Monday, June 20, 2011

My Kind of race

I wish it hadn't taken me so long to do one of these, I suppose South Mountain was similar, but really doesn't compare.  I drove up to very upstate New York on Friday afternoon with Mo and we ended up spending a little time waiting for someone to bring us some diesel...  But we didn't get in a ride that evening like we planned though we did have some nice trout (supposedly caught from the river behind the restaurant...)

The next morning we got up and went for one of the slowest rides of my life, just lolly-gagging around and watching the hordes of triathletes pass us.  Apparently it is a big practice weekend for the Lake Placid Ironman coming up in a couple weeks.  So the geek factor was extremely high.  The poor quality of this photo is also in the extreme range but off in the distance covered with clouds is Whiteface Mountain, the hill we'd climb later that evening along with several hundred other nuts.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing, had an incredible lunch at the Chair 6 in Lake Placid, a little house that happens to house a really skilled chef whose lunch prices are not out of reach though dinner might be.  After we picked up our packets we relaxed a bit more and then strolled over to warm up.  And by stroll I mean rode slowly.  I did a bit of warming up, maybe rode the first half mile or mile with some guy that talked a lot about how he'd ridden the thing more than anyone alive.  Interesting.

We start in age group waves, sort of random, women and tandems first, then 20-29 and 60-69 started five minutes later.  Then us 30-39 year-olds started up the road.

True to what I've heard, in many ways the first two and a half miles are probably the hardest in terms of grade as they have (I thought) a couple steeper sections.  But in general, this thing just goes up at a steady 8-9% for the entire 8 miles.  A group of three guys shot off the front and I was trying to be conservative so I didn't chase.  I sat around with a group of guys for maybe less than a minute before it was clear that they weren't going to be getting up the road too well and so I moved on with one guy for company.  he was pretty quickly shed though.

So for a long time I watched the three guys pulling away slowly but just tried to keep my heart rate from going too far north of 180, not really wanting to blow up but also wondering if I couldn't sustain 185+ for the entire thing.

But I loved it, just grinding away, trying to change gears every so often and taking advantage of slight changes in grade to pick up some speed.  It was also nice to be passing people the entire time as the waves in front of us started coming back.  I started to see one of my age group foes fall off the wheel of the two guys in front and he slowly came back over the course of mile 2.5-3.5 until I caught him.  I briefly sat on his wheel figuring I would give myself a little rest, but it seemed better to just keep up my own pace so I moved on in search of the other two guys.  I thought I could still see one of them so I just kept my eyes focused on that red jersey off in the distance.

The gap slowly came down over the course of about two miles and not too long before 6.5 or 7 I caught up to him and did the same thing, sat on his wheel briefly and then tried to move on.  I even tried to pick it up a little bit as I didn't want him to sit on my wheel and then muster the energy to beat me to the finish but he hung on pretty well.  So we rode together for a bit, then just after mile 7 we hit the short bench that is pretty flat.  I actually got into the big ring and really tried to push, hitting maybe 23 mph after quite a long time doing 8-9mph.  The guy in the red jersey stayed right there and the road started to kick up again before the last switchback to the top.

Then, suddenly he was gone and I was on my own.  I couldn't see the other guy from our age group (and the people were getting pretty scarce at this point) but there was a guy in front of me that I wasn't sure about so I set about chasing him but wasn't really sure I could get him.  I thought the finish was at the castle thingy but it actually was quite a ways before, catching me a little by surprise.  I tried to "sprint" through the line but it was rather pitiful.  There were a lot of people up there cheering and ringing cowbells and it was really fun.  Supposedly Lance said that the difference between a flat time trial and an uphill on was just pain and then "sweet pain" for the uphill ones.  I'd have to agree.

The couple times you come around a corner and get an exposed view it was breathtaking, even as I was breathing far too hard and loudly.  But the view from the top was tremendous, and I hadn't quite started freezing yet from the wind and the significantly lower temps at the top so I could enjoy it, have some orange slices, and wait for Mo and the guys who'd been kind enough to give us a ride down to show up.

I ended up riding to the top in 51:10, and I was feeling pretty good about getting second in my age group.  Turns out I was 8th overall, (in the men, there was one super-woman who beat me by 18 seconds) and times were significantly slower thanks to the headwind that was with us for a lot of the race.  Really a blast, I can't wait to do it again and maybe even find another one of the BUMPS that I can do this year.

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Finally opened my account

Not with any money but at least a win in the Cat 4s.  In fact, I actually feel pretty good about this one because I was 6th overall and only about 30 seconds behind some guys that are pretty darn good at this TT stuff.  The other thing is that they are all significantly bigger than me so I feel like it is evidence of some decent watts/kilo on my part, but I still have some work to do so that hopefully I can catch them.

 The numbers :
47:40
27.3mph avg
1st in Cat. 4 and 6th overall.

I actually averaged a bit faster on the longer return leg and felt good enough to get up to 31-32mph on the (I think) slight decline over the last 1-2K to the finish.  It was also convenient that there were several guys that were ahead of me that I could focus on catching them over the last little bit.



I've tried a few different things at this TT and the Wednesday night ones that are just 10 miles one way and I am starting to think that I just go better pushing a big gear, channeling my inner Jan Ulrich or something.

I will have to take Marshall's advice and work on a fixed gear on my single speed, something I've thought about but been rather afraid of.  I am sure it will help me improve my pedal stroke and maybe by next year I can be spinning the gears I am pushing now.  Maybe then I can close the gap to the TT beasts that win all the events in NJ like Lundgren and his boys.  He managed to average 28.8mph for the same event and I think he might have been going a bit easy since he is peaking for the NJ State Champs this weekend.

Anyway, next up is the Philly Amateur TT, hopefully picking up some BAR points there and at the State TT the following weekend.  TTT anyone?

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Second place is...

The first loser.  But I suppose that's what I get for riding my bike twice a week and thinking I can ride fast!  The course in Upper Freehold was actually pretty interesting, much more up and down, some pretty good little turns where I am sure I lost time, and the weather turned out better than I thought it would, not a drop of rain the whole time.  I actually warmed up on the road which I prefer so immensely to riding on the trainer so that was a big plus.

I was hoping to start at the end of the 4-5 guys but it appears that the ranked starting order only counts for NJ guys maybe so I was starting in the middle and caught a few guys right away, maybe a minute or two in.  Then I took the first major right turn and it got lonely pretty quickly.


I'd actually heard several stories of going off course so I was nervous about it and after riding for what felt like quite a while and not seeing a single rider or marshal, I was getting nervous but it turns out I was on course.  The time I sat up to look behind me just to see if someone was coming probably cost me a second or two (and losing by nine I suppose I regret it, but...)  The other part that was extra fun was having to squeeze by two cars on the right who had slowed down behind a guy in front of me (who had a sweet HUGE beard, extra props for having that amongst the "aero" crowd) and hoping they didn't decide to creep over to the right and push me into the bushes.  This of course distracted me from shifting and I ended up going up the hill in the 55x18 or so, not really what I'd recommend.


In the end, I lost by nine seconds to a guy that I beat by forty seconds in the TT at LBI despite taking a wrong turn and all that.  So I figure it has to be partly due to the fact that I had ridden nearly every day prior to that race since I was on Spring Break and had time, and this week I barely rode at all because we have eighteen track meets in the span of two weeks.



But I think the next race will probably be the Philadelphia Amateur TT, hopefully a chance to pick up some PA BAR points since it is now looking like I won't really factor into that competition since I haven't been in a BAR race yet!

Monday, May 09, 2011

C-130 Hercules Time Trial

So starting out of the back of a C-130 was cool, but it would have been cooler to have a ramp that didn't make you wonder if you would either bust your wheels or just go face first into the tarmac coming down.

Actually, it wasn't quite that bad.  Maybe because I also kept wandering around thinking that I was #378 when I was actually #371 so I almost missed my start time like an idiot.

You can't really see it too well in there, but that is me rolling out of the back of the plane.  The start was interesting, semi-technical and VERY fast with a huge tailwind so it was easy to get well past 30mph and then find yourself going into a corner and, if you are terrible at driving your bike like me, it can give you a scare.

I also knew the guy in front of me was actually quite good so I was trying to chase him down and I know he made some serious distance on me coming out of the gate so I set about trying to run him down on the outbound leg.  I was happy that my HR came right up and so I felt like I was able to push pretty hard despite only going between 24-26 on the way out with the wind coming from the front and the side.  I think I got to within about 10 seconds (with some very rough calculations on my part) and passed a few other guys when we got to the turnaround...

And from there he was gone.  He was a bigger guy than me, so maybe he just had more power, but he really opened it up and even with the ten to fifteen seconds I lost when I had to slow up for a truck turning with a big trailer right in front of me, he would have killed me.  It was fun to roll past a bunch of guys but I was bummed because I knew he was in my category and I was losing the race even as I was spinning a 55x12 for a while and wishing I had an 11 on there.

I ended up finishing 3rd in the 4's, clearly a lot of work to do.  I am sure it would help if I rode my bike more than 2-3 times a week.  Hopefully I can at least go back this week and race the NJ crowd and do better than my previous run and just make all the right turns and see how I stack up.  Plus this one has at least one hill in it which I always think plays to my advantage, even when it doesn't.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Good and Evil

So, I had a few minutes to kill today and I was reading random things and two really struck me.

The first one I had to stop reading partway through and come back because I thought I was going to be sick, so just like they warned us on the radio last night, this article is horrifying and I don't want to put a link to it until after I warned you.

But if you aren't convinced that evil exists in the world and you are sitting down, read this.

But just after reading that, I read this, an interview with a young man who was convinced that joining the military was the right thing to do and then grew increasingly troubled after joining up.  He grew so concerned that he was convinced he would go to jail rather than finish his term until he found out he could apply for conscientious objector status, which he did.

But his willingness to examine his own approach to the world and to make decisions and take actions that were so against the grain of the organization he was in, what his family thought and any number of other difficult obstacles.

It is difficult to imagine a person willing to not just deliver late term abortions but do so in the manner he did.  Perhaps you could dismiss it and say he could only do that because of some psychosis or very serious mental disorder.  But what about the people he paid to help him?

To then read about a young man willing to go against all the community or local pressure to go along with doing something wrong was very refreshing.  So in the same few minutes that I almost threw my computer out the window because of what I read and the pure evil of the people involved, I came back (I had put it down so I wouldn't throw it) and read about this courageous young man.  Nice turn around.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Amy Chua and the Brooklyn Free School

Lots of people read the article in the Wall Street Journal about Amy Chua and her outlook on parenting, and a lot of people have responded.  Or was it alot of people...

Regardless, it was an interesting article, one that stirred up lots of folks and apparently made Ms. Chua feel like she needed to retract or explain some of the things she wrote.  She took the time to interview and try to re-work her image, but she must be excited about the buzz as it clearly helped sell a lot of books!

David Brooks took a slightly different tack and called her a wimp!  He felt that the sleep overs and play dates her kids were missing were a lot more intellectually demanding than the thousands of math problems or hundreds of hours of piano practice.

Interestingly enough, the most recent edition of This American Life and the last piece of the story in particular suggest something similar.

The episode ends with a piece about the Brooklyn Free School which opened seven years ago and is modeled after the Sudbury Valley School with no classes, no set curriculum, no grouping based on age, no grades and an emphasis on democracy as students really do control and vote on everything that goes on in the school.

The story ends with a discussion of an all-school meeting called by a young woman upset at being called a "whore" by a couple of her school-mates.  She felt it was important to discuss the issue as an entire school, that calling people ugly things was something that they needed to bring up in front of everyone.

In the end, there was no resolution, there was no proposal to be voted on for a new rule, in some ways it felt like a let down.  But not to the young lady in question.  She was so glad that she had the chance to call a meeting, that she had that authority and that respect and that she had a chance to discuss this with her peers and then be able to move on and feel good.  She felt sorry for adults because they don't have that power in their daily lives.

But to navigate that environment, a world where students really do have control and authority and respect sounds to me to be a far more challenging and also far more rewarding environment than one in which everything is decided for you, whether it is by your mother or an autocratic school environment. 

So maybe Amy Chua really is a wimp, but in a larger sense, perhaps many of us adults are as we'd rather know that our children are in an environment where adults decide what is best for them and provide control and structure and authority.  Maybe we are all afraid of the Lord of the Flies rearing its ugly head and scaring the little ones.

I'm starting to think that Daniel Greenberg and others like him who've built the free school movement and suggested that kids really ought to be trusted with the opportunity to decide for themselves what is important are right.  I wonder if we have the courage to try it.
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