rapwithtom, that's a shame about Cobb Lake. Right now, I'm likely sticking with individual stuff, as surviving a June intact is the goal this year.

I raced LAVRA TT Sunday at Velo Sports Center. I was 4th in the 500 meters for the older masters group ~.8 seconds off the winning time. I do not have the results for pursuit, but I was happy with my time for the first pursuit of the year.

I raced 4K team pursuit with my wife and two other women before the individual pursuit. I put on some lipstick that made me perfect since I was already dressed in women's underwear with shaved legs. I had all the trappings of the other women except for the world and national stripes.:cry: Fun race and we stayed together except for the last lap where the final rider accelerated (planned) and popped my wife off my wheel. The other team won by 1 second.

The cooler part of the team pursuit was the Roger Young put the two women's teams together. When we walked in he said who was on which team and the order. We got to practice during the warmup before the afternoon session.

There was a men's team that got organized ad hoc among the racers but they were ragged on the execution. They may have been faster but it was not pretty as we were.:D

Thank you Cleave! It was a good time.

Thank you nacler22. I hope you land the "kid". :)

Nice stuff, Hermes. Well done, and well done Mrs. Hermes. Lipstick, eh? Interesting. :)

@Hermes, are you copying me from last summer? I didn't have any lipstick with me on that day though. ;) Great job on the 500m!

Another lovely Autumn day yesterday - this time spent at my clubs 307m velodrome.

Unfortunately very few riders showed up, so we had a mix of races anyway just without paying or prize money...

http://i58.tinypic.com/686c5l.jpg

Races included a team pursuit with a mix of juniors and seniors on both sides of the track. Scratch race, handicap (which I had to pull out of), motorpace, team sprint and finally warmdown as a group.

Reason I pulled out of the handicap was I felt something give in the drivetrain right at the start luckily without it going completely so I was able to stay upright. Though initially I had stripped the threads only to discover when trying to remove the cog that the whole hub was turning in the wheel! It is an old Zipp Predator pre dating the Zipp 1150 so has done well over all these years! Am going to see if it can be rebonded otherwise I have a Zipp 950 waiting to be converted so will use that.

Nice result yesterday, LAJ!

Thank you valygrl! I was pleasantly surprised, considering. I knew I wasn't last because I finished just behind the fellow that started 30 seconds ahead, so that helped.

My cadence was good, my pacing was good, I just need more suds in the engine room. I'll take a 12th, and work on it.

Well done for a newby. ;)

@LAJ Well done on the HC. Welcome to my world of TTs and HCs.

Suggest reading the Iron Race. It has some great stuff on mental preparation and how Dave Scott and Mark Allen willed their way to performance excellence. Most athletes quit because they can no longer endure the pain. Scott did not give into pain. He basically out suffered superior aerobic genetics.

+1 on both counts.

LAJ, well done! Early in the season, the suds will come! Great result. :)

Ooh, a hill climb. Nice job catching your 30 second person.

LAJ great job.

Aetna Spring Series, Bethel course. Mid 40's with a 10-15mph wind. M45+, pretty stacked field, 15th. I just finished base so no great expectations, but my coach told me I would surprise myself with my strength and general fitness. As usual, he was right. I just didn't have any top end for more than 60 seconds. This makes sense, because I have not trained much for that. Two very strong guys got OTF early, with two chasers late. I was in no position to do anything about them. Towards the end a couple of promising moves formed and I jumped on, but they were short lived. I was in decent position for the sprint, but it was really sketchy and I let common sense take the best of me.

P/1/2/3. It snowed a bit. Part of the charm of the place. The wind picked up to 20mph. A group of 8 or so got off early and stayed away. There might have been another chase group, I don't remember. This is just for time on task fitness so I just wanted to finish. With 5 to go I hit a nasty hole in the pavement and pinch flatted. With no free lap, I just wanted to get back in and finish. CDR changed my wheel out, and I soloed for a lap until the field caught me. I finished with the field a lap down.

Nice to race with gsteinb (as always), grolby, TKP, Globecanvas, and Mikey.

CBR Daylight Saving Time Criterium
(This race was on Sunday, Mar 8th. Another late report due to business travel. :()

Masters 40+ 1/2/3
The schedule for this monthly series of races changed this month when the promoter ADDED a 55+/60+ race. After last year's "boycott" by some 55+/60+ racers, the promoter dropped the category for the first two months since he was losing money. Not sure what made him change his mind but he did. The only problem was that he put the race as the next-to-last race of the day, so my first race was the 60 minute 40+ race. Not the ideal way to warm up for the 40 minute 55+ race.

There were 123(!) entrants but I think some of them were no-shows. Basically, I wanted to find a good wheel and stay on it. Did that and finished in the pack -- 61st out of 85 finishers. Oh and it was a 1 hour, 27.8 MPH warm up. :D

Masters 55+/60+ 1/2/3/4
The promoter said that if we wanted him to have further races for this age group, we needed at least 30 total entrants. We did better than that -- 42 55+ and 11 60+. This race started slow and after 3 or 4 laps of dawdling around at something less than 25 MPH put in a half-hearted attack just to get people moving. I didn't want to go super hard this early in the race. Someone went with me but he didn't want to pull through so the pack caught us pretty quickly but that did get things moving. I followed a couple of other moves but I waited until lap cards to try something big. I saw some guys from some of the big teams moving up the side of the pack just as we were getting two-to-go. There were three of us but the second guy didn't want to work and by turn 3 we were caught. Stayed in the pack for the finish and went fast enough to keep from getting run over from behind. 32nd out of 38 finishers with a 25.3 MPH average for the 40 minute race.

Other than the local Tuesday twilight races, I'm not sure when I'll do a weekend race next as my regular business travel is messing up my training. As noted elsewhere, I am pretty sure that I will bring my rain bike up to Everett but it will be hard to get much quality training in given my work situation when I am there. Also, I missed the first Tuesday race last week and I am going to miss this Tuesday's race because I have another (local) commitment. Since I'll be in Everett the week after next, my first opportunity to race on Tuesday will be the 4th race of the series.

Of course all of my "woes" are first-world problems. I really am glad that I still have a job that I generally like and can train reasonably while I'm home.

Team Integrity Training Race #3

C race (CAT5) for 45 minutes
45 degrees
20-25 mph winds gusting to 45
.7 mile laps with 83' gain per lap. Of course the uphill bit with the 5% or so grade was dead into the wind.
14 entries

The whistle blew and despite the best laid plans of my team mate wanting to go off the front I looked over and saw him having a problem clipping in. I waited for him to find my wheel and delivered him to the front as best I could. Having burnt a match for that effort (27 seconds at 170%) I started falling back though riders and settled in to what I thought would be a blown up race due to the short climb of about .2 miles that was dead into the wind. I'd work at what my FTP is and just see what happened. On the second lap I started reeling folks in and passing them and then could see a few up at the front who would turn out to be the winners.

Knowing that I'd never catch them I found one guy that I worked with for a dozen laps or so and we'd take turns leading each other up the rise into the wind. Looking at the data there were times when I was at 115% FTP and going 10 mph. We'd come to the 40 mph downhill part and I'd tuck and coast for as long as I could to try and recover. That coast generally lasted for ~25 seconds or ~.2 mile and got me a 'nice tuck' comment from the other guy.

The race did get blown up and I thought the two of us were fighting it out for the bottom step so I knew my only chance was to take off at the bell and not coast but to hammer and try to get away. That plan worked out with my last lap being 2:15 at 120% FTP however I failed to notice that there was one other person between what I thought to be 1 and 2 and myself so I took 4th

Turned out to be 14 miles with 1400' gain and more importantly everybody stayed upright.

TSS 83
IF 0.96


Good times but I still don't care for crits.

shovelhd, sounds like a good start to the year, less the flat tire. I really do wish that our season started later in the year like yours.

Good job you guys.

IBOHUNT, whether you like them or not, sounds like you did pretty well in the crit. Since it was a Cat 5 race, I presume you also beat a bunch of kids. Good job!

Thank you very much Heathpack, Hermes, Racer Ex, Sara, Cleave and shovelhd!

That book is on my list, Hermes.

Nicely done, shovelhd! I like that. "Part of the charm." We said.

That's a lot of racing against a lot of people, Cleave. Good stuff.

I hope your training adjustments work out.

Good heavens, IBOHUNT. That sounded like a pretty tough race. Very well done.

Nice work out there folks.

Dalai; Makes me wish we had a track here, every time you post a picture.

Hermes; Same as above.

LAJ; Gonna work on the "kid" again tomorrow.

Cleave; Looks like you're making some lemonade out of a slug of lemons.

IBOWHUNT; .........BAM.........next up.........podium. :thumb:

shovelhead; Solid as always. It'll be fun to watch your results when you and coach, decide to turn the pain spigot on.

Sara; Somehow missed your last race. Sucks about the seatpost. I had my seat fall off last year, while in 2nd place. :mad: