Masters Racing (All Disciplines) - Just hanging out shooting the bull

Hello all,
I'm new to bikeforums. I just came across this thread and thought that I might join in the conversation. I race the SCNCA crit series in the masters 60+ category. I'm actually 66 but there aren't many 65+ races. Hope you will let me join in the conversation here.

Hello coachloren,

I'll be racing with you next year. I move up to 55+ next year and I'm looking forward to it.

Hi All,

Managed to get in 150 miles last week over the course of 4 days (Thursday to Sunday). I am having a lot of trouble convincing myself to get off of the bike completely since I missed a couple of weeks in August after I crashed. My Sunday ride was an easy 66 miles solo. The problem with an easy 66 miles is that it takes a while to do it. :p

I picked up a new fixie, Raleigh Rush Hour, at the LBS yesterday. Let the fun begin! My coach is hosting a weekly fixie ride every Sunday into spring. Riding the bike in the parking area and access roadways behind the LBS revealed that I've got quite the learning curve to overcome. As long as I concentrated on moving my feet and legs things went well, as soon as I scratched my nose with one hand I almost went over the bars!!!:eek: Holy sheet Batman that bike coasts forever!

A question to you guys and gals with fixies. Do you have speed and cadence monitoring on your bikes?

I use the Garmin 704 ANT+ and put a cadence/speed sensor on my track bikes to get cadence and use the same head unit for all the bikes.

Hi All,

Managed to get in 150 miles last week over the course of 4 days (Thursday to Sunday). I am having a lot of trouble convincing myself to get off of the bike completely since I missed a couple of weeks in August after I crashed. My Sunday ride was an easy 66 miles solo. The problem with an easy 66 miles is that it takes a while to do it. :p

Cleve, I find it very difficult to do any easy ride over 45 minutes. As soon as I start up any hill or into the wind the efforts just ramp up. It's even worse if I'm riding with a buddy. Last Friday night I rode with 2 guys after dark on a 1.75 hr ride that was supposed to be easy since 2 of us were racing cross the next day. After loading the ride on the computer I saw my average watts equaled a Z3 ride effort.

I use the Garmin 704 ANT+ and put a cadence/speed sensor on my track bikes to get cadence and use the same head unit for all the bikes.

Upgrading to a Garmin 704 would cost more than the bike.:lol: I use a Cateye Astrale 8 head on most of my bikes which have the wiring harnesses already attached. I may just purchase an additonal harness and move the head. I'm not sure if I'll get workouts in time, HR and/or cadence using the fixie. Riding with a group really won't matter what the cadence/speed is.

I use my old Blackburn Delphi 6.0 on my track bike without cadence. Need to find another sensor for the Blacburn Neuro 6.0 (all wireless speed and cadence) and put that on the track bike. Been tempted to use my Andriod with Strava on my track sessions.

Hello coachloren,

I'll be racing with you next year. I move up to 55+ next year and I'm looking forward to it.

Hi Cleave, Yes we will be racing together. 55+ and 60+ race together and score separately. It is really a great bunch of guys.

Upgrading to a Garmin 704 would cost more than the bike.:lol: I use a Cateye Astrale 8 head on most of my bikes which have the wiring harnesses already attached. I may just purchase an additonal harness and move the head. I'm not sure if I'll get workouts in time, HR and/or cadence using the fixie. Riding with a group really won't matter what the cadence/speed is.

I do not think Garmin has a 704 (I meant 705) so it would cost more than my house to develop one. I spend a lot of time fretting about what gearing to use at the track. A big discussion with my wife will be "will she use an 88 or a 90 at the Home Depot Center". And the difference between an 88 and a 90 is one tooth on the chain ring. So knowing what the cadence is while you are riding is interesting but there is nothing you can do to change it unless you slow down or speed up. After riding, I like to review my cadence on the computer. Since everyone is riding fixed, the group rides should be a blast.

I do not think Garmin has a 704 (I meant 705) so it would cost more than my house to develop one. I spend a lot of time fretting about what gearing to use at the track. A big discussion with my wife will be "will she use an 88 or a 90 at the Home Depot Center". And the difference between an 88 and a 90 is one tooth on the chain ring. So knowing what the cadence is while you are riding is interesting but there is nothing you can do to change it unless you slow down or speed up. After riding, I like to review my cadence on the computer. Since everyone is riding fixed, the group rides should be a blast.

Hermes, knowing how "cutting edge" and cost savvy you are I wasn't about to question your Garmin 704. I assumed that you might have a secret prototype device or could have purchased it from Garmin's Scratch and Dent Outlet store.

For my bike I could buy a Power Tap cadence sensor and watch cadence and HR then be able to load the data via ANT+ on my laptop for records.

This discussion is reminding me of the Brim Brothers tongue in cheek how-to video on swapping their cleat based PM from one bike to another. The guy dismounts from one bike, takes his Garmin 500 off, gets on another bike, puts the Garmin on, and rides away. Pretty sweet...

I think the Garmin based PM, if it works as expected, is a game changer for the sale of high end pedals. I went into a bike shop and the sales guys shows me the latest Shimano carbon pedal. It was nice but I said that I am waiting for the Garmin PM so I can purchase one and swap it to various bikes. Well, that means I will not have any pedals on bikes as they hang in the garage. Currently, all my bikes have pedals. Once this trend takes hold, I suspect it will reduce the number of high end pedals sold.

I have to believe that pedal manufacturers are thinking about sales and what the new technology will do. I doubt that riders will purchase several power meters for all their bikes since swapping pedals is easy.

Also, IMO, a lot of the Garmin electronics and software are not very cool and down right "goofy". I would prefer Apple as my power meter hardware and software developer. Then I would have video, text, voice and power all in my computer on my bike.

Props to Quarq. I think a stick or something hit the battery cap on my wife's PM and broke the cap. I called Quarq and they had another one to me at no charge in 2 days.

I hit mine with my chain during a cleaning. They did the same thing for me, sending 2 of them FedEx. Gotta love 'em. Glad that, at least so far, the SRAM acquisition hasn't changed anything.

Also, IMO, a lot of the Garmin electronics and software are not very cool and down right "goofy". I would prefer Apple as my power meter hardware and software developer. Then I would have video, text, voice and power all in my computer on my bike.

I'd prefer that the perfectionist, arrogant, ******** at Apple wrote all the software I use, and designed all the device interfaces. Their infrastructure work isn't quite as up to par though, as my "me.com" email times out a lot. Seems better of late, as I'm sure they beefed up their cloud infrastructure in advance of the iOS 5.0 release. But email infrastructure is notoriously hard to scale, and responsiveness is dependent on many factors not in their control.

The only issue with an Apple PM, though, is that it would no doubt only work with Apple sensors, and only show video if it wasn't flash based!

By the way, it seems that many of the issues with using an iPhone as a head unit have been resolved by the iBike folks: http://www.ibikedash.com/

Still a heavy and expensive solution, particularly if you crash. But it has batteries to extend the run time (replaceable mid ride if necessary), is ANT+, and even has an apparent wind speed sensor (but no wind angle, so accurate true wind speed/angle isn't there).

My IOS 5 update on my iPhone works perfectly as well as Lion and iCloud. I really like the gesture control on the mouse pad. My wife will soon have a new iPhone 4s and it will work seamlessly with my Mac and we can use FaceTime. I am upgrading my Mac hard drive to 750 Gb to accommodate the ContourRoam videos and the increased spaced required for other digital media.

Most of Genentech uses Apple computers except for the legal department. Their document management system only works on PC. When she and I go to a WIFI hot spot, my computer connects seamlessly, Many times her computer refuses to connect or connects slowly and she always wants to use my computer to look at pictures and video or listen to music.

When Apple comes out with the TVs it is going to be totally cool. It will be interesting to see how the competition to make deals with the media owners and producers play out.

I carry my iPhone when I ride. The least of my worries is electronics in a crash.

I have been in significant discussion with both Saris and Quarq being an early adopter of their ANT+ technology. Their take on Garmin is they they are not responsive to developers' needs which was evidenced by the early problems with the power meters connecting to Garmin - I have both PowerTap and Quarq. So I anticipate a host of start up problems with the new pedal based power meters. I hope I am wrong.

My IOS 5 update on my iPhone works perfectly as well as Lion and iCloud. I really like the gesture control on the mouse pad. My wife will soon have a new iPhone 4s and it will work seamlessly with my Mac and we can use FaceTime. I am upgrading my Mac hard drive to 750 Gb to accommodate the ContourRoam videos and the increased spaced required for other digital media.

Most of Genentech uses Apple computers except for the legal department. Their document management system only works on PC. When she and I go to a WIFI hot spot, my computer connects seamlessly, Many times her computer refuses to connect or connects slowly and she always wants to use my computer to look at pictures and video or listen to music.

When Apple comes out with the TVs it is going to be totally cool. It will be interesting to see how the competition to make deals with the media owners and producers play out.

I carry my iPhone when I ride. The least of my worries is electronics in a crash.

I have been in significant discussion with both Saris and Quarq being an early adopter of their ANT+ technology. Their take on Garmin is they they are not responsive to developers' needs which was evidenced by the early problems with the power meters connecting to Garmin - I have both PowerTap and Quarq. So I anticipate a host of start up problems with the new pedal based power meters. I hope I am wrong.

I'm enjoying iOS 5, and had been using the iCloud predecessor (me.com) for quite awhile to keep email, contacts and bookmarks in sync everywhere.

The only reason I ever bought a PC was that there was a period when the MS Office applications were a generation behind on the Mac, the file structures of the versions were incompatible, and I couldn't share files with the PC based folks I was starting a business with. Then Apple went through its dark times, but now I'm gradually converting the family back over. I remember with some degree of fondness carrying one of the original Mac's around the country. If you took it out of its bag, you could just fit it into the overhead. That was state of the art "portable computing" back then, and having a "Fat Mac" was the cat's meow. It would take over 10 minutes for my financial planning spreadsheets to recalculate, even with that software assigned all the memory, something you could do on a Mac but not a PC.

But I digress.

I agree about Garmin. It took them forever to listen to people and allow you to permanently set 1s recording, instead of reverting to their "smart" recording whenever a PM wasn't recognized.

I'm more interested in the Brim Brothers "Zone", than the Garmin "Vector". I'd rather change pedals than cranksets, but not changing anything is better than either.

The Brim Brothers looks interesting. Hopefully, neither solution goes by the way of Cold Fusion. I would have thought that Garmin would have come out with a commercial product last year after purchasing the technology that was purported as fully cooked but lacking commercialization. Obviously, there was more to it.

Our historic rains continued today. It is still October and the yearly rain fall total is over 2 inches more than the all time record. We still have 2 more months to smash the record!!! Due to the rain I did my first roller ride of the season. Balance and technique where just where I was on the last roller workout in May. I only was able to ride for a little more than 1 hr due to cramping in my calves much the same as last week's trainer ride. I hope the cramping calves are not a trend or issue that I'll have to overcome.

Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and 45 degrees. I'm hoping to take the fixie out for an easy 45 minute ride.

I skipped the Tues crit when a thunderstorm hit as I was about to leave the house. Metabolic test yesterday, and it showed my aerobic conditioning had declined significantly compared to last year's initial test. The race season, and then the 'fun' rides I've been doing, has left me where I'm burning almost all carbs. Base season starts now, and my zones are now lower, which means I'll be going really really slooooowww.

And in a timely coincidence, my team hosted a presentation last night by a physiology Phd working with the team. He recommends low carbs and high fat (and all natural whole foods) to help get your body burning fat as much as possible. He gave a really interesting presentation on the metabolic system, what adaptations occur, and how to generate them.

AZT, I think we need to find a numerical average equivalent to adopting what your physiology Phd and my nutritionist Phd said about eating.:D

I follow my own version of Barry Sears' Zone Diet and increase carbs depending on the amount of exercise I get. Sears advocated adding fat when increasing exercise. That did not work for me.

Our "club" nutritionist was negative on the Zone diet but interestingly recommends the same mix of carbs, fat and protein and was pretty adamant that one should eat protein with carbs which was one of the basic premises of the Zone diet. She is a proponent of not eating on rides less than 2 hours and just drink water. The idea is to burn fat versus muscle glycogen.

I had my genetic testing done by 23andMe. I have one copy of alpha-actinin-3 in fast-twitch muscle which make me a likely sprinter. Some people have two copies and some have none which make them likely more endurance. With respect to weight loss, I am likely to lose weight with exercise whereas my wife is not. That seems to be true for both of us.

I think my metabolism and muscles perform better with glucose than fat.

I sent them another spit sample and they are going to update my profile with their new platform. The way 23andme works is they improve their data base platform and as new genes are implicated publish the results in my database.

I think it is all pretty cool and extremely interesting.

She is a proponent of not eating on rides less than 2 hours and just drink water. The idea is to burn fat versus muscle glycogen.

My Coach, and the guy last night (Ben Stone) are also proponents of not eating for morning training rides, although he and the shop owner were careful to cover themselves legally by saying they were NOT recommending we all go out and do it. Turns out a lot of us already do. That's commonly referred to as "bonk training", even though you don't bonk.

Ben did what I guess is an exercise physiologists idea of fun, catheterizing a grad students femoral artery, then injecting different substances in him as he exercised. They did this in Europe someplace, as they would have probably been arrested in the US. They paid the grad student $50, by the way ;-) They measured his Respiratory Exchange Rate real time, which showed the ratio of carbs to fat he was burning. When they injected fat, he started burning it (dramatically) within 30 seconds. When they injected glucose, the reverse happened, just as quickly. They played with him, bouncing his RER up and down at will. The lesson is that your body will burn not only what you train it to burn, but what is available. So, if you provide a bunch of carbs, you are going to burn those instead of fat. Hence his recommendation to up the fat compared to most diets, and reduce the carbs. You want to increase mitochondria, and you do that by burning fat. The more fat you burn, the more fat you will be able to burn.

When in a high intensity race, he recommends slightly diluted honey, taken in frequent small sips, to provide the carbs. That's it.

He also provided interesting info on the limiting factors when you are anaerobic, which is your ability to keep your blood PH balanced by getting rid of what the lactic acid is doing. That is done by attaching bicarbonates (if I have that right) and exhaling it. He said to forget slow and easy breathing. You want forceful and rapid exhalation.

Interesting stuff, and it matches my recent experiences where I've burned up my carbs and blown up. As I've been doing high intensity, I upped my carb intake, which contributed to that. For the next couple of months, it's going to be more miles and less carbs.

In Dr Michael Ross's book "maximum performance for cyclist" he suggest doing some workouts early in the AM prior to eating that will teach the body to utilize only stored fuel. He states that during sleep most of the fuel for the body comes from stores in the blood, liver and muscles and that when you workout at Z3 the body will burn fat since that is what is available. I think he terms it Lipolysis (sic no doubt). I have done what he says on the trainer over the winter season for his reason and also to lose weight. He also cautions about doing the workout for too long and to monitor your breath for ammonia.

Maybe it's dumb luck or intuition but on rides of less than 2 hrs I never take any food and only water. Rides with hard intervals or races less than 2 hrs are different.

I am doing a hill climb race tomorrow. My ContourRoam is operational and I am debating whether to use it in the race since the weather forecast calls for sunny skies and 60 degree temps for the race so the video should be excellent.

I am doing a hill climb race tomorrow. My ContourRoam is operational and I am debating whether to use it in the race since the weather forecast calls for sunny skies and 60 degree temps for the race so the video should be excellent.

Hermes, go for it! It would be great to see video of that!

I did my first fixie ride today. Riding along the road was not too bad at all, slowing for stop signs and the few redlights was a whole different experience.:eek: Towards the end of the 1 hr ride I realized that I needed to tilt the seat back a little and raise the saddle a 1/4". Once home I made the changes and tried the bike on my street and think that the next ride will be a little better since I won't keep sliding forwards. The bike came with Welgo pedals with cages and I may use the cage pedals next time to help in the times when I'm stopped and starting out. I had a hard time clipping back in with my Keo pedals as the bike kept speeding up while one foot kept trying to flip the pedal and clip in.

Hermes, Does you camera have the the same speed and watt dashboard as the video you posted? The watts looked like a tachometer as the rider progressed up the hill.

No. The camera records the video. The GPS and other metrics such as watts and rpm are from another software application. That software is from a startup company locally. Video, GPS and performance metrics are loaded to their server and they produce the integrated video. It is a beta version and free for now.

I think my metabolism and muscles perform better with glucose than fat.

Probably why you gravitated to the track.

BTW, where are you mounting the camera? Helmet? Stem?

I did the team group ride, but did the B's to try and stay as low in the zones as I could. A friend and I added another 25 miles or so to get to 70. I only ate maybe a third of a Clif bar (stomach was screaming Feed Me!!!), to see how much I could do using only stored fat and glycogen. The ride clearly confirmed that I turned myself into a carb-dependent short haul rider. I can pour on the power (relatively speaking), but once I'm into a ride 2-3 hours, and have burned up my carbs, I'm toast. I'll be doing everything I can to get my fat burning back up. Either that, or I'm switching to only crit's, and only eating McDonald's french fries and Jujyfruits candy.

I purchased both the stem mount and head mount and tested them both. With the head mount, the helmet has to be tight on the head or there is a lot of camera shake. The stem mount produced less shake. In iMovie, there is image stabilization software but it takes a lot of time to run the program on a large block of raw video so I have not tested it yet.

I did my first fixie ride today. Riding along the road was not too bad at all, slowing for stop signs and the few redlights was a whole different experience.:eek: Towards the end of the 1 hr ride I realized that I needed to tilt the seat back a little and raise the saddle a 1/4". Once home I made the changes and tried the bike on my street and think that the next ride will be a little better since I won't keep sliding forwards. The bike came with Welgo pedals with cages and I may use the cage pedals next time to help in the times when I'm stopped and starting out. I had a hard time clipping back in with my Keo pedals as the bike kept speeding up while one foot kept trying to flip the pedal and clip in.

If you're anything like me, you won't find the cages easier. The trick is to start off slowly. If you accelerate through the first couple of pedal strokes it's tough to catch the pedal, whether clipped or clipless.

If you're anything like me, you won't find the cages easier. The trick is to start off slowly. If you accelerate through the first couple of pedal strokes it's tough to catch the pedal, whether clipped or clipless.

Thanks for the input Chasm54. Tomorrow is another easy ride on the foxoe and I'll concentrate on clipping right off the bat.

I just got back from an eight-day training camp in Spain. I was there to train, of course, but also to help look after a bunch of fourteen-to-sixteen year-olds for whom the camp was predominently designed. Some of these kids were quick; one is shooting for a place on the UK Olympic development program next year, and according to my coach he might make it. They absolutely tore me to pieces in the hills, especially on one eleven-kilometre 3rd category climb that was used in the Vuelta this year. When you're fifty-seven years old and still weighing over 200lbs you just have to watch with good grace as the super-talented fourteen year-old who is literally half your weight dances away from you on a 13% gradient. Fortunately it's still a different story on the flat sections, but that won't last long...

A great time, and some great workouts. Acting as lead-out man for these kids to teach them how to time their effort to jump past me when going for the line was not only a lot of fun, it had me doing better intervals than I have tackled for quite a while. There's another camp scheduled for February, I think I'll be signing up.

Cyclo cross this weekend was under sunny skies and mid-40's. Riding through this soaker was not a pleasant experience x 5.

http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr256/sru75/321654_2589483139533_1328222534_33082720_1146964928_n.jpg

A'Jet, I am a little surprised you are having trouble cleating in the fixie. Most crit racers are great at cleating in on the first revolution otherwise they lose position. It is probably due to thinking too much about the fixed nature of the bike. You can always go for Speedplays. At the track, cleating in is never a problem. One commences a mass start race by riding up to the rail and hanging on. The group releases from the rail and rolls around for a lap and then the ref fires a gun starting the race. All other races are from a held start with both feet cleated in.

A'Jet, I am a little surprised you are having trouble cleating in the fixie. Most crit racers are great at cleating in on the first revolution otherwise they lose position.

It is probably due to thinking too much about the fixed nature of the bike.

I'm probably nervous at the red lights. I don't have much trouble taking one foot out and clipping back in while on the rollers. One issue I have to overcome is being able to stop at a spot with a pedal near the top of the down spot and not be too deep or shallow in the intersection. I plan to do another easy spin ride today and will ride the fixie.

Cyclo cross this weekend was under sunny skies and mid-40's. Riding through this soaker was not a pleasant experience x 5.

Yowza.

I just got back from an eight-day training camp in Spain. I was there to train, of course, but also to help look after a bunch of fourteen-to-sixteen year-olds for whom the camp was predominently designed. Some of these kids were quick; one is shooting for a place on the UK Olympic development program next year, and according to my coach he might make it. They absolutely tore me to pieces in the hills, especially on one eleven-kilometre 3rd category climb that was used in the Vuelta this year. When you're fifty-seven years old and still weighing over 200lbs you just have to watch with good grace as the super-talented fourteen year-old who is literally half your weight dances away from you on a 13% gradient. Fortunately it's still a different story on the flat sections, but that won't last long...

A great time, and some great workouts. Acting as lead-out man for these kids to teach them how to time their effort to jump past me when going for the line was not only a lot of fun, it had me doing better intervals than I have tackled for quite a while. There's another camp scheduled for February, I think I'll be signing up.

Sounds fantastic!

I'm probably nervous at the red lights. I don't have much trouble taking one foot out and clipping back in while on the rollers. One issue I have to overcome is being able to stop at a spot with a pedal near the top of the down spot and not be too deep or shallow in the intersection. I plan to do another easy spin ride today and will ride the fixie.

At the track, we roll off the track and as we slow down, we uncleat one foot and then as the cleated foot is coming off the bottom, we stand and stop. If we wanted to immediately go again, we raise the rear wheel off the ground and reposition the clipped in pedal to where we want it. However, the majority of the time, we get off the bike. We position the pedal by rolling the bike before we get on.

Sounds fantastic!

It was, thanks. My coach is trying to develop a regional junior team to feed in to the British Cycling development programme and these camps are going to be a regular feature. So I can go and help him look after the kids at the same time as getting some quality time on the bike. The February camp will be a bit more hard-core, because it will be dominated by adults putting the final touches to their preparation for the 2012 racing season.

Cyclo cross this weekend was under sunny skies and mid-40's. Riding through this soaker was not a pleasant experience x 5.

http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr256/sru75/321654_2589483139533_1328222534_33082720_1146964928_n.jpg

Allegheny Jet, Looks like a whole lot of fun...

QUOTE=coachloren;13436987]Allegheny Jet, Looks like a whole lot of fun...[/QUOTE]

Cross racing is a lot of fun in a relaxed setting and with racers letting their guard down. Last weekend we had a race with "costumes mandatory". It was very muddy and I elected to race on the 29'er which was a good choice for the first 15 minutes until it loaded up with mud and leaves which were cemented together with pine needles.

http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr256/sru75/Chragrincrossday1.jpg

On Sunday we rode the same course in the reverse direction. I rode my cross bike on Sunday with no issues with clogging of the derailers and brakes.

http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr256/sru75/chragrincross4.jpg

225333

And got to race through the "twin tubes of death" again!

Explosive blowout riding home last night. Tube wound around the brakes, I slid on the alloy rim (rear), etc. Brand new tire shot, and I think the rim is as well, especially as it is the second time it has happened, and the same wheel. I sanded the rim as smooth as I could last time, but it looks pretty messed up now. The first time was a pothole pinch. This one is totally unexplained, but could be due to the last event. Going to mount my tubies tonight, and may just ride them for awhile, carry sealant, and see how that goes before deciding what to do about new trainers. It also stripped the (plastic) adjuster on the Ultegra 6700 brakes, which is undoubtedly better than what would have otherwise happened to the brakes. Quite the mess. Quite the frustrated commuter.

Cross racing is a lot of fun in a relaxed setting and with racers letting their guard down. Last weekend we had a race with "costumes mandatory". It was very muddy and I elected to race on the 29'er which was a good choice for the first 15 minutes until it loaded up with mud and leaves which were cemented together with pine needles.

http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr256/sru75/Chragrincrossday1.jpg


That is the first time I saw your hair. Do you normally stuff it in your helmet?:D

AZT, Glad you are okay. What kind of wheels and tires were you using?

I rode my TT bike this morning for 1.5 hours of endurance work. It was a beautiful morning on the TT course with sunny skies and the starting temperature of 50 degrees.

AZT, Glad you are okay. What kind of wheels and tires were you using?

Bontrager "Race" and a new Conti GP4000s. Different brand tube than when it happened the first time - I switched.

That is the first time I saw your hair. Do you normally stuff it in your helmet?:D

Yeah, I was having a bad hair day and just let it fly for once.

I did the hill climb on Saturday and planned to video the event and overlay metrics. The new camera worked well but on the way to the starting line, my power tap battery went dead. We had 120 racers and went in groups of 15 spaced 2 minutes apart. I went with the 3rd group which was too fast and I rode alone on the climb which is okay but I got no benefit of any draft which i may have got if I went with a slower group.

The video camera works great but the amount of space required on my computer is too much and I am replacing the internal hard drive with a 750 Gb drive. Since I use a dual boot system, it is a bit trickier to get the new drive running on OS X and Windows.

Here are a couple of pics from the event. My wife set a new 20 minute power record and came in 3rd out of all the women.

http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u250/rallen94402/2011%20LKHC%20Palomares/rfamouthopen.jpg

http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u250/rallen94402/2011%20LKHC%20Palomares/meabiglegs.jpg