Booger Knights

My track bikes have all left town, but I'm still going to find a way to come to Boogie Nights, a five-week late-night track-bike race series in Prospect Park.

Yes, it's safe.

It's a great way to get some fun end-of-the-season racing in. It's also a good way to get some first-time race experience under your belt, if you haven't raced in a pack, or raced a track bike before. It will get you buying your USAC license and dreaming of Opening Day out at Kissena.

There will be good competition for noobs and for experienced racers, so if you're in the city, come check it out.

Prizes will be multitudinous. A plan ticket to anywhere in the lower 48 states will be raffled off, with all proceeds going to support Gabe's ongoing recovery.

Itching to Race

Track racing was canceled last night, due to rain. I had been hoping that the rain would hold off, or be over early enough, but Alan sent the email in the afternoon and I had to make other plans.

Al and I decided to hit Prospect Park on our track bikes for a handful of laps and some hard efforts thrown in. A few hours before we were scheduled to ride I called him and said, "I'm bored! Let's ride right now." He laughed and said, "I'll meet you at the park in forty five minutes." But wouldn't you know it, when I was ready to leave the house it was pouring rain, and after the two of us and three others rode a few laps with some hill sprints, it eased up.

Among the reason that riding in the rain is good: it reminded me that, since it's not freezing February rain, riding in the wet won't ruin my day.

Now, I'm at work, waiting for the day to finish so we can go race in Rockleigh. Gui and I did this once last year, and I enjoyed the course.

I am just itching to race as often as I can. My moderate success and feeling of strength on the track is giving me confidence that I can turn around some of my marginally disappointing results in road races this year. My season has been consistently developing and I'm eager for that to continue. In that vein, along with weekly track racing on Wednesdays, I have the option of circuit races on Tuesday, crits on Thursday, and weekend races. There is a crit this weekend, a circuit race next weekend, a very hilly road race the following weekend... it goes on and on, and somewhere in there, I'm going to squeeze a Saturday trip to the velodrome in Trexlertown.

Amid this all, I have to stay aware of my level of exhaustion. With a busy month of racing, I don't want to hit a wall and have either my performance or my attitude go downhill. If I'm starting to feel like I need a break, I'll take a break. Last year, a combination fo racing and a very demanding work schedule conspired to make me very sick - sick enough to burn out my fitness and effectively end my season. Was it partly because it was my first season subjecting my body to the demands of racing? Perhaps. Fortunately, this year, my work schedule is much less demanding. I should be able to manage a busier racing schedule and, knowing the effects of overstressing my body, be able to more carefully back off of the intensity level when it's necessary. If I have to take a week or two off in early July so that I'm still racing in August, I will do so.

I've got a lot to look forward to - I want to keep learning and improving all the way through the season. I'm halfway to my upgrade to Cat 3 on the track, and I'm starting to feel strong enough to earn more points toward my upgrade to 3 on the road. I'd like to make the most of the season by avoiding burnout, overtraining, overexhaustion, over-stress, or any of a myriad names for it...

...so that I can kick off cyclocross season with a bang.

Figuring it out

Riding without a computer at the Bear Mountain Classic may have given me the confidence to bomb that descent a bit more aggressively than I would otherwise. Unlike at Battenkill, I know that I wasn't eyeing the speedometer every few seconds, watching it climb higher and higher. We were over 50mph - of this I'm confident - but I had few of the wide-eyed high-speed what-if jitters that I sometimes get when I know how fast I'm going. Ignorance is bliss.

It's important to ride, to just ride. Not for work, or to get to work, or to race and feel good about winning or bad about losing, so I'm starting to get very excited about tomorrow morning. I need some fast/casual fun/hard no-demands hours in the saddle. Housatonic Hills is coming up, and I can't let track racing, with its fast scratch races and endless sprints, make me forget how to ride for longer than a few minutes or slower than 27mph (when necessary).

I have no interest in hitting a mid-season physical or emotional wall, which means that here on out it's going to be important to monitor how I'm riding and racing so that I can keep feeling good and avoid burn-out. And that means opening up time for fun rides over the river and through the woods, for the dual purpose of fulfilling the sacred duty of going somewhere aimlessly, and getting strong(er, still), so that I don't get caught out in the sprint (that's my face peering out from behind the rider in red).

Connecticut Criteriums

I spent a weekend in Connecticut and used the opportunity to race criteriums in Plainville and Bethel. I needed just a few more races before I upgrade, and I chose Plainville based largely on having heard about it from Sprinter Della Casa's blog and Bethel from its reputation in NYC as a good training crit. After racing both, I highly recommend each for some good weekend racing.

Plainville is an excellent course - fast and flat, D-shaped with two ninety degree turns separated by the home stretch and by a long, fast, winding part. The final turn was just before the 200m mark. The combined 4/5 category meant that the race was long enough to be satisfying (45 minutes plus 5 laps), and I found the racers and organizers, volunteers, and marshalls to be really congenial. I got there with enough time for a few warm-up laps before being called to the line, and when the race started I found that the quality of racing was pretty high. A few riders whom I wanted to be away from but nothing terrible, and some people who had that quiet confidence around them.

I separated the race into sections and executed my plan very well. I sat in and got a feel for it. Then I tested things out as an opportunist, putting myself in a good two-person break for several laps until we were decisively reeled in. Then, I sat in and recovered, and figured out what positioning I would need for the sprint (recovery was aided by an unfortunate 6+ rider stack-up on the backstretch; the officials stopped the race a few laps after as an ambulance needed to attend to one rider still down. Here's hoping that everyone is not too bad off and riding again soon). And then I played my position very well, putting myself where I thought I needed to be. I saw an acceleration moving up the inside on the backstretch, jumped, got myself to be the third wheel, took the corner at 31mph and sprinted. I got into a rider's draft and threw my bike at the line to take 2nd! I even won cash, which went right into lunch for me, my traveling buddy, our helpful friend, and our two hosts for the night. Burritos - my favorite post race food.

My traveling partner and I rolled up to Bethel in barely enough time to sign in and get to the line. I was able to take one (1) warmup lap: ninety degree turn, sweeping gentle downhill, wicked headwinds on the back stretch, and a hill that's long and steep enough to change things. Sand on the course but nowhere particularly dangerous. The cat 5 race was only 12 laps and I figured I'd just patrol the front. The front turned out to be the eventual winner, a big young guy who liked to sit at the front and hammer. Had he attacked he could have done some damage. He also telegraphed everything he was about to do, so coming up to the finish line I jumped right before he did, opened up a huge gap, and rolled over the line first. Except I had made a mistake: there was the official, ringing the bell. One to go - how did I mess that one up? I sat up, got a wheel, and tried to chill out. I did but was tired enough that I couldn't sprint the way I would have liked, and came in 3rd.

Good results feel good, but I'm happier about a few other things: I made plans for the races and I stuck to them; I read the races well, and I read the other racers well. But on the top of the list is that I just submitted for an upgrade to Cat 4. I'm also just happy that a weekend of traveling and racing worked out very well - I had a great time in Connecticut, hanging out with friends, enjoying the first weekend of Spring weather immensely. And we hit up some races that I do not hesitate to recommend broadly and widely (in fact, I just emailed my team doing so!). So, if you're within whatever you consider to be worthwhile driving distance of either Plainville or Bethel I recommend that you get out to them. The people are friendly and the courses are good.

A Personal Best (and, On Losing Part II)

Stephen Roche on La Plagne, Tour de France 1987.

On Monday, three of us met in the morning and headed over the bridge for a training ride. We had no lofty goals for the ride, no intentions of long mileage or tough paces, but we did want to take advantage of the nice day and get some miles in to our legs. And we wanted to ride together, outdoors. Al and I went after some hills together, and on the flats Gui joined us for some traffic light sprints. On the way back from Piermont, Al and I decided to turn off of 9W to take a run at Sherriff's Hill (the Alpine climb), one of the few challenging steep sections within a short ride of New York City. We were a bit exhausted from our ride (despite my intention to work on re-fueling during longer rides, I messed up and felt it), and so looked at each other and decided not to crush it up the hill, just to take it steadily and do it because it's there. We descended the bumpy, twisty cliffside road, called Gui to ask him to time us, and set up the road.

On the bottom third, Al set a steady pace that reminded me that climbing hurts. Two-thirds of the way up I made my way around to embracing the pain, having it drive me with that teeth-gritting damn-the-torpedoes attitude that I'm not entirely familiar with in myself. Gui was there, circling where the road started to level out, and when we drew even he road next to me as I heaved side to side and yelled, "Faster! They're right behind you! You're almost there!" and then, "Six minutes and six seconds," which is faster than I've ever climbed that hill - despite our set-no-records approach to the day. Needless to say it made me feel like I'm making progress and gaining strength for the upcoming season.

I can't climb hills without thinking about Stephen Roche's performance on La Plagne in the 1987 Tour de France. There's a terrific video clip here, where you get to see footage of him collapsing and a later interview ("I just et the road" - priceless). I actually meant to post this as part of On Losing, but forgot, and never went back to edit. Take it as an example of a way to lose with style, pushing yourself so hard that you collapse at the end and your rival doesn't even realize that he's only gained 4 seconds on you at the end of the day. Utterly hard, utterly bad-ass

Roche also gets bonus points for being bashful about his cheeky comment, and translating it to hindsight-language as "I don't think I'll be going dancing tonight."

Sunday: Forty five degrees and sunny.

I headed north over the George Washington Bridge with the team for what turned out to be ninety-five miles with some pretty good climbs - more than I thought I'd be riding in the day. I reminded myself to eat and drink often, even though early in the ride, river-to-rivering Manhattan, one water bottle (of two) wormed its way out of a broken cage, fell down to Canal Street, and burst open. Damn.

I felt good - I stole second at a laid-back sprint for the state line (I don't think Dan C knew I was coming up) and later managed to come around an unintentional box-in to take a teammate in a long sprint for a traffic light (something I need to work on - getting coordinated with when to shift during sprints. It's so much easier on a track bike!). During the climbs I kept up with the leaders, those mountain goats, and still had energy to push it later.

Much later in the ride, Gui sneaked up to me and said, "If you do this ride every weekend, and ride during the week, you'll kick ass at Battenkill."

Training in the winter is hard. The weather, the motivation. This ride felt a little bit more like performing (for myself, for my new teammates, for my bike, finally in good working condition) than a casual training ride, and the weather suggested the early days of spring.

I have been working - riding on rollers, doing leg exercises three times a week, and, of course, on the bike in the meatpacking district (and in the park when the weather's good) - to get strong. And I feel stronger than I was last year. So that's a good sign. I might not be able to do a ride like this every weekend - not every weekend will be a balmy fortyfive degrees. But maybe today was a sign that I've been doing well with my training, and if I keep it up (whatever it may turn out to be in the next few months), maybe I have a chance of kicking ass at Battenkill.

The Palisades are a fine setting for this stuff. Cyclists pass by on these quiet back roads, these country highways. Something about the geography, the topography, and the ecosystem feel like home. The double paceline called out patches of ice and potholes, and once, in a steep climb, we turned a corner to see fields of snow across from a hibernating apple orchard. Just beautiful. In a car it would just feel like driving around in the middle of nowhere, but on a bike it's so much more interesting.

Accidental Tendencies Toward Underdog Stories

I have an excel spreadsheet - my training outline. It's got all the dates for the next several months on it, and for the past six weeks or so I've been recording what riding and other exercises I've done. It helps me look back on the last week, and on to the next week, and think, Okay, did so many miles. I should plan for another longer ride on Thursday; and I should make sure to do leg workouts on these three days. And ride rollers for an hour tomorrow morning.

I'm really just starting my commitment to training - my season of racing in '08 was largely based on my fitness and strength as a commuter. One of the things that's regularly on my excel spreadsheet is an entry - "15C." Many days- 15 miles, commuting pace. It's a conservative estimate of the ride in to my delivery job, a few nonsense miles during my shift, and the ride back. A busy day is probably more like 20 miles - nothing to brag about. Getting the blood flowing in my legs. Spinning quickly up 10th Avenue, back down 9th. Bikerattling romps over cobblestones in the meat packing district. And, in weather like last week, slipping and sliding around a fair amount.

It's not much of training. It's not endurance, I don't do intervals, and though I do put effort into my accelerations it's not like I'm launching Monster Sprints in my low-geared fixed workbike. So what good is it? Well, it keeps me on the bike. It keeps my legs supple. It lets me feel my progress, my fatigue and my strength, as I work out indoors.

I think that it also fertilizes a useful stubbornness - a willingness to ride as far as it takes for as long as it takes, in as much discomfort as it takes. The cranky commuter mentality just might be a lot closer to the classic definition of the cycling "hard man" than your average road racer. Those of us who are out on the streets day in and day out, whether commuting or working on our bikes, have a different relationship with the bike. It's not a toy, not a hobby, not a beloved exercise machine. An integral part of every day life - no choice, but simple fact. It's a prosthesis, and with it we are coordinated, adept, as smooth as if it were a part of us. Last week, I stubbornly pulled on a pair of pants over my tights and two pairs of socks as I set out in temperatures touching down at 15F. I snarled at the weather and launched myself head first in to it. I had to get to work. It's not like in New York City we've got a whole lot of room indoors in which to train, anyway. I set up my rollers in the kitchen doorway, with just enough clearance from the refrigerator (behind me) and the couch (in front of me).

I never trained for my first season racing - I just commuted every day, about 24 miles round trip from the Bronx, through the cold months, the rain and the snow, the traffic, the darkness, and into the spring and summer, into the insistent heat and humidity, the perpetual sweat. Fatigued? Saddle up - you've got another forty minutes of riding before you get home.

Maybe it will make me stronger, more bullheaded. Maybe just provide that chip on the shoulder, that motivation to work hard, to train with my body, to race hard on used bicycles, to prove to myself and anybody who might listen that a scrappy punk-rock underdog with a slim budget can race with the big boys. It's a story I play out largely in my head, the old trope about the outsider.

Maybe it's a little bit silly since I've never been made to feel like an outsider while racing.

But there it is.

The autumn winds blow chilly and cold.

Recently I spent a little while during a long, lazy autumn morning trying to plan when I would pull on my kit and go for a low-intensity, get-the-legs-moving ride in Prospect Park. In the bathroom, brushing the coffee out of my teeth, I looked down at my legs and realized that as much as underemployment might give me plenty of time to ride, I'm not making the most of it. My legs are unshaven. My excuse or reason is that there is no need to keep up appearances when race season is over. The reality that struck me, however, was that I haven't done a whole lot of riding in recent weeks.

I did squeeze in a really wonderful Century a few weeks ago, out to Montauk. Al and I put our heads into the wind and ground along for five hours, then stopped for a bunch of pizza, to watch the cold wind and the waves on the abandoned dunes, then climbed on the LIRR for a lazy train ride back. Six days later I did sixty or seventy miles through the city, up toward Nyack, and then down into New Jersey for family reasons, and the fatigue in my legs suggested that I had been lazy with my recovery - I hadn't ridden between those two long rides, and my recovery is best when I'm riding almost constantly. When I'm not tiring myself but always keeping my legs going.

In order to better be able to evaluate myself and keep myself on a schedule, I put together an excel spreadsheet that will let me track my riding and make plans and changes where I need to. One of the downsides of no longer living up in the Bronx means that everything I do no longer has a twenty to thirty mile round trip associated with it. This eats into my base miles.

However, this week I'm starting part-time work on my bicycle, which will get me on the bike every day and putting in some miles. That, combined with my excel spreadsheet, should keep me moving, thoughtful, and motivated.

It's been rainy a lot in the past couple of weeks. As November starts to get dark and grey it will be harder to really want to ride, and despite the fact that I welcomed autumn with open arms this year, it won't be long before I long for those warm spring days when you take the first opportunity to dress lightly and go out for long rides under the new sun. I plan to be well-prepared for next season's racing, though, and that will require me gritting my teeth and getting the miles in throughout the winter.

We'll see how I do.