Mark's Blog

I know it has been a little while since I updated the blog.  The race at the camp was a blast.  I raced my first WORS race on a single speed and all I can is that the last lap hurt A LOT.

The lead out was interesting, I got a shitty placement in the wave and had to start towards the back.  I managed to pass a lot of people on the lead out.  By the time I got to the single track, 2 miles after the start, I was in an ok spot.  I managed to keep pace with the group in front of me and when we would get out of the singletrack I would just spin for my life to get ahead of the group and try to latch on another group in front of me.  I managed to do a lot of that kind of riding for the first lap, by the halfway point of the first lap I caught Steve and made sure that he knew it was me on a single speed.  Once past Steve I managed to make some ground on some people and then we get to the “wall” and I was forced to run because of the people in front of me.  Half way up all I can here is, “Why are you running, you can ride that.”  All I can say is, thanks Steve for the encouragement.

Once on the second lap the groups were spread out fairly well, I didn’t get slowed to much in the singletrack.  With about 4 miles to go I managed to catch the second place clydesdale.  I sat on his wheel for a while and then gave a big effort to get rid of him on the flat singletrack sections.  Sorry, Sikora for almost crashing into you while passing you.  I was going at 100% right there in an attempt to put people between me and third place.  After that I just made sure that he wasn’t anywhere to be seen and then rolled to the finish line 69th overall for sport, my highest finishing spot ever.

Later

After riding the race course tonight with Ian and Quentin I look at my bike because it was making a horrible noise and I find a hair line crack right where every other frame broke.  I am now going to ride this for as long as I can before taking it in because of such a long wait to get another one.  You got to love the Trek warranty because they haven’t failed me yet.

The race went well.  We were the only registered clydesdale team so that is an automatic win.  So after I was picked to do the running and the first lap I asked Lanser if I could ride his single speed for a couple of laps and he said, “sure.”  The single speed was a blast to ride, the first lap I was a little bit over geared with a 32:16 and the seat post sliding down hindered the fun of that lap.  Once I get back I asked Matt if we could change the gear to a 32:17 and that made a world of difference.  I set the fastest lap for me with that bike, a 58:31 lap.

Matt Hockers, Matt Lanser and I had a competition to see who could set the fastest lap for the team.  On my fast lap I should have been faster but at about the 9 mile mark we turned into some singletrack that went for a little while.  I was riding solo when I caught some slower traffic and then some other guys were right behind me and we were all asking the slow guy to just slide over for a second so we could go around.  That didn’t fly with that dude and we ended up riding behind the guy for almost a mile of singletrack at a snails pace.  So that threw my fastest lap off of the time that I needed to beat Lanser and win the Cane Creek 110 headset.

Good job to Roadie and his 5 man team for their race.  It was nice to see the roadie make another attempt at the “darkside” of cycling.

Later

All I can say is, “That was a blast!”  It all started with me running late this morning and then hurrying to get to the race, never a good thing.  I didn’t forget anything, which is surprising.  Well, I get there with plenty of time to spare and then register, change and warmup with about 5 minutes to spare.

After the starters pistol went off I went from the back to the front half of the group.  I managed to stay there for a little bit, basically until the first steeper hill when the fast guys decided to punch it.  I was disappointed that I couldn’t hold on to that group, oh well.  After that I managed to get into a group of Warren, me and 2 other guys I never met before.  We rode together for a little bit and then one of the guys looked like he was hurting so I decided to try and push it for a little bit and see who would come with me.  I managed to get rid of the guy that was dying and then the group was down to 3.  Then the three of us managed to reel in one guy that tried to bridge to the lead group and we rode pretty well together for a while.  At that point every time I would look back I seen that there was a chase group not far behind us and I wanted to make sure that we weren’t going to get caught.  So once half way through the race there was a section of road that had a bunch of rollers in it, every time we got to the uphill I would go to the front and make sure to set a tempo to make sure the chase wouldn’t catch.  On the second or third uphill Warren got popped off of the group.  Then the rest of the race our group of three managed to catch and pass a whole bunch of the duathlon people.

Once we got within a couple of miles of town the course started to go uphill quite a bit.  I managed to get rid of one more rider by setting a good tempo up the climb.  Then after a little bit of the both of us riding a sudden right and then an “awesome” climb decided to show up and then I tried to drop the last guy but he wanted to stay with me and then he thought I was going to slow up the hill.  After that I made sure he was going to pull me in to the finish.  The ride through town wasn’t bad, it reminded me of a crit go fast, turn and repeat.  We hit the final straight and I nail it, and I didn’t know that I had to be on the opposite side of the road to go across the timing pad.  So, on paper it looks like the guy in 10th beat me but that isn’t the case.

I just reserved a rental light for my backup for Wausau24.  I managed to get one of these, which is quite a bit brighter than my current one.  Now, I just have to pack in the miles so I don’t die during the event.

A good place to start is this weekend, the road race in Kewaunee and then the 100k Titletown Tour.  Nothing like a awesome weekend of riding my bicycle.  I will hopefully have some pictures in the near future for your viewing pleasure.

Later

Tonight on the Bike Hub ride I set a new PR for speed in a sprint.  I managed to hit 36.5 mph with my hr hitting 193 during the effort.  I managed to position myself in the lead group coming over the climbing in Ledgetop and then they started to pick up the speed to catch the two that broke away.  Once they were caught everyone sat up and then I went and hit the top speed right before we got to Hwy. 96.  It was fun to ride like that and feel good during the effort.  I shouldn’t have done that because I wasn’t in the lead group coming back up Lost Dauphin but I managed to get in a chase group.

Later.

Well, the race on Saturday went well.  I managed to get 5th which isn’t too bad.  I actually felt fine for this race which isn’t the usual for me lately.  I almost crashed into Shawn who was standing on the side of the trail because of his crash in the same spot.  I managed to drop Shawn on the third lap, I had to make up some time on him since he tried to ride away from me on the second lap.  Then afterwards I tried to take some photos of the different groups of people suffering.  After some of that it was time to watch, “the big dogs come out and play.”  That statement was told to me by some guy at the race.  I was awestruck by the speed of the front 4 in the race.  The only way I could fathom keeping up is to get a dirt bike and ride around.  They were in the big ring on the hills where I was in my little gear trying to spin up.

Subaru Cup Photos

This last week after the race has been quite boring and nothing else new to say.

Later

This last week has been fun, I started a new part-time janitorial job.  So that is a good thing, I just need to secure a full-time position.

This week in riding has been GREAT.  Sunday night involved me riding for 61 miles, Tuesday was a night ride (first of the year) and last night was 70 miles.  Last night was a bitch because of the rain storms that were closing down on us.  As soon as we turned south I pegged it trying to out-run the pending storm, that wasn’t happening.  I was doing one gigantic interval and I looked down to see how fast I was traveling.  I was amazed to see that I was doing 33 on the flat trying to fly.  I could only hold that pace for just a little while then I had to slow down for a little bit to try and recover.  The winds were so strong that I got blown across one lane of traffic, that is a freaky feeling to have that happen.

So now it is time to recover and get ready for an 8 am start on Saturday.  That is going to suck.  Hopefully the rain holds off till after my race.

Later

This link makes me like Gary Fisher more than I do now.  And everyone knows how much I loathe Gary Fisher.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Quj7ZUU3SfY

This race went down ok.  I finally got my average H.R. to go up for once.  The first couple of races I could never get the H.R. to go high enough.  I put a lot of hard rides in the last two weeks and it is paying off.  I finally felt good at the end of the race.  for the first time I actually passed people instead of getting passed.

The race went ok, no major problems.  I finished 5 out of 13, should have been 4 but I couldn’t hold the guys wheel up the final climb.  This race made me put the granny gear back on my bike because of the greasy climb which should have been rideable but I couldn’t do it with the gear that I had.

Photos