Post – G

What a loaded title. At first I felt a little pride in the cunning of the words and there meaning but today it doesn’t seem to feel as smart. I also thought this would be a long post but I think its getting shorter by the minute. But I will get to the point since a lot has happened since my last entry (a full two weeks ago).

Gateway Cup

This was supposed to be a success I was to go and finish all the races and take the next step to racing at this level. It’s amazing that the steps that you think will be impossible you can achieve and the steps that you think achievable the impossible. At.Gateway there was 4 days of racing and I’ll give the overview of each for me and the team:

Friday, August 29, 2008 - Lafayette Square
This race I was a little nervous for. It is a night time crit and a straight up 4 corner crit 0.9 miles and 140 rider (maxed out) field. Well I got to the line up front (maybe in the 3rd row which was up front). We started out and a crash in front of me not 15 feet into the race. I got back into the field and about 5-6 laps in another crash in the center of the road going into the start finish. Well we were going all out the 5-6 laps prior to the crash and then having to go another all out effort to catch back on after being held up by the crash – I didn’t have it. I chased for a while and then was chased for a while. After being caught and passed I sat on the back for the most of the rest of the race. BTW there was another crash on the last lap that I got caught behind. Chad was pulling out the stops on the race and got 6th in the sprint.

Saturday, August 30, 2008 – Downtown Criterium
This race was hard with what seemed like 3/4th’s of the course going uphill. Unfortunately it was just too hard for me. I had bad positioning from the beginning and could never move up really well. Again Chad pulled it out with 4th on the day.

Sunday, August 31, 2008 – The Hill
This was one of the coolest races that I have done this year. The crowds were great and I managed to get good positioning in the beginning and keep it. I could see all of my teammates were I was sitting in the field. The temps were real high and we were all cooking. I went to unzip my jersey and ran over a hard cut in the road which knocked my remaining hand off of the handlebars and down I went at 30 mph. I got up and got back into the race but didn’t last but another 20 minutes as my hip was really bothering me and in pain. Chad and the team finished out the race and again Chad pulled in another 4th.

Monday, September 1, 2008 – U-City
After yesterday’s crash I needed to get back on the horse so to speak and trust me that’s not always easy. I didn’t feel great, to begin with my hip still hurt. Once racing I was too tense and with every jolt I just remembered the prior day. I tried to get over this but even with mental fortitude my hip and glut had pain every time we went up the hill. I hung on through the pain as long as I could and was done. Shortly after I came off so did Bill and Kolt. Chad was still fighting though and pulled out a weekend best 2nd on the day clinching 3rd for the weekend.

The weekend for the Team was good but for me not so well. I hope that next year I’ll be there with Matt, Bill, and Kolt; if I’m lucky in a few years maybe up there with Chad.

Gustuv

Almost 3 years to the day after Katrina, Gustuv ripped through Louisiana. New Orleans seemed to be spared for the most part but maybe only because of a mandatory evacuation that had close to 2 million people leave in preparations for the storm. We have widespread power outages that is quite possibly the worst ever encountered in LA. I would love to see a satellite photo or aerial shot of the week before Gustuv and the day afterwards. From New Orleans to Alexandria power was out for a majority of people. Fortunately I didn’t per say evacuate sine I was going to be out of town anyway but I was forced to leave nonetheless. Even more importantly I was left in St. Louis with no immediate home to return to and really no place to go. I met up with Jessica P. when she evacuated up to St. Louis (Jessica went to the University of Washington in St. Louis for her masters and thus had friends there). I met up with Jessica at my race on Sunday and she was watching when I crashed. Monday after racing we met up and she took me to Ted Drew‘s which I was told was going to be the highpoint of my trip. As instructed I got the Great Pumpkin Custard and it was good. The next day we met up and went to the zoo and accompanying museums that were all free. I met a poor (intellectually poor) guy at Chipotle that thought we were still evacuated from Katrina. Tuesday night I stayed with Jessica’s friends Jill and Wayne who were great hosts. We decided Tuesday afternoon to make the trip back to New Orleans. The reports were that the city would open up to people at 12:01 am on Thurs. morning. I was hoping to get there around 11:00 pm and hope that they would le us in being so close to the re-entry. We were trying to avoid the traffic of 2 million evacuees.

We ended up getting back to New Orleans at 12:10 am Thursday morning. They actually started letting people re-enter earlier in the day although it didn’t seem like it. The streets were that of ghost towns; the only life on the streets were camouflaged figures carrying M-16’s. My power was out so I once again met up with Jessica and we again found ourselves staying together.

Grandma

On Thursday morning after a couple hours cleaning debris off of the road in front of my condo I got 8-9 missed phone calls and messages from my mom the one of which caught me the most was 911! I thought Mr. Wayne may be hurt or having trouble without electricity. I called her back and in tears she told me that grandma had fell sometime during the night and my uncle found her early Thursday morning, she was unconscious, not responding but said she had a strong HR. I tried to calm my mom down telling her that we would have to wait and see what the doctors said and that it was early to get all upset about it yet; we would have to wait and see. The next time I spoke to my mom about 2 hours later she told me that after running some tests that grandma was considered brain dead and that they were going to pull the breathing machine off of her; she told e they didn’t know whether it would be hours or days that she had left. I told her that we would leave soon to try to see grandma. I left my condo shortly after that and was driving back to Jessica’s when I got another phone call not 15 minutes after the first call. Grandma had passed.

I’m now sitting in the funeral home while the wake is just getting underway. I’m supposed to be typing up obituary that my mom has been slaving over the past few days, but I just can’t bring myself to write it just now. I loved my grandma, she was a friend, a protector and a mother to me in addition to being a grandma. Last night we were going through some stuff to get things together for today such as pictures and such. With every box that I opened there was a picture of me as a boy or something I had given her. When we moved to Louisiana and experienced Mardi Gras we brought her some beads to show her what a small part of Mardi Gras was like. After that, she would ask us for new pretty beads when we came to visit. In her closet she must have had every bead we had ever given her; I found toys of mine from when I lived with my grandparents; just like I left them. I loved my grandmother. This is the wake for my Grandma; tomorrow will be the services and the burial. Grandma always did have good timing; tomorrow is her and my Grandpa’s wedding anniversary; Nearly 10 years after he passed she’ll be re-joining him. This is the grandmother I will remember – a picture taken only 3 months ago.

MotorPacing

8/21/08

Today I wasn’t able to scratch the third check mark off of my list but we were close! And considering that my driver (who is awesome) was pacing me for the first time we did a good job and it was a good workout. My coach was satisfied and so was I. Thanks again to my driver for being fabulous!!!

Check TWO - The 5 min test

I’ve done a lot of racing this year. Out of all the racing and training I was more nervous about 5 minutes this morning than any race this year. 5 minutes as fast as you can go – sounds simple, yeah right! Go too hard at the beginning you die at the end, too easy you don’t leave everything out there. What made this one even harder was the implications. Nail the 5 minutes with avg. of 5.25 watts/kg and I go to Gateway; fail and I stay home training! I focused so much on it the night before I mapped out the entire 5 min sec by sec in Excel. 450 for 30 sec, 330 for 120 sec, 320 for 10 sec, 330 for 30 sec 340 for 30 sec. 350 for 30 sec, 360 for 30 sec, and finally 450 for 20 sec = ~ avg of 360.

So with my plan in mind I started off after a 30 minute warm up. Executing is always harder than the plan. When it was all said and done I avg’d 352; 5.6 watts/kg. Check two!!!


_X_ Finish Bayou Circuit Crit
_X_ 5 min @ 5.25 w/kg
___ motorpace avg 27mph
___ Finish National Level races
___ Top Ten in Bayou Circuit Race

Check

_X_ Finish Bayou Circuit Crit
___ 5 min @ 5.25 w/kg
___ motorpace avg 27mph
___ Finish National Level races
___ Top Ten in Bayou Circuit Race

Last weekend was the Merridian / Cuba Omnium. I always like this race as the Crit is fairly technical on the first half and with a down hill sweeping turn at FG on the second half this course doesn’t leave room for too many errors. I changed my warm up for this race and actually think I liked it better. I rode for 45 min in the morning before driving to the race then only spun around before the race for about 20 min with a could 30 sec. FG efforts. The warm up wasn’t too taxing but was enough. I may try to do warm ups like this in the future. The Crit was fast from the Gun with attacks one after another through the 30 minute mark. This was a 60 min Crit so I guess that people started looking more toward the finish after the halfway point as the attacks were still present just not as frequent. With 4 to go the pace was staying steady and I stood up and what was seemingly easy rode up to position myself in the top 10 (keep in mind this effort took about 350 – 400 watts to do it just felt easier than the watts indicated). For the remaining 4 laps I rode in between 5th and 10th place and felt good about my position going into the last lap. During that last lap on the 2 turn of the course some morons decided they would try to move up on the most technical section of the course. This cause some people to touch wheels and the peloton to shift left pushing me out of my position heading into the next turn. On that next turn I had to take the turn sharp on the inside and lost about 10 position (this left turn heads right into a short uphill section and you need momentum to maintain position; by being out of position I lost my momentum and thus the positions). I ended up finishing the Crit in 17th position.

The Road Race was 3 laps on what I view as the second hardest course on the LAMBRA series (second to Rouge Roubaix). In the spring they run this course as a solo road race and we do 4 laps at 88 miles, however, with the August heat and the Crit the night before the organizers reduce the road race in the fall to 3 laps. In the spring I crashed on the first lap and spent a lap chasing before abandoning (this is the crash in which it broke my front wheel and hurt my shoulder). I was exited to get back on the course to see what I could do and in a way get over what happened in the spring. Evidently while I like this race it doesn’t like me. About 5 miles into the race a few guys touched wheels again and went down. I got tangled up in the after math and fell (softly) to the ground. The damage was still done. I twisted my seat post, bent my rear derailleur hanger, and bent my rear wheel just enough to rub my brakes. So I got a wheel change and tried to get everything back in order to mount a chaise. I chased and chased. The wheel truck was great and came up one me and got me back to the group but all in all it was about 20 minutes that I was out there either solo or behind the truck. I finally got back in the group and thought I wouldn’t make it to the finish after the effort I just put in. My shifting was all over the place making the climbs twice as hard and my speed magnet shifted so I was no longer reading speed and had sketchy readings from my SRM. We finished the first lap and I got my hand up of an ice sock and two bottles as planned. The second lap was filled with attacks as the break was within sight and everyone was trying to bridge. I was just playing the game moving to the front when it slowed down and drifting back during the attacks and hills. The third lap was steady as everyone was looking for a couple of people to make the move that never came. We came into the last 5k pretty slow and it only picked up at the 1k to go mark. I once again had good position (in the top ten) and was sprinting toward the finish. At 100m to go my race virtually ended. My chain flew off of my bike in mid sprint. I managed to keep it up but had to ride my top tube to do so. I ended up walking across the line last .

This weekend was successful though. The goal was to finish with the group on both races and that I had done. It does suck that I think I could have done better but I don’t feel disappointed. Wednesday I have a 5 min field test that will determine if I go to Gateway Cup or not so it’s recovery from now until then.

4 x 1:00m (in)

This afternoon while I was sitting next to my co worker slugging away I looked out the window and said “I hope this rain stops” It was coming down in sheets. I really wasn’t looking forward to doing tonight’s workout anyway but to do 3 sets of 4x1 min intervals Full Gas in rain seemed worse. I started the workout in the rain and it eventually cleared but not before I got all wet and got a flat to go with it.

Last night I saw maybe the most spectacular race I can remember! The USA beat the French in the 4x100m team relay. Amazing you really needed to see it to believe it.

This weekend I have the Meridian/Cuba Omnium. Hopefully I will be going well for it. I felt fine tonight but now the legs are cooked with motor pacing in the morning!

Well I guess there is only one direction to go J

ToKC

Well, maybe not. I messed the dates up on my calendar and while I thought ToKC was next week, it's actually this weekend. After looking at things at work and talking to the coach and my directors I decided to nix this off of the race list. It's hard because I love racing and it's been too long since racing with the team. I'm going to refocus my calendar and instead do the Merridian/Cuba Omnium next weekend and then the Gateway Cup. My coach has set up a super hard training block to get me to Gateway prepared and all I can do is give it my all and hope that the body responds.

Goals for the next month:

1. Race Smart at the Merridian/Cuba Race and at the very least finish both the Crit and the RR with the main field
2. Avg. Speed of 47k in my Motorpacing Sessions
3. Avg. 5.25 watts/kg in my 5 minute efforts

Then to Gateway Cup

CHI – OLINA

It’s been a week and tomorrow I’ll be back to the same old routine. Over the past week I’ve learned how to be a super accountant, how to live like a bike racer, and how to lose like an amateur.

I left New Orleans with a rocky start arriving a t the airport late and with a bike box that was too heavy (80lbs). I took some stuff out and re-weighed it and the lady said it was too late to check it in! WTF. So I settle on leaving with 2 carry-on’s and o straight to the plane. Between New Orleans and Chi Town (Chicago) my mom and I worked out a plan to have the bike shipped to Chicago and that afternoon the bike was on its way.

At the O’Hare airport I met up with Alle (Alli), Vinnie, and Lisa from Rochester, NY. They got there a bit early so I didn’t have to wait that long. Unfortunately their bags didn’t come with them so they were not happy campers on the train ride into D-town Chicago. Once downtown we met up with Alli (from NOLA) at the hotel and we all went to meet the others at Giordano’s Pizza.

As usual we ordered too much pizza (same thing happened last year) and after dinner we walked around Chicago and gave our leftover pizza to homeless people. Unlike NOLA homeless people who would have thrown it away or insisted on money, the homeless in Chicago are actually thankful and eat it. The rest of the afternoon we did the standard for us which was the guys getting dragged to multiple shopping venues. We were able to get a na in before going to Navy Pier and partaking in the evenings festivities.

So we ate dinner at Navy pier and had some “golden libations” (i.e. Beer). During dinner fireworks started to go off and I enjoyed the long and colorful display while most of my counterparts were not interested at all. They did liven up when we left the Navy Pier to go to a local bar; RockBottom! Allison, Matt, and I decided to get the sampler as this was a micro brewery and we could get 4 ounces of each of the 7 different kinds of beer for 7.50. Somehow this turned into a contest between Matt and Alli and they were taking the beer sampler like shots! They quickly finished and decided to get a pitcher, each. They then continued to see how fast they could finish the pitcher. It was around the time that Alli gave it to Matt like a Bi-atch by finishing off the pitcher first that Natalie and I decided it would be a good time to make our exit. We walked back to the hotel and were in bed by 1 am. The others got in around 5.

The next day was rough for the rest of the crew. I was able to get some personal things done before everyone woke up and after we all ate breakfast in what was the most part silence we split up to our own ways. Alli was meeting friends and ended up at the zoo; Natalie, Matt, Juli, and Emily were headed to the conference hotel to take a nap and I was off to see the inaugural Chicago Criterium around Millennium Park. At te race I was a litte surprised to see Stefan and Chad from my team as they were just as surprised to see me. Stefan rode like a pro getting off of the front 2-3 times before finally bridging up to the final break. He ended up getting 17th which was a good result. I had to leave the race early to make my way out to the conference and to build Tiki Huts.
This year AGN designed a whole bunch of group activities for us and us being from NOLA we took all of these to the extreme:

SUNDAY NIGHT
Build Tiki Huts and Make sangria
Followed by beach volleyball with lots of beer
Then to Vinnie’s room for drinking games with a handle of Vodka and a Handle of Bacardi Mojito
Bed Time ~3 am (very drunk – I passed out and am not quite sure how I made it on my bed the last thing I remember was going to the restroom in my room!)

MONDAY NIGHT
Dinner at an Italian Restaurant
Pick up beer at Liquor Store
More Drunken Beach Volley Ball
Bed Time ~12:30 for me and ~1:30 for everyone else.

TUESDAY NIGHT
Dinner at a BAD ASS Mongolia restaurant
Drinks at a nearby bar
Back to Vinnie’s Room for more drinking games.
Bed Time ~ 11 for me everyone else between 11 and 3.

Wednesday, we finished out training and were off to the airport. I was heading to Charlotte, NC for the remaining Cross Road Classics (a series of 9 Crits over 10 days). I got into my hotel room near the airport ~ 12 am and turned in. The next day I hooked up with Reed. Reed rides for the Hincapie Barkley Elite team and was kind enough o pick me up from the hotel and let me hang with him until the race that night.

The races the following three days were blistering fast. I need to be around this type of racing more often as doing it 5-6 times a year just isn’t cutting it. Below is a short recap of the races

Thursday – Salisbury
Figure Eight Course; hard from the gun with a lot of Pro team’s warming up for the BOA Crit on Saturday Evening. I lasted about 10 min in the field.

Friday – Statesville
An L – shaped course; again hard from the gun but not like the night before. Rock Racing showed up and Rashad Bahatti made it look easy lapping the field and then taking the sprint like he was doing an average day of training. Time in field ~ 15 minutes. Although I rode out a little longer and sat a little on the back of the field in subsequent laps.

Saturday – Harrisburg
This was the most technical of the courses and had 5 corners of which were a little tighter than the previous days. I was hoping for an easier day as most of the pro’s would be racing that evening and saving their legs. I was wrong. Most of the pro’s were saving their legs but the pro’s who were left off of the start list of one of the richest prize crits in America were pissed and racing against pissed off pro’s isn’t too fun. Time in field ~10 minutes. This was the easiest day but unfortunately I was pretty burnt and didn’t have much left.

Tonight I am staying with my cousin that I haven’t spoke to or seen in years. She’s a sweetheart and its good to see her and her family. Tomorrow she is going to be kind enough to wake up at 4 am to take me to the airport in Charlotte.

UPDATE:
I’m back in New Orleans now and back to the standard day to day. Yesterday was Kate’s B-day so I got to see her a bit and relax by Jessica’s pool with some burgers and beer. I fell asleep rather early at 7:00 and didn’t budge until 8 am this morning. Today I have another day off of the bike before hitting it again hard tomorrow!

Only 2 weeks until Tour of Kansas City!!!