Santa Cruz prelim report

After 17 laps of pain in the Men's A race

no caption needed

Here was the first lap where I did my best to hold off the fast hard start, it took 17 secs from the start to pop my HR to the redline.
-well hot damn I managed to get 25th out of 60

T-Minus 10 days

Well well well after last nights pre UC Santa Cruz meeting I find an unsettling feeling in my gut. The past few weeks of training have been great, my mind has been relaxed. I’ve had no thoughts of having to do well in the upcoming collegiate races, just visions of suffering on my TT bike. How quickly things change. The time has come during the meeting to mark your name under your category you plan to race in. Jake is first to put down men’s A, Scott follows and then etches my name for me under A’s. All I can do is slump down in my chair. I thought I had grown a backbone but obviously not.

I am not ready to compete against these guys. Although if were talking a flat ITT, then that’s a horse of another color. I think that I can place top 5 at every collegiate TT. Na na na….funk that…..I will place top 5 every time….take that shyte to the bank! Unfortunately for me Santa Cruz is a RR and HCTT. I can’t help but to think of this picture. Tyler Dibble, putting the hurt on Coach. Pretty much guaranteed he’s going to be there as well as the other high caliber riders. Which is fine by me, I like riding with good racers…..I just don’t want to be dropped on the first climb left dwindling down a lonely highway road for the rest of the day. If I can stay with the pack….then the race will be a success.

For some good news I am on the forth week of training with my powertap….or should I say I have 25days of consistent training. My FT is increasing, so I must be doing something right (just being consistent). The veins are here Olaf!!!!! Only down side is that it’s my left leg that is all sexy like, the right one needs to play catch up. Well time to hit the trainer before going to school.

It's a girl

I am pretty dam excited, my TT frame showed up on fri evening....of course I spent all night putting it together. I have to admit it was pretty scary putting it together. I haven't been around bikes that have a seat post that is integrated into the frame. Somehow I managed to cut the post straighter then a preacher's dick (excluding catholic preacher's).

The only problem I found with the seat post is that if you want the seat to be as close as possible to the seat post then you loose access to the adjustment bolts. I got around this by reversing the seat post, that way I can access the seat post clamp and the saddle bolt. The downside to this is I cant tilt my seat down anymore. Which seems ok for now...only time in the saddle will tell. I plan on getting two more items for the bike:

1) a look ergo stem to really dial in the position

2) a disc wheel cover, that way I can run the powertap and still get the aerodynamic effects of a disc. I just loose that beautiful sound :(

I can't wait to get a TT race in. First race is UC Santa Cruz. Kind of sucks though they're having a RR that consists of thirteen 2.6mi laps, a HCTT. They are having a flat TTT.....except I don't have a team. Hopefully Berkeley will have a ITT

Power Workout

Just finished a little power workout today. 10min warm up then One 5min at max then every 5mins I would drop gears to the 53:13 and shoot for 120rpm (felt a little unstable on the trainer), cool down for 10mins. FYI for people, the maximum HR I have seen is 203...if I go pass 191 it all falls apart!!!

UNR USCF Crit

Oh I was wondering if I could get some input on our race we are going to hold. Our race coordinator wants to remove the masters cat and just have the following: elite 4/5, elite 1/2/3, and womens/juniors race. He feels that it is too much to ask for the Collegiate Mens A to race at 6pm and then do a RR the next day at 8am. Is it just me or does it sound like he belongs on the officating crew at the TOC...stage 1???

This is what I would like to run for the race:
elite 3/4 45min start at 8am
womens 1/2/3 & 4 45min
masters 3/4/5 45min
juniors 15-16 20min
juniors 16-18 20min
elite 5 45min
elite 1/2/3 60min
collegiate men d
collegiate men c
collegiate women b
collegiate men b
collegiate women a
collegiate men a start at 6pm

I think that if its such a concern to race the mens A late in the day I can always reverse the collegiate order and put mens A as the first race...........What y'all think about that???

newbie

I have been pretty excited about getting my powertap. I am starting to get some numbers and what do they tell me? Exactly what I have known all along but have had too much pride to ever admit…..I SUCK!!! Coming from a science background, it’s nice to have an easy way to see what form I am at. Now I can test to see if I am the “shit” or just plain shitty. Or in my case two weeks structured riding has increased my 20min time by 15watts.

Collegiate race season is quickly approaching, and for some reason several people on the team seem to think I am some type of super road racer. I don’t know where they got such an idea, I certainly didn’t say anything. Safe to say I am expected to race the men’s A division. I am not ready to race an 80-100mile road race, that’s pro distance. A cat 4 (mind you a cat 4 with two solid weeks of training) has no right in that division. So you could safely say I have some pressure to perform. That is until I evaluated my situation this weekend.

Where did the fun go??? I miss the roAd triPs. WhaT I miss the mOSt is the Churn OF the disc wheel, heArtbeat pulsating, and the wind whistling over my aero helmet. Its time to get back to basics, the guys are just going to have to deal with the fact that I am just a newbie. The plan is just to race B’s this year and have fun. Once school is out for summer, I can evaluate where I am at physically and what direction I want to go in for races.

As soon as I figure out how to export my graphs from cyclingpeaks software I will do so. In the mean time my TSS numbers for the first two weeks are……..drum roll please 680 and 749

What a pain in the ass it was to figure out how to post pictures, from cyclingpeaks that is.

Knock Knock

Well now I have finally managed to be a master at myspace.com a few weeks back. I find myself periodically looking around at various layouts there, and I come up with two conclusions:

1) I am too old for this shit! Missed my generation by about 5 years (need to be 10-20years old).

2) The people that are my age on there, for the most part are degenerates.

Now its time to move up in the world, moving on up to the big boy’s myspace...blogger.com. I know a couple of people here so for these first posts please bare with me…I am still learning. I do have to say its nice not having to post codes to insert a picture.