Spring training

So, I haven’t been writing much. I’ve spent most of the spring following my three early season races working on fixing the deficiencies that became all too obvious to me and anyone that reads my race reports.
The problem that I’ve been running into is life is getting in the way of training. Having four children, a demanding job and a lot of work related travel is making it tough to have a training schedule that I can maintain. As I write this I am sitting on a plane that is taking me to the other side of the world.
The plan was for me to get up early in the morning and workout. This sounds like a great idea but execution has been hard because I’ve been getting up too late to workout, or it’s been raining so my motivation to go out is lacking (ignoring the safety concerns) and the past week has been my annual hell week for allergies, so I’ve been skipping a lot of early workouts.
I think the other factor sapping my motivation is my horrendous showing in the spring series. Last year I was generally in the middle of the pack; this year I’m fighting to not be last. The great weather over the winter raised everyone’s game. Too bad this was the year that I lost three months because I was stupid and hurt myself.
I’ve already decided that after Hyde Park and Maderia the rest of the year is going to be riding for fun and prepping for a great 2013 season. Now, if I can only make sure that I don’t embarrass myself at those races…

OSRS 3 – Harrison’s Tomb

So, leading up to the race everyone knew that the hill was going to be a deciding factor.  I’ve been working on my climbing this year, but I know that I’m not a strong climber.  I can get up the hills and I’m getting faster but race speed is a different matter.  I went into the race knowing this and planned on treating it largely as a training ride.

The turn out from 7 Hills was great.  There were 7 of us in the 4/5 group, I think 4 in the 3/4, 1 in the 1/2/3 and 2 in the 5s.  Its always good to see your teammates at a race and it works out better when everyone stays upright and/or finishes well.

I chatted with a couple of the new team members, did a little recon on the course and got ready for the race.  The weather was making it difficult to decide how to dress. Because it was threatening to rain and was in the low 50s when we started I decided to go with the arm and leg warmers. Tired, wet and cold sucks.

We lined up and I think there was a wreck coming out of the parking lot… at least thats what it sounded like with the crunching noise.  That did not bode well for the day, but heck if it puts more people behind me and no one is hurt, I’ll take any advantage

Big Dave decided to be evil this week and we came out of the neutral start immediately into the first ascent.  Warming up before hand was really important because hitting the hill cold would have been awful. I wasn’t doing awful on the climb.  I could see the group stringing out pretty bad but I wasn’t the slowest up the hill by any stretch, but I was clearly back in the pack.  The hill went on forever…. I thought it would never end.  We hit the top of the hill it flattened out and it was almost immediately into the descent. And to top it off it started raining; I was glad I was dressed warmly.

The descent was fast and into the wind.  Winding roads that are slightly slick meant needing to watch the speed.  The 3/4 group had a huge wreck on the descent on the second lap.  When I hit the bottom of the hill the first time it was time to find a group to work with.  I grabbed the wheel of a bunch of the team dayton guys but they were moving faster than I could manage.  I fell off and went into time trial mode, which seems appropriate since it was a TT course.  At this point my only goal was to not get lapped by my field.  I knew that I could maintain a pretty decent pace so I found a pace I was comfortable with.

The second time up the hill wasn’t bad and I was now playing leapfrog with a guy in Minnesota kit.  He didn’t seem to want to work with me, and it looked like I was a stronger climber so I got ahead and went.  We needed to slow on the descent because of the aforementioned wreck.  Its never good when the moto-ref is telling you to slow and the next thing you see is ambulances (plural), police cars and a fire truck.  Tons of riders on the side of the road.

I hit the bottom and went back to TT mode.   By this point the 5s had caught and passed us.  Then the stragglers were coming by.  Who do I see in their midst? The guy in the Minnesota kit.  What pissed me off was we aren’t allowed to mix fields and this guy was pacelining with the 5s.  WTF?!? I’m out here working by myself obeying the rules and this douche is cheating for like 60th place.  I mentioned to him that the refs could DQ him for that and he shrugged.  Oh, well.

Around this time it was sunny and getting warm.  The arm warmers and leggings were too much.  The only thing I could do was strip off the arm warmers.  I’m glad that I’ve practiced that.  I’ve found the trick is to use your teeth so you can keep one hand on the bars.  The rain and sweat made them a little grabby but not a big deal.

Midway through lap 3 Jenny (Bishop’s) blew past me right after the descent.  It was like 4 miles later before the rest of the women’s field came past.  It wasn’t even close with her race.  I don’t think they realized that she was that far off the front based on the brief chat we had when they went by.

Lap 4 sucked.  The hill was just painful the last time.  About half way up I saw the Minnesota guy.  He was alone and knew that he didn’t have the 5s to help him.  That was all the motivation I needed.  I gained on him the whole way up the climb. I gained ground on the descent and when he slowed at the bottom, I blew past him, hit the turn onto the TT course and kicked into gear.  I knew that we had no more climbing so at that point it was whatever pace I could manage.  It turned out to be my 2nd fastest lap.

Met my goals for the day: didn’t get lapped by my own field and didn’t finish last.  It was also a good day because the team finished without an accident.  It doesn’t get much better than that.

OSRS 2 – New Haven

I spent a lot of this week thinking about my performance last week. I was comparing last year vs this and came to a couple of conclusions. The three months of base training that I didn’t have this year vs last year made a difference. In reality I hadn’t planned on even being ready for the spring when I made my plan this year. So, I reset myself to remind myself that this is training for me not a race. That bit alone helped with the race morning jitters.

All week the weather forecast for the day was changing. It was fairly consistent that there was going to be rain but the question was how much, how long and when. Typical weather forecast. On waking it looked like it was going to be cool and wet but low chance of rain until after the race. Looking up.

The other thing that was encouraging was there were a number of riders from 7 Hills registered in my category. That might be the encouragement I need to work harder/smarter.  It turned out to be a good number of us that did show: Dave S, Bagel, Jim P, Collin, Jeremy Bishop, Scott B, Brad and Guns.  We were split between the 3/4 and 4/5 fields.  GT even showed up to give us the prerace pep talk.

Collin, Jeremy, Scott and I went out for a warm up and brief strategy session.  Nice ride and a very calming effect for me.  We lined up and had a good size field.  The race starts off and it was slower than I expected.  It seemed like we were moving along at a noodling pace, not a race pace.  I was confident that it would pick up but I wasn’t complaining.  Doug and I had a nice chat on the first leg.  Very pleasant, if not different.

We hit the first hill and there was a little yo-yo-ing going on, but not terrible.  I hit the top just a few feet off the back and caught up on the down hill.  First big challenge down.  I’m pedalling along and I notice its getting harder to keep up my speed.  In the back of my head I’m thinking “I can’t be tired already…”  When I looked down, rear tire is flat.  Race over…

Made it a whole 3.5 miles. not even 10% of the race.  It took me 4x longer to get back to my car than I was actually in the race

Shit happens.  I’m a little disappointed but at least I got to have a nice chat with the guy driving the sweep car.

OSRS 1 – Deer Creek

So, we are starting off the 2012 race season. It’s been an interesting year as you probably know if you’ve been reading my blog. Less than stellar end to 2011 season, cating up to 4s, taking up running, having knee surgery and a new baby. It’s been busy.

I spent less time training this year but I had better focus. PT for the knee has forced some new exercises that I hadn’t been doing and I think it’s been helping. Starting the day I felt physically strong but the mental aspects weren’t quite there. This was quickly shown when realized that I forgot my socks… Not a great start.

Leading up to the race it was amazing to see the number of riders preregistered for this. The weather was forecasted to be awesome early in the week and then got steadily worse as the day approached. It looked like a 50% chance of rain.

I rode up with Jeffrey and that was awesome for calming my jitters. Worked out great. We got there, got signed in and started the prerace routine. Dave S, Bagel, Shoe, Chris Muse and I were all there. We all took a little longer to get ready than planned to warmup and recon were shortened.

Finishing our warmup we got back to the parking lot and the rain found us. Luckily it was just a 5 minute cloud burst but it was enough to make the pavement and new line markings wet and the air a little heavy. Things cleared up enough that we had a nice start and no additional rain during the race (I’m still trying to figure out how Dave does that)

The fields were huge. I did find it amusing that the second year in a row there was a wreck on the lead out of the parking lot. This year it was the 1-2-3 group instead of the 5s. That was a tension breaker. We then got to hear Ron’s weekly speech about the centerline rule; oh, how I’ve missed that.

When it was finally the time for the 4-5 group we had a nice easy start. The
group was pretty reasonably paced. No big surges. You could definitely tell that there were a number of the 5s that had little to no race experience and it showed. From the demeanor of the more experienced racers you could see they were going to try to drop as many as they could to shake lose the dangerous ones.

The finish line was on the opposite side from last year, right at the top of the first incline. It’s short and then there was 500m to the finish. I ended up getting dropped the first time around after we passed the finish line. On the plus side I made it up the hill with the group but I needed too long to recover before they picked it up again.

So, I’m thinking its back to my standard individual TT style road race. I managed to catch another guy that got dropped and we agreed to work together. We were working on catching a guy ahead of us going solo and hoping two behind us caught up. The two behind caught us, so now we had four working. We worked well for a while but I got sick of a couple of them aiming for every puddle on the track and spraying me in the face. Yes, I know I needed to suck it up but I can only eat so much road grime.

They pulled ahead and I was back to my own. At about mile 20 I started getting twinges presaging cramping in my calves and by mile 25 my quads. I did my best to stretch them and back off the pace. I increased my fluid intake but it was pretty much too late. My pace backed off and it was a long 20 miles to the finish.

I looked at my performance vs last year. I did better on the hills, mostly. I didn’t stay with the group as well and my overall pace was slightly slower than last year. Over the same distance I was about 1:30 slower and overall about .7mph slower.

I’m definitely off from last year. I’m not sure how much is an off day, how much is less preparation than last year, different weather and nutrition differences. Heck, it could have been that my heard just wasn’t in it.

I hope next week is better. I definitely have things to think about with regard to my training.

–update– after results were posted I found that I was 50 of 52 finishers. Looks like >20 didn’t bother to finish which answers a question that was bothering me about my apparent miscount of the number of racers ahead of me.

PT update

It’s been a little over a week since surgery. The improvement has been dramatic.

The first couple of days were mostly on the couch with a bottle of Percocet. The swelling was pretty bad and I wasn’t really stable on my feet. I could get around a bit but didn’t want to push it. PT started less than 48 hours post surgery.

At my first PT appointment they did an assessment of my range of motion. On my good leg I can go from 0 deg to 150 deg, pretty good. On my left leg, post-surgery, I started at 5 to 94 degrees; apparently not too bad but needed work. We went through the normal get things moving routine and gave me a list of things to do at home. From there I went to see my doc and he said everything went great, two tears and some cartilage damage, all fixed.

Friday night was my last Percocet and exercises over the weekend went fine. On Sunday I moved down to one crutch and was getting around pretty good. I tried driving since I drive a standard and that was cool. Then I over did it by trying to do a shopping trip for a couple of things at Kroger. Always got to push it.

Monday was rough and started with PT at 7am. I got new exercises and the good thing is my range of motion increased to 0-103deg. Getting around at work has been good, and I’ve gotten to practice doing lots of stairs.

Wednesday things were better and I got to start PT with a quick 5 minutes on a stationary bike to warm up. It was odd for several reasons:

1. it was a recumbent
2. there was almost no resistance
3. I couldn’t establish any kind of decent cadence
4. strangest of all, my right leg was stronger than my left. That’s never been the case

I could tell that my stability was getting better. One of the exercises was standing for 30 seconds on just by bad leg. On Monday I was very wobbly. By Wednesday I was much more steady. Today is even better.

Starting yesterday I got to ditch the crutches all together as long as I wasn’t feeling pain or getting tired. I used it a bit both yesterday and today but mostly off.

Tomorrow I get my stitches out. The only thing that is really bothersome is I can’t get enough sleep because my leg is cramping from being in one position too long. Hopefully that will resolve itself pretty quickly or I’m gonna start being really grumpy.

More to come later.

2011 recap and 2012 preview

I haven’t written in a while. Things have been busy. Let’s first catch you up from the Hyde Park Blast.

My next scheduled event was the MS150 in August. I ended up squeezing on of the Mainstrasse crit series in because I was having race withdrawal. I got pulled about half way through but it was fun to race on cobbles.

So, the MS150 was why I started riding again in the first place. This was my third year riding it. Last year I trimmed a full hour off of each day riding and I was looking to improve that this year. My plan was to ride hard day 1 and be social on day 2. The day started off easy and at each of my time checks I was within 15 minutes of my target. I was riding pretty much in zone 2 and low zone 3 the whole time so I felt pretty good about it. I hit mile 60 and was getting ready to ramp the pace for the last stretch. Coming around a corner, I hit a patch of gravel. I slid but managed to stay upright through the corner. Coming out I hit the cranks to regain momentum and something bad happened. I either threw the chain trying to recover, picked up a piece of gravel, or just had bad timing on a chain catch, but the entire drive train crumbled as the chain wrapped around the rear dérailleur. It ended up destroying both front and rear dérailleurs, the chain, a bunch of spokes on the rear wheel and the cables and housings. Not a cheap fix. I knew immediately that this was an end to my weekend and most likely the season since my only other scheduled event was two weeks away. Oh, well, more time for transition.

Taking advantage of the time, I decided to end my season and move into full on off-season mode. I took up running to get a little distance from the bike and refresh myself. I’ve been wanting to get into another activity that I can do when traveling or the weather isn’t conducive to road riding or just to change it up. So I started on a easy training plan to get me to running a 10k for thanksgiving. It worked out well that I had two weeks of out of town travel so I could do something that didn’t require bike transport fees

Running was great this time. I got to the point where I could run 8.5 miles pretty quickly. No real pain to speak of and I was feeling great. I was surprised as anyone that I was actually enjoying running. Getting back from travel I found out that the Cincinnati half marathon was just a couple of weeks away. Some of my buddies thought it was totally doable.

I ended up taking 8 days off because I came back from my trip with a nasty cold that knocked me out for two days. The next run I did, I managed 6 miles without a problem. The race was 3 days away and I signed up. I thought, “I can do this, make a realistic goal and stick to it”. My target was 2:15 which seemed completely reasonable.

I felt really good during the run. I maintained a pace I could sustain and ran the entire way. At mile 12 I was felling good enough that I cranked my pace up, way up. I ended up finishing in 2:09 and change. Awesome result. After I got home I noticed a pain that I wasn’t used to. I was tired all over but hills and stairs were giving me a problem. Heck, even spinning on the bike was getting painful. After two weeks I went to an orthopedist.

Turns out that I torn the meniscus in my left knee I ended up having surgery last week and am on the mend. PT is helping but sitting all day isn’t helping the swelling. I’m going to need to change up my routine.

As for 2012, I think it’s going to be a light year. Based on when I can start training again and conflicts with home life, I’m going to miss a big part of the spring race series. I’m hoping to hit the tail end. I’ll be gearing up for the mid summer crit series for sure. I may even try to run a full marathon depending on how my recovery goes.

Overall, I’m happy with my rookie race season. I catted up before my bike and health issues so when I do start racing again it will be as a cat4. I wish the season had ended on a high note but I did manage 16 races this year and a half marathon. Not bad for a guy that just started. Can’t wait to see what happens next.

Hyde Park Blast 2011

After proving yesterday that I was able to finish a crit, I wanted to try to do better today.  The weather was perfect and I was hoping that would work for me.  When I got going I was still a little stiff from yesterday so I wanted to make sure to get in a good long warm up to loosen up.  It was on “home turf” so it was a comfortable area for me so I was able to maintain a nice easy pace to get limber.

The field was much larger than yesterday.  Madeira had less than 20 riders, Hyde Park had reached the maximum of 50 riders.  In the staging area the 7 Hills crew assembed: Darryn, Kevin, Brian, Chris and myself.  We were feeling pretty good about things.  We got to chat with one guy with a really nice Pinnarello who’s primary statement was, “I’ve never ridden in a crit, and am used to riding by myself, how does this work?”  When I am explaining the rules and finer points of racing a crit to someone, you know there is going to be trouble.

Lucky for us, they were doing call ups. As we were the first team signed up (thank you Susan) we were at the front of the pack.  From the advise I’ve gotten from various people and what I’ve read, the primary thing in one of the technical courses is to stay near the front to avoid the slinky effect. I took this advise to heart when the whistle blew.  A bunch of guys were slow clipping in and I took off.  From the get go I was out in front to hit the 180 at the end of the square first; this seemed to be key to position.  Coming out of the turn I was still in front.  So, I’m thinking to myself, “this is new, hang on and someone is going to pass you”.

I then came face to face with my old nemesis, the hill.  It was short and not steep, but that’s never stopped me from falling back in the pack.  I hit the top and I’m still out in front.  Thinking to myself “how that f*ck did that happen… okay, stick with it”.  Down Monteith, I took the left hand side of the road and cut the corner.   It was going pretty fast and shot down Erie for the line.  Passing the 7 Hills group and my family I heard the loudest group cheering out there; kind of awesome.  Then I’m hearing the announcer call out that I’m the guy in front. Awesome.

At this point, I’m recognizing that I can’t keep up this pace, but I need someone to pass.  Careful what you wish for.  I took the 180 towards the outside. This seemed to be the safest line. Remember that guy that I was explaining how a crit works? He decides to pass. I’m thinking, “okay, at least I can grab a wheel….” Yeah, that was too much to hope for.  As he’s cutting around he’s accellerating and then lost traction.  Next thing I know his bike is sliding across the pavement and directly into my line.  I slow down and dodge around it and him.  Everyone else goes to the inside and takes off.  I’ve lost most of my momentum and need to catch back up.

From there, it was the standard “Dave fell off the back and worked to catch up game”. Thanks to GT for yelling out status on what was going on each time I passed.  It helped gauge how hard to hit the hill.  I did manage to pass a couple of guys that also dropped off the back.  Unfortunately, I knew when Ron was riding up behind me on his motorcycle that it couldn’t be good.  About half way through the race I got pulled because the peloton was catching up.  I was cooked anyway.

It was nice to see Chris and Darryn in the lead group for most of the rest of the race.  I’m not sure where they ended up.

Aside from the Cat 5 race.  I missed most of the cat 4s while I was getting into a more comfortable outfit.  The Cat 3s was awesome.  And the Pro race was exciting from the start.  I cannot believe that the lead group actually lapped the field… it was pretty cool to watch.

It was a ton of fun and it was really hard.  I learned a couple of things, and that’s the important thing.  This was race #14 in 17 weeks for me and I’ve learned an immense amount.  All I have left for 2011 on my calendar is the Milford Crit in September.  I think I’m going to start working on the 2012 training plan… I have a few things I want to change with how I trained for this year.

Madeira Centennial Crit

This weekend has been out on my radar all year.  Two races in two days.  That’s a lot more effort than I normally put in and I’ve been a little stressed about it.  When I setup my training plan for the year I wanted to be at peak performance for this weekend and then again for the race weekend in September.  I’ve never been in a race with this many spectators and with races where the Pros are showing up.  It was a little stressful.

My goal was to show up around 3pm to get registered, go through my normal pre-race routine and warm up.  I was a little later than I hoped but was encouraged when I saw a couple of other 7 Hills racers there.  The temperature was good and it was a bit overcast. I got my number, registered Ripley for her first “race” and got going.  When I got back to the car and got my number pinned on, what do you know, it started to rain.  Warming up in the rain is not my favorite thing; I know all you cross racers are telling me to remember rule #5   This was a more “technical” course than I had raced before with 180 turns and a lot of corners.  Wet with railroad tracks, manhole covers, sewer grates and road lines could get a little dicey.  As we warmed up, we were picking out our lines for the corners, figuring out how to avoid the obstacles and working on the strategy.  Darryn and I agreed that aiming for spots 1 and 2 on the podium, either order, was our strategy   The good thing was the rain stopped and it started to dry out.

There were 3 7 Hills racers, Darryn, Nau and myself.  We lined up a little late and got the race started.  Being cat5s there was a bit of a delay getting clipped in and those of us that were is decent position at the start were off on the slight uphill.  Coming around the first 180 I found myself near the front (not a normal position for me).  The pace was slower than I expected and I let the others set the pace.  As the first couple of laps wore on I ended up near the back because of (1) fitness and (2) positioning in the corners.  There was a lot of passing as we hit the 180s; need to remember that for future reference.

Darryn and Nau were in the lead group.  Nau got a couple of shout outs from the announcer because of his strong position on a few of the laps. It was awesome to hear that a 7 hills rider was doing well.  At the back it was me and one rider from Team Dayton for most of the race.  We weren’t the end of the group but weren’t at the front either.  He and I had an informal working relationship.  I drafted for a couple of laps and then he would.  Positioning as we came into the last 2 laps, I did want to make sure that I didn’t let him get past; I wanted to finish in front of at least one person.

Half way through the penultimate lap the lead group passed us.  They finished up strong and we went around again to finish our laps.  I was a little disappointed that the cat4 group hit the course for warm up before we crossed the line, but its not like we were in contention.

It was awesome to watch strong finishes by 7 Hills in the Cat 4 and Cat 3 races.  It gives you something to look forward to.  Then there’s watching the pros do it… its a whole different ballgame; amazingly fast and smooth.

Overall, it was awesome to actually finish a crit.  I managed to finish every road race I was in this year but hadn’t had a lot of luck with the short, fast courses.  I’m hoping today at Hyde Park is better.  The field is going to be a lot bigger, the course is rougher, a lot more spectators and from what I’ve heard, its going to be fast.

Zeke

About 10 years ago, my wife (then girlfriend) and I adopted two cats. They have been great companions for us.  They are two of the best behaved, social, playful cats I’ve ever known.  A bonus is they are great with the kids.  They put up with lots of little hands.

A few months ago, Zeke, the older one began to have problems: he was losing weight among other difficulties.  After several trips to the vet we learned that he had a kidney stone that had destroyed one kidney and weakened function in the other.  In addition, he had a mass in his bowel that was growing.  The mass was operable, but because of his weakened kidney function he would have difficulty with the anesthetic.  It was likely that the operation would kill him. We decided against the risk.  Today was his last day.  His condition had worsened to the point where we felt euthanasia was the best option. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.  I am grateful for the compassion of the staff at the animal hospital; they made it “easier”.

The girls took it pretty hard when I brought him home afterward.  We had a nice service at a grave we prepared for him and gave them an opportunity to grieve.  Probably my least favorite parental duties.

That is all…

Tour de Cure – Indianapolis

This weekend was a fun ride.  I’ve been looking for a century to do (100 mile ride).  Last year, I did the Horsey Hundred.  It was much harder than I expected and the elevation change was significantly different from what I expected from the map.  When the opportunity to ride on the Indy 500 track came up, I thought to myself, “I have got to do this”.

I drove up to Indy on Friday evening.  The charity ride organizers arranged for a group rate at one of the downtown hotels.  I expected a clean hotel to sleep in.  I didn’t expect to get a room in a really nice hotel.  I’ve done my share of traveling for work over the years.  At one of my past employers the Ritz was a standard corporate hotel (financial services companies are like that).  This was way nicer than any room I stayed in at the Ritz. It was not what I was expecting in downtown Indianapolis; New York, LA, San Francisco, maybe but not Indy.  Too bad I was only going to be there 8 hours and 7 of those should be asleep.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a lot of sleep.  I’m not sure what it was. It could have been the climate control in the room.  It could have been the excitement about a low pressure ride the next day. It may have been being away from the family.  I’m not sure, but I was awake every hour all night. It kind of sucked.  When 5:30am rolled around, it was pretty easy to get up and out of bed.  A nice breakfast showed up at the door just after 6 and then I was off.

The drive to the track was short.  I’ve been to Indy as a spectator, but driving up into the infield and hanging out was really different for me. It was bigger inside than I remembered.  I unpacked my bike and got dressed.  This was really no different from any race weekend at this point.  I have a good routine down to make sure that I don’t forget anything.  The biggest differences were I was carrying 4 water bottles instead of 2, the number of people was significantly greater, and the participants were a much wider variety in terms of fitness (4 year olds all the way up to 80+ year olds on the widest variety of bikes ever).  Pretty typical for a charity ride.

I met up with Bagel and Brian at registration.  For the 100 mile ride, they wanted to check the reading on your bike computer to ensure that you actually completed the 100 miles.  If you finished there was a “prize”.  We then made our way to the track.  Out through the pits, through the barrier and onto the smoothest pavement ever.  It was pretty cool.  We lined up near the middle of the 100 mile group.  You looked 50-100 feet forward and there were 100s of riders, you looked back and it looked like riders stretched back all the way to turn 4.  It was the largest mass start that I’ve been a part of.  I am truly surprised that Susan and Mike found us in the mass of people.  The target kick off was 7:30… it ended up being more like 8:05 by the time it was all said and done.

Off we started.  My plan for the day was to take it easy.  I’ve been working a training plan all year and I didn’t want to over do it; I know that sounds funny for a guy getting ready to ride 100 miles.  When I left home my goals were:

1. ride solo… I can control my exertion that way
2. try to maintain a zone 2 workout for the majority of the ride. This was going to be a purely aerobic exercise and since it was flat as a pancake, it shouldn’t have been a problem
3. Go without stopping.  I brought food and water to cover the time I planned on riding.  Good test if I ever want to do RAAM
4. target pace 18mph.  This was a reasonable pace for me and should have been around 5:35 for the finish time.

Immediately the group went off fast.  Brian and Bagel joined up with a really fast lead group and I moved fast enough to get out of the mass of people and into a good position.  The first lap was significantly faster than my target pace, but you need to have a little fun.  Get everything limbered up for a couple of laps and then drop into a rhythm.

By about lap 4 I was going pretty good.  I had a nice rhythm going, I was figuring out which riders to stay away from (e.g. small children, people on beach cruisers, pace lines that looked like they didn’t know what they are doing, you the idea).  I knew my speed.  Then I hear “hey, Dave” and there are Bagel and Brian lapping me.  They got into it and every 3-4 laps they were lapping me.  That group was going really fast and most of the time Bagel was towards the front.

One thing I did notice about the track is how narrow it is.  From the stands and on TV it looks really wide.  On the track you get a feel for how small it really is.  In the corners its really clear where they drive because of the rubber and oil stains.  The pros are going around the track at 200+mph several wide in the straight aways and single file in the corners.  There is very little margin for error.  It really gives you an appreciation for how good those guys are.

At lap 20 I decided to take a break to get a refill on water and use the facilities.  (I saw one guy pull the urinate while riding trick, but I didn’t think it appropriate.)  I had just gotten off of my bike and walked over to the water jug when I heard someone yell.  I looked over and here comes the fast group (100+ strong at this point) and I see a guy go sideways, a bunch of scrambling, bikes flying, riders going down all over the place… it was mass carnage.  It looked like the first guy down got run over by a couple of people.  It was out of hand.  Luckily Bagel was in front of it and Brian was able to avoid it.  Several people had pretty bad road rash and there were a couple of pretty serious injuries from what I could see.  It was not what we needed on a charity ride.  I was glad that there were several ambulances on hand for exactly this type of thing.  They were all over the scene pretty quickly.

The 2nd half was definitely harder than the first half.  At about hour 4 the sun finally came out and unfortunately the wind picked up.  It had been pretty calm up until then.  My pace dropped off from the 19mph I had been managing.  At about lap 28 my bottom and my saddle were no longer good friends.  Laps 30-39 were pretty slow.  Around Lap 31, I saw what remained of the large group pass me by as they were finishing; and off the front by a couple hundred yards were Bagel and one other rider.  It looked like a race finish

When I passed the line for the finish of 39 I decided I was going to make lap 40 count.  4 turns left.  I punched it up a notch and went to it.  The end of it was pretty awesome.  I ended up with a final pace of 18.6 mph and was under my final estimated time.  I managed to stay in zone 1 or 2 for most of the ride.  The only goal I missed was not stopping, but I think a 6 minute break for water, watching a wreck and peeing is pretty good for a century.

If you get the opportunity, I definitely recommend it.  It was an “easy” century and also seems somewhat family friendly.