Judging Self-Worth Through Insignifigant Cycling Achievements

I did the unthinkable and participated in an unsanctioned road race on Saturday! It was part of the grasshopper series, which is about 5 or so races that happen every year in Sonoma or here in Marin. They always draw the best competition available locally and have a good grassroots feel. Now when I say the best competition available locally I’m not talking about a couple of cat 2 racers and some pro mountain bikers, feast your eyes on this;

Yeah, that’s Levi holding one of the “lammies” with the course directions on it. Yes, he did win, easily I might say. His front group ended at three hours flat and the chase group that I was in was 10 minutes back. Now I am aware that if he wanted to he could have turned it on and shaved some serious time off of that but let me have my fun and say that I finished a road race 10 minutes behind Levi while he was in his peak. Even if it holds no water at all!

So anyways, this race was about 70 miles or so with about 6,000 feet of climbing, some of which was pretty steep. I treated it as a training ride and did A LOT of pulling and chasing down breakaways/ instigating breakaways and what not. What was kinda funny is that the “chase group” that I was in (which started with about 12 and ended with 5) was a bunch of pro/semi-pro mountain bikers and maybe one or two roadies. You should have seen us trying to do that weird “echelon” thing in the wind, it was priceless!

Another thing that had me working a little harder than I wanted to was a weird noise coming from the rear of my bike. I kept hearing it over bumps and was imagining that my rear wheel was moving around a bit. It was terriable on the way down the hills and I kept getting dropped and having to chase back on because I was pussy-footing the decents. When I got home later I checked the Orbea out and found a CRACK in the drive side chainstay just behind the bottom bracket!! Maybe I wasn’t imagining the rear wheel moving around after all!

Once it was all said and done I finished 13th (awesome number) which I was very happy with. Did I mention that Saturday was my 27th birthday? Can’t imagine a better way to spend a b-day that a free bike race followed with burritos and beers! Once again these races are awesome and free, so if you’re local I urge you to come out and battle! No matter what your skill level is there will be someone for you to race with and everyone is super friendly, hope to see you at the next one! Here’s the link;
www.grasshopperadventureseries.blogspot.com

And a picture of me on a road bike for those who just can’t picture it

By about 36 seconds it turns out. The race up in Cool California was last Sunday and the conditions couldn’t have been better! This race is known for having awful weather (snow two years ago) and usually being a sufferfest. This year there were the two creek crossings, one mud bog, and a bunch of dry and rocky fire roads that were even a little marbley in spots.

The race started at 10:30 so I was out of the house by sunrise to make it up there with time to warm up. While I was driving along highway 37 I was privlage to this sunrise;

which I thought was kinda awesome. In any case I got up there, rode about a third of a lap, decided that I felt pretty good and went to scope out the competition. Aren Timmel was there and so was Jason Moeschler, I figured that if I could keep ethier of those two in sight it would be a good day.

This race is kina weird in the fact that it groups the pro/semi-pro/expert fields together so it almost ends up being a mass start. Well, when Sean Allen said go I had a little trouble getting my right foot clipped in and I missed the bus when the pro’s took off. I sorta had to play catch up with everybody until the first climb came. I had just caught up with a group of 5 pro’s (minus Timmel who had gotten a flat as soon as he possibly could) and decided that it was now or never so I put out a good effort in an attempt to drop or at least split the field. It worked sorta, I dropped everyone except Moeschler who let me pull him around the first lap and totally blow myself out. It looked something like this;

After the first lap was done Jason showed me why he’s a pro and I’m a “semi”-pro and put a gap on me on the first decent. That looked something like this;

And that’s about how it went for the next lap and a half. He ended up winning with a time that was 7 full minutes faster than last years winning time. I ended 36 seconds behind him and about 2 minutes ahead of the third and fourth place guys. All in all it was a good race for me and it even had a pay out! I think the payout even covered my fuel to drive up there and back (diesel is over $4 a gallon in California right now) and a decent lunch.

I’m really enjoying all the stuff that I’ve been learning by racing with people who have YEARS of experience on me. This is a lot different than just going out on the single speed and hitting the hills as hard as I could and I think that it’ll help me be a faster rider by the end of this year. Maybe within the next year or two I’ll be able to keep up with or even beat some of these guys!!

Yeah, I know that I haven’t blogged for like a month or something like that. So sue me, I’ve had a lot of other stuff going on! First and foremost I met a girl who appreciates and supports (but does not participate in) my bike racing, which has boosted my morale considerably! Secondly, one of my main training partners took a little tumble last weekend and is off the bike and on the mend for at least the next two weeks. This is a tragedy because the poor guy put in all those hours through the winter and now, just as the weather is turning, is stuck riding a trainer to keep his fittness up. Seriously, I can’t begin to imagine how frusturating that must be. Lastly, I’ve actually been doing some cross country racing! On a geared bike! It’s all very exciting, listen up…

So for those of you who don’t live in the area, there is an early season series in the Monterey area called CCCX. I think that at first it was meant to be a Central Coast CycloCross thing but somewhere along the way a  cross country and downhill series got added on. Anyways, I missed the first race of the series at the beginning of February only to find out later that my friend/nemesis Eric Ebberoth (who I battled with on singlespeeds all last year) had gone and got a geared bike and an upgrade to semi-pro. Oh yeah, and he had also won the first race by over two minutes!! Not fair at all! This news had me all up in a huff and ready to go down for the second race swinging for the fences.

Longish story made Shortish; I was able to get my geared race bike together in time for the race (see below)

The couse is a mainly flatish, sandy loop with some really fast and fun burms towards the end of the lap. The pro-expert race was a five lap race and I think that there were 10 or 11 in the pro/semi-pro class. We started off in a group of about 6 or 7 and ended up with only 5 by the 4th lap. I missed a shift (not used to “shifting” yet) on a short steep climb and seperated myself and Jim from Eric and the other two guys. Eric attacked while Jim and I were chasing to get back on and I wasn’t ever able to catch back up with him. I ended up third, 32 seconds behind Eric and 1 second behind pro rider (and friend) Dave Yakiatias (who’s name I am surely misspelling). Come to think of it, Dave probably posted his info on the MotionBased website since that’s who he rides for. Maybe I’ll give that a gander when I’m done with this. I wasn’t really happy with how that race ended because of the missed shift on the climb and all, oh well life goes on and there was going to be an opportunity to make up for that poor showing on March 1st (which was last Saturday). Well, here’s how that one went down…

Jim wasn’t able to make it to this race so it was looking like I was on my own on this one. I ended up getting there just in time to see somebody gettind hauled off in an ambulance with a broken collar bone, bad start for a nice weeked. I was early enough to warm up with an entire lap around the course (which ended up being the same exact course as last time) with Dave. He informed me that Jason Moeschler (winner of the Downieville XC last year and all around bad ass WTB pro rider) was there and off warming up somewhere, this week was shaping up to be a battle!

The pace started a lot slower than I had expected and it seemed like no one wanted to be out front in the wind from the very beginning. After two laps at a very relaxed pace there was still 7 of us riding together and I decided to try and break that up a bit. I went for an attack up a slight hill and didn’t look back for about a minute. When I did look back I was a little dismayed to find that I had NO ONE in my draft. All alone on a fairly flat, windy course is bad news! I slowed down a bit and waited for everybody else to catch back on, then I ended up pulling for the rest of the third lap and just kinda wasting some energy. Eric ended up pulling the entire fourth and about half of the fifth lap, one could say the he was being hung out to dry, which he was.

Half way throught the fifth lap I decided that it was now or never and I went for it up one of the few climbs that the course offered. I ended up getting away from everybody except for Jason (who was glued on my wheel) and Dave (who wasn’t far behind). We ended up getting tangled up with some lapped traffic which had us coming to a dead stop, three wide on a paved road. Then the third of a mile sprint for the single track began. Now, if you know the three of us you know why I ended up about half a bike length behind the other two in a sprint. Jason and Dave are both put together more like sprinters, more on the bulky, muscley side. I, on the other hand, have never been described as “bulky” or “muscley” and don’t imagine that I ever will be. In any case, the three of us hammered out the rest of the course as fast as we could, totally blowing a couple of the corners and generally making a mess of things. In the end Jason won the race with Dave 2 seconds behind him and me about 3 inches behind Dave. This time I was okay with a third place finish because I was the one who made the attacks that determined how the race ended, which was totally fun! Here’s an “action shot” so that you’ll almost feel like you were there.

And one from the first race so’s that you can see Jim, too
That’s Eric on our left in the blue kit and Dave behind us in the white

So that’s what I’ve been up to for the last couple of weeks, mostly kinda starting to get into race mode again. There’s a race up in Cool (near Auburn) on sunday, I won singlespeed there last year and I expect to be in the top five overall this year. I’ll letcha’ know how it went sometime next week. Unless, of course, you’re at the race. In which case you won’t have any need to trudge through my spelling and grammitical errors to figure out what happened. Hope to see you guys there

So the Temecula race was this saturday. Getting down to the race proved to be almost as trying as the actual race was. I had the dirty diesel all loaded up and ready to roll as soon as I got off work on thursday.The plan was to drive straight down to Fontana and poach a hotel room with a friend of mine who just happened to be staying down there that night. As luck would have it the grapevine was closed due to snow and a reported 4 feet of standing water on the freeway! The only alternative was to drive around the mountains east of the central valley and come down into southern california by way of 395. If you don’t know the area then you probably don’t understand how much of an inconvience that was.

All traveling hazards aside, I made it down into Temecula on friday about noon or so and found a completley empty race site. The course was marked so I made my way out for a lap or two of pre-riding. It obviously had been raining for the last couple days because the normally dusty/desert course was about as tacky as anything that I’ve ever ridden on. There was even a little of that gooey, energy sucking mud on the flats and I was hoping that it was going to dry out before the next day. After I finished a lap (which my garmin said was about 10 miles and 1350 feet of climbing) I ran into Jason, the race promoter. We eneded up chewing the fat about who was gonna show and who wasn’t for about half an hour or so and then I went out for another half lap. Jason had put in a new rock garden and I wanted to give it another once over before race day. After that I was off to a crappy hotel room and maybe a meal at Denny’s or something like that.

Saturday morning rolled around and it was BALLS cold at the race course! I backed the diesel up to where I thought pit row was and set my pit up out of my trunk. Turned out later that I had set up on the part of the course that was only used for the “parade lap”, my own fault for not asking. I did a quick survey to see who had showed up and who hadn’t, I think that the less than perfect travel conditions kept a few people from coming out. Tinker was there, Monique Sawiki was there, and a whole bunch of pros that I’ve never heard of were there. I also didn’t recognize any of the single speeders, which kinda worried me (who are these crazy people?). 

Race got rolling at 9 on the dot and I was peeling off the arm warmers within the first 5 minutes. Turns out as soon as the sun came out the weather was perfect! First time without knee warmers in like 2 months! This is the point that I deciced that walking is for house wives. I was feeling pretty good and I decided that ethier I’m getting second at this race (let’s face it I’m not gonna be anywhere near Tinker no matter what happens) or I’m gonna blow myself up all over the mountain. So I rode pretty much the whole course (there were two short hills that I simply couldn’t get up) and turned out 50 minute laps for the first 7 laps ( I was told Tinker was doing 47 or 48 minute laps but haven’t seen the results yet). At this point I was beating all the pros (except Tinker) but was starting to feel the beginning of some cramps coming on. Then came the atomic mushroom cloud half way up the major climb on the 8th lap. I was off the bike, I was walking, I was a house wife.

After that lap was done I decided to take a look at the standings and see where the single speeders were at. At that point I had enough of a cushion that I could take a breather and maybe recollect myself. While I was having a bite to eat and stretching out my “haven’t ridden a single speed all winter” legs one of the pro guys got by me. Arrrgh!! I got back on the bike and tried to chase but it was no use. I was just too beat up to try and chase anybody down, I grumbled about it a little and continued to make my way around the course. Soon it was dark and then the rain came. I did two night time rainy laps and then decided it was time to rethink things. After my 11th lap I had another look at the standings, I was two laps up on any other single speeder and I wasn’t gonna catch ethier of the 2 (yeah another one got by me at some point) pro guys or tinker (who had lapped me). It had been like 10 hrs and 25 minutes or so and I felt like that was good enough for a January race. I had a look at the garmin just now and the number read like this;
110 miles
19,500 feet climbing
10hrs 24 minutes (10 hrs 4 minutes of actual rided time)
4th overall
1 good time

Now I know that going out too hard is not the best way to win endurance races but ya’ know what? I don’t really care right now! I feel like last year I didn’t quite push myself as hard as I could have in a couple of different races and January seems like an excellent time to explore the different depths of ” the atomic mushroom cloud”. Just how much is too much for me? I don’t wanna find out in spring at some big races so I might as well figure it out right now. Plus I kinda just want to totally destroy everybody this year. Now, I realize that I am not fit or strong enough to do that and that many, many people will beat me this year. But I will also beat a whole lot of people myself in 08′ and I plan on being totally ruthless about it. DESTROY, that’s the magic word for 08′ and it’s where my mindset is right now!

 

Here’s a picture that vic from teambigfoot took at the top of the rock garden. pretty cool stuff if you ask me…

     Since I’ve decided to ball up and do 24HOA Worlds again my training plan for the year needed to be refined. First order of business, get a single speed and start riding it.
Done (thanks to the guys at Spot). Second order of business, sign up for some endurance events and go ride above metioned single speed at these events. Almost done.

     As soon as I wrote the check to HOA I started scanning the internet for upcoming local endurance stuff, preferably lap races so I can further perfect my pit system (a cooler with a couple of bottles in it and some electrolyte pills strewn about). Then I remembered what I was doing at this time last January, which was getting lapped (chicked) my Monique Sawiki at a 12 hour race in Temecula. I signed up and then did a little digging on the interweb and came up with some pretty cool news, Tinker is suppose to be down there! I figure that if he put two laps on me at a 24 that I sould only be one down in a 12, right? Right.

     Okay, now I’ve got a single speed and a race in a couple of day to ride it in, let’s go work some trails on a beautiful Saturday morning. Not an hour into my first time on a single speed since October I ran into Yuri while he was out coaching one of the High School teams from Petaluma. There was a brief exchange of pleasantries (look how cool your bike is! No way, look how cool YOUR bike is!) and some talk of the upcoming Temecula race. Apparently Yuri will be down there also! That means that Tinker, Yuri, Mike from Vegas, and Desert Dan will all be down there showing me how the endurance game is really played, kinda hope that Jason decides to set the podium five deep!

     All b.s. aside, I did two of the 12 hour races that Jason puts on in Temecula last year and had a blast at both of them. The competition is there, the atmosphere is relaxed, and the course is fun (even though there isn’t even one tree the entire time). I’m looking forward to making the trip down south for the winter, I’ve been in need of a three day weekend anyways and this will be time well spent. Who knows maybe I’ll stop off in Fontana on the way back and pre-ride the course for the upcoming NMBS race that’s going to be there in the spring. 

Here’s a look at me totally blown out at the June race in Temecula. This was my last lap and Dan and Mike both had just passed me after I had been leading for the last like 7 hours or something. Let it be a lesson; when it’s over 100 all day and there’s no shade at all, don’t mess with two guys who both live IN the desert. Please take note of the amout of salt that I have on the back of my jersey. A tough day in SoCal.

Just when you’re starting to feel pretty good about yourself something always comes along and teaches you a lesson in humility. Today that lesson came in the form of two high school age kids. Late last week my friend Fritz had invited me to go on a road ride with him and a couple of other guys on Sunday morning. Seeing as I’m getting a little bored of the scenery around here (and of falling on slimey roads) I replied with an enthaustic “heck yes I wanna ride in Sonoma!”
 
Turns out that it was just Fritz, myself, Devon ( a junior expert who I believe is 16 or so years old), and Riley (who I know is 15 and should be racing junior expert). I’ve seen these kids race at some local dirt crits and they always blow away the entire field minus the pro/semi-pro group. Still I kinda figured that they would have a hard time keeping up on the road, espically on a longer ride. Almost as soon as we rolled out I realised that I had been mistaken, these kids can ride! After about an hour and a half of cruising around mostly flatish stuff we came to the first climb of the day.

Fritz, being a local Santa Rosa guy offered up this tasty little fact at the bottom of the hill; “So it takes Levi about 22 minutes or so to get to the top of this climb”. To which I answered, “From where”? His response, “right here” had me out of the saddle and on the pedals like someone was chasing me.  About 28 minutes later I’m at the top considering throwing up. I figure that nobody’s gonna roll up the hill for a good 3 or 4 minutes or so and I can probably re-gain my composure by that time. Then like a minute and a half later Riley rolls up looking waaay too comfortable, I mean seriously the kids only 15!! Once we all regrouped everybody dropped me down the backside of the hill, ever since my tumbles last week I’ve been a little squeamish about wet, unfamiliar roads.

In any case, we ended up putting in about 75 miles and I think 7,000 feet of climbing in about four and a half or five hours or something. Not what I was up to when I was in highschool. I just think that it’s really cool that there are young people showing so much potential and excitement about cycling locally. I also think that it’s cool that guys like Fritz are taking them out on such killer rides and even driving them home after the rides. Again I say it, those guys up in Sonoma County have a really posative social scene going on based around cycling. You can go to their races and see an up and coming 16 year old battle with a ex-pro if you show up on the right day and it’s all in good fun. Sure beats playing the Nintendo, doesn’t it?

Here’s the group after the ride, notice the chamios butter sticking out of my bag. Better safe than sorry, right?

Ended up following Fritz and his Battle Wagon on the way back towards Marin. I kinda like how the Benz star is sticking up at the bottom.

     The last week has brought with it a couple of mistakes, all of which are kinda funny. If you live anywhere near Marin, then you know that we are in the middle of the biggest storms in the last two years or so. Along with big storms comes wet rocks, roots, generally snotty trails, and in certian instances heavy fog and high winds. That was the sceniaro on monday evening, to the point that Bolinas-Farifax road was closed to traffic. Perfect, no cars on the road!! And I’m on the road bike enjoying the luxury of two lanes without the worry of being run over in the darkness. As I came to the first high speed turn under the trees I figured out why the road was closed, it was totally covered with pine needles, branches, and mud. Next thing you know 145 pounds of sissy and 17 pounds of Spanish carbon fiber are both airborne and headed in opposite directions. The end result looked a little something like this:
  
And also a little on the hip for good measure:
            
So, once again my complete lack of grace as a cyclist becomes painfully apparent. At least now that excuse I use for shaving my legs about it being easier to clean up wounds will make sense for a week or so.

Mistake number two in the last week isn’t really worth mentioning but it comes with a funny picture that’s been getting a lot of attention on myspace. I messed up doing my laundry for the umpteenth time and shrunk another wool sweater to comical proportions. For your viewing pleasure:

little guy in a littler sweater, funny stuff right?

This is my first blog, I’ve been itching to get one rolling ever since I got this computer about a month and a half ago. It being winter and all, I haven’t had any cool bike race stuff to talk about so I’ve been holding off waiting for something cool to happen. A couple of cool things are happening. Cool thing number one , it seems that I’ve greased the right palms and I’m in for SSWC in Napa this year. I’ve also recently had a couple of conversations that may have me signing up for 24HOA World Championships again this year. If all my finances work themselves out, that is. Cool thing number two, Nick at Spot Bikes. The guys over at Spot have had a little something cooking for me for a few months now and I just got my first glimpse of it…. Arrgh!! I’ve been trying to put a picture of the bike on this blog but the only way that I can make it work the picture is huge!! Technical difficulties. In any case those guys at Spot made me a sexy bike and I’ll have a very flattering picture of it as soon as I figure out how to use my computer. If this bike rides anything like it looks (and I’ll bet that it does) I’m gonna be one happy guy in 08! Pictures coming…