Nationals...Panic, but Mostly Frustration

Day 2 of rest has not disappointed me. I knew it would be a tough day and it has been just that. The day day started well enough with a 1.5 hour ride. I have yet to find a road around here that is somewhat flattish. I long for some good high speed tempo riding. I cleaned up and had a phone meeting with Jay which seemed to help keep my nerves at ease. I approached the afternoon very casually and eventually decided to get ready for tomorrow. I had to switch out cassettes and clean the bike. I put the race wheels on and took the bike for a little spin around the parking lot. It was shifting horribly, if it would shift at all. Hmmmm. The wheel is in straight. I double check my work and the cassette is fine. I put the bike in the stand and I noticed that the wheel is not centered. I can't get it to center. I call Bob. I was hoping there was something simple I was missing or forgetting about. I put the other wheel back in and noticed that that one was also off center, but a little less so than the other one. Now I'm thinking that maybe the derailleur hanger is bent. I'm awful at seeing things like that unless it's pretty bad. So, I took it to the local bike shop only to find out that I was a better, more knowledgeable mechanic than the guy who was there. Damn. He looked at it and didn't even notice that the wheel was off center until I had him look at it from a different perspective. His "oh damn" response was not what I wanted to hear, but what was worse was that he had no solution to offer. I ended up trying to adjust the rear derailleur cable tension which was very loosy goosy and that seemed to help. It almost shifts fine. I finally gave up worrying about it and will ask the Shimano folks for some help in the morning.

I ended up putting my 404 on the rear instead of the 303 because the brake pads kept sticking to the 303. Sticking badly enough that I could not get the pedals to turn at all in the stand. I'm not sure what is up with that. There isn't any errant glue on the braking surface and I'm using the recommended Zipp brake pads. Screw it. I can't worry about that too. 404 rear and 303 front it is for tomorrow.

So, other than that, there is nothing to report. A pretty boring day, but I'm getting excited about leaving tomorrow. I'm excited to race, for sure, but I'm also really ready to be somewhere else. Until tomorrow...

Nationals...Rest and Freaking Out

I must admit that I'm not a big fan of having 2 days "off" between races. It gives me too much time to over think things and freak out. Of course, it does not help when fellow racers are freaking out around me. One of the things I learned at the TT last Friday was that I should warm up with my iPod more often. It prevented me from listening to everyone stress out around me. No one's anxieties could play with my head. It was a great barrier. I'm thinking that I should listen to my iPod when I'm outside here accessing the internet. Enough people have seen me out here enough times that they now come up and talk to me. Usually, that's a good thing. Many of the people here are nice and as normal as cyclists can be I guess. But, every once in awhile, if we talk for more than a couple of minutes, their anxieties come out. The conversation turns to the 19% grades on the road race course and trips to Pittsburgh to get a cassette with a 29 on it. Or the previous results of competitors come up. This happened big time today. One guy managed to freak me out enough about the road race that I had to call Bob and verify/hear that it was not in fact a good idea to spend ~$600 to get a 29 on my bike. Yes, $600 with new rear derailleur, cassette and chain. For one race? I don't think so. That's over the top, even for me. Besides, the only thing a 29 would do is get me home. Unless it's Mt. Washington or something, races aren't won in a 29. Even if you disagree, humor me for now and then feel free to argue all you want AFTER my race on Wednesday. :)

There's not much going on here in Somerset. My friend Curt tried to Google something for me to do today, but found nothing. The only thing listed under things to do in Somerset was to visit the Flight 93 memorial which at this point I think is merely an office space on Main Street. Yeah. The closest movie theater is a 40 minute drive which wouldn't be too bad, but none of them are playing Sicko. I watched Oceans 12 on my laptop today. Is Oceans 13 out yet? I had a nice ride this morning and the legs are feeling good. My hip seems to be OK. It was bothering me on the road race course on Saturday, but Sunday's crit hardly stressed it. In fact, I think it loosened it up. So, maybe there is a silver lining to that "race." Ah, who am I kidding, I'm still annoyed. I'm increasingly becoming annoyed with myself. If ever I find myself in that situation again, I'm just going to keep attacking until I win or I blow up. As Julie , the Terry team director, said, you can't win if you're not willing to lose.

So, tomorrow is another "day off" but I will go out and get a good ride in in the morning. I'm not sure what I will do to entertain myself tomorrow afternoon, but I'm thinking of taking the camera to document some of the oddities around here. Oh, and one sign that just really seems odd to me is the Speed Limit 14 sign. Why 14? It doesn't even work out to something normal in the metric system. 15 is too fast? I don't get it. See, like I said, too much time to think about things. Of course, it's never about things of relevance or importance. Just stupid things like 14 mph. Oh well. At least I'm on sabbatical so I can't feel guilty about not doing work. :)

Thanks for reading and thanks to everyone for all the kind words and well wishes. I will do my best to give you something to cheer about Wednesday evening.

Nationals...Criterium

Today's race is brought to you by the letter B. B is for BORING!! Ugh. There's not much to say about today's race, though I'm sure I'll ramble on about it. 25 miles. 73 minutes. Not exactly race pace. I've been in some slow, defensive races in New England, but this one takes the cake. I'm not sure why I even bothered warming up for 45 minutes. The first time I attacked, it was an 80% effort just to get my heart rate up a bit. We did 25 laps of a 1 mile loop. The first couple of laps were done around a 2:45 pace. Not exactly fast... I tried to tell myself to be patient. I was for a bit, but after 5 laps, I had to something. No one had tried anything at all. So, I took off to get the HR up and hopefully get the pace to pick up. No such luck. The field caught me and then slowed up without a counter attack. I go a couple of more laps at the front with another woman who seems equally frustrated so we plan an attack together. I take off with an 825W acceleration, she follows and comes around when I start to slow. We had a little gap, but the field reeled us in and then, the only counter attack of the day went off. She was reeled in less than half a mile and the field shut down again. I was bored. I spent a lot of time at or on the front. I didn't tire myself out, though i did try to raise the pace a few times and accelerated to see what would happen. There were strong women in the field, but no one had teammates so everyone was looking for someone else to do something. It was awful. It became quite clear that it would come down to a field sprint with everyone still there. I was going to attack again with 2 laps to go, but ended up on the front and I figured that the field would just follow my wheel so I nixed that idea. I had hoped that by staying at the front when we went into the last lap I would be able to keep a decent position going around the last corner but it didn't play out that way. The last corner was frightening. Now, remember, we haven't taken this corner at any real speed yet. So, we hit the corner which is 200m to go and someone in the middle can't hold their line and they swing wide. I find myself off the road riding in gravel. Game over. At least I kept the rubber side down. I was pissed. I sprinted back up to the group so that I could at least get a same time finish. We may as well have just been given an hour to warm up and then lined up for a 200m street sprint. It would have been more exciting. After venting with the woman that I attacked with, I walked back up to look at results and much to my dismay, but not surprise, none of the top 5 ever even went to the front. They sat in the entire time waiting for the field sprint.

As women, we get really pissed when promoters are continually combining our fields or worse, eliminating our fields at regional races. It sucks, but if we race like we did today, then we have no ground to stand on. I think that we've had some good aggressive racing in New England this season, in some races anyway. I felt like maybe we were making some progress. One of the things that appealed to me about Nationals was racing against people I didn't know. A new field. Instead of the aggressive dog eat dog crit that I fantasized about, it was by far the slowest and most boring race of the season. Exeter was exciting in comparison. I got off the bike, loaded it into the car and I just wanted to drive home to Massachusetts. Instead, I sit here outside my hotel room going back and forth with being frustrated with the field and angry with myself. I was definitely one of the few (there were only 3 people who attacked) aggressors in the race, but I should have been more so. I couldn't have done any worse. Ah yes, the beauty of hindsight. I go into the road race with some fire in the ole belly. That can only be a good thing. :)

Nationals...Recon and Rest

No racing for me today so I decided to check out the road race course. I'm thinking that was not the best idea. Lately I have not been able to climb to save my life and this course.... damn. It's going to be a suffer fest. I'm thinking I want to make something happen at tomorrow's crit because I don't see it happening at the road race.

The course starts and finishes at Seven Springs Ski Resort. Bad sign #1. The first section is OK. There's one "moderate" climb up to the golf course which I don't think it will be too bad. Then, it's a nice downhill/rolling run to the beginning of a loop that we do 3 times. The loop is weird. It has about as much rhythm as me when I dance. You turn right onto the loop, go around a curve to find a short, steep roller. OK, not too bad, but to borrow a saying from Doug, the road is dead. About three miles in, you take a left turn (without much momentum)to hell and find yourself at the bottom of a half mile hill/climb. I've been trying to think of what, if any, climb it may resemble in New England...no particular one comes to mind. It hurt though and I was trying to take it easy. It's not exactly gradual. After that, it's just a lot of rollers and not a whole lot of momentum. After three joyous laps, we get to go back up the hill that we rode down. We take a slight detour near the top so that we have a bit of a descent before a finishing climb. I think it will be a race of attrition. Alas, I'll worry about that later. Tomorrow is the crit.

After my ride and some lunch, I headed out to the crit course to watch the Masters Men 55-59 race. Those guys were fast. They averaged over 26 mph. It was fun to watch as I have seen many of them racing in New England. Tom Officer was off the front for awhile, but he was reeled in. Lots of attacks. The eventual winner attacked with 9 laps to go and stayed away. Field sprint for 2nd place. From what I heard, it was the only race on the day that was not won in a field sprint. I don't think that our race will be quite so fast tomorrow, but hopefully it will be as aggressive.

Thanks for reading. Hopefully tomorrow will yield another good race tale.

Nationals...Time Trial

They call it the race of truth. Sometimes, the truth hurts. A lot. Today, it hurt physically. Some say that it's all about how much pain one is willing to endure. I threw up some cola flavored Clif Shot Bloks in the third leg. I pushed as hard as I could. I took the third length hard. Jay told me to think about all the indoor intervals we did and reminded me that many of my competitors would likely take the third leg conservatively and I could gain some time there. I think I did just that. I even passed someone on the last leg. When I finished, I heard the announcer say that I had squeaked into the top 5, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't hold since nearly half the field started after me. I did in fact lose my podium spot, but I still finished 7th. I have to say that I am happy with that. I didn't know what to expect results wise so I am pleased. I'm not a TT specialist like some of my competitors. In fact, today was my first race on my new TT bike. The course was technical with 4, yes 4, turn arounds. It was a little confusing at the first one, but then I just settled in and focused on the task of riding hard. I probably lost time on the turns, but oh well. I can honestly say that I did my best. While the truth hurt physically, mentally I liked what I saw, heard and felt. That's a good day in my book.

Nationals... Part 0

OK, so I'm here in Pennsylvania for Masters Nationals. I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking (or what I may have been on) when I registered for this. But, whatever the reason, I am here. Sitting outside my hotel room with my laptop, next to the PA turnpike. Lots of diesel. That can't be too great for me. Oh well.

The trip down was uneventful. I highly recommend travelling on the 4th of July. There was no traffic. :) With one stop, it took 7.5 hours to reach scenic Somerset, PA. I have to say that no only do I appreciate the great riding in the Pioneer Valley, I appreciate the relative ease of the driving. I-91 is 65 mph. It slows a little in Springfield and briefly in Hartford but otherwise, it's 65. So nice. New Jersey and Pennsylvania - not so much. Good freaking grief. Oooohh, a town is coming up in 10 miles, we need you to slow to 55 mph NOW. Surprisingly to those who know my driving habits and penchant for getting stopped, I stayed within 10 mph of the speed limit the entire way. For real. I'm saving my speed for tomorrow's TT. Yeah. That's it.

Today was my first full day here in PA. I set out to do some recon, get some groceries and pick up my numbers. I had hoped to pre-ride the TT course, but it's on a highway closed to bicycles. It's illegal to ride on it and we were warned that we would be held accountable to the "fullest extent of the law" should we choose to ignore said law and pre-ride the course. So, I pre-drove the course and it's a highway alright. Long, very gradual uphills, downhills, a little flat... We do a 6k section of the road 4 times. Yup, 3 turn arounds. Yippee. My start time is 13:43 so I won't have to get up too early. :) I did ride my TT bike out on Route 31 which seemed to have similar terrain. I felt pretty darned good and hopefully this race into fitness thing is working (I sure as hell didn't have it at Fitchburg!) Oh, and to add to my day, it poured on me and then I had to clean the bike... that wasn't such a bad thing until the bike fell and landed on the rear derailleur. Owies. I think it's OK. I ran it through the gears and it seems to work. I'll have the Shimano dudes check it out in the AM.

As for the rest of my recon work...groceries... holy crap. I don't think I have enough battery life to get going on this. I wanted skim milk. I go to the dairy case. No skim milk. I ask one of the employees if they have some in the back or something. "We don't carry skim, ma'am." What? At least he didn't call me sir. "No, no we don't have that." OK, but, if you are in search of whole or 2%, you are in for a treat. Whenever you open the door, the cooler moos at you. Yep, the milk "is so fresh, the cows are in the cooler." Just don't ask for skim. I did eventually find skim milk at another grocery store. They even had my favorite Stoneyfield Farm Organic skim milk. :) No Stoneyfield yogurt though. That was a bit disappointing. Can you tell yet that I'm bored? I'm writing about freaking dairy products. I will try to be more entertaining tomorrow. Hopefully I'll have some results to talk about in a favorable fashion. Lots of cyclists at this hotel. A bunch were at the restaurant where I dined as well... They're all so uptight. You'd think this was a national championship or something.