Rhythm and Blues

With age my training cycles keep on getting shorter and shorter. There was a time I could do five week builds before a week of rest. Now I'm down to less than half of that. For two weeks I have the rhythm, the next week, the blues. That's ok and it works well; the tricky part is making sure the music doesn't stop until Monday... In an ideal world, at least for this time of year, I could take it easy during the darkness of the weekdays and be at least starting to rattle, strum, and hum by the following Saturday. Yet of course the world ain't ideal, bringing us to today's weekend race reports.

The past two weeks my training was solid, even though this past week morning cold and darkness relegated my bike workouts exclusively to the trainer. That was fine though, and my runs went well too, although a few new aches and pains came up. My plan was to get through the weekend and then give my legs some recuperation time. I had left Sunday open just in case I felt up to running a long race (I didn't), only registering for the Saturday Northampton. I chose the "A" masters this time because the officials are consistently cutting races one lap short of whatever is specified, and I did not want to drive all the way out there for a 34 minute B race. Colin's race predictor demonstrated that I was in pretty far over my head in this field; registering late, securing a last row starting spot wouldn't help much, but who needs a handout?

All six of my readers were at the race, except Il Brucie, who I saw Saturday night, so I'm not sure why I'm bothering with this, but here goes. Once again the weather stayed clear and dry. The Noho course layout must be the fastest race in New England, or at least tied with Gloucester. I heard the track was 2.8k in length. If that's true, even I averaged 16 mph at the back of the master's field, finishing seven laps in 46 minutes. That's right, I finished about where I started, at the back. OK, that's not 100% accurate, because in reality I started off the back, standing in place, chatting with the official's for ten seconds after the starting whistle blew. At that moment, I realized I'd know Bill Dolan longer than anyone else on the race scene, but that's a story for another day. This entry will focus on my sit and wait strategic move, both in hopes of making a better race for me as well as a more interesting race report for the blog.

We should back up for a second though, to stick with the R&B aspect of the story. As soon as I woke up on Saturday, I wasn't feeling it. Getting on the bike at the venue confirmed we were in Mississippi Delta territory here; your hero wasn't going to tear it up today. Anyhow, I got in two preview laps of the course before hitting the trainer for the real warmup, but I never settled on any lines through the root sections. That's unimportant too, but I mention it anyway because this is piss-poor unplanned Monday morning writing. Sorry. So my brilliant strategy: approach the race like a time trial. Avoid surges. Try to grind out huge gears on all the power sections, keep it steady, and run my competitors down as the race wore on. I've watched Colman O race in his own little world this season, and it works for him. Not that I was expecting the same results, but I just wanted to give it a try. The second part of this strategy was the "sit back and let the race roll off" portion. The idea here was to avoid the certain back of the eighty rider pack first lap bottlenecks by being behind them. I'd go right into TT rollout mode, ride the course at speed, and come up on the back of the group just as they emerged from the certain clusterphuck at the sandpit and/or runup, using my momentum and nicely warmed up legs to blow by the last ten riders and enter the fray, late but rockin'. It didn't really work...

Ten seconds was probably more like five, while Mr D quipped "now you got them right where you want them," but it seemed like the pack was miles ahead. I took off in pursuit, with onlookers not privy to my brilliant plan yelling at me in disbelief. It took about a tenth of a lap for me to roll up on the back of the logjam and be left turning the cranks at three rpms waiting to clear the bottleneck... I should have sat there for thirty seconds. Who needs good planning? You go to war with the army you've got, right? So now it's a typical last guy in line start, except that this field consisted of mostly decent riders, so we were moving OK and there were no gaps yet. Some enthusiastic fans yelled "You're last, you suck!" and that made my day. I spent the next lap trying to breath and laugh the entire way around. At least nobody tried to grab my wheel and throw me back down the runup. They didn't have to though. My forward progress -- not so fantastic.

Issues were many -- bouncing through the roots (remember that not deciding on lines part?). Maybe one of these weeks I need to try my new glasses so I can actually see some of this shit. I fumbled with my pedals on every remount; the sand and muck were creating issues. I passed a few here and there, and was next to Gewilli when his so much for Ebay new to him used tubular went Pssssst after just a half lap of racing. Flying I was not, but I stuck to my plan in hopes the race would come back to me. I ground the 50x17 for much of the course. Teammate Tim was about ten seconds ahead, with a few riders in between us. Maybe I should have broken my rule and tried to surge up, but I thought if I held to my strategy we'd be working together soon enough. I got close after two laps, but then a few more ill-timed miscues such as a late dismount on the runup and subsequent missed pedal raunch job up top pushed me back precious seconds. And I didn't even have tifosi telling me I sucked anymore.

On two to go I put together my best lap, closing to within a few seconds of Timmy, just in time for him to start going hard after G-Ride and Special Sauce. I'd get no closer, but did manage to narrowly avoid being caught by the leader and sent to an early grave. I heard them announce Jonny's win right about when I made the second train crossing, perhaps a minute past the finish on what was my seventh and final lap. Final damage was 55th of 67 finishers, 19/23 amongst the 45+. Yeah...

Saturday night we gathered at Brucie's house for his deck warming party. It wasn't all that warm, but Elizabeth made fabulous chili and wings. Orange suit boy must have been home and sick, but he missed out on terrific food and beverage, and we got to make jokes about him in his defenseless absence. We also relived the day's race with Murat, who even has photographic proof of the happening on his blog.

Sunday's plan was to hit the Lexington Battle Green 5k to see if I could eke out a sub-18 PR on a certified course. Again the answer was no. It turns out that racing cyclocross on Saturday isn't the road to running PRs on Sunday, at least not for me. They have a 10k at this event too, but since I ran one last week, and because my lower legs have been feeling abused this week, I opted for the short route. My buddy Tom drove up with me and did the 10k, as did my old friends locals Sue and Donovan. About 230 runners lined up for the 5k. The flyer noted a short, steep hill at the one mile mark. Hopefully this would lead to gradual downhill the rest of the way. At the gun several young runners literally flew off the line. One minute of what felt like sprinting into the race and I was already 200 meters behind the rapidly exploding lead group of five. My plan was to go for broke and try to run the 5:48 pace required to break 18 minutes. The start pace felt like 5:15 to me, but after a gentle second half of mile one, the marker came at 5:44. As advertised, there a short wall appeared immediately. It slowed me down and drove me close to the red. On the other side the downhill was only slightly less steep. I passed one kid and the road quickly leveled out. I was hurting but tried to hold it together. Mile two came up at 11:45, for a 6:01 split, and all hopes of a sub 18 were pretty much gone. The next guy was at least fifteen seconds ahead, but despite my suffering I pushed on in hopes of a PR or at least an age group win, as all those ahead of me appeared to be barely out of high school, if that. We raced into the edges of Lexington center before turning toward the finish. They had a mile 3 marker which I passed at 17:48, so 6:03 for the split. Official time at the tape was 18:16, six seconds slower than my best. At first they had me in fourth so they must have missed somebody. I won my age group but it was just for a medal. The post-race buffet was unbelievable, kind of a waste after racing just 5k. I packed mine up and brought it home for dinner.

Now it's blues week. The weather looks to be turning ugly-cross for next weekend. I'm not sure how I'm going to approach this. It's all morning workouts now. Better get started. Thanks for reading.