Month: March 2008

We woke up at 6:30 to head out for our first, and last, race of the WWU/UW omnium. No snow today!! First off were the D men, followed by the C men. Next were the B women, then the B men. Then the A women, and finally us–at 1:30. There was a lot of waiting around. During which I took 3.5 poops!!

As for the results, not including the A men’s race, Lisa Turnbull won the A women’s field (big surprise!). Lary took 4th in the D men’ crit, Andrew took 11th in the B men’s race, and Karey took 11th in the Women’s B field. Most of the rest of the team placed top 20 in their races. So this week wasn’t a great success. Tony, who couldn’t make the collegiate race this weekend but raced Piece of Cake road race, took first in the cat 4s.

Back to the parking lot in Seattle:
After completing my fourth trip to the bathroom, I suited up and began the long process of warming up before a crit. I began with about an hour on the trainer, followed that with some honey and stretching, then more trainer, and finally topped it off with more honey. I was feeling pretty good, but not great. It’s been about 4 weeks since I’ve felt great.

The women’s A race had just ended when I took my bike off the trainer and discovered that I had a rear flat. Takuya lent me his spare wheel (thanks T) and I rolled up to the start line. This is the third time in 7 races that I haven’t had any power data because I have gotten flats before or during the race. So, according to Ivar, because there was no power data, this race was a waste of time and there really was no point in doing it. Ivar also had no power data because he deleted his CPU right after his race on accident. HA.

The first 10 minutes of the hour long crit were fast. David, Peter, and I attacked a lot but nothing that we were involved in stayed away permanently. After 10 or 15 minutes, a UW guy got away and stayed away by himself for the rest of the race. Wow.

I attacked a number of times throughout the race but I didn’t have the oomf in my legs to keep cranking out the watts after the initial sprint. I guess that will come a bit later in the spring/summer for me. I feel like a have great endurance, but the power and ability to recover quickly from a hard effort just isn’t in me yet.

The end was approaching quickly, and no one seemed to be able to get away on the hilly course. But with 3 or 4 laps to go, Peter and 2 other guys broke off and stayed away. Peter took 4th. Not too bad considering this was his 3rd race in 2 years.

By the last lap, there wasn’t much of a pack left. These collegiate races aren’t as big as OBRA events, so there are no fields of 50+ riders. We started out with about 30 or so, and after a number of people had dropped out, there were probably only 15 left in the peloton by the end. I was sitting at the back of the pack coming down the final hill of the last lap, and I jumped on the back wheel of an OSU guy as he made his way to the front. He stopped short though, and so did I. My legs were feeling decent enough by then because I hadn’t attacked for at least 3 laps, so I made a split decision and decided to go for the finish line at the bottom of the hill–which was probably a bit too early. The hill starts out “steep” (but not very steep) and flattens out a bit and curves around to the finish with only a slight uphill grade. I just barely held off Adam Cadez, from Idaho, and took first in the pack sprint and 5th overall. I wasn’t pleased with the place I got, but wasn’t super upset either.

The rest of the team was eager to get home to watch TV, so I didn’t get a very good cool down in before the 6 hour van ride back home to Eugene. The highlight of the van ride home was chasing Ivar with a stick in a Safeway parking lot during one of our rest stops. And also telling mom jokes over the van radios. And I can’t forget the amazing discussion our van had about the possible solutions to the energy crisis/global warming/overpopulation. David had the best idea: fiber optic cables supported by a new kind of carbon fiber that would go all the way up into space and to the moon, where solar panels would collect the sun’s energy.

It was a hell of a lot of driving for a 60 minute crit. But it was a fun trip and everyone kept a positive attitude despite the god damn snow that fucked everything up. God damn it. Well….maybe I didn’t keep a positive attitude.

After a long drive up to Bellingham Washington in a cramped van with the UO collegiate team, I finally arrived at our host house. On the ride up, I had consumed about 4 pounds of pasta, shrimp, and sausage. It was a fine meal. And it did not improve the smell inside the van. Ever since Tuesday, I had been stocking my stomach full of bean burritos and chile. The gas had been building up to dangerous pressure. And it decided to come out during the van ride. My teammates spent the majority of the 8 hour ride with their heads out thew window, gasping for fresh air.

We got to sleep at around 10:30, and woke up the next morning at 6 to a snow covered ground. It began to snow harder and harder as we drove out to the TTT course. Our van (which included Ivar, Karey, Takuya, David H, and Dereck) was getting pumped up with a little Rob Zombie when we got a call from our team coordinator, Adam, that the TTT was cancelled due to snow. I was pissed. When was I ever going to have another opportunity to do a TTT in the snow?

The van headed back to the host house where we slept for another couple hours, waiting to here if the RR was going to be cancelled as well. Mike and I listened to Flight of the Concords–The Humans Are Dead–while wrestling with a German Shepard named Citrus. Our worries were forgotten briefly, then we heard more bad news. The road race was cancelled too. I was pissed.

We headed south to Seattle; and on the ride down I ate an old meatball sandwich that I really hope won’t give me troubles tomorrow during the crit. We got to our next host house and threw our stuff out of the vans and eagerly hopped on our bikes to let out some steam. The most eventful event that occurred during the ride was a train wreck that happened right on the bike path. We were riding among some trolly tracks that went through the street when Andrew rode by Will and I proclaiming that he “was a train.” “Chuga chuga choot chooooooot,” were his last words before he plastered himself across pavement. After we saw that he was alright–except for a torn bib and road rash–Will and I burst into laughter.

I just finished dinner and am sitting in front of an EXTREMELY boring basketball game, sampling some Japanese candy that Takuya just brought back from home. More food has just been brought out. Time to go.

I cautiously peaked out of the window yesterday morning, hoping that the sound of rain falling from the sky onto the roof and blasting sideways against the window was just a figment of my imagination. But no. It was not. Instead of riding outside, my dad and I went over to the YMCA and rode on the spin bikes. I thought that taking the day easy–instead of doing hill intervals, which was what was scheduled–would benefit my race the next day on Saturday. But it turned out that it would not even matter.

I rode for an easy 3 hours today. Average heart rate at about 130. The weather was all over the place, early this morning it was so frosty it looked like snow (I didn’t get up early, I just got a glimpse of it through the sleep in my eyes as I stumbled to a from the bathroom). Anyways, I went out riding in the early afternoon when I saw that it was sunny, although still cold. I stayed in the hills all day and experienced heavy, big drops of cold rain, hail, very light snow, extreme wind, and sun. I was tired today from yesterday, and surprisingly close to bonking by the time I got home. I hadn’t brought very much food and if I had made it a four hour ride instead of 3, I think the last half hour would have really sucked.

One other thing that has been sucking is that my left ipod earbud keeps falling out. I think it has to do something with a nagging ear infection that I’ve been fighting since September. When the race season ended last year with the Eugene Celebration SR, I noticed a slight itch in my right ear. That itch turned into a burning sensation that would wake me up at night. It oozed fluid and built up large quantities of wax. I finally did something about it in late January. The first doctor I went to said it wasn’t an ear infection, and told me that the only thing wrong with it was all the wax. He had a nurse irrigate it and he said it would be fine. It was not fine. Two days later, it started acting up again. About two weeks later, it got so bad that the built-up pressure forced me to down about 6 ibuprofen. The next day I went into the university health care center and the doctor there gave me some antibiotics saying, “Wow, you certainly do have an ear infection.” I cursed the other doctor under my breath. Freakin idiot.

It was 10 days later and I thought my ear itching days were over, but when the later doctor stuck the ear microscope thing in my right ear to examine the infection, she swapped it over into my left ear to see if ol’ lefty was infected as well. He was not…at the time. But I’m guessing that when she put the scope into my left ear, she transferred the infection over into it. So by day 11 the left ear was burning with a passion just like the right one had been for half a year. Now I have no infection in my right ear, but my left ear definitely has something growing in it–and it seems to be swollen, which causes my ipod earbud to spit out on rides. Is it too much to ask for at least a month of clean and uninfected ears!!??

First ride: 1.5 hours easy this morning. Feeling good, I averaged about 250 watts in the hilly country roads of sherwood. I got home just before it began to pour.

Second ride:

About four hours later at 3:30, I headed out on the hard ride. It had been raining hard for most of the day, but luckily it stopped about 30 minutes before I headed out. After 45 minutes of warm up, the pain began. The scheduled intervals were supposed to be 2X 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 minutes in the 39×15 at 24mph. They are painful, but today they weren’t going to work out. The wind was too strong, so I decided to just do a lot of all-out intervals. About an hour later, I was done. And could feel it in my legs.

After the intervals, I headed over to the hills for some hill repeats. After those, I could really feel it in my legs. The workout wasn’t over then though. I had about 1.5 more hours of easyish hills. At around 7PM it began to snow, and The Final Countdown started playing on my ipod. It was time to hammer again. I got home at around 8 and ate a huge bowl of chili, rice, and steak. Total ride time today: 6+ hours.

This is the second day of spring break–and a rest day for me. So I went on an easy ride up in Sherwood. It was gray and cold out. I got a flat. I didn’t have my bike bag with me because my brother, Galen, took it off my saddle and put it on his during his ride earlier today. I called him up and he and his girlfriend drove out to me on the backside of Parret Mountain and dropped my bike bag off and fixed the flat tire. I didn’t mind too much because it wasn’t raining, and I couldn’t be mad because Galen spent all day Saturday helping out with the UO/OSU road race and time trial. I know this is pretty riveting stuff and I hate to leave you on such a cliff hanger. Don’t worry, more is on the way…