On the Road Again! US Pro Race Report

This time last year Christian, Paco, Nate, Bobby and I were fending off a mosquito infestation during our week-long stay in a cabin near Saguenay, faced each day with the question; "do I go right or left on the road?" Left was better. Paco was busy riding up a dirt path to the top of the ski resort and getting a flat tire. We all gave our best at our newly created Strava Segment "American Champion Climb" which Paco now holds, the only Spaniard on the trip. 

Oh the things that can happen in a Year.

Today we are in the race hotel for the Gran Prix Cycliste de Saguenay which starts tomorrow, a mere 40 miles from the infamous cabin of a year ago. I felt like a local when I was able to tell everyone that the town of La Baie, which is beautiful, is French for "The Baie" and that there is water here, just like I remembered. 

Ok so Im not much help, but the internet is quite good and I have some free time, so I figured I would review the last week and a half on the road, my first trip back racing from a broken collar bone 9 weeks ago.

After a solid 0.75 races done on the NRC calendar, I figured it might be good to more than double my race days with the US Pro TT, where I was 7th in 2012 but since then have not had great time trials. It being my first race back, I didnt expect a whole lot and thats what I got. I was happy I could ride hard for 40 minutes without exploding and started looking forward to the start of the new season. Then:

US Professional Road Race

I can't remember a time I was more nervous before a bike race than before this year's National Championship Road Race. Normally by the time nationals come around you have a solid half season of racing on your legs, you've righted the ship if need be, or just cruised on good off season training, but this year I was coming in cold with 18 days on the trainer and another 2 weeks on the road after collar bone surgery. Ill admit that I was far more worried about crashing than I ever have been before, partly because I hadn't been in the peloton much, but also because the accident in Redlands has really effected my attitude about the safety of sanctioned races.

From the gun it was clear Gamin wanted to be in the break, which I thought was interesting, so I thought it would be important to cover some early moves despite having the freedom to sit in an wait. The break went in the same place it went last year, 11 guys, including Sam Bassetti, worked well together on the opening circuits, and before we hit Lookout Mountain the first time the gap was already 6 minutes. Right then I knew it would be all about saving energy, maintaining cohesion in the group, and hitting the 4th and final time up lookout with my best effort. When Ben King, Chris Jones, and Julian Kyer attacked, all better climbers than me, I decided to ride my best 10 minute effort and hope it was enough, I caught on to those three half way up the climb, and we finished off the last climb with a bit of tempo, last time check was a minute to the remnants of the break and 2 minutes to the chasing field.

The break headed  up Lookout Mountain

That's when all cohesion stopped. From the bottom of Lookout to the finish line there was always someone hoping to sit on the group and get a free ride to the finish. Eric Marcotte, eventual winner, caught the 4 of us first and seemed willing to work, but he is also one of the best sprinters there is, so going to the line with him was not an option. Any time someone sat on, I tried to attack and make them work, you never know how people's legs are in those situations. When Alex Howes showed up with a small group of chasers from the peloton I was somewhat devastated that my chances of winning were now less, so when McCabe and Zwizanski attacked I thought it would be the best chance to stay away from the large group of strong riders, so I gave everything to get across. 

Under 10k to go!

McCabe, leading the NRC, was the clear favorite in the group, so its no doubt both Zwizanski and I wanted to get ahead of him before the finish. Zwizanski attacked first, and in my mind if he would have waited until after the short climb, the National Champion would have come from our group, but its Nationals, and everyone wants to win, so cohesion was a bit too much to hope for. McCabe did a great effort to pull him back and the 3 of us cat-and-moused all the way to 500m to go when I tried my last effort, but having cramped just 500m earlier I couldnt make it count. At the same time the chasing group was catching us, and Marcotte came through the last corner with about 4 mph on all of us and won a well deserved victory, and I was able to hang on to 6th after a long day of fighting. I was heart broken to be that close and to have worked that hard, also completely exhausted. 

Finish Camera Shot

 Im sure McCabe and Zwizanski, like myself, had some trouble falling asleep for the past week or so thinking about that move, replaying it, wishing you could tell your past self to just give a little more at the right moment, but Marcotte for sure earned that win, and Smartstop rode a great race taking 1st, 2nd, and 5th on the day. I was pleased to be back in the mix, and I credit Frank at FasCat Coaching for making the plan and calling me all the time and checking in while I recovered. It makes me really excited for the rest of the season!

Its all up from here!

Bike Racing > Parking

Lets all agree, without going into much detail, that human beings are not meant to be sitting in traffic or doing laps around the blocks near their home looking for a parking space on Tuesdays from 1-4pm because your road has no parking due to "street sweeping". I don't think San Jose owns a broom, let alone a 5 ton automatic broom that drives with a swiffer wet-jet bolted to the front of it. So, I parked there, tried to give myself a ticket (pictured: a note card with my grocery list on it), and they still got me:

I thought I was sooooo smart.

According to the structure of the law, I deserved that. According to things reasonable, I DO NOT DESERVE THAT. Sigh. Being passionate about justice but doing nothing about it is exhausting. If supporting NPR only costs $15/month, I cant wait to see what San Jose does with that $50 I gave them for not sweeping the streets.

What. A. Racket.

Back to things that are right and good. You know what I love about driving past all the farm land in California? Its the symmetry of all the trees and vines and plants as you drive by that look like an array of space between trees that forms an infinite number of lines going back into the field, like this:

I also like the color green... bodes well...

I took that while riding before racing the Chico Stage Race this past weekend. So, Chico is a really sweet town! Why didn't you tell me?! Donny came up for the weekend to enjoy my restful lifestyle in the hotel after the races, and we both got to watch our first full length NCAA game of the year, and Wisconsin won! The race itself was awesome, we did a circuit on this track:

I think they went a bit faster than us. The circuit itself was cool and fun, but its nature was against the 3 rules of attacking, which are: Don't Attack When:

1. You are already in the 11
2. You are doing 500 watts in the peloton
3. You are doing 35mph

So for me, it was pretty uneventful. The next day at the 90 mile Pakenta Road Race, however, was my jam! A crosswind start quickly sorted the field into tiny groups all doing a team time trial chasing each other. My group had 3 Optum riders in it, and was the front group, so my group won! Unfortunately for me I did not win. A combination of a well timed attack by Optum and a flat tire on the gravel 5 miles from the finish set me back quite a bit. Thankfully, however, it was a super good day of training, and you cant take that away from me!

The last day had a morning TT, which I couldn't take seriously without a TT bike (I did take my saddle bag and frame pump off, for some reason), and an afternoon Crit, in which I got 7th by actually trying to do the field sprint. How'd that go? You ask? I came out of the final corner 3rd.... so... that's pretty depressing. Nothing can beat the fact that the race director proposed to his girlfriend before the crit.

YEAAAAAAA!!!

Can we always have proposals before bike races?! That was teh coolest! It was a great weekend, a great race, and I had a great friend hanging out, so we decided to make a great choice and visit the Sierra Nevada Brewery which is in Chico.

Perfectly sized beers for a guy who's last beer was in February

This was just awesome.

This was in the parking lot, WHAT?!

That last picture is great, how cool is that guy? "Oh, I just drive my crazy car down to one of the first craft breweries and have me a pint and a massive appetizer and then give myself a high five. It'll be a nice little Sunday."

The last bit of my week was having to deal with my own mental shortcomings that I am experiencing with the season being neigh and wanting to win every race. That is the thing, I want to win, and its stressful, because I have worked hard for a very long time and I think its time to win. My coach Frank talked me down a bit from my craziness and now that I am sitting in bed the night before the first real race of the year I am confident and excited about the season. I also started my winning ways last night by beating that stupid 2048 game that my sister introduced me to on Monday night, PROOF:

VICTORY

So with that, I leave you for San Dimas. Its going to be a great season, and I hope to come back on here and tell you about how it feels to win.

Fog of War and the Annexation of an Orange Slice: My Latest Race Vacation

Did you ever play World of Warcraft or any other civilization-take-over-style game? No? Ok, fine, well in those games there is a map covered in fog that can only be cleared away by traveling into the fog revealing the map beneath. It looks like this:

Dude. You gotta move around.

This is how I think of the world; clearing the fog of war bit by bit as I travel around. Well, March is in full swing and I am super excited that I get to clear some fog from my map with a slew of local races. How excited did I get for a weekend fog-of-war-clearing racing vacation? Well, here is a folder that is on my computer called "March Racing":

Excessive.

Containing PDF files that I created all by my lonesome with pictures like this:

The past weekend's travel map. Totally pointless.

Lets take a second here to note the total irrelevancy and uselessness of this picture to my general well-being. When I got in my car, I did not load up the PDF document with itemized directions, no sir, I took out my phone and searched "Sonora, CA" on Google Maps, pressed navigate, and listened to podcasts for 3 hours with frequent interruptions like "In 1000 feet, keep straight on yada yada yada back to your podcast that you are kind of paying attention to." This unnecessary preparation can be likened to making a hand drawn map of the grocery store with all the items' locations, which you would ignore instantly because its just getting groceries and the isles are labeled and its not that big of a deal. You would think I have never driven a car somewhere new before. Anyways, I love bike vacations, got it?!

I call bike races vacations because that's what they are. Training is a lot of work, racing is a lot of fun, and going somewhere new is THE BEST THING EVER, so race weekends make me really happy. Probably the biggest bonus is that, unlike other vacations, there is no real work in planning involved (just fake work that I make up for myself, like making dumb maps and "weekend at-a-glance" note cards). You drive out a day early, pre-ride the beautiful course, and then Yelp a dinner spot. Suddenly, you have all these pictures!

Its not just the green landscape, its the smell and the calm warm weather that make these rides so good. The pace of an easy ride is perfect for short attention span outdoor lovers.

Out to dinner with my shoes. Cheapest date ever! Not great conversationalists, however...

I do not want to be a cow, but, if I had to be, I could get used to it.

I also raced, which is kind of my whole deal, but I find training races uninteresting to talk about when the primary focus is to ride as hard as I can and probably lose. Its not that I lose on purpose, its just that the nature of the "training race" is one of little strategy, and great amounts of self destruction. I was 5th at Ward's Ferry and 4th at Fort Ord, for the record, but I don't really think about these races that way. What I look at is how hard I was able to make the race for myself, and I made them really hard, so that is a success. Its actually a very nice difference from the upcoming season, where the focus is 100% about winning. These races are 100% about training, which makes them easy on the mind (hard on the legs).

Well, do you have a flag?

Since I foot the entire bill for these training race weekend vacations, I have to figure out a way to keep them under budget. My budget is essentially this: "You have no money, ever, why do you even look at your bank account?" I can only go out to dinner occasionally. Going out to dinner is getting strange, this weekend I got a plate of food with an orange that had apparently been claimed by another country already.



I ate the orange anyway, despite my lack of flag. I know military takeovers are kind of taboo these days, but I really like oranges, and I didn't think anyone would notice. I think I'm in the clear, apparently someone else in the world is trying to take over a lot more than an orange slice, sounds like a jerk move to me. Anyways.....

Not being able to go out to dinner is fine by me, I have actually gotten quite good at eating in my hotel room. These days I chop up a ton of veggies, make a giant bag of rice, buy a rotisserie chicken, and make some salad dressing. I proceed to carry that all around and eat it all weekend.

Mobile nutrition at its finest!

Food blogger I am not, so deal with that picture being merely normal, lacking some fancy wooden bowl from some ancient tribe on a bed of flowers and some strange garnish which has the same effect as wearing a fancy hat in public (you cant eat it, and it seems to have no other purpose, so why is it there? This is my philosophy for many, many things). 

Beautiful places, new places, chopped up food in a Rubbermaid, breakfast lunch and dinner in bed, spotty internet, racing your face off, and semi-listening to podcasts for hours retaining .01% of the information are all reasons I love race weekends. Luckily my military takeover of the orange slice stayed under the radar for the most part, and I was able to clear a lot of the fog off of my World of Warcraft map. I still have a lot to go, which I am thankful for, could you imagine if you didn't have new places to check out? You would feel like a hamster (the word hamster has no "p" in it?! WHAT WAS I BEING TAUGHT IN SCHOOL ALL THOSE YEARS?!) and probably understand a lot more about that running wheel they seem to love so much.

That's all for this week, here are a few more pictures of my weekend:

Weakest attempt (has a "p" by the way, senseless language we speak) ever at a wave-explodes-on-rock picture.

Pebble Beach and the Fog of War

Browsing music just isn't the same any more. Side note: Sonora has 15 thrift shops. So there's that.

Madera Stage Race and Sympathy for my Teammates

Most of my teammates are down doing Vuelta de Mexico right now. I dont know what is actually happening but here is a quick synopsis of what I have heard about the goings on of that race so far:

• Chad Beyer was doing well until he started puking, and for all I know, he is still puking 4 days later.
• Gavin Manion may or may not have taken a chain-ring to the face. Probably as a part of a strange ritual related to Americans buying coffee in Mexico, because that would be tough to do in a bike race.
• Bobby said that the stages start and everyone just gets dropped right away. Sounds fun.
• I caught something about the whole race being neutralized due to a protest.
• There were 180 speed bumps on one stage.
• There are dogs with bib numbers acting like bludgers in quiddich from Harry Potter (no i will not check the spelling on EITHER of those two words).
• Someone glued half soccer balls made of steel to the road, everywhere.
• Christian was eaten by a 38 foot python, here he is with his new python sleeping bag! (unconfirmed)

Looks so warm!

 So, I am happy to say, I am in Madera, California with Sam Bassetti doing some road bike time trials, a crit, and a road race. I got 9th in the first TT which was cool because I think I was the first place dude on a road bike (meh, thats mainly meh), but then this happened:

At least the bees love it.

So, I feel terrible, and not 20 minutes goes by without either having some Zicam, taking benadryl, gargling antacid, drinking emergen-c, doing some crazy nasal rinse that makes me feel like im drowning, or COMPLAINING ABOUT THE POLLEN. How much pollen is in the air? Well, every field has 20 boxes of bees sitting next to the road, and I have 2 bee-stings to prove it. I'm sorry to report that I have solved the (tragic) sudden bee death problem: its cyclists' faces. That's right angry drivers, I finally found a legitimate reason for you to treat me so terribly. You're welcome, although I know you don't need to be thanked. 

Annnyways...

This is my first race with Sam (@swbassetti). Yesterday he came back from dinner with friends and, without saying anything to me, changed out of his jeans into shorts. Therefore he is an awesome person. Not having TT bikes to ride made the first two stages frustrating, but we kept our spirits high by riding to and from all the stages because I am too lazy to pack up the car every day. Frankie (@Fakiefrankie) has managed to still throw his two cents in via twitter, telling us we are worthless and road bikes in a TT are not an excuse, to which I say he should concentrate on keeping the rest of the team out of the belly of large snakes in Mexico.

Tomorrow we hit up the road race and hopefully America's Best Value Inn and Suites, which I am going to start calling hotel buzzword inn, lets us get back in the room to clean up for our long treks home. (I just sneezed all over this keyboard). Hopefully I get a picture of the wall hanging that depicts a HUGE tsunami wave engulfing the golden gate bridge in the lobby, its a gem.

As for you, reader, keep on coming back. I feel a blogging tailwind on the horizon, and I even put some fun links over there to the right in the sidebar. The goal this year is to win. The other goal is to tell you about it. My third goal is to keep the bee stings to a minimum tomorrow.