6 hours of Erwin Park

6 hours on the bike is a long time. 6 hours riding a mountain bike with a high temperature of 52, a strong wind from the northwest and on a rooty trail can be miserable. Not that I'm whining or anything... ;~)

From 11:00am until 5:00pm I rode 7 laps for a total of 47.1 miles. I could have gone out for an 8th lap, but every once in a rare while I have a moment of lucidity so I decided that I would wait about 5 minutes before crossing the line and call it a day after 6 hours.

The good news is that although I'm sore & tired I still like my mountain bike!

Me & PJ (with Zoe jumping into the pic) before the race


Waiting to start


Oh, there's my bike!


Solo 48 hour crazy Shaun T at about 31 hours in


Oh yeah - Congrats to Kyle for completing the Tour das Hugel!!

Cyclocross can be messy

I choose not to partake in the fun & games last night. Which I'm sure Alan appreciated since that meant he only had to clean up one bike...



his

"The Look"

Today was the Smithville mountain bike race and the 3rd installment of "this is going to hurt". Good news was that it didn't hurt as much as it could have... bad news is that I didn't put in the effort needed to make it hurt. This was the last race of the TMBRA Fall Series and I think my body is ready for a break.

I had a good pre-ride on Saturday and felt good on the trail and afterward. This morning was a different story, I just could not motivate myself for the race. I've had this happen before and usually once the race starts I'm able to get somewhat focused; but not today. My heart rate was high, but my legs just didn't have the umpf needed to turn the pedals... slow and consistent seemed to be all I could muster, at least I didn't blow-up ;~)

There was some special excitement for the weekend as Lance Armstrong... yes that Lance Armstrong... raced today; which led to to larger than normal Pro/Cat1 class. Would he walk away from the normal 'big dogs', or would there be a race? The following is a blatant cut-n-paste steal from someone that was there for all the action:
Well the start was the usual suspects. Lance missed his pedals and his front row call up went to a back row start... He wasted no time getting up to Fawley, Rick, Scott and I. Basically we shed Rick, and the four of us left rode around for about a lap. Both Scott and Bryan put in some pretty good attacks and lance had no problem sitting third wheel. I could tell he was just sizing us up. At one point, towards the end of the first lap, Bryan got a pretty big gap. He probably had 20-30 seconds. I actually don't even know how it happened, but I think he just out-rode us in the rough twisties. Anyways on the run in to the Start /Finish Line you probably have a good 1/2 to 3/4 mile jeep road. When Scott, Lance and I came to this I saw probably one of the most violent attacks on a bike I have ever seen in my life. Lance got his superfly going probably close to 30-35 miles an hour. I got gapped and spun like a hummingbird to keep it close. Everyone somewhat slowed in the feed zone and by the half way point in the Fat Chucks complex I had made it back to the group... but that was short lived. On the last hill on Fat Chucks Lance put in another 'final' kick. He killed it up and all the way to Karaway. In a section that probably takes 2 minutes to do, he got about a 30 second gap. Everyone in our group rode around by ourselves for the rest of the race. He chewed us up and spit us out. Unfortunately for me, Lance's strong point all day was my weakest. In the wide open stuff he went REALLY FAST and only my legs went really fast.

I'd say our local boys did a good job of representing...

Men - Pro/Semi-Pro
Place	Name	Time	Team
1	Lance A	1:52:2.00	Mellow Johnny's
2 (1 - SM)	Scott H	1:53:50.00	Trek/VW
3 (1 - PR)	Bryan F	1:54:57.00	Park Place Lexus
4 (2 - SM)	Mitch C	1:58:41.00	Gary Fisher 29er
5	John C	1:59:27.00	Solar Eclipse
6 (2 - PR)	Rick W	1:59:43.00	Solar Eclipse
7	Dan T	2:1:13.00	Beans & Barley
8 (3 - SM)	Noel R	2:3:22.00	Bicycle Sport Shop
9	Jimmy C	2:3:34.00	Bike Barn/Gary Fisher/Subaru
10 (4 - SM)	Craig K	2:5:34.00	Bicycle Sport Shop

While racing with Lance would not be an option for me, being passed by him was definitely going to happen, and I could only hope that I would at least be able to get my first lap in before it happened. The way I was riding had me thinking that completing the first lap without getting caught was just a pipe dream, but somehow I did manage to at least accomplish that goal.

Spectators were gathering about a mile or so into the course (which was a series of loose gravel/sand climbs) with cameras at the ready to snap a picture of Lance in action. At the top of the second climb there was a good sized group and I told them that I couldn't believe they were all there just for me! That got a laugh from the crowd and a some extra cheering for me.

At the top of the third and last climb I could see another gathering of spectators and soon I could hear them cheering "Go, Lance!". For half a second I thought that maybe they were giving me a hard time, but then I looked behind me and there was Lance and he was closing the gap very quickly. Since I was in the only decent line up the climb I pulled over to clear the way for Lance to pass. As he rode by me he looked over and gave me what I'm claiming was "the Look", or maybe something like "come on, get on your bike and let's go"

or maybe it was more of a "who is this person in the trail" look... oh well, although I'll never know for sure I'm going to go with "come on, let's go" theory.

Tuesday night may or may not be another round of CX/ST racing and depending upon the weather the 6 hour solo race is still on the calendar for Saturday.

Until then I'm outta here!

'nuff said

Cyclocross

is hard.


I look more like this...
except the kids are more graceful that I am.

Looks like fun, huh?

5 weeks of "this is going to hurt"

I didn't think about it until last night, but starting with the Ruston stage race I have 5 weeks of cycling silliness. Which also means that I get to subject my faithful readers (whoever you are) to my adventures on the bike.

October 25 & 26th - The Piney Hills Classic stage race in Ruston, Louisiana. - Check
November 2nd - The Texas Cycling's Sweatin' Burnt Orange Bike Tour - Check
November 9th - The Rocky Hill Roundup - coming this weekend!
November 15th - The Ultracentric Experience 6 hour solo race at Erwin Park - 99% there
November 22nd - El Tour de Tucson with Team in Training - airline tickets have been paid for.

I already whined and dined my way through the Piney Hills Classic stage.


Now it's time for the Sweatin' Burnt Orange Bike Tour (a fund raiser for the cycling team) which was held in the Texas hill country starting in Blanco (west of Austin). We could have elected to ride the 45 mile route, or even the 60 mile route... but noooo, we decided that the 80 mile route (which was really only 72.8 miles) was more our style. There was a cut-off time for the longest route, but I didn't think I would really have a problem making the first 30 miles within 2 hours... but it was a goal I could consider not making.

The weather was perfect for the ride, a little crisp in the morning but warming up nicely during the day. It did get a little windy later in the morning, and of course it had to be a head wind.

I started off with the front group, but soon realized that this was not a wise decision if I wanted to complete more than 10 miles, so I moved to the edge and let the fast riders go by and settled into my own little ground eating pace and that was the way it stayed for the rest of the ride.

Living in the "rolling hills" of Dallas, the hill country had a tad more climbing than I was used to. The first killer was by mile 7 with 125+ feet of climbing in less than 1/2 mile, ouch! Surprisingly the climbs is where I would close the gap on riders in front of me.

I made it to the dreaded cut-off rest time with plenty of time to spare (dang it!) and about 10 minutes behind Alan. I grabbed some food, topped off the water and our loving son sent me on my way with a "turn left for the long route!". Off I went to the left, and another climb. I spent the ride enjoying the scenery and cussing the big climbs, but overall having a good time riding my bike. Here and there I would see a rider in the distance, sometimes closing the gap and passing and other times they would continue to ride off into the distance.

This cool little graphic is from my heart rate moniter:

I know it's hard to read, but the top squiggly red line is my heart rate, which was in the "max" zone for 35% and the "hard" zone for 61% of the ride.
The next dark red line is the altitude... see those two tall spikes? Those were at mile 41 and mile 60, not a nice thing. Minimum altitude was 960' and maximum was 1700'; 3430' of ascension and 3465' of descending. It sure didn't feel like there was more going down hill than what was climbed!
The green squiggly line is my cadence (pedal spin) and the blue one is my speed (average speed of 15.7mph, with a max of 38.4).

I completed the 72.8 miles in 4:40 with a total time out of 5:02ish, so about 20 minutes spent at 4 rest stops. I can live with that.

Want some candy?

Had a good night of Trick or Treaters, 99% little kids all dressed up. Best costume (sorry, no pic) goes to the front loading washing machine, complete with laundry soap and assorted clothing. His partner in candy looting was the Maytag Repairman. Too cute!!!