Recovered

I am back! I had to work hard to restrain myself over the past couple of weeks and not race. I skipped a Wednesday night, Friday night, and the Redmond Derby Days criterium in order to let my head and skin recover. I'm not completely healed, mind you, with still a bit of jaw discomfort, and my teeth are slowly coming back to normal, plus some of my road rash was pretty deep. But, I managed two hard training rides on the weekend without any symptoms that I was overdoing it, so I showed up for Master's racing on Wednesday, and tonight I will race with the cat 3's, two weeks after the crash.

Speaking of those training rides, they were real kickers. The Climb4Cancer Time Trial up Zoo Hill is in a couple of weeks (register if you haven't yet - it's only 2 miles!), and I want to trounce my time last year, 14:17. So, I rode to the base of Zoo Hill (starts near the Cougar Mountain Zoo) and did three repeats of Zoo Hill -> Lakemont Blvd -> Newport -> Zoo Hill. My first time up was 14:20, with two full water bottles, etc, and I was keeping the heart rate at 160 or less, so that bodes well for the TT. The next two repeats were 15:15 and 15:49. I then finished the ride with a loop around Lake Sammamish. That was last Saturday. On Sunday, since I was missing the Derby Days crit, I did a two hour sprint ride. I did a warm up, and then two sets of 10x15 second sprints. Each sprint exceeded 32 mph, which I owe to the track racing - the first set was even into a headwind! I really felt strong the whole weekend.

I took is off on Monday, and then did an easy 20 miles on Tuesday, with two short sprints. Wednesday night was the big return to the track. I got in a break in the 10 lap scratch race with a woman who has joined the Master's field a couple of times this season. We worked really well together, and only just got passed by about 6 riders in the final straight. I really thought we were going to stick it out to the end. But, it was a great effort.

Then, in the chariot race (one lap from a held start, in heats of 4-6 riders), which I have always thought was not my event (see an earlier post), I was sprinting with the top two guys in my heat, just not able to come around them. I didn't feel so bad, since one of the guys was Woody Cox, a former Master's World Champion, who excels at this kind of thing (plus each of his thighs equals both of mine together), and was happy I was right along side him in the sprint! Getting third put me in the consolation heat, where I still did well (for me) and narrowly missed another 3rd place (which would have been 9th overall in the chariot races).

my teammate Mark took this shot before the points race
- can you tell I am happy to be racing again?

The last race was a 6x5 points race, and shortly after the first sprint (where I got 3 points) I found myself in a break of three, chasing the aforementioned Woody and Mike Burdo who were a break further up the track. My break of three included my companion from the scratch race, plus another strong rider from the Benaroya Research team - I think they are all cat 2 or better riders on the road. We worked really well and stayed away from the pack for the rest of the race. The Benaroya guy (Pat Gray) was ripping our legs off every time he was at the front of the break, and had no trouble out-sprinting me for points on each sprint lap, but I was really enjoying myself being "on the rivet" for the remaining ~23 laps. Eventually Woody dropped back, and joined our break. Of course, he outsprinted me for the finish, but still, it was a great effort and shows my sprinting legs are still improving.

Tonight I am going to try new gearing. Up until now I have been using a 50x15 (50 teeth on the front chainring, and 15 on the rear cog), which amounts to 90 gear inches. I'm going to step it up to 49x14 for tonight and see how it goes. That pushes it to around 95 gear inches. For the layperson, this means it will be harder to pedal at a given speed, but assuming I am strong enough, it will mean I can ultimately hit a higher top speed before my legs are spinning out of control.

Overall, our team is doing super well - we've got three more additions to the regular track racers, including two of our top road riders (Travis and Jason), which means all of our road cat 2's are racing the track. I think we are going to be able to top the team standings by the end of the season!