Shrinking the sprawl

One of the ironic aspects of bike racing is that you spend a lot of time in the car.

When carpooling to races  with my teammate Tris, we invariably end up talking about how we don’t like driving, and how we’d like to be able to walk and/or ride to more places.  The urban sprawl that most of us live among makes that difficult. While in suburban Louisville for nationals, there was a Starbucks just half a mile from the hotel.  But walking required crossing 6 lanes of heavy traffic without any visible pedestrian crossings.  Riding required either (illegally) dodging said traffic on the bike, or else following the maze of traffic lights and required u-turns.

Who was responsible for that planning fiasco?

One of the things I most miss about the 8 months I spent in Germany was being able to — and in many cases being required to — walk to places.  It was easy to walk to the grocery, bakery, restaurants, while it would be a hassle to drive and try to park.  In those 8 months, I lost weight simply from walking more, more than offsetting the increased beer consumption.

Is it possible to shrink the sprawl?  Especially in areas like Northeast Ohio, where the population is declining or at best stable?

A couple of related stories caught my attention. This one, written by fellow racer Jim Nichols, talks about how some would like to transform decaying urban spaces into small, working farms. Cool idea.

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1246870636117330.xml&coll=2

The other story is about the city of Youngstown, where we will be racing this weekend at the Tour of the Valley (promoted by our team).  Faced with declining population, Youngstown has taken the forward-thinking approach of embracing the decline and creating large green space from blighted areas, and then concentrating the developed areas.  This sort of an approach has the potential to shrink the sprawl.

The current and future land use maps can be seen here:

http://www.youngstown2010.com/plan/plan.htm

At least some people are thinking.

Baskets of regret

When they published the schedule for this year’s USA Cycling Masters Nationals, I felt the heads of hundreds of masters racers shake in unison. Why would anyone schedule the road race (for the biggest fields) the day before the time trial? The answer that came back was: we’re trying to minimize people’s travel expenses.

Guys like me were then faced with a decision: do the road race and likely lessen your chances in the time trial? Or skip the road race and put all your eggs in the TT basket? Or just do the road race and forget the TT?

I waffled. After finishing 5th in last year’s TT then crashing in the road race, I was looking to place better in both events. Even after signing up for both, I waffled. After a good ride at the Ohio state TT championship (3rd overall), I waffled more.

Thurlow Rogers (winner the past 3 years) was not signed up. This could be a real chance for a top 3 in the TT. The road race is more of a crap shoot; you never know what is going to happen. Why not focus on the TT – the race where you can most control your outcome?

Either way, I knew there was a good chance I’d end up regretting whichever decision I made.  I hate that feeling.

In the end, I decided to do both races. I told myself I would do the road race without worrying about saving it for the next day. It didn’t work. Three riders got away 5 miles into the race. One of them was one of the “danger men” I planned on watching. But I was trying not to do too much work too early. They stayed away, subsequent attacks were chased, no chase could get organized, and I decided to stop with 5 miles left to start recovering for the next day.

It felt like a wasted effort. Not how I like to race.

The next morning my legs felt decent considering the minimal recovery time. And I had a decent ride. I felt like I got pretty close to the right pacing, considering the hilliness and having ridden the course only once beforehand. But when I crossed the line and saw my time, I wasn’t too confident of making top 3, let alone top 5 again.

It was very close though:

1 Matthew Wukasch 00:30:16.80 Champion Porsche
2 Kevin Metcalfe       00:30:24.40 Team Specialized Racing Master
3 Brendan Sullivan   00:30:38.00 Iron Data Racing
4 William Henry        00:30:47.40 Vic’s Espresso/Peerless
5 Simon Walker         00:30:48.00 Suburban Health Sports/Soroff
6 Brian Batke              00:30:49.10 Carbon Racing

Before getting too regretful, it should be noted that 2nd and 3rd like me did the road race (and congrats to Brendan Sullivan, who I beat by 1 second in the TT last year). They might now be thinking, “could I have won the TT had I not done the road race?”

Yes, regret is a cruel emotion.

The perfect taper?

I’ve tried a number of different approaches to tapering for a big event. Take days off completely. Lower the volume but keep some intensity. Don’t do anything different at all.

What I really like to do is to throw a race in between some easy days. Just enough to keep race-sharp, but not so hard that the legs feel destroyed. That can be difficult to do, because once in the race you often can’t help yourself from racing full-throttle.

I think I found the perfect way:

Decide to do 48 mile road race that is 2.5 hrs away
Get up at 5am (good practice for early race start)
Wait for teammate who is late because his coffee pot overflowed on the kitchen floor
Drive 76mph for 2 hrs
Ride quietly in the field for first 10 miles, dodging potholes
Follow attacks on 2nd climb; attack over the top (race effort #1)
Flat on the downhill after hitting rock:
- feel lucky for not crashing
- feel lucky for having decided not to bring good tubulars
- feel lucky for having stuck a tube, levers, & “pump” (quotes necessary) in pocket
Fix flat, ride to parking lot to use a real pump
See Masters field go by
Make threshold+ effort to close 30 second gap and catch on (race effort #2)
Chat with Masters while riding up first climb
After first climb, “motorpace” (more necessary quotes) dropped rider back to field (race effort #3)
On final climb, follow attacks of lead group (race effort #4)
After descent, alert lead riders that marshal has left corner and they are about to get hit by oncoming cars (adrenaline spike #1)
Sort-of sprint at the end, behind the lead masters (race effort #5)
Drive back home at a reasonable speed
Think, hmm, legs are a little tired but not destroyed. Mission accomplished.

But did it really require an 11 hour trip?

You say Ver-sales

Before leaving for the Ohio time trial championship in Versailles, my son informed me of the correct way to pronounce where I would be going.

“It’s Ver-sales”, he said. “They don’t like it when you say it like the French city.” As a college student at a small Ohio liberal arts school, he now apparently knows these things.

I added it to the list of other Ohio cities and towns named after foreign ones, but that somewhere along the way forgot how they are supposed to be pronounced.

Milan is “MY-lan”.
Berlin is “BER-lun”.
Genoa is “Ge-NO-a”.
Toledo is “Tuh-LEE-doh”.
Lima is like the bean.

And I think the residents all get mad when you say the name “properly” — like the more famous counterpart, even though that is in fact the origin of their names. Somewhere along the way, someone must have declared, “I ain’t gonna live nowhere that sounds like some Frenchy place.”

Maybe this is the answer to Ohio’s declining economy. Make Ohio sound more cosmopolitan, and we can fool businesses into moving here. When they hear “Ver-sigh”, they might think of wine, bakeries, and street cafes rather than egg farms and chicken poop.

That is perhaps unfair to Ver-sales. Driving around Ohio to go to races, you pass through some pretty dismal looking places. Ver-sales wasn’t one of them. The main street (called Main Street of course) and the surrounding area was striking with its neat little well-kept houses, all with sidewalks, nice paint, and trimmed lawns.

It seemed as though people actually cared about where they live. And more of that would likely do more to revive Ohio than anything.

Chasing myself

I can understand how some pro riders feel pressure to dope.  I don’t agree with it, but I can understand it.

After a bad race, and then another, you start to have doubts.  When you’re doing this “just for fun”, it’s not such a big deal (though it doesn’t feel that way).But if you’re a professional, and your livelihood depends on your performance, the stakes are higher. How do you handle that pressure?

I had a (relatively) bad race at the Groveport Time Trial.  Then my legs felt tired and heavy at the Thursday night Leroy TT. At that point I was about ready to just stay off the time trial bike for a while.

So I waited until the last minute, literally, to sign up for the State Championship time trial.  That put me on the receiving end of a cosmic joke: starting 1 minute in front of Paul Martin, multi-time national champion. Great.  Being passed in the TT would send my confidence even lower.

We pre-rode the course the day before the race.  After a hard week of training my legs felt bad.  So while others were doing their pre-race “openers”,  I rode slow.  Really slow.  So slow it was tedious riding the entire 19 or so (no one seems to know the exact distance) mile course.  I even stopped for a pee break. Not a good sign.

But maybe the easy ride was exactly what was needed, because I woke up with legs that felt fresh.

Standing in the start house, I was not happy knowing that Paul would be chasing me.  It was going to be a tailwind on the way out — Paul would be flying.  And a headwind, with more uphill, on the way back — Paul would be hammering.  The challenge for me was to ride my own race, and not spend energy worrying about getting caught.  Yeah, I kept repeating that over and over.

It worked, until the turnaround, at which point I could not ignore the sight of Paul chasing.  I started to push harder — harder than I should have, but I just couldn’t help it.  As I started to fade, I could almost feel Paul closing in on me.  With every whoosh of air from a passing car, I fully expected Paul to be flying by me.  But I didn’t dare look back.

Somehow, with 2.5 miles to go, I found the strength to push to the finish.  Only then did I look back and see … that I couldn’t see Paul. At that point, I didn’t care what my time was.   I wasn’t close to having been caught.

The bonus was finding that my time was good enough for the podium — 3rd in the 1-2 field and 3rd overall.

And just as quickly as the doubts can enter, they can exit after a good ride. I think it’s similar to what golfers say: that one good shot on the 18th hole will make you forget about all the triple bogeys on the first 17 holes.

***

Results here

Excellent photo set here. (kudos to Robert)

More Mind Games

Someone recently told me that riding a time trial is like riding a knife’s edge.  Just a little too much in either direction and you fall off.

This is one of the aspects that attracts me.  The time  trial is known as the ‘race of truth’: there is no drafting, no wheels to follow, nobody to hide behind.  But it’s not pure strength.  The guy with the most watts doesn’t necessarily win. You have to optimize the watts that you do have, with your pacing with with how aerodynamic you can make yourself.

A common mistake is starting out too fast.  You’re on the start line with someone holding your bike by the saddle, the clock is ticking down, and your heart rate is already spiking from the adrenaline.  You blast off from the line like it’s an 8km prologue.  Only you have 40km to go.

You feel strong those first 5 minutes …   and then you hit the point where your legs feel like tree trunks, your pedaling goes square, your arms start to tingle, and you know you have gone out too fast.

I know all this. Yet I still do it.  It happened to me recently at the Groveport TT.

I left the start, into a headwind, and felt good.  In the first few miles I was already catching rides in front of me.  That should have been a clue. With about 10 miles to go, I suddenly became aware of the feeling: I need back off and recover.  From that point to the finish it was a matter of damage control.

Riding to limit the damage is not the optimal way to finish.  Nor is it enjoyable. You’re dying horribly, but you still have to ride yourself to the finish without totally giving up.

The worst thing is that it plants a seed of doubt.  You line up for the next TT, and now you have to deal with the memory of that experience. You know you can’t go out too fast.  But now do you overshoot to the other side and ride off the knife’s edge?

And how will you manage it when you know that starting 1 minute behind you is the winner of multiple national championships?  Yes, that will be the situation at the state TT.  Mind games.

TT Training Tricks

Yogi Berra said, “90% of baseball is mental; the other half is physical”.  Like many other “Yogiisms”, though logically incorrect, this one has an odd, zen-like quality.

He could easily be talking about riding time trials.  You might have a good engine but if you don’t master the mental aspect, then it’s just …  suffering.    Actually it’s suffering in any case, but the ideal is to optimize it: just the right amount of discomfort over the given distance.  Go out too fast and you die a horrible death.  Go out too slow and you kick yourself for having “too much in the tank” at the end.

Learning how to do that takes some practice.  The problem is:  who wants to practice suffering?  Bike riding is supposed to be fun.  Why would you want to get on a bike just to ride until you feel like crap?

Fortunately (I suppose) the human mind is sometimes able to fool itself.  There are a few tricks that, if nothing else, make the TT training doable.  Thinking about this, here are the top tricks that seem to work for me.

First is to find a good stretch of road.  Some roads just seem better for TT training.  If I’m going hard and am constantly being buzzed by cars, or have to dodge bad pavement, then I get annoyed, get distracted, and then just think about how much I want to stop.  Once I find a good route, then it just feels like a TT route. It feels right to go fast.

Everyone I know who TT’s has some kind of data that they look at.  Ideally that’s a power meter.  But a heart rate monitor, or even watching speed over a known course seems to work. Besides being an essential training tool, it’s an additional point of attention away from the discomfort.

Maybe the best trick — for me anyway — is to do some training TT’s.  Like the Thursday night TT in Leroy Township. Once you know that someone is recording your time, and know you’re in competition with other riders, a switch goes on and the suffering is in a completely different context.

Now the fear is that having thought about and exposed the tricks, will they still continue to work?

Nobody walks in Florida

Go for a walk in Florida and you risk being stopped by the police. That was the experience of Viktor, my friend and colleague from Germany.

We were at a work conference in Florida back in February.  The conference was about 40 miles north of Orlando, in a pleasant area covered with orange groves and lakes.   The roads were surprisingly good for cycling.

But like in many places in the U.S., you can’t really walk anywhere.

Viktor, being a good European, wanted to go for a walk after the day’s meetings and before dinner.  So he left the hotel complex and  started to walk along the main road — a 45mph state route.   This apparently was an odd enough occurrence in Florida that the police pulled up and asked what was wrong, and whether he needed help.

“Just going for a walk”, didn’t seem to satisfy them, and they were insistent on giving him a ride … somewhere.

By definition, there must have been something wrong, because no one in Florida would “just go for a walk” out on a main road.  (They apparently didn’t consider that was the ONLY place he could walk, given his starting point).

Once you get beyond this as a good source for jokes … it’s discouraging to consider that this is the sort of mindset that would need to be overcome in order to make more pedestrian- and bike-friendly areas in the U.S.

Can’t resist racing

When you live in a place that during winter is the butt crack of the universe (*), you need some small glimmer of hope to get you through until spring.  For me, it’s knowing that spring racing will start at some point.

The hours in the basement on the trainer, the rides in sub-freezing temps, the running – yes, running even – are made tolerable by thinking that there will be a race in some number of weeks (counting weeks seems better than months).  I’ll even sit on the trainer and visualize being in a familiar race, say Race at the Lake, and think, “20 more minutes, that’s only 7 laps.”  It’s enough to get through that last stretch when otherwise I’d be tempted to just climb off.

When the racing finally does come — which it did this year the last Saturday in February — I can’t resist doing the races.

A couple of weeks ago, there was hole in the calendar without a decent race option. It looked like Saturday and Sunday would just be training from home. But after racing almost every week since the last Saturday in February, it just didn’t feel right not to race.

So the emails went out late Saturday evening, and a couple of my Carbon Racing ‘mates and I decided to meet up in Aliquippa, PA for the only race within reasonable driving distance.  It was nothing big: a local criterium in a gritty industrial park on the Ohio River.  But the pavement was good (unlike what out local industrial park course has become), the racing was hard, and most importantly, it was a race. We rode pretty well, battled the wind and the PA racers, and finished 2nd and 6th.

It felt like a real spring weekend.

Afterward we drove back to Ohio, bypassing the PA Turnpike extortion ($4+ for about 15 miles), and rode a loop on the Tour of the Valley road race course.  You can see a video of the course here.  It’s going to be hard.  Did I say “hard”?  I meant  “fun”.  Yeah, it’s not going to be hard, it’s going to be fun (keep repeating from now until July).

—

(*) phrase courtesy Dave Steiner

Winter Slacking

You know you’ve been slacking on writing when …

You can’t remember the password to your WordPress account.

Yeah, winter sucks in Cleveland.  I can’t even say I made “lemonade from lemons” this year.  With all the snow, I didn’t go snowboarding once.

But I am in Florida right now, so things are looking up.  Funny how a little sunshine, warmth, and dry roads makes me think of writing about it.