Season Starts!

As any of the readers will know, I don't really train like the rest of you serious racers.

Anyway, my regiment has been a Tuesday hill ride in Arlington and getting dropped. If I get an additional ride on the weekend or on another day, Wed or Thurs at Hains Point, that's a bonus. However, Hains is now out with all of the tourists and people enjoying the Cherry Blossoms. I avoided it last week and low and behold a serious crash down there. Hopefully, Lauriston Marshall is okay, I hadn't heard back from him yet on his situation. Today is Tuesday and I took it off. No one seemed to be planning on going riding today with the expected rain (NOT!! it's sunny outside!) and high winds. I've cleaned my bike and didn't want to do it again. Oh well, ride postponed till tomorrow, so if anyone wants to join us we leave at 12:10 sharp from the Italian Store in Arlington.

So rewind a several weeks back. I've been trying to get at least one day out a week this winter and was pretty good until it snowed. Then it was pretty much off the bike. When I did finally decide to ride, the ground was wet with salt and sand. Well, that did me in. My Trek's headset was now grinding like someone dumped a spoonful of sand in it. I took the bike apart and tried to clean and relube it. Well that worked only so well as I noticed the bottom cup loose. Trek made this funky design on the 5900's. It was a 1 1/8" top bearing and 1 1/4" bottom bearing. The bottom cup is supposed to be bonded to the frame. I ordered new bearings and took my bike in to the shop to get them replaced. The mechanic, Pepper, said that replacing the bearings was not going to work as the bottom cup was unbonded from the frame and that would present a danger. So they contacted Trek and Trek told them to send the frame back to them so that they could replace the fork and bond a new sleeve in to the head tube so that it could accept a normal 1 1/8 headset. Good and bad. Good thing was that it wasn't going to cost me anything from Trek, bad was that it would cost me to get a new headset, Bottom Bracket, basically overhaul my bike. The worse news was that I would be out of a bike for at least 3 weeks. After a week went by, I was starting to get antsy. I needed to ride. Well, luckily a teammate of mine has a few extra bikes, so he lent a built up frame with SRAM Force on it. I just put my seatpost and saddle on it, pedals and wheels. I was set to ride. Unfortunately I really didn't do any fitting on the bike. I found the bike to feel funny the first time I rode. It seemed long and on a ride my hands were getting numb. So, I changed out the aluminum stem to my carbon one. That helped a bit and I also lowered angle of the rise on the stem by putting my stem on. I didn't have the numbness anymore. The problem was now that whenever I went on a group ride, I kept getting dropped on the climbs. I didn't think I was that bad off for not riding over two weeks. It continued to happen. I was pretty sure that it was the bike and I was looking at my fitting specs, however didn't have the time to really measure the differences to the bike I was riding. I got a call back from the shop and they said that the bike would arrive in a few days. It had been now four weeks since I sent it back in. It arrived and they reassembled everything. I took it home and compared it to the Cannondale CAAD9 I was riding. Big difference! The major difference was where the seat was positioned to the center of the bottom bracket. I was over 3 cm forward. No wonder why I had no power up the hills. I was using the wrong muscles. Well, I quickly disassembled the borrowed bike, put my seatpost and stem back on and I was now ready to test out the new headset and fork.
A day later... Wow!! what a difference it is! The bike now handles through turns like my old steel bike did. I always felt that the 5900 was going to slip out on the turn. Now I was much more confident on the turns, back to my old Crit racer self. Why didn't I do this years ago?
A week to Jeff Cup. I hadn't signed up yet as if I was getting dropped like I had been on the borrowed bike, it was going to be a waste.

I registered for Vint Hill as a teammate suggested I should do it, even as a training ride. Unfortunately, I was still on off season time. A friend of mine called me last minute on Friday night and we decided to have a good time. Good time it was staying up till 4:30 am. Then waking up at 9 am to leave to Vint Hill.
Well Vint Hill's master race turned out to be training ride for me as my teammate Pete Lindeman got into a break. I moved up front and blocked making sure no one tried to bridge, luckily most of us had teammates up in the break. There were several attempts, however we chased them down and they all basically gave up the chase. The final sprint came around and I competed for that to see how my legs were. It was okay, ended up 3rd in the group sprint, however sprinting legs definitely are not there anymore as I hadn't been focusing on any sprint exercises. Because the Masters race was not taxing and I was feeling pretty good, no effects of alcohol from the night before, I entered in the CAT123 race for more speed work and mileage. After one hard lap of chasing a break, I almost bridged with two bike lengths ahead, but gave up because my legs were really out of energy. Unfortunatetly there was one guy on my tail and he bridged as I pulled back, then merged back into the pack about 20 seconds later. I sat in the whole time and didn't do much except to just stay in. Tired and satisfied with the ride, I wandered home to refuel. Pasta, chicken, and wine. It was delicious.
Well, I know I'm behind everyone in their training so I needed a day with more miles. Trying to pick a ride was difficult. Well, I decided to do Jared's the Battle Bull Run Mountain ride. It was a drop ride. I knew that, however a teammate of mine, Mark Klein said he was going too. So I knew I would have company and someone to hopefully look out for me.

Just as expected, I was dropped on the first hill. Oh well... ride at my own pace. Several of us got together to ride. My major mishap was when my chain got stuck in my chainstay, I cranked backwards and forwards on the pedals lightly to try to free it, no luck. I pulled over to the side on the dirt/gravel road and found that the chain had actually popped out of the derailleur hanger. Luckily for me I had my tools with me and took apart the pulley section and reinserted the chain back in. On I go by myself trying to figure out if I was going in the right direction. Luckily the guys waited up for me at the major turn. I finished up with the guys, legs sore and tired. It was a good ride. I've stressed my body good. Recovery time. Ice cream, I must have eaten a half gallon of ice cream. Pasta, Steak, vegatables was for a snack, then dinner too. It was awesome!

Normal Tuesday hill ride, Goon ride in the evening. More good miles.
Wednesday hill ride. Feeling pretty good, didn't get dropped.
Thyursday and Firday off.
Saturday, I decided to do a low effort ride with the N2 riders. Well, it was supposed to be, however I decided to go to Poolesville. After Poolesville, on River Road, I put in a good strong effort by myself, dropping everyone behind then waited up at the meeting point to regather everyone. Everyone finished off and went home, except for a friend Phil, who I rode another extra 10 miles with, capping it off at about 80 mile by the time I got home. I was pretty much exhausted with that extra 10. Duh.. Sunday's Jefferson Cup!
I arrived at Jeff Cup a bit tired still, my legs felt pretty heavy. I warmed up a little bit, but didn't want to use up too much effort. I won't go into the details of the race, however, I actually finished up 6th. And I still had legs to go another lap or so, as they cut our race down early. Oh well, I would have chased the breakaway on the last lap and the results may have been different. However with 6th place, I'm pretty content especially since I rode 80 miles the day before. I didn't have a sprint at all, because of the cold and wet. My legs were heavy with the wet clothing and I also took too much out of myself trying to work my way up from the back. Oh well. Bottom line don't train like me.