Iowa State Gravel Championships

Today was the State Gravel race hosted by Twisted Spokes down just south of Kalona, I saw this race a little while back and wasn't sure if I was committed to racing on gravel, but as the time came closer I decided that it might be fun to give it a go. Looking at the race flyer I noticed there was a Mountain Bike Open class, and since my cross bike is down right now with a shifter that isn't making with the happy, I figured this was something I could do. Load up the car and head down, get there with about an hour till we were off, got registered and waited to see who was showing up, saw Landon, and he was giving me crap about doing the mountain bike class since he too would be doing it, and then a little later another guy shows up with a mountain bike, not sure who he was but was from an Iowa City team and didn't know how strong he would be. We got all lined up and it was a neutral start for the first 1/2 mile or so till we got to the actual course.

The course is 7 miles long with pretty much rolling hills for the first 5 miles and then the last 2 miles are where the bigger hills come in.

Heading into the first lap we were joking about just rolling the first 2 laps together and go all out on the 3rd, but quickly that plan changed. I dropped back to talk to the other mountain bike guy to find out what his fitness level was and what kind of threat he might be. The group was rolling along really well together until we started hitting some hills, I was up front with the only singlespeed guy in the group and we pulled the others around, there was only 9 of us in the 4 or 5 different categories that were on the road and the mountain bike class was the biggest with 3. We get to the west section and that is straight into the wind, and being as I was up front I was doing most of the work, I tried to drop back a few spots but seemed like noone really wanted to come through. Turn onto the final stretch with all the climbing and I think on the 2nd of 4 hills is when we started to lose people off the back, by the time we got onto the 2nd lap we were down to a group of just 5, the guy on the single speed, 2 60+ guys and Landon and myself both on mountain bikes.

I tried to get the others to work on this lap to just put more time in between us and the others, but didn't get much interest in that, so I continued to set the pace at the front and tried to sit in if I could on some sections to conserve energy. This lap would be pretty uneventful as the 5 of us rolled along the countryside, no attacks, no one really falling behind we just stayed where we were at. Legs were feeling good on the hills and towards the end I would put in a few little digs on the hills to see if anyone else in the group would be going with, and John Adamson was the only one to really keep with me. Going into the 3rd and final lap we had a small gap, maybe 15 seconds, and I was ready to go, but he informed me that he would be going with, but not working at all since his teammate Landon was racing against me, and he wasn't attacking a teammate. So for a little while I kept going and decided it would be more fun to wait for the group and battle it out at the end. Sat up and within about a mile of that time the guy on the singlespeed had gotten a flat so he pulled off to fix that, now we are down to 4, John makes an attack and I decide not to chase him, I probably could have bridged up to him, but since we were about to turn into the headwind I wanted someone's wheel to sit on. So thats what I did, got onto the wheel of the other 60+ guy and sat there waiting for the final right hander leading us into the climbs again. We get there and now it is on, Landon comes charging from behind on the first hill and I follow right on his wheel, second climb I put in a small effort to only have it matched, and realized it will be best to wait. On the 3rd climb Landon tells me he is fully expecting me to pull away from him on the final climb and once we get to the bridge it is on, so we get to that point and now I am up front and he is on my wheel, I don't attack on the bottom part of the climb, but you can start to see the barn where the finish line is so I give it a little more, he follows, and then once we hit the 200 meters to go sign I decide it is full on sprint time, put my head down, pick up one gear at a time and don't look back.

Ended up 2nd overall for the group, and got my 1st Win since returning to racing in 2006, felt really good, and to know that I have the legs to attack and recover pretty quickly was awesome. I did get some crap from my wife for beating an old guy, but it's all good. Headed back to registration to change and get my medal, and my prize, a plate of homemade Cinnamon Rolls from Landon's wife, they are so good.

So I am the 2011 Iowa State Gravel Road Race Champion in the Mountain Bike Open Class!!!

2011 Team

Guess I never announced it but I am back racing for HBA Racing for the 2011 Season.

Snake Alley Crit

This past weekend brought the return of road racing to my season, first time since 2009, and what a way to come back but to do the hardest race in the area. For those of you not familiar with the course it is a .8 mile lap with a climb up the second "crookedest" street in the world, with 6 switchbacks and an average grade of 12.5 percent and a max of 19 percent.

I didn't make the decision to race until just over a month ago which meant I was behind on getting a great starting spot, but was still good enough for a 4th row call up, and with as wide as we line up on the line I was in the 3rd row, looking around there were a few people I recongnized but for the most part it was out of state racers and even the ones from Iowa I wasn't familiar with. I had a game plan and that was to line up as far to the left as possible as the start is a downhill roll out to a 90 degree right turn which then starts you with a one block straight up climb before entering the narrow street know as Snake Alley. My reasoning for this was I figured everyone would be fighting for a position on the inside line of the corner and I would be able to carry more speed on the outside, so they give us the countdown and we are off.

I was able to get clipped in right away and was trying to move up as fast as possible, but got caught behind people that didn't get in right away, boy do I love my Speedplay pedals, a little bumping but was able to get where I wanted to be, and turns out that my plan worked flawlessly, I was able to get down into the little ring before climbing and not worrying about dropping a chain, shot past a good part of the field and entered the Snake up in the front, by the time we hit the top of the hill I was sitting in 3rd place, wow not where I was expecting to be, and once you get there you drop down into a technical descent with 3 downhill 90 degree turns, full of painted lines, and manhole covers, my descending skills are pretty good so I was able to retain my position until we hit the bottom where it flattens out a little bit and the guys with bigger motors then I have passed my, but still sitting up in the top 10 heading up the Snake again. The next few laps were about the same, I would try and climb the best I could, but was losing some time and places there, turns out I just ran out of gears quicker then I thought, next year I will have a 12-27 out back for that little extra climbing gear.

I would continue to ride the next few laps solo, lost some more places by now, not sure how I am doing, and we are at the halfway point now. The field was so blown apart and I see Rob McKillip at the top of the hill cheering me on, he started with me but got pulled early on, so at this point I was in survival mode and tried my best to TT the best I can to avoid getting caught and pulled, had very consistant lap times through these last few all around the 2:44 area and was hoping to stay away, come up towards the line on lap 7 or 8 and see the USCF Ref down on the street kind of waiting to pull people, and thought my time was up, but I was spared and he pulled the 2 guys that were maybe 10-15 seconds behind me, dodged that bullet, next lap saw him again and I was still allowed to continue, so figured I was doing well enough that I wasn't holding anyone up or causing a situation to where I should be pulled.

At this point the sky's opened up and it started to downpour on us, not good for this race, but knowing there was a chance of rain I was running a lower tire pressure to try and get just that little bit of extra traction. I was climbing when it started and going down the first time was borderline scary, I grabbed the brakes going into the first corner and they didn't do much for me, only slowed a little, so I sat upright and trued to avoid leaning the bike in the corner so I didn't go down. Climbing proved to be a challenge as well since you can't stand up on the bricks when they are soaking wet, and I am not a good sit down climber, with 3 to go I got caught by the solo leader, so I only had 2 more laps to go. I did the best I could to stay out of the way of riders that were lapping me, but of course they were catching me on the climb, so I would take the far outside line, was easier to climb there, but my lap times suffered pretty bad. Final lap and I had been caught by 3 guys but had another group of 6 or so charging pretty hard so I basically sat up before descending to get out of the way, was a mistake because no one was actually going downhill faster then me so I just jumped in line and would get out of the way at the bottom, I had one guy think I was on the lead lap and almost sprinted but told him I was lapped, he smiled give me the thumbs up and cruised across the line.

At this point it was still raining hard and I had no idea how I did, went and found my wife and headed back to the car to change, the rain stopped shortly after my race and I was able get changed and walked over to look at results, ended up in 23rd out of 52 finishers, 62 starters, and 5th Iowan. I was very pleased with that result. Came home and downloaded the info from my Polar power meter and compared my race to when I did Snake Alley 2 years ago and had an increase of 32 watts average for the race, I was pleased with that as that is a 10% increase in power over 2 years time, means I am still getting stronger.

Pictures from the race can be found here

2011 So Far

I know I have been bad about updating this since I have been into the social media with Facebook, and recently twitter, and have been letting people know what has been going on there. I will try and keep this more up to date though as race season is getting into full swing.

Training so far hasn't been consistent to say the least, had an awesome January, February I fell off a little bit, March wasn't great either, but April things started coming around as I got to a few group rides, races started up and was getting good mileage each week, and now we are into May and things are going well.

First race for me was Sylvan Island MTB race in April, always a great way to start the season, this year I will be competing in the new Comp Class in the IMBCS Series basically in between Cat 2 and Cat 1, and the same people I was battling with last year for the overall in the series also stepped up to this class, and with that they have upped their training. So this year they decided to do a parade lap which was about a mile long to add some longer double track sections and try and break up the pack more before heading into the singletrack to prevent a bottleneck. Well from what I was told beforehand we would not be doing that as our classes were small enough that we wouldn't need that, apparently the USCF Ref didn't get that message and sent us out to do the lap, so the tape was moved at the finish line area but not in the woods, I was in 2nd place at the time and the tape was across so I yelled out to the guy in front to just go under it, and a course marshall held the tape up so the rest of the field could get under it, so now I am in 1st place leading the way though the lap, and we come back down by where the start line was to see all the Cat 1 guys standing there and they stopped us saying we weren't supposed to do that and we would be restarting, crap my HR was up and I was ready, but now I had to stop and stand around again. On the restart I was bumped into the 2nd row somehow and even though I got clipped in right away I didn't get a great start and was 3rd going into the woods. First lap I felt like I was doing awesome, till I couldn't reel in the guys in front and could hear guys coming from behind, so I just did my best to hold my position. I would lose a few spots before that lap was over, and was doing my best to keep up the pace I had set. The problem with Sylvan is that they only have so much room to build trails so it is tight singletrack with many turns with short sections in between so you are flying into every corner and pushing to get out of them as fast as possible, well after a couple laps of that it takes it's toll on you and I was really starting to lose some major time on each lap. By the last lap I was toast and every corner I just wanted to stop and get off the bike and walk out of the woods, but knew I had to just keep going, was helpful that there are a ton of spectators out there cheering and that keeps you going. I came across the line in 14th place in the Comp Class, not bad for the first race of the year, but farther down then I was hoping. Pictures are here http://angysnoop.smugmug.com/

Next race was the Decorah MTB TT going into this race I knew there would be a lot of climbing which I did my best to train for by hitting some hills around here, but still nothing can prepare you for this race. The weather was less then desirable for this time of year, when we arrived it was 37 with a wind chill of 32, I didn't pack for that kind of temps, I did have arm and leg warmers, but just my summer long finger gloves. I did pre-register which gives you the option of choosing your start time when you check in, and since it rained the day before I wanted a later time to let it dry out a little more, and was able to get 40th spot. I got a little warm-up in and rolled up a few minutes before I was to go, and knew who my guys right before and right after me were, and with 1 minute intervals you can kind of judge how you are doing out in the woods if you can see them. I started off up the road towards the entrance of the singletrack and dove into the woods to start climbing, this year was dryer then last year and that was nice being able to climb everything and not have to get off and run, I started catching a few of the slower riders not too far into the woods, so we climb almost to the top of the hillside, and then switchback down towards the bottom to only climb again, and repeat a few times, except this year they had a cruel idea of sending us basically all they way down to the start line to climb all the way back up as a sustained climb that would take somewhere in the 3-4 minute range, then drop down the backside of the hill and hit yet another 3+ minute climb, then bomb back down to the flat section of the course next to the river. For only being 6.1 miles long there was just over 1100 feet of climbing, took me 42:15 which was good enough for an 11th place overall and 3rd in my age group which the overall placing was awesome for me and I was pleased with that. Here is a video I took with our Go Pro handlebar cam http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGeZr1XsQtg

After that I did Snake Alley Crit which I will do a separate write-up on that later.