Position

I've changed my setup on the mountain bike this week. Taking the advice of the skills gurus out there (Gene and Lee), I put a shorter stem on the bike and raised it. I already had a 75mm stem on my singlespeed, so I used that, replacing the 90mm stem that was on the bike. My estimate is that the changes moved my bars back and up about 1 inch each.

Lee mentioned a test to see if you have adequate skill to rip with a longer stem. He suggests dropping off a curb 100 times. To pass, you have to land with the rear wheel first every time. I didn't try to do it 100 times; I only did 10, and I landed correctly 8 times.

Last night, I got my first real ride in with the new setup (at Pontiac Lake, my "home" trail). I can say that it's definitely different; it took a little while to get used to. While pedaling, I felt much more upright; it felt a little odd on the road, but fine on the trail. My first impression is that I descend and corner a little better this way. For sure, it's easier to lift the front wheel. I didn't notice any real problems climbing, maybe the front end wanders just a little more, but it wasn't too bad. I did stall on the steep climb after "The Chute" on both laps, which is pretty unusual for me now. I attribute that to the rider rather than the bike though, my legs just felt dead for the whole ride.

I also had Sarah record me doing Figure-8 drills in the driveway earlier this week; it was really interesting to watch. I expected to see that I wasn't leaning the bike nearly as much as I thought (I wasn't), but I was pleasantly surprised to see that I looked reasonably smooth. What I didn't expect to see was how bad my upper body position was; I mean, I knew it probably wasn't great, but what I saw wasn't even close.

(Lee, demonstrating proper, although exaggerated, form.)

So, I've been working on getting myself into a good neutral "attack" position whenever I'm not pedaling. I figure, if the ground is flat and straight enough to pedal on, I should be in a pedaling position; otherwise, I should be in the attack position. I found that being in a good attack position also makes a big difference in my comfort level while descending and cornering. What I realized last night though is that I basically never corner like that; instead, I go to some position where my butt is hovering just off the saddle and my chest is still high. I expect that this position puts too much weight on the back of the bike, which is why I feel like the front of the bike doesn't want to turn. For sure, in that hovering position, I can't lean my bike very far without leaning with it, there's no place for the saddle to go!

Hines Park TT - 2009

It looked for a while like this race wasn't going to happen. When I went to bed on Saturday night, the report was that there was 1-2 feet of water over the road. I woke up a couple times during the night and could hear it raining hard. So, I was a little surprised to check my email Sunday morning and find that the race was still on (although probably delayed a little).

So, I loaded up the car and drove down (through more rain) to the race, where I found out the race was delayed 30 minutes, then an hour. By the time I started, it was getting hot, humid, and windy... perfect weather for bike racing!

The race went OK for me. I felt like I settled into a good pace pretty quickly. There were still some big puddles on the road; some of them where I wanted to ride. I hadn't considered that there would be a difference in puddles in the road created by rain (which is what I usually see) and those created by a flooding river. Turns out that the flooding river kind are really muddy. So, just a few minutes into the race, my bike and I were covered in mud... I usually finish mountain bike races cleaner than I finished yesterday. I tried to avoid the puddles a little more after I got coated the first time.

When I've done this race in the past and it's been windy, it seems like I usually get a good tailwind on the way out. There may have been some of that yesterday, but at times, I got a pretty strong crosswind instead, so the going wasn't too easy. There were strong headwinds and crosswinds all the way back too. Add the heat and humidity, and conditions were pretty tough.

I passed a few people on the course, including my dad, and only one guy passed me. I ended up finishing nearly a minute slower than last year. I'd like to attribute it all to the conditions, but I'm not sure if that's really the case.

Pontiac Lake

This weekend is the Hines Park TT, a 20km road time trial. I enjoy doing this race quite a bit. It's short enough that it's not too hard (I did the 40km race one year, and that was not so fun), there's nothing about the course or race format to worry about, you basically just pedal as hard as you can for about half an hour. My dad is coming over for the race too this year, so that will be fun.

So, in an effort to not really prepare for the race, I've been splitting my riding time between two activities: mountain bike "skill" rides in my backyard and rides at Pontiac Lake. The skill rides have been interesting. I'm making progress on cornering, but not so much on hopping. The improvements in cornering have mainly been due to looking farther ahead and improving my upper body position.

I'm starting to see the influence of my skill work on the trail too. I had really good rides on the trail on Sunday and Wednesday. I've noticed that I have the most trouble on corners where I can't see the exit (due to trees, grass, whatever), even if I know what the rest of the corner looks like. In those situations, you're supposed to look "through" the obstacle at where the trail will go, but I seem to have trouble doing that in practice.

Maintaining

I realized that I hadn't posted in a while. Not too much has been going on lately. I've been spending some time working on my technical skills again. The things I'm working on (mostly cornering) are getting better.

I rode at Pontiac Lake on Saturday and Sunday. Particularly on Sunday, I thought that I rode really well; the time spent on the skills stuff seemed to pay off. My biggest issue seems to be just not looking ahead enough; at times, my vision gets "stuck" on certain parts of the trail and causes me problems.

Speaking of working on skills... I'm strongly considering heading down to Virginia this Fall to attend a skills camp by Gene Hamilton. Ashwin has done this twice and has found it very beneficial.

Stony Creek TT - 2009

Sunday, I raced the 2009 edition of the Stony Creek Time Trial. I didn't feel particularly well-prepared for the race, but I still had some reasonably high expectations.

The preparation problems revolved around just not riding enough after my trip to California, and that my legs were still very sore after what I thought would be a pretty easy workout Friday night.

In the past, I've gone with the strategy of holding back a little at the start of a time trial, and then (hopefully) speeding up as the race goes on. In the distant past, I've also gone out too hard and blown up in time trials. Anyway, what I've been finding more recently is that it works better for me to go a little harder at the start, to psychologically set the intensity level for the race. So, that's what I did.

The format of these MTB time trials is that pairs of riders go off every 30 seconds. So, I went out pretty hard, as planned; the guy that started with me seemed content to draft me on the grassy start. Maybe this should have bothered me, but I'm not sure there's a huge aero advantage to be had at the speeds we were going, particularly behind me ;) . Once we got to the gravel road, he dropped me pretty quickly. The good news was that I could see that I had nearly reeled in the guy that started 30 seconds ahead of me (there was just one, the other guy didn't show up at the starting line).

Everything went fine through the first water-crossing, and then I passed my 30s guy just before a short section of singletrack. He was still close when we hit the first big climb; I pushed hard over that climb and dropped him. Even though my legs felt bad, it seemed like I was doing OK. Just after that, the guy that ended up winning my class passed me.

I hit the first long section of singletrack, The Pines, and backed off just a bit. I rode it about how I usually do, which is probably not aggressive enough. I got passed by two guys.

Basically, that's how the race went. I pushed hard on the two-track, and backed off a little on the singletrack. The passing I mentioned above was the only passing that happened. Later on, I did run into the guy that started with me. He had some problem with his chain that he'd just fixed. Once he got going, I didn't stay with him for long.

Anyway, I finished in 1hr 1min. It's a little hard to compare this time to my 2006 time, since the trail is now a little longer, but in 2006 I did the race in 1hr 4min. I guess I'm a little disappointed that I didn't finish in less than an hour. Despite the sore legs and rustiness, I actually felt like I raced OK, so the time surprised me a bit. Maybe this is a case of letting a bad result ruin an otherwise good race, I don't know.

There really wasn't one area that I can say caused me to be slow. My fitness seemed OK (despite the sore legs), although it could always be better. My singletrack riding was OK for me; it's still a relatively weak point, but (at least at Stony) I don't feel totally outclassed like I used to. I did a pretty good job of staying focused mentally. I think it's a case of going just a little faster everywhere, which would add up to going a lot faster overall.

California Trip

"Bears are everywhere, but not all the time."

- Yosemite Park Ranger

So, the trip to California... The basic plan was this: me and one of my old roommates (Greg) that still lives in Michigan would fly to San Fransisco and hang out there on Thursday afternoon. We'd meet up with a third roommate (Jacob) who lives out there, and then drive to Yosemite National Park that night. Friday, we'd hang out at the park and do our "big" hike. Saturday morning, we'd hang out at the park, and then drive back to SF in the afternoon. Sunday, the Michigan guys would fly home.

San Fransisco was pretty cool. From the airport, Greg and I took the BART to Chinatown and had lunch there. Somehow, we managed to pick a Vietnamese restaraunt, but it was good. From there, we walked to Fisherman's Wharf. We saw Alcatraz (from a distance), the sea lions on the pier, and the different ships. We used a combination of mass transit and our feet to get to Fremont, where we got our food for the weekend and met up with Jacob.

The drive to Yosemite was pretty uneventful, although we did see a coyote on our way in. Unfortunately, we got a late enough start that it was dark by the time we got to the park. It's too bad, we could see that the views from the road were pretty awesome on our way out. That night, we got the bear lecture from the Curry Village staff. As if to emphasize the point, later that night, some people did see a bear in the camp area not too far from us. The park rangers set off a big noisemaker, and we saw them outside our cabin with radio equipment, big flashlights, etc.

The hike on Friday was awesome. We took the Mist Trail up to Vernal and Nevada Falls, and then we came back down on the John Muir trail. It took us about 6 hours at a pretty liesurely pace. The trails were a little more crowded than I would have preferred, but it wasn't bad.

Friday afternoon, we drove down to the south end of the park and saw the giant Sequoias. On our way back, we stopped at one of the picnic areas to cook some dinner; we were the only ones there. We'd been there about 15 minutes when we heard some crashing noises from across the road. We scanned the woods until we found the source, a bear had climbed a little way up a tree and was scoping us out. We could see his head peeking out around the tree trunk. We quickly packed up our stuff and got ready to leave. We must have made enough noise to discourage the bear, because he wandered off... but we did see him cross the road to our side. Needless to say, the rest of our meal was a little more tense.

On Saturday, we packed up and decided to drive around the valley and visit some of the points of interest that we couldn't see too well the day before. Because these areas were easily accessible, and it was now Saturday, the crowds got worse as the morning went on. We were happy to be leaving when we did. We did see one more bear, swimming in the river, on our way out of the park.

The trip home was fine, except I ended up seeing a lot of the San Fransisco airport, since my flight was delayed about an hour and a half.

Feeling Better

A post (with pictures!) about my trip to Yosemite is coming soon, I hope.

I've been focusing on getting more sleep the last few nights; I've been generally feeling better since then and it's helped my motivation. It also occured to me that I might have been suffering from a little jet lag... even though (as a super Europe/Asia traveler) I usually scoff at that idea of jet lag from a little 3 hour time change.

I got out to ride last night again. It took me a while to get warmed up, but I felt pretty good once I did. I did a few hard efforts, which also seemed OK.

I registered for the Stony Creek TT this weekend (on my birthday). It's been a few years since I've done it. My goal in 2007 (the last time I planned to do the race, but didn't) was to get down to 55 minutes. I'll probably stick with that again this year, although really not sure what to expect. I'm a very different rider now than I was the last time I did this race, in 2006.

Stiff Legs

I got out on the bike for an easy spin last night. I didn't want to push too hard since I haven't ridden in nearly a week and haven't been sleeping enough. Sure enough, my legs felt like they hadn't seen a bike for a week... stiff and weak. Hopefully they'll come around quickly; I'm planning to race on Sunday.

Interesting interview with Jeremy Powers at Cyclocross Magazine. Part 1 and part 2. The comment that stuck out to me was: "Work on anything you possibly can. Because you are putting in 20 or 30 hours a week riding your bike and you’re not doing those things, then you’re not giving yourself a full chance. I think it’s important to just look at yourself from the outside in and say, “o.k. what can I do to make myself better, what do I know that I am not good enough at?” If that’s running, or if that’s riding in the mud, or if that’s just power, all of those things can be worked on. You can run more, you can train harder at intervals, you can go out and wet down your back yard and ride around in circles in the mud. You can make sure that you do all these things to at least give yourself an opportunity, and if you don’t give yourself that opportunity, then you have stumbled out of the start gate as if you never even tried. I would say breaking it down piece-by-piece and then taking your game to a different level is the hardest thing to do, but you have to look at each individual piece and then focus on one at a time and just knock them off. That can take years."

Riding at the Back

I went to the track again last night; it was the first time in a few weeks. Finally, the weather was nice on a night when I went.

Not too much to say, except that I still have some things to learn about road racing. I did OK in the first little race we did, except for right at the end. I ended up being near the back of the group near the end and got stuck in a position where I couldn't move up, even though I felt pretty good. Basically I was too far back at a critical point.

In the second little race, the pace picked up earlier than I expected, and I found myself near the back again. This time around, it was much worse. I kept following people, then they'd start to fall off, then I'd have to chase to close the gap. It seemed like every time I'd close a gap, another one would open up a few people up. If I could have stayed with the main group, I probably could have hung on longer, but since I kept having to chase, I ended up dropping off relatively early.

Anyway, it was a good ride...

Everybody Has a Plan...

"Everybody has a plan 'til they get punched in the mouth."

- Mike Tyson

More goin' hard on Saturday. I had wanted to get my ride in on the trails, but it rained all morning, so I opted for the road instead. I rode out toward Indian Springs; I had a good headwind to do my intervals into. I basically felt pretty decent while riding, but I was a little cooked by the end.

I got my first look at the natural gas pipeline that they're running through the park (and, as I understand it, also through a bunch of private property). There's a huge swath cut through the park right now; it looks terrible. Hopefully they do a good job restoring as much as possible.

I had a disappointing ride on Sunday; I rode over at Pontiac Lake. My plan was to ride hard if the legs felt good. If they didn't feel good (which they didn't), my plan was to work on my riding technique. That really didn't work out so well either; I just didn't ride very well. I think there were two problems: one, I hadn't eaten in a while before I left, and two, I hadn't set out my goals for the ride very well (definitely not as clearly as I wrote above). Maybe three was that I was more fatigued than I expected after Saturday. Anyway, I ended up cutting my ride shorter than I had originally planned since I just wasn't accomplishing anything.

One of the things that I've really focused on this year is to have some goal or objective for each of my training rides, whether it's working on a particular skill, doing some intervals, or just getting time in the saddle. This is the first time in a long time that I haven't accomplished what I set out to do. I suppose that's going to happen sometimes, but it's not a good feeling.

Camping

So, the reason for the meager (and late) posting last week was that the family went camping at Sleeper State Park in Caseville. We had a good time, but we also had the bad weather that seems to be tradition. It rained on us all the way up and it was cold the rest of the week.

We didn't bring any bikes, but we did do some hiking at Sleeper and at Port Crescent State Parks. The trails at Sleeper were much longer, but the trails at Port Crescent were a little nicer.

We also stopped by the Point Aux Barques lighthouse. It was a cold day, so it was nice to be inside for a little while doing things. They also had a nice playground at the lighthouse park.

Time to Get Fast

So, I decided this week that it is about time I start work on getting fast (getting some high-end fitness). My knee seems completely healed after my injury this spring, and I've got a solid base of miles in now.

I missed the track night this week because my throat was a little sore in the afternoon on Tuesday and I just didn't "feel right".

I felt fine on Wednesday, and I spent about an hour in the backyard and driveway working on some skill things. I mostly did cornering drills, but I also worked on hopping a little. I think practicing cornering in a controlled setting like that is really helpful for me. If things aren't quite going right, it's relatively easy for me to diagnose my problem and fix it. On a trail, the corner goes by so fast, so you might never realize what you're doing wrong.

I'm still struggling with a proper (flat pedal) bunnyhop/J-hop. I think my problem has to do with timing and the amount that I'm loading the rear tire. To resolve that, I've mostly been working on lifting the rear tire alone. It's been kind of a slow process.

Last night, after a short hike (still getting ready for Yosemite!), I rode over to a quiet neighborhood and did some sprint intervals. For me, this kind of very short, max effort work is the first step in building high-end fitness (once the legs are ready for it anyway). Ideally, I will work from these shorter intervals to longer ones. In the past, I've tried it the other way around, sort of tried to build a foundation from intermediate/long intervals and then top it off with shorter ones, but it doesn't seem to work as well for me.

The other interesting thing about my interval work was that I did them all from a complete stop (one foot on the ground). I wanted to do this because I've had some pretty miserable race starts lately (especially in 'cross last year). I need to work on getting that second foot clipped in... I think even if I have to look down for a while.

Room for Improvement

After we got back from camping last week, I put in a few easy rides over the weekend. Friday I went over to Lakeshore Park to ride. I haven't ridden there in a few years. It's a nice trail, but very different than what I'm used to. It's more-or-less flat, but very tight and twisty. They've also built up a number of technical features (big rock gardens, log rides, etc) that you can ride if you choose. I mostly stuck with whatever seemed to flow best... sometimes it was over the technical feature, sometimes not. The ride went fine, but I could tell I hadn't been on a bike in nearly a week. I felt a little rusty at the start, but I rode better as the ride went on.

The main reason I went was to check out the pump track that they built. It was quite a bit different than the one at Stony, so it was interesting to ride. The soil type was about the same, kind of gravel over hardpack... I was really hoping for no gravel. Some features were nicer than Stony, others weren't. In general, I thought the berms were better (they were built higher and steeper), but one of the bermed corners wasn't a berm at all, it was more of a flat bank. Some of the bumps were also too tall for good pumping, it looked like they were built for jumping (which is OK I guess, but it wasn't what I was looking for).

Saturday, I just got in a very short skill-focused ride. I worked on my drop technique and also front/rear wheel lifts.

I went to a last-minute club ride at Pontiac Lake on Sunday. This was a beginner-focused, no drop ride. There was a pretty big turnout, maybe 10 people or so. The reason I've been doing these rides is to focus on descending and cornering. Typically, people will ride fast down the hills and then go slowly (sometimes very slowly) up the climbs and on the flats. I mostly followed a guy that was new to the club (and to the area), but he seemed to be a good rider. I was more tentative than I would have liked, and more tentative than I have been at other times this year... still lots of random braking. Anyway, following him around showed me (as if I needed reminding) that I still have lots of room to improve. (My drops were all very nice though, I could tell that I'd practiced.)

Some more pictures from the Stony Marathon race...

From Ten Mile Media (great pictures, thanks!):

From Jeff Borisen:

Photo 1 (not sure where this is and why I have my inside pedal down while turning, but I noticed that other people did too... must not have been a very sharp corner...)

Photo 2

Photo 3 (finish line... whew!)

Stony Marathon XC - 2009

It's always hard to figure out what to write about this race... it's so long and so much stuff happens. So, here we go, the 2009 edition Stony Marathon XC race:

My plan was to get up around 6am on Saturday to eat, finish packing, etc. My daughter decided that she had a better idea... how about wake Dad up at 4:15am, try to sleep in a chair for a while, and then finally give up and stay up around 5:45am? I ended up getting about 6.5 hours of sleep the night before the race... sweet.

I enlisted my dad to help me at the race, handing up water bottles every lap. This was the first time I'd done it (nothing like trying a new hydration strategy at a 40+ mile race), and it actually worked really well. I probably drank more water than I would have with the Camelbak. I'm not sure that I'm ready to switch to bottles for all races, but there are lots of open sections at Stony that make it easy to drink from a bottle.

My strategy for the race was to go out reasonably hard and try to build up a gap (and clear traffic) until we hit The Pines; then, just a steady pace after that. I also wanted to get myself a little more fired up before the race.

It worked pretty well, I think. At least, by the time I hit the long stretches of singletrack, there was plenty of space for me to pass and others to pass me. I ended up having a little crash right at the end of the Pines. It was a weird crash; I'd gotten through all of the slick spots, and my front tire slid out over a very small root in a nearly straight section of trail. The rest of the lap went OK; my improvement in riding was pretty obvious in the Roller Coaster section of trail. I still wasn't great everywhere, but I could open up gaps on people just by really nailing the corners. That's definitely a first.

The second lap was also pretty decent. The only problem I ran into was another crash; this time in the Roller Coaster. I had a couple guys behind me and I was pushing a little harder than normal. I've actually crashed in this exact same spot in the exact same way before... so much for learning from my mistakes. It seemed like the second crash took a little of my aggressiveness away.

No crashes on the third lap, but I was starting to get tired. I was also mostly riding by myself on this lap. At the top of the climb to Mt. Sheldon, I stopped for a few seconds to help a woman find a shortcut back to the start/finish area. At first, I didn't give a very clear answer when she asked; then I took a closer look at her and saw that her face was half-covered in blood. Then I really stopped to make sure I gave decent directions and that she felt OK to make it back.

The other thing that happened on the third lap was that my legs started to cramp on the long climb near the end. It's the first time that's ever happened to me during a bike race. Not a good feeling! There are a whole lot of possibilities for the cause, so I'm not really sure why it happened.

I was by myself for most of the fourth lap also. The Elite riders started lapping me once I got to the Pines. This is actually one of the ways I've been judging my performance at this race. How soon do the Elites start lapping me? Every year, I've pushed it back farther and farther. I managed to ride most of the lap at a level that kept me from cramping, but it seemed like I was close to it on every climb. I had a crash on this lap too... my front tire slipped on the edge of a rut climbing up Mt. Sheldon. When I fell, my calf hit a log, which immediately caused it to cramp. Anyway, I finished out the lap and the race OK after that.

Once I finished, I felt like I'd done pretty well, but I wasn't sure how I placed. It's so hard to keep track of who's who when you're passing, being passed, etc and there are so many classes racing at once. I stood near the finish line for quite a while and didn't see anyone from my class come through (other people in my wave though). I started thinking maybe I hadn't done so well.
As it turned out, I did do OK. I finished 6th out of 14 in my class, and I was only 30 seconds or so out of 5th place. The gap behind me was huge though, about 13 minutes back to 7th place, which is why I wasn't seeing anyone come through.

Even looking back on it, I'm pretty happy with my race. I felt like I worked really hard and executed the strategy that I planned. It was a hot day, and a long, hard race. About half the guys in my club DNF'd.

My only disappointment is that my lap times, in particular the first lap, weren't a little faster. I'd need to pick up another 2 minutes per lap (~4%) to be competitive with the top Sport guys in my age group, and another couple minutes to match my friends in the Expert class. The thing I did notice is that I generally slowed down less per lap than most of the other guys in my class. I'm not completely sure, but I'm going to put most of this down to fitness, although I know I could still go faster in parts the singletrack. Most of these guys have been training since late Winter / early Spring. With my knee injury this year, I've really only been at it since May, and I've hardly done any high-intensity work.

Last thing; here's a picture that Andrea took. Not the best picture of me (and you can see I have too much tension in my shoulders), but I like the look on my face. Compare that to some of the Ruby pictures, and it's obvious that I was pushing myself harder here.

Minor Fall, Major Problem?

So, Sarah left this afternoon for a skating conference in Delaware, leaving just me and my daughter for the rest of the week. That part of it has actually gone fine so far. We went for a nice hike this evening and got a good look at a big deer. I also got her to bed with no crying... what a champion dad!

Anyway, before Sarah left, I wanted to do a quick loop at Stony, just to refresh a few things before the race on Saturday. I also wanted to ride the pump track a little. I wasn't pushing particularly hard, but I have been riding more agressively as I've been gaining confidence in my (somewhat) newfound cornering skills.

So, as I was exiting what should have been a pretty easy corner on a sidehill trail in the Roller Coaster section, my rear tire slid out a little in some sand. If the trail would have been a touch wider, I would have been able to save it, but I ended up going off on the uphill side. It was really a pretty minor fall. I wound up with just a some minor scratches on my leg, but I jammed my right thumb in a weird way (sort of between my shifter and the handlbars), and it was extremely painful to use the thumb shifter after that.

My thumb has mostly stayed sore as the day has gone on today, and its gotten just a little swollen. If it isn't noticeably better tomorrow, I'll have it checked out. Anyway, I'm concerned that it's not going to be feeling good enough for Saturday... we'll see.

Big Weekend

This past weekend turned out to be pretty big in terms of training. I ended up riding Friday night, which is unusual for me. I had some extended fatigue last week, a combination of the race on Sunday, the hard riding on Tuesday night and not getting quite enough sleep.

The Friday ride was pretty productive though. I had intended to work on finding my balance point for wheelies, manuals, etc by intentionally "looping out" (letting myself go off the back of the bike), but I ended up working on switchback-type corners on the hill in my yard. I struggled with the switchbacks at Ruby last weekend, and so I thought doing a little practice would be helpful. By the time I started working on the wheelies, a storm rolled in and drove me inside to the trainer.

Saturday morning, I took my daughter out hiking at Independence Oaks. I hiked about 2 hours, but she only caught the first half hour and the last 5 minutes. She slept the rest of the time!

Saturday night, I went over to Stony to ride the pump track. I definitely rode better this time than I did the time before. In particular, I improved my speed through the bermed corners. I was riding up higher on the berms and I shifted my weight forward a little. It was interesting that the things I noticed were very different this time. As I was adjusting my saddle back up to leave, a guy on a BMX bike zipped through half a lap on the track on his way to meet someone. Watching him, I realized that I still have plenty of room for improvement...

Sunday morning, I went back to Stony to turn some loops of the Marathon course. The conditions were very muddy in the Pines and in a couple other spots, so I didn't do complete laps, but I got most of it. Again, I feel like my riding has really improved, but it's still inconsistent. Some corners will be great and I'll really rip through them, but then I'll get all balled up and stall in others.

Hopefully outside events won't conspire against me for the race this weekend. My daughter has had a little cold this past week, and now Sarah thinks she's getting sick. I've also been nursing a saddle sore; so far, it's not very bad. I'm hoping I can make it through the race on Saturday, then I can take a little time off the bike to let it really heal.

Ruby Photos

Photos from Sarah...

The guy in white wondering how to get around...

Across the river!

Outhouse Hill

The bike's looking good...

Don't smile!

Across the river! (Again, and again...)

Almost done...

Finished! Clearly didn't suffer enough...

Leftovers

I went to the club track night again last night, this time carrying a little leftover rage from the Ruby race.

Last night was a time trial night. I breathed through my nose for the whole thing, except for the last corner. I had a nice improvement over my last TT, almost 2 minutes faster (about 9%). I felt pretty good... the disappointing race at Ruby helped me keep pushing. Still, I expect that I could have gone a little faster breathing through my mouth, but it definitely limited me less this time than it did before.

My dad was in town last night, so he rode at the track with me. Because of that, we rode with the "slow" group during the first race. As it turned out, the slow group ended up riding tempo at about 25mph... so it wasn't so slow. I took a couple of pulls at the front, and I felt pretty good.

Shelled at Ruby

Last weekend was my first race of the year, and it was pretty rough...

Sarah and I dropped off our daughter and dog at Grandma's on Saturday and drove out to Ruby Campground. We planned to ride Saturday, camp there Saturday night, and then at least I would race on Sunday.

Sarah and I were both pretty impressed with the campground itself. In particular, I thought the bathrooms and showers were some of the cleaner ones I've seen at a campground. There were lots of families (and bike racers) there, so things quieted down pretty quickly after dark. I would definitely go back. Anyway, on to the riding...

The Saturday ride with Sarah was OK, but she struggled on the trail. It was a bit more difficult than either of us expected. About halfway through the first lap, there was a narrow bit of sidehill (downhill) trail; at the end, you had to squeeze through a tight pair of trees, and then you dropped into a steep left hand turn. I went through and watched while Sarah came down. "Wow", I thought, "she's going really fast down that hill." Then I saw her go straight through the turn and go flying over the handlebars... uh oh. She wasn't hurt, just a few scrapes, but that was the end of her ride.

I finished that lap and did another one by myself. I mostly enjoyed the trails there, but I also recognized it wasn't the type of trail that suited me. It looked like if you knew the trail well, you could probably go pretty fast, and I definitely wasn't there. It would have been nice to get a ride in at Bloomer last week to help prepare, but I didn't manage to get out there.

Sunday was a beautiful day for the race. The details of my race weren't particularly interesting. I was basically slow everywhere except on the climbs and when we were running (the water crossings and some of the climbs). I didn't have any big problems, but I didn't feel very fit and I thought I rode below my technical ability. I ended up finishing 7th of 8, and not particularly competitive in terms of lap times either... ouch.

(Photo by Jeff Borisen)

After the race, Sarah commented that I didn't have the same intense look on my face that other racers did (I guess I shouldn't have smiled at her when I saw her at the side of the trail). It's hard to be really focused when you know you're getting crushed, but I think it's still a valid comment.

Two things I've noticed:

1. When I'm racing well, I'm able to keep riding at a very uncomfortable pace. I can push even harder when the trail allows, and recover a little when it gets tight. When I'm not racing well, I can't tolerate the discomfort for very long, and I don't feel like I can push when things open up. I'm not sure how much of this is physical (fitness) and how much is mental. Surely, it's some mix of the two.

2. I don't think I have the same sense of urgency in a mountain bike race that I do in a cyclocross race. Because a cyclocross race is short and, relatively speaking, there aren't too many corners and obstacles, I think it's much more obvious that you can't waste time. The same is really also true in a mountain bike race. It's not hard to imagine picking up a couple minutes over the course of a 1.5 hour race just by being a little more efficient.

Chasing Knee Perfection

"A living dog is better than a dead lion."

My left knee has been a little tweaky since my ride on Sunday. Not quite bad, but not quite perfect either. (At least my right knee, which is the one I had the big trouble with this Spring, has been OK.) I always tell Sarah though that I'm chasing "knee perfection", so, I'm going to pass on riding tonight. Another day of rest/light activity is probably smarter than going to the track, where I tend to have trouble taking it easy. In fact, I told her to hide my keys, bike shoes, whatever, so that I wouldn't be tempted to go once I got home from work.

I've been riding only 4 days a week this year: typically Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. The nice thing about that schedule is that it's pretty easy to move the days around if I decide I need an extra day of rest. Being home 3 weeknights (really 4, since I ride after my daughter goes to bed on Wednesday) is working well to keep the family happy too. So maybe I'll ride on Thursday this week instead.

I've been trying to think of these things in terms of risk and reward. What's the risk of riding (hard) tonight? Hosing my knee for a few days, a week, more? What's the reward? I stay exactly on my training schedule. Assuming that I'll ride Thursday instead of tonight, there's almost no reward. Certainly, there is no significant reward compared to the risk.

So, instead of riding, I took my daughter out for a little hike (using the carrier). We had a good time, but I'm not sure how much longer we'll be able to go to the nature center; the mosquitoes there seem to be getting worse. Mom needed a little break tonight, so she liked us being gone for awhile.

The Poto

I did some nice rides over the weekend:

Saturday, Sarah and I went to the club's beginner ride at Bald Mountain. It was the first time Sarah had ridden her mountain bike on a trail in a couple of years. It went pretty well, but she was pretty tired after we were done.

Yesterday, I went over to the Poto for a group ride. I've only been there twice before (over a period of about 5 years), and I made a spectacular wrong turn getting there, so I was late. No one else was in the lot when I arrived, so I figured the group had already left (actually, everyone else was even more late than me!). I ended up riding by myself, but I actually had a really nice ride. I did about 4 long, moderately hard efforts, and went pretty easy in between.

Once again, I felt like my riding was much better than last year, particularly when the trail was relatively open (so I could see where I was going).

I'm planning to do my first race of the year this weekend at Ruby Campground. I've never ridden there before, so I have no idea what to expect. I feel like my riding skills are higher than last year, but my fitness is lower. That's part of the reason I wanted to ride with the group yesterday, to gage my overall speed. Anyway, Sarah and I are going over to Ruby on Saturday to pre-ride the course, and then we'll camp there Saturday night. It should be a fun weekend.

Baby Carrier

So, I took my daughter out for a walk tonight in the baby carrier. It worked pretty well. I had to do a little adjusting to get the hip belt low enough, but that was about it. She stayed content and kept her hat on the whole time(!).

We went down to the nature center in our neighborhood and saw lots of ducks and a couple of "swamp cats". The ducks were a big hit, the swamp cats, not so much...

Cornering Confidence

I rode at the track again last night. I got off to a pretty slow start; my left knee felt pretty wonky during my warmup. It felt bad enough that I was considering stopping and going back home. I stopped to stretch for awhile, and that seemed to take care of the problem. I had no problems after that.

The main point of interest happened during our first little race. It was restricted gear, and we rode opposite the normal direction. The reversed direction meant that the downhill section had some relatively significant curves. Anyway, for the first two laps, I felt pretty good and really crushed the downhill section. I was noticeably faster carving the downhill corners than most everyone else. So, I was really happy about that; that's the sort of experience that will help me build bike-handling confidence.

Of course, on the third (and last) lap, the pace was pretty high; I started the lap near the front (thanks to my descending), but I blew up climbing the hill the last time. Still, I felt good. I told Sarah that I felt like a bike racer again for the first time this year.

In our second race, I stayed Mark Wolowiec's wheel for a while (as long as I could). It was pretty interesting to follow him and watch him work through the field. It seemed pretty clear that he reads the field and the race at a much deeper level than I do (which is no surprise, given that he's vastly more experienced). The one thing that struck me was that he seemed to take the individual rider's characteristics into account as he decided whether to follow them or not. For example, as we approached the climb, we were following a relatively weak climber, so he pulled out and positioned himself to go around just before the climb started, anticipating that a gap would open up (which it did). The result was that he smoothly caught on to the next wheel. Had I not been following Mark, I probably would have stayed with the slower climber until the gap had already started to open; then I would have had to work harder to go around and close it up.

Body, Mind and Sport

I decided to read the book that inspired some of the linked articles that I wrote about recently, John Douillard's Body, Mind, and Sport.

In general, I was actually a little disappointed with the book, but I can't exactly put my finger on why. Maybe my expectations were too high, or maybe it was my Western bias. Essentially, the main point of the book is that you should live and train in a way that is in accordance with Nature to maintain optimal health and fitness (which is not necessarily the same as performance). It's not that I really disagree with that idea, but some of the specifics are a little jarring.

There are some aspects of the book that I really liked. A key concept is that to achieve optimal athletic performance, you need to have inner calm. He describes it as "the eye of the hurricane". The more dynamic the activity is externally, the more internally calm you need to be. I get this, and I understand that this is part of my problem when it comes to riding my bike. I ride so much better when I can just switch off my brain and let my body do the work.

The training method used to achieve this state is interesting, and, again, a little jarring to Western sensibilities, but it does sort of make sense. The idea is to put yourself in a calm mental state during your warmup, and progress with your activity in such a way that you can maintain this state. One of the catches is, at least initially, to maintain this state, you will probably have to reduce your intensity... a lot.

The last thing that I appreciated was that Douillard didn't take the approach that his way was the only way. For each point, he mostly took the approach of, "This is what I think the best way is, but try it out. If it works for you, great. If not, or if you don't like it, do something else."

I'm still not sure what the endgame here is for me. Even though my performance while nasal breathing has improved a lot over the last few weeks, it's hard for me to imagine actually racing like that.

Mattawan Rides

We went to visit my parents this weekend. I brought the 'cross bike and rode with my dad both days.

I was pretty uncomfortable on the Saturday ride. I hadn't slept enough the night before, and my pre-ride nutrition probably wasn't the best. I was a little overdressed, so I was too warm almost the whole time. I stuck with my nasal breathing for the entire ride, but I seemed to be working too hard to match my dad's pace. I've been in the habit of using chamois cream for longish road rides, but I forgot to bring it, so I was chafing a bit by the end. My knees were also inexplicably achey. Just not a good time.

Everything that was bad on Saturday was good on Sunday. I got enough rest, ate a more normal meal, was dressed properly, etc. The ride went really well. I kept asking my dad if we were going slower than the day before (I haven't used a bike computer for a long time now); nope, it was about the same pace. By the end of the ride, I was feeling really good. My pedaling was super-smooth, and it seemed like I could go reasonably fast while still staying relaxed and breathing slowly through my nose.

This, I think, is the feeling that Douillard says we should be aiming for in Body, Mind and Sport. It did go away once I realized what was happening and started to push a little harder, but I still got a taste of it, even if it was only briefly.

Club TT

Last night was time trial night at the track. Even though I'm not in very good shape (the TT would be my longest hard effort of the year so far), I decided to go ahead and do it. My plan was to pace myself by only going as fast as nasal breathing would let me go.

Actually, the plan worked fine. One thing that I expected to happen did pan out, which was that I didn't go out too hard. I also turned very consistent laps, all within 1s or so of each other. I only had to open my mouth a few times, when I went a little too hard up the hill or into the wind. Really, the only problem I had was that I went too slow. Relative to a "normal" TT effort for me, I had too much energy left at the end; I probably could have ridden for quite some time at the pace I was going.

The only other club TT I've done was in May 2007. It's pretty hard to compare my time from 2007. By this time in 2007, I was reasonably fit and had already raced a few times. Still, the comparison was that my overall time yesterday was about 2min 20s slower than 2007, or about 12% slower, or almost 30s slower per lap! Probably I could have gone a bit faster if I'd been breathing through my mouth, but I don't know by how much. I doubt that I could have gotten down to my 2007 time.

Tuesday nights have turned into a nice benchmark for me on the nasal breathing thing. When I started with it two weeks ago, any time I had to pedal up a hill or into the wind (at maybe 13mph), I would struggle to breathe. Yesterday in the TT, I rode for 20+ minutes at nearly 20mph. Pretty big improvement in such a short time! I don't think my breathing has caught up to what the rest of my body can do yet. In Body, Mind, and Sport, Douillard said that the range for adaptation is 3-10 weeks, so I probably still have quite a bit of room for improvement.

Yosemite

I haven't posted about this yet, but I have a cool trip coming up this July. I'm heading out to California for a few days to visit with my old college roommates. While we're there, we're going to Yosemite National Park to do some hiking. I've not been there before, but Yosemite looks awesome from the pictures.

Unfortunately, the only weekend we could all get together conflicts with a mountain bike race I was planning to do; so I'll miss yet another one. We're planning to do enough hiking that I want to physically prepare for it. I'm not concerned about my fitness, but I am concerned about my knees and feet (blisters). So, to prepare, I want to start taking longer walks / hikes in the shoes and socks I plan to use. I will probably also resume running a little bit.

As the trip gets a little closer, this preparation will end up taking time away from riding my bike. I'm basically OK with that. I do want to enjoy my trip because these opportunities don't come up too often. The side benefit of the walking so far has been that the whole family can do it: my wife and I walk, and my daughter and my dog ride...

Busted Chains

I had a couple of nice rides over the weekend. Saturday morning, I went out on a club MTB ride that was intended for beginners. My plan was just to ride slow with the group and work on my skills. I was reminded of a few things that I don't like about group rides pretty early though: we started about 20 minutes late, and we stopped less than a mile into the trail when someone broke their chain (with the wet spring we've had, the mosquitos were brutal!).

Once we got going though, I really enjoyed the ride. I tried to go as fast as possible down the hills and slow everywhere else. I had some nice moments again. I felt like my cornering was improved over last weekend, and my hopping was definitely improved.

Yesterday morning, I rode by myself at Pontiac Lake. I had some really nice moments, particularly early in the ride. I absolutely ripped through some of the faster sections at the beginning; faster than I've ever gone before. What I noticed during these sections was that my body position was really good: I was relaxed, my chest was down, and my head was up. The only times I had problems were in a series of linked corners: if I'd take the first one much faster than I was used to, the second one would sometimes come up much faster than I was prepared for and I might botch it. Still, that's not such a bad problem. I think it's mostly a matter of re-learning the trail's rhythm at a higher speed.

As for the broken chain... I saw three guys by the side of the trail on the final steady climb after The Chute and the steep climbs. I asked if they could fix their problem (a broken chain); they said yes, but without much confidence. So I stopped and watched them work for a little bit (they would have been there for awhile), and then I took over and fixed the chain. A little trail karma never hurts...

Pads

Seriously, why do I not wear pads?!?!? Did I not just write a post a few weeks ago saying that I needed to wear pads when I was practicing? Agghhh... here's the story:

I spent some time working on my bunnyhopping progression last night in the backyard. I was riding the bike with flat pedals. A few years ago, I bought shin pads specifically for working on stuff like this. My pads were safely tucked away in the garage, protecting nothing.

As I was working on lifting my rear wheel, I found that my feet would lift off the pedals a little. Fine. After one such incident, with my feet at 3 and 9, I started bouncing up and down. (Why was I doing this? I don't know. No good reason.) Fine... until my foot slipped. So, with all my weight on one pedal, and no weight on the other, the predictable thing happened... the free pedal swung around and smashed into my bare shin!

So, now I have a nice bloody shin. I thought, "Gee... maybe I should go put my pads on." I'm not kidding, my next thought was, "Nah, I've already bashed my shin once, it won't happen again." Finally, reason prevailed, "Seriously? Go put your pads on!" So I did. I didn't have another incident where a pedal hit my shin (pad), but I did slip off the pedals one more time before I was done.

Listening

I went out to the track to ride last night. There were a couple interesting things:

Nasal breathing - What a difference a week makes! Last week, I could hardly get through the warmup without breathing through my mouth. Last night, I only had to breathe through my mouth twice. The first time, I was riding by myself and went a little too hard into the wind. The second time was in a practice race, just before I got dropped.

The other thing I noticed was how much more I ended up paying attention to my gearing, position on the bike, etc while I was breathing through my nose. Since wasting energy makes breathing more difficult pretty quickly, I found myself trying to maximize my efficiency whenever possible.

Practice race - After doing some very good group riding drills (the drills were good... not necessarily the group!), we did a short practice race. Gearing was restricted for the race, meaning it was much more important to hold on to wheels.

Like I mentioned above, I was able to maintain my nasal breathing for the first two laps. We weren't going too hard, but it was hard enough that I was a little surprised that I could maintain my breathing. At one point, while we were in a double paceline, I could hear the person next to me breathing hard, while I was still breathing, more-or-less easily, through my nose.

For the first couple laps, I also felt like I did a good job of riding with the group. I seemed to do better than usual holding on to wheels, drafting, and moving up. In particular, there were a few times where I saw a gap opening a few riders ahead of me and I was able to move up into it. In the past, it seemed like I usually wasn't looking far enough ahead to notice this. I've found that not noticing a gap opening ahead is a good way to get dropped!

The pace kicked up a bit during the 3rd lap; this is when I needed to switch back to mouth breathing. I was still with the group, but I was working harder than I wanted to, so I pulled off. I waited for another rider that had already been dropped, and we worked together to finish the race.

In general, it was a good ride for me again. One of the things I'm noticing this year, since I've been focused about building skills rather than fitness, is that my rides are generally more fun and I finish them feeling good about what I've done.

Trail Ups and Downs

I got out yesterday morning for my first trail ride in a long time. I rode at my "home trail", Pontiac Lake. There were a few positive and a few negative things for the day:

Positives:
+ My low-speed balance and low-speed handling skills seemed quite good. I've been keeping up with my trackstand and slow-riding practice, so this isn't too surprising.

+ Granted, there's nothing too big at PLRA, but my drops were all very smooth.

+ The Kenda Small Block 8 tire that I started using on the rear seems to be working OK. I dropped pressure from 28 to 25 psi for this ride, and it seemed to help the tire hook up better. I didn't feel any of the high-speed squirmy-ness that I noticed when I ran my Nevegal that low. I also felt like the SB8 rolled noticeably faster than the Nevegal.

+ I had some really nice cornering moments near the end of the ride. I need to keep working on doing the skill correctly; this should help me build confidence.

+ I'm not quite as out-of-shape as I thought, but I'm still not in racing shape. I didn't push hard at all, and my lap time was about 10 minutes slower than normal. This includes a few minutes spent crawling through and over a few downed trees on the trail. But I felt a little more fit than I expected.

Negatives:
- I was really rusty early in the ride which led to some bad moments and generally poor riding. This seemed to get better as the ride went on.

- Cornering on the dirt is not the same as cornering on pavement. While my (pavement) cornering practice has helped me, I think I need to start also practicing on the dirt to get used to the tires slipping a little more.

- I need to keep working on looking ahead. Things work so much better when I do that.

By the time it was over, I felt pretty good about my ride. As I ride the trails a little more now, I should get more comfortable and faster.


Also, I tried nasal breathing again on my way out to the trail. There was a pretty stiff headwind, and it was really hard to keep a reasonable pace while also only breathing through my nose. I eventually abandoned it again so I could ride more normally. Still, I think there may be something to this.

I have pretty much adjusted to only breathing through my nose throughout the day. At first, even doing that was a little challenging. Things would be going fine, then I'd suddenly feel like I needed to open my mouth to take in (or blow out?) a gulp of air. Now, I'm finding what I can only describe as a feeling of security when I'm aware of my breathing.

Return to Training

I got going on my training again last night. I went out to the track with the club. It seemed like there were a lot more people there than I remember; I think the club has become much more popular the past couple years than it was when I joined. A lot of my cyclocross racing friends were there, so it was nice to see those people.

My plan was to take it pretty easy and mainly work on just being relaxed and riding smoothly with the group. It was basically a success, I kept myself to only two hard (but short) efforts.

I did a nice, easy, long warmup. I'd been breathing through my nose all day; it was kind of an interesting experience, a few times I felt like I just needed to open my mouth and take a big gulp of air. Breathing through the nose worked OK on the bike, until I tried to increase the intensity at all. Even climbing up the little hill at the track at a moderate pace was enough to put me into some breathing difficulty. I largely abandoned the nasal breathing after my warmup, but I want to keep experimenting with it.

I joined the second fastest group for the formal riding. We mainly practiced just keeping in line while the leaders accelerated and slowed a little. It was good for me to do this a little. Holding a wheel and keeping gaps from opening is something I need to work on.

I thought I could feel a difference from my work this Spring on riding relaxed and working on cornering. While in the group, my shoulders stayed relaxed and I kept a nice bend in my arms the whole time. I also felt more comfortable cornering in the group. We weren't going too fast, but, since I'd been working on tighter and faster corners in practice, I felt confident with what we were doing.

Anyway, it was a good ride. My knees felt fine during the ride and afterward. So, it looks like I'm off to a good start.

Running Followups

I found some follow up articles to the one I posted some time ago about barefoot running, nasal breathing, etc.

The original
Follow-up 1 (More on barefoot running, nasal breathing, aerobic training)
Follow-up 2 (running economy)
Follow-up 3 (illness and injury)

It's always interesting to go back and read something again after some time has passed. Originally, I was mostly interested in the barefoot running part. This time, the sections about nasal breathing and relaxation caught my attention more.

The new articles are good too. I particularly like the third one about injury. He makes the point that injuries don't happen randomly; if you're injured, there's a reason for it. You need to find the reason, and then make some change to fix it. This has been my experience with cycling too. If I get hurt (usually a knee thing), then there's usually some mechanical reason for it. Trying to work around it, or patch the symptoms, just usually doesn't work in the long-term.


Speaking of being out of whack... yesterday was brutal. I couldn't fall asleep until about 2:30am on Sunday night, so I was really dragging all day yesterday. Hopefully that will be the worst of my jet lag. Sleeping was no problem last night since I was so tired.

Korea and Tubulars

I got back from my trip to Korea yesterday. Everything went pretty well, but I've been pretty tired for most of the day. I got a little exercise in while I was gone, mostly on the step machine. It's always interesting to go to public gyms, and gyms in Korea are no different. I slept like a rock last night (for 12 hours), but I'm not optimistic about tonight, we'll see.

My E-bay tubular wheels and tires came in while I was gone. They look like they're in pretty good shape, but I'm not sure about the gluing job. There seems to be a lot of extra glue on the rims; it looks a little bad, but I'm not sure it's really a problem.

Greatest Mountain Biker Ever...

...or, Maybe I Should Start Wearing Pads.

So, I went out to ride the pump track at Stony Creek today. They opened a "skills park" last summer, with a pump track, wooden stunts, etc. I swung by once last year to check it out (right before the cross-country race), but I never got around to riding it. When I visited last Fall, there was nobody there.

I was a little surprised by what I saw today. Lots of families there with smallish kids (and some young teenagers). There was only one person on the pump track, a really little kid (5 or 6 years old maybe). After I started riding, one more kid joined, maybe he was 12 or 13. It was a big enough track that everything was OK, once I explained to the little kid that I would be careful and wouldn't run into him.

Riding the pump track was interesting. It was apparent after a few laps that keeping my saddle in the typical XC position just wasn't going to work for me. I dropped it as far as it would go, and that helped considerably. My only incident was early, I messed up one of the bermed turns (I think I was leaned over too far for where I was on the berm; had I been riding it higher, I probably would have been fine), my tires slid out and up the berm, and down I went. It seemed like the kids were right there, and they made sure I was OK. The 5-year old then showed me all of his safety equipment (knee, elbow, shoulder, chest pads). We agreed that he was obviously much safer than me. He said that he needed to be safer because "I need to live longer than you". Fair enough.

One thing that I always read about riding pump tracks was that it was surprisingly hard on the cardiovascular system. I can now say that this is true. I had to stop every once in a while and catch my breath and let my legs rest. One of the times I was resting, a woman stopped by with her family and said "it really doesn't look that difficult." (Maybe I forgot to mention that most of the families were by the bigger stunts. Not that they were really riding them, but that's where they were.) I tried to explain (with my leg bleeding) that the pump track really isn't difficult to ride, and that the point is to ride it without pedaling, and that makes it hard. I'm not sure she believed me.

So, near the end, the little kid told me I was "the best mountain biker ever." That's going up on the board! ;)

Anyway, I had a good time out there. The pump track was cool. I'm not sure exactly what I learned, but it does make you think about riding with your upper and lower body separated. I had some good moments where my timing was good and I was going fast, and then moments where I felt pretty uncoordinated. I'll try to go back again.

I had wanted to ride the XC trails a little bit more than I did after my pump track session, but my bike was ghost-shifting badly, so it would have been an exercise in frustration to continue. I'm trying out a new rear tire (Kenda Small Block 8) this year. It makes the bike noticeably looser, but I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing. I want to experiment with the tire pressure a bit more and ride it a bit more before I make a judgement about it.

About the pads... right now, both of my knees and both of my elbows are scraped up. Definitely the fall on the pavement did more damage than the fall on the dirt, but still. Both times I've crashed while "practicing", so maybe pads for practicing aren't a bad idea. It might help me feel OK about continuing to push, and keep me intact when I make the inevitable learning mistakes.

BMX Kids

I've been fighting off a cold this past week. Some of the days I felt good, but other days I had a sore throat and runny nose. I didn't feel great yesterday morning, but I did want to get out and ride. I decided just to do an easy spin; I headed over to Waterford Oaks, where, if nothing else, I usually have the park to myself.

Apparently, BMX season has just started, and there were a bunch of kids out at the track. I stopped and watched for a few minutes. They hadn't started racing yet; just warming up I think. There was a wide variety of skill level out there. I had a good view of the first two rollers; some kids just got over them however they could, others were pumping the rollers, and at least one kid manualed the rollers (which, as I understand it, is the correct technique). It was obvious that pumping was faster than just riding, and manualing was faster than pumping. It was pretty interesting and fun to watch.

After that, I spent some time working on my own riding skills. I did some cornering work again in the parking lot; I'm definitely getting better and more consistent. Then I decided to work on my bunnyhopping progression. The Lopes/McCormack book suggests that you learn to balance a sitting wheelie before moving on (I think, so you learn where the balance point is). I'll admit, I never got wheelies down as a kid. Sure I could pop my wheel up, but I couldn't keep it there. Yesterday, I made some pretty good progress. I got to where I could balance it for at least a few pedal strokes, but I think I still wasn't leaning as far back as I needed to. I practiced this on a grassy field, just in case I did lean back too far.

What's pumping you say? Watch the first half of this video...



While I'm posting videos, I might as well post this one. The recent time trial at Pontiac Lake, my "home" trail. Too bad I couldn't race it this year.



Good post on Joe Friel's blog about pacing for a time trial.

Bunnyhops and Endo's

I rode again on Sunday; I basically did the same stuff that I did on Saturday, except for the crashing. It didn't go nearly as well as Saturday. Mainly, my bunnyhop practice wasn't so good.

On Saturday, I worked through the progression pretty thoroughly. I started with wheelies, then lifting the rear wheel, and then the bunnyhop. On Sunday, I sort of rushed through the first two steps and went straight to hopping. It didn't work so well. My timing was off, and maybe I was overemphasizing the rear wheel lift. Anyway, the result was that my front wheel wasn't really getting up enough... I nearly endo'd over the curb, twice. I definitely need more practice.

I think my knee is doing well. It's a little hard to tell now because it's sore from crashing on Saturday. But, it's a different kind of sore. I'm going to Korea next week for work; I'll do a few more easy rides before then and I'll start training in earnest when I get back. This hasn't been a fun process, but it does seem to be working. I really haven't had any major setbacks.

A couple of other random things:

- So, it turns out that my road frame got damaged in shipment on the way back from Georgia. The head tube is pretty badly dented. I did ensure it, and I'm going through the process of resolving it with UPS. They've been pretty good to deal with so far, but we're not finished yet. I haven't decided what I'll do yet, if I'll try to repair it (it's a steel frame) or do something else.

- I just won an Ebay auction for tubular wheels and tires for my 'cross bike. They should show up while I'm in Korea. The tires aren't my first choice, but I'm hoping I can get through this season on them.

First Crash of the Year

Well, I had my first crash of the year today... it was a beaut! I was doing my tight (slow) figure-8 drill in a parking lot, got too close to a curb, decided to grab a handful of front brake while leaned way over (oops!), which had the predictable result of tucking the front wheel under and putting me on the ground. It put a hole in my knee-warmer, scraped up my knee, got road rash on the elbow, and messed up my new pair of gloves. Quite a bit of bodily damage for such a low-speed fall.

Otherwise, I had a great ride. I'm still babying my knee, and it felt good... aside from falling on it. Cornering practice was good again. I also spent some time working on bunnyhopping. Just hopping over lines in the parking lot, curbs, little features on the trail, etc. I made some noticeable improvement, but I'm still inconsistent. I a few really nice hops over the curb though... totally smooth landings.

That is the plan for this year. Keep working on the basics. I can see where this focused practice on the basics will improve my riding. It should be fun to see how I progress.

Who Wins Races?

Before hockey last night, I was working on my bike and watching Battlestar Galactica. It was an episode where one of the pilots had to do some nearly impossible mission (which he accomplished, of course), and there was a big celebration when he got back.

So, on my drive down to hockey last night (my last skate of the year, by the way), I got to thinking about what makes something like that possible. How do you achieve a peak performance? How do you win a bike race? Assuming we don't consider cheating or luck, I think it comes down to preparation. Not just physical preparation, but mental, equipment, strategic/tactical... everything. You give yourself the best chance to win by being prepared in all facets.

I've been thinking lately about how I achieved my best race results. Certainly, I was usually reasonably fit, but there are other trends. One is that I have gotten all of my best results when I've gone out hard early and have been at or near the front for awhile. The second trend is that, in my better races, I'm usually focused outward, watching about how the race is unfolding, thinking about what my moves are going to be, etc, rather than focused inward, thinking about my pace or how much I'm hurting. Granted, there is some link between them, if you're not fit, you won't be able to get to the front (or stay there long). This may also lead to you riding by yourself, in which case it's hard to focus externally. Anyway...

I was thinking about one race in particular, Munson 2007. This was an interesting race for me, tactically. I got a good start and made a group of 4 that were well off the front. I got dropped by this group after one lap, and I ended up riding most of the second lap by myself. Eventually I got caught by Mark C, who I worked with for a little while. This gave me a chance to recover a little, and I eventually burned Mark off my wheel and rode in for 4th place.

In this race, it didn't turn out to matter, but here is the question: "When I got dropped by the front group, should I have sat up and waited to be caught by Mark (and maybe John O)?" I think, most of the time, the answer is "yes", especially if there had been more than one or two in the group behind me. Since it was a windy day, I burned a lot of energy on lap 2 riding by myself. It also happened early enough in the race that it would be tough to stay away. So, I would have been better off sharing the work in a group. Coincidently, I just read a race report from Mike Simonson where he was in a similar situation, and he did drop back.

I guess my point is that it's important to prepare for races in other ways besides just getting your fitness dialed. I think a big part of it needs to be planning what you will do in certain situations. As with the example above, your first instinct may be wrong, and it might pay off to have considered the situation beforehand.

More Cornering Thoughts

I rode outside again on Saturday, basically the same ride as Thursday. My knee still didn't feel perfect, but it was improved over Thursday, so I feel like I'm still on track. I'm still not planning to do anything hard on the bike for another week and a half.

Anyway, I spent more time working on my cornering. In the parking lot, I worked on initiating the turn by counter-directional steering. It seems to work pretty well, and I got pretty comfortable with it by the time I was done. I like that it forces the bike to lean, and that it doesn't put much weight on the handlebars. I think this parking lot cornering practice has been pretty effective.

The second thing I noticed was out on the trail. There's a slightly off-camber right hand corner that follows a little descent. Nothing too extreme, but I feel that I need to brake going down the hill. These are the kind of corners that I tend to have trouble with when I ride. Saturday, I discovered one reason why. I was going down the hill after having been brakes at the top, so my cranks were level (which, I think, is the proper position for braking and descending). When I got ready to turn, I felt that familiar bound up feeling that I sometimes do, and I ended up not taking the corner very well. What I realized later was that I'd never moved my feet to the 6-12 position, so my body wasn't in a comfortable cornering position. I repeated the hill a little later, got my feet in the correct position before I turned, and went though the corner much more smoothly.

What I'm working toward here is a little cornering sequence. Obviously, mountain biking is pretty variable, so you don't need to do everything for every corner. For example, there are times when I do prefer to corner with my cranks level, like during a quick sequence of open corners. In general though, my sequence might be something like:

1. Look at entry
2. Pedals to 6-12
3. Look at apex
4. Initiate turn (push inside hand forward)
5. Weight outside pedal, point hips into turn
6. Look at exit

Obviously, if you think about each steps while you're doing it, the corner will be over before you get through the list. But I think it's helpful for review and for practice. The way I see it, you need to have some idea what you're trying to get your body (and bike) to do before you can do it... with any consistency at least.

On the Trails Again

The weather was great last night, so I got outside for my ride. I've been a little hesitant to ride outside while my knee is recovering because I have a tendency to ride too hard. I do a much better job of controlling my effort on the trainer.

Anyway, I rode my 'cross bike over to Waterford Oaks (my mountain bike and road bike are still in pieces, and I won't be riding my singlespeed for a while). I rode on the trails a little bit. It was nice to get out on the dirt, even if the trails are pretty tame. I also practiced cornering for a while in one of the parking lots there.

My knee didn't feel perfect this time, but it wasn't painful either. I'm not going to ride today, but I'll ride Saturday again. Hopefully I can transition smoothly to riding longer (and outside) again.

A couple of observations from last night's ride:

1. I was trying to focus on staying relaxed. In particular, to keep my shoulders down (not hunched up) and arms loose. I noticed that keeping my shoulders down automatically puts my arms in a nice bent position. This feels good on the bike, but seems to have resulted in some weird chest/back soreness.

2. Looking ahead in corners: I need to remember to look ahead to the corner entry, apex and exit. I have a tendency to focus on whatever is to the outside of a corner, which is not helpful. Looking through the corner to the exit also seems to reduce perceived speed. I think that remembering to look at the sequence is more useful than just thinking about "looking ahead".

3. Turn initiation: I was playing around with a few different ways to initiate a turn. The one that felt the best was to initiate the turn by pressing down with the inside hand. I liked it because it easily leaned the bike and automatically put pressure on outside pedal. I think that this isn't a good technique though. I felt like I was putting too much pressure on the handlebars, and, if I'm going to put pressure on the bars, I want it on the outside, not the inside.

I also tried initiating the turn by sort of rolling my outside hand into the corner. This created a better condition at the handlebars, but I didn't feel like it was very purposeful motion. The last thing I tried was the countersteering method: pushing the inside hand forward to turn the front wheel out of the turn, which then causes the bike to lean into the turn. I was a little hesitant about this, it just doesn't feel like it's a good idea to turn the bars the opposite way that you want to go. I was more inconsistent with this method, but when I did get it right, the bike really turned for me.

I'm obviously overthinking this way too much right now, but that's how I am. Once I figure out what I really want to do and start drilling it, it will start to become automatic and I won't have to think about it so much.

A couple more pictures from my phone...

Knee Progress

My knee recovery is coming along nicely. It has felt perfect on my past 3 rides. Beginning with my next ride tomorrow, I'm going to start slowly ramping up the volume again. I'll still be keeping the intensity low for a couple more weeks.

I've been having a little trouble finding motivation to train lately. With my knee problem, I feel like I haven't been training enough to keep good "training inertia". I'm hoping that will get better as I start extending my rides and getting outside again.

Tonight was an off-night for riding. I ended up shooting baskets in the driveway for about 40 minutes. It was fun to get outside and do something different.

Use It!

One of the lines I really like in "Sport Psychology for Cyclists" is that when adversity pops up, you can let it use you, or you can use it. I've been thinking about how I can use my knee problem. (By the way, my knee has been feeling very good lately.)

First, I've been spending more time visualizing mountain bike situations. Two things have surprised me so far: one, my visualized pedal stroke on the mountain bike is much more choppy than when I visualize myself riding on the road. So, I need to work to clean that up. Two, I can't immediately bring up a clear mental image of how I want to go through corners on the trail. This probably explains why I'm inconsistent (at best) in reality. So, I'm working on my cornering when I visualize now.

Second, I've been reviewing my training plan, to make sure I understand how and why I got hurt, and to make sure it's really what I should be doing. As I've posted before, I'm pretty sure I know how I got hurt and how I can avoid it in the future. The question about the appropriateness of my training plan turned out to be more interesting.

I've written many times before about how much I think my race results would improve if I were a better bike handler. I've also written more recently about how I'm not in "race shape" for enough races. I took a look at my original Morris-based training plan relative to these two objectives. Judging from my own planning, and other people's experiences with the Morris plan, I realized that I'd be spending a lot of time on the trainer doing intervals. Is this really going to help me improve my bike handling? Will this get me into race shape?

For the bike handling thing: no, my original training plan would probably not have done much to improve my bike handling. For years, I've said that this is something I need to improve, and my training plan doesn't address it! That alone is probably reason to change.

As for the race shape thing: I'm sure my original plan would improved my fitness. I'm starting to think though, especially for someone with very limited time, that the intense training needs to be more race-specific. What if, instead of doing somewhat arbitrary intervals, I focused on the specific aspects of race fitness that I wanted to improve. For example, starts are critical in MTB and CX races, so how about working on specifically improving those (on the trail, grass, etc)? Fitness would still surely improve, and the training would apply directly to racing! There's a big psychological component here too; you would know what to expect out of your body in race situations, because you would have come close to replicating those situations in training.

This is getting to be a long post already, but the gist of my proposed training plan is this: One, spend a lot of time working on fundamentals (balance, cornering, riding in groups, etc), these are likely to be longer lower intensity rides. Maybe with the addition of a little extra riding, this would be sufficient to build aerobic capacity. Two, make the more intense rides race-specific. This would include working on starts, doing intervals on technical sections of trail, etc.

I know that this plan is not ideal for developing fitness, but, it does address my training objectives... and that's really the whole point of a training plan, isn't it?

Georgia Riding

I got back from Georgia on Tuesday this week. It was a shock to go from 70 degrees and sun to 30 degrees and snow!

The trip went well. My bike made it down without damage, although I need to learn to pack it better if I'm going to do this very often. I got in three rides; it was not as much riding as I'd hoped to do, but it was good recovery time for my knee. I wore shorts and a short-sleeved jersey only one day, but I had to wear knee warmers and sometimes arm warmers the other days. Still, the weather was very nice for riding, and the terrain was dead flat, which was good for my knee I think.

I kept my rides relatively short (about 1 hour) and easy. My knee is feeling pretty good. I'm not feeling any patella discomfort now, but my knees are feeling a little fatigued by the end of the rides. I think that this is a result of my body adapting to the corrected saddle height (I've experienced this before). I'm going to stick with the short easy rides for another week or so, and then I'll start building the volume back up a little. So, I'm hoping to resume normal training by the end of this month.

So, assuming all continues to go well, this injury will have set me back over two months. This is why it's important to train in such a way as to avoid injury! This means that my goals for the season really need to change, as I will be totally unprepared to race the Spring mountain bike races. There are a lot of races in August, so I think I will build toward those, and then focus on cyclocross.