NBX Cross at Goddard Park Day 1 Masters 1/2/3 Pictures

The way it usually goes for 'ol Murat, the race begins when he opens his eyes in the morning. Indulging in some extra sleep is a weakness which even Solobreak can't help me with and were it not for his call at 7:00 am, I would probably have slept until 9:00 and not 8:00. First order of business- dump the hamper on the laundry room floor and wash my cold weather apparel until the stink is gone. Check. Out the door at 9:22, planning to get there at 9:35-ish, one hour to get all sorted out and warmed up. Wrong! There's no gas in the minivan- it's running on fumes.. and I discover that I've forgotten to bring water. No worries- a quick stop at Sunoco and I get a quick $10 of gas and buy H2O. I'm down 8 more minutes.. So I get on my way- south on Route 2, Murat is snagged by every single red light there is. No amount of cursing gives me relief. I get to the park and pull over onto the right hand side thinking I can quickly make my way to registration. Nothing doing. I'm chased out of there and told I need to park in the field like everyone else. Down another 5 minutes. Here's the part that really turns my crank- what I did not expect is that it would take 10 minutes to ride from the car to registration. Didn't plan for that, no sir. I get to the table at 10:02 or :03. Registration for the Masters 1/2/3 is closed. I keep my cool. Who wants to get ready to race in only 25 minutes (15 if you count the ride back to the car). So your hero ends up registering for the 2/3 race (killer bees? first time I ever heard that one) In the first 30 minutes of waiting for my 12:30 race, I made myself useful and took over 200 pictures of the racers in the race which I was not permitted to enter. Warning- I use a 3 megapixel Kodak that I bought at Target 4+ years ago, out of the box, no instructions, and it's held together with a rubber band which I renew every few months because well, it breaks on me and lets the batteries fall out. I'm not a photographer. If you find any photos which are worthy of printing, you're a lucky bastard. In the spirit of giving you these mediocre photos, Murat put $25 toward a Pro Flickr account, so in case you find some picture in there which don't suck, there's a button in the sidebar where you can donate a buck or two. Humor me.
Here's the pictures at my Flickr account Enjoy.

Drumroll please..

My eagerness to dish up photos caused me to forgot to tell you the story of my race. This was my first 2/3 cross race ever. I was a trooper, I started at the very back per usual.. and after a few laps, instead of the usual "ride at my own pace all by myself" bullshit, I hooked up with 3-4 guys and stayed glued to them! This required me to push deep into the pain cave occasionally, primarily after the run-ups, where I am absolutely horrible. At any rate, just before completing lap 4- I did a power slide into the last left hand corner with my front wheel- a miracle that I didn't dump it hard. The two guys on my wheel had to squeeze the brakes. After going through the finish, my front tire turned to mush- and in no time, it was down on the rim. So approaching the first and more difficult sand pit, I'm done, or so I thought. We're not lapped at this point.. Hopes were dashed. I told my drop-mates about the flat and the immediate reply was "Lucky bastard". Hehe. So I shoulder the bike and run it all the way around the course to the pits. Watching me run is like watching a horror show, but I make it. A very quick neutral wheel change follows my clumsy prancing over the barriers and I'm off. Unfortunately, I lost some big time here and got myself lapped by the leaders a little beyond that muddy off camber corner. (2 to go changes to 1 to go, of course) By the time I reached the 2nd sand pit, a few more guys went past. From there I just held my meager speed and finished my 5th lap in exactly 45 minutes flat. I used the Polar HRM, and the data says that I reached 189 bpm on 3 or 4 occasions, and that I averaged 175 bpm for the 45 minutes. To wit: I should admit here that this was the most fun I've had in a cross race, and I'm wondering if maybe it was because I was in the 2/3 field and not the Masters 1/2/3 field. It seemed to me that these younger riders were more interested in having fun than in beating each other's brains out. End result- 64th place out of 67 finishers and 73 starters. Thanks for reading.

Canada's tolerance for obesity

Read about how obesity is rewarded in Canada while others are charged 90 Euros to bring back an extra suitcase of what remains of their dead father's belongings. -uck you Lufthansa.

Back on the wagon!

..or fell back off of it, depending upon your opinion of Power Meters.. For the past couple of months, your hero has been manually entering mileage, duration and even estimations of average power into his Peaks software. This was so that I could maintain some semblance of correctly maintained data which represents my TSS and the running averages called CTL and ATL. I thought the Powertap was kaput when all this time it was nothing but a broken wire near the shark fin. I crimped the two together- it's ugly, but it works. I'll add a pic later. Data is so intoxicating. I promise to share as many power charts as my time allows, from now until the next wire breaks.
Here, get used to seeing a lot of this in 2009.

Viga rocks

Many thanks to my friend and team mate Rick Gervais for introducing me to Viga. I'm in my car horking down a serving of chicken Pomodoro.. This is sooooo good. Their pizza is excellent too. Look it up: Viga Italian Eatery. Walking distance from my projects on Beacon Street.

Is there a contest?

I'm at Harvard for an appt but the fire alarms went off and everyone's outside. Standing near the dozens of bikes these students and faculty ride around campus, it seems as though there's competition to have the crappiest, least maintained Piece of Shit humanly possible. Homeless people have been observed riding better bikes. There's a Schwinn "Le Tour" from the early 80s with what appear to be the original tires on it. Do these college pukes have any self respect? If you can afford this tuition, you can afford a bike that doesn't suck this badly, I think. There are limits to what is considered safe to ride.. 

Time to kick off the indoor training

If not for falling asleep at 8:30 with my son last night, I was going to set up the windtrainer, bring the LOOK indoors and even try to splice together the broken wires of my Powertap shark-fin wire. Oh well. Extra rest and sleep never hurt, so I'll be doing it tonight instead, which will kick off the real beginning of my 2009 road season. Joy.. What I'm less certain about is whether I want to race at Goddard this weekend. Lately I'm not so gung-ho about it.. but that could change quickly. Money's tight. I can't deny my son's request for a Hot Wheels Trick-Track Triple Stunt Starter Set and then blow $60 on entry fees, at least not without some guilt..

Crappy Weather = Rest Day

I'm glad I did my 3-1/2 hours yesterday- it's wet and miserable today. Despite Sunday rides offered to me by my teammates and others, I decided to take rest and get some extra sleep. I'll add the Polar chart later on. So I left the house at 7:00 am Sat to make it to Sophies on Route 2 at 8:00. I was right on time, give or take 2 minutes. Nobody was around.. I had pretty much lost all hope right then and there. Took off my glove unzipped the jacket and retrived the Crackberry so I could e-mail J-Lo "where r u?" Hoping of course that he carried one also. Before I could even hit SEND, a train of yellow-orange-red came streaming out from behind Sophies, where I did not bother to look. They all turned right onto route 2, seemingly oblivious to me as I stood there- unzipped, ungloved and unprepared to jump onto the train. No worries- I sorted myself out and chased up to them before we hit route 138. It's always a lot of fun to meet up with the Arc crew. What sucks is that it's a one hour ride to get to Sophies, and I generally try to stay close to the house when it's very cold, so I always feel a little vulnerable and paranoid when I'm so deep into Southern RI. To wit, after riding with them for an hour Saturday, I was already into my 3rd hour and it took almost 90 minutes to get home after that- all on Route 3 north which, as I'll show you later, isn't at all flat.
Time to break out the rollers and wind trainer- looks like the weather is going to suck for a while.

I was right

It took 90 minutes before I felt comfortable- toes got quite chilly, but 51 miles and 3:08 later, I was home, feeling good, feeling thankful, and very hungry. I'll post a Polar chart of the ride later on, if the mood strikes. Avg HR was 155. My race form is clearly kaput- I'm re-building base fitness. Nine days off the bike when I had the flu the other week, really hurt what little form I had left.

Turkey Day- Ride yourself to caloric deficiency..

..then add it on two-fold at dinner..
Thursday morning at 8:00 am: Holy Apostles Church at the corner of Route 12 and Pippin Orchard Road (same place where everyone meets Tuesday and Thursday nights, see below) We'll depart from the church at 8:00 and most likely head north towards 116 and take a left turn onto Peeptoad and end up criss-crossing back towards western Coventry. Chances are, I'll be doing this ride all by myself. Prove me wrong! 8:00 am Thursday Holy Apostles Church! See below.

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Chris Hoy: Man vs Machine

I don't know why this reached my INBOX at work.. Click to enlarge.
See www.raceofchampions.com for ticket details.

What a mistake

To think that I could ride an hour each way, to hook up with a 3 hour ride in that cold was very poor judgment on my part. Not only was I off the bike for 9 days prior, I just emerged from a week of having a very bad cold, it was 20 degrees when I left the house, and I went to meet up with a group of guys who like to trounce the hills of Rhode Island once a week. It's bad enough that I don't climb well and that I'm out of form- it's also 20 degrees out. Add to this I'm 20 minutes early to the meeting point- thanks to mis-judging the distance and a tailwind. I did laps up and down the street to keep warm. Then the toe warmers I got for such a great deal at Marshalls- they suck. So by the time we roll off at 9:00 or whatever I'm an icicle. In weather like this, I usually stay close to home, so in case I get too cold I can bail and be home in 20-30 minutes, tops. To break this golden rule of sub-freezing winter riding- very dumb of me. The time off the bike was no help- my left knee started to hurt before I even got to Venda Ravioli. Then I panicked and tried to nurse it a little bit, making the right knee share in the hurt. Then our little group of five started hitting some gradual climbs and the right knee went berserk. Near the top of the first longish climb- one which I'm completely unfamiliar with- I can't push on the right knee any more and I let a gap open. Took my head right out of it at that point, and being near a local road which I knew would take me home in about an hour (route 116), I pulled a u-turn and spun home. Today my knee hurts just to walk. I'm feeling my age.. Needless to say, this ride was incompatible with me on so many levels, when Gewilli turned to me and said "why?".. the easiest answer was to just say "cold". When I got home about an hour later, it was still only 28 degrees out. 2-1/2 hours was enough. Had I stayed with those guys (Nathan, Aaron, Mark and Gewilli) my knees would be completely trashed and I would have ended up doing 4+ hours. Enough stupidity prevailed that I had to draw the line somewhere. On the bright side, making promises to ride with others is a good way to force your ass outside into the freezing cold, where you might otherwise say -uck it and just sleep in. From that standpoint- no regrets. I'll try again in a few weeks when the knee re-adapts to harder stresses.

A Solution For You!

The G-Diddy

Not only did I co-populate his office with a pre-announced visit coinciding with some work that his employer has hired me to do for them, I also got wrestled to the floor and my camera forcibly removed from my clenched fist when I threatened to shoot a pic of the slovenly mess he calls his desk. Err, I made up that last part, about the wrestling. So.. yeah not only did I get to see his monotone looking Giant cross-bike-turned-commuter with squishy Schwalbe tires weighing a kilo each occupying 1/2 of the floor space in the room, I also promised to do an epic three hour hilly ride with him on Sunday. I hope I live to tell about it, and not hear about how those tires slowed him down.. Hills in November, go figure. Like me, G-Diddy has hacked off the lion's-mane-which-can't-be-tamed, which is pictured here. I'm gonna get an earful for this one, but this pic isn't marked 'private' or anything in his Flickr account, so why not.

Know Your Rivals...

..so says the coolest road racing website I've found, at least since discovering that USA Cycling used a ranking system which ranked me higher than I deserve credit for.. (hey it works for golfers, why not for us?) One clear weakness of USA Cycling which know your rival excels at, is giving you a compilation of results for an entire team. I love it! Especially because you can filter those results by category, by team member, by placing (how many times did your team get 4th place?) or by race (road race, crit, tt). Very cool to play with the data.. Below is a compilation of all of my team's criterium results in 30+ Masters events:Now for the very interesting data. Know your rival will also give you a report of who you are most commonly shouldering, hooking, elbowing, cursing, and trying to pass when there's 100 meters to go.. Here's my list of rivals:
There are still some things which need to evolve a little more- our team's website isn't listed for example, and neither is our parent club, GVCC. My 18th place result at the Blue Hills Classic is missing too- but that's most likely because I registered 'day-of' and this almost always guarantees that someone will mis-spell my name, my team or my license number (that's an inadvertant plug for Bikereg- your personal and team data is always consistent and spelled right- meaning no missing results) I expect that the blanks will slowly be filled in over time- it depends on the owner of the site having the continued resolve of a Buddhist monk. I hope it continues because it's informative and entertaining to tool around with. It's going to be interesting to see the condensed results of particular teams, those other than my own that is. Give it a try. Look up any team's results, then filter it to narrow it down to age, category, wins, or even particuar events.

1989 Albany Tulip Festival Criterium

By popular demand of one reader: Your hero from 20 years ago- the Torpado SLX in action. Yeah that's me racing the thing, being tailed by a very well oiled Aaron Newland and his team of teenage dudes with matching kits, matching bikes, matching helmets and even "clipless pedals".. Notice I'm still using my Alfredo Binda straps and my Mavic GEL280s with Clemente Super Criterium Silk tubies on there.. IIRC, George Hincapie won this junior race without breaking a sweat. I sprinted to 4th place (have a pic of that somewhere). Distinctly remember having to lie down after that race from cramps and how all my insides started spasming, I tried so damn hard. I still have the prize money envelope somewhere, probably the race number too. I remember being astonished about getting $60 for 4th place and loving it. Back then, I didn't have a skinsuit, so I'd tuck my GVCC jersey into my shorts and discreetly safety pin them together in a few places. Voila- the poor man's skinsuit is born.
Found it: Murat sprints for 4th, but it feels like a win. Mr. red/yellow threw his bike too early. Click to enlarge.

If you're wristwatch is the accessory which says the most about you..

..Then mine must say that I hate myself. I'll post a picture of it tonight. Although, to be fair, I used to use a SEIKO, which is the company which came up with the above tripe in the first place.
To be continued.

Now that I think of it, the heading shows you my previous watch- a Seiko Automatic which I got on Ebay for $50. The reason I don't wear it now is because I broke the strap in a fit of rage- I was at Dunkin Donuts on route 138, on my way to the Ninigret Crit, running late of course. Everyone behind the counter was serving the -ucking drive thru customers and us schmucks in side the store were being ignored. I said something profane and flung the door open to get out, using my wristwatch as leverage. The strap broke. It's still good- needs one of those spring loaded pins. My wife bought me this travesty of a timepiece when I jokingly told her I always wanted a calculator watch. So you see, my watch says that I love my wife.

Who wants to do a Spring Training Camp!?

in TURKEY!! Serious. I'm setting it up.

Update. This is not a joke. Flights from Boston are about $1000, but I expect there to be promotions in the spring. I am looking to have base at either the seaside town of Mudanya, which is close to tons of spectacular roads that I'm very familiar with, or at an all inclusive resort in Antalya, which will cost more and be quite luxurious. We've been to a few and never been less than astonished at the quality of the food and the amenities. I don't know the roads as well, but Antalya has the added benefit of being warmer in April (think Florida), and having more local attractions like rafting and mountain bike tours. The bottom line is that I am definitley going, same as last year, and probably for two weeks straight. One week in Mudanya/Bursa and one week in Antalya. I came back from Turkey last year in very solid form. Think about it. This idea will develop more if people show me some interest. Otherwise, I suppose I'm on my own, which is fine and dandy. I'd rather share the experience though!

Feeling crap-tastic!

Energy levels are way down. I'd pop a vitamin if they didn't give me such heartburn. Did anyone watch the CNN Special last night on the Jonestown mass suicide? 300+ little kids had cyanide squirted down their throats from a syringe, by their -ucking parents. I'd always heard snippets here and there about this trajedy, but last night I got a two hour dose of it, including tape recordings and video footage from 30 years ago. What a sad story. Kool-Aid will never taste the same again.

Even MORE Boring Commute Stuff

Well it finally caught up to me- the nasty cold that both wife and son have been fighting for about a week has infected me on a low level, making my breathing a little scratchy. I was bragging to my wife the other day about how my superior fitness, adaptation to the cold weather and my bike commuting was supposedly protecting me in some way from getting sick the same way that they were. I still think that if I was a sedentary person, I would have been a lot sicker, a lot sooner. Right now I'm just feeling some nuisance symptoms, most notably sore leg muscles and overall tiredness. I rode in to work this morning taking the shortcut (which turns out to be 7.5 miles, not 9) It was warmer this morning than yesterday, but it felt 10 degrees colder. I don't plan to ride home tonight or ride at all tomorrow, especially if the weather predictors are accurate and it rains. It's time to take it easy, rebuild, recover, rest. I've been riding pretty consistently for a few weeks- twice a day usually, not with any great intensity, but with enough volume and variation that I've made myself tired, wound up the spring a little bit. Race this weekend? Not in the rain, so Saturday's out, and not sick, so Sunday's a remote possibility. I recently showed y'all a vid and pics of my serene bike path commute with ankle high foliage concealing the actual road. Yesterday morning it was still there. On my commute home last night, it was all completely cleaned up- like freshly shorn legs. That is, until I reached the West Warwick town line. The suckiness envelopes you the instant you enter West Warwick. I don't know why I live there sometimes..