Killington Stage Race 2.0 - The Aftermath

Yes Thom, that's Chelada.



And yes, we drank it, but it was a team effort. Story to follow. Thanks for reading.

Cuts-Ville

This weekend marks the return of the Killington Stage Race in scenic Vermont. Padraig already wrote about it back in the fall, and now the race is here. The KSR began the year I started racing with a license, 1987. That year it was an omnium; you could enter each race individually. I went out to the big-money Tour of Schenectady and then only did the final day on the course from Rutland to K1. I flatted. In the years after that, I raced it quite a few times as a Cat 3, and then in 1996 as a master. In those days the race was a full five days, always including a TT up the access road, a circuit race in Bridgewater, and a criterium in Rutland, along with two lengthy (and hilly) road stages. The Pro/Am always attracted strong teams. I don't think Armstrong ever did it, but I could be wrong. All the others did though, Hincapie, Hamilton, Knickman, Phinney etc. One year me, the Cronoman, and the rest of the Nashua Velo crew had a condo downstairs from Coors Light. They had Alexi Grewal and Mike Zanoli on the squad. At the crit, Grewal busted his ass to bring back a break and keep the field together for the sprint, but I guess Zanoli sat up. We heard them arguing about it, with Alexi really laying into him. Then furniture breaking, shit rumbling, and their D.S. Len Pettyjohn yelling "you didn't have to hit him Mike." Good times.

This year the race is back on a new weekend and in abbreviated three stage form. We'll do the same old circuit race, three laps of an 18 mile loop down in Bridgewater on Saturday. On Monday, the final day, they've laid out a 67 mile single loop road course that goes up 100 to 107, then over some big hills and a bit of dirt, and back to Rt 4 in Woodstock before returning to Killington. The finish is up East Mountain Road, aka Bear Mountain, which climbs 1100 feet in just over two miles. It is pretty brutal. And you're not done at that point; you still have to go over the rollers through the condos and up the last part of the access road to the K1 base lodge. That is going to be G.C. right there.

In the middle, the meat of the sandwich, we have the real subject of this post, the new 11 mile, fairly flat time trial. The start is at the Long Trail Brewery on Route 4. Heading west, it's a very slight but steady uphill past the gondola and then across the ever-windswept Sherburne Flats. The finish is in the actual village of Killington, which is a tiny town way at the base of the mountain. Sounds simple right? The news here, for some anyway, is that a 20% time cut will be enforced. Huh?

Back in the day at the old KSR, the uphill TT was always the first day. In a prologue, time cuts do not apply. But one year they called it "Stage One" and in the pro-am Knickman went sub ten minutes. Now 12 minutes was actually a rockin' good pace on this beast of a course (3.6 miles with a healthy elevation gain of around 1000+ feet). A large number of amateurs in the pro-am were not this fast, and were cut, thank you very much for your $120 entry fee, hope you enjoyed your 3.6 miles at Killington. The next day, the officials relented and decided not to enforce the cut, but by then most of these guys had been in a state of shock/denial/WTF?/let's get hammered for 24 hours, and either chose not to start the circuit race or got shelled out of it. The damage had been done.

In the lowly Cat 3 and other fields, this was never an issue that I recall, at least not for me. Fast forward to 2010. I'm in the 40-49, as are my team mates, some of whom do not time trial quite as well as I do. And so are guys like Jonny Bold and Fred Thomas, monsters who can TT at speeds approaching those of the young pros. In fact, just this past Sunday, I competed in a time trial up in Maine, the Freeport LL Bean Time Trial, part of the Maine Time Trial Series. Mr Thomas was second overall, with an average speed of over 28 mph, which was 12.6% faster than me. So I would survive a 20% time cut, but shit, I'm supposed to be a good time trialist.

Don't get me wrong; I hope they enforce the cut. It's only fair. So long as my team mates all make it... The big guys have to haul their carcasses over the mountains, so why shouldn't the little guys have to man up in the TT? But in this day of "racers as consumers" I can hear the whining now from those who don't make it. And since the fields did not all fill, I won't be surprised if everyone is allowed to start on Monday, regardless of their TT time. They won't want to scare off potential entrants for next year. Remember what happens when you make races too hard... I'm tired, time for bed, thanks for reading.

Sunapee Race Report

A rushed report on the past weekend's racing. This is going to be crap, as I'm too busy to post, but I don't think I've ever let it go nine day before; that's flirting with blog abandonment. Saturday we raced up at Sunapee, the 37th annual edition of the race, making it a New England monument. If there is a road race with a longer tenure, someone please point it out (Fitchburg was just a crit up until the 90s).

We had 92 starters in the 45+ race, including lots of talent spread across the big teams. Corner Cycle elected to make things harder on themselves by racing down in the 35+, but OA, Keltic, CCB, Fuji, Mystic, Cyclonauts, and everyone else except the host club of Sunapee (who all sacrificed and worked the event) were there. On BOB we had me, Marro, Billy C and Garry S. I have not been feeling too fit this month, and I think I messed up my training cycles, but that is a subject for another post. Suffice to say that Sunapee is one of my favorites, as I have a good track record here, thus making it an "A" event when planning my season, but I knew going in that I wasn't on the form I wanted.

I expected the usual suspects would try to form an early break. We did not have anyone on our squad who was willing and able to cover such a move successfully. The best scenario for us was for the field to stay together to the greatest extent possible. Since I wasn't warmed up all that much, at the start I rolled off first and went right to the head of the race and tried to ride a brisk tempo. My thoughts were that maybe I could set a mood for the day, or at least for the first half lap, where the pace would stay high and nothing would get away. And it seemed to work. The OA and Keltic guys sent attacks off, but me and some others were always at the front making good tempo and no big gaps materialized.

On the Route 11 climb (the old feed zone) Hank from OA went to the front and set a hard pace. I followed him, but felt way to stressed to think about going around. Luckily nothing came of it. The rest of the lap it seemed there were just too many "riders to watch" and this meant about 15-20 guys continually jockeying at the front in order to be in a good spot to cover moves. The end result was nothing ever got up the road, even on the climbs. The second lap we saw the Cat 4 pack ahead, and nobody attacked until after they were neutralized and we passed them. The second time up the Rt 11 climb the race got quite animated and started to break up. Four guys got a small gap, less than ten seconds, on a group of about twenty of us that was strung out at the head of the race. The rest of the field dangled behind, in danger, but not entirely ridden off. Keltic had a guy in the small leading move, and two guys in the group of twenty trying to slow the pace and let the break get away. Mark Suprenaut (Team Type 1) was driving the chase, but they just sat on him. I would have liked to have helped, but I was hanging by a thread a few riders back. The blocking efforts of Keltic allowed the rest of the field to come back together on the descent, but Soups had kept the break close enough that the job was soon finished off and it was all grouppo compacto.

On 103A the last lap I faltered a bit. I was sort of holding my spot, but not moving up on the climbs, and not close to the front. It slowed on the last hill and I got back up front. On 103 with 5k to go, I had good position, but no confidence for the finish climb. I should probably have just waited, but I race on instinct and on one rise there was a slowing and I knew I could get a gap so I went, pulling out a few eeconds. But on the next roller my gap evaporated as quickly as it had formed and the field went right through me. The Cronoman had a go at that point, but they were on him straightaway. From then on I was soft-pedaling in to save my legs for the TT on Sunday, and I don't really know how the final uphill kilometer played out, but Billy ended up 4th, which is a stellar result against a field of this depth.

The TT report from Sunday, and the KSR preview will have to wait. The day job beckons. Thanks for reading.

You should race Sunapee!

Zencycle leads Armand and his cottage of wattage down Lower Notch Road in Bristol, VT.

Especially if you are a Cat 3. For the record, I planned on writing this a few days ago, before I read G-ride's latest post. But before I get started, I want to give a shout out to my man Armand, who came to do the four gaps ride with us on Saturday. Now I am not exactly a climber, but I'm a lot closer to one than Armand, who has a build more suited to bar fights or bike toss competitions than to riding up mountain passes. The other guys on the ride, zencycle and my team mates Billy and Les, weigh less than 450 pounds combined, and thus are physically advantaged for going uphill compared to the mighty A-Man. The moose we saw on the way home Saturday could probably make that claim too, now that I think about it. Yet this did not deter our over-muscled hero from throwing down on some of the most feared climbs in New England. Not that he expects to become a KOM contender anytime soon. As noted by Jonny, you don't climb hills just to get better at climbing hills, you do them to get stronger in general. Back at the ranch Saturday night, everyone in our little party was commenting on how they were sore in places they weren't usually sore in. Climbing like that, and in particular climbing when your primary movers are totally fatigued, conditions your body to learn new muscle recruitment patterns. Anything to keep the bike moving. And that's the stuff that makes you stronger.

Anyhow, enough of that lovefest, back to the point. There are only 27 riders signed up for the Cat 3 race at Mt Sunapee this weekend. WTF is up with that? I know there might be a few riders who elected to do the Pro/1/2/3, but come on. I'm afraid there are multiple problems at work here. For one, I'm told the USCF or USAC or whatever we call our beloved road cycling sanctioning body now has a membership that is 80% masters age. And sure enough, the 45+ race has over sixty riders signed up already. The 35+ not so many. Not to get all nostalgic, but back when I was a Cat 3 the situation was totally the opposite. Cat 3 races filled at 100, 125, 150 and even 175 riders sometimes, often weeks in advance, even though we had to lick stamps and mail in registrations in those days. Of course, a lot of us still race, thus the big 45+ fields in the current era. But there are other forces at work, and I think they should be dealt with.

There used to be only four categories for men, not five. In fact, slightly before my time, there were only three. Some of the masters around today who carry a Cat 3 license never had to be upgraded to get it; they started and stayed there. Then a lot of us started as Cat 4 and only upgraded once. The big difference then was that without Cat 5, there were only "citizens races" for people with no license. These events were just as dangerous as going on a group ride of non-racers (I follow the mailing list of such a local cycling club, and every "training ride" they conduct seems to involve brushes with death). Buying a license and racing Cat 4 was only slightly better, as these were like present-day Cat 5 races, except with hundred rider field limits instead of fifty. This was big motivation for most riders who stuck around to upgrade to Cat 3, where not only were races longer, but the chances of losing skin on a weekly basis due to some bonehead's lack of skills and/or good judgment were greatly reduced.

A side effect of this situation was very low entry fees for licensed racers. You see, USCF races had a regulated fee system, but the "citizen" races did not. So promoters could charge a then crazy fee, like $10 or even $15 for the citizen's race, and use the proceeds to subsidize the USCF categories, where we typically paid $5 to race for a $500-$1000 prize list in the Cat 3. You read that correctly, prize lists used to be A LOT BIGGER than they are now. Are today's promoters gouging you? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Their expenses have gone up dramatically, and their revenues have plummeted because the USCF started Cat 5, and killed the promoter's golden cash cow that was the citizens. Someone in Colorado Springs saw all the money this source was providing, and came up with the bright idea of starting a fifth category, and then requiring and selling the "one day license," thus robbing the promoter of what was rightfully theirs. Now the rest of us pay $25+ to race for $150/5 places and shit like that. But I digress...

The end result was now riders just want to get out of Cat 5, and make a forever home in Cat 4. As noted at the top of the post, even the riders just starting out are mostly over 35 for some reason. They may be largely delusional (they are wannabee bike racers after all), but most don't even dream of moving up the ladder to Cat 2, 1, or Pro, as they know they are already too old. The problem is most are content to stay as Cat 4 (probably to race in the early morning and get home before the wife and kids wake up). There is a huge glut of Cat 5 and Cat 4 racers. Now I don't really like the Cat 4s in the masters races, but that is a different topic. I think what really needs to happen is the USCF needs to do a better job at moving these guys along into Cat 3, which should be the biggest race, and should be fiercely competitive like it used to be. This will in turn graduate more better riders into the masters. The promoters can do their part here too, by not paying prizes in the Cat 4, and more importantly, like Sunapee, not caving in and combining the Cat 3 and Cat 4 fields. The idea is to make racing the Cat 3 more attractive, and the Cat 4 less attractive, even if this might bring some short-term financial pain.

Why should I even care? Because I believe it's the right thing to do, and that is what Sunapee is doing. Not only that, but they are only charging $25, including bikereg fees (don't get me started on that nickel-and-dime scheme, a huge expense that nobody seems to care about) for one of the best and longest running races in the region. Why it is not filled beyond capacity by now is a mystery. Is the race too hard for today's salon riders or something? You know, it used to be three laps of the course for all categories. In fact, the NH/ME districts used to be there and do four laps, and I think the big race might have even been five at one time. Today it seems that if there is any chance of getting dropped at a race, riders stay away. What ever happened to confronting a challenge? Is it really just because the entry is not $5 any more?

We have already lost Bow (I think anyway, don't see it on the calendar this year), which suffered from poor attendance because the racing public deemed it "too hard." As I told my boys this weekend, do you really want to tell your grandkids about how you used to ride in circles around industrial parks? Besides that, the men and women who run the Sunapee Bike Club are some of the finest people in New England racing. These guys will race you hard as all shit, but then be super nice in the parking lot. They support all of our races, routinely turning out full squads for races across New England. So don't give me the "it's too far, it's too early" shit. These guys, and lots of others from the outer limits routinely commute hundreds of miles to attend your crappy races, so quit whining and reciprocate with some support.

I am not sure if I rambled my way off course or not. I guess I forgot to suggest maybe even just going to 40+ and 50+ for masters, thus forcing the 35-39 set to race with the 3s and even out the fields. Hey, I'll be fifty next year... Later I'll probably think of a bunch more stuff that I meant to write but did not; that's the way it goes. This is just your reward for making it this far, courtesy of Burt Friggin' Hoovis. Thanks for reading.

Weekend Activities

To make this easy on myself, in roughly chronological order:

1) Packed up my shit.

2) Drove to Vermont with zencycle.

3) Went riding. Team-Time-Trialed up Route 100, trying to get back before dark.

4) Tried to soft-pedal up the one mile, 20% grade to the house in order to save my legs for the next day. In the dark.

5) Drank Guinness.

6) Ate the best pancakes ever.

7) Rode over Middlebury Gap.

8) Rode over App Gap.

9) Made a movie of Armand humping his bike over App Gap.

10) Panic-braked in the middle of the App Gap descent to buy homemade cupcakes from little girls running a roadside lemonade and cupcake stand. Totally worth it.

11) Rode over Roxbury Gap.

12) Rode over Rochester Gap.

13) Saw a moose.

14) Drank Peak Organic Expresso Amber Ale.

15) Ate more of the best pancakes in the world.

16) Rode up to the Killington base lodge.

17) Ate a meal home-cooked by Armand's mom.

18) Drank Budweiser Ale.

19) Packed up my shit.

20) Drove back to Mass with zencycle.

21) Drank Mayflower Porter.

22) Ended sixty glorious hours without internet or cell service.

Thanks for reading.

Not Again...

WTF has happened around here? More charts and graphs than Ross Perot. Or maybe even Murat. I figured out how to isolate intervals in GC v1.3, and it's actually very slick. You can now use the "find best intervals" tool, save them with one click, and then plot them, framed by the ride using different colored dots, or isolated by themselves, like they are here. The power of FOSS at our service.

Anyhow, this is the combination of two trips up the Big Blue Hill access road. The first one took 5:40 and was 386 watts, which means I'm a little fat, or maybe I need to zero the torque, as that's higher than expected for this speed. The second was 404 and 5:15, same situation. Could be a combination of wind, obesity, very full seat bag, and two full water bottles. Anyhow, the average cadence was a mere 68 rpm. The first time up I was just trying to keep it steady and not spike the power, as I'd planned on doing it twice and know from experience how badly that goes if the first one is too hard. I used my 39x23 a lot but never went for the 25, staying seated as much as possible. Between the ride down and some rolling around the museum lot, I had seven minutes recovery before trying again, this time with feeling. 39x19 to start, I think, then the 21? Lots of standing, trying to focus on breathing as deeply as possible rather than panting and closing up the chest. During the hardest parts at the top, I try to drop myself into a trance, visualizing oxygen molecules jumping from my lungs to my bloodstream (they look suspiciously like Scrubbing Bubbles according to my vivid imagination). Open up your vessels and let the blood flow! Or maybe I'm just weird like that. It seems to work, for me anyway, and I almost feel like I can stave off going anaerobic with this technique.

There's no conclusion here, except maybe that I'm nuts. In the next few weeks I'm going to try to bang out some flatland intervals at VO2 max and see if I can cluster the dots in the yellow zone but shifted over to the right. Just for scrubbing bubble giggles. Thanks for reading.

Host Housing Request

I have a 23 year old neo-Pro from California who is coming out to race Fitchburg. His team is not coming, so he needs host housing for the race weekend. If you are in the general vicinity of Fitchburg and might be able to help out, please contact me at jellysidedown at gmail. Thank you for your consideration.

Bummer story

I just got word that Dougie broke his ankle yesterday, out mountain biking. Most of you know he has been training his ass off to prep for a trip to Italy later this week, to ride the mountains and watch the Giro. Send the poor guy some cheer...

Dougie, this is why I do crits instead of mountain bike! Heal up! Thanks for reading.

Race Report - Sterling Circuit Race Cat 3's

Yup, I did not reg for the 45+ and it filled up. Thought about the 35+, but decided to wait and make a game day decision, because of my recent slowness. Then race morning it rained. I was going to bail out on it, but the 3s didn't go until 1 pm, and the radar showed some promising signs. Around 1100 am, when the masters races were just going off, it was pouring at my house, and I heard later that on the course it was even worse. But I loaded up my backup bike, ancient GP4 wheels, and even my old shoes and made the sixty mile trip north, just making it before the close of registration. My car thermo read 55 degrees; it seemed warmer, yet inside the school there were a dozen riders from earlier races wrapped in mylar blankets, shivering from hypothermia. Hmmmm.

It was only drizzling by now. Trackrich was working the race for the host Minuteman club, and he gave me the 411 on course conditions. I'd packed a pretty light selection of clothing, but after seeing the flash-frozen racers at reg, I went with my Hasyun wool undershirt, arm and knee warmers, and toe covers. Four layers of newspaper up the jersey, and an extra pair of long gloves in the pockets in case the first pair got too wet. And yes, a cycling cap under the helmet, visor forward.

Probably the last to register, I received bib number 68. There must have been a dozen or so no-shows, as on the line the field appeared to be around 50-55 riders. I had zero warm up, but the first 5k or so is neutral to get from the school to the course, but then it's uphill for about 1/4 mile. Sterling is an 8 mile loop, and it's one of those courses where it seems like almost the entire thing is downhill. I guess you gain the elevation on the short finish hill and then a bunch of little rollers that all add up, but don't feel much like climbing when you're in a bunch. And that is where I'd be today.

I've raced hundreds of Cat 3 races. When I started there was no Cat 5, and my career as a 4 lasted only three months before I was upgraded. And I've been there ever since, never bagging high finishes consistently enough to satisfy the powers that were for upgrading to a 2. Then I became a master and since then I've only done one or two Cat 3 races a year. They never seemed all that hard. Until yesterday. Maybe I'm getting old (well duh), and there were several juniors in the field whose fathers I normally race against. But hopefully I was not having a good day. With the lack of warmup, I was on the ropes right from the gun. It did not help that having not seen the course since last year, and expecting puddles and debris from the morning downpours, I was leaving myself extra space. Anyone who thinks that old-school wheels are not much slower than deep carbons is crazy. With the GP4s, closing up little gaps at speed was WORK! I was feeling like I had my pants around my ankles, face down in the mud behind the 7-11, the field having its way with me.

Still on lap one, heading onto Route 12, someone ten riders ahead of me let a huge gap open. I was trying to conserve energy and sit on wheels, but these guys were not closing it, instead letting it grow. The field was drilling it and the next thing I know it's 10-15 seconds. Seriously, just from shitty cornering. This is what I get for riding at the back. I had no choice but to take the initiative and show these punks how it's done, driving the chase group for about a kilometer until it got close enough (and the field slowed) for someone else to finish the job. Burning matches on the first lap just to stay with the field, not a good sign. By the time I got anywhere near comfortable, we were back in Sterling center at the base of the climb. The good news was, this was the only place on the course where I wasn't struggling to hold my spot. A break moved off though, I think three guys, and I'm pretty sure two of them stayed away to win. Me, I just fought to hang, passed at least ten riders, but at the top the only one behind me was the follow moto (who kind of annoyed me all day by basically riding in the pack, often taking the good line away from us on the wet descents. But he had a job to do, I guess). The field had shrunk to what looked like 30-35 guys.

I pulled myself together, remembering how to conserve energy on this course, and was more vigilant about little gaps. I could tell this wasn't going to be a day for me to ride the front. Then the third time up the hill, I swear the field got bigger. I suspect a bunch of dropped riders took the bypass and jumped back in. With many riders still covering their numbers under vests and rain capes, it was a perfect opportunity for such shenanigans to go undetected. Whatever. Our field ebbed and flowed. A couple of the laps got pretty fast and strung out. I was just doing the "make it one more lap" thing. Then when I expected to see two to go on the cards, they read three, and my heart sunk. Looking at my watch, it read 1:21 or something, and the neutral had taken eight minutes, so yup, we've only done four circuits. I forced down some gel, probably too little too late. I knew I was shit, as riders around me were chatting pretty calmly at times I was breathing hard. At least I did not know anybody so no one tried to talk to me.

Made it to one to go. Woo-hoo. I could see Eric Pearce (Cyclonauts), another master and maybe the only guy in the race older than me, dangling off the front. Briefly I thought about trying to bridge, as he is strong, but I knew that once in the wind I'd go poof like the famous proverbial fart in a hurricane. Besides, I couldn't really get to the front without burning a match, as well as risking the ire of the heavy-handed yellow line enforcement going on from the moto. So I sat where I was, tail firmly between my legs like I had all day. Oddly, we went pretty slow until we were almost in Sterling, then they wound it up. I was cramping just trying to hold my spot. Uneventfully, we rounded the tight final turn and the "sprint" began. I think I passed three or four leadout riders who had sat up, one racer even more pathetic than I, and maybe a pizza delivery guy on an adult trike. But I made it to the line.

Back at the cars it was not raining, and not cold. I got all cleaned up and packed. The kit was dirty but not horrible. Two runs through the wash would do it. Once I was finished, I stretched a bit and got in the car to begin preparing a sandwich. Suddenly it got dark as all shit, the skies opened up, and by the time I was pulling out of the lot my wipers were on their highest speed and the road had six inches of flooding on it. Score! If I'd stayed home I may not have even ridden. As it was, I got in almost 100k. The race was 40 kph average for 85k, pretty decent. I was near threshold the entire time. I think I'll ride easy today. Thanks for reading, as I know this one was much less fun-filled than usual.

Spin Class

Update: OK, the last picture was an entire two hour ride, when the only part I cared about was a 40 minute interval. So that wasn't really fair. In fixing it, I upgraded to GC v1.3, and it makes a little bit nicer plot.

Pop quiz: Can any of you geeks tell me what is going on here, and why I am pleased by it? Get it right and there might be a star for your forehead or something. Thanks for attending.

Update on comments: What is going on? This isolation of the 40 minute effort does a better job of showing what I am bragging about. If it wasn't obvious before, the black curved line plots whatever power value you plug into the Watts box on the left. With v1.3 of GC, it's hardly even needed, as now the background has these nice rainbow-like shadings to identify power zones for the rider in question. The value plugged in to the RPM box moves the Y-axis from left to right, to the corresponding pedal velocity, based on the crankarm length input. The horizontal black line really has no purpose, as you could use the intercept of the vertical line and the black curved line to see where the watts and rpms intersect. I guess it helps you find that point on the force scale, but other than that it has no meaning and is just in the way. Where the points land in relationship to the curved line and the vertical line is what matters.

So then what is the big deal? This plot represents a cruise interval. I've been doing this workout for years, since long before I got the stupid power meter. Normally I do these on an uninterrupted, 10k stretch of flat road, and they take 15-17 minutes, depending on wind, fitness, etc. My goal with these has always been to simultaneously maintain both a fairly high effort and a high cadence. Yesterday I was just fifteen minutes into my lunch ride when I realized I was feeling good and ready to begin. With light daytime traffic, I could navigate over to my normal course without stopping or having anything else get in the way. Therefore, as a change of pace I figured I'd try to do this for 40 minutes straight, with only a slight decrease in effort from what I normally maintain for 10k.

What I like about these plots in GC is they depict the "quality" of your spin. Anyone can spin the pedals fast with no pressure on them. That doesn't do much good though, does it? This is always the issue I've had with athletes using a fixed gear or single speed to develop allegedly good pedaling technique. Without pressure on the pedals, high cadence is rather meaningless. By the same token, all the pressure in the world doesn't do much good if you're at 40 rpm. We've all seen the DWI's and pathletes (and some of us even compete with them) chugging along in their 42x13. It may hurt, but it doesn't make you go faster. In fact, one of the real revelations I had after starting to use a PM was just how badly my power fell off the map when my cadence dropped, even though the effort seemed difficult. Anyhow, if you want to be like Cancellara, then you have to not only spin, but spin with some pedal force. And that is what I try to do.

As I noted in a post earlier this week though, I've been feeling like shit since coming off my rest week. The real indicator of shit-feeling to me is when I just can't find a gear that works. I can't muscle, and I can't spin. No matter what I do, I can't make the bike go fast. This was particularly disconcerting to me this week, as up until Turtle Pond, and even last Sunday riding with the Cronoman, I felt I was pedaling very well. The work I've been doing to free up my SI joint has helped me feel more balanced, and generally "loose," which in turn helps me maintain a good cadence even during more intense efforts. But since Sunday that was lacking, until yesterday.

And that's all there really is too it. If you look at the plot, which shows just the 40 minute interval (except the few black dots), the majority of it is on the high side of the 90 rpm line. The 289w black line is the average power for the entire effort. This is only about 10w less than what I normally do for 15 minutes. In fact, the best 15 minutes of this, which came at the very end, on the road where I normally do these efforts, came in at a PR of 318, and an avg cadence of 99. And that was after 25 minutes of 270ish. But what really counts for me here is that the pedal velocity is high, but the force is still there, thus the power was made at high rpm. I'm spinning with authority.

Dougie's comment about Blue Hill is a fly in my ointment though. I've still never been able to make a good run on Blue Hill at high cadence. My best times up there usually end up being an average of somewhere between 68-75 rpm. Nature of the beast I guess. The grade is pitchy and I stand a lot. Plus at anaerobic power levels, higher cadences seems to push me closer to the tipping point. On the other hand, when I do five minute efforts on the flats, I do my best at 100 rpm or better, but the power is generally 10% or so lower than what I get on Big Blue for the same duration. On the flats I think my efforts are more of a true 5-minute VO2 max indicator, whereas on Big Blue it's 4-minutes VO2 max followed by 1 minute of totally anaerobic. Of course, we don't have a lot of 40 minute climbs around these parts, which is why Doug does so much traveling to seek them out. Next weekend I plan to try some of the longer ones we do have in New England though, and I'll see if I can climb at decent cadences too, and if it seems to help. Yes, I realize that it's how fast you go, not how you go fast, but i think after all this time I know how to make me go faster, thus I work on it. Thanks for reading and commenting.

One Minute Hills

A few weeks ago a semi-famous Boston-based Mountain Khaki-wearing pro bike racer/coach/promoter/blogger twitted a request for places to do one minute hill repeats. Uninterested in the popular pastimes of facialbooking and tweetering, I only follow what makes it onto his blog, and from the synopsis it appeared that he settled on Moose Hill in Sharon. The main part of Moose Hill is short and pretty steep, definitely a sprinter's hill. Personally I don't like it all that much, as it has a fast lead in and that makes you feel bogged down when you get to the more difficult part. Then there is a stop sign at the top. There are two other longer, more gradually ascending roads that lead to the same spot, and I enjoy these. For intervals, you'll more likely find me down at the bottom, doing loops on the little triangle made up from Moose Hill Parkway, Upland Road, and a short section of route 27. It takes five or six minutes and has nice ups for efforts and downs for recovery, great for crit simulations. And it's all right turns with minimal traffic.

Of course I work over in the Blue Hills, right on the course for the race they had last week (in which I did not compete this year). Anyone who reads this blog probably knows that I often frequent the main Big Blue Hill access road for my five minute efforts. And of course, like the smart-cyclist referenced in my opening paragraph, I've been riding around the hill on the race course (aka the "short loop" which distinguishes going down Canton Street from the "long loop" which stays on 138 all the way to the 'pan before turning right on the parkway) for years. But I am not crazy about the climb up Unquity. The road is generally busy with speeding commuters in the evening, which makes it unpleasant. More than that though, much like Moose Hill proper, I find it hard to keep a good rhythm on it from top to bottom. It's not a hard climb, in fact it probably averages only 3-4%, depending on where you start and end your measuring. On a good day if I can power over the little pitches without bogging down, I won't dip much below 27 kph or so. Big ring. But it's just not the kind of hill that inspires me to push myself. The last pitch always seems to leave me ending my effort early rather than finishing it strong.

These days, I'm more likely to descend Unquity, then turn right up Hartland, climb to Hillside, and then continue back to close the loop either by just going straight, or turning left up Forest. We raced here back in the day, when it was called "Milton-Roubaix" as Hillside was totally bombed out at the time. When the BHCC revived the race a few years back, they used this loop, but went counter-clockwise for some reason, which I don't understand. The past few years they just used the short loop. Well, the Hartland loop is the shortest of all, but when I get out of work it's much quieter and I'll generally kill time doing circuits or figure 8's on it until a bit later in the evening when 138 and Canton Ave quiet down. Last night I did just that, and it's then I noted that Hartland can make a pretty good "one minute hill," although it is not that steep. And actually it takes around two minutes, but you can get efforts of any length up to that in.

I have been feeling like shit this week. I'm coming off a rest week, which was generally mismanaged with excess activity (working on the Merrimac race), not much sleep, trips to the pub, and no massages. I had been going really well up until Turtle Pond, and then the day after I did a proper "ramp down" ride at a snail's pace before taking three days completely off the bike. Thursday and Friday were hour rides at a gentle pace, and Saturday after working our race I actually got the Cronoman to do a coffee shop ride. Then Sunday we went out and probably went too friggin' hard, riding in a successful search for Hilljunkie's test climb, Chestnut Hill Road near Goffstown, NH (10:15 Doug; your record is in no danger). With minimal sleep and spotty nutrition for the two days prior, our hilly four-hour ride proved about two hours too long, and Sunday afternoon I was a wreck. Then Monday I worked and went to the Sox, getting home at 1 am. This is what the PROs do, right? Tuesday I rode easy for thirty minutes (yes, it is worth getting kitted up for that sometimes), leading me to last night.

In my mind, I should have been feeling better, but my legs felt smoked when in the saddle. Residual damage from Sunday? Who knows? But Big Blue was out of the question for me. Hence the one minute efforts. I had to do something, and standing/sprinting up climbs for one minute seemed like it might be tolerable. So after warming up and trying to open with a few modest efforts on Hartland, I crossed Rt 28 to try my personal favorite for uno minute tests, the forbidden Chickawtabut access road. Forbidden? Long time readers might recall this post. Well, the bird-watchers must really mean business now. The gate at the bottom was closed as usual. But now, instead of the little signs with a picture of a mountain bike with a red circle and X over it, they have two new signs. The first is a large one that says "no wheeled vehicles" with a picture of a bike on it. Seriously. The second says "vehicles by appointment only." This signage almost makes it appear that the dude I argued with was so flustered by my calling him out for driving his SUV to the summit, yet insisting that I not ride my bike up there, that they went out and had new signs made. This might require some activism, as I'm sure state highway funds are paying for the road maintenance. These fucks have their heads up their asses.

Anyhow, ignoring the signs, I went around the gate and hit the uber-steep upper portion of the climb, sprinting in my 39x23 until I blew, about forty meters short of the top gate, which was open. Figuring bird boy and company might be up there, I just left. Taking a right at the bottom, I remembered an even better sprinter's hill, the bottom of Chickatawbut that comes up from near Wood Road in Braintree. This is a nice straight section, about 350 meters long, with a very constant grade that I'd guess to be 7% or so. Perfect. I did two more efforts over there. The first I was under-geared and had to shift, but for the second I used a 39x14 and got in a full minute before blowing chunks. That one resulted in a power PR for all durations between 22 and 49 seconds, but I faded to 587 versus a PB of 605 (set last year on the audubon hill) for the full minute. Not great numbers for a 77 kg guy, but I'm old and not a sprinter, so fuck off. And I'll keep working on it. Now off to the day job. Thanks for reading.

No.Sleep.Till Merrimac!

Photo courtesy of Garry Sansoucie

Race promotion. If you've never been involved in it, then you simply have no fucking idea how much work goes into planning and executing even the most seemingly insignificant events. At Team B.O.B., we're a pretty small group, less than thirty active members. Despite our tiny membership, we've managed to do our duty to help ensure the health of the sport, putting on several races in the past years. This weekend was our new date for the Wayne Elliot Memorial Circuit Race. Wayne was a Team B.O.B. member before my time with the club, and he was killed by a car while out training, just off the course for this year's race. Friday I learned that the tragic accident which took Wayne's life had happened right in front of a house where I lived during the time I was getting into cycling.

B.O.B. has put on the Workingman's Stage Race since the time I began competing in 1987. After Wayne's death, the club started a second annual race, a memorial criterium in a Haverhill industrial park. We ran that for several years, but eventually a large rehab hospital was sited in the park, and the increase in weekend traffic ruled out closing the roads for a crit. Last year, we tried a circuit race on the original WMSR TT course back in Plaistow, in conjunction with the town Olde Home Day celebration. That did not go so well, as traffic control challenges around the course overwhelmed our resources. Therefore, this year we came up with a the new course in Merrimac, and a new date in May due to the cancellation of the New England "monument," the Jiminy Peak road race.

Getting the first Saturday in May was a major coup for us. Racers are all gung-ho in the spring, and turnouts are much better than in the dog days of summer. But after last year, we had to make sure this went well. The six mile loop was mostly rural, but about 1/4 of it went right through thickly settled Merrimac. All race promotions are a ton of work, but doing a circuit in a suburban setting is trickier than an isolated crit or a road race in the boonies. And the down side of getting the first day in May is the race comes right in the thick of training season. Further still, our club is mostly family men, and school vacation comes the last weeks of April. Yeah, this would be fun.

Armand was the race director. In addition to training and racing, Armand works full-time as an engineer in the defense industry, has a wife and three children, including nine-year-old twins, and is starting a new business, building a low speed wind tunnel that is near completion. Obviously, with such a light schedule, he has a lot of spare time to fill up. Volunteering to be race director was a natural for him. Think about that next time you're at a race bitching that it's been 45 minutes since the race ended and you still haven't got your prize money, and you need to get going because you've got things to do. Especially if you ride for a club that has never put on an event, get it? Minor rant off.

Were I creative and witty, I'd have made this into rap lyrics to go with the song. Or at least written a coherent essay. But I'm neither. Mostly I'm just still a little tired. And my role was only to be marshal captain and a general helper. Me and Il Brucie, who drove a pace car all race day, headed up to the wind tunnel (race command headquarters) after work on Friday. We live an hour away, but there was bumper to bumper Friday night traffic, so it was more like two hours. We quickly ate on the way and reported for duty around 8:30 pm. Despite having worked on this for three weekends prior, as well as from the end of the workday Tuesday until midnight, there was still much to do. Signs to be painted, potholes to be patched (ok, some sections of the road were atrocious, we did all we could), envelopes to be stuffed with prize money, start lists to be published, radios to be checked, maps for marshals to be printed, sponsor banners to be hung, police to be made friendly and cooperative, ambulances to be arranged. It was all good. By 2:15 am we were all comfortably trying to sleep on the couches in Armand's house, and the alarm would not be going off until 4:30. Sweet. The first race didn't go off until 8:15. The morning would be SO relaxing. I'm almost 49, and this was the closest thing to an all-nighter I've done in a long time.

Cutting to the chase. The race went pretty well. The weather was good. Our volunteers turned out, including our six motos for securing the rolling enclosures. We also enlisted a radio service which proved immensely valuable. Special thanks to Mike Norton of team Cyclonauts for helping us out with that and a bunch of other details. Thanks to all the riders who turned out, even the ones who complained about stupid little stuff. But if you've never marshaled a corner, much less put on a race, and think your $30 entry fee gives you the right to be a pain in the ass, well, our sport deserves better. To ALL the clubs, teams, and individuals who do put in the effort to promote races for all of us to enjoy, thank you, and thanks for reading.