Fall Fling Overall Standings – Cat 5 – Citizens
Some discussion over at BF had me going back to the results to complile my own version of the overall scoring for the Cat 5/Citizens field for Fall Fling. I have run three scenarios with the following assumptions:
So...still too early to play numbers games...can't realy do that until after the TT. The TT will pretty much set the final standings. At that point we will know who is in and who is out of the overall as well as what is even feasible during the final crit.
Why is this important to me? Who knows. I find it immensely interesting. The tactics involved in trying to position overall are far more interesting than just going out and hammering yourself, doing poorly then sulking for the rest of the day.
I have TT experience (well 3 TT's this season). I am by far not a very good TT'r, but I look at it this way....I have gotten faster in every TT I have done. My general form is about at a peak. I have a more dialed in TT position than I have ever had before (still lacks). I will be pre-riding the TT course on Thursday night after work IN my TT setup....a first for me. It's the SHORTEST TT I have ever done. I know better how to embrace the pain that is a TT where a lot of these guys have never done it before.....
....in other words I hope to make up in experience what I lack in talent. My hope for overall was top 10. So far it looks to be something within reach.
Postponing
I have been postponing my Psimet Invitational ride report. Don't know why. Just tired I guess. It seems like a monumental task. I know it doesn't have to be, but just doesn't seem right if I don't do it up right.
So...it's coming...
Right now just trying to enjoy the winding down of the road season. Last night's group ride was fun. Colorchange attacked on a downhill before the big climbing sections. I followed mainly because any advantage I can get for climbing will help me stay even. The attack was on a long slight downhill so it didn't cost me anything energy wise to go there. I usually spend my time on and off the brakes through there anyway.
I hit the first climb behind colorchange, but he slowed at the top kind of waiting for the group. I yelled I was on him and we went. We traded on the other climbs and really pushed it for a bit once we realized we were gone. Worked it a bit like a race. Felt like it. Was fun and a nice preview for this weekend.
We ended up passing alien2 who had come out later and was riding the course backwards to find us. We slowed up for a while to let him swing around and catch up. Then we started shooting the crap about the race he did this last weekend. It's on the same course as my race on Saturday. We slowed enough that it was definitely the end of the break by the time we turned South off of the hilly leg.
I felt good. I am not in as good of form as I was a few weeks back. Little P has been sidelined with a massive fever/ear infection. Others around me have been really sick as well. I had a small fever for a little bit before the ride. I just hope I don't go into full sick mode before during or after the races this weekend. A 4 stage race split over 2 consecutive weekends at the beginning of fall gives you tons of risk for getting sick.
In general I would be really happy with a top 10 overall for the series. That will most assuredly require a top 10 for the road race - which is double points. I don't know if I can do it, but what can I do but try. The TT and the crits don't bother me.
The TT is 10 miles. It will take at least a 25mph TT to take the top spot I am guessing. I don't have that in me, but I have done some near 23 mph ones...I might be able to do a 24 mph one if the wind cooperates and if I can borrow some Zipps (last TT I did a borderline 23 in the pouring rain with regular box section wheels on. Sat up in every turn and slowed to a crawl to stay upright....and it was 24-ish miles long).
The crits are like 8 miles long unless they make a last minute change. It will take like 15-20 minutes. I can ride at killer speeds for that amount of time. MJH2 has already decided to try to make it fun, and I am with him...especially if I screw the road race the day before.
I won't win anything (especially if I think this way). I might have a chance if it comes down to a sprint and I am in position, but the odds of that are pretty slim. I also think it there won't be a ton of riders doing all 4 events so that may give me a slight advantage.
Like I said....I would be extremely happy with a top 10.
...then it's on to learning how to cross race. This would be the equivalent of a runner trying to learn how to swin in order to do "try"-athlons. Knobbies and mud....ewww. So NOT me, but they are still mostly road bikes and the bikes look HAWT.
Besides...Carpentersville will have beer this year.....
Hardware
I scored some hardware at today's epic TT. I didn't ride as well as I could have, but I did a good job I believe. I came in 3rd out of 4 in the 30+ category. 1:04:48 seconds for 23.75 miles - about 22mph average.
I say epic because it was a downpour for the whole route. I couldn't see anything through my glasses so I rode looking over them. If I had my head up the rain was so heavy it would sting my eyes.
Standing there getting drenched while in the start house I looked around at a few of the other guys and just had to say it, "you know...we're some pretty messed up guys for coming out here in the rain to put ourselves through the torture that is a TT. We could all be in bed or eating a nice breakfast. We're idiots." I got the obligatory laugh or two, but everyone was thinking, "you wussy. I do it so that I can kick bike weenie ass. Get in line for your ass kickin you weenie."
"30 seconds"
I noticed that my heart rate goes from 50-60 just standing around to in the mid 90s when I get into the start house. Crazy. You want to pee, crap yourself, throw-up, fall over into a fetal position, etc. You know the pain that is coming and you know the little guy with the clipboard isn't going to save you or make the pain stop. He's going to enjoy every minute of it.
"Rider ready. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, GO!"
I don't care how much you warm up, if you are not feeling like you just got hit by a Mack truck within the first 30 seconds to a minut of a TT then you're doing it wrong.
Pain is like crack. Beating someone is like heroin.
I wasn't expecting much and did nothing to prepare for this other than switch my bike over. I think I did OK. This is the first piece of hardware I have ever received from a competitive cycling event. Sure it's no big deal and doesn't mean anything with such a small field on such a crappy day, but it's a medal. I will take it.
Colorchange pulled a 1:00:03<--missed the hour by 3 seconds. Awesome job. He pulled first place in Cat 5. Alien2 was there to finish the series. He placed 2nd overall in the series as well as second today. This is in Cat 3. He's a fast dude. It shows on Tuesday nights. He did the route in something like 56 or 58 minutes. Hella-fast.
Fall fling is coming and I am hoping I can do good things there. The TT is half the distance so I will need to really hammer it out in order to be able to do anything.
Pain Cave Part 2
So...there we are on the second leg of the first loop. I'm feeling the burn. I'm also feeling something else. I had a chance to ride the TT setup for about 20 miles before the actual event. Not really enough to perfectly dial it in. During the event I was actually cranking about 10 rpm higher than what I did during my trial.
10rpm doesn't seem like much to most people, but when it comes to bike fit for me it appears as though it is the difference between staying in place on a slightly down tilted nose saddle or sliding forward. Apparently I was going to be doomed to sliding forward for the rest of the event.
As some of you no doubt know it really sucks to end up having something small wrong when you are in a race. During a century ride or group ride you have the option of just pulling over and fixing it quickly. During an event that would mean your event is over. So I just had to deal with it. To top it off the extreme position also allowed me to remember that losing feeling in certain areas is a sensation that I do not enjoy.
So we were making good time on good pavement, but I was starting to get uncomfortable and we had a long race still left. We turned on to leg 3 and there was a pretty wicked wind - mostly cross wind I believe. The helmet and speed were making it hard for me to really tell which way the wind was coming from. I just knew it hurt.
There were a couple of rollers and it was along this leg that we were finally passed by alien2. "Hey psimet." Thanks....I appreciate that. One thing to pass me on a TT, but it's another to do it fast enough that I had to look quickly to see who it was as well as to do it with enough wind in your chest to yell hello. Like it's just a Sunday ride - well...I guess it technically was.
This was my, "here have this set of panties" moment for this TT.
From there we hit the home stretch of the first loop. Dead on headwind from hell. We dropped a lot off of our speed. We were still struggling along right at 20 (seriously....I love that I was thinking of 20 as being slow regardless of the headwind). I was looking down at the Garmin and thinking, "Oh crap. This isn't going to work. I hope everyone else is suffering this bad."
It was around here that the 1 minute pulls started to disappear. I was too busy suffering to look at the clock, and I am a wheel sucker by nature. It just so happens it was around here that aham says he feels like he kind of hit a rhythm. Coincidence?
Rounding the corner of the start house and knowing you were just about to start all of this over again was just....well....demoralizing. I was hurting on leg 1 of the second lap for sure. By the time we hit leg 2 I was losing it. We were still doing OK, but then I just cracked. I sat up and yelled at aham that I needed to get some food in me or something. He sat up and tried to get a gel in as well.
By the time we hit the third leg I was feeling better, but the little rollers were enough to keep me just beghind aham's wheel trying to hold on. Turning the last corner I was feeling burned, but good. I was definitely getting a saddle sore the size of Texas, but I knew we only had about 2-3 miles left. When we rounded it there were a few groups in front of us. We had passed a few groups during the rest of the race, but not many. This represented an opportunity to lay some hurt on someone else. If aham wasn't going to take on the chase I was definitely going to.
Well...great minds think alinke. He just poured it on until we dropped their butts....even though they were definitely in the "masters" cats we toasted them (they were old). Once the passes were done aham swung off. I could see the finish line in the distance and really realized I had some serious juice left.
I then proceeded to blow aham off the back. News flash here folks...It's a TTT - Team Time Trial. That means it doesn't matter if I sprinted to the line or not - it was the finishing time of the second team member who set the time for the ride. I sat up and he grabbed on. We both sprinted for the line - simultaneously realizing that was most likely the hardest thing either of us had done on a bike - speed wise.
We hung around for a bit - traded impressions of what happened, etc. then hit the car for the ride home.
I just pulled the results from the site and now know this:
We placed 32 out of 51 teams. We came in last in our cat. We beat the following: 1 cat 1/2 team (they must have had a mechanical), 1 masters30+ from ABD, 1 Masters 40+ from Team Mack, 2 Masters 50 + from Vision Quest and Velo Roubaix, 1 Masters 60+ from Vision Quest, 5 other Masters teams - getting older, 1 set of juniors - extrapolating their data for 2 laps, and all 6 women's teams including their fastest team.
Stats:
1:24:23 for 31.16 miles = 22.26mph average.
Pain Cave
1:23 minutes of acid churning pain. It was a blast.
I picked up aham Sunday morning for the Team Time Trial put on by ABR out in Herscher, IL just West of Kankakee. It's good times just to be hanging with someone like aham on a nice mroning on the way to go ride bikes.
On the trip we discussed my mistakes with inadequate warmup before events. When we got there it was about what I expected to see....a superhero convention in the middle of a small town surrounded by corn fields.
We were outgunned and knew it, but we brought our biggest cans of whoop-ass and decided to give it the old college try. I hit the trainer and tried to work up a sweat. aham hit the road with my set of wheels on his rig (a way to try to lighten his gear a bit).
With some flotbots playing from starship psimet I tried to put on my "race face" - which BTW kind of resembles my "I have to take a big crap" face. "Must beat SOMEONE! Must beat SOMEONE! Must beat SOMEONE!" became my mantra.
Point of note here. This would be my second TT ever. The first was early this spring when I slapped on some clip-ons on to my road rig and went for a ride. I was decimated. I beat one guy in the 60+ category and at least one "Junior" under 16 racer. That was it. They might as well have handed me a pair of panties at registration with my number and said, "just put these on instead. It will save us all a lot of time and effort and the result will be the same."
I needed blood.
aham and I rode a small section off course in a last minute prep then took our place in staging. Staging is fun...NOT! It's not like other races where you line up, milling around, getting a little nervous then get a 2 second speach and you're off. No...instead TT staging is where you get to line up and listen to "high-tech" timing devices make beeps and count down every 30 seconds or so. It SOOOOOOO adds to the drama.
To top things off we have a set of juniors going off in front of us (3 spots - 3 minutes). I looked at aham and told him I felt like saying, "good luck. You better not beat me or I'll kick your ass after this is done" to them, but alas there were other supervising adults present.
Even better one of our Tuesday Night Group Ride resident aliens was lined up in a team about 6 back from us. UGHHHH!!!!
Alien2: "Hey psimet!"
psimet: "Hey alien2. So how far are you back from us?"
Alien2: "6 minutes."
psimet: "Oh....so we should expect to see you somewhere around 12 minutes in? You'll be going twice as fast right?"
Alien2: "HAHAHAHAHAHA...yeah...right....well....maybe. 
"
psimet:
Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep, Booooooo
Whooosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh......
Every minute another set of ridicuously expensive carbon wheels went whooshing off the line.
"Riders 9:19!"
A couple of "bent racers". Really freaky fast on the ground recumbent bicycles with more carbon and technology on them than on a top end race car.
Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep, Booooooo
Whooosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh......
"Riders 9:20!"
A couple of dudes messing with a last minute bike problem. I'm resisting my urge to help out last minute knowing it will throw off my mo-jo.
"Just a brake problem. I don't need those anyway. Hahahahahah."
I feel like I want to vomit.
Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep, Booooooo
Whooosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh......
"Riders 9:21! OK Good...team psimet and aham? Good. OK you will hear a first beep at 30 seconds. The next series will be for the last 5 seconds. Go on the long tone. You have 2 laps. 50k total. Come by this start house to begin the second lap. Watch for riders. Finish in the <30> straight behind us. just keep going straight - don't take the turn the second time. Number? Good. Have fun guys."
Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep, Booooooo
Whooosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh......
......pain.
I had put a flimsy "gameplan" in place with aham at the start. i told him I always get pumped up at the start of stuff and will go out harder than I would like. Without being warmed up I tend to go hard until I pop and then recover for a bit until I hit my stride so to speak. I did just that.
aham was looking like he was already hurting. I was gapping him when coming to the front to pull. I would sit up to slow down and he would rocket past me putting himself right back in front. Result was that neither of us got a good break for a few minutes. Then we settled into a 1 minute rotation.
We passed the juniors near the end of the first leg of the first lap. YAY!!! 1 mental victory achieved. I knew we were going to get passed soon and often. I don't think aham was ready for how soon or often. There were some beasts out there. I think we were 2-3 teams down just on the first leg.
Second leg was a fast one. I was able to get in position and make the equipment work the way it was supposed to. I kept seeing 25-26mph when I was looking down. aham and I were hoping to finish with 23 for the run.
gotta get home...I'll finish this later....
Holy Crap
This...
...is a fast fricking setup. I rode it today without the Zipps and even though I still need some tweaking I beat my PR for a 30k TT....without actually attempting to. I was just kind of riding along...
I hereby dub this configuration of the Giant as ..."Yo-mama."
Try to pass it and you might actually hear it say, "yo-mama!"
It is squirrelly though. I took the track crossing on Highland and just about dumped it. Seriously. I did what I alwasy do as I am going down - tense up and start saying "OOoooooo." I ended up keeping it rubber side down, but I really don't know how.
I got back and found out that little number knocked the wheel out of true..and it had been rubbing the brake.
I told you…I’m Batman
Before:
Elapsed time = 1.5 hrs - I had to do a fitting. as well.
Not bad for having raced in two race today either.
I told you....I'm Batman.
Lots of racing
Elgin crit is on Sunday. There's a 2-man TT I'm doing with aham on the following Sunday. In between the two I have the following:
- Train all operators and managers in a new Lean visual board system
- Set up a Kaizen event for the following week
- Travel to DC for SPC software training from Tuesday-Friday
- Set up my road bike to a full TT setup...for the first time including new brakes, shifters, bars, etc.
- Validate the setup will work
- Be a father and husband on Saturday before the TT while my wife is at work (no ride on the TT setup)
- Lace 2 wheels, tension, true, validate 4 of them.
Traveling the week before a race will suck. I hate business travel. It's extremely painful mentally anymore and it is a assured way to gain weight and lose fitness. To top it off my flight back is at 5:30 out of DC Dulles to Chicago O'Hare on a Friday afternoon..... = No frigging chance of being even remotely on-time.
I'm starting to wonder when I am going to get any of this stuff done. I was trying to commute, but even that has become hard to do with timing.
Perfect storm - family, work, riding. I am virtually a ghost on BF and basically have resorted to using this blog as my main outlet for now basically because I don't feel the need to check for updates every 5 minutes.
If I have time later today I'll update with a picture of some new toys for the TT, impressions of the Elgin Crit course, and thoughts about the fact that Sunday looks to be the hottest day of the year. Boo.