Monday, March 19, 2012

Day-O: Banana Belt Race 3 Report


“Why do I race?”  This is what I am contemplating as I am half way through my second lap at Banana Belt #3. 

The race started well, I rolled along with the main field for the few miles.  Then, at the main climb, I got dropped.  Once I get dropped in a road race, it is not likely that I am going to catch back on to the group. I am dropped at mile 4 of a 33-mile race.  The sun was shining, so I decide to bury myself for as long as I can to see if this time I can catch back on to the main field.

As the miles roll by I look ahead in hopes of seeing other cyclists who may have been dropped.  I catch my first dropped rider at the end of lap 1.  I encourage him to draft off my wheel.  He tells me that he is going to drop out of the race.  I push on.

Lap 2, the sun continues to shine and the legs feel good.  I have a song stuck in my head.  My mind begins to wander,  “Why am I killing myself right now?”,  If I keep going, there is a chance I won’t be DFL”,  “Am I having fun?”.  Near the end of Lap 2 I spot another dropped rider.  I lower my head and pedal harder.

This is how I envisioned the day going, but fate and fitness had other plans.
At the start of lap 3 I catch the dropped rider.  This rider is ready to work and we take turns pulling and drafting.  I am stronger on the hills; he is faster on the flats.  We eventually catch another dropped rider and form a group of three. 

The group rolls toward the finish and I begin to plan my finishing strategy.  It is an uphill finish, so I plan to sprint with 200 meters to the line.  Since I am third in the pace line at 200 meters mark, my attack comes as a surprise.  One rider is dropped immediately and the other rider hangs onto my rear wheel.  With 100 meters to the line, my legs begin to fail.  The rider on my wheel pulls ahead at the finish.  I manage to make it to the line and avoid DFL. 

Although the day did not go as planned, I felt strong and I feel my fitness is progressing.  Why do I race?  I race because it makes me faster and improves my cycling skills. I race because it is fun.


Monday, March 12, 2012

Road trips and a Narcissistic Joy Ride on Syncline


Spencer already wrote a great race report about the Echo race. My race wasn't great and made worse by a mechanical, and a lack of early season riding. But this post is more about the weekend itself. The team carpooled up to Hermiston, then Hood River for two days of awesome riding and hanging out. We rolled into Hermiston with 3 car loads of racers at 11pm the night before the race and shared 2 hotel rooms. It brought me back to high school sports trips but with beer in hand.
Post race team nap

Post race we hurried off to Hood River to check out the breweries and hangout around the town. Some night time adventures in the name of finding a hot tub came up short but we found a 100 foot waterfall instead at the Columbia Gorge historic hotel, also they had great biscotti and coffee in the morning:)

Lewis and Clark? No Spencer and Ethan, but no less epic

On to the fun ride. For a post race ride we headed across the Columbia to the Syncline trail network just East of the town of White Salmon. We had varying paces and we trying to keep the group together. This is where things went wrong.  A few of the guys(Spencer, Ethan, and team friend Ryan McGinnis went up the road and didn't turn back) The rest of the group sat waiting hoping they would turn around. They didn't.

 So after 20 minutes Hollis,  Deireck and myself went up the road to try and catch the guys and come back down to Hollis's friends and Julie, Erin and Jen. We climbed and climbed and climbed all the way up into the snow and then came to a fork in the road. At this point a truck drove up and told us that he talked to our friends and sent them down a different way. He was nice and told us how to hit the trail from there. Note here: we told the ladies that we would ride back down to them on the road. But since the guy sent them down and we didn't have phones we thought we were good.

So the following footage is from a super epic descent down the trails Crybaby and Little Maui. On the way down we found Ethan, Ryan and Spencer.





After we got to the bottom we found out that the guy in the truck was talking about Hollis's friends and not the girls. The other guys had peeled of also and left the three women waiting for us to return. Ryan did have a phone and called and talked with the ladies. They were tired, hungry and pissed. To put it nicely we the guys of Tensegrity owe the women a night out. We made the start of reparations by stopping in Portland at Hopworks Brewery and buying the ladies many pints of beer.

So lessons learned for the team.
1. Have everyone carry their cellphones, and actually have everyones numbers programed into your phones.
2. Regroup and turn back if someone in your group doesn't show up, they could be hurt.
3. Never ever leave the ladies up the hill.

In the end all was fine and the ladies got there descent, ending an epic weekend of racing and riding with friends.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Echo, saved by Stans?





How can I begin to describe my 1st Mt. bike race. Well it really started 3 days before, when I was gluing some super light tubless tires. Turns out the super lightweight tires are the Divas of the tire world, and don’t like to get pumped and filled with fluid (Stan’s fluid). I would fill them untill they were nice and tight, and Pssssss… a little pin hole bubble decides to pop, and rel
ease air… not such a big deal, all you have to do is shake some of the Stan’s fluid that is in them into the hole, then re-pump it up to pressure... Psssssss… I just repeated it about 40 times untill they finally held air over night. The next day on the 5 hour drive up to the race venue, and over night, my front tire the bigger Diva decided to deflate and pull away from the bead. No matter how furiously I flapped my little arms the floor pump couldn’t get the bead to reset. Long story short, I had to put a tube in it.
Ooook on to race day, did I mention it was my 1st Mt. bike race ever, yeah well it was, and I was on brand new never ridden (Diva) tires, on a bike I had ridden maybe 3 hrs total.
We, the team, team Tensegrity + Ryan, got to Echo Red to Red, pulled up, and preceded to get ready and registered, bla bla bla, time for the preride. Off we ride up the windy road, following the windy racecourse, we veered off to the left onto a windy gravel road. Still windy, we cranked through the dust, and tumbleweeds. Blowing past bikers slung along the wayside, soon realizing that the tumbleweeds we were riding through were hiding, not so tiny two pronged, thorns (we call goat heads). Fearing for the lives of our tubes we furiously turned around and started tearing back through the goat head minefield, trying to avoid a pre race flat… Ethan’s tire went down, nothing we could do, leave him behind, the rest of us made it out unscathed, or so I thought.

Pulling up to the line I B.S.ed with a couple of the other guys trying to blow off some pre race excitement. I just happened to look down and I see a huge goat head chewing into my front tire… do I pull It? No time to change a flat… Awe F it… I pulled it, Psssss… but, hear comes my big but, but it turns out all the Stan’s fluid I left in the tire worked even though I had a tube in it, it sealed itself up. The rolling start begins. Cruising up the road I go, BAM, someone’s tire blows… They limp to the side of the road, Bam another down. We push on, down the gravel road, we turn right into a field, and then onto some single track, turns out it was not just windy but dusty too. I start passing people on the up hills, and try not to cry in terror, on the downhills, tricking myself into thinking my tears are from the wind. After pumping down the trail for a while, happy my tires are holding as I pass others stopped with flats. I see a fly over in the distance,
(a large wooden bridge over a second trail, set up to allow two riders/trails to cross simultaneously without running into each other). I approach, seeing a line of people piled up failing to ride over it. I think to myself I remember this game from cross, so I just shoulder my bike and run past everyone up to the top, hop skip and a jump back on my bike, landing lightly on the saddle. Ha ha eat my dust; you all suck (isn’t what I’m thinking of the 5 riders I just passed). This couldn’t be going better. Wait, my shoes failed to clip in. Turns out using brand new shoes means my cleat position is different. Screaming down this man made deathtrap, I bottom out no feet on the pedals, suddenly I’m sitting back on my bike, like I’m popping a wheelie.

I stop, thinking that my seat post has dropped. It’s still in it same spot, but me seat is pointing at the sky, in what I can only assume is an attempt to let me know who is punishing me for my greed. I bust out my multi-tool, and attempt to adjust my seat. I see the rails are bent and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. I raise my seat a bit, grab a granola bar out of my pocket, and jump back on my bike.
I’m annoyed as I start catching and passing people I have already passed. I keep pushing hard, I crest the top of a hill, expecting a nice well-deserved rest, only to be beat down by the steady battering ram of the Eastern Oregon winds. I do everything I can to keep pedaling and stay in the single track. I snake along the trail sometimes leaning sideways into the wind so far it looked like I'm leaning through a corner even when I'm going strait. I was doing great again, passing people on the up hill, and holding on for dear life trying not to die on the downhill. Ha I’m dominating these people. Clunk, clunk, clunk, I started to feel my back rim hitting as I road over rocks, it was going flat. I pushed on until it started to burp air; I stopped and whipped out a co2 charge, to pump it up. I connect the two pieces and hook it up to my tire… nothings happening… I try looking for a button or something to release the gas… I see nothing, I push and bend it to no avail… it must be a dud, so I start to untwist the charge from the adapter, and PSSSSSST, IT WORKS, I’m a dumb ass. Off I go again, passing people, some for the 3rd time. I’m not so annoyed at this point because I assume my race is over due to the punishment by the lord for my callous pageantry.
I push on, I run into the far end of the gravel road, one big hill left, then a flat cruise to the finish line. I laugh as I see people up the hill walking their bikes or slowly spinning in their granny gear. I can pass everyone here. I jump up and start my out of the saddle grind. My back tire is slipping, and my legs are failing… maybe half way up, defeated, I slip into my granny gear, and slowly spin my way to the top, with everyone else. As I crest the top of the hill, my temples pumping out of my skull, ready for
the flats to catch my breath, I hit the wind again… the damn wind that I forgot about. Even with the wind I’m finally able to catch my breath, I notice some of the Cat 1’s in the field to behind me to my right, they are destroying the field, pace lining through the wind making us cat3s, 2s, and clydesdales look like we are standing still. I can see in the distance where we will meet, so I punch into the wind. I just barely make it to the intersection in time to jump on the back of their pace line. I try to hang on while the guys fly up the gravel road. They keep switching back and forth cutting the wind for each other, while I feel like a bitch just sitting back trying to catch my breath again. Finally we hit the road, and I figure I should at least try to be something other than a parasite, so I crank into the big ring (of my 3x9), and drop the hammer into the front, I say something cool like, “I’m a bad ass Cat 3 see if you Cat 1 bitches can keep up, aaah ha ha”, as I burn rubber and speed away. Ok what really happened was I said “jump on, I’ll pull you as long as I can”, and I did. I pulled for a good 3/4th of a mile thinking I may be able to beat these guys to the finish, only to have them sprint past me in the last 400m like I was standing still (reverse breakaway).
All and all, I felt good about the race, turned out I got 2nd in my age/division, so that was good.