DCCX race report

Thanks to John Nagy for the pics!!!

Well....I was kind of tired going into this race and my heart wasn't really in it.  I'd done enough rigorous riding the past week to leave my legs a bit sore so I actually started the race with some soreness.  I almost quit before I started but decided to give it a go since I was already there.

The start was fast and there was a nasty little turn early on.  I had a decent position at first but found myself getting passed left and right by people.  I am just not aggressive enough in crowds.  This led to me getting pushed into the tape by someone, having to get off and run some because of getting caught behind people, and getting completely taken out by someone on this nasty off camber hairpin turn all on the first lap (I hit something hard in that crash....feels like someone hit me in the calf with a bat....I'll feel that for a few days).  That was really disheartening.  People I normally race against were way out of sight and I had little hope of catching them (or so I felt).

One of my teammates (Jay Neighbors) came up behind me during all this and rooted me on.  He was doing awesome so I stuck with him while getting back on my feet.  Things got better as we got away from the less skilled people that seem to like to take me down with them.  I dropped my chain when I bounced my bike going up the stairs on the third lap....that cost me.  I originally thought it was pretty cool because the top bar popped up into my waiting hand like Harry Potter with his broomstick....until I jumped back on and was free spinning... (yes it's almost Halloween and I had to insert a Harry Potter reference.....)

Tom and Jay on the stairs

 I just kept grinding away and was feeling mildly terrible for most of the race.  The leaders pretty much maintained a 1:30 lead on my so I decided I just needed to finish this race.  I could see a pack not far behind me and resolved myself to not get caught by those guys.  I started feeling kind of peppy on the last lap / maybe lap and a half.  I started pushing harder knowing it was almost over.  I walked some guys down and gapped those near me.  I started to feel like my normal self a bit.

I passed a guy a bit before the end and he passed me back a bit later.  Going into the final stretch, I knew I could out sprint him because he looked super tired.  I shifted up, then shifted to the big chain ring....spin spin spin....I LOST MY CHAIN!!!  Even without being able to push, I was still right behind this guy.  I was shifting madly trying to get my chain back.  I finally got it back just before crossing.  I admit that I felt so betrayed by my bike that I threw it away from me when I got off.....gotta work on that anger management.

It could have been worse.  Auggie Plitt from my team got a flat on his 3rd? lap and had to run about 1/4 lap before getting to his pit bike.  Jay Neighbors somehow blew off his valve stem right before the finish and lost some positions from that.  All in all, it was kind of a frustrating 3/4 race for AFC, but we all finished, none of us was really hurt, and we still had fun.

Tom

Charm City Cross day 2!

Long story short:

I raced in the Men's 2/3/4 for Charm City Cross and placed 23rd out of a full field of 125 riders.  I got to race with my friend Lance for the first time since we did the Cat 4 races of Charm City last year and also Goat!  Karisa's Dad and brothers (Dan and Josh) also came out to watch me race!  No pressure...:-)

The longer story:

I had an ok warmup.  I rode the course a few times, rode around the lake there, and finished my warmup with one last lap around the course.  I followed Lance and Goat around the course and watch their lines they took.

I knew it was a full field and the start would be what Lance likes to describe as, "escaping from a burning building".  I started well but almost immediately popped my right foot out.  I clipped back in quickly and tried to move up where I could.  Things were tight for the first lap but I managed to pass a couple people that I'd marked while getting passed by others.  I'm not really good with riding in crowds because I'm not super aggressive.  I passed Goat about 3/4 of the way through the first lap fixing his chain....not cool and and I would not see him again.

I'd decided on the pre rides that I was going to run the massive sandpit.  I watched enough people in previous races getting caught up in the sand pit and knew my skills were not good enough to guarantee I could ride it....so I ran it every time.  I have to admit that I didn't look forward to this part because it was kind of a long run, but it worked out well and I never had any troubles there.

I started to get really tired halfway through the race.  I don't know if I was going to hard (couldn't tell because my HR monitor fell down early on and was around my midsection) or what, but I could feel myself slowing down and was passed by some really fast guys.  Toward the end I just kept putting in lots of effort to hold on to what I had and crossed all alone in 23rd position (beating the race predicted 63 by a good margin).

This was awesome!  I can't believe I could do so well in such a stacked field!  I've been training a lot, getting some awesome unofficially official coaching from my friend Patrick Blair, and trying hard to get my nutrition right (yay Probars!) and it's been paying off.  It's really cool that all Pat asks for his coaching is sponsoring a child from Kupenda - something wifey and I love to do anyway!

Karisa took pictures of the race and I haven't converted them yet.  I'll add them to this post later!

Tom

BCA Cross

2nd race of the season for me and first for the Sportif Series is BCA Cross.  This was my first Sportif race.  I knew that Sportif races didn't tend to have as many racers so I was looking forward to a less frantic/crowded start.  I raced in the Cat 3/4 race that started at 11:45 with the junior race starting on our heels at 11:46.  The weather was just about perfect for such a race....I was a bit chilly warming up but I knew that would mean ideal conditions during the race.  The course conditions were dry with some soft spots.  The course was made up of lots of flat grassy sections chock full of bumps - I've never been on a course this bumpy and pot-holed before!

The start was pretty uneventful with about 30 riders in my race.  After the short start section, I got into the grass somewhere around 10-14th place.  I settled into a rhythm and started to fight my way up some positions.  Near the end of the first lap or into the second lap I was in 4th or 5th place and about 10 seconds behind the leaders.  3rd, 4th, and 5th, we all rode fairly closely together.  This kept up for another lap and then I decided to try and bridge the gap to catch 1st and 2nd.

I attacked and passed the guy in 3rd and started making a hard effort going after the leaders.  I was about halfway up to them when I took a turn a little too wide and caught my pedal on one of the stakes holding up the tape (when pushing hard, the first thing to go is your brain).  I got off and ran to get momentum back up and was caught by passed by 2 riders as I recovered.  At some point this became 3rd - 6th all together and I really didn't want to end up in 6th! We lost one rider when he attacked, got ahead to third and then crashed on an off-camber section...then there were three (I didn't realize he wasn't with us anymore till later).

All together for a while.

I found myself in 4th place sitting behind a Twenty20 cyclist. I decided that my handling was terrible and that I needed to watch this guy's lines to try and conserve energy for a later attack.

Watch his lines....

I stuck with him for a good 2 laps watching his lines, watching when he pedaled, and trying to really focus on my handling.  I was actually feeling really good and rested when I attacked with 2.5 laps to go.  Before I knew it, I was about 20 seconds from the leaders and 20 seconds from my chasers.  I pretty much stayed equidistant between the two groups until the last lap.

On the last lap I put in more effort to guarantee that I'd stay away from my pursuers and actually started to close on the leaders.  They saw me coming at one of the turn-arounds and also started to put in more effort.  Toward the back half of the course, I could see that they were still too far away to be overtaken and that I'd made a nice gap behind me so I took it somewhat easier toward the end.  I didn't want to screw anything up due to a crash at the very end.  In the end I was third place!  All that training and advice from Pat Blair has really been paying off!

Third!

It was a fun race.  Next up Charm City!

Tom

Tacchino CX Race Report

It's been a while!  I've been meaning to post about all sorts of things, but today forced my hand.  I raced the Cat 3/4 Cyclocross race at Tacchino.  All summer, I've struggled with whether or not I even wanted to race this fall.  Last season I placed highly in the Cat 4 race and I've trained pretty hard since then.  This was a great opportunity to see how much that training has paid off.

I struggled with it because I've never been particularly competitive, I don't particularly enjoy racing, and I get incredibly nervous before races...not sure why.  It's comforting to know that my friends and teammates also get pretty strong jitters before races so that helped.  As race time approached over the last week I got nervous every time I thought about the upcoming race, but I felt pretty calm as I was pre-riding and warming up (not to say I wasn't jealous that Jay Lins and Jon Houghton had just finished their race).

Anyway that's enough of how I felt before the race - on to the race report!  Here is the course ride on Strava.  The start was a mess.  The first couple of rows were nice and clear but I was in the 4th or 5th row and we were not in clear start blocks.  Everyone was jammed together like sardines.  I started next to James Dull but Goat and Auggie Plitt got to start near the front because of their points from last year.  I figured that there's really no point in focusing on my start since I didn't really have anywhere to go...I'm going to have to earn my positions.  The whistle blows and we're off!  I had a good start and found a gap here or there, but overall stayed pretty much in the same place.  There were some really close calls and almost some crashes around me because of how close we all were, but things we ok.

Things started to thin out a bit over the course of the first half lap.  The official said it'd probably be 4 laps plus that half lap...I can do this!  At one point in the first lap, I heard someone tell a friend that they were somewhere in the 40's so I knew I had some work to do.  I kept hearing people calling out positions to their friends and I used this to track my progress.  Over the course of the next two laps I walked people down once I settled into my groove.  I was feeling good!  As I was going through the barriers the second time, I saw dollar bills sticking up.  I always wanted to try and grab one of these!  I made a grab, just barely missed, hit my back wheel on the barrier, and jammed my thumb....oh well it was worth a shot.  Then later on the 2nd lap, I crashed hard.

There is a section that comes out of the grass onto a gravel road with a but of a dip/hump right before turning right on the gravel.  I hit the hump somewhat gracelessly and slid out on the gravel - falling hard on my right side.  My entire right got thrashed by the gravel and I lost quite a few positions trying to pull myself together. As I rode and tried to recover, I saw blood starting to pool on my right wrist and through my gloves....not good.  As I'm reveling in my pain, I managed to crash again in one of the muddy/peanut buttery s-turn sections (James told me the name of these but I forget).  My seat was caught on a post as I awkwardly tried to get out of the way and get moving again.

I lost at least 10+ positions due to these crashes but it was also pretty disheartening.  The next lap I just kind of recovered a bit from my injuries and only passed a couple of people.....not great.  I knew I could go faster but I was just being pathetic now.  Over some time, I regrouped and kept pushing.  Time to make up some more positions.

I finally remembered to look at the lap count sometime around here....3 to go.  What the crap?  So much for only 4 laps.  The freaky thing is, I was kind of glad.  More time for me to gain ground!  I kept pushing - pushing - pushing.  Digging and passing people.  I'd catch someone, think, "This could be a good person to hold on to", but was never satisfied to stay there....on to find the next guy!  I made another attempt at a dollar bill and actually got it!  Woohoo!

Before I knew it, I was hearing position numbers in the 20's, then the teens.  There was a guy (Brooks?) that I passed, then passed me back, who I just stuck with for a good 2 laps - he made a good pace car.  On the last lap I saw we were gaining on my "white whale" - someone who'd placed ahead of me for every race last year and look up to very much.  I passed him and my pace car near the beginning of the first lap and then 2 more later (passed 4 on my last lap...what?!?!).  I pushed hard for the finish but would have needed more time to catch more positions.

I ended in 12th place!  This is fantastic since I was predicted to be 62nd based on last years results!  The experience was also totally different for me from last year.  Last year I always started near the front and held onto / slowly lost some positions throughout the race.  This race, I started in the middle and worked my way up through the ranks.  I have to say that it was a pretty awesome experience to have earned my way up through those positions....and I'm surprisingly glad that the race was so long (about 50 minutes for me).  Next week is BCA!

Tom

So what about the health benefits of commuting?

Executive summary: I've burned about 51,813 calories commuting in the past year!  All this commuting has been a major contributor to how fast I've gotten on the bike too!

So in my last post I wrote about all the mileage, money, and carbon emissions we've saved from my commuting by bike rather than by car.  Some of my friends know that I always talk up the health benefits of commuting but I didn't mention anything in the last post.  Well it's time to augment my last post with some additional details for the health benefits!

My first reason for commuting by car was actually mental health.  I used to drive an hour each way on my commute for several years and just couldn't take all the time in the car anymore.  Once I changed my job location, I was excited at the prospect of being able to actually ride my bike to work.  Time out on the road just biking along really helped me tolerate sitting at a desk all day.  I see deer, birds, frogs, snakes, chickens (there's actually a chicken along part of my commute that ambushes me sometimes...jumping out of the bushes when I least expect it), and all sorts of other stuff!

Biking took more time to get to and from work, but that's not so bad.  I looked at it two ways:

• The commute time on my bike was as long as my old commute, but it didn't feel like it was just wasted time in my car.
• I'd be spending about an hour in my car commuting if I drove. Biking takes an additional hour, but that actually means 2 hours of exercise.

When I started commuting, I weighed a little over 200 lbs....once I hit that weight I knew needed a change.  My friend Pat gave me tips for getting fit and how to eat healthier (what Pat calls the "linslean" :-) ) - because 90% of weight loss is what you eat!  As a result, I progressively dropped weight until where I am now - 165 lbs.  Maybe I'll put up some comparison pictures in a future post so you can see the difference.

To give an idea of what commuting adds to all this, my average commute burns about 1300 calories (round trip according to Strava).  I added that and all my other bike commuting to date today to my spreadsheet and found that I've burned about 51,813 calories this year.  It should be said that the calories counted by any system are somewhat inflated (I took the lower bound of a bunch of samples anyway from the all the routes) and that a rider will typically eat to compensate for calories burned (especially for higher intensity workouts).  I hope that means the number is a lower bound but at least gives you an idea of how much you burn.

How about performance?  I started commuting more and more and Pat told me that the biggest thing I needed to get faster was just miles on my legs.  Last summer I struggled to keep up with the B group of a group ride I do and I was a solid B rider by the end of summer.  I raced in the fall in cyclocross, doing way better than the single race of my previous year.  I commuted all winter and at the start of the group ride again I was barely able to hold onto the A group of the same group ride.  Each week I'd manage to stay on a bit longer until I was able to do the whole ride with them!  (Since then I had a knee problem from running and have lost a bit of fitness, but I'm on my way back!)  I can definitely say that commuting has been a major contributing factor to how fast I've gotten.

Commuting

So I was thinking about this coming month where I'll be commuting a lot, putting on some serious mileage, and hopefully saving gas.  I always wanted to commute to work more on my bike to save on gas and emissions and endurance mileage training is a great time for it!  I found myself wondering how much I've commuted to work thus far this year and how much (in theory) it's saved us.

I have three main routes:  round trip to work, round trip to church, and church/work/home.  I went back through Strava to count up my commutes (I also have some other extraneous rides I counted for this that saved on driving too).

I put together two levels of cost.  I used the federal cost-per-mile cost and also a cost calculated from http://commutesolutions.org/external/calc.html.  I don't know how accurate the latter is, but their numbers are much higher and make our savings seem that much higher.

I also tried to calculate the emissions per mile for my car and come up with an estimation on those savings as well.  I used http://www.nativeenergy.com/travel-carbon-calculator.html to come up with an amount of emissions per mile.

The Results:

• I saved 967.1 miles in my car by biking so far this year.
• According to the Federal cost per mile, I saved $531.90.
• According to the other estimate, I saved $1344.27.
• I prevented 0.744 tons of emissions from my car.

That's pretty awesome!  I'll try to keep my spreadsheet updated and report back at the end of the year.  In the meantime, check here to see my calculations.

Tom

Archery

So I've been doing archery with an interest group from church.  I started out with some of the beginner bows but wasn't satisfied with the inability to actually shoot accurately with those bows...not to mention that they're sited for other people.

I bought a PSE bow off someone and quickly realized that my wimpy little cyclist arms didn't have the strength to draw a real bow.  I took it to Bass Pro and they dialed me down and hooked me up with a trigger release to improve my accuracy and draw capabilities.  The bow's full draw weight is 70 lbs (which I had not hope of drawing back) but it's much more manageable when dialed down to 53 lbs (about as low as this bow can go safely).

I've learned some things that I'll share in future posts but one thing I'll say to anyone thinking about archery is - make sure you get a bow that fits your draw length!  The bow I bought is a bit long in the draw for me.  As a result, I need to draw the string back behind my ear before the cams turn over (the point at which a compound bow becomes easier to hold).  Being left handed, this means that my shots go off to the right slightly based on how I'm holding the bow (people traditionally hold the string right by the corner of their mouth...behind the ear puts the string off to the left a bit when drawn).  I've adjusted my sights over to try and compensate but I can't move them over far enough to where I could actually see them (they'd be behind the bow itself).  Once I realized this I learned to compensate while shooting and it's payed off.

Not bad for a newbie

I'm looking into selling this bow in favor of one that fits me better but will continue using it in the meantime.  I'm told that I'm about good enough to actually take hunting this fall if I wanted...At this point I'm still not sure if I could kill Bambi yet.

Speaking of Bambi, Ben (roommate) and I were talking about hunting dear and I said that I'd probably have as good luck if I just carried a wakizashi while biking since I get so close to dear on the road or while mountain biking.  Sure enough, I passed really close to a deer yesterday at WsW while on Landing road.  I was so tired, I didn't even notice the dear until its fawn spooked and ran away from the road...at which point I was about an arm's length from the mother.  It definitely surprised me!

That's all for now!  Next time, beer!

Tom