Another nice day today ...

It was another nice day today so I put in another 4 hours on the bike.

started training again.

I went for a 4 hour ride yesterday. Started to train seriously again. I'm a little sore today but the weather is good so I'll probably ride some again today.

Only over 100 days to go

I checked Aki's website and he has Bethel starting most likely March 7th. It's only a little over 100 days until then (107). Time to get training.

positioning and training

My training has been quite different this year. I've been doing really long night walks on the weekend (usually resting at Uconn halfway). This past Saturday I walked 20 miles. Besides the nice blister on my right toe and sore feet I'm good. I've been doing this for about a month now, once a week. My next one is scheduled for Thursday night as I don't have school on Friday. These help stamina and fat metabolism I believe, granted I could just be telling myself that because I like them. I've also been commuting back and forth to school with a 20 to 25 lb. backpack (depending on the day). It's only 6.5 miles one way but a lot of hills.

Anyhow I've been feeling fast but yesterday I put some Lemond Lewedges on my shoes and tried them without orthotics. It was unbelievable how fast I was, especially on the hills and my weight is still a tad high (vs race weight - 12% b.f. vs. 6%). Anyhow I'm looking forward to next season as I think I'll be riding in a lot of breakaways.

Planning next season

Right now my training has been very light and by light I mean sort of heavy. I've been riding back and forth to the school I am student teaching at carrying a 20 to 25 lb backpack (depending on the day). I usually bring my laptop so I can write up plans on it during my prep period. However the total training time I've been doing has been low ... about 5 hours a week on the bike and a 4 to 5 hour hike on the weekend. Anyways I started to plan out the training for this next year and will start to work into more serious interval work in January.

Men's rankings

I just checked the men's category 1 (the top category) criterium rankings for CT riders 30 and up. I'm not sure how they do this as I barely raced and ...

1	12	3	Timothy Unkert	60363
2	10	1	Eneas Freyre	146736
3	4	2	Eric Brownell	144563
4	3	4	Anthony Alessio	146429
5	0	1	Lane Rodgers	47112
5	0	5	Stephen Badger	62085

Didn't race much this year ...

Well to anyone reading this who is a racer it was obvious that I didn't get many racing miles in this year. However next year I plan to do a lot of criteriums. Probably not a lot of road races though. It takes a lot of effort to train for 100 miles races, plus I like the speed and cornering of the criteriums more. This winter I'll probably spend a lot of time in the gym, getting jacked ... no seriously I'm doing most of my training now commuting back and forth to the place I'm student teaching at. The backpack which weighs 21 lbs makes this some considerable effort and in all seriousness I will spend a fair amount of time in the gym.

The actual last Tuesday night race of the season.

So yesterday was the last Tuesday criterium of the season and eventually a break of six went. Noted riders in the break were Ben Wolfe, Ron Larose, his teammate, and myself. I went with two to go but could not get clear. Ron counterattacked followed by Ben and then myself. Ron's teammate followed me up and then went off me to the front and won. Ben passed Ron and was second. I ended up fifth.

The pressure

Tomorrow is the last Tuesday night criterium of the season and possibly the last race of the season, the pressure is undeniable. Just kidding ... it should be fun.

The last Tuesday night crit

After winning a preme Tuesday night I missed the winning breakaway and had to chase all night. Somehow despite chasing nine guys all night I was able to get back some and catch and pass three of them, so the end of the race went o.k. I haven't been training that much.

Dr. Hand again!!!

running?

I randomly went running 5 miles today as I wanted to do a little bit different endurance exercise. I haven't run though in several years, but it was fun nonetheless. It won't help much for going fast on the bike but it's good to vary the workout routine every once in a while.

New pedals

Cruised up Avon mountain on the new pedals, they felt good. I did notice a difference feeling I was more "in" to the pedal (same foreaft ... maybe stack height?). Anyways starting to feel like I can motor again which is good given the lack of cycling training this year.

pedal stack height

So I've adjusted my seat height to compensate for the decrease in pedal stack height which from what I can figure is about a cm from the old look to the new time. It was a bit of effort to figure this out, aside from measuring it and going to speedplay's website. I even found one post about a guy who did a similar switch and claims to have lowered his 15 mile time trial time by one minute, just from more efficiency. I'm a bit skeptical about this ... but if it is true I should just attack next Tuesday night and solo lap the field seeing I can ride 15 miles at the field's pace and stay about the same distance ahead of the field (providing I was riding all out). Therefore since it only takes about a minute to lap the field at Rentschler I would therefore lap the field, because of the pedals ... right? Yeah, riiiiiggghhhht. It's nice to dream though.

pedal axle break

So I got about 5 or so miles and my pedal axle broke on my left pedal. It must be due to my strength ... yes, that's the ticket. Anyways I went down to Tolland Bicycle and got some Time RXE Edge pedals. Put those on and set up the cleats / adjusted the saddle height and whatnot accordingly. Tomorrow maybe I'll go for some training of some sort after the class stuff I have to do.

The weather

Why does the weather have to be horrible the one day I have off from classes?

Most irritating Tuesday night criterium ever

So as the title reads this race was rather annoying. A small break of three formed up front. Shortly later four more of us went up. Using advanced addition you can realize that the break now had seven guys. We worked well for a while until Ron L. decided to ride like a goofball and attack everyone. So I chased him down and then Trent and I watched him while the other four went ahead, including a teammate of each of the three of us. After a while Trent and I decided to collectively work to still try to lap the field. Ron sat on us, then after a while, like a goof attacked us. At this point Trent said the hell with this and sat up. Ron, meanwhile, had vastly overestimated his ability and found himself in no man's land for the rest of the race. Somehow he thought he would solo lap the field. I guess he was looking up to me as his hero? Thanks Ron, thanks I appreciate the love. Anyways I continued on behind him with my 3 hours a week training form and kept about the same distance behind him for a while until with two to go the field caught me. However by this point I had a teammate who had lapped the field with the front four, so I did what I could in my fatigued state to help him out. With about 3/4's of a lap to go I couldn't do anymore and sat up. At about a 1/2 lap to go bam!!! there was a crash, my teammate went down. Fingers immediately began pointing at another teammate of mine, Mike Norton. After the race there was a lot of yelling and arguing. Trent was saying "Mike you're pathetic." and I was saying "Trent, offer constructive criticism". I didn't see the crash close up so I cannot judge. However outside of who actually caused it I did notice some things: First off, only four riders lapped the field, yet everyone was going for the field sprint, and even when I was trying to lead out I had guys a lap down that were coming up and fighting me for position. If four riders lap at a Tuesday night race where only the winner recieves a "prize", the prize being a beer or soda then only the four riders that lapped and their teammates should be up there contesting. Their teammates can help out in the leadout. However I did notice several riders who had no team interest up there going for what was in effect 6th place (Ron was still ahead). This makes it dangerous for everyone. Also please take a larger view of what may have caused the crash and not just point fingers at one person. If one person did cause the crash then constructively tell him what he did wrong. Also yell at the person who obviously deserved to be yelled at ... Ron! I think Trent wasted a lot of energy yelling at Mike when he should have yelled at Ron. Just kidding Ron. Anyhow two more Tuesday races to go, hopefully they will be raced hard and there will be no further controversy and crashes this season.

Riding up Avon "Mountain" in the heat

Today I rode up Avon "Mountain". It was pretty warm but it needed to be done after class in West Hartford. I weighed myself this morning and noticed the weight creeping up a bit so more frequent training is necessary I think ... granted I've only been racing the flat Tuesday night criterium so it's not super important. However you always want to keep fit for various things. Despite the scale I noticed a suppleness in my pedal stroke today up the climb that had been missing. It was rather easy to ride up it without effort so that's a plus. On the downside I noticed traffic back up, from some sort of accident I think, so I went off road until I found another side road. The adventure through the grass / gravel was fun and entertaining. All in all a good ride. Then after the ride I got a grape coolata. These are heavenly after a hot ride. Anyway tomorrow is the Tuesday night battle at Rentschler, providing it doesn't rain.

I'm surprised I'm still in graduate school after this ... he he he

Yeah I did this as part of a polygon lesson for my technology in education class. I'm not sure why "Joe" had such an odd accent but whatever ...

victory at Rentschler a few weeks ago