Sunday, September 20, 2009

2009 ain't over yet



iPhone over the helmet shot of the group ride yesterday. Our team gathered for a ride and eats and fun.

5 potential 2010 recruits + 3 parents + 8 juniors + 7 masters = motivation to push the pace on Palomares which is one of my favorite climbs with a new personal record of 17:43. 261 recorded climbs since 1991 and yesterday was my fastest! Getting old does not have to mean we slow down (although Peter Taylor beat me to the top!)

How is your off-season going? I won't know until after Master Worlds in Sydney (Oct 19-24) but our team is SOOOOOO looking forward to 2010.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Madison Camp (Sept 5-12) summary



Look, no one is sleeping!

Okay, so I ran out of time and didn’t post updates while I was in Colorado. Overall, I had a great time over the 10 days that I was away from home. Coaching at a National Camp has been my dream for many years and I hope to have more opportunities in the future. I learned a lot from Clay Worthington and from the athletes too. The other coaches were inspirational - Colby Pierce (Livestrong) joined us on days 6 though 8, and Cari Higgins (Proman) was there all week.

“That’s an accident waiting to happen” was my very first reaction when I saw a Madison about 15 years ago. If not schooled correctly, it’s easy to see most Madison races that way. It has been Clay’s ambition to change Madison races to be run off more like points races than shattered fields of riders. Obviously, I’m not the best Madison rider around (although I’ve won 6 state championships with 5 different partners ;-). Even still, I now fully appreciate that Clay tossed these national caliber athletes into the most sophisticated of cycling events and that the athletes responded without fear and with confidence.

Day 5- day after the rest day and you begin to understand why stage racers work their rest day! The group looks groggy and out of sorts.

Day 6- energy is back up as we have a morning session and then an option to race at night. It’s the final Madison event of the year in COS. We’ve got 4 junior teams duking it out with Colby and his teammate. The juniors score 2nd, 4th and 5th in the 40L chase, 5L scratch, 15L scratch, 80L chase format. Yours truly was DQ’d for dropping back and helping out one of the junior teams. Doh!

Day 7- 30mph winds kept us off the track so we were back in the classroom and then on the road in the afternoon.

Fast forward to Day 8 (Saturday, September 12) and we are looking at 12 teams of two riders exchanging in harmony, so much more coordinated than back on Day 2. Riders are staying on the pedals before and during the exchanges, relief riders better understand their roles and drop down with precision, exchanges are made powerfully and the speeds are up! Wow, what a week!

577km (358 miles) in 8 days! Great memories.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Madison Camp (Day 4) Garden of the Gods



Clay, Zack, Austin, Matt, Andrew, Colton

Junior National Madison Camp, Colorado Springs, CO – Day 3 and 4


Teammate Andrew Lanier Jr. and Matt Baranoski (Buck’s County, PA) hamming it up next to the USA Cycling that I’ve been driving all week.

Day 3 – another 4 hours at the track. 30 laps warm-up around 25mph in an 86 or 88 then 10 laps full gas burning most of the riders off, BUT today more stayed on longer than the first two days so we’re seeing progress.

We moved immediately to a Madison paceline warm-up and we’re seeing huge progress with the group of 13 teams of riders and their exchanges. That’s 26 riders on the track at the same time! The chaos is becoming organized! Two - twenty minute sessions with some solid instruction has these kids improving every hour.

Then the fun began. We stayed with our partners and did a flying 2km test. 3 weeks ago I broke my old national record at this distance (the 50+ year old pursuit distance) here at the Springs so this distance is obviously one of my strengths. But, we’re not talking about aero equipment, we’re talking about two riders slinging each other maybe 4 to 6 times in 2km. This is a real test because the higher speeds accentuate any exchange flaws the partners may have. It’s a great learning tool. About 10 of the 13 teams went under my 2:19.661 record with the winning time of Matt Baranoski (15-16 National Omnium Champ) and Colton Barrett (17-18 National Spring Champ) just around 2:08.5. That’s a respectable time, around 57.5kph!

Day 2 – afternoon and we were in the classroom to learn more about the fine intricacies of the Madison and to hear about the USA Cycling Track Endurance Program. We shuffled some kids around and then sat down for a 3 hour dinner with Clay. I am fully supportive of his initiative to improve Madison racing in America. So much so that I’m going to change my Tuesday night format to Madisons. Initial thoughts: Partner match-ups at 6:30pm, Madison warm-up at 6:45pm, two Scratch races, Miss and Out (together), two points races, final Madison, with all scoring done as a team. Feedback is encouraged.

Day 4- its our off-day today so we are planning a ride from the OTC out to the Garden of the Gods, followed by a nap!

Just to give you an idea of the quality of riders attending this camp:
Danny Heeley (CA) – Jr Madison National champion
Ian Moir (CA) – Jr 17-18 pursuit National champion
Matt Barnoski (PA) – Jr 15-16 Omnium National champion
Andrew Lanier (CA) – Jr 15-16 Points Race winner (part of omnium)
Zack Stein (CA) – Jr 17-18 Points Race National champion
John Tomlinson (IL) – Jr 17-18 Scratch Race National champion
Michael Dessau (CO) – Jr 13-14 ITT and RR National champion
Dave Kessler (CO) – Jr 15-16 RR National champion
Yannick Eckman (CO) – Jr 15-16 ITT National champion
Colton Barrett (MN) – Jr 17-18 sprint National champion
And, many more talented athletes! What an honor it is for me to work with these young athletes!

Speaking of young athletes, my 20 year old daughter Thea scored a goal for Fullerton yesterday!

Ain’t life wonderful?

Larry

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Junior National Madison Camp, Colorado Springs, CO – Day 1 and 2


A handful of cyclists in the Olympic Rings


Labor Day Weekend Hot Air Ballon festival just outside the COS Velodrome!

Clay Worthington is the USA National U25 endurance track coach and talent identification manager. He’s also responsible for all of the regional camps across the US. I met Clay when we were organizing the western regional camp. He came out to observe and help at our June camp. I was fortunate enough to have been invited to assist him during the Sept. 4-13 madison camp.

Teammate Andrew Lanier Jr was invited to the camp as was local talent Daniel Farinha (San Jose).

Neal Henderson (Taylor Phinney’s coach), Cari Higgins (Proman) and a few other coaches are here to help too.

Day 1 – Clay invited 22 of the best road and track junior athletes in the US. Clay laid out the rules and number one (as it should be) is safety. These kids are amazingly talented yet some had not ridden on a track before. The grand goal of Clay’s ambitions is to raise the level of Madison racing in America. The madison is arguably the most complex event in all of cycling. Guy East and Austin Carroll helped get lift off last year when they won U25 races in Europe. Daniel Holloway and Colby Pierce helped add credibility when they won pro six-day races. To raise skill and tactical levels of brand new track racers to these high standards seems lofty, but Clay dreams big –and- teaches in the detail so that these athletes simply “get it”. In today’s three hour session on the track we dove right into team pursuiting. Not the easiest skills (speed of pull, position in the draft, communicating while anaerobic, swinging off, latching back on, recovering to do it again) to aquire. All 22 riders raised their game in a relatively short period of time.

Day 1 afternoon road ride from the Olympic Training Center towards Pikes Peak (only 420m of climbing) helped to tucker these young athletes out (but only until they recharged their energy)

Day 2 – back to the track for 3 hours and we dive right into Madison exchanges after our paceline work. Amazing! I’ve been track racing for 17 years, I’m a supervisor at the San Jose Track and I’m the promoter of Tuesday Night Points races but until today I never would have thought that a rider with 3 hours experience could do a Madison exchange. These kids handled everything tossed at them. We practiced paceline Madison riding with 26 riders on the track repeatedly, with breaks for Clay to provide feedback, and the improvement with all of the riders was totally exciting to witness.

Day 2 afternoon road ride from the Olympic Training Center. No climbing but we did get rained on. When we turned to come back to the OTC we had the rain chasing us so the young men turned on the juice and throttled it for a nice 10 mile stretch into the wind. Like I said, these are some very talented athletes and I am very fortunate to be here to help. 80 miles in my legs today and I’m starting to eat like a teenager! Not really. Most of the OTC campers did 4 meals today (he he)

Good night!

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Cheating Death

Today was the Altamont Team Time Trial which was also the District TTT Championship. It was the same course that Larry, Rob, Mick and I raced on in the spring, with a few miles added on to make it 40km. This time around our team was Rob, Craig, myself and Mark Volkman who stepped in for Mick when he got sick this week. We raced in the 35+ group.

We knew it would be windy today. It was windy in the spring and well, they put the windmills here for a reason! But hey, it wasn't THAT bad in the spring.

What followed was probably the most frightening 59:50 I've ever spent on my bike! Every thing was fine until we made it over Altamont Pass on the way out. As expected we got going pretty fast on the back side. What I didn't expect was the HUGE side wind gusts. Let's just say that getting moved across the center line at 50mph is NOT fun. My max speed was 52.5mph. I spent one mile where I averaged 45mph!!! I certainly wasn't in the aero bars and I likely wasn't pedaling much either! All told I probably spent less than 15 minutes in the aero bars and on some of those fast sections I wasn't even trying to go fast, I was just trying to control my bike and not go down. There were a number of occasions where we'd get blow over, get a speed wobble and fight like hell to get back in control so we could go again.

Poor Rob at 135 lbs was getting blown all over the place. We finally had to leave him as it was just too hard to stay in the pace line for him while he was getting blown all over. It was bad enough at 165 lbs...

We hit the turn around in 21:35 for an average speed of 34.7mph! On the way back there were sections where we were riding three abreast because the side wind was so bad. Where even in the "draft" I was putting out over huge watts just to stay on. This was the cross wind section. When we turned back into the teeth of the wind and started climbing back over Altamont Pass it was at least safe. But it was SLOW. I looked down during one of my pulls and saw that I was putting out 400W in my aero bars and going 13mph in my 39x21. Our return trip took 38:15 at 19.1mph.

We were the only team to break 1 hour. I have only once gone this slow in an individual 40km TT. Afterward, everybody I spoke to was in agreement that this was the scariest thing we had ever done on our bike. We all agreed that we spent far more energy on not crashing than riding fast on the way out. In retrospect a road bike with clip on bars and something like Zipp 404's front and rear would probably have been faster than our TT bikes today!

Happily as far as I know all the teams made it through and kept the rubber side down.