This coming weekend I will be in Arlington for the “BIG” race. It should be interesting working my first semi-pro race as an official! I was selected to work as a volunteer official.
Work has been interesting at best, last week was some “schooling” in California. I got to experience my first earthquake, even if it was only a minor after shock. I alrwady knew most of the product line but it was still fun to see CA and meet some some new people. The economy totally sucks and the coomercial work is dropping off BIG time. I truly think that things arw going to get a good bit worse before everything stabilizes and we seem see some upturns. It sure would be nice to find some way to pull the cycling community together and “network” to help each other out!
Now if I could just get some drive back in to the cycling again!

I came across an article this morning at Pilotonline.com that is not good news for the bike racing community.  The city is researching the lease of the Sportsplex to private developers and allowing development of shopping and other facilities to help boost the usability of the Sportsplex.  Although this would be great for the city it looks like it will mean the end of the criterium/multi-use trail that was opened up there last year.  On the other hand if the developers are a “cycling friendly” there could be the possibility of improving the course.

Upon further research I found an earlier article from July that
somehow slipped under the radar.  The article mentioned the interest
from Princess Anne Atheletic Development LLC to lease, manage, and
develop the facility.  There are three people mentioned in both
articles:
Chuck Thornton, Owns Hometown Heroes restaurant.
John Wack, Manages the Fredericksburg Field House.
Marcie Laumann, president of the Piranhas Soccer team.
Something
positive that I have picked up from the two articles is that Princess
Anne Athletic Development LLC seems to recognize the need for creating
sources of revenue other than just the Sportsplex itself.

Let’s hope
that if the City of Virginia Beach and PA Athletic do in fact go
through with this plan to develop the Sportsplex that they will listen
to the voices of our cycling community.  Incorporating some sort of
cycling facility in to the plans will add yet another way for them to
increase revenue for minimal investment.  Think about it…… several
hundred racers, their family, and spectators coming out to spend money
to race at the complex as well as money in the surrounding stores. 
Even better if the course was planned out properly, unlike the one now
that actually crosses the entrance to the facility, it could be used in
conjuction with other events at the complex.

Read more about it here:
Developer group seeks to manage Beach’s Sportsplex | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com

Gilbert, aka Keirin Racer, was too lazy to race this past weekend. Maybe that was a good thing though, he took some great pictures! Check them out:

Picasa Web Albums – Gilbert Craven – Chesapeake Crit

He even caught the picture of me to the left with my “game face” on. Ok, so maybe it wasn’t a game face it was more me worrying about keeping my wheels on the ground!

Time Trials SUCK!  I went in to this one knowing that but was determined to do well anyways.  I did not succeed in doing well!  It started out with the never ending 6 mile stretch in to what felt like a steady head wind.  Then a turn in to more wind.  Then a turn in to more wind.  It did not feel like the wind ever let up.  Then about 35 minutes in to the ride I started to feel dizzy.  A couple more minutes then the nausea kicked in.  Another mile or two and I started getting the chills.  Now that was a weird feeling!  Riding along, I could feel the heat from the pavement and the warm air.  Yet I still had goose bumps and a chill.
I kept on riding and pushing as best I could, but I was not doing well at all.  It took everything I had just to make it back to the finish line.  Once off the bike it took a few minutes before I could actually stand with out holding on to something.
I can not remember ever having to push myself that hard for such a horrible result.  I think my time was right at or slightly under one hour.  That’s a horrible time especially for what seemed like such a hard effort.  Maybe time trials just arent “my thing”.

Last night was my first ride on the new saddle.  The Bontrager Inform RL.  Needless to say it was awesome!  No numbness, no sore spots under my sit bones.  I was able to make the Pungo Loop without having to constantly stand and shift in the saddle. This is the second Bontrager product to go on to my bike.  The first was the Bontrager Fit VR “Mini Drop” handle bars.  They were originally designed for women, but as short as I am they worked perfectly.  So that’s two times that Bontrager has been able to solve fit problems for me on the bike! 

We were riding this Saturday and the person that I was riding with asked if I had done any upgrades on my bike.  That got me to thinking….What has been done to my bike?

I started with the Felt F5C which was a pretty nice bike.  First came a set of Ksyrium SSC SL wheels.  The next upgrade was the Bontrager Fit VR bars.  Several saddles swaps.  Then, I moved up to Campagnolo Chorus from Shimano Ultegra/105.  Now the Bontrager Inform RL Saddle.  The only things on the bike that are original are the seat post, forks, and frame.  So, in the end I have ended up spending almost $3000 for my  ride in it’s current state.  Next time around I think I will start with the frame and build up from there to get what I want in the beginning!  Then again who would have thought that two years ago when I bought the bike I would still be riding it.

No races this weekend!  Without the fuel efficient MINI we opted out of driving to Richmond to do the races and had some fun staying in the good ol’ Hampton Roads area. 

Saturday we were supposed to go to Gloucester for the Renaissance Festival, but work and traffic had other plans for me.  I received a phone call from a customer that was having problems with equipment.  So I had to head to the Norfolk Naval Base to deliver equipment.  We were going to leave for Gloucester from the base.  Traffic screwed that one up though…. there was an 8 mile back up at the tunnel.  We scratched Gloucester at that point and drove back to the Ghent area of Norfolk to check out East Coast Bikes and Cogan’s Instant Art Bar.

The reason for the trip to Ghent was to hit East Coast Bikes to see check out a new saddle.  For those non-cyclists types or those, like me, who still have the word seat ingrained in their head from years and years of calling a saddle a seat.  A saddle is in fact a seat.  It’s the place where your arse gets beaten to a bloody pulp from all of your weight bouncing on and being supported by places that weren’t exactly meant to support weight.  The mission to find a comfortable saddle has been going on for awhile now.  It started with numbness.  That was cured by getting a seat with a cutout in it.  Now the numbness is gone, but after a long hard ride I was having some MAJOR soreness around my sit bones.  To be graphic, sometimes I had what looked like blood blisters.  Obviously that isn’t right, so I was very excited when I read Bryan Burn’s post about the Bontrager Inform RL saddle.  After reading the post I went over to the Bontrager site and did some more reading.  It sounded like this seat might just do the trick!  Normally I buy all of my gear from Fat Frogs Bikes, but they aren’t a Bontrager dealer, so the next closest place was East Coast Bikes.

I hadn’t ever been to East Coast Bikes so I was very impressed when I walked in the door and saw the selection of
bikes.  Especially the Felt B12 near the front of the racks.  I was
greeted by a very nice employee who took us right back to the Bontrager
saddle display and the special fit system.  The Bontrager Inform line
comes in 3 different widths to accommodate different sized people. 

To
properly size the saddle Bontrager developed a special fit system.  I
was expecting this big elaborate system, but it was only a board with
heat sensitive gel on it.  You sit down and it leaves an imprint of
your sit bones.  Pressure is then applied to the gel where your bones
contacted it and a color shows through.  The color corresponds to a
size designation for your proper width saddle.  In my case it was the
146.  What was really cool was the fact that there was one white seat
left and it just happened to be in my size!  On the way to the register
we noticed that East Coast Bikes happens to be a Hammer Nutrition dealer as well so we snagged a container of HEED. 
I had been wanting to try out HEED to see if it would eliminate the
stomach pains I have been getting while training and racing.  The
product I am using now contains glucose and sucrose.  Those two sugars
have been reported to cause some people stomach cramps.  Hopefully the
HEED will work!  I was impressed with East Coast Bikes they had a good
selection and carry several items that I aren’t normally stocked at Fat
Frogs.  There location is good too…. it will give me an excuse to eat
at Tap House Grill and a new favorite, Cogan’s Instant Art Bar, more often.

After
leaving East Coast Bikes we walked a couple of blocks over to…

Read More…

What a weekend! Amber and I left Friday night to head up to my “ex-”in laws house for the weekend.  The plan was to spend some time with my son who is staying with them for the summer and get in a bike race. I say “ex-” in laws because they are ex, the marriage that made them my in laws is over, but despite that fact we are still as close as ever. They are the best people! 

Anyways…. the drive up was uneventful and we got there around 10:30 on Friday night. Anyone that has left the Hampton Roads area on a Friday afternoon knows uneventful isn’t something that happens very often. There was NO backup at the tunnel, no backup where the super-intelligent traffic engineers had five lanes narrow down to two, and the rest of the trip up 64 was smooth sailing!

6:00 AM Saturday morning came around all to fast after tossing, turning, and having an all around lousy night of sleep. I was dragging! I managed to drag my butt out the door and get three kids and gear packed in to the RAV4 by 7:15 AM.  We got up to Hagerstown around 8:00 which gave me plenty of time to warm up and get myself stressed out about the hills and turn 2. 

The start time finally came and we were off. We made the first left turn going in to the steepest of the two climbs. Made the slight veer off to the right at the top of the hill, then dropped in to the “nasty turn”.  There it was the first wreck of the day. It was on the first turn of the first lap of the first race! Wow…. a lot of firsts! The rider in front of me went in to the turn to fast and had his back wheel slide out.  I hopped to the side and some how made it around him.

This “nasty turn” was a very hard left turn coming off of a slight down hill. The turn could have been fast but there was a strange drop off going in to it.  It was one of the spots on the course that I was worried about. Throughout my warm up I was focused on coming up with the best route through without loosing momentum while giving myself the most room to move if other riders lost control.  Coming out of the turn in was a slight down hill with another left turn at the bottom.  Next was a small climb up then a wide 90 left turn that put you in to a headwind heading back to the start/finish line.

After seeing the wreck in the “nasty turn” in the first lap I was really focused and over stressed, but after several laps I managed to settle down.  I became very comfortable with the Cat 5 group I was riding with. They were very stable and seemed to be in control of their bikes.  That is something that doesn’t always happen in a Cat 5 race.  I also realized that I was really was really enjoying the course.

The scenery was great and the fact that it was more technical than a flat oval was awesome. I was surprised how fast the racers were too. It seemed that the average pace was faster than that of our races here in VACA land. The hill climbs and the more technical layout of the course broke up the monotony that I find comes from running the same oval and wide turns over and over again.

30 minutes and many laps later I crossed the finish line somewhere in the excess of 34 miles per hour to place 5th. I was supposed to have a first place finish but it seems that the Long “crew” and Matt that were officiating didn’t want to believe me when I told them that it didn’t matter what the camera and their lap counting sheets said it was me that came across the line first. That aside it was a great race.

Kudos goes to the promoters and everyone else that put on this race. They picked out an awesome course and did a great job with the all of the preparations. The course was well marked, police and course marshals did an AWESOME job keeping it clean and clear, and the officials crew was top notch.  I even saw one of the police officers come out in to the course to pick up a piece of trash! 

The only complaint was that Joe Jefferson guy… he sure does have a mouth on him…. he was doing nothing but talking trash about people and playing awful music. They need to ban him from those MABRA races. Maybe then we can get him down here for some of the VACA events!
This was one of my most favorite cycling events so far!

The rest of the day Saturday was spent wandering around Shepherdstown, WV and swimming with my family.  Shepherdstown is a small college town with an artsy flair.  There are a lot of unique shops scattered along the historic main street section.  One thing that always amazes me there is how friendly and welcoming everyone is.  The first place we hit was Lost Dog Coffee shop.  They have a killer selection of loose tea and whole bean coffee.  They also make a great cup of coffee.  Lost Dog also has a nice display of local artwork on display.  Now that we had our caffeine fix we continued up the street and came across a bike shop called Shepherdstown Pedal and Paddle.  The shop was run by a nice guy that even gave my son, Devon, a t-shirt and I didnt even buy anything!  He had a good selection of mountain bikes and some other really nice gear and took the time to just chat with us.  He seemed to be very knowledgeable about the bikes and the area’s trails and resources.  One thing that they do is Segway tours, next time I am up there and have more time I am going to have to try that.  Luckily for my wallet on this trip there wasn’t too much in the road bike department and the cylco-cross bike that he had was a little too big for me. 
Sunday morning we were pulled from our slumber by the scents of a wonderful breakfast.  Eggs, lots of fresh fruit, sausage gravy, and buckwheat pancakes. We all dug in only to have Amber start having an familiar itching feeling in her mouth. The same one she gets after ingesting walnuts, which she is highly allergic to. We scrambled to find her benadryl.  She took a dose and we hit the road.  The swelling and itching proceeded to get worse, and she even broke out in hives. Two more doses of benadryl and the symptoms finally started to subside. We now know she’s allergic to buckwheat in addition to pecans and walnuts.  Hopefully we dont find anything else!  The rest of the ride home was much like the ride up…. minimal traffic and a nice steady speed.
Now I am home, exhausted, and ready to crack in to a nice bottle of Petrus Golden Tripel Ale!

Here is a link to the consolidated results from the Hagerstown Criterium Challenge:

http://www.bikecvcc.com/avc/Events/2008/hagcrit_2008/2008%20Hagerstown%20Challenge%20Criterium%20Results.html

Following is a google map of the actual course.  When I was trying to see what and where the course was I had a hard time finding anything on it.  So here it is:

View Larger Map

Mike has finally posted a Coach’s Tip with a report on a race that I will actually be doing, the Hagerstown Criterium! Hopefully this inside information on the course will help we blow out the whole Cat 5 pack and win the race. Ok, I have to wake up now…. Maybe it will allow me to at least finish with the pack. Either way I am excited to be racing on a course that is more than just a flat oval and with a different field of racers. It will be strange to be the only Frog in the field though.

GamJams.net: Where Mid-Atlantic bike racers roll: Coach’s Tips For… Hagerstown Challenge Criterium

Pedal’n Arounds’ wife, aka The Bike Widow was nice and had some T-shirts made up for him.  All three of the ones pictured are great, but I especially like this one:

I might have to steal this idea and make a T-shirt or two or three of my own.  Of course I will buy one from them first! 

Check out the other designs: http://pedalnaround.blogspot.com/2008/06/t-shirts.html