2014 MFG #2 Race Report, Results and Photos

 Results can be found here

     Photos can be found here

         Series standings can be found here

El Pirate leading out.  Check out my low pressure...

For the second race in the 2014 MFG series we returned to where, for me, Cyclocross started.  Steilacoom is where I saw my first race and was instantly hooked ten mud-filled seasons ago.  A couple weeks later I was flogging myself riding a Craigslist purchased cross bike at Kelly Creek.   Riding was even more fun than I expected.  There was no turning back.

This time I lined up on my way-too-cool-for-me bike and even had a front row call up.  Hot damn! Ten years ago I didn’t even know what a call up was. My training has taken a bit of a dive which in hindsight I attribute to a combination of too much, too hard with not enough recovery combined with neglected nutrition and a heaping helping of ignorance and/or denial.  The result was a tired and likely borderline anemic Evo who didn’t bring a lot of power to race on a power course.

Taking the advice of El Chefe’ I had visualized myself having a good start and first two minutes as opposed to my typically having a half dozen riders shoot past me like I had opened a parachute following the opening straight. It kinda helped.

We had a long starting straight and when everyone reached terminal velocity I felt like I could go faster. I jumped into the big ring and moved into the lead.  That was easy. When a Fisher guy pulled up just ahead of me I was happy to follow him into the first turn.   I was down in the drops and wheel sucking. 

I took the turns fast and wide and was delighted nobody tried to chop me by going inside.  Later looking at the first lap photos I now know the reason was my teammate El Pirate was on my wheel and trying to pass two riders in brown has zero chance of success and a hundred percent chance of future regret.   

Evo, El Pirate..

I maintained second wheel with El Pirate in tow until we reached the climb.  This course featured a single sustained climb with the first half paved and the top half loose dirt.  As soon as the climb began six riders shot past me and pulled away.  WTF?

I couldn’t get going and looked at my HR and cadence to confirm I was redlined.  Nope. Not even close.  My HR was 20 bpm lower than I expected which surprised me.  I picked it up and held the gap and on the dirt portion I started to claw back some of the gap.  The loose gravel downhill was a white knuckle affair that featured a ninety degree left which was followed by a single track descent.  At the bottom there was a loose 180 degree corner that was where the difference between having disc brakes and canti’s was manifest.

Not only did I not close the gap on the leaders but I lost another place here when a rider had power and I did not.  I tried to accelerate and it didn’t happen.  When we returned to the grassy slalom my bike, tires, tire pressure and level of effort kept my placing intact each lap.  Then a real gravel section followed by a dirt road again once afforded my bike a chance to shine and I typically gained ground.  I managed to avoid the quicksand gravel that awaited you if you went wide when you hit the finishing straight.

This was a course that should have suited me exceptionally well.  The zigs and zags were more “Euro” (read faster) which suits my strengths and bike set up.  The long climb was a chance to power past weaker riders.  My discs allowed me to fly down the descents and still maintain control.  I should have killed it.  

I am not one given to constantly watching my HR during a race but I do look now and again.  Nearly every race I hit my threshold three or four minutes in and it stays redlined until the finish. The last two races I have been about 10-20  bpm lower which is very unusual for me. While I was still catching guys from the 45 plus cat I was passed by riders in my cat on each of the first four laps.

On my last lap I was passed early and took it back on the last quarter of the big climb.  There were riders on that climb on the latter laps who were blown up by the last quarter of the climb.  Riders who were struggling to hold a line and keep moving.  Although I didn’t have it in me this day I was able to smoothly go past those guys.

I could feel a rider on my tail on the downhill and I didn’t let up. Then I drilled it on the grass to open a gap.  When we hit the gravel road section there was a Fisher Plumbing guy a good ways ahead who was in my cat.  I looked down and to my surprise I was in the big ring up front.  I took the first of three corners pretty hot and came out of the saddle and powered into the next corner. 

The second corner had an island of asphalt with gravel before and after and I cruised over it all without incident. I was gaining on the Fisher guy who was still thirty meters ahead of me.  He made it onto the finishing straight and I could see him turning to look back just as I went behind the bushes that marked the corner and guessed correctly that he didn’t see me.  I went left to avoid the potholes then right to avoid the quicksand gravel and I hit the paved finishing straight in the big ring.  I cranked hard and pulled up on the bars such that my front wheel came off the ground for a second. Off day or not I was going for it.

By now the gap was twenty meters with just over a hundred to go.  My approach was drawing attention and spectators started yelling which alerted the rider ahead that I was coming.  I was flat out and gaining but not fast enough to know for sure I could take him.  He got out of the saddle and the race was on. I was now about ten meters and closing ever so slowly.  My quads were screaming and if he beat me, he beat me, I couldn’t go any faster.  He was digging but I was still closing.  With a grunt that transitioned into profanity he conceded as I pulled ahead and held it to the line to claim tenth place.

I carried my speed across the line and by sheer luck didn’t crash post race.  The Fisher rider congratulated me and I breathlessly retuned the sentiment.

El Pirate won and by so doing took over first place in the series standings.  Despite a subpar performance I am clinging precariously to fourth place in the series thus ensuring at least one more week of call up glory.

My Sensei has picked up on my exhaustion and has reduced my suffering in the near term to allow my hematocrit level to return to double digits. I haven’t yet taken to eating blood sausage for breakfast, however, my intake of eggs, beef, spinach, turkey, pumpkin seeds and vitamin C has risen sharply.

Next week we return to the gritty purgatory that is Silver Lake.  My hope is that the MFG version of Silver Lake will feel less like Lombard Street and more like LeMans.  Sadistically I also hope the sand will require running.  I am hoping a fresher Evo can lay down the hurt on his competitors.

Spatchcocked….. Again

Love of mud is a many speckled thing..

Know this: I will never miss a chance to use the word, “spatchcocked.”   If it is not already part of your personal lexicon, look it up as we approach the season of its vernacular use.

I have almost always been able to adapt to the challenges that came my way. Back in 1989 I managed to get by for months on a fraction of my normal sleep quota. As my professional workload has increased from time to time I buckled down and did what was needed.  This history has given me the perhaps unjustified self perception that I can handle what comes my way. This outlook is both good and bad.

As my coach has piled on the hard work I have thus far managed to keep up.  In the evenings I’m pretty much useless and I’ve been going to bed super early in an attempt to adapt to the increased volume and increased intensity. As I’ve said, I’m glad this is a short season.  Ugh. The hard during the week is much harder than I am used to doing.  The recovery rides though not individually hard, are longer than I might have expected and when combined with weights and core work, add up to quite a bit.  Two-a-days happen once or twice each week.

One of the things I have been happy about is that my coach cycles in an easier week every now and then.  The amusing thing is that even without the intensity I still finish those weeks with a bunch of saddle time, albeit easy saddle time. From a raw numbers standpoint it does not look like an easy week. Just knowing there is an easier one down the road does help me to keep up during the hard weeks.

Last week and this week have been hard weeks. Both weeks have had weights, core, stairs, intervals, more intervals and some easy miles all in varying quantities.  If I had a stalker watching me they would think I was crazy.  Why is Evo running stairs before the sun comes up?  Why is he riding after dark in the rain with lights on his bike?  I see he is getting up early so he can spend an hour and a half on a trainer before showering and going to work as if nothing happened.  What is the deal?

“The deal” is difficult to explain to someone with a straight face. I’m doing all of this in the hope that it makes me faster in Cyclocross.   Is that important? Not really.  Why push yourself so hard? Why not?  So you’re thrashing yourself on a whim?  Maybe not a whim it’s more of a curiosity. 

I’ve been at this racing thing for so long with marginal success that I’d be happy just to know what it takes for me to be markedly better.  If I do this and get the results I am hoping for then I at least know there is a winning formula.  It can then be my decision if I want to pay the price to use the formula in the future.

Coffee and Lies #91 I can hear the ocean

 Almost; but not quite...

This past weekend was a conglomeration of atypical happenings.   The following is a summary of those events.

In no particular order the first oddity was that I slept almost eleven hours Friday night.  I’ve been training hard and it would be a lie to say it finally caught up with me. It caught up with me a week ago; this was just the first opportunity to sleep in and I took it.

Because of Hottie’s bike crash we opted to stay in town this weekend.  It provided some opportunities to do things that were not in the plan had we gone away.  One of those things was that I did a cross race that I had intended to skip.  I emailed my Sensei and told him I would race and anticipated he would change my Saturday workout from a thrashing to a warm up.  Without a hint of a pause he responded that I should keep the same thrashing on Saturday as this was scheduled to be a “heavy” weekend. Thank you very much.

Dutifully I punished myself with over/unders Saturday morning.  When I finished I threw my bike clothes into the washing machine and heard them splash in the empty drum because they were soaking wet. I could feel those efforts in my legs the rest of the day.  This was on top of a week where I had done stairs and over/unders already. Ouch!    I am learning how to fall asleep with sore legs.   It is a skill worth cultivating.

Tux, as a former professional racer, how did you sleep with sore legs?

As it happens; El Chefe’ was supporting a fund raiser by skipping sleep for four days making and selling his award winning BBQ ribs.  Since we were now in town, Hottie and I picked up some of his BBQ perfection and had a picnic at Alki.   We had enough left over that we called it dinner on Sunday evening.   

Hottie was moving slowly and painfully from her injury and because she is a rabid Seattle sports fan she opted to watch the Seahawks once again dispatch the Denver Broncos. This made more sense than shooting pictures of middle aged men in Lycra riding bikes in the sand.  Thus I went to the race solo.  I can’t recall the last time I raced without having my personal photographer at the race. Yeah; poor me.

I met up with Guy, El Pirate and Mr. T who would all get a head start on me at the appointed hour. Big Ben was there as well who would had so much fun passing me he did it twice.

My race was tough on every level.  It was freakishly hot by Cyclocross standards and there were two long sections of soft beach sand that could be ridden only with herculean effort and no traffic issues.  The balance of the course was a serpentine nightmare with an uphill literally around every one of the eight hundred corners found on each lap. I know others seem to have found a rhythm but I never did.  I didn’t have good lines and fought the course the whole day. The endless series of short accelerations didn’t suit my sore legs on this day.  I was reminded of some of the single track at South SeaTac back in the day. On that purgatory of a course, there were sections that I just could not get going fast no matter how much horsepower I had in my legs. This felt the same way. 

After a decent start I relaxed for a nanosecond and a couple guys popped in front just before the first turn and I counted myself ninth on the first hill. Soon a gap formed and I couldn’t close it on the technical course.  I could see a bunch of guys chasing me.  I think they started us only thirty seconds behind the group in front and we were catching guys from that group on the first lap. I moved past guys the rest of the afternoon and I didn’t really take much notice if they were in my group or were from the group in front.

Oddly the part of the course where I gained the most ground began with the second long sand section which was followed by a brief bit of solid ground before a final corner of deep, soft, slow, strength draining sand. Then with virtually no momentum you had a steep climb that led to the lone barrier followed by a loose run up on a steep hill.  The zone five remount that followed was challenging for many as it is hard to swing your leg over your seat when it feels like a soggy noodle.

The sand tackled me on my second lap and for reasons I cannot explain I am good at crashing and rolled over and resumed racing with only a momentary delay.  As I pedaled I could feel sand spilling out of my left ear.  I took my hand off my bars and brushed the sand out of my ear or so I thought.  Three minutes later I tiled my head and felt more sand exit.  That isn’t a nice sensation. This wasn’t my day.

Anything in a 46.5?

I was feeling the previous day’s effort and just didn’t have the top end that I had two weeks ago.  This was the other end of the spectrum as my earlier race and the same words applied.  It wasn’t any easier or harder, I just went slower. I found myself battling a friend/nemesis and put the hammer down.  He wanted to beat me and would not give up. Tired legs or no, his days of beating are were over and I made it so. On the next to last lap I got a shout out from the announcer who commented that I looked like I was suffering.  I was.   When I crossed the line to claim seventh place he noted my placing over the loudspeaker and added that he had no idea I was that old.   I took that as a compliment.

I compared my times to those in my old age group. My time would have placed me right where I was last year.  Considering my poor match up with this course and my Saturday trashing, I was okay with that.  I did take note that the 45 plus Cat 3 field is stacked deep with freakishly fast mofos. If anyone is looking for a category to race in that would inflict self doubt that is the place.  I don’t miss it for a second. 

 

After crossing the line I did my proper warm down and tried to catch my breath.  I pulled off my sweat splattered glasses and realized I had sand on the side of my face.  I looked at my left arm and realized it was covered with sand.  My right arm had black lines where the dust and sweat had congealed in the wrinkles on the inside of my elbow. My left leg was also battered with sand.  My tan and hair made my sand coating less visible to others.  I was a mess.

Back at the car I poured the sand out of my shoes and socks and discovered I had sand between my toes as well as in my hair.  There wasn’t much of me that wasn’t sandy.  I drank a bottle of recovery drink and then another bottle of water and then a third bottle.  I cleaned up as best I could with water and wipes.   I checked my results and I had indeed finished seventh. 

Two races so far in 2014.  One podium and one top ten.   I’m okay with that.

Next week we return to where it all began. 

There is a new horse in the stable Boone 9 Disc

As my devoted reader deduced months ago I have gone crazy about riding gravel.  It is a mix of mountain biking, road biking, Cyclocross and backcountry solitude that I have fallen in love with. Last June I had some of my teammates along for a weekend of gravel riding and I was so impressed with the performance of their bikes that I made a big decision.  I was going all in for gravel. 

There just aren’t many sponsorship opportunities for exceptionally fast old men and there are absolutely none for slow old men so I had to devise a plan.  In the weeks and months since that fateful weekend I have sold four bikes, multiple wheelsets, tires, chainrings, brakes and brake parts, a crankset and a tool.

Before you think the barn at Casa de Evo is vacant; I will confess I did all this only so I could purchase a disc equipped carbon Cyclocross/gravel wonderbike frame.  I have taken the resulting machine out on the remote roads of the Cascades and my lofty expectations have been exceeded.

I built the wheels myself both to save a couple (hundred) dollars and so I could have tubeless wheels with good hubs for riding in harsh environs.  The brakes are the TRP HyRd which come in a tad heavier than mechanical discs but are a whole lot cheaper and lighter than a full hydraulic set up.  The balance of the build is pretty predictable for me including my trademark SRAM Rival crankset and Lizardskin bar tape. Why would you want anything else?

Thus far I’m running 35mm Tubeless Stan’s Ravens which continue to impress.  White the tires are illegal by UCI standards, nobody is checking out on the gravel roads.  They soak up the bumps and have taken a handful of hard knocks only to smile and ask if that was the worst I could find.  The tires and discs allow me to be both faster and safer on loose forest service road descents.  No downside here!

With my canti’s braking was a chain of sequential events that culminated in slowing down.  First you pulled the levers. Then you felt the brakes squeeze the rims.  Then you felt the tires fighting with the ground to slow down and finally you slowed.  With the discs you squeeze the levers and you just slow down. Modulation is indeed everything they say it is. 

Einmotron said it was life changing and he was right. McWoodie likened discs on a cross bike to the difference between down tube shifters and integrated shift levers. They were correct; there is a true step function improvement.

On this bike I have been able to keep up with Hottie when she is flying downhill on her mountain bike.  It climbs without flexing and is ridiculously light. I set it up with two bottle cages and a saddle pack that allows for a third bottle so I can keep hydrated on long adventures far from refueling opportunities.

I am racing cross on this bike since I sold both my cross and pit bikes to pay for this.  I felt self-conscience when I raced on carbon wheels, now I’m going to be THAT GUY who shows up at the back of a cross race with a carbon bike worthy of Sven Nys..

Since I bought the bike for the gravel I will just smile and shrug off the dirty looks I get at the Cyclocross races. Since I get to race in a new category with fewer folks in it, I am hoping traffic won’t be as much of an issue this season.

The frame is flat black and I ran with the stealth theme and have black hubs, rims and spokes.  Black cables and bar tape add to the Darth Vader appearance.  It isn’t exactly a Hello Kitty look.  If it weren’t for the discs I think I could disappear at night. 

On the gravel roads the bike is stable and goes where you tell it to.  The tires, wheels and frame work together to soak up a range of lumps and bumps. When climbing the machine reveals both its light weight and stiff bottom bracket. The bars don’t quite jump out of your hands when you accelerate, but it launches forward more than I was used to.

The stability on rough descents is ridiculous.  I need only watch and avoid the most vicious rocks. When washboard can’t be avoided the Boone carries me through with minimal abuse.

I was reluctant to expose the Boone to potential abuse on the cross course but after the first race it was apparent this machine was built to inflict pain on those around me.  On some courses the frame makes little difference.  On courses covered with small bumps such as potholes or grass clumps low tire pressure can only go so far. The Boone not only smoothed out the ride, but kept the tread in contact so I could corner securely while others bounced around.

I’ve never been the guy on the bike that gives him an advantage.  So far I like being that guy.