Elkhorn!

Elkhorn! Somehow, the completely unpredictable weather and ambivalent locals of Baker City have charmed me back for this race for the third year running. Quick Elkhorn Redux.

2009: My first 1-2 stage race! Piled into Daifuku's MLR (Mobile Living Room) with Adrian and Jake MacArthur, packed a 1-bedroom vacation rental with 8 racers, got made fun of for wearing these to bed, got dropped on the first hill on stage 1, couldn't chase back on, started right after Steve Fisher in the TT, caught up to him and chatted about this and that, beat the eff out of Steve for the town line sprint during the TT, got penalized 30 seconds for drafting off Steve, survived the crit, and drilled it on the front of the final stage for Adrian, who both won the race and went faster through a corner in the aerobars than anyone I've ever seen:

(me: "'ees fast as!")

2010: Part of a motley crew of aimless racers, until Sam decided to ditch Nature Vally and flew out the morning of our departure! Decided on the Oregon Trail Motel option, begrudgingly at first, until we learned of the breakfast voucher offer (source of much confusion). Tiny Alan provoked the ire of our surly, 5'4", pigtailed waitress by conspicuously smuggling his flavorful, dark coffee into the diner* , the standard procedure of which was to serve only a thin, brown, transparent liquid (albeit in limitless quantities). I gave Sam a reverse leadout in the crit, helping him close gaps through each of the unbelievably slick corners while Steve Fisher went OTF, natch. Sam took runner up to his other half, Chris Hong**.

*prepared with his Whisperlite and a Moka Express in the motel parking lot each morning
**I mean someone half his size.

2011: So far, everything has gone smoothly, save for continued confusion about the meaning of the Motel's breakfast voucher. More on that when I can upload a pic of it. That's part of the problem. The voucher uses ambiguous language, but by the time we've bumbled our way through our order, they've taken our vouchers and we can't figure them out.

(Spinning on the TT course)

Right now, we're sitting in the hotel before the crit. Lang rode his way into the leader's jersey in the TT this morning (wtf?), so we got some work to do. BOOYAH!!

(Today we are looking for the best possible result, which is to bed the leader's jersey.)

The Agony of defeat!

Dear readers. Sorry about the delay. I've been busy living vicariously through Ian Crane's blog, and when it's come to thinking about my own exploits, I just wasn't to be flexed with.

Recently, after my third bout of sickness in a month, I decided to hit the reset button. Wenatchee reassured me that racing can be fun even if you don't have good legs, but nevertheless, I was feeling very rundown, and riding didn't feel as exciting as it ought to for an optimistic bike rider like me. To give an idea of how I felt after the 'chee, take a look at this picture of our host's garage freezer, home to what was once a proud selection of carbonated beverages:

(a'splosion!)

There's an obvi silver lining to this situation: coke ice cubes!!!!! Ian, don't even TRY to claim this as a new get-rich quick scheme. I'm on this one. Now ice doesn't water down your coke as it melts! Just shake up some coke, drop it in the freezer, wait a few weeks, then eagerly shove your sweaty phalanges into the frosty pile of cokecubes and aluminum shrapnel that now fills your freezer (patent pending).

So anyhow, my legs were cracked like the thin walls of a coke can. I put my bikes aside and focused on other things, like visiting friends in Walla Walla, where I saw this sight at Whitman's commencement ceremony:

(a dog that is only comfortable when surrounded by people legs)

Then I traveled to Hawai'i with my family!

(Pretty much an average day)

Craig Undem connected me with his bike shop owner friend Donnie in Pa'ia, who outfitted me with a Scott Speedster (vroom!) bike for a few days. I had taken some advice from the real Joe Holmes and stopped worrying about riding as training, so I just took the steed out and rode it how I felt. Well here's what I felt like doing:

(Hwy 30 on the way to Wailuku)

(Iced Toddy stop, natch. Early starts are crucial on Maui to avoid high temperatures and wind.)

(Northwest shore of Maui. One-lane switchbacks for about 20 miles.)

That's the elevation profile for the Pa'ia to Haleakala ride. 35-miles, nbd. The bros at the shop were all LOLing at me for my late (10:00am) start, but I wasn't concerned. I could ride 35 miles in like an hour if I really wanted to, so I headed out with a bottle of water and a Snickers (Rich McClung style). 3:30 later, I arrived at the summit of Haleakala, having almost finished my bottle of water! Here, I was treated to one of many fellow-tourist interactions that made me sigh heavy.

Morbidly Obese Ohio Resident 1: "Zomg did you ride your bike here? Are you training to ride with Lance Armstrong??"

Ok, pedestrian enough, what else have you got?

Morbidly Obese Ohio Resident 2: "We were going to go check out the Olivine Pools on the West end of the island, but then we heard that it was a 0.25-mile hike, so we decided to take the 2-hour drive to the top of Haleakala instead."

Ok, now we're getting somewhere. Part of what I noticed about tourism on Maui, and I think this applies to tourists everywhere, is that accessibility can be a toxic feature of any destination in a heavily-toured area. The crowdedness of a given Maui location seemed in direct correlation to the quality of the pavement that led to it. It's true that Haleakala provides a killer view of the island on a clear day. It's also true that the Olivine Pools (and their surroundings) are other-worldly and breathtakingly gorgeous. However, the 10-minute hike that separates an automotively-encapsulated tourist from the Olivine Pools acts as such an effective barrier to entry that the roster of visitors to Haleakala probably outnumbers that of the Olivine Pools 10-to-1. I was a tourist, too, but I feel like when exploring a new place, you ought to do a little work, and sometimes the work itself is what makes the destination satisfying.

Aaaanyway, that was self-indulgent.

After ruminating on subjects such as these, Joe Holmes called me and told me I was to ride Mt. Hood with the Elite Team. Ruh-Roh!! I told him okay, but that my legs would be rusty, if well-rested. I decided to get my competitive juices going again at the airport on the way home, although I was defeated in my first competition back by a flock of pilots, who pro-cut us in the security line, crit start style.

(Delta CHOP!)

In my next post, I'll tell you all about how my ill-preparation for Hood treated me.

Wenatchee Omnium Report

Hey global audience,

I'm a little sleepy right now, so I'm posting my race report that I sent out to the team verbatim. Boom!

Lang was a faster bike racer than me this weekend, but he's running from the law somewhere in California right now and can't type a race report when he has one hand on the wheel and one gripping his balls.

In attendance at Wenatchee were me, Lang, Tyler, and, for Sunday's RR, Tiny Alan. On Wednesday, the forecast was 0% chance of rain, but by Friday, that had been updated to "Orange Terror Alert." I went ahead and packed on Wednesday because I like to plan ahead, so I neglected any warm clothing in my righteous certitude.

TT: The organizers also like to stay ahead of schedule, so the 10:50 estimated start times were revised to 9:45, ruining some peoples' day with missed starts. Well, we didn't let that ruin our day. We let bad legs ruin it. Colin 17th, Lang 21st, Tyler 36th (missed start [day ruined]). Sammy J won. X

Crit: Rain!!!! BANG!!! Langer takes the hole shot yeeeah! Wait, why is he going so slow at the front? I have never seen someone jumped by so many Canadians at once! Ruh-roh I think Lang and Tyler are dropped. Tokyo.Drifting.Everywhere. My legs hurt. X

RR: The road race was the same as last year: 14 miles flat leading to the 11-mile circuit, of which we did 4 laps, then 4-miles to the finish. Lang was our go-to guy, what with all the hills. He had been talking nervously about Strava profiles all weekend, so we wanted to make sure he could set a good time up the climb. I went ahead and did the early break thing, getting in a move with Ian Mensher (KR) and Zach Garland (H&R Block) right from the get-go. With a small field (35-40) and a lot of people looking at each other before the first time up the hill, it looked like we could get a good head start on the hill without having to totally gut ourselves, plus it would put me in a position to help Lang when he caught us up later in the race. The three of us worked hard until we had about a minute on the field, then rode steady until the hill, at which point our lead had ballooned to 3:00. Garland the Canadian was much faster on the hill than the combined 13 feet and 350 lbs that constituted his company, so he took off while Mensher and I traded turns up the hill. Our gap to the field fluctuated between 2:00 and 3:30 over the next two laps, while Garland extended his lead on us to a few minutes.

According to Lang, the field was aggressive the first time up the hill, whittling itself down to 8 riders by the top, growing on the descent as riders chased back on. The disorganization in the field helped Mensher's and my gap stay up, as we were riding steady. Second lap was tame in the field and our gap stayed at 3:00. On the third trip up, Davis Shepherd (Greggs) put in a dig early on, and Sam countered him, at which point, the field a'sploded for good. Mensher and I were treated to a reality check as first Sam, then several Canadians, picked their way past us, emerging from, and disappearing into, the thick fog that blanketed the hillside. I was already pretty screwed (see note at "Time Trial, Lack of Power in"), but when Lang came past with a Garneau rider, I dug deep to keep them within sight. I caught them up on the descent, and started riding, trying to pull back a little time on the next guys up the road to give Lang a chance at catching them on the last lap. I offered Lang a handsling at the base of the hill, but Lang is an average Cat 4 on the track, so he opted to just pedal hard.

On the last ascent, Lang and the Garneau rider took off, while I went into survival mode. Lang worked his way through some of the guys up the road who had gone deep to stay with Sam's first acceleration, and soloed in for 5th. I got caught by a couple more Canadians midway up the hill, but kept schlepping myself to the top. I pulled back their minute advantage during the flat run in to the finish, attacking the eff out of them as soon as I caught them, coming in for 8th. Tyler rolled in for 11th, with Tiny earning himself a coveted omnium point with a 15th place showing. Zach Garland soloed for 50 miles to take the stage win, with Sam taking 2nd and the overall.

Definitely an every-man-for-himself kind of race. It would have been a lot better if we could have every-manned up and won the crit or gone faster in the TT, but I think we did what we could with the legs we had in the RR, plus the rainy weather slightly delayed Tiny Alan's slow descent towards skin cancer, so you can't call the weekend a total loss. Plus Lang is pretty sure he set a new strava record or whatever. Special thanks to Tyler Stearns' parents for standing in the feed zone in the terrible weather!!!