant Valley Park is an old landfill and we’re not allowed on the hill created by all the garbage. That’s too bad because it’s the only place I might have located a climb and some off-camber turns. There might be an opportunity to do more with the southwest corner of the park near the starting chute. Zig-zagging through row after row of compost piles could be a good way to practice accelerating out of tight corners … or it could just be tedious.

Royal Oaks is still a really good option. Compared with Pleasant Valley, it offers the same lap length but much more elevation change and course surface variety. But it also attracts more people, and it’s hard to conduct race simulations when there are other park users on or near the course. And at Royal Oaks we waste a lot of time getting barriers and cones from/to our cars during set-up/tear-down; at Pleasant Valley the parking area is right next to the course.

Perhaps the biggest benefit at Pleasant Valley is the park’s proximity to other racers. Practices at Royal Oaks attracted a West Bend crowd. I think I could keep that crowd and attract riders from Ozaukee County by moving into Pleasant Valley Park. Getting more people to participate can only make the practices more fun and a more accurate simulation of actual racing conditions. Watch for more on this topic soon, as we’re probably just four weeks away from the first practice! Is there an even better venue for Washington and Ozaukee racers? Let me know.

Da Doo Ron Ron

Talking with a fellow cycling fan on Sunday at the finale of the Tour of America's Dairyland, I had one of those funny little moments where one party knows what he's trying to say but he can't quite communicate it to the other party.

The Tour de France had begun the previous day. The winner of the first stage—and therefore the first maillot jaune—was sprinter Marcel Kittel:

K-I-T-T-E-L

My new friend was wondering whether Marcel were "Ron's son." In conversation you sometimes can't tell the spelling differences between two things that sound alike, so immediately I thought of Ron Kittle:

K-I-T-T-L-E

Ron Kittle is a former Major League Baseball player best known for winning the 1983 AL Rookie of the Year with the Chicago White Sox. He was an all-or-nothing power hitter who slugged 176 home runs while batting only .239 over 10 seasons.

Surely, the American baseball player Kittle has no connection with the German cyclist Kittel. It took me a moment to figure out where this "Ron's son" hypothesis took root:

K-I-E-F-E-L

Ron Kiefel is a retired pro cyclist who competed in seven Tours de France, won the 1984 Olympic bronze medal in the team time trial, and is a member of the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame. He was one of the 7-Eleven pioneers who introduced a top-level American cycling team to the European peloton.

Ah, now that connection would make more sense! Still wrong, but good for a laugh.

Everybody Wins?

In Wisconsin we have two statewide mountain bike racing series: WORS and WEMS. USA Cycling recognizes WORS as the state championship series. WEMS operates independently. WORS attracts hundreds of participants who compete for awards in multiple classifications based on gender, age and ability. WEMS recognizes gender as a distinguishing attribute and allows riders to race as individuals or as members of a relay duo or team, but WEMS does not classify riders by age or ability.

Sometimes it seems like WORS goes too far with its distribution of awards, creating classifications so precise that they contain just a handful of racers. There are several categories in which simply completing the race puts you on the podium.

In WEMS races, women, duos and teams all have excellent chances of winning just by finishing. But in the men’s solo categories, you’re merely pack fodder unless you are a Pro or Cat 1 (or equivalent). You go head-to-head against even the best racers over the same terrain. Most WORS races have course configurations that get longer and more challenging as the day’s schedule progresses from beginners to experts. In a WEMS race you get to see how you really measure up, and I think many racers enjoy the purity of that competition.

But some people now are advocating a change that would make WEMS more like WORS: categorization by ability. On the surface it sounds like an OK idea, creating more opportunities to recognize the racers’ achievements. And WEMS is listening, because the change could lead to greater participation. But how would the series administer that change? I think most promoters and racers want WEMS to stay free of USA Cycling oversight. If the races remain unsanctioned and many of the riders remain unlicensed, then it falls to WEMS to develop a system of classification that includes criteria for upgrades. I wouldn’t want that headache. Everything from registration to individual race scoring to series standings becomes exponentially more complex.

This is an occasion on which it’s best to leave well enough alone. Categorization by ability could be the first step down a slippery path to categorization by age and other attributes, and pretty soon WEMS is handing out trophies to everybody who shows up. And if most racers regard the WEMS calendar as a collection of individual events instead of a season-long points competition, what’s the harm? WEMS gives unlicensed racers a chance to compete, it visits several trail systems that WORS could not effectively use, and it offers course distance challenges far in excess of the 25-30 miles that WORS asks of its elite. WEMS is a distinct series and it should remain so, without apologies.

ToAD Comes To An End In ’Tosa

Zero laps to go. See you in 2014!

We’re so lucky to have the Tour of America’s Dairyland! But all good things must end and I was in Wauwatosa this evening to watch the sun set on the 11-day series. For the next three weeks I guess I’ll just have to settle for the Tour de France when I’m not working on my own racing ambitions.

Early this afternoon I did a fast Eisenbahn State Trail ride on my cyclocross bike, going all the way to Eden for the first time this year.

I used my Garmin to take split times over a few key segments:

Not a bad effort on a trail that is mostly gravel.

Split 1 was the segment from my house to 2nd Street in Kewaskum. Split 2 covered the next segment to Main Street in Campbellsport. Split 3 covered the segment from there to the end of the trail in Eden, and Split 4 was the return to Campbellsport … made slightly longer by a quick detour to the picnic shelter at Eden where I slurped down a Hammer Gel. Split 5 got me back to Kewaskum and Split 6 got me home. Split 7 was a short cool-down around my neighborhood.

I frequently do TT efforts between my house and Campbellsport, always shooting for less than 1 hour in each direction. Today’s time over those segments was 57:00.3 up and 53:35.2 back. I had never before recorded my times on some of those other segments, so now I have additional data to motivate me in future efforts.

So, we’re halfway through 2013 and I have done 76 rides for a total of 2,059 miles, an average of 27.09 miles per ride. That compares to 97 rides, 2,474 miles and an average of 25.51 miles by June 30 last year. You can blame our crappy spring for the deficits. In fact, I’m still waiting for properly hot summer weather to arrive. But I am still confident that I will achieve this year’s mileage goal of 4,570. That’s the number I need to reach 40,000 miles in my 10 years as a serious cyclist.

There should be many excellent opportunities to ride during the upcoming week. I have to work on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but then I get to enjoy a long Independence Day weekend.

Images From Downer Avenue

My favorite venue in the Tour of America’s Dairyland is Downer Avenue in Milwaukee. That’s my old neighborhood: I used to live at the corner of Bradford and Prospect. ToAD didn’t exist at that time. Its predecessor—the International Cycling Classic, or “Superweek”—did, but I wasn’t into cycling when I lived on the East Side.

Today I was into the pro women’s race, won in beautiful solo style by the beautiful Alison Tetrick:

There's plenty of time to wave to the crowd.

I also was into the bike shop owners’ tricycle beer keg pull, won with dashing style by the dashing Bill Koehler of Belgianwerkx …

It's got to be that Giro Air Attack helmet!

and completed in good time by the good-time Russell Jobs of DreamBikes:

Rockin' the old-school helmet!

Ricardo Escuela won the pro men’s race to tighten his grip on the leader’s jersey with just one race remaining. I plan to be in Wauwatosa on Sunday to see the finale.

Former Team Pedal Moraine road racer Jadon Jaeger, now of Belgianwerkx, survived a bizarre incident in the men’s Cat 4/5 race and appears to have a lock on the leader’s jersey in his classification. Jaeger’s race was neutralized when an advertising scaffold crashed onto the course. I wasn’t there to see it, but here’s a picture from Jaeger’s page on Facebook:

Sounds like there weren’t any serious injuries to racers or to people in the crowd, and after lifting the scaffold from the course the race was allowed to resume. The incident was oddly similar to what happened at the Tour de France today. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, huh?

Grand Départ

Tomorrow the 100th edition of the Tour de France begins and I remain hopeful that it will be less predictable than last year’s snoozer. I think Team Sky’s Chris Froome is going to be the man in yellow on the Champs-Élysées. However, I would prefer to see an American victory, and our best prospects are Tejay van Garderen and Andrew Talansky. But van Garderen will begin the Tour in the service of BMC leader Cadel Evans, and Talansky, making his first Tour appearance, probably just needs to follow his more experienced teammates before he can mount his own challenge next year.

Talansky and his Garmin-Sharp buddies will be an interesting team to watch during the next three weeks. They will do well in the team time trial and they won’t be wasting energy on a sprinter who (sorry, Tyler) just doesn’t match up well against guys like Cavendish, Sagan, Greipel and Degenkolb. Jonathan Vaughters knows that Talansky, Dan Martin and Rohan Dennis are the future, Ryder Hesjedal is a somewhat-inconsistent present, and Christian Vande Velde and Tom Danielson have already reached as high as they can. But with a whole team of good-but-not-great GC men, Garmin-Sharp should be in a lot of breakaways. Throw a bunch of guys at the front of the race and see who sticks. When your team doesn’t have the firepower of a dominating squad like Team Sky, I like that strategy.

Ordinarily at this point I would ask you to predict the winner by voting in the poll on the right-hand side of this page, but there won’t be a poll this year. I don’t think Blogger’s poll app works especially well. But feel free to use the Comments section. Froome is the favorite, but there are good arguments to be made for a handful of others.

I Meant To Do My Work Today

This is getting stupid. Seems like every time I have mountain biking in my plans, the weather takes a bad turn. Last Friday I went to New Fane and found it too soft from a recent rain and, in a few places, still covered with puddles. I’m a good boy: I don’t practice on wet trails. I sat in the parking lot until my Team Pedal Moraine friends arrived and we spent two hours on trail maintenance, so the evening wasn’t a total loss.

This Tuesday wasn’t a total loss either, but wet trails again forced me to abandon my mountain biking plans in favor of a 50-mile solo road ride. I had good legs, and that solo ride set me up for a good performance on Wednesday. I decided to do the Ozaukee Bicycle Club ride from Cedarburg and I felt great, but less than 2 miles into the ride I hit a patch of bad road and my frame pump rattled loose. It should nestle under the top tube by spring tension alone, but it’s not a perfect fit and I try to secure it with a strap. After a couple of potholes, that strap was the only thing keeping the pump off the ground. I had to stop to reattach it before it got caught up in my wheels! Stopping on an OBC ride means you will never catch the front of the group again, but I had no choice. It didn’t take long for me to resume but I couldn’t close on the leaders. I worked hard, though, hoping that I could catch a straggler or two as ride cohesion broke down. At Mile 9 I finally caught a lone rider with TT bars on his road bike. I passed him and at first I thought he couldn’t lift his pace to match mine. I wanted nothing more than to work with this guy to bridge the gap to the next straggler and form a gruppetto that would stick together to the end. Hell, I didn’t know the route! With the leaders literally out of sight, I was just guessing. Fortunately I had found a new partner and together we reeled in a third rider just south of Port Washington. By that point I had recovered from the time trial effort that brought me back to the tail end of the ride, so I did most of the work on County Highway LL to Belgium. There we decided to ad lib our return route to Cedarburg, staying mostly on the Ozaukee Interurban Trail. Again, I did most of the work and I felt strong. It turned out to be a good ride in good company, but I’m left wondering whether I had the legs to stay with the leaders. From now on, I will rely on my CO₂ device for such rides.

With two good road rides under my belt, I went back to New Fane this evening for some badly needed singletrack practice. And on my warmup lap, things were going pretty well. My lap time of 27:52 was right in line with the times I have been posting and I expected to be faster on the next one. Then this happened:

The timing couldn’t have been better: I had just returned to the parking lot. Still, it was disappointing. The thunderstorm blew in quickly and probably was gone before I got back to West Bend, but it dumped so much rain that the trails must have been compromised. And I’m still a good boy, so I’ll try again tomorrow.

Time Takes Time

Sometimes you have to march to the beat of your own drum.

On Wednesday afternoon I did an Eisenbahn State Trail ride to Campbellsport and back. I might have chosen to ride with the Ozaukee Bicycle Club, but I didn’t. After work I had 4.5 hours of daylight with which to complete a ride and to cut the grass in the back yard. Both of those things had to be done, in that order. Switch the order and I could have made the OBC ride but with diminished energy. That’s no way to train. I pushed the pace on my Eisenbahn ride and got a really good workout, and it didn’t matter that I was a little fatigued while I was mowing my lawn.

On Thursday I worked through my lunch break to create a little extra time at the end of the afternoon for another solo ride. I might have chosen to ride with the group from the high school parking lot, but I didn’t. I really wanted to catch the opening day of the Tour of America’s Dairyland.

On Saturday afternoon I rode alone again. I might have chosen to ride in the morning with the Washington County Bicycle Club, but I didn’t. The club’s 54-mile ride included a lunch break and probably took the group something like 5 hours to complete. I had other commitments and simply didn’t have that much time to give. My 1-hour solo ride probably conferred just as much training benefit anyway, because I was able to ride faster than I would have with the club.

I am having a big re-think about the way I use my time, and group rides are taking a beating in that internal dialogue. It’s usually true that I would be better off doing my own thing. On weekdays, starting my own ride at 4 p.m. means warmer temperatures and no worries about running out of daylight. On weekends, being able to pick my own time allows me to ride when the weather is most to my liking. At almost any time, riding solo creates an opportunity to address specific training needs in ways that would be incompatible with group riding. There are many benefits to group riding, of course, but when you look at my upcoming race schedule they are not the benefits I really need. More time riding singletrack and more TT efforts will pay larger dividends.

Since mid-April I have been averaging about 8 hours of saddle time per week. That’s not bad, but I would like to increase my training volume in what remains of June and throughout July. The only practical way to do that is to start as early as I can on those weekday afternoons. I’m not saying that all group rides are off my calendar, but they aren’t automatically on it either. I know the plan I want to follow. If rain wipes out my singletrack practice on Tuesday, then I will make up that workout on Wednesday or Thursday. I haven’t really been training for the kinds of races that I have been doing. Time to start.