Dudelsack 

You have the highest Strava time for women except for a pro.

chasm54

Hi, all. Haven't been here for a while. Finally did my first crit last weekend - brief report in the 33, which AZT was kind enough to read and comment on. Suffice it to say that all my experience of riding bikes, competing in endurance events, and watching bike racing failed to prepare me for the crit experience. It's a bit like reading a book on the theory and practice of swimming. It all makes perfect sense until someone throws you in the water.

I'm not nearly as fit as I had planned to be, either. At the start of December I came off on some wet cobblestones and broke one, or possibly two, ribs on an inconveniently-positioned bollard. So much for all the base miles I intended to do that month. And in the first week of January, on the very first serious ride following that injury, I hit an invisible patch of black ice. No bones broken this time but so much trauma to my right glute that the bruising was still emerging down to my calf more than two weeks later. I was hobbling around like I was overdue for a hip replacement. So all in all, about seven weeks of winter training went straight up in smoke.

Still, I have had some pleasant ways of trying to make up for lost time. In February I went (for the second time) to help my coach run a training camp in southern Spain for young racing cyclists. Ten days and over 400 miles later I was beginning to feel a little more like myself. The kids were great, too - a dozen or so 13 -17 year-olds, some very talented and one - a 13 year-old girl - whom I confidently expect to see featured in Cycling Weekly in a very few years. Absolutely phenomenal for her age.

Another crit coming up on Saturday. Hopefully I'll have my wits more together this time. And then a short 40km 4th cat road race on Easter Monday. That should be more my style...

Hermes

Chasm54, Congrats on first crit.

Hermes

Motorpacing at the track on Tuesday and met my wife yesterday for a lunch ride up Mount San Bruno. On the warmup ride to the base, my legs felt like crap and once I had to tell them to shut up. When we started the climb, the wind was stiff and in our face - this just keeps getting better.

AzTallRider

The good thing about crits is that there a lot of them, so you can quickly forget about the last one an plunge into the next.

I'm sure that training camp was great. We have three really promising kids racing on our team, and they are also just great kids overall. It's fun to watch them succeed in cycling at the same time they are learning about life. Our 17 year old just moved up into Cat 2, and has already done well in a couple of Cat 2 races, even with his restricted junior gearing that has him often turning 150 rpm. Kid is really fast.

Hermes

Boom

AzTallRider

I've had the need to drive to work almost every day this week, so my riding has been limited to our Tuesday night crit, and commuting yesterday. The crit wasn't as fast as some weeks. Last week there were 6 Cat 1's riding, and the pace was blistering. This week it only got really hard once, and I chose to drop off for a lap rather than totally redline it. I hopped back on and was fine the rest of the way, only dropping off as we came around the last lap, since I hadn't earned the right to sprint.

Saturday I'm a volunteer ride-marshall for our Tour de Cure Diabetes charity event. I'm doing the 80 mile route, and will stay up front to yell at the fast folks who don't move over to let cars past. Wups... I mean I will make sure "everyone has fun and stays safe". And I'll help with any flats. If I know the guys who'll be up there, and I do, it will be a pretty quick 80 miler. It's a pretty flat course. I'll do solo base on Sunday.

Sadly, our racing season has only about a month left. I may be a real "Zonie" and invade SoCal for a race or two. Looking at the Barrio-Logan GP in San Diego.

AzTallRider

Wow... what a great video. Thanks Hermes.

One of the concepts that has been explored here in Arizona, to fund getting a track built, is to capitalize (pun intended) on Indian gaming. Let folks bet on the races. Human trackies would replace the greyhounds.

shovelhd

In Japan, that's called the keirin.

Racer Ex 

Double boom. When done right, this and the Team Sprint are incredible.

chasm54

The Brit team pursuit squad is phenomenal at the moment. If they don't win the gold at the London Olympics this summer I think there'll be a national day of mourning.

Hermes

Opening lap at 20.2 seconds with succeeding laps at 14.4 seconds or approximately 37.8 mph. The final lap was 14.18.

Hermes

Here is the women's 2011 team sprint gold medal final UK v AUS. I like that team Australia is using Scatto 3T bars which I recently purchased for this event and possibly for the 500 meters and I think Victoria Pendleton is hot. Women have two racers per team and the men have three. In this case, the first racer pulls off in an exchange zone where the objective is to exchange at the last possible moment within the zone to offer the second rider the most drafting benefit. There are specific rules governing the exchange with respect to distance and up track separation. If the exchange is not made correctly or out of the zone, the team is DQed.

AzTallRider

I don't think this photo of the athletic form is inappropropriate, and I'm hoping the board agrees:

Victoria Pendleton

Hermes

I like this one.

chasm54

Vicky P is interesting. Personally I rather regret her decision to do the nude pictures, she's certainly a wonderful physical specimen but I'd rather that gifted women didn't feel they had to market themselves in that way. It savours too much of half-naked girls draping themselves over cars at motor shows. Others may disagree, it's just my opinion.

In any event, she's a hell of a cyclist, a wonderfully fluid technician who regularly outperforms more muscular opponents in the sprint. She has inner demons, though, she is surprisingly underconfident and prone to black moods. I suspect that it will be a relief to her to give up competition after the Olympics this summer. Hope she wins, though. I suspect she will lose out in the sprint but that she and Jess Varnish might win the team sprint.

AzTallRider

Hey, it's tough to make a buck in the minor sports, and I have no problem whatsoever when people use their natural talents for financial gain, whether that be brains, athleticism, or looks. They are all part and parcel. Lots of nude studies have been published of olympic athletes, both male and female, and I see nothing demeaning in it. It's a celebration, and I applaud what these top-of-their-sport athletes have accomplished by pushing themselves.

Racer Ex 

Trust me, that pretty much covers a lot of folks who compete at that level. Fear of failure is a great motivator. One of the hardest things in sport is to be sitting on top of the heap, get knocked off, then claw your way back.

Wish I had video of it, but here's a pick from our winning Team Sprint ride at 2010 Master's Nationals. Can't find the non-watermarked pic I bought at the moment, props to Willshoot for his great work.

shovelhd

The man knows.

One question from a non-trackie. In the team pursuit, why does one of the guys take longer pulls than everyone else?

Hermes

Stronger riders take longer pulls. In putting together a team, it is unlikely that all riders will have equal ability. So to keep the stronger riders from blowing up the weaker ones by increasing pace, the stronger ones take a longer pull. Part of practicing as a team is to get the right order and duration of pulls to optimize time. Sometimes, there will be a lead out racer who takes 2 or 3 pulls and then stops when he pulls up. The remaining three complete the race. This is typical if one of the racers is more of a sprinter and does not have the endurance to last the entire race.

Hermes

Every year our club has a speaker from velonews talk about covering the TdF. He is a former member and racer. The pressure to get interviews and racers to produce results is immense. And news media managers have themes and story lines that they want the reporters to follow that in most cases the racers do not want to support. For example, Velonews wanted to know whether Lance was going to compete in a mountain bike race and develop a story. The problem was to find a moment on Lance's time during the TdF when he wanted to talk about anything other than the TdF. He was nice enough to talk about his plans at a mountain top finish. However, that is a rare case.

Thor, the God of Thunder, did not want to grant an interview one year because he had no results to talk about. He did not want to answer the lack of performance question.

Quite frankly, I do not like the lack of performance question nor do I like to discuss things that are not relevant to me at the time. Who does? However, that is the life of a professional athlete. Some handle it better than others and most reporters love the darker side of competition. No matter how great winning multiple world championships, setting records and winning Olympic gold is someone will want to point out a dark side. People want to focus on the negative.

Red Rider

Really? I had no idea.



That makes me happy to know. Thanks for making my day!

shovelhd

Thanks Hermes.

AzTallRider

I love some Cav interviews, as he tends to tell it like is without worrying that much about repercussions:

“200 kilometers on Belgium’s worst roads. All ok. 15km from finish, peloton’s riding easy and a d—khead throws a bottle in my front wheel. Crashed hard.”
He added that all new racers “should take a written and practical test to get license.”

Allegheny Jet

Raced the Barry Roubaix in MI a 36 mile gravel road race with 2,000' + of climbing. It was roller after roller with some sandy hills just to make it harder. Over 1,500 racers with 80 in the 55+ race. Rode well even though it was my first gravel race. The first 5 miles was like a crit then it became a long TT to hold my position. I'm the fat dude in white.