Yes, I know. I haven’t blogged in two weeks. My entries are always late. I’ve become a lazy bum when it comes to blogging, and I’ve lost all my mad writing skillz.
But at least I’m blogging!
As you may be aware, last Friday was the 4th of July here in the USA. We had some Bearcat people over and went swimming/boating in the lake, then made a campfire and roasted s’mores. After a while we went inside and everyone participated in a ping-pong tournament, while Sammi and I jammed on my Les Paul.
It was a smaller party than we usually have here, but nice and relaxed.
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The next day I had to get up brutally early (for a 5th of July morning), because I had track racing state championships that day. So we headed to Alpenrose velodrome in Portland, and as soon as we got there it started pouring rain! Now, because the track is so steep, it’s impossible to ride around the banks without imitating an amateur skier, so they had to postpone everything until the track was dry.
Two hours and 500 towels later (not really) Alpenrose was dry, and people started zooming around the track. We soon discovered that my 17-18 year-old age category consisted of myself and Richie Suditu, an unfairly fast 18 year-old national-caliber racer.
We both did two matched sprints at the beginning. This happened to be the very first time I did a matched sprint at an actual race (yes, at the state championships). Of course Richie beat me both times, but the second one was by less than the first. Matched sprints are about 90% strategy and 10% legs, and I used better strategy my second try.
Our other races were a 1k time trial and a 20-lap points race. The points race was interesting — every 5th lap there would be a sprint, and the first four finishers would get points. The race basically consisted of myself, a couple unattached guys, and four riders from team BBC. Three of the BBC guys worked together for the whole race and I hung with them most of the time, drafting here, bridging a gap there… I came in 4th in each of the sprint laps, and I finished 4th at the end of the race.
I ended up getting a silver medal for the overall, because Richie and I were the only 17-18 year-olds (even though I am, in fact, 16). This (state championships) was a fun little break from swimming, and an opportunity to try out my new track racing skills.
Last Friday, my dad and I made our triumphant return to the Alpenrose Velodrome, which I hadn’t seen since track season last summer. Alpenrose is one of the steepest velodromes in the country, with banks sloped at 43°. It was scary going around the track for the first time in so long, but I quickly got used to it.
This was also the first time I was able to try out my new track bike, which I got last December for Christmas, but hadn’t been able to ride until now! Track season lasts only in the summer, so I’ve been eagerly waiting to try it for five months.
The bike is amazingly light, and I can accelerate really fast. Part of the reason for this is the pedals we put on: your shoes lock in like with any normal clip pedals, but to release your foot, you have to pull a little lever on the back of the pedal. Now, remember that this is a fixed-gear bike — so you can’t stop pedaling to pull said lever! It takes some getting used to, but after a while I could do it without any trouble.
I had three races: a ten lap scratch race (which is just a regular race), a 15 lap point-a-lap race (where the winner of each lap gets one point, but nobody else does), and a 15 lap points race (every fifth lap, the top four people get points).
Having been away from the track since last year, the best way to describe my first two races is with the word “pwned”. The last one went a little better though… I didn’t get any points, but then again most of the racers didn’t, and I finished in the middle of the pack, even though most of them were fast 30 year-olds. I probably would have come in a few places farther ahead, but somewhere in the middle of the race a guy wiped out directly in front of me — all I saw was him cartwheeling in the air and his bike flying, but he miraculously landed on his feet, and the race continued. He was surrounded by other riders when it happened, but somehow nobody hit him, although I had to swerve up-track to avoid the crash, which cost me some speed.
It was fun racing at Alpenrose again and getting back into the track culture. And I didn’t even have to face my worst fear: not being able to clip out, and tipping over in the grass!
It was a cold day… The early morning sky was gray, and frozen ground crunched beneath feet. It was the start of the bike racing season!
We showed up at Portland International Raceway last Sunday for the first race of the year, a Kermesse. It was a 45 minute race of about 16 miles (for me), around what seemed to be the maintenance roads of the car-racing course. It also included about 1/3 mile of cyclocrossesque gravel, which was, to say the least, abundant in potholes.
Besides an eleven-year-old, I was the only one racing in my category. Luckily(?) though, they let us start with the 35+ B Masters. So I set my mind to staying with them as long as I could.
At first I was thinking, “They’re only going 20mph… I can keep up with these guys!”. Then we came to the gravel, where they… didn’t slow down. A few miles later, we came to a long gradual hill, on which they also refused to go under 20mph. But I somehow stuck with them for the rest of that lap, and then another lap after that. However, by the time we came to that hill the second time, the last of my sprinting muscles had been spread over the road like butter, with nothing left for me to catch up. But before I dropped 4mph due to the lack of pull, I checked my average speed: 20mph.
I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I’m happy with myself for hanging with the B Masters for two laps, considering I hadn’t ridden a bike in two months. I can’t wait till the next race — hopefully there will be… people!
EXTRA: Check out the winner’s prize: possibly The World’s Worst Trophy.
Thanks to the felicitous timing of photographer Tim LaBarge, I can now relive the rest of my mud-tasting experience. Notice how, if not for the bike, the mud, and the umbrellas, this would have been an almost perfect racing dive in swimming.
The mud has been described as “epic”. I disagree. I say it wasn’t mud, but a meld of peanut butter and Play-Doh with a hint of some mondo jelly and a splash of brown honey that feels like residue from the bottom of a lake.
On Sunday in Hillsboro I did my second cyclocross race, unofficially dubbed “Mudfest 2007″. Last week at Estacada, I thought I was seeing mud. Now I realize that was simply wet dirt. What we raced in this weekend, I’ve heard, put all the cyclocross races for the past year to shame.
There was about three times as much running in this race as in the last, and only about half of it was up hills. At the beginning the mud was deep enough for you to sink down to your rims; as the race went on, the mud got worse, and by the end your wheels could sink down to the hubs.
But enough with the mud. Let me take you on a tour of the course, FREE of charge (and of bike)…
You start out with about a quarter of a mile on solid pavement. Then, you turn off onto a trail of relatively hard packed mud. After a few hundred meters, the fun starts to start: the trail cuts across a ditch filled with water, which will slow you down drastically if you try to simply ride through it. (I discovered after the first lap that flying through the air is much more efficient than the more traditional method of traveling by ground.) About 20 feet later, you repeat the same process cutting across another ditch, only this time it’s uphill. You then chug over a small rise, and proceed to descend into a pit of mild Peanut Butter Mud. When you get through that, you are rewarded with a stretch of dry Gravel-N-Dirt™. But just when you start to get your speed up, WHAMMO! Two 16-inch barriers force you to dismount, pick up your bike, and jump. Not far ahead, the path takes a couple 180° curves, and then turns 90° right off the edge of a 10-inch curb. After that is several hundred meters of more mud and Gravel-N-Dirt™, which eventually takes you straight through The Lake: a ten foot long mud pit which is filled with six inches of water. On the other side of the water is an incline consisting of completely unridable mud, up which you must run. When you get to the top the path takes a curve off to the right and then to the left up a short and steep run-up, which immediately turns 180° back down into a swamp. (I almost ran into a boundary stake here, thinking it would be a good idea to ride fast down the hill. Nope.) When you get through the swamp, you ride a few hundred feet on some (almost) hard-packed ground, and then are dumped into a bowl of peanut butter, which continues for about three minutes (depending on how much you actually ride, and how much you run). The path then changes to hard dirt and, seeing a steep hill up ahead, you try to gain speed. But that is not to be, because of the two barriers at the bottom of the hill! You dismount, jump over the barriers, and run up the hill. At the top the path curves 90° off to the right, onto hard packed gravel. But after about 50 feet, you turn right again, off a cliff into the mud pit, for just long enough to throw you off your bike. With that task completed, the path curves around 180° back up the cliff (hope you’re good at mountain climbing). At the top you are rewarded with a few hundred meters of more hard-packed gravel (although I squandered my reward trying to get clipped in the whole time). But just when you think things are starting to get easier, the path takes a plunge, down, around, and down some more, right back into The Lake. After you’ve finished with your swim, you crawl back up onto pavement and dignity, where you will momentarily find the Finish line (provided this was your last of three laps).
So now that you’ve successfully(?) completed the course, let me tell you how I faired.
My first lap was mostly crash-free, with only a few splashes of mud. But my second lap was far from it: in one place, I have no idea what happened, but all of a sudden I found myself lying ten ten feet from my bike, face down in the mud. When I had crawled back to my bike, I found that my bars had been knocked crooked with the wheel, and it required adjusting twice.
Later in that lap came the highlight of my race (at least for the spectators): I was coming back down through The Lake, when somehow I managed to ride my front wheel straight into an invisible hole under the water. In slow motion, my back wheel rose into the air, up, up, up… and down the other side. I did a front-flip over the bars, face-first into the mud.
My third and last lap also had a crowd-pleaser, in the same Lake, and in the same hole: making the mistake of thinking lakes could simply be ridden through, I tipped over, 200 meters before the Finish line, and lost my shoe in the mud. Since my foot was completely numb from the cold, I at first didn’t notice, so I got up and kept riding. Needless to say, I quickly discovered that I had lost some gear, but I wasn’t about to go back into The Lake when I could be finishing the race within 30 seconds.
So, with one functioning foot, I crossed the Finish line. I can’t tell you how useless bare feet are with eggbeater pedals.
Below is a video so you can see the mud first-hand, and then some photos so you can see the mud even more first-hand! And if after that your thirst for mud is still not quenched, there’s lots more on my photo gallery.
On Sunday I did my first Cyclocross race, at Estacada Cross Crusade. We also brought my friend Iza, who, being an exchange student from Brazil, got to see what Oregon is REALLY like.
For those who don’t know, Cyclocross is a form of bike racing which includes pavement, wooded trails, steep hills, barriers, and other insidious obstacles.
Cyclocross attracts a lot of interesting people. We saw more than a few unicycles, and several people who hadn’t yet succeeded in taking off their Halloween costumes from the last cyclocross race. Also present was a guy dressed up as a devil with blue spiked hair, standing in the middle of the track, carrying a plastic pitchfork and a water bottle filled with beer.
The race didn’t have a set number of laps: instead, you race for 45 minutes, and then whoever finishes their lap first after those 45 minutes starts everyone’s last lap.
The course was about three miles long, so I ended up doing four laps in about an hour. The biggest obstacles were:
a tight and steep off-camber turn (on which many a foolish rider wiped out)
a stretch of swamp consisting of Grade 2 mud (sometimes referred to as Adobe Clay), which according to the linked Mud Glossary, “slows down the bike and drains a rider’s energy without apparent cause”
a steep hill covered in mud so thick that you have to get off your bike and run up, unless you have motorcycle tires
and finally, a section of six 10-inch high barriers (aka The Six Pack), forcing you to get off your bike, pick it up, and jump over the barriers
Before this I’d only done road and track racing, so having my back wheel constantly sliding around was something to get used to.
Amazingly, I only fell once, and it was more of a tip-over than a crash. Yet it was enough for me to be able to personally meet with the mud face-to-face.
I ended up taking 12th out of 33 people in the Junior category. Considering I never train in cycling, I don’t think I did too badly.
I had a lot of insane fun at this race, and cyclocross is a great way to get acquainted with bad weather, mud, and Drty Bikes. I’ll definitely be doing this again next week!
EDIT: The Single-Speed Cyclocross World Championships also took place at Estacada about an hour after we left. We didn’t stay to watch, but that could be a good thing since I heard the winners wore golden Speedos on the podium…
Last night we went to the last track race of the season. As you can see from the photo, almost everyone was from Forza Jet Velo — even the ref.
There were three races: an eight lap scratch race, a miss and out race (where every other lap, whoever is last gets pulled from the race), and what was going to be a points race, but got changed — on our whim, 30 seconds before it started — to an unknown distance race (self-explanatory), which ended up being six laps.
I don’t mean to be arrogant, but for my own records, I won all three of them. I almost crashed though — in the second to last lap of the scratch race, I was drafting behind Andrea, and I started to pass her by going up track, but she went up track at the same time, sending me careening toward the wall. It looked much cooler than it sounds; therefore, I’ve posted a video below.
Last night I competed in a bike race at the velodrome for the first time. They call it Fast Twitch Friday, because it consists of mostly sprint races.
I did two races: the first one, called 10 Lap Progressive, is a ten lap race where you get points every time you win a lap. The first lap is worth one point, the second lap is worth two points, the third lap is worth three points, etc. Whoever has the most points at the end wins.
I didn’t do very well in that race, mostly because I didn’t really know what was going on, and one guy got way up ahead of the pack at the beginning, so there was really no point in anybody racing unless they could catch him. But I did better in the next race, which was a 12 lap “regular” race. There were 13 people racing, and I came in 4th — but the youngest one besides me was 26, and they were almost all bike messengers.
I was scheduled to have a third race, but it got cancelled because somebody had a really nasty wipeout. She was going over 30mph when she lost control about 40 feet before the finish line. She slid about 20 feet down on the track, and it looked like she broke her collarbone and had a concussion.
Unfortunately we didn’t get a video, but if we had, it would probably be worth 1000+ views on YouTube.
Coach: “There’s some gear and a skinsuit over there. Take it. You’re on the team.”
Me: “But… But… I have swim practice every day, and doubles three days a week!”
Coach: “Good, then you’re in shape.”
I’m now part of the Forza Jet Velo cycling team in Portland. We’ve been showing up at their practices at the Alpenrose velodrome every few days for the last few weeks, just to be able to ride on the track and train with them for the time trial. Well, yesterday I broke their team record by a second in the 500m sprint (which is just under two laps), with 41.89, on a crappy rental bike. Now I’ve been recruited to the team. This is going to be great: it won’t interfere with swimming, because I’m not even required to go to practices. I just have to go to one championship race per year, which I already do anyway. And they just gave me a bunch of gear for free.
Looks like my legs are going to get a lot stronger by the end of the season…
I did the state championship cycling time trial today, which was 20 kilometers (12.5 miles). Unlike last year, there was a really strong wind that had me going 25mph on the way down and 17mph on the way back. So my time was seven seconds slower this year (34:52), but I think that’s not so bad, seeing as some other people were four minutes slower this year than before. Also, I’m proud to say that I trained for it even less this year than last year (which was two short rides the week before the race).
