So How Am I Doing So Far?

It's early in the season and I've done several road races (no crits - at least, not yet!), with some mixed results, which is to be expected. And, this is probably a good time to assess how my climbing program is going, since *that* is certainly my greatest weakness as a cyclist.

Well, my very first road race, the Cantua Creek RR, was a resounding success, IMHO - I didn't quite make the top 10 (the current results show 22nd, but they made a mistake that has not yet been corrected - I will ultimately end up with 13th, and my friend, Gary Griffin, will be placed 14th instead of 13th, since I beat him by half a tire width - see my full race report right here). I was especially pleased with this first road race of the season, as I fully expected to finish AFTER Gary, who is a much better climber than me, by far - and yet, I somehow managed to actually beat him, albeit by the slightest of margins - and it wasn't on a course that really favored hill climbers, like Gary - it favored people like me, who can sprint pretty good up a relatively short climb - if that race had continued on for another 1/2 mile uphill or more, I'm sure Gary would have easily beaten me into submission at the end... :)

Then, my second road race, the Snelling RR, was a full-blown disaster - and to make things even worse, it was my very first race with my new team, Bicycle Trip! Not exactly how I hoped to start out my racing career with them! You can see the gory details of this disaster here, assuming you like to read stories that make you feel a whole lot better about yourself, as you compare your life to the sorry life of the story's author! However, in my defense for that particular race, it was a really nasty day, with horrendous headwinds - and I had been snookered (is that a word?) into doing the Masters 45+ open race with my new teammate, Dennis Pedersen... :)

Well, I didn't really get snookered - I actually thought that a Masters 45+ open road race would unfold like all the other road races I had done this year and last year - but *those* road races were with the Masters 45+ 4/5 group - and it turns out that the 45+ open category for Masters is a totally different beast than the 45+ 4/5 races - so now I know! Needless to say, I was completely unprepared for what happened at Snelling, so I suppose you can say I'm allowed to make one terrible mistake this year - you really have to choose your races wisely, which is pretty obvious, really!

My third road race this year, the Merco Credit Union Foothills RR, was interesting - I was actually racing the regular Cat 4 race with another new teammate on Bicycle Trip, Bryan King. It turns out this was the only race I could get into - the category I might have normally signed up for (Masters 35+ 4/5) was all filled up, unfortunately. I was a little bit leary about this race, since the regular Cat 4 group is primarily a bunch of kids - like Bryan - guys in their 20s and 30s, mostly - so I was about twice as old as the average kid (and I *do* mean "kid") in that race.

But - unlike the Masters 45+ open group, the regular Cat 4 group has *only* Cat 4 racers - no Cat 1, 2, and 3 guys, like you see in the Masters 45+ open races. So, I thought I had a fighting chance in the Merco race, and the distance was only about 50 miles, much like the road races I normally do with the Masters 45+ 4/5 group.

And, it turns out I was doing just fine in that race - except Bryan and I *both* got caught behind a crash just 2 miles from the end of the race - darn! - and ended up finishing the race, but way down towards the bottom of the list - and we both thought we had excellent chances of placing in the top 10 in that race - Bryan for sure, and me, quite likely - I guess we won't get a chance to find out until next year! If you need to see the longer story, check out my race report here.

My last race for this year, at this point, was just an unsanctioned time trial - the first Swanton Road TT, where I was doing okay for the first half, but got a terrible cramp in my right calf muscle after I did the turnaround, and had to pedal relatively easily for the return leg of that TT - ending up with an okay time, especially considering the strong winds we had to deal with, but at least 1.5 minutes slower than I might have done if I had been able to push as hard coming back as I did going out. My average heartrate going out was about 161 bpm, but it dropped down into the 152 bpm range for its average coming back on the course - and we had a nice tailwind coming back, too! Oh, well - I take solace in the fact that my "adjusted" time would have been reasonable for this time of year!

So how does it all add up? Overall, I'm relatively pleased - my climbing is not quite where I'd like it to be - but it's much better than a few months ago - and my weight has barely dropped down (I was supposed to have lost 20 pounds by now, but it's been more like 2 pounds!) - I figure if I can lose the weight I should have lost by now, my climbing would be good enough to entertain new PBs, left and right!

So my new short-term goal for the next 60 days is to get that weight down while I continue to improve my climbing. Working with Team Bicycle Trip, doing their weekly hill repeats (every Saturday morning and again on Wednesday afternoon) has certainly paid off for me - and I haven't even been as diligent as I could be! Imagine where I'd be if I was more consistent!

Okay - it's time to stop and start now, as in STOP blogging, STOP eating, and START riding more and START doing more hill repeats... :)

Memorial Ride for Kristy and Matt

Last Saturday afternoon (March 15), I decided to go out to do the memorial ride for Kristy Gough and Matt Pederson, who were the 2 cyclists killed on Sunday (March 9) on Stevens Canyon Rd.

It was amazing - there were hundreds of cyclists - maybe even more than a thousand - that all congregated at Foothill College on El Monte Rd today, starting about 2:30 pm. The ride was scheduled to leave at 3:00 pm, heading down El Monte to Foothill, then following Foothill until it became Stevens Canyon, then end up at the memorial site where the accident happened. After the memorial, the entire group of cyclists would then return on the same route back to Foothill College.

The Channel 7 News team was there (maybe Channel 2, also - but I only saw Channel 7) - they were filming everything and doing some interviews with different cyclists. I also saw a helicopter hovering above - I'm not sure, but it might have been a news helicopter, just getting some aerial shots.

The Third Pillar Racing and Roaring Mouse Cycling teams left promptly at 3:00 pm, leading out a very slow procession of cyclists, with the Sheriff's office helping to providing traffic control all the way to the memorial site on Stevens Canyon Rd. You could see that all the people from the Sheriff's office that were present were very respectful and truly felt bad about what had happened last Sunday.

It was an amazing site seeing the hundreds of cyclists covering half of Foothill Blvd and then Stevens Canyon Rd as we headed out to the memorial site. We were allowed to totally take over the slow lane all along the route. When we got to the top of the small hill on Stevens Canyon Rd (just a short distance before the place where the accident happened), they had closed the road completely to allow all the cyclists to come to a stop at the memorial site.

Most of us were wearing small patches that had been handed out to us in the parking lot of Foothill College before the ride started.

Also, a lot of people were handed roses, including myself - and those with flowers - or anything else they might have brought with them - were allowed to come up to the memorial site and place their flower (or whatever memento they had) down on the site. It was a very moving experience - and it was generally very quiet as people moved slowly past the memorial site.

The saddest part was hearing Kristy's mom, who was crying uncontrollably for quite a long time. I only knew it was her because someone that knew Kristy's mom pointed her out to me.

Ride safe, everyone...