A New Direction

Firstly, I apologize for my extended absence.  Between going back to school, training nearly full time and general laziness, I’ve been short on time to post.  Needless to say, a lot has changed.  I was on form, ready to demolish the collegiate season when I was in yet another bike wreck.  This time, I broke a small bone in my wrist into a couple of pieces (hopefully I can find the x-rays and post them).  It was actually kind of funny, you didn’t even have to be a doctor to see that I had seriously messed something up. There was a piece of bone just floating around my wrist, attached to nothing.  Unfortunately, this has led to a change in my life.

Goals for the 2012 Season

Now that I’ve had a couple of weeks of training and have done my post season analysis, it’s time to make some goals.  What makes a good goal?  One that has both a time and a specific, measurable objective.  So, “go faster”, is a bad one!  Without further ado, my goals for the 2012 racing season:

Hindsight is 20/20

My season unfortunately came to an abrupt end on on Monday when I tore several ligaments in my left hand, so I am left with no choice but to end my season and begin focusing on the next.  While not ideal, it’s also not the end of the world either.  This end allows me to take a long hard look and what went wrong/right and figure out what I need to do to make this next season even better.  As an added bonus, being forced to take my season break means I’ll be able to started training earlier, which means I will be ready for some extra early season racing!

A Lesson in Bad Position

The Bannock Criterium started off like any other, a sprint off of the start line in order to position for the first turn.  In fact, this race was pretty standard and I even felt like the race was downright easy until about five laps to go.  This is where I started having problems.

In a criterium, position is everything (I’ll write more about this in another post).  If you’re not reasonably near the front, then you can’t respond to attacks very well.  If you’re boxed in the middle of the peloton, you also can’t respond to much.  From this point in the race (5 laps to go),  I did a poor job of creating escape routes and staying near the front.  What would happen is I would move up, but, once I attained good position, I wouldn’t fight hard enough and ended up getting boxed in by other racers trying to do the same thing.  Once this happened, I would generally get sent four or five position back, which I would then have to make up again.  This constant battle is no way to race a criterium.

Weekly Update

Let me first start by saying that I love training and I love racing.  With that said I can’t wait for the season to be over.  Burnout is high this time of year because many of us have been racing and training hard since last October and, for some, even earlier.  No matter how much success you have, it can be tough to make it through an entire season, but I’m pushing on.  I have most likely six (or so) more race days coming up and I plan to make the most of them.  Starting with the Salida Classic Criterium and the State Championship Road Race.

So Close I Could Taste It

Today was the Vic’s Expresso Criterium in Prospect Park, which is located in Longmont.  Coming in to this race I had a lot of confidence after coming in third at the State Criterium Championship as well as second at the Sanitas Sports Criterium.  As usual, I showed up a few hours early to get registered and walk the course.  I’ve found that walking the course (or riding it slowly) is a great way to get a feel for how things are going to play out.  I’ll also generally watch a previous race from various places to know where the good lines are in the corners as well as where I can pedal and where I can’t.  I did my standard 25 minute spin the on the trainer and rolled up to the start.

The One that Got Away

North Boulder Classic is, well, a classic in Boulder.  A criterium with a rich and storied history with numerous big names coming out to race, and win, the event each year.  This year was my first attempt at this technical criterium.  In fact, given the nature of the course, I came into the day with extremely good feelings about the day.

As has become the norm the last few weeks, BRC Reality decided that they would drive the front for the first several laps, attacking and then slowing the peloton at the front.  This tactic is particularly good at a course like this one because they were able to keep everything strung out most of the race.  I’ve been taking a different approach to my racing in that, instead of hiding in the middle of the peloton, I have been ensuring to stay in the top three to eight riders.  From previous experience and basic logic, this should work out as all of the action naturally happens at the front (this also helps avoid crashes that happen from people diving corners.

Unplanned Vacation…

I had a bit of a rough week, both in training and in life.  I’ve recently been through my second funeral in as many weeks, which caused me to spent 8+ hours in the car  driving to Lincoln, NE for services.  While I don’t want to compare a poor week of training to the loss of a loved one, this is a training blog and therefor I feel obligated.

During my time in Lincoln, I was severely limited in my ability to train, I only managed one training ride although, I have to admit, training just outside of Lincoln city limits is amazingly peaceful.  Beautiful rolling green hill and light traffic.  I changed up the planned ride up to a more random approach to get some much needed intensity in my legs given that I haven’t been able to race much lately.  I’d also like to shamelessly plug an app that the company I work for developer called Cycletracker Pro.  My normal training device (Garmin Edge 500) was out of commission with a broken screen, so I decided to give this app a try and was pleasantly surprised with the ease in which it sync’d with TrainingPeaks.com

Ups and Downs

It’s been a long time since I’ve updated everyone on my racing and I figured it’s about time for an update. It helps that I’m on a road trip to Nebraska.

Racing has been hit or miss so far. The season opened, for me, with the CU Criterium where I rolled in for a pack finish; also winning a prime. This was a great result for me as I was looking to sit in as much as possible in order to get some speed work in my legs.

The next weekend was the Oredigger Classic. This modest sounding event was a hill climb up the famous Lookout Mtn in Golden, Colorado. Sadly, I was having stomach trouble during my run up the mountain, which left me in trouble. I still managed a top 10, but was far from hitting on all cylinders.

Weekly Update

Whoa, you blink and two weeks goes by.  I apologize to all of my viewers who read my blog on a regular basis for not updating!  I just started a new job and I don’t have as much free time at work as I used to.

Things are going wonderfully.  Over the weekend I saw my tempo power go up by a good chunk.  It was so windy on Saturday that I ended up doing most of my intervals up a canyon (Lefthand Canyon, if you know the area), which has an average gradient of 3% for the majority of the climb, but does pitch up and down along the way.