Could've Seen It Coming a Mile Away

It's really too bad that you can't excise the stage race part out of stage racing weekends. Because I had a great Mt. Hood Cycling Classic weekend, if I remove the "Cycling" from of the equation.

I figured that after almost four mostly incident-free, and pretty successful, months of racing, that I would start having fatigue, incidents and mishaps that would create a more sustainable state of equilibrium in my cycling life. You can't win 'em all and you can't race as much as I do without getting a major mechanical or flaming out once in a while. I just didn't expect to have two major mishaps in a 24 hour period.

Now that I look back on the last two weeks, I should have seen one of these mishaps coming. I couldn't finish an interval workout two weeks ago due to nosebleeds and dehydration. This was followed by a sub-par effort on my part at the TTT. At PIR last week, my sprint legs were nowhere to be found. Developments and complications in my personal life caused irregular sleep patterns, thus leading to an over-consumption of caffeine, thus causing irregular sleep patterns...you see the pattern here.

I knew mid-week that something wasn't right with my body, but I had managed to stubborn my way through a lot this spring and figured I could stubborn my way through a 71-mile road race with 8500 feet of climbing (this was the stage that scared me...not the 18 mile uphill TT into a headwind or a very technical crit).

Friday: First, a quick plug for Mountain View Cycles in Hood River, Oregon. MV is owned by Julie and Wes Swearingen and its a great shop filled with great people. It's right smack-dab in the middle of downtown. Check it out the next time you visit HR.

The Friday race was an 18 mile time-trial from The Dalles to Hood River. Considerable climbing for a TT course, including up and over the Rowena Loops. Climbing, TT, 20+ MPH headwinds....lots of suffering to be had.

I was, sickly, sort of excited about it. I can time trial and climb and, although no one likes headwinds, since I'm built like a tank, I can usually mentally and physically fight my way through.

Kelly McKean (Beth's Veloce teammate and, ultimately, the GC winner) was my 30-second person, which I was really excited about. She's an awesome triathlete and a really remarkable climber. I figured that if I could keep her in my sights, I could clock a solid time.

I caught Kelly at the bottom of the Rowena Loops. That gap lasted all of 150 meters into the first climb. She went by me like I was moving backwards-while I was going by someone like she was moving backwards. Wow.

I caught her on the descents and flats between Rowena and Mosier, but again, she flew by me once we starting climbing up and over to Hood River. I was steadily gaining on her once the course leveled out and then....

Rock.

You mean the softball-sized one in the middle of the bike path? Yeah, that one. I was suffering pretty heavily at this point and forgot the first rule of avoiding things that you don't want to hit...don't fixate your gaze on it.

I hit it square on and my back tire immediately blew out. I skidded, but stopped safely and got off to quickly to assess the damage. No derailleur damage, but I had 3 more miles to the finish and was on a vehicle-free bike path no repair kit. Gingerly got back on the bike and starting soft pedaling. The rims weren't hitting the path, so I figured that I could try and just coast downhill to the finish.
(Photo taken by Anne's husband Tim. Notice that my is bandanna not on my head. I was sweating so profusely by the time I reached Mosier that it had worked its way down my forehead, knocked off my sunglasses and was interfering with my ability to see. )

It was the longest three miles that I've ever ridden on that bike. Three of the seven ladies I'd caught went rolling past and my inner monologue was running "please don't ruin jb's wheels, please don't ruin jb's wheels" on a continuous loop.

I rolled through in at 1:02 something. I did some math and guestimating later that evening and figure that I lost at least 5 minutes in that last three miles. Without the mishap, probably good enough for podium, but we'll never know. But couldn't be too upset...I still managed to turn in the 24th best time (out of about 40 riders) and the wheel was fine.

Kelly and I both got dinged for drafting, which didn't end up mattering at all for either of us (she annihilated everyone on the second stage and, well, I didn't even finish the second stage, for reasons I will get into shortly), but was interesting considering both of us are experienced triathletes and were being very careful to stay out of each others way while leap-frogging.

Saturday:

Let me repeat: 71 miles, 8500 feet of climbing.

My longest race this year was the 50ish miles at Silverton. I can count on less than two hands the number of 60+ mile training rides that I've done since the racing season started.

Total terror. It was all I could do Saturday morning to manage my stress so that I didn't freak out my teammates. Here we are...two hours before start time.


Once the race got rolling, my nervousness subsided...somewhat. The first 15 miles are a descent into some little town (Dufur). Everyone was regulating their speed carefully, which was frustrating and caused a lot of braking and mid-pack shuffling. Sarah T. from Sorella and I went off the front for a bit, and after a while, we were joined by my teammates.


Then the climbing started. As we had agreed as a team, I went to the front and set a high tempo up the first climb. I felt OK, kept my head down and just kept pushing until the road briefly leveled out. Within a mile, we've lost half of the field. And there are several miles of climbing to go.

With about a mile to go until we could descend again, Amy Campbell from River City attacks. Six, seven gals are able to go with her. Anna and I can't make the jump and Sam is stuck in no man's land between the lead group and the chasers. I ride briefy with Jo and Beth, then get enough leg back to pull Anna and I up to Sam.

Then HV chased. And chased. And chased. I pull us up the climbs and rest on Anna's wheel whenever I can. For almost 45 minutes, we would get close on a flat or a descent, only to watch them pull away on the climbs.

There got to be a point when we couldn't see the lead group anymore and I started to look behind for help. Wasn't long before a group of about 8 women (including Serena from Sunnyside, Beth and Jo) caught us.

From the best I can recall, I was feeling OK when Beth and Jo's group caught us. Tired, but not feeling like I was going to blow up. I was into my second bottle of Heed, almost done with my Perpetuem bottle and had kept on top of my other nutritional and electrolyte needs while we had been climbing.

Within ten minutes, I went from tired, but OK, to completely not OK. I got really shaky and cold, couldn't pull through and Jo and Beth told me to go sit in the back and take a break. I think I tried to hold on for another five minutes, then it was over. Beth and I had a brief conversation about her dropping back to just get me to the finish so I could race Sunday, but I told told her to just keep going.

From the time where I got spit off the back of the chase group, the next two hours were a bit of a blur. Gunderson had already called it a day and twice rolled up in the sag car to see what was going on. I don't remember what we talked about, other than a sense that I felt pretty agitated.

Jeff and Sallyanne were waiting at the second feed zone, which was about four miles from where everything started to go haywire and crossways in my head. I do remember thinking that if I could just make it to them and take a break, that I would wait for Anne Linton or Julie Swearingen and ride the last thirty miles with one of them.

Didn't happen that way at all. I rolled up to Jeff, unclipped...and my legs immediately buckled and everyting faded to black.

I remember coming to a bit and realizing that my shoes, socks, gloves and helmet were off and Sallyanne was holding me up. Jeff, Sallyanne and Gunderson got me changed into dry clothes and into the truck. Then, I faded to black again. I'm not sure how much I slept in the truck, but when I woke up, I felt like I had been sleeping for days.

For the next hour, I alternated between wanting to throw up, burst into tears and sleep for a hundred years. Sat on a rock by the finish with my head on my knees line waiting for my girls to finish.

And they all finished. Sam at full speed, Anna with a huge grin on her face and Beth spewing obscenities left and right.

I fell asleep again in JB's car on the ride back into town and this time, when I woke up, I actually felt human again. By the time we got dinner on the table, I (aided by a bottle of Ninkasi Spring Reign and almost an entire growler of Double Mountain IRA) was in a good place again.

The best I can figure, I probably went down as a result of overheating/overtraining/exhaustion. In other words: EPIC BONK. I can accept and own that.

Sunday: I thought I'd wake up Sunday morning with a sense that I had been a huge wimp and should have toughed it out. However....not a chance. I pre-rode the crit course with Anna and, although that course would have been a blast for me, at no time did I feel any regret or longing to race that day. Instead, rode an easy hour with JB, watched the ladies race and demo-ed a Specialized Tri-Cross all over the lawns and curbs of downtown HR...happy as a pig in shit.

Post: All in all, despite all the chaos, it was a good weekend. Had a great birthday celebration, spent some quality time with my teammates and friends, made some new friends and participated in some great racing. And developed a crush on a new cross bike...one that may be worthy of a return trip to HR this weekend.

But holy hell, do I need some serious rest. And a few massages to work out this frozen pot roast feeling in both of my quads. My rest week likely to turn into a full month of leisure rides, a bit of track racing, some short track mountain biking and getting a master plan together for late summer/early fall. Because, shit....cross starts in just three months....

TTT State Championships

Its hard for me to write a race report for a Team Time Trial because nothing about the event lends itself to entertaining or snarky self-reflection. You warm up for an hour, race in a paceline for an hour, then cool down.

HV showed up with two full teams , eight ladies strong for some suffering in the sun:
Because my team consisted of two Cat 3's (LK and Sam) and two Cat 4's (Anna and Jen), we had to race in the Senior Women's division instead of a Category Division.

Angela, Alice, Mindy and Sallyanne rode as a Cat 4 team.

The course was four laps of a 7 mile circuit. Headwind on the frontside, tailwind for the second half of the race. Jen had consistently strong and steady pulls and Anna just got stronger as the race went on...in the last lap her pulls were at upwards of 27-28 MPH. She's really feeling it right now.

We covered 27 miles in one hour, nine minutes and ten seconds. Ended up third in the senior division and posting the fifth best time overall.
We are all pretty pleased with that result, considering we practiced for, at best, an hour the day before and two of our riders were without all of the necessary TT dork equipment.

Our Cat 4 team had an off day, getting off course at a poorly marshalled corner on the first lap. To their credit, they stuck it out once back on course and finished the race.

Tomorrow, I'll be back on the TT bike for the first stage of the Women's 3/4 race at the Mt. Hood Cycling Classic. Not a typical TT...eighteen miles, big climb five miles in and steady rollers throughout. My kind of course and I'm excited to see what sort of time I can post.

And, oh yeah, its my birthday today...here's to being faster and stronger at 32.

Cherry Blossom: Stage Two and Three Reports

Here is my second installment of the Cherry Blossom 2009 race report. By the way, did anyone actually SEE a Cherry Blossom while they were in The Dalles? I thought I might have seen one yesterday while climbing up Seven Mile Hill, but that might have just been my cornea exploding.

Stage Two: The Time Trial. Unlike most sane, rational human beings, I like time-trialing. This might be the case for me being neither sane nor rational, but that is a topic for another day.

One of the more insane things about time trialing is that the most important part actually takes place before you race. Warming up for a TT is an art form. It's all about kicking your own ass and minimizing the time at the start of the TT when all you want to do is throw up in your mouth. For an eight mile race such as this one, I would ideally warm up for an hour.

And ideally, we wouldn't have had to coordinate six people, seven bikes, four trainers, three extra wheelsets, two pots of coffee and 100 pounds of gear at 6AM on a Saturday morning.

So we ended up only having about 40 minutes to get ready. Which involved getting my heart rate up to 85% as quickly as possible.... in 37 degree weather. This is why Metallica and Red Bull exist.

The course was an out-and-back course with about 400 feet of elevation gain in the first 4 miles.

It was hard. I was on the edge of barfing the entire time. So all in all, exactly what needed to happen. Overall time 22:32. Averaged about 21.3 MPH. Caught my 30 second, 60 second, 1:30, 2 min, 2:30 and 3 minute persons.

I ended up second (I am listed third in the results, but the posted winner of the TT was the victim of a clerical error) by about 11 seconds. Not bad, but the TT was my best chance to win a stage and I know that an extra 15 minutes of warm up would have gotten me those 11 seconds.

But....moving on to my favorite type of racing...crit racing.

Stage Three: Cherry City Criterium. I was hooked on crits after my first one in August of last year. Fast, dangerous and over in less than 45 minutes. (Sort of like junior prom, but just a little bit). I am a confident bike handler and frequently sport an overabundance of ego--so it was a natural fit.

I got a call-up for my TT finish and it was pretty awesome to hear all of the cheering When the inevitable ejection from Cat 4 comes within the next few months, I'm going to miss the ladies that I've met in the last two months of racing.

The call-up also got me up front for the start of the race, which cut down on my pre-race anxiety. The only place worse than the middle of a Cat 4 women's crit is anywhere in a Cat 5 men's crit.

I wanted to start fast and out front, lead as little as possible and fall no further back than third or fourth wheel for the entire race. We were having to deal with a backside headwind and there were only 4 corners-all easy, so there probably wasn't going to be an opportunity for a breakaway. But if someone jumped, I wanted to be in the position to go with her.

I executed my plan perfectly, more or less. By "more or less", I mean that I was exactly where I wanted to be going into the sprint...until I took the final corner too tight, had to make a correction and lost both speed and the wheel I wanted to be on for the sprint. I did fight my way back to fifth, stood up and sprinted....IN MY DROPS.

The post-race relief I felt lasted about 45 seconds. Someone rolled up to me and told me that I had a teammate that went down in the final sprint. I didn't see anyone from my team and panicked. Basically rode another lap of the course at a faster pace than we had raced at.

Turns out Mindy went down with 30 meters to go. A lot of road rash and a busted front wheel, but otherwise OK. In fact, she was able to get up and RUN her bike though the finish line, "Breaking Away" style. You might not know if from looking at her, but Mindy is a seriously tough cookie.

We stuck around until the end of the women's 1/2/3 crit, which ended with a great finish for Burns but also with a horrible crash on the final turn. One of my former teammates from Group Health and a friend from Veloce were two of the four taken off via ambulance. Very sobering.

As was the prospect of climbing 1800 feet in 5 miles the next morning. We drove the dreaded Seven Mile Hill on our way home and I promised myself I wouldn't think too much about it until the morning. I broke this promise repeatedly.

Fell asleep in the middle of "My Cousin Vinny" and dreamt of climbing.

When Animals Attack IV

On Sunday, I did the bike leg on a relay team for the City of Portland Triathlon. It is well known amongst my friends that pigs will fly on a cold day in hell before I will swim in the Willamette River, but the sustainable focus of this race is awesome and I wanted to participate in some capacity this year.

Introducing "When Animals Attack IV," ready to rock it old school relay style:

Recently minted Ironman bad ass extraordinaire Scott Hull led off with stellar 28 minute swim. Here I am waiting for Scott, looking superfly (and rather bobbleheaded):The bike route was three laps of an eight mile course out of downtown, up Barbur to Beaverton/Hillsdale Highway, up Terwilliger, back up Barbur, then back into downtown. About 530 feet of elevation gain per lap. Not exactly a time-trialers optimum course, but it was an interesting course and fun to ride in a cave of pain sort of way.

I averaged 25 minutes per lap and about 19.9 miles per hour. Total time of 1:15:27. Fourth best female time of the day and 33rd fastest overall. The three women that finished in front of me are all elite age-group racers and went on to run a 10K after their ride. This is spectacularly impressive--because when I was done, I went on to lay on the grass and try not to puke in front of my friends. Scott has a great picture of me trying not to puke. I'll post it when he sends it over.

Doug ran the 10K in a blazing 39:39. My rudimentary addition skills indicate that Doug was the one that caught up to, and passed, the two co-ed relay teams that were in front of us. We finished in 2:25:10, first out of eight co-ed relay teams.

Now, the three of us are pretty decent athletes and thirteen people (including three women) managed to do this faster than we did...all by themselves. Wow. Really, wow.

Now it is officially time to put the Kuota to bed for the winter and spend some time figuring out how the hell to jerryrig my back race wheel so that it stops either rubbing the frame or refusing to spin.

Gimlet Cave of Pain

Sunday was the OBRA Time Trial State Championships. I had originally planned to spend the weekend with Sarah T. and some other fine folks mountain biking in Oakridge. Had to scrap that plan after getting the prognosis on the shoulder a few weeks ago.

So I was left scrambling to find an activity that was at least that fun to fill up my weekend hours. Came up with the perfect plan: how about getting catastrophically trashed at a party on Friday night, spending most of the day Saturday trying not to vomit, then racing a 40K time trial on Sunday. So much more fun than epic singletrack.

My journey into the cave of pain started Friday afternoon. I took the day off from exercise and, as unfortunately happens on many of my rest days, I basically forgot to eat for most of the day. Two Americanos for breakfast and a mediocre tuna sandwich around 11-that was it. I really do know better, I swear.

I rode the Il Pompino over to the Pearl around 3:30 to get my hair cut and colored (red!). Here was the evening's drink count:

Glasses of white wine consumed while color processing: 2
Beers with Jeff and Shari between hair appointment and Twilight Crit: 2
Beers at Twilight Crit: 2 (?)
Beers at home between Twilight Crit and Susan H.'s birthday party: 1
Gimlets at Susan's birthday party: approximately 2. Who the hell really knows for sure.

Between 3:30 and 12:30 I ate a half a bowl of rice and beans and a piece of pie. This puts my rough and unscientific booze to food consumption ratio during that time at about 308:1. Which also means that at about 12:30am, I more or less fell off of the side of the mountain that I had been climbing steadily and loudly for the prior seven hours.

I remember (1) D and I giving a friend a lift home, and (2) brushing my teeth. And that was about it until about 11:00 the next morning. I think the last time I was that drunk was at Susan's wedding (a wedding in which I ended up in the pool twice: once wearing a bridesmaid dress and once wearing absolutely nothing at all). Damn Susan and her damn gimlets.

Saturday was interesting. Until around 3, I alternated periods of laying face down on D's bed trying not to puke while he worked on his TT bike with periods of laying face up trying not to puke. Against my will, we took the TT bikes out for a 20ish mile spin in the late afternoon. Can't say that was the most enjoyable ride of my life, but at least it allowed me to sweat out a bit of my misery. And I did feel better afterwards, but I think that had more to do with the post-ride Haagen Das than the ride itself.

Sunday morning came a bit to early for my liking, but I was over the worst of the hangover and was looking forward to taking the Kuota out and getting her up to speed. The TT was held in Peoria, a few miles east of Corvallis, OR. The course is a smooth and flat out-and-back that notorious for the headwind in the last 20K.

Colleen, D and I carpooled down together. I have a sneaking suspicion that Colleen will never ride in a car again if we have complete control over the stereo. Personally, I really don't have a problem with Paula Abdul remixes at 7:45am, so i have no idea what her issue was. To each their own, I guess.

I was scheduled to start around 9:37 and got in a pretty decent 40 minute warm-up on the trainer beforehand. I don't have a set warm-up, but tend to favor a few sets of 30, 60, 90 second ladders at 90% and at least one 5 minute set at about 80%.

The race didn't really start the way I had planned. My rear race wheel is really finicky and if the skewer isn't tightened exactly right, the wheel will either (1) fly out of the horizontal dropouts as soon as i put any major force on the pedals or (2) refuse to spin. Fifteen seconds in, I realized that I was dealing with the latter problem. So I had to pull over and fiddle with the skewer for about 20-25 seconds. Then went back to business.

I didn't realize until the turnaround that the headwind was coming from the opposite direction as it had in years past. So I spent the first 20K feeling like total crap...I couldn't sustain over 22 MPH for more than a few minutes and had to settle into a gear that I didn't particularly feel comfortable racing in. I just tucked in as much as I could (which limited road visibility and led to me riding straight through some serious roadkill) and tried not to think too much about how much the final 20K was going to suck.

The turnaround brought some serious relief. Tailwinds. I think I spent most of the last 20K at around 25 MPH and got up to 27 for a few minutes while pushing some gears that I usually only used on downhill grades.

Came through the finish at 1:04.50. Almost six minutes faster than my 2006 time. Good enough for first (out of two) in the Womens' Masters 30-34 division and...a new course record for that division. Not bad for someone who hasn't done intervals in months and, 24 hours ago, had been laying face down in a miserable heap of her own trouble-making.

Mt. Tabor is the turf for the skinny gals with light bikes. Flat, powerful riding is my turf. Granted, nothing about the race is particularly fun. Both of my piriformis muscles cramped as soon as I sat up and my feet and undercarriage were so numb I refuse to ride the Kuota again until I find a new saddle and better road shoes.

That being said...there is something totally bad-ass about TTs. There is no place to hide, spin or coast in a TT. No rest for your legs and no distraction from your inner monologue. Your team and your competitors have nothing to do with your results...its just you, the bike and the road. Gotta love the simplicity of it.

(Colorado Adventure Recap Coming Later Today!)