Ups and Downs: Update from Fitchburg

I'm home on the couch, drinking tea, instead of being at the bike race in Fitchburg.

I have mixed feelings about this. I have a slight, but annoyingly persistent cold, and yesterday during the circuit race I felt absolutely horrible. I sucked it up, rode a smart race, tried to be a part of the actual racing, and rolled in with the pack to an ignominious finish. The thing is though, with the form I have had in the last month or two, I should have been able to pick that race up and spin it on my finger like a basketball. Instead I suffered all day, had heavy legs, felt crappy, and descended into a spiral of negative thinking, self loathing, and general unhappiness. Not a particularly rational reaction to having a bad day of bike racing, but nobody has ever accused me of being particularly rational.

So I pulled the plug. I don't want to get sicker, I do want to race well at the Tour De Quebec next week, and racing when you're sick, trying just to follow wheels and survive, is no fun at all. I have never dropped out of a stage race before, and it doesn't feel very good, despite being sure that I made the right decision. After dropping out of Housatonic two weeks ago feeling the beginnings of this same cold and suffering from short sleep, I'm starting to feel a little all-or-nothing about my season, which was going really well until a couple of weeks ago. Being sick is being sick, though. So what? It's a good opportunity for me to catch up on some life stuff and settle for a few days while I get better. And given the time of year and the volume of racing and training I already have in the bag, the extra rest will likely do me a heap of good.

In much better news, my good friend and teammate, Matt Purdy, won the cat 2 road race today at Fitchburg in fine style. He dropped his early break companions to solo for the last two laps, which on that course is no joke. In the end he held a minute and a half gap over the chasing duo of Dylan McNicholas and Cameron Cogburn, who had both looked pretty unbeatable over the last couple of stages. He got the win, the points jersey, and moved himself way up on GC, possibly onto the podium but the results aren't in yet. I have said it before on this blog, but Matt is a seriously strong and motivated bike rider, and he has trained, and sacrificed, and suffered in anonymity for a long time now. He deserves this win in a big way, and I am really proud of him.

I'm a little sad that I wasn't there to help and to share in the victory, and to tell the truth I feel a bit like I let my team down. I have this "what if?" feeling like maybe I should have started today...but I know I shouldn't. I know my throat hurts and I'm achey and lightheaded, and pedaling up that hill yesterday--which usually makes me feel like a tough guy--made me feel like a chump. But I have a score to settle with that road race, and I was really hoping that this was my year. And with Wachusset removed, it looked like it might be. But the nice thing about bike racing is that it's a team sport, and there's always another race next weekend. But damn I wish I was there to see my boy come across that line with nothing but air behind him! Next time.

-n

Pre-'Burg Thoughts

It's still wet. Everywhere.

Fitchburg starts today, which means I will likely ride a squishy wet time trial later this afternoon. I used to get really excited for this race, to the point of it almost always being a bit of a disappointment. The race comes right around the time that many folks start to feel like a mid-season break is in order, and given that it's the only NRC stage race in New England, and one of only 2 four-day stage races in the region all season, it definitely is a high point on the calendar. But it's also kind of a mediocre race around a truly depressing little town that I can't imagine wanting to visit for any other reason. And yet, I've grown pretty fond of the rolling hills and tree-hidden ponds and reservoirs out around Princeton.

Don't get me wrong: the road race is beautiful. And this year, with the mountain top finish on Mt. Wachusset taken away the race actually suits me better. And the crit and the circuit are cool, and this year's tt course is pretty well right up my alley...but. But something. The race is a cruel mistress and seems every year to be both more and less than the sum of its parts. I had hoped to race this year as a cat 1 and do the NRC pro race, and I probably could upgrade at this point if I were so inclined. But it seems like a good idea to do one last cat 2 race where I can ride to win and really put the stamp on my cat 1 upgrade. And the 2 race is no giveaway--I can think of two guys I know personally who were in the 2 race last year and are pro this year--but it's more of a level playing field than the pro/1 event, which is unforgiving enough to stretch the limits of the definition of the word "fun".

In any case, I am definitely feeling the need for a mid season break coming on, but I am still pumped to race hard. I'm just feeling a bit conservative in my expectations, which is a good way to start a big race. I've been so close to a good result at Fitchburg for years now, and it always gets away from me. So nothing to lose, right? Apart from that, after Fitchburg finishes on Sunday, I will be home for 2&1/2 days and then head up to race the Tour Of Quebec in and around Quebec city. Now that should be fun.

So today, a rainy Thursday, I sit in my brother's kitchen in Northampton, MA, and I think about bike racing, about missing my daughter, missing my girlfriend, getting a job in the Fall and feeling scared of trying to become the teacher I want to be. And in the midst of all that, as much as I don't want to clean my bikes, or race in the rain, or deal with bike racer attitudes sometimes, I am grateful. I'm grateful for this sport that pushes me so hard and tells me where my limits are. And I'm grateful for those limits presenting themselves immediately, and frequently. It can take a long time to really, honestly discover for yourself how good you are as a parent, or a teacher, or a lawyer. But bike racing is intensely honest, for the most part, and you are revealed to yourself, for good or ill, awfully quickly, week in and week out. I suppose that can be jarring, but it's also reassuring in a way that is addictive, I think. I look forward to a more balanced life some time soon where my self-definition week to week is more well rounded, and where intellectual limits present themselves to me with the same clarity as physiological ones. But for now, today, it's Fitchburg. I'm racing, and if I'm going to bother to pin on a number, I'm racing to win. But first, breakfast.

-n

Settling into Summer

My garden is in full bloom with soccer ball sized heads of broccoli and 24" tall potato plants already. Yesterday I packed my daughter off to Summer camp in Vermont, where she is happy as a clam and enjoying all the best bits of being almost 11. I skipped the bike races this past weekend in favor of domesticity, relaxation and sleep...and my apartment it still a mess.

I have been pretty slack about blogging lately, but I am on a plan to be less slack, generally, starting now, so I'll start by playing a little catch-up and then get to some interesting recent developments.

Bike Racing:
Over the weekend of 6/13-14, teammates Matt Purdy, Matt Mainer and I descended on the little mountain town of Jay, NY for the 2nd annual Wilmington-Whiteface Road Race on Saturday, and the Saranac Lake crit on Sunday. This is a new race weekend put on by the Placid Planet club, and they have done a great job. I really hope people continue to support these races, because racing up there in the region around Lake Placid is just awesome.

Given that the race is nestled nearly in the heart of the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks, and that a DEC trailhead for Whiteface and surrounding peaks was all of 500 meters from our hotel doorstep, this was a good weekend for my long suffering girlfriend to come along to the races and have some fun of her own. No, not in the feed zone!! Perish the thought. Purdy's parents had that under control. My girl was gettin' her hike on in style, covering Whiteface and Esther while we were racing. Interesting factoid: Esther is the only peak in the 'Dacks named after a woman, and it got its name when a 15 year old girl went out and charged her way up it, solo, against her parents objections in 1839.

In any case, the race is pretty cool, and a high quality field showed up including Colavita's Dan Vaillancourt and CCB's Dan Cassidy; a semi un-retired Kevin Bouchard Hall, and a respectable smattering of strong French Canadians, Vermonters and New Hampshire folk. The race proved tactically interesting given that many of the strongest riders lacked teammates, and while the course is selective, with one notable climb and many rollers per lap, the group kept splitting more or less in half with 15 or so apparently evenly matched guys at the front, eyeballing each other. On lap three of four, we decided to send Purdy up the road to a growing break while I annoyingly brake-checked on the front of the field. He made it, I snuck off solo a bit later, and then a chase group containing all of the favorites caught me at the top of the feed zone climb. Mainer had made the chase group, so with Purdy up the road, we exercised our right to sit on the group, hoping Purdy could pull out the win up front, and figuring to be fresh for the counter-attack if he got caught. This left a group of 8 chasing a group of 11, so there was still plenty of uncertainty in the outcome, and plenty of racing left to do.


Thanks to hard pulls by Vaillancourt, Cassidy and rising strongman, Cameron Cogburn, the break never got more than about 90 seconds ahead of us, and the last time up the feed zone climb we began catching stragglers from up the road. As we made the turn to head back toward Whiteface for the finishing climb, we could see Purdy still going strong in a group of 4 or 5 about 30 seconds up the road. Cogburn continued to pull like his life depended on it, Vaillancourt also worked hard, and everyone else either started playing cagey or was simply too tired to pull anymore. As we began the 1.6 mile, steady 8% climb to the finish line, Purdy's group had a lead of about 20 seconds, and Vaillancourt, Cogburn, and Michael Joanisse of the Quebecois Nativo Concept team crossed the gap almost immediately. Mainer hung on to this train as long as he could making an impressive effort, and I settled into a sustainable (for me) pace, picking off riders one at a time. In the end, Cogburn won in a seriously impressive effort, with former mountain biker and first year roadie, Joanisse, taking 2nd, and Vaillancourt 3rd. Purdy and Mainer were hot on their heels in 4th and 5th, and I put in a painful effort to catch a couple of guys in the last 200 meters and take 9th. In hindsight I should have just hurt a little bit more and caught 7th and 8th places, too, but I was a little lazy. All three of us in the top 10 was pretty solid, though of course we had hoped for the win. We were beaten by really good guys, though, and there isn't much you can do when the other dudes just pedal harder, so we were happy.


Sunday's crit looked to be a blast on a rolling, tight, 3 corner, 1/2 mile circuit with the finish line on Main St in Saranac Lake. But with only 18 starters in the 1/2/3 race, and rain falling on the slick, painted crosswalks as we lined up, "fun" began to seem like a relative term. I was aggressive early, getting away immediately, getting caught, then getting away again with one other rider. When I got caught, 4 guys rolled away, we missed it while I was catching my breath like a wanker, and that was that. A 10 or 15 second gap doesn't seem like a long way, but when it rains and the corners have an absolute top speed, in order to close the gap you have to go significantly faster on the straightaways than the break is going. I tried for the entire race to get across solo, and once with a willing partner. Each time I would close to within about 5 seconds of the break, the field would chase me, I would get caught, and then we would ride slowly. It was the most frustratingly negative race I have been in recently, and I was pissed at myself for missing the move. Eventually the inevitable happened and I finally got away for good (I say inevitable because I was the only one trying in earnest) and the field was lapped by the break. Michael Joanisse continued his good run from the day before, taking off from the break to win solo, and I rode in with him, having never worked harder for a crappy 5th place in a tiny local field. Anyway...

Back to Olde New England:
Until last week I had never raced in Ninigret park down in Charlestown, RI (for the uninitiated: zoom in on the figure 8 in the bottom left corner of the aerial view to see the permanent "ten-speed bike course"). As a fairly experienced Northeast/New England bike racer, this really seemed like a serious omission, so I decided to head down to the Mystic Velo crit at Ninigret last Saturday with Al, Mukunda, Sullivan, and the form-building Dan Greenfield. Seriously, if Dan keeps riding his bike he's going to get back to the form he had in '05, and then everyone else will be really, really sad.

The field was a classic New England mix of everything from cat 3 juniors to stalwart veteran pro's, like Myerson, and perennial contenders like my teammate, Al, and CCB's Amos Brumble. Early on in the 41 lap race, a break slipped away containing Al, Amos and two other riders and the rest of us did a good job of frustrating any chase attempts, confident as we were in Al's chances fromt he break. Myerson remained aggressive, as did Alister Ratcliffe of Bikereg/Cannondale and a few others, but nothing was going. I made a solo bid to bridge and made it to within "I think I can" distance, but overreached, blew up and got caught. Oh well, it was a good interval. The pace remained high, the juniors aggressive, but the break continued to gain time on us until it began to look like they would lap us. Ultimately a chase group got away late in the race, and the break did lap the field. Al won the race with a little leadout help from Myerson as well as our guys, and I took 5th, getting bested by half a wheel in the chase group sprint by Luke Keough. I got a little cocky and shifted into my 11 cog instead of just winding out the 12, whereas Luke had no option but to keep his head down and spin out his 52x14 junior gearing. My mistake, shifting always costs you a second's hesitation and that was enough for Luke to keep accelerating. Good for him though, those kids are badasses.

After the race local boy Sullivan guided us to a magnificent wharf-side seafood joint, satisfying Al's hunger fro Quahogs, and we all ate more fried seafood and french fries than you would imagine possible for a bunch of skinny bike racers. Really: we may or may not win the bike race, but I promise you we can eat any other team in the country clear under the table. Al alone put away about $40 worth of deep-fried happiness.

Sunday was the classic and painful Housatonic Hills Road Race. Long story short, I slept a horrible and fitful 4 hours Saturday night and felt lousy on the start line. Maybe it was the friend food? This is a really hard and unforgiving course, constantly up and down, and there really isn't anywhere to hide if you're having a bad day. I was having a bad day. After two laps of riding like and idiot, starting the climbs at the back of the group, getting dropped, chasing and getting dropped again, I pulled the plug at 52 miles of the 80 mile race and logged my first DNF of the season.

Purdy and Tremble made the front split, however, and hung tough to finish 7th and 13th, respectively. Had Purdy had better positioning in the sprint he looked good for a podium and Tremble had really bad luck and flatted about 10k out. Mainer and Al rolled in in the second group, and that was that. A funny takeaway from this day for me was that I was reminded how sometimes hanging out at bike races is more fun than racing in them. Honestly, I haven't talked to some of the people I caught up with that day since last Fall.

Writing:
In addition to the flash-fiction contest from a couple of weeks ago, I have been busy at work putting together a job letter and application packet for a couple of community college teaching jobs. Honestly I think some of the most important work done in the landscape of public education is done in community colleges. It's a great place to really teach, and to do so for folks who haven't necessarily had a great time of it in terms of educational opportunities. Anyway I am looking forward to it.

And some time soon I will have a regular, bi-weekly column appearing in Embrocation Cycling Journal. They are launching a new, online format and it looks like it's going to be one of the top cycling cites on the web in short order. Check it out.

More to come.

-n

Happenings

There has been a lot going on lately. I am in arrears on bike race reports, which I hope to make up for by the end of the week; I've been working on a job letter to actually try and land a teaching gig come Fall; my daughter is "graduating" from the 5th grade today, and my garden is going amazingly strong. My fellow community garden plot sharers are coveting my broccoli. Word.

Upcoming posts will recap recent races, address the bizarre trend of graduation ceremonies for elementary school aged kids, and talk a little bit about my non-blog writing. It looks as though I will have a column coming up soon in an online cycling journal.

Until then,

-n

Tidbits of Good News

Apparently the reputation of elite cyclists worldwide is on the upswing. News from the UCI reports that the majority of riders in the ProTour peloton are clean. Now if the Euro pro's are clean, and the domestic American and Canadian pro's are slower than them, and if the domestic amateurs are, on average, a notch or two slower than the domestic pro's, well, you get the picture. Believe in your local elite racer, believe in Euro pro's, too. Just don't start asking too many questions about NFL football, the UFC, or professional soccer.

And I had a short-story published online as part of a flash fiction contest put on by Canadian publisher, Biblioasis. The winner gets a stack of books, a token amount of money, and his or her story published in a Canadian quarterly. Guess whose idea this was...

In other news, the Adirondack North Country Race Weekend went well for us, and Mukunda managed to win a 30+ masters crit in Connecticut. Another weekend of geographically diverse solid results for the Spooky crew. Full reports to follow.

-n

The Ride: Spooky "Skeletor" Review

I get asked a lot of questions about my bike this season, and a lot of people aren't yet familiar with the Spooky brand. I thought I would take this opportunity to get in a little plug for my team's main sponsor, but also to offer an honest appraisal of the bike's performance.

The Spooky "Skeletor":
*Pics to follow

Spooky bikes are manufactured regionally, for those of us in the NE anyway, in Easthampton, MA. The legacy of the brand is definitely mountain bikes, and going back to the early-mid 90's they had quite a cult following. Current owner, propriety, engineer and purveyor of all things Spooky, Mickey Denoncourt, apprenticed as a frame builder with them while racing mountain bikes in the 90's, and resurrected the brand in recent years, maintaining the traditional focus on mountain bikes, but introducing a road bike line, as well. Mickey's philosophy is "bikes for bike people" and he chooses to focus on engineering and ride characteristics over pricey paint jobs and slick finishes. The result, in the form of the Skeletor road bike is a light, stiff aluminum all-race machine that handles better than any road bike I have ever ridden. The finish is no-frills anodized black aluminum with tidy, kitchy decals, and some models leave the shop matte black with no stickers at all.

Part of the philosopy of keeping the bikes priced within range of real world, workaday bike racers is an emphasis on stock sizes. With a compact geometry, steep seat and head tube angles, and beefed up and reinforced chainstays, almost any size rider can be comfortably fit to a stock Spooky. To help with this, fit Guru and Spooky partner, Carl Ditkoff has his Retul fit shop set up in the Spooky shop, so the perfect fit for your ride is all part of the package. Custom geometry is available for special needs at no upcharge, but those cases are the exception.

So what should a race bike do, anyway? Well, it should want to race, and the Skeletor does. This bike is twitchy, in the sense that it accelerates fast, and goes where you point it, but it tracks with unbelievable stability, owing in large part to the Edge Composites fork around which the frame is designed. I have raced a custom IF Crown Jewel, a Cannondale, a Specialized, and a Giant TCR Adanced 0, and I can say without hesitation that I have never been so confident while descending or cornering at speed as I am on my Spooky Skeletor. This is consensus within the team, as well, and all of our guys are delighted with the bikes.

Another common observation among the riders on the Spooky / NCC / Kenda team is that almost to a man we are set up with more aggressive positions than on past bikes, meaning more handlebar drop, but we are also more comfortable. The geometry of the bike and the seat tube angle have allowed me to shorten up my reach by a centimeter or so, better positioning my center-of-gravity over the bottom bracket, but at the same time lowering my bars by a full 3cm compared to my Giant. I am much more aero, the bike handles better through corners, and my back still doesn't hurt. What more could you ask for?

Now it might seem like I would be unwilling to say anything critical of my bike given the importance of keeping sponsors happy, and it is indeed hard to look a gift horse in the mouth. We have all been instructed by said sponsor, however, to be as honest and critical as we can in the hopes of making the bikes even better in the future. Nevertheless, I have no complaints, and genuinely love this bike. Given the price tag of $1295 for frame, Edge fork & headset, (and the Edge fork is arguably the best racing fork on the market, and American made, to boot) or $850 for the frame alone, I would be hard pressed to recommend a better buy for a race bike. And built up with Rival, with carbon race wheels on, my ~56cm model weighs in just under 17 pounds, and that's with aluminum bars, stem and seatpost. With Red, Dura-Ace or Record and carbon bars, the bike would easily skim 16, if one cares about such things, which I don't.

Aluminum is stiff, of course, and that's the point. I won't pretend that 6 hours on this bike doesn't get to feeling a little rough, and it is certainly not a touring bike. If I were to suggest one structural improvement it might be the addition of carbon wishbone seatstays, but that would jack up the price and might also compromise the stiffness and handling that I love about the bike, so I'll say leave 'er as is. You don't expect an Indy car to have plush leather interior and cup holders, right? Right. Race bikes are for racing, and whether you're into fast club rides, training crits, or full time avocational/semi-professional/professional-amateur racing, the Skeletor delivers in spades.

Basically the Skeletor just begs to be raced, it is a joy to sprint on, as it seems to accelerate itself, and it climbs as responsively as you could want it to. And as I already mentioned, the handling on descents is just about perfect.

So if you want a race bike for racing, and if performance is more important to you than brand recognition, and if you like the idea of American designed and made bikes that have truly emerged from grassroots racing culture, then get yourself a Spooky.

-n

A steady Diet: Then and Now

Racing, travel, training, racing, travel, training and occasional and much-needed down time in between. I tend the garden with Charmaine, we go on dates, have fun, we're a pretty annoyingly happy couple, and I like to think I'm a pretty damn involved and on-top-of-things dad, too. But these days, what I am is a bike racer.

This past weekend was the Balloon Festival Classic close to home in Cambridge, NY on Saturday, and a local crit on the (in)famous Bethel course on Sunday. Full race reports are up on the Spooky / NCC / Kenda team site.

My net takeaway for the weekend was positive: a little bit of prize money pocketed, some quality team bonding achieved, and a couple of more solid results added to bolster my recent confidence boost. I've also had some quality time to reflect on what it is that I get out of being so committed to cycling these days.

I have worked really hard at riding bikes this year, and it feels good to get something of a payoff in terms of results after the last couple of years, which have felt pretty lean at times. It's such a small thing, and I'm sure the really talented guys take it for granted, but for me, to have finally put in enough time that I can show up at local races and not struggle, not worry about getting dropped, and actually start thinking about how to win the bike race, well, it's gratifying to say the least.

This sport is so hard, and so many people quit. It isn't the physical difficulty that kills people, though in objective terms I think we work harder than most other professional, or elite amateur athletes--MMA fighters being a possible exception--but it's the physical difficulty with no guarantee of immediate reward. In the end, no matter how fit you are you still have to respect the sport, you still have to drive your bike and make good decisions, and you're still subject to that mysterious collective will of the peloton, which is a completely unique aspect of bicycle racing shared by no other sport. The drive, the inertia of the aggregate ambition of every racer in the pack manifested in unstoppable forward motion. A bike race lives and breathes, and to win one you have to wrestle yourself free from its grasp, and this grasp is not subject to the control of any other individual racing. It's an is.

That's the alligator I'm wrestling with these days, trying to win a big one. But I feel more evenly matched than I used to, feels like a smaller 'gator.

So I scored 6th at Balloon Fest, soloing in from a group of 3 thanks to some stellar teamwork from my teammate, Matt Purdy. We had Mainer in the break, I soloed half a lap trying to get across, didn't make it, and was joined by Purdy and Ron Larose of CCNS. Hijinx ensued, we raced bikes, etc. We put over 2 minutes into what was left of the field, (led home by Al, also solo) and there was a time when that alone would have felt like a victory. These days, though, I want more.

I got a dose of perspective on Sunday, though. When I arrived at Bethel for the 3rd annual Connecticut Coast Criterium, I immediately ran into Dan Greenfield at registration. Dan is racing a bit again this year, and has been coming along, fitness wise. He's been rocking the Spooky kit with us when he can, and he even bought a bike from Mickey, because why shouldn't one of the stronger guys New England ever produced race one of the better bikes New England ever produced? I got 3rd in the race after taking a risky inside line and winding up boxed in. I got out too late, and got beat. But that isn't the story.

When I started racing bikes in 2005, Dan was The Man. He won Bear Mountain, was 2nd at Palmer, 3rd at Jiminy and seemed to be top 5 in every pro 1/2 race in New England that year. He turned pro the next season and after a pretty solid year with Targetraining, he found himself totally burned out and overtrained, so he bailed and started a PhD in economics at Northeastern. He can still pedal wicked haahd.

I used to stick around after my cat 5 and, later, cat 4 races that season to watch the finish of the pro 1/2 race sometimes, and those guys--my teammates now, Al, Mukunda, Dan--on Louis Garneau, or CCB or Fiordifrutta, or the regional pro's like McCormack, they were untouchable to me. I came to cycling late, came to sports late, for that matter, at 26 after a lifetime of cigarette smoking and worse, 70 lbs overweight. That all ended in July 2004 when I bought my first road bike and the rest is, well, the rest, and here I am. But back then, still sporting a head full of Jesus hair, and half expecting to wake up in the morning with all that hard-lost weight back on due to some unfortunate, magical fluke; back then the local elite guys I saw every weekend were effing rockstars. I just couldn't imagine being that good no matter what I did, or for how long, or how many intervals, it just couldn't happen. But something was there, some little drive, some spark, some blast of energy that wouldn't go away, so I stuck with it. And now I quibble about missing the breakaway.

So getting a leadout from a guy like Dan, on his way back up, racing for the love of it, for the rush, the sensory overload of flying along at 35 mph, buried in the peloton, colors and sounds unified, just loving life, that's a reality check I need.

I love this sport.

-n