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MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!
Well after much careful planning I got a puncture about 10 minutes in. Not recommended as a strategy.

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moctopus
Nov 28, 2005

MrL_JaKiri posted:

Well after much careful planning I got a puncture about 10 minutes in. Not recommended as a strategy.

That always stinks. I think you said it was the last one too?

It's times like this I always remind myself if anything goes right it just wouldn't be bike racing.

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!

moctopus posted:

That always stinks. I think you said it was the last one too?

It's times like this I always remind myself if anything goes right it just wouldn't be bike racing.

Next one's in February so not that long to wait.

bicievino
Feb 5, 2015

That sucks, man. Bummer.

serious gaylord
Sep 16, 2007

what.

MrL_JaKiri posted:

Next one's in February so not that long to wait.

Don't fancy the Hill Climb season then?

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!

serious gaylord posted:

Don't fancy the Hill Climb season then?

I'm doing A Hill Climb on Sunday but it's an average of 4.3% so it doesn't really count

serious gaylord
Sep 16, 2007

what.

MrL_JaKiri posted:

I'm doing A Hill Climb on Sunday but it's an average of 4.3% so it doesn't really count

Whos promoting this flat TT in hill climb season????

Show yourself cowards.

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!

serious gaylord posted:

Whos promoting this flat TT in hill climb season????

Show yourself cowards.

Cambridgeshire be like that sometimes

jamal
Apr 15, 2003

I'll set the building on fire
Oh yeah I did a zwift race yesterday and realized there have been a few other things I could consider "racing" that happened this year.

A guy in town has done a pretty good job of getting stuff going like the distance/climbing challenge thing this summer that resulted in me having two pretty absurd months and has put me on my biggest year of riding ever. This spring he did a zwift series in place of our mtb racing but I was content to just go ride outside and also didn't have a smart trainer or zwift.

In august, he put on something called "d.e.a.t.h. ride gravel." The death ride, which stands for Drop Everyone Ascending The Hills, has traditionally been a spring group ride where we go up a bunch of climbs around town. Race to the top of every climb, regroup, and ride together to the next one. There are points and prizes and an aid station or two and it's a hard, but fun day. This year Shaun had two of them planned, the standard, plus the gravel version, but they turned into a DIY thing. The gravel one had a little better organization with an official day to do it and some water and snacks placed in a convenient spot on course. I did it by myself and there were a couple of small groups out and so you saw some other people over the course of the day. Total for the route was like 68mi and 11k feet plus I rode another 30 or so getting to/from the route. I took my hardtail and wound up with the fastest overall time.


https://www.strava.com/activities/3957254713

The other thing that happened was our hill climb. A local bike club had been putting that for about 40 years but stopped doing it recently. So a guy in town started a strava version last year and collected prizes to give out. Due to my summer of riding I was in pretty good shape for this but on the other hand had not been doing any short or hard efforts so I wasn't sure how it would go. Wound up at PR pace and getting 3rd so can't complain. Got a gift card to a pizza place.

No bottles, no flat kit, almost nothing in pocket for run. I wish the wheels were lighter but you go fast enough on the climb that aero is important.


https://www.strava.com/activities/4142894104


Oh yeah also that zwift thing. Organizer of the spring series and the death ride got another wed night zwift series going in place of cyclocross. Last week I borrowed a trainer to try to do it but didn't get into the meetup and missed it. Then i noticed my shop had a couple of kickr cores and realized that if I wanted to do any zwift etc this winter I had better buy one, so I did. Yesterday's race was fun, it was all the people I'm used to riding and racing with but have barely seen all year and it went a lot like our wed group rides and races usually do. The route was sand and sequoias, which is pretty short and has a small climb in the middle. I got the "kom" and thinned the lead group down to about 8. In retrospect I should have gone harder, but it's hard to see what's going on behind you and you don't really know how everyone else feels like you do when they're right next to you. You want enough people to make it over and have the energy to work and stay together to the finish. That's pretty much what did happen and I wound up getting 3rd and it was my first zwift race so I suppose it went pretty well. The way Shaun is doing these is through meetups instead of in an official race which is nice since it's just the group of racers on the road and it gives you a finishing leaderboard at the end. Although I definitely pipped that guy at the end but in the results it shows him ahead of me and gives us equal times so maybe the precision isn't as good. Other thing is with the group going into the finish it's harder to notice an attack happening. 3 guys got a little bit of space with less than 1k to go and I didn't really notice, and then we're getting closer and closer to the line and no one was doing anything so finally I went and caught the one guy right at the line.

https://www.strava.com/activities/4256663861

It was good timing on the smart trainer too as it's cold af and snowy outside so I'd otherwise be sitting on my rear end every day. This zwift thing is a lot better than the old fluid trainer staring at nothing or a tv show and I expect I'm going to spend a lot of time on there this winter. Did a little goon group ride last weekend too.

jamal fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Oct 30, 2020

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!
Was finding my threshold intervals impossibly tough (as in had to bin it after 10-12 minutes rather than 20) so I assumed I was ill.

What actually happened was that I needed to re-zero my pedals after a minor bash last Saturday, and the net result was under-reporting by about 13%.

So yeah, not ill, just an idiot.

jamal
Apr 15, 2003

I'll set the building on fire
Another wed night zwift race, this time I tried out doing a livestream.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYYcJPz3eGs
(it's pretty full on from about mile 7 to the finish)

Pretty flat course, I'd rather have some hills in the mix because I don't consider myself very good at sprinting. Especially on a trainer. The finishes of zwift races do seem kind of different where someone can sneak away with like 1k or less and then the pack coordination/drafting dynamics never seem to work as well to reel them in. I'd say I was maybe overly aggressive in my racing but hey someone's got to make some attacks. Upon review, though, I should have done some recon of the course ahead of time and picked some specific places instead of half assed ones I did from too far back. Especially going into the end, I would have liked to be a little fresher to try a solo break, although I was at least making it hard for everyone. And it was fun though. While I didn't make any commentary while I was riding I didn't realize there was no sound other than zwift (turns out my mic was just on mute). Also should have put the window in the bottom left so it didn't block the map and grade and top of the leaderboard. I think we've got two more of these, it's great to be with the group of regular wed night cx guys plus a few extras from out of town. 3rd again. Going to keep doing the livestream thing but try to get some working commentary/sound from myself. My cheap laptop can just barely handle doing it.

Zwift told me I set a new best 20min at the end of that but I've only been on it a week so I haven't really tried doing that or an ftp test or anything yet and also this is the time of year where my fitness is well into a downward slide.

https://www.strava.com/activities/4287752160

jamal fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Nov 6, 2020

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!

MrL_JaKiri posted:

New FTP day :toot:, up to 370

384 :toot:

Literally Lewis Hamilton
Feb 22, 2005




:stonk:

How much do you weigh again?

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!
My target race weight is 200lb (92kg), so it's not completely mad (4.2W/kg or thereabouts)

bicievino
Feb 5, 2015

First race of 2021.
A mtb time trial.

I'm not a mountain biker or a time trialist, but it's 2021 and I'm in the US so mass start racing ain't a safe thing.

The event felt pretty good from a covid-protocol standpoint. Everyone masked until 10s before they started (folks queued in a line at the trailhead, vaguely self-seeded based on expected speed). Went off one-by-one at 15-30s ish intervals (not a strict time since it's all based on timing chip).
I was worried about passing on course when folks weren't masked, but everyone was both courteous and quick about it - never spent more time around someone than passing on a MUP.

Course was very twisty and undulating, not much in the way of flow at all. Only a few sustained sections where I could just put power down.
Ended up feeling very reminiscent of a PNW-style cyclocross course. No jumps or that sort of thing, which probably plays to my strength.

Ended up having a good time, getting second in the Cat 2, and looking like a huge dork. What more can I ask for?



Crumps Brother
Sep 5, 2007

-G-
Get Equipped with
Ground Game
Weekend Race Report - Lake MacBride Fat Tire Classic

The closest thing I've had to a real race in a very long time. Even then it was definitely enough to scratch one hell of an itch. They took out the mass start and gave everyone a window to roll out whenever they wanted. Timing was done TT style. The course changes a tiny bit every year, but not too much. You always ride through the park itself which has some killer climbs and descents in it. Some years you pedal up the hills and some years you run. After that you cruise along a lakeside MUP. That gets a bunch of foot traffic so it has a chance of being pretty rough. The final long section is over some gravel roads. Always smooth, but lots of exposure and not always plowed or groomed. Los of variety over this year's 19 miles.


Suffice to say, it was a cold one this year. Because of the wind and temps they took out most of the gravel section to limit our total exposure. Only one unplowed B road and a highway shoulder totaling just a few miles or so. No surprises though so we all had plenty of time to dress appropriately.



The team rolled out from the start line together. It took about 15 seconds for us to snap this non socially distant group photo. Then we kicked off for the race. Way too cold out to stand around and gab at each other. Everyone immediate settled in to their own pace and rode by themselves.


No photos from the single track that I know of this year. Here's me at about mile 8. Right at the start of the lakeside MUP. At this point my goggles are almost entirely fogged up. A teammate was planted here for the photo op, but all I could see was a silhouette and had no clue who it was.


After a bit of gravel and right before the drat B road. New clean lenses for this pic. They're magnetic so I was able to pop off my yellow set and pocket them, ride with just the frames for a bit, then snap the new clean set back in place after my eyes had enough. It was pretty great to be able to do that without ever stopping.

The B road was a completely exposed, unplowed, and drifted to hell and back section of gravel. If you really had your poo poo together then I guess most of it could be pedaled. By the time I came through there were ruts and foot prints everywhere so I was running about 50% of it.


After the gravel it's back in to the woods for a bit and back to the start. About three miles total at the end. The start line window closed at noon and I started at 11:34am. The thought was to delay as much as reasonably possible because that would let the early folks pack down the fresh snowfall and speed up the course. I think that plan worked everywhere except for the B road.

Also, I never really used my balaclava before this race. I was planning on intermittently shoving some shot bloks in my face to fuel. I was already on the start line when I finally realized that I didn't actually have a mouth hole in the mask. Whoops. The lakeside mup was so smooth though that I had plenty of time to finagle a few bloks in through the nose hole and down to my mouth from there. Do you need fuel for a two hour ride? No. But it sure is nice to have. I never did figure out how to drink water. I foresee myself cutting the mask for future use.

All in all, I love this race because of the course. It's an absolute blast to ride. This year's weather added some fun elements to it too. I finished 9th overall out of about 100 registered racers.

Crumps Brother
Sep 5, 2007

-G-
Get Equipped with
Ground Game
Race Report: Iowa Wind and Rock 2021


Here's the cliff notes for the race if you didn't scour through the website.
341 miles, solo self supported gravel, two drop bags and one official 24 hour c-store on route.
It's cue card navigated. You're given sets of cards 15 minutes before the start and upon arrival to cp1 and cp2. If your total elapsed pace falls under 10mph then you're scratched from the race and you don't get the next set of cards. Elapsed time, not moving time. Every second you spend not moving is counting against you.

Pandemic Disclaimer:
1. I have both my vac shots and it was greater than two weeks ago.
2. It's a 341 mile solo race so I'm not riding in groups or anything like that except for...
3. The shotgun mass start. If you dig up a picture of it you won't be happy. You also won't see me in it. I wasn't in the starting chute; I was hanging out with a buddy behind it. We started pedaling a bit after just to throw in some extra space.

My Gear
I use the same bike that I've used for pretty much everything that I post about. My 2008 Jamis Nova Pro. I never did take a picture of it fully loaded for the race, but I have the picture from my full shakedown a couple weeks ago.



Four water bottles. Two feed bags for food. Half frame bag for extra clothes/whatever. Saddle bag for maintenance. Varia, Orfos Pro, and Flare city for tail lights. Cygolite something and Serfas something for head lights. The cygolite has a giant battery and can last for the whole race. The Serfas can run off an external and gets 12+ hours with a battery in my jersey pocket. And one Energizer book light which was a totally untested last second addition and completely amazing.

Drop Bags
Code Red/Gatorade/High Life
Rice Cakes/Cookies/Shot Bloks
Uncrustables
Butt lube/Bike Lube
TP/Wet Wipes/Paper Towels/Lens Cleaner
Chemical Warmers (cp2 only)


The Race
Forecast for the race was what I'd call perfect, but I'm sure there's some folks out there that would have preferred no rain instead of a tiny bit of rain. It was dry the whole week before race. It rained about a tenth of an inch right before things kicked off. Just enough to make the start nice and sloppy, but was completely dried out by midday.


The start time for the race is 4am. Starting the previous Sunday I pushed my alarm ahead by one hour each day. Sunday was 7am, Monday was 6am, ..., Friday and Saturday were 2am. On the day of the race I woke up with a solid 7.5 hours of sleep under my belt. Breakfast is shitloads of granola and greek yogurt washed down with a liter of Code Red. It was still drizzling while I was setting up, but was done by the time I "lined up".


We kicked off right at 4am. The race leaders missed the third loving turn. Everyone was just following them (me included). So about a block in I saw the whole pack heading back towards us and knew exactly what that meant. I turned around and all that social distancing felt a smidge wasted because now I'm surrounded by cyclists again. It wasn't a tight peloton, but damnit. We're spread back out in another block or two. We're on gravel quick enough and from there everyone is just riding bikes. There's not much to say about the beginning. It's wet gravel, but only surface level so the riding is still fine. There's lots of splatter and I'm really thankful for my rear end saver.

I hit the first B road after ~2.5 hours. It's still wet. I don't know if everyone knows how B roads work so I'll just get long winded. They're minimum maintenance gravel roads. It's just dirt/clay and will see a grader if things get rutted up enough, but otherwise the county doesn't touch 'em. Riding a dry B road can be great because it's just hardpack dirt. Riding a wet B road is a thing. You have to watch your line and tires carefully and the moment you start to see your tires collecting crap you have to stop and hike-a-bike. If you don't things will go from bad to worse very quickly. Because of this everyone carries a scraper. I have a plastic putty knife (it never leaves my frame bag). I see lots of paint sticks and spatulas as well. If it's just a normal ride you can carry your bike no problem. It's a lot harder when you're fully bagged out. I've been carrying my shoulder strap for awhile now, but this is the first time I've actually needed it. I only had to walk about a half mile so that wasn't bad. When I reached the end I really only had to scrape my boots, but I spun the wheels once and cleaned the edges of my tires as well. Strava says I only spent seven minutes cleaning up.


Started rolling once more and again things are pretty uneventful. Once the sun came out I stopped to turn everything off and make sure my batteries were good. Helmet light and handlebar light are no problem. I was using my Orfos Pro for my taillight. It only runs off external power. I really like that light. It's zip tied to my saddlebag and the power cable runs up inside where I have a battery pack mixed in with my tools and stuff. I don't even know how long it'll run on that battery because I've never had a ride where I ran out. I unzipped my bag, unplugged my Orfos, and then tried to zip my bag back up. Too much junk. The zipper handle broke and I was left with a hosed up bag. I used some water from my bottles to try and clean it up and that helped, but I still couldn't get it closed. A friend stopped to help and had the brilliant idea of using part of his pipe cleaner for his number plate as a new zipper handle. That ended up working after a bit more convincing. Finally I got my bag closed again. It felt like forever. Strava says it was three minutes. On a whim I stole my wife's Flare City and threw it on my seat stay. I was very happy I did that. It runs for 14 hours and it meant that when night fall rolled around again I wouldn't have to mess with my saddlebag zipper for a taillight.

Things are rolling once again. Race time is exactly four hours so things are still early. One tiny hiccup in the saddlebag issue, but otherwise fine. Then at mile 44 poo poo went down. We turned right on to Lewis Ave on to what was a completely normal looking gravel road. That road was poo poo. Totally hosed by the rain. Sandy aggregate mixed with a clay surface and the morning's rain sitting in with it. By the time I noticed I was in a bad place it was way too late. So I did what any rear end in a top hat would do and just kept pedaling through it. It was only one mile and I'm already a bit screwed. My bike basically shut down at exactly the halfway point. Mud and sand got in to everything. I pulled the putty knife back out and got to work cleaning up. The chain kept dropping to the inside on the inner ring. My two lowest and three high cogs on my cassette couldn't seat the chain at all with the poo poo that was jammed in it. I eventually noticed that when I wrapped the chain on the inner ring there was so much crap that I couldn't remove that the chain wouldn't even sit inside the teeth completely. I worked to clean out the teeth even more, but I just couldn't get the chain to stay in place. Eventually I realized my outer ring actually looked kinda clean. I shifted over to it and everything seemed to "work". There's too much poo poo in my pedals and boots so I can't clip in, but I gave my bike a quick test ride and it seemed like I could move forward in this condition. I'm now riding a single speed that's geared at 46-25. In that one mile section I spent 21 minutes. That's not counting all the time I spent elsewhere on route dealing with the after effects of that road. I would have been way better off just getting off my bike when I noticed things were going south and strapping back up.


I pushed on after Lewis Ave. Up until now I've been riding with a buddy of mine. I had to leave him for dead on Lewis. Never saw him again. Sorry, friend-o. The rider in front of me missed the cue to turn off Lewis, but was only 80-100 feet out so I was able to yell her back on to route. We leap frogged each other a bunch of times throughout the day. Coincidentally, the one other leapfrog rider I had did the same thing later in the day and I had to yell him back on route as well. I'm off of Lewis and the road is dry enough. With a bit of speed things start to clean themselves up a bit. Slowly I start getting more available cogs on my cassette. After a few miles or so I shifted to the inner ring and everything stayed in place so I'm incredibly thankful for that. Grinding up the hills in big ring sucked. I'm a little worried about pace at this point. I'm still ahead of cutoff time, but I don't know what's in front of me and if there's another "Lewis" that's going to start putting things in red. After about another hour the roads are looking really dry. I'm thinking that things are looking up so I have some minutes to spare. I stopped to use more of my water to give my rear der and cassette a better cleaning. It costs me five minutes, but when I start rolling again I I'm only missing the three highest cogs on my cassette and my low gears are spinning reliably again. It felt like a good decision.

The rest of the way to cp1 is uneventful. No photos between Lewis and cp1 because at that point I was in an "every second counts" kind of mode and I certainly wasn't going to try and pull my phone out. Leapfrog lady passed me again on the way to cp1. She was in the same boat too. We had a quick chat and she was telling me how wildly overdressed she was, but she didn't want to stop to spend the minutes packing up her jacket and whatnot. But instead she's just going to sweat it out and worry about proper clothing once the next set of cue cards were in her hands.

Checkpoint 1: Mile 80.5 closes at 12:03pm
I reach cp1 at 11:46am. 52 people started the race and 28 reached cp1 in time. Covid restrictions mean that you can't fill your own water bottles. You place them on the ground with their tops off and a volunteer will fill them and put them back on the ground for you. I ask the volunteer, "How many times are you willing to fill the same bottle of water for me?" with the idea that I'm about give give my drivetrain a proper cleaning with as much water as I can. I'm not the first person with this idea because he tells me, "about 40 feet behind you is a water spigot and it's working." Oh hell yeah. Bearings be damned, I wash my bike. Everything looks great when I finish. I repack my nutrition, eat my uncrustables, and chug all the liquid in my drop bag.
(Not actually my bike, but pretty much exactly what I did with my bike too.)


I left cp1 at 12:22pm. At this moment I am 19 minutes behind the cutoff time. However, I have the next 110 miles to make it back up. Between cp1 and cp2 there were no major events like there was in the first "lap". So instead the following is a more general sense of how things went. Pace wise things went well. I caught back up to the cutoff at mile 20 and started adding minutes after that. I think managed to bank upwards of 50 minutes at one point. I was able to pick off riders one by one throughout the lap and played more leapfrog with those other two folks as well. I had a nice chat with my team leader and fatty rider too. Turns out he rolled right through the first B road and didn't even need to stop and clean up. Then when he hit Lewis he was able to pedal through it all in the ditch. He saved all sorts of time with both of those maneuvers. Sadly, all those advantages disappeared during this section and he spent it all just bleeding time. Bummer.

At any given time I usually run my bike with 36/46 up front and 11-28 on the rear. It works well for the location and use cases for me. When I know I have more hills in front of me I swap over to my 11-32 and that's been fine. I've always been able to grind up any hill I come across. What I straight up wasn't prepared for was how relentless the rolling hills were in this part of the state. Nothing is flat. You're always either going up or down. And somewhere in this second section that really started adding up on me.


Also, my nutrition, all of which is tried and true, started to get weird on me at some point. All recipes are from Feed Zone Portables and I really love that book. But food got harder and harder to eat as the day wore on. I also think I bit my tongue somewhere in there? My cookies are delicious, but after some hours in the feedbag they got really dry. Saltine "pull all the moisture from your mouth" dry. My rice cakes were good, but it took me about 15 minutes to eat a rice cake because swallowing food had become progressively harder as time went on. I'm a lover of candy and savory foods only get me so far. My cookies were my sweet treats and I kinda lost out on those. I also had margarita shot bloks and those never let me down once. I ate both packets available (not actually true, madness has already started setting in) during this section and really looked forward to restocking at cp2.

It got dark. Lights went on. I kept riding.



Checkpoint 2: Mile 191.4 closes at 11:08 pm
I hit cp2 at 10:26pm. 19 people reached cp2. By the end of that section I was pedaling under pace. I lost 8 minutes and not because I had stopped anywhere. I remember rolling in to town and they had a speed camera thingy on a lamppost. I was riding downhill on pavement and the dumb thing clocked me at 7mph. Woof. Everything hurt. I was given my cue cards for the end and my drop bag. I smashed my Code Red, nursed my gatorade, and gave away my High Life. It hurt to swallow solid food, but the uncrustables were just soft enough to still put down. I packed up my rice cakes, cookies, and shot bloks. I sat on a bench for a long while and just tried to collect myself. With some positive comments from other cp2 attendees I settled on just pedaling to the next c-store and then figuring it out from there. It was *only* 65 miles away. I left cp2 at 11:17pm, already behind the cutoff time.

All I had to do was pedal to the c-store. I have three water bottles, a bunch of food I can't eat, and "2" packages of shot bloks. Side note, I actually had four packages on me, but somehow lost count of what I had eaten? It was slow going. I found myself walking up some of the hills because I'd slip my back tire trying to pedal on a bad line and once the bike stopped I was in no condition to start back up on the incline. I had been hearing phantom wahoo/garmin beeps for the last eight hours and occasional phantom voices for about the last four. I also saw a deer run across the road in front of me, except that the deer was completely jet black and also it didn't actually exist. Things were starting to get weird.

I took a wrong turn at mile 7.8. When I reach the intersection I knew I was supposed to turn, but I got confused and when I checked my cue card I saw the R on 7.8 and didn't notice the previous instruction. It took a little over a mile before I figured out what happened. I backtracked and fixed things up. My lap mileage is now off, but it wasn't egregious and with a little bit of math I could still sort things out from one cue to the next. It wasn't much longer before I took another wrong turn. I was supposed to hang a right on Mockingbird Pl. But apparently There''s a Mockingbird Ave less than a mile beforehand. My lap numbers were already wrong and I wasn't sure of my math anymore and "Mockingbird" is right there so I turned right. I was only supposed to ride a half mile before the next turn, but instead rode a mile and a half before stopping because I saw another cyclist ahead of me. He made the same mistake as me, but I have no clue why he rode the extra mile down the road. We stood there and figured out what went wrong which took a hot second because I knew for a fact that we were definitely standing on Mockingbird. He's the one that noticed the Ave vs Pl situation.
|

That's two wrong turns within the first page of cues. In the two hours since I left cp2 I only managed to bike 18 miles and four of those didn't even count because they were off-route. I'm not even making up any time. There was a town about one mile away from where I was currently standing. I gave my wife a call to pick me up and texted the race directors that I'm scratching at mile 209. It's 1:19am. I'm out. I pedaled my way to town and wouldn't you know there's a bar still open. It takes my wife an hour to reach me and I bide my time chatting with all three people in the bar.



What Will I Do Differently Next Year?
Gotta have a lower gear. At least a 1:1 ratio. Lots and lots of different ways to achieve this within my current build, but I think that 1:1 or better will really help out in the long haul.
No lovely saddlebag zipper. Two bottles inside frame and two bottles under my saddle (no more b-rad). Tools and maintenance in a bottle cage under the downtube. Run a Flare for a rear light.
More varied nutrition. More candy. I love candy. Gotta keep those spirits up.
Putty knife was great, but something smaller and more pokey would also be good. Maybe a tiny wirebrush too?
If I were to be truly competitive I'd have to use something else to hold my cue cards. For my purposes what I was using was fine. Nothing I'm going to change, but food for thought.
Ibuprofen all day long.

Crumps Brother fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Apr 24, 2021

bicievino
Feb 5, 2015

I love reading this poo poo.
I don't think I ever want to have a day like that, but goddamn bravo.

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!
Now that looks fun

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!
First TT of the year :toot:

Coming off a knee injury so on the road bike in the road bike category (ie no deep section wheels, etc), just went the whole hog and raced with a saddlebag so I could go straight home (and did, without unclipping until my back door). Rolling course, caps out around 8%, 13 mile course



Went ok - averaged a little over 350W, which is well under I'd have been targeting 2 months ago but getting through it without my knee swelling to the size of a balloon was a big win. 1st race of the season down, next one on Saturday!

bicievino
Feb 5, 2015

MrL_JaKiri posted:

First TT of the year :toot:

Coming off a knee injury so on the road bike in the road bike category (ie no deep section wheels, etc), just went the whole hog and raced with a saddlebag so I could go straight home (and did, without unclipping until my back door). Rolling course, caps out around 8%, 13 mile course



Went ok - averaged a little over 350W, which is well under I'd have been targeting 2 months ago but getting through it without my knee swelling to the size of a balloon was a big win. 1st race of the season down, next one on Saturday!

Nice! Race season has started up for me here in Seattle, too.

First road race of the year for me here yesterday. More of a crit distance (1 hour) but on a course too boring to be called a crit.
We're doing field size caps for covid reasons, so only 30 folks. I was not feeling particularly confident and signed up for the masters 1/2/3 instead of open 1/2/3. In retrospect I should've just gone with the 1/2/3 because despite just doing yolo fun efforts with no real goals, I ended up taking a prime and the win. Surprised with how good I felt.

Up next is our first night of pre-season racing at the track on Friday, and then a 60mi mtb race on Saturday. Wheee!

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!
:hmmyes:

Results out, second in category by like 30s - but given I was using winter tyres I was leaving a good 20W on the table from that alone, more than enough to make up the gap next Wednesday.

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!
Tomorrow's 25 miler features 30mph winds and heavy rain. Character building for sure.

jamal
Apr 15, 2003

I'll set the building on fire
First XC race in a long time tonight. We're still not doing mass start, so the way it works is you can show up any time between 3:30 and 7:30 and do your laps. The course is all taped, there's timing, food, beer, etc. And you can get some friends and start in a small group. I'm working part time for the guy who took over putting on nearly all the local bike racing this year so I was up there last week doing some trail work on the course (after managing a trailwork day sunday morning), and then up there this morning setting up the course. So I guess what I'm getting at is that I could use a day off or two.

Once things were all set up and people were starting and it didn't seem like I needed to do any "work" stuff I got ready and warmed up to do my own laps. Conveniently, 3 friends of mine were about to get started so I hopped in with them. Cory, Kory, and Owen. Kory is always fast, Cory is on a good year and we had fun racing in zwift this winter, and Owen owns the cycling house and has been riding a lot in warm weather.

Course was simple for the first week, mostly up the road, then straight back down, avoiding the pretty technical bottom part of the pro course descent. Next week we'll race the full course and I'm gonna have to get up there and do A LOT of work because it's all overgrown and lumpy and hasn't really been used in two years (it's on private property). We did go through a little bit of singletrack right off the bat, and Cory, after taking the hole shot out of our little group messed up and we all had to get off which was kind of funny. Then we hit the road and Kory took off, I picked up the pace a little and got some room on the other two but he was out of sight by the top of the climb on the first lap. Then I dropped my chain at the bottom because I was riding my old beat to poo poo hardtail with worn out everything because it's way faster uphill than the new Hei Hei and the descent is pretty easy, just a little fast and lumpy in spots. Next two laps I went through that section a little slower and in an easier gear to give the chain more tension and it stayed on.

Owen was always back there but I stayed ahead of him to wind up 7th, behind all people I'd generally expect to be behind. Howard Grotts lives here now and is racing with us so he won by a pretty good amount. I would have liked to be a little closer to the next two guys but to be fair I don't think I've every beaten them in an XC or CX race, plus I did lose a bit of time with the chain thing and slower descending. And all the recent walking and physical labor didn't help.

Anyway, we've got 6 more of these plus a weekend race. I'm going to try racing the hei hei next week because there's a lot of places I can save time vs the hardtail and it has fresh XC tires and new carbon cranks so it's a little lighter and faster than it was a week ago. Last night I thought it actually felt like an XC bike, it's just still almost 28lbs. Really wanted to get a new hardtail xc bike this year (would have gone with an Orbea Alma), but I didn't commit to it back in like December so no bike for me. I think this summer I'll try to order one and then maybe it'll be here by next season.

jamal fucked around with this message at 06:00 on May 8, 2021

Literally Lewis Hamilton
Feb 22, 2005



Pinning numbers on my skinsuit when I don’t have a teammate is a pain. Anyone used the racedots on a bike?

serious gaylord
Sep 16, 2007

what.

Literally Lewis Hamilton posted:

Pinning numbers on my skinsuit when I don’t have a teammate is a pain. Anyone used the racedots on a bike?

A clubmate has used race dots for Time Trials and they work ok. I have a NoPinz pocket to avoid this all together.

Crumps Brother
Sep 5, 2007

-G-
Get Equipped with
Ground Game

Literally Lewis Hamilton posted:

Pinning numbers on my skinsuit when I don’t have a teammate is a pain. Anyone used the racedots on a bike?
I tried it once for a cx race and it did not go well. I wondered if a light spray glue might work out though.

bicievino
Feb 5, 2015

Literally Lewis Hamilton posted:

Pinning numbers on my skinsuit when I don’t have a teammate is a pain. Anyone used the racedots on a bike?

Use a pillow.

bicievino
Feb 5, 2015

bicievino posted:

Nice! Race season has started up for me here in Seattle, too.

First road race of the year for me here yesterday. More of a crit distance (1 hour) but on a course too boring to be called a crit.
We're doing field size caps for covid reasons, so only 30 folks. I was not feeling particularly confident and signed up for the masters 1/2/3 instead of open 1/2/3. In retrospect I should've just gone with the 1/2/3 because despite just doing yolo fun efforts with no real goals, I ended up taking a prime and the win. Surprised with how good I felt.

Up next is our first night of pre-season racing at the track on Friday, and then a 60mi mtb race on Saturday. Wheee!

First night of track racing was fun. Low attendance because we're being very strict about covid (mandatory vaccine or follow the UCI testing protocol) and also because the weather was quite threatening. Ended up cutting warmup short as the track dried, but actual racing went off in the dry.



Pre-season is usually pretty mellow, but with so much pent-up-angst it was a quite spicy affair. Our track's juniors have clearly been training way hard. Hoping fitness builds quickly with racing so we can more thoroughly put them in their place.

I ended up taking the overall with two wins and a second, and one of my teammates took second. Plus we finally got to race in the kits I designed back in winter 2019.


bicievino
Feb 5, 2015

Shamelessly triple posting because then today was my third ever mtb race.
60 miles, 4 laps of a roughly 15mi course (give or take some start/finish stuff). All new trails to me.
Got barely any sleep cause of track racing and failure to prep well, but made it out the door in time to catch the ferry to the race. Didn't even forget anything!
I brashly lined up second row, despite knowing that the first bit was a big fire road climb to shake things out, and as you can see from the pics in the prior post, I don't have a climber's physique. Started off hotter than I should've for the first 5-8 minutes, until we hit the singletrack, at which point I was a bit off the front group, but well ahead of the only other trackie, so, mission accomplished.
After that I settled in to learning the trails, trying to shake the race adrenalin jitters, and wondering how on earth I was going to find time to eat/drink.
Ended up being fairly challenging to do either - I was glad to have half my bottles with carb mix instead of just electrolyte. There were two big fire road sections on the lap, and that ended up being where I crammed in most of my eating and drinking. Not ideal. Definitely need a better system for eating - jersey pocket was a hassle to access.
By the third lap I was feeling reasonably confident in my pacing and starting to recognize the trails. I also had just a glimmer of cramping on a really steep section, which I was able to ride through and told me I was at least not slacking off.
I didn't stop for food or water on the fourth lap, which ended up biting me when the finishing section ended up being significantly more challenging than the downhill cruise in that I had thought. All in all feel quite happy with my pacing and time. Don't know results still but I think somewhere in the top 20 for the Open men.

TobinHatesYou
Aug 14, 2007

wacky cycling inflatable
tube man

Literally Lewis Hamilton posted:

Pinning numbers on my skinsuit when I don’t have a teammate is a pain. Anyone used the racedots on a bike?

A very light misting of 3M Super 77 spray adhesive. It leaves no residue if you don't overdo it.

kimbo305
Jun 9, 2007

actually, yeah, I am a little mad

My man over here with the modesty football tights.

TobinHatesYou
Aug 14, 2007

wacky cycling inflatable
tube man

jamal
Apr 15, 2003

I'll set the building on fire
First real bike race in quite awhile for me today. Yeah I've done some zwift, and TTs, and Friday's XC race (which was mostly TT format) but this one was an actual mass start. Which, when I noticed how many people were registered I second guessed my participation. But I'm vaccinated, and so is pretty much everyone there I know, so maybe it's fine?

Anyway, somewhere over 60 people started the 74 mile race, part road and part gravel. (there was also a shorter version). I was really unsure on what bike to use as I have my road bike with rim brakes and 25mm tires, and my cross bike, also with rim brakes, but 38mm tubeless maxxis ramblers. The first part of the race is 13mi on pavement to a pretty short dirt climb, with a really loose and rocky descent, and then back on the pavement, up a bit of smooth dirt, onto more pavement, then a 10mi each way out and back on dirt. Pam, a teammate who lives up there, was starting on her road bike and she knows that area best so I went with the supersix. Plus side, my 25mm corsa controls measure more like 27-28. Minus side, they have tubes and a 32 would be better.

Approaching the first climb I started moving forward in the group and got next to Ivan. He said he wanted to go for the KOM (there was a banner and timing mat at the top), mostly because he had to stop and pee. So he went for it, Dan was 2nd and they started rolling down together, and I crossed in a group of like 4 right behind them. Mostly I wanted to be up there so I could go slower on the descent but if I'd realized the KOM paid out the top 3 I probably could have snagged 3rd as I was pretty comfortably there and then eased off.

Anyway, some guys went absolutely flying down the descent and I didn't. Kevin Bradford Parish passed me going into a corner full of giant loose rocks with his foot out, sliding. 5 wound up in a break and then I was in the 2nd group with about 9-10, with all my skin and air in my tires. Conveniently, with Ivan up the road, myself and another teammate, plus Cory from the cycling house, got to sit in while everyone else did work chasing. Things were pretty uneventful and then we got to the turnaround out on the dirt and I realized that Ivan and Dan were solo with a big gap on the next 3, who were not that far ahead of us. So now I'm in it and start taking pulls and trying to get the group going smoothly. Which doesn't work. Guys are going too hard (probably myself included), other guys are sitting in/barely hanging on, a small group of 3 sneaks up the road and I burn a big match bridging to it and then we're caught after like 2 minutes. Back to where we were and then it's up a hill. I guess I deserved it though. Cory gets a flat, a few guys get dropped, another guy sneaks away but only has like 30s as we go into a 10 mile loop before heading to the finish. This is where it gets a little hilly and I'm thinking will be my chance to get away or up to Eric before the finish. But as we're at the bottom of the loop making two right hand turns, a guy drops a bottle trying to take a drink, looks back, misses that we're turning, and clips Kevin's back wheel. Pretty good crash but he was the only one who went down and seemed ok, just had a flat tire. The rest of us stopped so Eric and the 2nd group of 3 were home free to the finish leaving like 6 of us racing for 7th. Oh also it had started raining.

The ride into the finish has some rolling dirt hills then a descent down to the finish line. It flattens out a bit at the line but it's only like a mile mostly downhill over the top so l made a big attack. But it's the 2nd to last rise and I look up and realized I've made a huge mistake. Thankfully, no one has anything for a counter attack as I climb the last hill trying to look backward at everyone at the same time, now there are four of us. Then just as we get up to speed a guy goes and actually gets a reasonable gap, I'm chasing, have a few bikes on the other two, but Kevin, the road state champ, is sitting on the back, waiting. I'm hoping he'll spin out his 1x cross bike, but no. He goes with a few hundred meters, passes me, and gets the other guy at the line. It was pretty close between the 3 of us, but I had nothing left at that point. Finished 9th, Ivan won.

Not too much to complain about but I definitely made some tactical mistakes. I guess that'll happen when you haven't ridden in a group or raced for so long. Should have not chased those three guys alone, and should have done a better job with my attack at the end. Think it would have worked if saved that effort and done it at the right place.

Our 2nd group when it was all together on the dirt out and back



hosed my bike up pretty good. Will probably need to do new brake cables, tape, BB bearings, take the headset apart, service the freehub, replace the chain...





jamal fucked around with this message at 20:29 on May 23, 2021

tylertfb
Mar 3, 2004

Time.Space.Transmat.
I want to race my local crit (barrio Logan Grand Prix in San Diego) next month. Can I still race on a 1-day license if I’ve had an upgrade in the past? I haven’t had a USAC license in 6 years, was a cat4. I want to do the 40+ cat 4/5 race.

bicievino
Feb 5, 2015

tylertfb posted:

I want to race my local crit (barrio Logan Grand Prix in San Diego) next month. Can I still race on a 1-day license if I’ve had an upgrade in the past? I haven’t had a USAC license in 6 years, was a cat4. I want to do the 40+ cat 4/5 race.

Yep, they added it in 2020. Can't accumulate any new upgrade points but you're fine to do a 1-day "experienced racer" license.

jamal
Apr 15, 2003

I'll set the building on fire
Week two of our xc series tonight, and the first time I've worn full spandex on my hei hei I think. Doing the full xc course lap it is nice to have a more modern bike but it definitely doesn't climb like the old king kahuna. I was in a good spot for about the first 5 minutes and then guys started pulling away and one more passed me. Then I stayed there and held off the fastest masters racers (here we do 40 plus and I'm gettin close to there and we all started together). Thankfully it was only two laps because I was not having a good time. It was the first warm one and that always gets me. Like halfway up on the 2nd lap it seemed to be a little cooler and then I felt alright to the end.

And the hei hei does make up decent ground coming back down. Comparing my best lap on strava I'm even for the first five minutes, and then lose 37 seconds in the next ~7 to the top of the last road climb before you get onto a kind of rolling bit of trail across the top of the course. There it's pretty even- gain a little ground going down, lose a bit on the short climb back up, then lose a bunch on the last stretch of road to the top, at this point I'm 52 seconds back on about a 20min lap. Then I come back to within 36. picking up 22s over about 3 minutes.

So maybe this will be an xc bike yet. As it it's close to 5lbs heavier than my hardtail, but for the most part I was glad to be on it, and I have some lighter parts hopefully coming in the next few weeks. The guy in front of me kept riding away on the road and then I caught him at the bottom of the first lap. Then did it again on lap 2 and was almost in a sprint finish. Also, I did my fastest 2nd lap ever so that's something. Comparison says I did the 2nd half from the top, across, and down about 30s faster, and then was only significantly slower on the first part of the climb where you're basically sprinting. Kind of promising that I can put down a lap a good amount faster than I've done if I can just put it all together.

Behind Howard, Ivan finished 2nd and then his dad was 2nd in masters so we got some decent team points tonight. I was 10, after a 7th last week.

jamal fucked around with this message at 15:53 on May 15, 2021

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!
Another Wednesday, another 10 mile TT. This one featured a reasonably big hill in the middle (1.3km @ >5%) and at the end (similar overall, but including 250m > 9%, capping out at 11%), so basically the closest to a summit finish you can get round here.

Being a tall, heavy type I did not back my chances much, double so because I was racing it on my road bike with shallow wheels for the road bike category (no rims > 30mm). But judged it pretty well - 6th fastest on the final climb out of everyone, 2nd in category to someone who definitely did not obey the "<30mm rims" rule. So pretty happy overall.

rngd in the womb
Oct 13, 2009

Yam Slacker
So many excellent race reports ITT. Nature is healing. :allears:

I'm still going through a build phase, currently on a rest week and packing up for a bikepacking trip in the desert this weekend. But once I finish my build phase, I am going to switch gears and start doing crit practice while maintaining my fitness. Eyeing the crit here in Ontario, CA, on 6/20 as my first race, but maybe I want to target something else in July instead depending on how confident I am feeling.

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tylertfb
Mar 3, 2004

Time.Space.Transmat.

rngd in the womb posted:

So many excellent race reports ITT. Nature is healing. :allears:

I'm still going through a build phase, currently on a rest week and packing up for a bikepacking trip in the desert this weekend. But once I finish my build phase, I am going to switch gears and start doing crit practice while maintaining my fitness. Eyeing the crit here in Ontario, CA, on 6/20 as my first race, but maybe I want to target something else in July instead depending on how confident I am feeling.

Do Barrio Logan GP June 26th if you’re in SoCal

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