Bull Mouse

I am still recovering. While the race Sunday was really hard, I have just felt off since last Thursday. I ignored the signs until Sunday evening after my race when I collapsed into bed spent. Monday morning I did yoga, or what I have come to call yoga, and the rest of the week I’ve been sleeping in.

With recovery topping my list of training priorities in 2010, I am just taking it easy until I feel good. Tux the wonderdog has shown great patience with me in the meantime.

2010 SCX Race # 2 Beverly Park Race Report

Pretending to be Portland..
All winter we pray for spring. All spring we dream of summer. All summer we long for Cyclocross. All during the Cyclocross season we live for MUD. This past weekend did not disappoint anyone.

The night before the race, it bombed rain. It was the kind of rain that wakes you up. The ground was saturated as we took a practice lap before the first race. There was mud. There are several types of mud. There is the cream cheese mud that Portland has. You ride through it and your tire tracks remain a six inch trench until the next poor soul comes along. There is the standing water over firm stuff that can be ridden. There is the shoe sucking glop that cannot be ridden. There is the sticky stuff that accumulates on your brakes and derailleurs like a brownish grey moss. This is dangerous stuff as it leads to broken derailleurs and snapped hangers. There is the greasy stuff that defies you to turn in it. There is the lava like stuff that you can ride with herculean effort then the mud flowing back after you leaving a seam where your tires passed. We had all these and more.

I held onto my rain jacket until the race official said there was one minute to go. It was raining hard and the rain was cold. I was in the second row and had a decent start. I hit the run up in the top ten. During the first lap I moved up as high as fifth. I was feeling strong and then I was feeling weak.

It was a tough day of racing. I later had a raspy cough that told me I had some congestion in my chest. This explained my fade in position. The mud made for a day when you could be putting out 400 watts of power on a flat surface with the right tires and tire pressure and only be going six miles an hour. If felt like the whole course was steep uphill. One racer remarked it was like plugging into a machine that sucked all of your strength out of your legs. It reminded me of riding when you are breaking in new brake pads, or just grabbing your brakes. The deceleration was that noticeable.

On Saturday we had practiced riding into sharp corners hard and then braking hard at the last second as you initiated the corner. The funny thing was the race course was so slow on Sunday; you didn’t really get enough speed on a straight to justify braking hard, so the technique was moot.

On the Evergreen course two weeks ago, you had stretches where you applied power followed by a break during a technical section. That was a fun course with some fast and slow sections. At Beverly Park, you didn’t get those breaks because with only one exception you never got enough speed to carry you through a technical section, so you had to keep putting out the power every second. It is tough mentally when you are putting out so much effort, and that effort doesn’t seem to be translating into the appropriate amount of forward progress. “How can I be working so hard and going so slow?” Your mind battles to reconcile the muscle stimuli (I’m going fast) with the visual stimuli (I’m barely moving).

In the end everyone was exhausted. It was the definition of a power course. A SLOW power course. Riders finished and slumped over their bars spent. One of my teammates crossed the line at the end of his race at full speed and stopped pedaling. Ten feet past the line he had rolled to a stop and was stepping off his bike. It was that slow. It was, however, very fun.

SFW and Evo apres' race

SSCXWC 2010 Progress Report

With Cyclocross season in full swing, the chance to bring in some variety to the suffering is always welcome. With Hottie covering the past two editions of the Single Speed Cyclocross World Championships (SSCXWC) for Cyclocross Magazine and my annual race reports for CX Magazine, it has become a highlight on the annual racing calendar for both of us.

This year the race has moved to Seattle and I have been racing part time in the single speed category. At first glance one would think these two factors would help me. Alas, once again the SSCXWC has instituted a qualifying race, so my participation is clearly at risk. I have been finishing in the top 80% at my races. A similar placement in the qualifier would not advance me. I can only hope that bribery and treachery, as in years past, will be rewarded generously.

The single speed mindset is an amazing thing. On days when I have raced both my age division and the single speed events, my perspective shifts almost as soon as I cross the finish line of my age group race. The simplicity of Cyclocross is exacerbated by the single gear. I recall one SS brother who said he preferred to think of his bike as having infinite speeds, all achieved using one gear. Suddenly the complexity of gears and cables seems cumbersome and unnecessary. The choice of what gear to start off the race in disappears. Time spent selecting the right gear is instead spent pedaling. There is no need to ease off while your chain climbs or descends your cogs, you just keep cranking.

I still love my geared bike, but that isn’t the focus of this post.

I am considering my possible costume options. Knowing I will be photographed is a factor in that decision. Knowing that Hottie always slips a shot of me into her CX magazine submissions is also worth noting. The legs are getting in shape, I’ve dropped a few pounds. Although I don’t have any tattoos, piercings, or ratty facial hair, I can pretend to have the single speed mindset. I will be quick to condemn those who show up with white shoes or white kit, shaved legs or carbon frames.

Elisha a.k.a Lennard Zinn told me to grease my skewers..

I hate it when any of my bikes make any unexpected sound. I take a pride in my mechanic skills. One of my teammates, when he emails me a technical question, uses the salutation “Dear Lennard.” This reference is to Lennard Zinn the sage mechanic who literally wrote the book on bicycle maintenance and repair. Associating me with Mr. Zinn is a compliment I welcome.

It was with great embarrassment that I endured a persistent clicking sound as I rode my wonderful road bike this past weekend. When Hottie and I shared a ride up Chewuch Canyon on Saturday morning I tried to keep the pedaling force down to minimize the sound. When I later took a hard solo training ride I pretended the clicking was a training metronome and tried to embrace the sound. Oh, the lies we tell ourselves….

I realize I have made mistakes about the source of creaks in the past. I was once convinced my headset was creaking when it was in fact a spoke creaking in my front hub. With all my experience I was pretty sure this was my BB. I have had my share of creaking bottom brackets (BBs) in my riding experience. I have learned to remove and re-grease a BB as fast as anyone. I keep plumber’s tape in my tool box for repairing creaking BB’s. I live on the fine line between being an experienced mechanic and being a creaking diagnostic snob.

A few weeks ago I re-greased all the Speedplay pedals that Hottie and I have, just in case. I have SRAM Rival cranks on both my road bikes. I had some creaking coming from my rain bike BB at a certain point of the pedal stroke. It wasn’t constant and seemed to have gone away sometime during the summer. Now the nearly identical creak was coming from my prized road bike. I was beginning to suspect SRAM, which was a scary thought.

I removed my road bike BB and removed the seals and cleaned (with an effective, but hazardous chemical that I will not list here) the bearings and races. I then greased them with a magic built-for-purpose grease. I replaced them and the clicking was totally unchanged. I then suspected the pedals so I swapped a pedal, and once again no change.

I jumped on the web and looked for other things to check. I read about loose derailleur hangers and broken bottle cages. Ungreased seat rails, ungreased seat posts and a myriad of other oddities. I looked at Lennard’s own words and he said after checking the BB, the next sources were pedals (and cleats) and skewers.

Feeling like I was on a wild goose chase, but wanting to check the box, I descended down to the man-cave and greased my rear skewer and frame interface points. Rolling out the door I took my traditional driveway up and back while listening. No creaking. I realized why my rain bike stopped creaking. When I built a new rear wheel I changed to a different, and perhaps greased, skewer. I am an idiot. Thanks Lennard.

I feel like the king of the world once again. This is Voodoo. But it is such cool Voodoo.

Wombat in the room ?

I have come to realize that many old people make really weird sounds when they sleep. The older they get the weirder, louder and more frequent the sounds get. That is all I am going to say.

VooDoo

Cyclocross is on the one hand the definition of simplicity. Get around this course as fast as you can, any way you can. You can ride, climb, run, claw, or do whatever it takes. On the other hand; the nuances of tread patterns, tire pressures, frame characteristics, brake options, not to mention embrocation, make this sport a true black art.

As my readership is well aware, I take the Classical view of biking as opposed to the Romantic view proposed by Robert Pirsig. For those of you who just like the Zen of riding, peace be with you and feel free to skip this post.

We spend time pondering the best bar tape for Cyclocross. Over the last six years I have raced with one set of handlebars and no less than six different front brake set ups. If I were to add brake pad experiments into that number, the result would surely exceed my finger based numeric system. I love my ride and feel it is pretty dialed in. For all the hubbub we make about gear, the race nearly always goes to the guy with the fastest legs. Yet because several places are often decided by a few seconds, we are constantly evaluating training, nutrition, equipment and clothing. When I went to Nationals last year I think I took five or six pairs of gloves. By the way, I’m still looking for good gloves for cold and wet conditions.

I recall the fit of rage I was in when I swore off Shimano SPD pedals and went the eggbeater route (I’ve never regretted it). I also recall when Kevin put his tubular front wheel on my bike and had me ride around. I couldn’t stop smiling.

Low pressure means great traction, at the risk of more flats. Get beat up or flat out? Pit wheels ? Pit wheels or pit bike ? I recently looked at my front wheel. It was just sitting there wondering why I was looking at it and wondering if I was some kind of cycling pervert. To the naked eye it was a wheel and a tire. I knew I had cleaned the carbon rim before I used the special glue and magic Belgium tape to glue the tire to the rim. I had of course put a valve extender on the tire before this and had taped the sides of the rim to prevent glue slop from getting everywhere. See my post about gluing the Evo way. Then I put a special sealant into the tire that would be at the ready to plug any small holes it might get while riding. And I had also coated the sidewalls with a special glue to prevent them from getting sliced while racing. That wheel is about as far from simple as you can get. It is, however, wicked fast.

I find myself riding a trainer downstairs before sunrise. Embrocation is a concept that freaks out people. There are several aspects of my Cyclocross life that seem to require explanation to the majority of the world. But to those that understand my sport, or love me, or both, they think I’m okay.

200+

I worked out today. It turns out that is the 201st time in 2010. That's it. Oh; maybe not. I suspect my shoulder is going to become a big deal.