Cleave

Thanks all for the well wishes for my injured friends. I think they are doing as well or better than expected.

@Heathpack, appreciate you consideration to join us.

USAC actually refunded our entry fee but Todd and I still want to do the race.

Strange thing about the incident is that I don't remember thinking I'm going to hit them. I couldn't see James well as I was in the aerobars and Greg is quite a bit taller than I. I could only see a bit of James as he started crashing and then Greg hit him or his bike and Greg started going over his bars. I remember leaning to the right to miss them but I don't recall thinking that it was really close. After getting past them and getting to the brakes I was probably 20 meters or more down the road and they were laying in very close proximity to each other. Todd was quite a way down the road before he looked back and stopped.

Got to spend some time at Urgent Care with Greg as he rode to our session. His wife showed up while he was in triage. BTW, she's a nursing professor.

@Racer Ex, I don't understand any part of the scheduling process that SCNCA uses. I've been baffled for a decade. I know that Directors for SCNCA are unpaid (though I believe they get reimbursed for expenses) and that it is generally a thankless job, but the people that held those positions until this spring seemed to value their position more than the service they were supposed to provide. There was a wholesale turnover in positions this year. We'll see if the new people do better. After I retire...

sarals 

@Cleave...glad to hear everyone is relatively okay, it could have been much worse. And that you missed the whole thing! Whew...

I do wish I could (logistically) cover for your team, and if I could, I'd volunteer. TTT's are major fun for me.

sarals 

@Heathpack, I don't know how many miles I have on my TT bike, but I totally love mine, too. It's a gas to ride it!

Coach sent me a breakdown on the Canada Road course for Saturday morning. I've ridden Canada Road once, in a group, and I wasn't sure exactly where the TT course overlays the route. I know now, but I don't know the course well enough to be confident I can ride it smoothly. It's a rolling course, and the start is actually downhill for a pretty good distance. It's out and back, so the finish is uphill. Pen Velo stresses that this is "fun training ride", but I'm going to treat it as the real thing and try for a decent time - for me. That would be sub 34 minutes for the 10 miles. I know the elites will likely be in the 26 to 27 minute range. Alison Tetric has the PR on the course at 21:55 for the women.

Today, JRA. Tomorrow, openers.

I get to race this weekend! Woot!

Heathpack 

The only reason I know the mileage on the TT bike is because Strava tells me. On the TT bike front, a cycling friend of mine is an engineer with access to a couple of different vertical milling machines, CAD software and a 3D printer. Mr. H asked me if he could maybe help out with making some wedge-shaped spacers for the TT bars and also a collar to limit the turning circle of the head tube (this has to do with burying the brake cables). No idea, so I texted my friend a couple of days ago. His answer was "of course, sounds interesting". Hooked him up with Mr H and they talked in detail and are meeting up today to go through exactly what I need (don't ask me, I barely know). Who knows if he can really do it? But he is Mr. Reliable, so I'll bet he can.

I did a 2 hour JRA solo this am- could not drum up anyone to ride. Tired legs but it was nice to get out there and ride.

Sail trip for us this weekend, a group thing which just goes down to Long Beach. We're actually bowing out of most of the group stuff due to logistics, but should be able to make cocktail hour on Friday. Then Sat am the plan is to Uber over to VSC for a quick meetup with fitter to try some actually-my-size aero helmets and skinsuits that he was testing with a US National Team member earlier this week. And then I'll try the track thing again. Even though Long Beach is not the most exciting sailing destination, the trip can be pretty cool because you sail right along an underwater escarpment. The deep cold Pacific water hits that shelf and there's a big upwelling of nutrient-rich water. That means dolphin and whale are super-common, they feed in this nutrient-rich water. We catch the edges of this while heading out to Catalina normally. But going to Long Beach, you travel along this upwelling for a few hours. Sometimes the whale watching is incredible. (Sometimes you see nothing but seagulls.) So other than the track, no cycling for me this weekend.

shovelhd

I felt exhausted going into last nights hammerfest, having spent all day crating up a tractor engine, but I woke up once the groups split off. Like last week, a rider that had no business in the A group blew up in front of me, but this time I was able to get around him without chasing at 30mph. I did about a third of the work. Good workout.

Hermes

Track workout this AM. Warmup, 3x4k motor team pursuits with another racer alternating behind the motor every two laps. 2 standing starts where I recorded my fastest 1/2 time at Hellyer and the fastest time of the day (all riders did 1/2 lap timed standing starts) and for those power mongers, I set a new all time power record of 900 watts for 15 seconds - PT hub track wheel.

Hermes

@Heathpack As a thought for you at your track session...you are in control. What I mean by that is you know what your racing goals are at the track. IMO, you do not need to be the greatest mass start racer with crazy bike handling skills diving off the banking. All that can come with time and practice but IMO, you need to know how to get on and off the bike, ride in the pole lane and at the relief line and ride in a pace line and do exchanges. That will get you enough skills to attend an open session and train on a pursuit bike plus race LAVRA time trials. From there you can expand your skills, if you decide to. You just need to ride more on the track and feel comfortable with the banking.

It would be great if you find another rider at the session who is better than you that you have confidence in and can practice riding in a pace line and doing exchanges. You might suggest that to the instructor as he may have someone to pair you with. He is basically a p u s s y cat and easily persuaded to do what you want to do. All of us that instruct at tracks want new riders to achieve their goals and we try to keep riders as safe as possible.

For example, i worked out with a newer track racer on the motor who is still learning to ride behind the motor. He is a very strong experienced crit racer and good bike handler. So the supervisor paired us together and I helped him with his motor work. I have done thousands of laps with the motor doing all kinds of drills. I assured him that I had his back so he could just relax and let go. So he was very comfortable working with me and by the end he was much better and we had a great workout.

sarals 

900 Watts. I wish! Nice, @Hermes!

JRA today, feeling purty dern good. My friend Barb was doing some sprints (from almost a standing start), so I joined her for a couple of them. Good power. Not 900 watts, though!

Heathpack 

Well, the track is off. My ever-tolerant-of-all-this-cycling-business spouse finally said to me today, "can't we just take the boat over to Catalina by ourselves and forget cycling for a weekend??"

OMG, yes of course we can. So that's what we're doing. No bikes.

It will be mid-May before I can get back to it.

I hear what you are saying about trying to be assertive about things whenever I do get back at it. I'm not exactly a shrinking violet but I hate high maintenance people when they come in to my show (ie at work). So sometimes I try to be cooperative and to go with the flow to a fault. The last track session I was just so incredibly taken aback by how it went. The first session had been so awesome, I wasn't really prepared for the second one to be anything less than that. It will be easier now that I'm prepared for that possibility.

Honestly the right thing for me IMO is to just let me ride around on the track and get used to the fixed gear (which is more weird to me than the banking) without worrying about getting me to ride in proximity to anyone else. It just seemed like there was this huge push to try to get me to ride in a paceline when at that point in my entire life I'd pedaled a fixed gear track bike for a total of maybe 30 minutes. Whatever, I'll work it out I'm sure. But right now I have to go call a client about another game-over scenario.

Hermes

Amen to more fixed gear riding on the track and getting used to the feel. Sounds like a plan.

happybday29475

wut?

Heathpack 

Well... Track is back.

Mr H brought my cycling stuff down to the boat "just in case". Then we went to a meeting at our sailing club last night. Thursday night is half-price-bottle-of-wine-night and yada yada yada it's noon and we're still sitting in our slip and have decided going anywhere is just a little too much for us right now.

The weekend has now morphed into: lay around today, go out for lunch at some point, track tomorrow, maybe a day sail tomorrow afternoon (maybe not though, the wind will be pretty gusty and our little dog is generally game but cannot swim if she falls overboard), brunch on Sunday.

As to the sailing club meeting, it was awesome to see everybody. Amazes me how much we neglect our sailing friends and all is well when we see them again. The meeting was about a group charter to the British Virgin Islands next April. The couple organizing the trip met at the bar at the Bitter End Yacht club on Virgin Gorda. They were on competing race teams (interestingly, he was racing with the Swedish National Women's team). Her boat won, of course. Fun people, great sailors, they've spent lots of time sailing in the BVI so great local knowledge. The trip sounds like its going to be incredible, they have a good mix of group parties/events/activities and unstructured days. The sailing there is super easy line-of-sight stuff, short passages. On the agenda are two nights at the Bitter End Yacht Club so a full day there with use of all their watersports equipment. There will be a pub crawl on Virgin Gorda using the Bitter End's hobie cats and sailing from beach bar to beach bar. (It's 100% true that sailors drink like fishes.). Dinghy racing, diving, snorkeling, lounging, eating, swimming. Sounds perfect except there will be no bikes.

shovelhd

Sometimes life gets in the way, and sometimes life gets out of the way. Glad it all worked out. I spent my misspent youth sailing on Long Island Sound. The raft parties were the best part.

Tomorrow I'm doing the club ride in the morning then heading down to NYC to meet son #1 and go watch the Red Hook Crit, stay up too late and drink way too much beer.

happybday29475

Sweet!

PS for a cyclist, I make really great ballast...

Heathpack 

There will likely be open cabins on some of these boats....

Fun track session today. Whew! I was actually a little worried because there was a junior race right after our Intro session and since these intro sessions also double as the 1-day certification classes for people who ride other tracks, there was the chance there'd be juniors looking to get certified before their race. Fortunately, everyone in the course was solid. Two women who ride and race up at Hellyer in San Jose, one whippet-like fast local 20ish year old who only rides fixies but had no track experience. The instructor had these three ride together. Then a strong guy with track experience, former Army helicopter pilot, who did his 4th session (so I'd ridden with him twice already before today, he's just very sane and easy to ride with) and the kid from last week who doesn't even ride a bike but is a former collegiate track (as in running and high jump) athlete- fit and maybe not so steady on the bike but a quick learner and listens well. I was riding with these two guys but newby was put on the tail of our paceline and instructed to keep two bike lengths back. So the whole thing was way more in-control this week.

I was early on account of trying on the aero stuff that fitter had. (Sweet new helmet coming out and it fits me well.) So I had my bike all set up and ready to go, was a little more prepared to be self-sufficient about it this time. Mr Helo was a little late and the instructor needed to help newby set up his bike and then to explain the peculiarities of the VSC track to the first-timers, so he sent me out to ride some warm up laps on my own which was completely perfect for me because I just wanted to spend some time rolling around on the bike.

Then he got Mr. Helo and Newby and I going. The big agenda item for the day was to practice/learn exchanges so we started with just riding in a paceline and riding high up on the track in one of the corners and then coming back down. Twenty laps of doing that every other lap and then we took a break while the other group went out and did their thing.. Then twenty laps of Mr Helo and I doing exchanges every other lap and Newby just riding on the pole line at the back. I have video of this, I'll try to upload it when we get home. I had zero concerns about Mr Helo but I was worried Newby would do something weird and we'd get into a crash. But looking at the video, he pretty much always did what he was supposed to and the whole thing was pretty well-ordered.

After this, I was surprisingly tired and we had only 20 minutes left. I was ready for a recap at the end, but the other group wanted to do some flying 200s. Instructor had Mr Helo go out and demonstrate and the other group rolled out to the start area. I tried to bow out, being tired and not really sure I wanted to go that high up on the track. Instructor wanted me to just sort of do one, go however high up I wanted, just get the idea of the flow of these efforts. For those of you who are unfamiliar, in a flying 200, you have 3 laps to get yourself up to speed way high up on the track near the balustrade, then you come down from the height at speed and sprint along the pole line at the bottom of the track (because that's the shortest distance around the track and the idea is to do it in the shortest time) for 200 meters, which is 80% of one lap. So I did possibly the worlds slowest flying 200, kind of like a turtle whereas everyone else was riding like whippets, and I only went up the track maybe 3/4 of the way. But it was pretty fun.

I was sore when I woke up this am and had to stretch a bunch to even get going. The fit of the bike seemed ok to me, except that the amount of drop when I was riding in the drops seemed pretty generous to me, so I was getting a sore neck and shoulders when riding. I'm surprisingly tired/sore now considering it was maybe only 30-40 minutes total on the bike today.

Pic is me in front, Mr. Helo behind me and Newby dutifully riding off the back. Video of the exchanges when I can get to it.

Curious @valygrl, what did you guys do in your recent track taster session? Just wondering how these sessions go at other tracks.

shovelhd

There's a reason you don't put 95 fixed gear riders in a mass start race. Red Hook men's final, two crashes in the first 100 meters. Four ambulances for the first one, dont know how many for the second but it was less than four. I've also never seen a race restart delayed for 90 minutes because there weren't four ambulances on the premesis. If the permit requires four at all times, you get eight. Crazy, but that's pirate racing for you. It was great racing to watch. A solo rider put 40 seconds on the field for the win.

Heathpack 

OMG sounds like my worst nightmare (as far as scenarios to be riding in). Gladiatorial.

sarals 

Great reads!!

sarals 

My legs feel okay today, as in they don't hurt and I can stand up, so the crit is on for me. It's going to be the men's 45/55+ 1/2/3/4 (any bets on how long I can hang on to THAT??), I'm entering the 45+ at the request of a friend. He wants riders for the payout. I'm sure there will be at least a couple of riders I can work with after we get spit out the back, so my plan is to finish. I'm not being defeatist, I know how strong these guys are. It would be exactly the same as jumping into a crit with Shovel, Ex, Rapwithtom, LAJ and others on here. There is a speed/strength differential?

Anyway, it'll be fun.
@Heathpack - track is crack!!!

valygrl

My track session was super introductory. We just learned how to start and stop, they taught us the parts of the track and what they are for, and we built up to riding on the blue line in small groups. We didn't do any exchanges, pace lines, or anything like that. It wasn't a certification class, just a "taste."

There were over 30 participants, many of whom never rode a fixie before, some new to clipless, one totally new to bikes. They only had a few of us riding at a time, to make it safer, and it was totally fine, but no one got many laps. No crashes. There were 3 instructors and 2 more helpers who are experienced trackies. Two of the instructors are pro cyclists, the other instructor and one of the helpers went to track masters worlds last year. All women. The only dude there was the owner of the track. Boulder is great.

Hermes

I believe UCI limits the field size to 24 riders on a 250 meter track. Hence for track events with more riders there are qualifying heats. I have to wonder how many pedal strikes there were in that race.

sarals 

@valygrl, it sounded totally fun!

sarals 

Oh, I finally got to do a clinic with my race team yesterday. We did two sessions. The first one was devoted to handling skills - braking (panic stops), slaloms (low and high speed), U-turns (among traffic cones), and then a paceline back to the start point. The next session was devoted to descending skills. We did that on Kings Mountain Road. After two repeats we bagged it, there was too much traffic. Fun none the less!

Heathpack 

@valygrl, your session sounds exactly like how our first session went. VSC has the advantage of being indoors, so one bit of logic for me in trying the track is that I can ride it year-round regardless of weather (and we rarely have weather that prevents riding, maybe 5-6 days per year). I wonder how popular an indoor velodrome would be in Colorado? Packed all winter maybe.

I actually have a tshirt from the Boulder Velodrome. The son of one of my Nightcrawler friends is big into track, and he raced there last summer when they took a family trip to Colorado. They were impressed with Boulder, thought the track was nice, and they wanted to support it so we Nightcrawlers all got tshirts.

Do you think you'll continue on at the track? It's probably harder for you because you have your summer racing. I'm kind of done in June, taking a little break for the summer.
@sarals, good luck today. Sounds like an "interesting" race scenario, to say the least. But whatever, you get to race your bike finally, so that part is swell.

Heathpack 

Lol, BTW my non-cycling spouse says to me yesterday, "When we go to Colorado, are we going to Colorado Springs?"

I'm surprised by this question because he never cares about travel details, I'm thinking he maybe wants to see the Air Force Academy since he is a former pilot.

So I tell him it wasn't on the agenda but we can swing down there if he's interested. One of our sailing friends lives there, she is an Air Force major in charge of a spy satellite squadron (so technically she's an astronaut because she flies spacecraft even though she does so from the surface of the earth). I'm thinking we can visit with her too & she's on the Air Force cycling team so maybe I can even get in a ride.

Nope. It's SRM. Their offices are down there and he thought we could stop by and pay them a visit. Really he was thinking he could get them to swap out the batteries on my power meters. Lol, they are all only 1 year old and these new models are supposed to last 5 years and they are currently working just fine, so I think they might balk at this. But at least now I understand the question. He's not interested in travel details, it's some piece of bike business that's on his mind.