Missed it by *that* much - Ronde van Brisbeen (20070408)

Men's E4 - a skeleton crew both days, but I can't blame a lot of the
guys for wanting to hit the 35+ race up, you guys were stacked deep there.

We had Ed Lai, Brian Johnston, Jim Rusk and I in the first day, and just
me and Brian Johnston in the second day.

The first day, that hill took it's toll, and Ed and Brian were both
viciously struck down before their prime. That reminded me mightily of
last year, wherein I cracked on the third to last climb, chased on, then
blew up spectacularly on the last climb. It happens.

This year, I was up there, with Jim with me, and we went into the race
without a plan really so we got predictably mediocre results. I had some
sort of brain malfunction where in the last kilometer I thought the idea
was to sit in the wind and then sprint too early. For some reason, I
didn't win...why not?? Oh yeah, because that's a pretty bad sprint. I
did creep away with ninth though, and Jim came in around 20-something.
There were 100 starters if I recall correctly, so that ain't bad.

Jim and I have resolved to yell at each other (as in "drill it") in the
finish in the future when there's two of us. I would have much rather
blasted myself to pieces knowing he was tucked in third wheel than
finish 9th. Jason James and I made the same mistake at Bariani but then
fixed it in the NorCal crit. Jim and I will get it right next time I'm
sure. And if I'm sprinting I'm going to find a wheel next time! Note to
self - I do not have a 400m sprint.

Then I waved flags at people for a long time and tried to reason
patiently with people about why they really shouldn't try to drive
through a bike race. It worked out okay.

The second day dawned with the promise of a fresh chance at victory and
I saddled up to tilt at windmills again. I really wanted a breakaway on
the Sierra Point course. I actually love this course, it rewards hard
work and positioning, and I'm good at positioning and willing to work
hard, so I'm all excited.

I line up right on the line since this race is really fast from the gun
historically, then they roll the juniors out on their gear check
(juniors have restricted gears - they can't use really big ones - to
protect their knees) and then sit them in front of us - nice! I lined up
on the line for a reason officials, and that's not quite fair. Okay,
we're away anyway and I spent all race trying to attack or off the front
and just never getting the two teams I needed to go with me (Webcor and
Third Pillar) to both be there at the same time, so the other one kept
chasing whatever group it was down. Very frustrating. Maybe I just
didn't commit enough though...I dunno. Nothing worked though.

Fast-forward through the usual round-and-around action, and then there
was a big sprint, and I got 6th. Still didn't quite get the sprint
timing right, but at least this time I didn't go too soon. Probably too
late if anything. Would you believe they had a podium that went down to
5 places? 6th place gets nothing. Sigh.

Got 4th in the omnium, and would you believe that they had podium
pictures for the omnium down to 3rd place? 4th place gets nothing.
Double sigh! Too near misses.

Then I played course marshall the rest of the day (5 hours?) and helped
my other teammates pick up and pack up after the race. Not a bad day,
but it would have nice to get on the podium at our own team's race.
Maybe next year...

Teamwork, and a "win" (20070408)

Not a long report (I may write more later), but what did we not do at
this race?

There were actually two races for us Elite Category 4 men. A race where
we were separate (all E4), and a combined race where E3 (a higher
category) and E4 raced together, but were "picked" separately - meaning
they would take the final results and separate them between guys that
were E3s, and guys that were E4s, resulting in two finishing standings.

We had total team domination in the Men's E4 race - we had a plan,
adjusted it a little during the race and just nailed it. Mark Robertson
and Jim Rusk seared themselves to a slightly blackened well-done while
keeping the pace high closing in on the last lap, I took the last
kilometer at full power and then some with Jason James drafting closely
on my wheel and then blasting around me in the finish straight for 2nd
place, while I hung on for 13th.

In the Men's E3/E4 combo race - teammate Justin Fraga was off the front
of the pack, up the road flying the team colors, holding off the pack
and taking the overall and E3 win, the team was really working well to
help out, and in the chaotic pack sprint I came in for a "win" by
technical knockout as the top E4 in the race at 14th. So I got my win, yay!

You can even see it online here - the race was "The Colavita NorCal Crit"

I also discovered that (as of this writing anyway) I am the #1 Men's E4
rider in the "Best All-Around Rider" standings for all races in Northern
California and Nevada. Woohoo! You can see that here just to prove it
(though I may have sadly dropped since then, you never know...)

Bariani Road Race (20070408)

A possibly quicker race report this time ?

Men's E4 race - cast was 6 guys

* Ed Lai (second race of the year after Merco)
* Michael Claudio (ditto, but after Cherry Pie?)
* Mike Hardy
* Jason James (raced a bunch already)
* Geoff Gunderson (first race of the year)
* Thornton Weiler (birthday boy, fresh off the grasshopper race)

So we had a full crew just about. We showed up 2 hours early and
proceeded to warm up together, talk turkey, and get ready. We lined up
right at the front of a full field in 70 degree weather with no wind.
The plan was to attack, then attack more, then attack. Preferably on the
hill and the flat section after.

True to plan, Ed goes off the front with another guy and motors away for
a bit. The pack gets antsy, and Ed comes back. Jason James gives it a go
with someone (possibly before Ed's break? I think it might have been),
but again, the pack is restless.

At this point, I should note that the lack of wind was a real bummer for
me. It made the race entirely too easy, in my opinion, if you were
sitting in the pack. Going off the front? Really hard. But sitting in?
Not a problem. So the only tactical feature left on the course was the
hill, but the flat road afterwards had a tailwind! Then it went downhill.

Had I used my head more, I would have thought "this thing is staying
together until the end, I'm saving it for the sprint". If I had done
that, I would not have done what Thornton did though. I pushed the pace
pretty hard up the hill, then as I faded off the front Jason James hit
it and strung it out a bit, and finally when he faded off a bit,
Thornton, a Stanford guy and a Squadra dude lept off the front. 2 laps
to go at this point? Fantastic timing, and great move, with the possible
exception of it missing a Third Pillar guy.

Jason and I tried a couple of times to motivate or help (with bridge
efforts) a Third Pillar guy get up there, but the pack wasn't going to
be fooled so easily and we couldn't make it hard enough to get
separation without essentially chasing Thornton down.

So now the Squadra Ovest team goes into blocking mode (with 8 guys?) and
we're just rolling along with Thornton growing smaller in the distance.
Unfortunately, at this point the Squadra dude in the break blew up, and
Squadra goes into chase mode. Drat. I get up there and start disrupting
whatever I can, and covering bridge attempts as best as I can, but
people (Third Pillar and Squadra now) are managing to put in fairly long
pulls, and Thornton is slowly coming back.

Up the hill the last time, and the pack makes the catch, I go hard up
the hill now and get off with a small group, but once we get to the top
we all just look at each other. I'm a bit cooked from all the disruption
and chase efforts so I don't want to go, and now Jason is driving a
group up to us, at which point we all just start looking around, 10 wide
and maybe 25mph.

From my perspective at this point you can sum it by just
fast-forwarding to the inevitable bunch sprint. Nothing fancy except I
went way too early for the amount of juice I had in my legs.

A special note should go to Jason James who was in the wind a bunch at
the end and gritted it out for 4th, almost 3rd in the sprint, and
Thornton, who reattached to the pack on the last hill and hung on for a
very high placing. 10th? Somewhere around there. I think I got 20th or
30th or something - I shut the sprint down early.

If I had it to do again, I'd do one of three things, but not what I did
today. either:

* keep the hammer down after the last hill with 2k to go (why not?)
* save it completely for the sprint, the whole day (but I had to
help block...)
* see that Jason was there and ride tempo to the finish for the
team (best option I think)

Menlo Park GP - 3 is now the magic number (20070310)

Enough of these challenging scenic road races, you know you've got a
guilty craving for some flat four-corner crit action, right?

Well, here's the Menlo Park GP. It's a flat rectangle, maybe 1k in
length. You can pedal through all the corners (not that the E4 pack did
mind you, nope, we hit the brakes and coast because ooooo a corner) and
the short straightaways were long enough that you couldn't do the
low-energy attack-before-the-corner-and-gap-the-pack thing.

In other words, it rode like a real honest-to-god flat square.

Who's the cast? We had Anthony Eng, Andrew Hardardt, Stephen Langone,
Ian Swinson (in his first E4 race, congratulations) and myself.
Beautiful weather, nice temperatures.

I checked registration the night before and noticed that all the usual
hammers were going to show up, but with no wind in the morning, as I was
doing the warm up, I boldly
predicted that there wouldn't be anything going on all race and we'd
have a big sprint.

One thing we 4s have done well this year is getting to races with a lot
of time and warming up together. With the exception of Ian (who did drop
by at the end of the warmup to sync up) we all had the trainers together
for a quick (but adequate, I thought?) warmup while we were able to chat
with each other. Very useful.

I'm still looking for a #1 next to my name before I become cat 3 cannon
fodder, and I worked on my sprint earlier this year. I asked around and
no one else wanted anything in particular, so with no one else wanting
to do anything at the race I wanted to go for it.

I predicted a sprint, and for me to do a sprint well, I need to have
breaks neutralized, and be confident that I can sit in but not get
swarmed in the last two laps, so what I needed was covering during the
race and what I call "pack discipline" at the end. The whole pack had
the covering thing down for us during the race, so that only left the
last couple laps.

Ian had fought his way up to the front near the end, and I was on his
tail, maybe 8th or 10th wheel, with the pack two-wide and two laps to
go. Perfect, looking good at this point. It was too early to do much,
but on the long straightaways swarms kept threatening. Ian and I
line-hopped over into the swarming folks and maintained our positions
pretty deftly heading into the last start/finish straight. At that point
in a race the pack always seems to hesitate a little bit, and true to
form the speed dropped a little with a big swarm threatening our perfect
positions. I yelled at Ian to punch it, and he rolled up and hit the
wind from about 1k to 700 meters to go - stringing it out in the
process, with the impending swarm fading back - sorry, next time guys. I
was still around 7th wheel, and that left the guys in front of me
without many options - perfect for me.

They basically had to hit the gas at that point, so I was able to sit in
the rest of the backstretch, and was fourth wheel coming around the last
corner. With 300m to go everyone stood up and gave it what they had - I
was still fourth at that point, but one of the guys in front of me was
fading and that was motivating. I just inched him out at the line,
taking third in the process.

I ran through the numbers later (below if you're curious) and while I
wish I had more power, I hit my sprint-training numbers at the end of
the race, so I must have done something right with regard to getting to
the finish in good shape, at the same time that I either need to time
things better or just need more raw power. The winner was still going
away from me at the line, so I'm going to vote for more power. Hopefully
he'll either cat up or I'll be able to train my power up in the next few
weeks and get the elusive 2nd or 1st place I haven't cracked yet.

In the meantime, I thought our team routine worked really well again,
and I thought our teamwork, especically at the end was the right thing
at the right moment.

Other exciting bits: Another Squadra dude crashed right in front me, but
this time I had a few more meters to dodge him, and I did so
successfully. Not so lucky was some guy between the crashee and I, he
hit him front wheel first and did a full front flip. For a moment I was
racing next to an upside down bike about 8 feet off the ground. They
neutralized us for 10 minutes, then stopped us and restarted us with 3
laps to go though, so they could mop up the broken collarbone one guy
had, and the broken tibia/fibula another guy had (ouch).

Some numbers:
Speeds - pre-neutral, 26.4mph avg (282 watts for me)
Speeds - last 3 laps, 27.9mph avg (320 watts for me)
Speeds - sprint max 35.6mph (900 watts for me)

Moving up a step... Snelling RR (20070225)

Saturday was the Snelling Road Race, a mostly flat road race in the farm
country of the Central Valley in Northern California.

The wife of one of my teammates calls it "Smelling" since there are a
lot of cows around, and that isn't too far from the truth but there are
also a lot of cherry orchards there, and they were in full bloom with
the spring, so I thought it was pretty country.

The race was around 65 miles, the roads weren't great, but there wasn't
supposed to be much wind, so I opted for some aerodynamic wheels I have
(tri-spokes, if you're curious) that are hard to control in a
cross-wind, but really fast.

The cast of Team Oakland crew in the race were:

* Jesse Freese (looking to finish strong in his first road race)
* Jim Rusk (looking to come back after his Pine Flat cramps)
* Jason James (looking for some glory, or a top-10)
* Me (looking for victory still, or maybe some points, or helping
anyone else with a strong desire)
* Ed Lai (who unfortunately got sick and stayed home - next time, man!)

Pre-race strategy involved talking with the Third Pillar team, since
they had a lot of very strong guys and warned us they were going to set
the pace high from the gun, and the Squadra Ovest team mainly just to
tell them that we were nice guys and the one hot-head they have on their
team should relax a little bit and enjoy the racing, n'est ce pas?

With five laps, we decided on a strategy of having a couple guys hang
near the front to keep on eye on things and go with breaks for the first
two laps, then have a different couple guys work the second two laps,
and basically attack the race trying for a breakaway. The final run-in
had about two miles of really crappy pavement, a 90-degree right hand
turn, then a 300m hill/flat-spot/hill sprint. None of us wanted to
sprint through all that crap, which is why we focused on breakaways.

Owing to the warning about the high pace, we all warmed up before the
start (not always necessary for a road-race, especially a flat one) and
lined up near the front. The field was completely full, with 100
category 4 racers, and when the gun went off, our huge pack rolled off
into the sunrise to see how things played out.

In contrast with the forecast, there actually was a wind, and the first
long flat section was a perfect cross-wind. When you're racing bicycles,
you need to be drafting as much as you can, but with a cross-wind the
draft is at an angle - it moves to the downwind side of the rider in
front of you. Since the road doesn't care where the wind is, what that
means is that you usually end up right up against the side of the road,
trying as hard as you can to get any draft from the rider in front of
you but not getting much, and not giving much to the guy behind you.

Third Pillar was true to their word, and they really hit the gas on this
stretch, which led to the beautiful to see (but painful to be in) sight
of 100 guys, in single file, ripping along a country road in perfect
single file. By the end of the stretch some riders had started to pop,
opening gaps that you had to jump around and close, and we were only 5
miles into the race. I could tell this was going to be a long day.

On the second lap, Jason James had opted for early-race breakaway
detail, and he went with two of the Third Pillar guys, and a couple
other folks. According to his story, they were riding so hard that he
could barely hold on to their wheel, but the pack wasn't letting them go
anyway. The pack kept the speed high, caught that break, and when Jason
slid back past me, he said he felt wrecked but that they were still strong.

Knowing the crosswind section was coming, that Third Pillar was
motivated, and that today was a day for breakaways, I pushed it towards
the front and got ready to try my own hand. Sure enough, on the third
lap, we hit the crosswind, and the pack hit the gas again. Gaps started
to open, and about a half mile into this two mile stretch I realized
that with the crosswind being what it was, it wasn't going to hurt any
more to simply go to the front myself, so I pulled out of line, went
past the final 5-10 people in front of me and really drilled it. That
tore up the front group, and when I pulled off the front we were down to
six guys off the front, with the pack strung out behind us, chasing like
mad.

Out of this group of six, the same two Third Pillar guys were there, and
one of them hit the front of the group so hard that the rider two people
in front of me had a little anaerobic disaster and blew off the wheel,
taking all three of us off the group. I jumped around it as fast as I
could, but now I'm chasing solo up to the front three.

We had a motorcycle escort, and as he came up to the group he saw me,
smiled, pointed to the three leaders, and waved me forward to spur me
on. That easy gesture from someone who only had to twist his wrist to go
faster frustrated me just enough to step on it and touch up with the
front guys.

So it was done - the race was torn up, I was in a breakaway group of
four, off the front of a 100-strong pack of racers, with the most
motivated team in the race (Third Pillar), a Webcor guy (Dave - nice
guy), and myself. We represented three large teams in the field, so as
long as we held up our end of the bargain by keeping the hammer down, we
could count on our teammates back in the field to hold up their end of
the bargain by disrupting chase efforts and giving us a good chance to
stay away.

There was only one problem with this setup. One of the Third Pillar guys
(his name was also Mike, coincidentally) was new to bike racing but
apparently is a very strong triathlete. So strong in fact, that he had
blown my teammate Jason James off his wheel already in the race, and now
I'm suffering like a dog to stay on his wheel. I pulled through a few
times, but I want to be clear that this dude powered the breakaway in a
big-time way. I was cross-eyed, seeing spots, having problems with
motivation and just generally having a hell of a time riding with this
group. It was clear that he was stronger than everyone but at least he
was nice about it - encouraging us to stay on his wheel and keep it
together, and even dropping back to fetch one or the other of us back up
to the little group when we split up.

We kept on like this for a full lap, amassing what must have been a 5-7
minute gap or so on the field so quickly it was amazing, but the Webcor
rider had already fallen off the group, and finally I couldn't take
anymore. I pulled through, felt my legs empty completely, and cracked. I
thanked the two Third Pillar guys for their work, wished them well and
fell off the pace. There were just under two laps to go, I was by myself
with a huge pack in the distance behind me and I just felt done. I have
to admit that at this point, I had no confidence in my own ability - I
had tried so hard to stay on, and failed, and despite being in third
place on the road I felt so beat down I wanted to pull over and stop.

Knowing how hard I had trained this winter, and that my teammates were
probably in the wind behind me kept me from giving up completely though,
and I quickly took down some calories and a bunch of water while ticking
over a relaxed tempo on the pedals.

The pack in the distance grew larger, I finished my personal refueling
and prepared to reintegrate with my field. To my surprise, that was a
Master's 35+ Cat. 1/2/3 pack though, not my Cat. 4 field. Apparently
that pack had passed mine, and now that they were gone, I was looking at
maybe 5 minutes of road behind me, and I still couldn't see my pack.
That meant that I still had a huge gap. Next thing you know, Dave, my
fellow break-mate from Webcor rolled up to me and said hey, we couldn't
hold on to those guys, but I still think we have something here, do you
want to go for it? I figured I wasn't going to sprint anymore today (my
legs were already too cooked for that) so why not.

And so it went.

Just under two laps to go, two guys out in the wind, with 96 people
behind us. Can we make it?

I don't remember anything specific about that 20 miles except that I
very carefully stayed right below my absolute limit the entire time,
with my heart doing nearly 180 beats per minute for nearly an hour. I
was so close to blowing up completely and cramping, but I kept it
together, and finally we hit the last stretch of road, with only 300
meters to go, and no pack in sight. We had made it.

We had agreed not to play games with each other since it was a hill
finish and that would be enough to sort us out. We held to that, and
when we got to the hill, we both stood up to sprint, but Dave
unfortunately cramped up, and I went just ahead of him to take 3rd place.

Woohoo! My first breakaway every, and my highest result in more than 10
years. And I get another t-shirt

Back in the pack, Jim Rusk had made it into a chase group, Jason James
had bridged up to it and gone through it, and both rolled through with
high placings. Jesse finished his first road race looking strong, and
I'm sure he'll figure bigger in the next one.

As for me, I'm taking it easy tomorrow to rest the legs, skipping next
weekend's races, and will be back for the Zamora Road Race the weekend
after. In the meantime, the next step is to figure out how to stay in
the breakaway, where "figure out" most likely means "training harder"
since I really just need more power.

Happy Trails...

Pine Flat Road Race (Four is still the magic number) (20060225)

Alright, so where are we? Well, in official races this year, I've:

* gotten crashed out (Early Bird Crit)
* gotten fourth place (Martinez Crit)
* then crashed out (Cherry Pie Crit, though I still finished top half)

I haven't done a road race yet though, and I haven't done anything
against my peers that involved climbing up hills while on a bike, so I
thought this weekend would be a good opportunity to see how I did in
those conditions.

That means it's time to head to beautiful Pine Flat Reservoir, outside
of Fresno, California. The drive is so long that I drove up the day
before, pre-rode part of the course with my friend and teammate Jason
James, then we camped out near registration. That was great actually -
the stars were fantastic.

The next morning dawned cold but with good weather, we lined up and took
off. This race features two sharp climbs in it after about 50 miles of
rolling or flat roads, and nothing really happens in the race until the
climbs hit.

I had one other teammate there besides Jason James - Jim Rusk. Jim is a
climber by trade so he was looking forward to Pine Flat but he also
hadn't raced yet this year so he wasn't sure how he would do. The night
before, we talked strategy and decided that we would pay attention
during the race so that no breakaways got away in the flat section (like
one did last year) but we wouldn't do anything until the first climb.
Once that climb came, the goal was to make it over in a small group, but
not alone, then get to the bottom of the final sharp climb in a
competitive spot.

Things basically played out exactly as we wanted them to - the pace was
really lethargic on the run-up to the first climb, but things all of the
sudden got hot once the road pointed up. When the pack hit the climb,
gaps started opening up everywhere and people were going either forwards
or backwards really fast as the climb sorted the group out. I attacked
up the last steep ramp of the first climb and got a decent gap, with a
couple people headed off the pack in search of me, meanwhile the pack
continued disintegrating.

Just over the top of the climb, I sat up a little bit to regroup so I
wouldn't have to work alone on the long downhill to the final climb, and
I eventually ended up in a group of 10 or 12 (I'm not sure) along with
my teammate Jason James. This was a good spot to be in as none of the
other guys had teammates, and the group was big enough that we could
hold off the rest of the field if we worked together.

We got a quick rotation going, and somewhere in the middle of it, Jason
rolled by me and asked how I felt on the climb. I told him I felt
fantastic (since I did - which was a really great feeling after all the
work this winter) and then he asked me if there was anything I wanted
him to do. That alone is a really self-less act, and the best thing I
could think of was for him to drill it in the section right before the
final climb to make sure we had pressure on the group and we really did
stay away.

Jason said he'd do it, and true to his offer, he really lined it out, in
just the right spot, for just the right amount of time. We got to the
point where we staring at the final 1.5km of climb, and I was sitting
third wheel, just behind one guy, and with a Webcor guy maybe 20 meters
in front of us. The final climb was a real slugfest - just brute
strength really. With 200 meters to go I was in fourth place, and I
stepped on the gas, momentarily passing two guys and making it up to
second place (the Webcor guy was still in front, with a solid lead).
Unfortunately, I couldn't quite hold that pace, so I eased off a touch,
and two people came by me, so I ended up in fourth place at the finish,
earning a free "Pine Flat" t-shirt for my trouble

For his part, Jason James has a goal this year of getting enough top-10
finishes to move up to category 3 (we're 4s right now), and after he
worked for me he realized he was about 12th. He dug deep, and beat up on
a few different dudes, finishing 7th. True grit right there,
congratulations, sir.

Jim Rusk unfortunately cramped up a bit on the first climb, but that's
racing - the first race back does that to most people since race-pace
accelerations are hard to simulate in training. He'll be back though,
I'm sure.

The cool thing is that this tells me that I can climb this year, so a
lot of road races I didn't do last year (since they had hills in them)
are open to me now. That should be a lot more fun than all the short
criteriums.

What's next? Snelling Road Race in beautiful Snelling, CA...

Four is the magic number (20070225)

Today I officially became a partner in Tacit Knowledge!

There are now three founding partners (Chris Andrasick, Scott Askew,
Manish Bardolia) and me - the first partner joining in from the ranks of
employees.

I can't tell you much effort has gone in to making this happen, because
it's entirely too boring, but I will say that it took a lot of those
three guys' time to make it happen, and I appreciate it.

Ian mentioned that it would have been cool if there was some notion of
what I'll be doing, so I'll write it up real quick. My immediate plans
and duties are basically "more of the same"

* I still need to be as billable as possible (Joann and Kodak for
now) to fulfill my employee responsibilities

* I'll still do TKIS-related things (operator@ helpdesk work, all
the infrastructure)

Going forward, I see one major new thing on the horizon which is that
David Martinez, Scott Askew and I have been working on opening a Western
Hemisphere delivery office, and if I can work out the details and it
makes sense, I might live there for a while to get the office started.

Other than that, as Chris said, I think one of the most valuable things
I have to offer the other partners is that nearly every way I relate to
the company is still strictly on an employee basis. So if something is
annoying in that regard, I really feel it too . You really should feel
free to bring things up with me if you want since I'll probably agree
with you, and we can try to come up with a good solution. I'll then do
my best to carry things to the rest of the guys to try to make things right.

Finally, I'll say I'm really excited about Tacit. I've been here a long
time, and I really like the way we're slowly, steadily growing both in
size, clients and skills. We're not perfect, but I think this is a great
place to work and I look forward to trying to make it even better as we
keep growing.