As the crank turns… tales of life on the rims

300W+Headwind+Gravel=10mph

Leland.  Meh.  The title says it all.

So....what else is new?

Raviv is off to Gila.  He's a hos.  No doubt about it.

Scott is recovering from his hernia surgery....by riding.  For some reason I feel guilty just thinking about that.

Iowa.  There was a race omnium there this last weekend.  Being Tim Speciale alma matter he saw fit to head that way and unleash the awesome.  He did OK.  Got enough points to upgrade.  He'll be a 3 now.  Raviv isn't far behind.

So Matt Cook - our red-headed 2010 version of Ryan Austin - went along with Tim to Iowa.  Now this guy has promise.  He's a 5 but carries himself on a bike with that gait of a natural rider.  He's made quick progress in a short period of time but it seems his season has been filled with lots of luck.  The bad kind.

Let's start at the beginning:  Matt, brother of someone near and dear to Speciale, was brought into the sport late last fall.  Speciale worked long and hard to cobble together a rig that Cook could throw a leg over and call his own.  The result is a hodge-podge of gear that is either completely worn out or cast aside.  Every time I get in a line behind him I am waiting for the thing to start dropping pieces.  Yet he rides it.  Hells yes.

Before Hillsboro Speciale had me order up some decent but cheap tires for Cook to get him through the season.  Because Speciale ended up on the PSIMET carbon for Hillsboro he gave Cook the opportunity to ride on his powertap.  Last minute tire and tube swap and Cook was cooking with gas.

4 miles in to the 5's race - flat.  He spent the rest of the race in the chase truck.  I felt bad for him having to go all that way down there to flat in the first 4 miles.  On the way back Speciale discovers that there is a hole in the sidewall - Cook must have put the tire lever through it mounting the tire that morning.

Flash forward to last couple of weeks.  Every ride Cook goes out on he gets a flat.  WTF!?  I am not there but keep hearing about it.  I'm starting to think I need to watch him replace a tube.  Last Tuesday he flats again.  Twice.  In the same ride.  Somethings up but I use it as an opportunity to poke fun at him.

So we go out riding Thursday.  Going into a turn - POP!  I was behind him and watched it happen.  It was an over pressurization failure - tube no longer restrained by the tire for sure.  I look it over and nothing.  I pull the tube out and it indeed has the telltale longitudinal tears but they are very small.  I am careful to keep the tire on and oriented the same as the tube so I can study the sidewall.... it's torn.....

Just then Ryan comes up and says, "hey, his brake in the rear on the right side was rubbing."  The tire has a groove worn all along it from where the brake pad had been rubbing on the tire every time he hit the brakes. *sorry Pandora just kicked in with Cake - going the distance*  This was pure ball-busting gold.  All I could think about was all of the problems he's had with flats and he never once figured out the root cause - tons of tubes, 2 tires...nothing.  It was almost like someone had asked him when the last time he changed the oil in his car and he responded with, "you have to change that?"  In the end I was just happy we found the root cause and I could be reasonably certain he wasn't going to be affect by flats like he was.

So - with everything working as it should- he set off to Iowa.  I got the following text from Speciale after the road race:

"I got nipped at the line and finished 4th...matt got hit by a f*****g..deer"

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAaaaaaaa.

an hour later I got around to asking if he was OK.  I guess I just knew he was.  I called him later in the day to get his report - "everything was going great then someone yelled 'DEER!' at the same moment I saw something big, brown and furry off to my side.  Before I knew what was going on I was on the ground.  I f'n hate deer."

"I got right back on the bike and kept racing.  I didn't really know where I was or what I was doing for about 10 minutes.  Then I dropped my chain twice and got it stuck.  Somethings up with the bike.  I need a new helmet too."

PSIMET Racing TT Victories

Congrats to PSIMET Sponsored Rider Debbie Dust for winning the Women's Open category at the John Fraser Memorial Time Trial on Sunday while riding some PSIMET 50mm carbon clinchers. not only did she win her category her second run was 3rd fastest as well. She was also the fastest woman of the day!

Her blog report is here:
http://velogoddess1.blogspot.com/2010/04/game-on.html

Results are here:
http://www.ambikerace.com/2010/resuts/JFMTTresults.pdf

Also congrats to Joe Berenyi!! His 4th place in Sunday's TT (1 day after Hillsboro) secured him the overall victory in Cat 4 for the entire series.

http://www.abdcycling.com/results/2010/indoorttseries/overall.pdf

Hillsboro Recap

....a brick...house.....

Hillsboro. That Southern Illinois early spring getaway. The land of my ancestors...OK...just my mother and her family. I have spent so many nights in hotels in Litchfield I am starting to feel like a local.

Friedman, Knoepke, Tabor and myself all headed down late on Friday. This gave us an opportunity to appreciate the Illinois scenery at dusk and early night. I have found this to be the best time to appreciate this vast expanse of corn and goodness we call home. It makes the driving...uh...yeah.

Scott had hooked us up in a place called something like, "America's Best Country Inn"-ish uh thingy. Upon arrival we were told that it would cost more....because we had 2 in each room. *wha?* The rooms themselves were interesting. Scott made sure I knew that the toilet didn't have "enough Oooomph" to "power down" any "real damage". Nice right? To top it off he placed a pleasant thought about the beds, the state of soil on the sheets and that the only people probably using them were old people.....nighty-night!

6:15 came and we made a beeline for the place:

Turns out 4 hours before a road race should be perfect timing for a meal...but I should have had something before the start.

I brought some carbon for Speciale to ride. I have been concentrating on riding my powertap, and let's face it I will learn more from that than I will benefit from the carbon at this point...which really means I am waiting for my powertap hubs to come in so that I can build some for me...err....the uh....team....demo....product... yeah.

So once we got to the race I was busy mounting tires, cassette, setting brakes, etc. Kudos to Speciale letting my mess with his setup the morning of a race. Especially since we all knew he would most likely be in contention. I may not race well, but this is my thing....and I do it well.

I got my frequent flyer card punched at the porta-pottys - I have a coffee cup made out of toilet paper as a free gift on the way. We waited....and then waited....and then waited.... I had my cat 5 moment of zen as I was called out by an official for having one of my numbers too high. Luckily Nikki Cyp re-pinned me. It TOTALLY took me back.

So...race... Epic Failure. As predicted.

The race started like a cat 5 crit. There was so much nervous energy. The pack started this death cycle between all out and all on the brakes. I know why it happens. I try to not let it bother me...just deal with it but this time it was hard. In a crit it's easier to deal with. Go outside into the wind and get up near the front. Done. In a road race....ugh. Ben Dover.

I was pegged but felt OK...kind of....I guess... I felt in control but ten out of the blue at about 9 miles in I popped. Instantly and permanently. Usually if I pop I just rapid out the back, recover for a second and then I am back on it. This time it was like slow motion. It took forever to make my way back through the pack and then they hung out in front of me like a carrot for a while. It was sooooo demoralizing.

After review - coach says the following: "The reason you were popped is because your w/kg for aerobic efforts isn't high enough. In other words, you need to lose the 10-15lbs and keep the power, or raise the power by a lot. You know this, but it will help hearing it from me." It's like telling a smoker that lighting up is going to kill him.

Soon after as I was thinking about the rest of the crappy ride to come I hear Richard Lenski come up on me. Myfirst thought was, "what the hell was he doing there?" He said he got put into a ditch early on. He's in great form and really should have been in the mix. I latched on and helped for a few seconds before I realized I was not going to even be able to help him.

I bid him luck and at that time I noticed my man Carlos Flanders - AKA- Colm Flannery walking around on the side of the road. He wrecked last year so my first thought was that he had hit the deck again. Turns out he snapped his chain. I stopped and gave him my multi-tool with a chain tool on it, and reluctantly headed off again.

Soon I ended up in a decent sized group of OTB fodder. There was a junior in there who was fairly strong but was just really doing some iffy stuff. Going to the front and then sitting. Guttering us in the crosswind, etc. finally we all yelled and got a semblance of a line going. We made decent time and before we knew it we were back in town. I was climbing the early rises fairly well - dropping a lot of our group on each one. Then we hit the feed zone and the hill after.

Time for me to lose the extra 10-15. It's killing me. My power is there but the weight has gone up. I watched the group slowly ride away from me on the climb. I got to bomb the hill and bricks at least. That's my favorite parts. I tried to break 50 but fell short. I LOVE flying into that section and block hopping (that's a new PSIMET term for taking a bunny hop that goes for a block at that speed) on to the different pavement sections.

As I came around the finish I was thinking - "30 more miles. alone...in the wind...." when I looked over and say the cat 5 and women's 4 PSIMET crew sitting in the grass enjoying the sun. No brainer. my race was over. Let's enjoy the day. I pulled off and soon saw that Lenski had pulled off as well.

I enjoyed watching everything else unfold. Joel Sprinted to a 6th place finish in the 3's - only to be disqualified for yellow line violations. Scott held his own...literally...he held in his hernia to finish respectfully. amazing really considering how dehydrated and hungry he was as well.

In the 4's finish i got to watch John Whipple win with authority. An amazing job by John for sure. He's an animal in lycra and not long for the 4's as we all knew last fall. I watched 2 others cross the line and then our own Tim Speciale. Turns out the other two were masters racers finishing up and Speciale was second on the 4's. He got a brick. PSIMET was on the podium and it was done on a set of PSIMET carbon. Nice.

Apart from my performance it was a great day for PSIMET Racing -

Cat 4 Women:
Crystal louden - 27th <- first race ever! Nice job Crystal!

Cat 5 Men:
Arron Hampton - 6th place <- Nice job Arron!
Matt Cook - flat at mile 4. "DOH!"

Cat 4 Men:
Tim Speciale - 2nd - Brick
Raviv Wolfe - 8th (was originally DNF until we caught it and went back to "protest")
Joe Berenyi - 38th
Kyle Tabor - 40th
Rob Curtis - one of the 26 DNF's ugh.

Cat 3 Men:
Scott Knoepke - 43rd

Hillsboro is coming

This weekend we will all pile into some form of combined transportation and ferry several lycra clad urban wannabes to the land of my ancestors (well....my mothers side at least). We will then attempt to prove to ourselves that we don't totally suck and all that food we ate during the Holidays has been sucessfully converted into hammers to be dropped at will as we stare at the farmlands of Southern Illinois.

Alas - it pains me to have the only real road race of size and importance at such an early time of the season. it sets such a massive tone of failure as you're decimated by the 3-4 rising stars or still peaking cyclo-crossers as their last harrah. At least this year I know I am packing a bucket of suck up front. This will be a long training ride with a bib number on and a high pace to start with. No more. No less.

It will be good to see my people again - along with the opportunity to bask in the glorious sun....before I return to the truing stand - recharged and focused.

Ah.... Hillsboro....meh.

Kenosha

Congrats go out to Tim Speciale for winning this weekend at Kenosha.  Word on the street is that Joe Berenyi opened up an opportunity allowing Tim to let it fly - in the process Joe secured 3rd!  Congrats to both Tim and Joe!  Matt Cook did a 5's thing and broke his derail hanger.  Everyone together - "awwwwwww..."

Scott K decided to recover from his wreck at last week's Kenosha race by going to Memphis and putting in something like 900 TSS in a few days.  In Scott's world that's called "recovery".

Also to sponsored rider Caley Fretz of Colorado State for his win on PSIMET wheels!

In other news we got a new kit design we might be trying out. I think it rocks!

Spring is on us. Rubber side down. Ride them like you stole them.

I can ride my bike with no handlebars

The handlebars have come off over at PSIMET central. Between getting ill, the hospital, building wheels, training, team stuff, etc....it's been interesting to say the least. During this time I was able to build up a few bikes that I would like to share. First up - Mike's new AeroCat team bike.

Before Mike's I was able to get Raviv's carbon 509 up and running.  It was an all night marathon from 7pm until 3 or 4am.  Everything from coming up with a wheel spec and building from scratch after he got there - etc.

Also - I got the rare opportunity to finally finish a build that has been in process since last year.  A long time fellow BFNIC'er contacted me about doing a full build for a custom frame she was having built.  Well...the build got drawn out a bit.  I ended up going through 3 or 4 different supplier situations in that amount of time.  The business had changed, grown, gone out on it's own, etc.  Turns out the frame is a custom Ellis.  It got delayed because it was on display at the North American Handmade Bike Show.  Ellis - although not this frame - won best in show again this year.

Impressions - Awesome rig.  Traditional.  Steel.  Smooth.  Nice touches on the details and yet not horribly bogged down in retro-ness for retro sake.  A real long term rider. PSIMET Wheels of course. Enjoy.

I still have another carbon AeroCat R509 in the shop to build up for Crystal.  It's getting some PSIEMT carbon wheels and a total Red build.  It's hot.  Real hot.

Get on your bikes and ride

So...a brief update.  I have been struggling with a bug of some sort for a long time.  This culminated in me finally missing work on Friday.  It got bad enough and I found I wasn't sleeping or eating so by Sunday I went to the immediate care - sinus infection - here's an antibiotic that doesn't work well for you.

Thanks.

Then I still felt horrible so I stayed home again on Monday.  By the end of the day I was in terrible shape and starting to get scared.  Mrs. P came home and looked in my throat and said, "get in the car."  Soon we were in the emergency room where a parade of doctors all came by and looked in my throat and said, "Oh..." 3 second diagnosis for all of them.  Tonsillar abscess(sp).  Yuck.  Big enough that my throat dangly was on the other side of my throat and I was having trouble breathing and couldn't talk.

This was followed up by an interesting procedure that I will omit the details of.  Suffice it to say I hope none of you ever have to go through it.

Needless to say I am just now starting to be coherent enough to get things done again.  Those of you waiting for quotes and correspondence - my apologies.  Keep your eyes on your mail boxes.

Some interesting upcoming posts - I got a chance to build up a handmade Custom form Ellis Cycles - winner of this year's North American Handmade Bicycle Show.  The frame I built up was one of the ones on display at the show this year.  I did the whole thing from full custom wheels to final build.  Pictures to follow.  Also built up another Aerocat team bike.  Rocking.  Really impressed by the construction.  That too ended up with full custom Psimet wheels.  With another build on tap for tonight I will be up to 4 bike builds in the last week + being sick and building as many custom wheels as I can.  Le.  Suck.

Happy spring.  Get on your bikes and ride!

Crystal’s AeroCat R509

Thanks to the fine folks at AeroCat - our new Bicycle Sponsor for the team - a new R509 showed up for Crystal.  Combined with some smoking SRAM Red and some new PSIMET 50mm Carbon Clincers I predict this rig may become the envy of the women's fields.  BB30? Check.  Tapered head tube?  Check.  Full carbon fork?  Check.  Internal routings?  Check.  Full carbon ass-kicking device?  Check.

I'll post some pictures and build info once I get it finished.  Sorry for the iPhone pic.  One of our Cat 4 killers also picked one up and is going with a similar build that is being built tonight.  Another (the aluminum version) will also be built up in the next week or so.

I said a lot has been going on.  People should know by now that PSIMET doesn't sleep.

Reluctantly crouched on the starting line

Whether I like it or not the season is upon us.  The kits are all ordered.  The team has been assembled.  Races have been registered for.  Some early season team rides have already occurred.  These should be good things.

Alas - I find myself looking at pictures from our team party last weekend and noticing only 1 thing - the thing I knew was there but was trying to sweet talk myself into thinking it would disappear....my fat.

Those of you who have been around a while know this is a perennial problem for perpetual Cat 4 racers.  Turns out when the mercury - alright alcohol, I mean let's face it thermometers haven't had mercury in them for a long time - dips below freezing and the night rides are too dangerous and too much of a hassle we tend to find solace in holiday cheer (food and booze).

Then as we emerge from our winterly slumber to once again throw a leg over our carbon and aluminum contraptions we are faced with hauling an additional uninvited guest up each hill.  We know how it happens.  We know what it takes to stop it from happening and what ti takes to remove it and yet every season it seems to be the same.

So once again I find myself sweating for hours at a time on a torture device called a trainer.  Swearing once again that I will never let myself get to this point again - and yet knowing deep inside it will most likely happen next winter.  I am putting in more hours at this time of year than I ever have thanks to my coach.  My legs are feeling like rocks - similar to how they feel mid-season and yet I am still down a bit on power.  The thought of actually completing Hillsboro and Leland is amusing to say the least.  At this point I can only hope for a few nice people to ride OTB with WHEN I get dropped.

Right now I find myself yearning for the short intensity of crit racing.  I miss the chatter, and the yelling. I miss the lively nature of the scene as everyone runs around getting ready, warming up, or standing in line for the horrid porta-potty.  I miss that uneasy tension you feel towards the end of the instructions where you start to realize that the race is on, about to start and you are questioning whether or not you are ready.

My wheel queue is stacked.  Deep.  There are 4 bikes on my list to build this week or next.  Coach has me on the highest number of hours to date.  To top it all off the weather looks like it will be good this weekend.  Hello 2010.

Congrats!

2 races. 2 victories.

Congrats to Scott on winning the second Cat 3 indoor TT in a row.

Congrats to Raviv, Arron and Joe as well for great placings!  This season is off to a killer start.

My apologies for not bloggin enough recently but the shop - IS - SWAMPED! Between trainer time and builds its amazing I sleep - oh yeah I don't.  The season is upon us.