Eugene Celebration Stage Race- 2nd place Cat3

This past Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I competed in the Eugene Celebration Stage Race. It was my first race as a Cat3, because I recently upgraded from Cat5, and it was also my first ever stage race. A stage race, for those who don't follow cycling, consists of multiple races over a period of time ranging from 3 days to a month, depending on the level of race. The competitors are timed for each "stage" and a cumulative time is kept as the days go on. At the end of the entire event, the racer with the lowest cumulative time is declared the winner.

This style of racing presents an interesting and fun set of strategies and tactics, especially when racing with teammates. Since each stage is different, it is never a guarantee who will emerge the victor, as each stage favors a different type of rider, and the rest of the field tries to minimize their time losses.

The Eugene race went as follows:

Friday- 3 mile uphill TT (solo effort)
Saturday- 57 mile road race (the entire field rides together)
Sunday- 15 mile flat TT,
45 minute criterium (whole field together, on a 1km loop till time is up)

I was in third place after the first stage on Friday. Climbing is not my strongest discipline, so I was 50 seconds behind the leader and .5 seconds behind second place. I feel I could have ridden faster, but my energy was not great, and my warmup process could have been better.

On the second stage, I attacked twice, but the field was highly motivated, and the teammates of the second place rider (Portland Velo) worked hard to bring me back on the first attack.
On my second attack, with 15 miles to go, the second place rider went with me, and since his team would not chase him down, we managed to get clear, and finished with a 10 second advantage over the rest of the field, including the leader of the race.

The time trial on Sunday proved to be the defining moment of the race. I started third to last, with second place behind me, and first following him. The time in-between our starts was 30 seconds. I knew this would be my only chance to take over leadership of the race. I had an excellent race, recording my best speed ever for 15 miles (27.8mph), but it wasn't quite enough, and second place caught me, and moved up 50 seconds on me overall. The previous leader lost 1:10 to me, and 1:50 to second place, and fell to third overall, behind myself.

This pretty much sealed up the final results, because it is practically impossible to gain any time in the criterium stage, try as I might. My three attacks were covered by Portland Velo, who I give a total hats-off to for their work this weekend, they were on top of it! It made for a very fun race.


2nd place overall, behind Jeffrey pollock, who is an absolute beast!

I'm pretty darn happy with this result for my first stage race and first Cat3 race. I got enough points from the weekend to get me 3/4 of the way to Cat2!

Congratulations to everyone who raced, and thanks to OBRA and the volunteers for a great event!

Killer Brick Workout

This brick was intense. It's a good thing I didn't think about it too much beforehand.

3x(10min race pace swim, 30 min bike at 90% of FTP)


The setting----
Set my watch to beep every 2:30 on the swim for turnarounds. Basically four laps that way..
Run up a boat ramp for about 125 meters to the car for transition.
I switched from wet track shorts to bibs and jersey, on the bike in under 2 minutes with the run-out.
Bike course was pretty hilly for first 2.5 miles, and I tried to peg it up the big hill right out of transition. Good race simulation. Then out and back on the highway, which was long rollers and windy.


The work---
I managed to hold about 5 watts high on all three bike segments, but the second half of the second rep was painful, and the third rep was a struggle from the start. I was able to get faster on the swim from one rep to the next, which I assume was mostly the result of my body being warmed up better for the second two reps. I tried warming up solely with stretch bands prior to the first block. This is a good simulation for ITU racing, where you rarely get an in-water warmup.








Cooled off in the lake after. Victory is sweet :)

Crazy Day!

Yesterday was an adventure, as far as training goes. Nothing went quite to plan, and I was beginning to wonder if my karma was off. It's very easy to get into a bad space when workouts have gone awry, especially if you are tired. But when it comes down to it, I was outside, playing triathlon, my favorite game in the world, which is a blessing.

To go back to the beginning of the day, I went for an open water swim, which I hadn't really packed for. (see video)

The water was insanely choppy, almost oceanic. But it was beautiful, and crystal clear, so I went for it. I could totally see the bottom while swimming, that was a new experience, pretty sweet.

It took me 30 minutes in the car with the heater and seat warmers on full blast, plus 20 minutes in the hot tub to get my body temperature up again. I won't lie, I kind of enjoy the warm-up process after a cold swim :)





THE RIDE.
Fast forward past lunch and a nap, and I headed out the door for a 2.5 hour ride with hard intervals. The wind was insane on the highway, and I struggled to hold 36kph one direction, and was flying at 49kph after the turn-around. I hit my target watts though, and finished up the intervals after an hour. I got back to the campground, and joined up with my Dad, so we could finish up the ride together. He had gotten info on some "great 30 mile ride" from one of the campground employees, who was a cyclist. From what I can tell, this person is much more hardcore than me ;)

We missed our most important turn on the way out, which added on an extra 10 miles or so. I thought we were doing a loop, and by the time we realized we must have missed the turn, I figured it wasn't a big deal, since the road we were on connected anyway. It turns out it was actually an out and back ride, and we were now 25 miles out. Owell, these things happen.
I figured in order to keep the ride from going 5 hours, it would be best to find the road we missed, and take that on the way back to cut off the extra 10 miles. When we found it, it was no wonder we had missed it on the way out. Thankfully I can laugh about this now that it's in the past :)

 This picture represents the nicest part of the road.
The rough part was entirely comprised of plum-sized rocks that I suppose could be defined as "gravel". I honestly wouldn't have ridden my mountain bike on this section, but I wasn't about to turn around. I knew what was behind me, but up ahead it must get better, right?

Luckily it did get better, and we were able to make decent time, but I'm going to have to give my bike a lot of love to salvage our relationship. haha



I spent the rest of the ride feeling pretty bonked, and muttering to myself, "someone is going to pay" and "who could possibly think you would ride a bike on that", and "Wow, I really do not give Paris-Roubaix riders enough credit." I was getting to the point of just staring blankly at my handlebars, so it was fortunate we only had a few miles to go.

After dinner had begun to digest and make it to my muscles and brain, it slowly dawned on me that I would look back on that ride and laugh. Even writing about it now, I'm smiling just running it through in my head. It was a great experience that I shared with my father, and I know plenty of guys my age who would kill to have  sport that would allow them to have such a wacky adventure with their Dad.

So that's how my 2.5 hour bike ride with intervals turned into that, plus another 1.5 hours; making it my longest of the year, first ride on a gravel road, and most memorable ride ever.
Good times.

Big weekend. So tired.

So my weekend was pretty jammed pack with training, work, housework, and more training.
I'm not complaining, but rather stating that I'm pretty proud of the accomplishments, and it feels good to be tired when it is well-deserved.

I worked Friday and Sunday, and I will actually work tomorrow as well, but what I'm more happy with is the list of things I knocked out around the house. I mowed the lawn, trimmed a tree, cleaned my room, did laundry, cleaned our trailer, and posted my excess bikes on craigslist. Craigslist is an ongoing fight with the more-often than-not bottom feeders of society. "Hi, would you take $100 for the $1200 bike you posted? And could you deliver it to me?" It is so refreshing to get someone who is just trying to find a good deal, rather than rip you off as much as possible.

Anyway, that could be a whole weekend consuming project in itself, but my second favorite task was the trailer. My Dad and I are going to Bend this week, so the trailer needed to be cleaned. That is, after the back end had been completely rebuilt to combat rot destruction. I'll post some pictures of the trip as well as the remodel process later. It was pretty epic. There's something therapeutic about building things with your hands. I love seeing things take shape and being able to see something you constructed finally come together is one of the most rewarding experiences there is. I wish I could have helped even more with the trailer, but unfortunately I spend an inordinate amount of time tired and trying to recover from workouts rather than swinging hammers..

To summarize the weekends athletic endeavors:
FRIDAY          60 min open water swim fartlek
                         70 min run w/accelerations
SATURDAY       10k road race---33:17 1st place (I was hoping for a super-strong lead pack to try and hang with, but local races are totally hit-and miss)
                                3hr bike ride----relatively relaxed, but right after the race, and through lunch time. o boy.
                                                          Bryant threw in some tough hill repeats too.
SUNDAY               40k bike TT effort--55:04 (I'm pumped about this, it's 3:30 faster than last year, and I                              total ride-- 2:45min             had no race wheels or aero gear at all)


As all the working folks out there know, it's tough to recover from training while you are working either at the office or around the house. But stuff just needs to get done, money needs to be made.. So I'm off to bed for hopefully a 10 hour night of sleep :)