3, west and 101

been a hectic week of sorts, so the lack of free time has cut dramatically into bloggage time.

here's the past week wrapped up -

3
- or should i say, the westlake disaster.

ok, got to admit, prior to this year, maintenance on my road bike has been somewhat non-existent. my stuff is just beat down in general to the point i am going to the point i will be needing a new road bike next year.

1 - anyhoo, got to the crit. 120 pounds of pressure in a tire does not fare well in 95 degree car. so boom goes the dynamite and my first tube of the day.

2 - new tube, pumped it up and the pressure seemed a little high. got distracted talking bike stuff, tire slipped off the bead as it wasn't seated, boom goes the dynamite again. damn.

3 - new tube from marshall. warmed up, did about 45 minutes of racing and hit one of the various ruts on the course super hard with my front and rear wheel. front wheel with the new conti wide clincher came through fine. rear wheel didn't and flatted by the first corner.

out of tubes, ticked off and i have always had a notion in my head that when you get your third flat of the day that it is divine intervention telling you not to ride any more. so i bagged it....


WEST
....and went home and packed up one of my pivot 429's to head west. i'll meet up with her in golden colorado with jonathan davis where we will head north to the pierre's hole 100. it is a new edition to the NUE 100 miler series.

25 miles loops, at high (but not stupid high) elevation, and has a lot of climbing. so, on paper, should be a good course for me - and i have always wanted to race in wyoming, so why not?

got the bike to fedex, rested and rode a few days and now....

101
headed 4 hours east to hang out with the stans gang for a bit before our early AM wake up call tomorrow for the start of the wilderness 101.

it's been a few years since i have done the 101, and i am excited to get back here to my home state and to check out the new course design that chris scott came up with. it will be to catch up with old friends and to say farewell to billy a as he heads west with bikeflights.com.

oh - and if you think i am nutty for riding 100 mile mountain bike event...

how about the burning river 100, a 100 miler RUNNING event in akron ohio. winning time last year was 15 1/2 hours. ouch. saw this event a few years back and caught up with runners at 70 miles. they were looking "slightly" rough.

and just to note - they will have 309 runners tomorrow.

either way, good luck to them and everybody else doing a 100 miler tomorrow. see you on the trails.

sologoat out

two crits

crit one - tuesday night worlds at westlake

was bound to be a fast one as panther duo andy and paul came out to dish out some pain. usual early attacks went down and i stayed back watching...

as laps dwindled down a little, i was sitting behind paul and noticed he looked twitchy just as we were about to catch a small break group. i stuck on his wheel, he ramped it up 30mph+ and immediately we had a small group of about 10'ish riders.

some were working, some were not, gap grew, gap got smaller. and then we were caught again.

so it would be a sprint. i was originally in bad position, getting boxed out early, but found my way around and wound up dead center of the pack and sprinting all out. i would get the rgf sandwhich - dave got first, i ended up second and bob wound up third.

chapel hill - thursday worlds
crazy corner course with crazy high temps. race start saw the temperature well above 90 and made the pavement seemingly slippy. i have always adjust pressure down in the tires for better grip, but never thought of doing that for a crit. got to think these things out.

45 minutes plus 5 laps.

one neutral lap, then through the start finish and i had a brilliant idea to up the pace. that was immediately countered and then it seemed like a series of fast bursts and attacks came.

i got caught out, but was in small group with two riders chasing the main pack. a lap or two chase, the gap was close but the others cracked. head down, i powered to the main group and decided i would hang out for the rest of the race. just didn't feel great and it seemed like it was a little hard to breathe.

more surges, more gaps, one grew out a little far on the last corner. bob and i almost made it, then a surge came from the main group and they were off.

goal at this point was not to get lapped, just ride steady - and so we did. most of the riders in the main group got popped off leaving jeremy, phatty and shawn up front where they would eventually finish 1/2/3.

our group got a little bigger, then some riders got popped or pulled out. i seriously thought about dropping out myself about 1/2 way through.

dan got back in after a mechanical, pulled us around for a bit and then i snuck around him just before the corner after the start/finish to get a good gap which i held onto to the end for 4th. tough day in the sun.

sologoat out

6 hours of power

last sunday brought the 6 Hours of Power in ellicottville new york. loop starts off with a climb and then is ridled with single track, short little climbs and drops and then concludes with decent on hard packed and rocky and rutty trails.

gun went off, and i made the lead 4 man break with two team riders and fellow solo competitor steevo cummings. we pegged it several times before the little turn at the climb, then they pegged it again right before the single track. with about 5 hours and 55 minutes left in the race and my heart rate at 185, i backed off and figured steevo would chase and eventually burn out with the pace and the heat.

lap 1 would have me hot on the heels of steevo and i could still see him for most of lap 2.

on lap 3, steeve kept the pace up as the temps went up and his gap grew.

on lap 4, a team rider finally caught up to me and i was passing more and more lapped traffic which was a nice break as it seemed like i had been riding by myself for a long time.

on lap 5, coming down the decent on the backside, i hit my front wheel sidewall and sealant starts squirting out. hoping that it would seal up and hold pressure, i continue on and near bite it about a minute later. i hit with some CO2 to get me through the start finish and then switch out my front wheel. steevo now has a pretty solid lead at this point.

lap 6 i decide to hold a steady pace and stay safe. all is good and i roll through the start finish with about 45-50 minutes to finish up my last lap. 3rd overall is close behind, but i hear from my pit crew that he is cramping up.

so i roll out on my 7th lap with little chance of catching steevo so i stayed safe and rolled through the techncial sections not taking any risks figuring i would up the pace if i caught site of my chaser and force him to do another lap.

with my garmin pretty much dead on tracking my overall time, by the time i reached the start of the last decent, my time was almost at 6 hours - and i would roll through the finish line a few minutes past 6 hours for 2nd overall.

sologoat out

a little late - tuesday worlds

tuesday was yet another installment of pain train fun at westlake and it was my debut of my new setup - a standard dura ace crank with new 53 tooth big ring. Crank came from one of my older Moots cross bikes running a standard crank with a single ring as the inner ring would hit the stays. In a moment of bike work geniousness, I finally figured out that most of the newer style cross bikes run compact cranks. So oddly enough, the swap of cranks between the cross and road bike worked out well - now i can run a double setup on my cross frame and then "upgrade" the road bike to a 53 to help me out a little more in the sprints and higher end speed.

first few laps went down as usual, i pulled a little after the first corner and could definitely see a difference in how the pedals were turning over and it was a lot easier to get up to speed. pulling back the gaps seemed a lot easier.

roughly half way through, i put down some efforts, some others joined in the fun and the pack was split in half. i was now in a break with about 15'ish or so riders, maybe more. it was good to shed the field, but it was too many riders.

spin and carbon seemed to be throwing a lot of attacks together, so i chased the first ones down from our pack group. after about 5 or 6 of them i decided that chasing each one down was a little ambitious, so i waited a bit.

dave and brian went, so did cameron. then i jumped. we got a gap pretty quick, we were going at pretty good speed until the closing laps. as the speed went down, so did the gap. i put down some longer pulls at higher speed, cameron returned the favor. a few turns with the guys and the gap went back up for the last lap sprint.

going into the stop sign right turn, had a little gap and i faked a seated attack - they jumped on my wheel.

we got into the straight and it spread out. i was to the left, cameron to the right - dave was behind cameron and brian behind me. at 150 meters, i jumped hard, but cameron was a little quicker - he would take the win, i would grab second, brian would grab 3rd and dave 4th.

next up - a little enduro. stay tuned.

sologoat out

chapel hill and stuff...

2011ChapelHillRace1 (4), originally uploaded by solo_goat.

this past thursday brought up the start of the 4 race chapel hill series which brought a small field in the A race as tour of the valley was starting the next day...

jeremy was there, so was bob, pete and shawn, so the pack was small but pain level was going to be surely high.

45 minutes and 5 laps, we shed a few guys here and there. twist and turns and speed were all good, everybody seemed to take a turn on dishing out some pain.

i dove into the last corners on the last lap and lead out the sprint after getting a good jump on the field. jeremy would take the win, pete took second and i came in 3rd.

another great training race topped off with a little bit of cash and free subs and cookies from subway. sweet!

saturday and sunday brought up 4+ hour hard tempo days along with a new addition...

yes, a 53 chainring is now on my bike and is officially NOT skipping.

up next, a few more training crits, an upcoming enduro and a trip out west for another 100 miler on my Pivot 429 build up.

with that, time to depart - it's tuesday worlds.

sologoat out

tuesday worlds and such..

0707_2011ride, originally uploaded by solo_goat.

another tuesday and another pain therapy session.

this time, early break went and got a good gap. worked with paul and bob to pull things back, held back a little at the end to try to reserve some pop for the inevitable 35mph paul attack but alas, didn't have the snap when he went with aussie rob.

several strong efforts were put down, and i know i took the more aggressive approach to those trying to slow the speed at the front,and a few others got up the road. sorry for any bumped elbows.

bob decided to help out a brotha' at the end and gave me a lead out, but had to battle pete in the end for his wheel - which was my "good-bye" gift to him as he departs for the west coast. (somehow things always seem better on the west coast)

bob jump at warp speed, i duked it out with pete and he would win the battle for 5th.

also - mucho thanks goes out to mr brink for allowing me to borrow that sweet Zipp front wheel.

next up, thursday night chapel race training crit - and a search for a weekend race.

sologoat out