Heathpack 

Great comments, thanks a lot.

I do find this TTT stuff pretty cool. Its just a beautiful thing to watch. I'd like to do one, we'll have to see if it works out. Nemesis lives (because of traffic) about 2 hours from me. And her suggesting that the Lake Los Angeles scout is not a good use of time makes me feel like she might take a different approach to these things, we might not be in sync. Personality-wise, I am reliable, able to execute a plan and willing to practice. But on the TT bike, I'm still kind of flaky. I have to think about it before I propose getting someone else involved in my flakiness.

As to the "smash the pedals" comment, another funny thing about Mr H is that once he told me that he didn't really get it, why don't I just push the pedals harder? Lol. What is wrong with me???

IBOHUNT

Practice? We talking about practice.....

Cleave

Quick Report: Valley of the Sun Stage Race

ITT: Could not have done much worse: next-to-last. Hoped to beat last year's PR, instead...
Road Race: Could not have done worse: last. Rode with a 65+ guy after we got dropped on the climb. Ended up with a medium effort training ride.
Criterium: Didn't do any worse. Stayed in a race that was full of attacks, just none of them were by me. Heading towards the line, three 55+ came past me so I was last again.

Still had fun with my teammate who fared slightly better than I. I'll be back next year, if possible.

Heading back to Seattle this morning for another week of no training.

Heathpack 

@Cleave, next year!

YogaKat

I don't get it. What is he talking about?



@Cleave Love your positive attitude and having fun is winning in my book.

Racer Ex 

Cleave,

VOS is the Devil. Easier dropping mescaline and wandering through the desert barefoot. Glad you got to race.

Heathpack 

They finally posted the current standings for the SoCal TT series, the last update was on Christmas Eve.

I had been keep track of the standings but it appears I made some kind of error somewhere, I thought I had 18 points.

I was wrong:
Nemesis 28 points (5 wins and a 3rd place)
Me 22 points (2 wins and 4 2nd places)
Wondergirl 5 points (1 win)

Ha! Two races to go, the scoring is 5 pts for a win, 4 points for 2nd and 3 points for 3rd. Do the math.

Cleave

After a week of no training and a moderate, flat ride on my TT bike on Saturday, I participated in a 50 minute criterium in Carson, CA. Didn't have too much trouble staying in but I didn't have the power or confidence to go to the front. NP essentially equaled FTP and VI = 1.12 so the power meter indicates that I rode reasonable hard and it wasn't just in my head.

YTD race count: 2 TTs and 4 road events (1 RR and 3 crits).
@Heathpack @Hermes The SoCal TT series calendar shows the next Santiago Canyon on May 7, 2016. I intend to be there.
@Racer Ex Glad I got to race too. If you want to call it racing. Had fun out there with my teammate and saw a few other friends. Hopefully next year I'll be able to train better.

sarals 

Hey Cleave....it's February! You did well, you finished, you were there, you looked more pro than anyone I'm proud of you for doing VOS. You'll be in the money next year.

Racer Ex 

I threw up my Chico Stage Race report over there.

Synopsis:

"Man, it's FEBRUARY".

Cleave

My good races aren't as good as your bad races. Sounds like a lot of pain -- the good kind.

Cleave

LAVRA Masters Omnium

As you probably ascertained by the bit of posting on the 'shooting the bull' thread and the 'cool race videos' thread, I competed in my first mass start track races: 4 Km Scratch, Miss-and-Out, and 10 Km Points (40 laps, points every 10 laps). A forum regular who is also a mucky-muck with our local velodrome racing association, a former teammate, and a friend kept badgering me to do this race. It was supposed to be a field of slow old guys (Masters 50+). Ha! At least three of the men had stripes on their kits and since only 4 women showed up for their Masters 40+ race (they needed 5 for a separate race), I got to race with two women with stripes on their kits -- oh, and one of them holds a world hour record.

I convinced another track rookie to do this race and I convinced a teammate who used to race on the track to do this race too. Misery loves company.

4 Km Scratch Race

The video is up on the 'cool videos' thread. I really had no idea what to do. Basically, I started near the back since I didn't want to do something stupid near the front. I kept trying to stay on wheels and keep the front in sight. The field apparently shattered pretty quickly and just after half distance, I followed two guys through on the pole line. I maintained my pace when I hit the front and then gradually pulled up the track to the blue line. I looked back and I had a gap. I hesitated for a moment and then thought, "Why not?"

I took off, hoping someone would join me but I ended up solo for a bit over 4 laps. I only know it was 4 laps because of the video, it seemed more like 8 laps. Instead of puking all over the nice pine track I decided to sit up. The lead group went by so fast and I was so tired that getting back on was just a passing thought. Pedaled squares the last 3 laps and ended up as the only person OTB that was on the lead lap.

Miss-and-Out

I have watched dozens (hundreds?) of these races and they look so easy -- don't be last on any lap. Knowing is a whole lot easier than doing. Being at the back doesn't help. Somehow I ended up 8th. You can see the video here:


My only tactic was to try to leave a little space between me and the person directly in front so that I could surge a little at the line. The one time I didn't do that was the lap I was out.

Points Race

All I know is that I got dropped relatively early, chased solo and then with some people for what seemed like forever, almost got dropped a second time, and hung on until the back straight of the last lap. Someone told me that there were points sprints during the race. I wouldn't know.

I did a lot better than I thought I would, meaning no one yelled at me for doing something stupid and I didn't get dropped immediately in any of the races. Somehow I managed to finish ahead of all of the women too. A rare feat for me when I race with women. Ask Velo Diva.

In the end, it was intense -- physically and mentally -- and it was fun.

Note to @Hermes (who told me, "Don't do it!"), it felt a bit safer than a criterium because people, at least this group of people, tended to hold their lines in the corners. It seems like since there are lines painted on the track, people can tell if they are holding their lines or not.

@VanceMac, when are you going to post results? I want to see how badly I did.

sarals 

Good read, Cleave! Great racing, congrats on not getting chicked Seriously, it looked tough out there, way to hang!!

Heathpack 

Raced my first 40k TT today, the best part of course was seeing @Cleave out in Piru today.

I've been having some tribulations with the TT bike of late. It hasn't been too hard to output power but I was getting huge amounts of lactic acid in my legs when I did, way different from the road bike and this has definitely been a limiter. Last Sunday, we finally figured out a way to get extended video of me riding the TT bike, sent the video to @Racer Ex and he suggested moving the saddle up and forward 1 cm each and the aerobar extensions 1 cm back. Lots of changes, and managed to get in two wee rides prior to today's race. Felt pretty good to me, sent some new video to Ex and he liked what he saw. For some reason, it did not really faze me going into this 40k with untested position changes, I guess its just seeming like the evolving changes are par for the course with a TT bike.

Oh, and BTW says Ex, I want you to ride it by feel, don't look at the power data during the race. What?! New distance, new position and new pacing paradigm. Really? Ok, why not.



Went well. I had a bad start, I had put bike into big ring after my trainer warm up and then when I wasn't paying attention, Mr. H tested all the gears and left me in the little ring. I never even looked at it, just looked back at my rear cassette to make sure I was where I wanted to be there. Then a bad clip-in. But beyond that, it went technically very well. Nailed the pacing (almost), finishing 5 watts below FTP and with ever-so-slightly negative splits that were within 2 seconds of each other. (This is a course where even splits make sense.) Overall felt great, I was trying to be conservative and felt like I was probably 20 watts below target, so I was really happy when I looked at the power summary on the Garmin post-race. Totally felt like I had more in the tank and today seemed easier than previous 20k's- maybe the longer distance suits me better or maybe its the new position, or maybe both.

There was 1 other woman racing today, an Ironwoman. I didn't pay attention to her time, but I think I beat her by 2 or 3 minutes. We'll see when official results are posted. Sweet!

Official time was 1:10:14. Not blazing, Nemesis will put up a time on this course around 1:02 or 1:03. But there's some low-hanging fruit to be picked, just riding this at FTP (which is a given, right?) will shave some time automatically. Overall just a really great experience for me.

IBOHUNT

KaBoom!
Well done. Very happy for you.
I like the last .8 miles. Crank'er up. Really drove the HR up the last 10 minutes

valygrl

Nice Heathpack!

I had my season opening race today - Frostbite TT SW3, 5th/10. It's an 11.8 mile out and back on the interstate frontage road near the CO/WY border.

Some <expletive deleted> put tacks on the course, so that was an added bonus, trying to spot tacks. I didn't flat, which was just luck, the tacks were impossible to see unless they caught the light just right, and it was overcast, so pretty much invisible.

I had a breakthrough. I managed the u-turn. I may or may not have admitted this here before, I have not been able to do the left-hand u-turn on the time trial bike, and I end up putting my foot down unless the road is extra wide, which this one is not. I finally did it today. Which is nice, because 6th place was only 4 seconds back from me, I could have lost that place if i bungled it as in times past.

Heathpack 

Nice racing (+ breakthrough)!

IBOHUNT

Nice racing valygrl. Foot down = motocross

LAJ

Very well done, @Heathpack! I thought the 40K distance was brutal, but good stuff on liking it.

Nicely done, @valygrl! I had no idea on the tacks. What a bunch of ****. Course, we were 15 miles from Wyoming... Though, Ft. Fun isn't as bike friendly as they claim to be.

Funny on the turnaround... I threw the anchor out, and my goal is to scare the crap out of the flag wavers, and make them really wave them. That means I came in hot enough... But, I was half looped, and was going to go around the lady standing in the middle of the road. I didn't even see the cone I was supposed to go around. As I got to her, she pointed at the cone, and I just reacted. Best turn I've ever had.

4th out of 21.

Heathpack 

Love it! Good day all around.

Cleave

I was at the same race as Heathpack. With my every-other-week in Seattle work schedule and the incessant northwest rain, I basically get a rest week every-other-week. That works, right?

Anyway, since racing is the best training and since it's supposed to rain tomorrow, I decided to try the Piru 40 Km TT for the first time. I haven't done a long TT in a number of years for a number of reasons and for some reason I was kind of nervous about doing it -- mostly because of the amount of potential pain. One thing on which I wanted to focus was doing a negative split. I don't think I've ever done a negative split for any TT course with multiple laps. My standard MO for a TT is to go out too hard and hang on at the end.

My teammate and I got to the course before anyone else yet we managed to futz around enough to keep from warming up properly.

Heathpack was the first one to start and I was the last in this small field.

I tried very hard to pace myself on lap 1 so that I wasn't going into the red but also not going too slow. I erred on the side of slow with a 34:10 for lap 1. On the way out on lap 2, I was having trouble raising my intensity level and when I hit the turnaround I knew it was going to be hard to beat my lap 1 split. I managed to go 20 seconds faster outbound and 20 seconds faster inbound on lap 2. Mission accomplished -- other than being slower than I'd like.

Also, my NP was surprisingly low so training every-other-week is actually not working too well for me.

My teammate really liked Heathpack's apple pie. It looked delicious and I wanted one but my wife would have smelled gluten on my breath if I had eaten one.

LAJ

It was a good day all around.

valygrl

Niiiiice!!

LAJ

I hope things get back to normal, and your training schedule allows you to race as you wish, @Cleave.

LAJ

Thank you @valygrl