Mt. Hood Classic- Day 2 (Scenic Columbia Gorge TT)

Well, today went a WHOLE lot better than yesterday. We swept the podium and not in the order that any of us would have expected!

Jeff had a time trial epiphany today. Riding his first ever dedicated TT bike, he won this 18.5 mile second stage! I (Kevin) was 2nd, 11 seconds behind and Mick was 3rd. Mike Hernandez surprised all of us (and possibly himself) by placing 4th.

The course was spectacular with a good mixture of flats and rolling sections and included two climbs to spice things up. Pacing and knowing when to parcel out your effort level was very important.

At this point everybody on the team is in much higher spirits and our legs feel better after two stages than they did before the start of the race.

Stage 2:

1. Jeff Angerman 45:18

2. Kevin Metalfe 45:29

3. Marco Hellman 45:48

4. Mike Hernandez 46:17

5. Clint Chase 46:28

6. Dan Martin 46:45

GC got a lot more interesting (from our point of view at least).

1. Dan Martin

2. Jeff Angerman 1:43

3. Marco Hellman 2:13

4. Kevin Metcalfe 2:38

5. Clint Chase 3:15

6. Roger Stevens 3:24

..

8. Rob Anderson 3:35

Stay tuned for tomorrow's report on stage 3: The Wy'East Road Race- 89 miles and 9000 feet of climbing. Ouch!!

Kevin and Jeff

Mt. Hood Classic- Arrival and Day 1 (Cooper Spur Circuit Race)

Wow. It's beautiful up here.

There's something about stage racing in Oregon that leaves you in a state of awe. The quality of the rural roads, the epic courses and gorgeous scenery, the meticulousness and friendliness of the promoters, and of course the great little towns, like Hood River.

Flying into the Dalles was a treat. I got some nice shots right over the Columbia on final approach. This one shows Mt. Hood at a distance:

We previewed the TT course yesterday, and I have to say it's one of the most amazing courses I have ever seen. Here's a shot of the road surface as well as a couple of perspective shots of the location of the course:

Today's Cooper Spur CR was a beast, even though it was only ~67mi, the climbing and heat (high 80s-low 90s) took a major toll on the field, shattering it to bits and pieces. The finish was at Cooper Spur resort (where we are staying), in a subalpine meadow below the Northern slope of Mt. Hood. Of course it was Dan Martin and the efforts to keep him in check that contributed as well. Rob Anderson was our man of the day. He rode a very impressive race and finished second to Dan, who decimated the field in yet another display of dominance.

Stage 1 Relevant Results:

1. Dan Martin, 67mi in 3h5min

2. Rob Anderson @ 2:22

10. Mick Hellman @ 3:10

12. Jeff Angermann @ 3:10

20. Kevin Metcalfe @ 3:54

34. Craig Roemer @ 13:58

38. Dylan Casey @ 18:52

Tomorrow is the TT, and we are really looking forward to it. I'll get the results and photos posted as soon as I can...

Off to bed! Thanks for reading.

Jeff

Nor-Cal Junior Criterium Championships

With all the other important races this weekend (Mt. Hamilton, San Jose Crit, other out of town races), not all the AMD Juniors were able to make it to the Nor Cal Jr Crit Championships. In spite of this, the AMD Juniors once again had a very strong showing.

Following the victory by James LaBerge in the 13-14’s race, Charlie and I prepared for the juniors 15-16 race. With only two of us in the race, we knew that we’d have different tactics than if our entire squad was in attendance. Rather than form a detailed strategy, we decided that we’d watch how the race unfolded and then formulate a strategy. At the start line, we spoke to Edan (Davis Bike Club), and decided that he and I would attack 5 laps into the race. With a large field starting the race we hoped to thin out the group to a select few with these attacks. After these initial attacks, we would observe the remaining strong riders, using these observations to form a strategy for the remainder of the race.

As the race started, Charlie rode to the front and set a fast pace. At the appointed time, Edan and I came from the back and shot up the road with the help of a nice tail wind. After just a few exchanges, we were brought back by the main group. The tactic had worked – the previously large group was now only about ten riders strong. What was unusual about this race was that everyone in this group was willing to work. The group of ten kept a rotating pace line until about six laps to go.

While the race had progressed, Charlie, Edan, Zach (Davis Bike Club) and I discussed strategy. We decided to send Charlie and Edan up the road with 5 laps to go. Our observation was that the only rider strong enough to successfully chase them would be Peter (Tieni Duro). To counteract this threat, I made sure that Peter was on my wheel with 6 laps to go. Coming through the home stretch, I attacked and Peter followed, as expected. Peter pulled through, I sat on his wheel and let him do all the work, hoping that he would become exhausted. When I failed to work with Peter, the group came back to us with just over five laps to go and Charlie immediately took off. Unfortunately for Edan, he was not on Charlie’s wheel, and missed the move.

I quickly moved into position to slow the group down. Sitting at third wheel when Charlie took off, I was able to disrupt the pace of the group when the riders in front of me pulled off. The combination of Charlie’s strong riding and the disruption to the pack gave Charlie a substantial gap after just two laps. At this point, Edan began attempting to bridge up to Charlie. At first, when Charlie was still in sight, I didn’t want anyone to join Charlie, so I chased down Edan’s attacks, but once Charlie was out of sight, I let Edan go. Charlie was too far off the front and I knew that Edan wasn’t going to be able to bridge, though he continued to try. I also knew that his attempts to bridge were likely to sap his strength, hurting his chances in a likely field sprint. Eventually, Edan gave up and came back to the group.

With Charlie out of sight and on his way to victory by a substantial margin, I was able to recover at the front of the pack and prepare for the final sprint. Peter sent one of his teammates to the front with a little over a lap to go. He pulled the group around until corner three, at which point I came around. Coming out of corner four I jumped with everything I had. Hoping that I had dropped Peter, I continued to sprint until the finish. Unfortunately, Peter came around me with about 75 meters to go, passed me with a few meters to go, and took the sprint by only inches.

Despite losing the sprint, I was extremely happy with the race. We paid attention to what was happening during the race and came up with the right strategy. Our ability to execute that strategy brought us our second championship of the day!

Joel

Modesto Road Race

There's only one thing to do when your heroes turn out to be fakes: get up at 5am on a beautiful Sunday morning and drive halfway across Cali to join a bunch of like-minded nuts to race your bikes fair and square. (Except that some CA masters are like 50 so maybe that's not fair. But they go like hell so whatever.)


Methdesto Road Race. Dead flat 9 mile circuit over 7 laps for a grand total of 63 miles through the Monsanto-scorched farmland between I-5 and Highway 99, a hundred miles east of SF. About 45 of us kicked off at 8:30am for the M30 race. Notable attendees: some Morgan Stanley guys; couple of Sierra Nevada guys, Peter and FBanks; Bubba, looking about 30 lbs lighter than I've ever seen him but no less powerful; some EMC and CVC guys? and couple of other good strong guys whose names or teams I don't know.

Who knows what's going to happen in a race like this? No real element of attrition, confusing and counterintuitive team dynamics, small field with a few big guns: I didn't have a clue. But what the hell. The one thing you want to avoid in such a situation is driving home 3 hours later torturing yourself about what you didn't do. I figured the one big risk of that happening was letting a group get away early and having the field lose interest in the race completely. So I lit the match on the first lap and things never really settled down after that.

Through all the gunslinging we managed to get up to a pretty good clip. There were stretches of near-max effort, which felt nice. Plenty of guys were going blow for blow. Problem was, you could never tell what might stick, and for what bizarre, convoluted reasons it may or may not. The one variable that you could count on was Morgan Stanley, bless their hearts. If they missed a little group that shot off the front, they would chase it down nice and slow, diesel style. In my view, when you've got some guns in a popcorn race like this, you might as well take the offensive. Instead, they ended up burning matches dragging the field up to little meaningless breaks here and there for a few laps, then finally got fed up and announced that they were done. I don't blame them, except that they kinda blew it. Right about then a group of 3 slipped away and Bubba bridged. Not sure what the f%@* I was doing at the time. MS missed it but they were unwilling to do anything about it. A few guys including moi tried to animate and get it going to no avail. We would get close, then fail to put the final nail in their coffin. The gap went up to a minute pretty quickly with about half the race left.

The wind had picked up by now so that made things interesting. On about half the course you would find yourself looking for that last cm of pavement in the crosswind sections, craning your neck around the bony ass in front of you to spot the potholes and missing chunks coming at you at 30+. It hurt bad enough to make me realize that as long as I was getting beat up, I might as well be the one dealing out the pain. Plus, the dread of meaninglessness was creeping up on me with every mile that passed. So I tapped a couple of the stronger looking guys and set up a classic crosswind train on the longest section. We left enough room for 4 and hit the nitrous. And it was good. By the end of the first half mile section, only the very strongest were left. We turned the corner, swung the train to the other gutter, and jacked it back up to 34 for another mile of crosswind hell. The guy in the Milram colored kit (Armstrong, Inc or something?) had enough mojo to hurt me bad when he came through but it made it all better when I turned around to see the shrapnel strewn behind us for a mile.

So 7 or so guys were left with 3 laps to go and I thought we'd just get down to business, reel in the raging Bubba, and have a race. It was not to be. Turns out only a few felt like getting down to business at all. They all had the stuff to suffer like champs in the crosswind, but now felt like whimpering and begging out of pulls. C'mon. What the hell did you drive out to bumfuck for? Why are you here? This is where the fun begins, the 31mph breakneck rotation with a few committed guys, hurting through your pull till you've got tunnel vision, then busting capillaries to get on the back, until you recover just enough to make it through again. That's bike racing. In fact, I LIKED that Bubba was out there like a carrot, giving us this wonderful opportunity to make temporary alliances with eachother, take legendary pulls, die a martyr's death, and then do it again 30 seconds later.

I was proud to find two allies in our group of misfit antiestablishment geezers: Milramguy and Big Fella. These guys went pull for pull, no matter what, which is just what you do in such a situation. They were redline like the rest of us and their chins were bouncing off their stems from time to time, but they didn't puss out. At this point, it's not about winning a bike race, or how tired you are, or team politics, or how you're exceeding your lactic threshold, or whatever. It's about putting it all out there, laying it on the line, everything those lame framed motivational quotes in sales offices around America are trying to say but can't. It's about creating some balance between your horribly sedentary modern life and your innate urge to kill and survive. It's about turning the completely pointless exercise of riding bikes around in big flat squares with a bunch of old guys on a Sunday morning into a goddamn life lesson. Everybody who didn't get these basic concepts got yelled at by me, which I now tentatively apologize for, though you can expect me to do it next time too. Can't help myself.

So why didn't the other guys participate? One guy had a mate in the break. Ok, fine. Normally, he has two choices: try to pretend he's not there at all, or roll through without hurting himself so he doesn't suffer punitive damages. Because if he doesn't pull, there is a formula: you simply leave him on the back to plan his certain victory for when we catch the break, then coldly assign the smallest rider to be the gatekeeper and absolutely put the pedal to the floor without mercy in every single crosswind section until his rims crack from bouncing off the busted concrete and his spleen ruptures and you leave him behind, a broken man, hopefully weeping silently by the side of the road. Done. But nobody got that. This guy kept getting in the way, causing stress fractures and consternation, apologizing but repeating, inviting wrath. Two other guys, FBanks included, begged off here and there - just enough to mess up the rythmn. Black stepped up at the end but too little too late. Same fate should have befallen all them. (Banks gets points for hirsuteness, and Black for being there and contributing, but still). But nobody knew the rules. So we all stayed together and went nowhere.

With a lap to go it was a mess out there. Guys were strewn all over the course from the earlier crosswind games, shamed but somehow still turning the pedals. Our group was beaten and unable to organize. 1:30 ahead was Bubba's group of 4 rolling tight but running on fumes. Could we have caught them? Is that the point? All I cared about was trying to. I was so pissed with the situation I wound it up one last time until my eyes bled, swung off and took a right turn towards the cars.

Results? Somebody post them when you find them.


P.S. When's the next race?

Kent Bostick Wins Festival of Speed Pro/1 Points Race

After a spring of taking some lumps the Pro/1 fields in the southeast, I finally got some fitness that allowed me to be competitive on the track. I won the Pro/1, 60 Lap Points Race at the Festival of Speed held May 12 at the Dick Lane Velodrome in Atlanta. This velodrome was saved from demolition by a group of highly motivated racers that raised money and created a community relations program with a junior cycling program. They prevented the site from becoming a storm-water drainage basin and recently refurbished a banking of the track that was falling into a creek. This velodrome is unique in that you can fish in the infield.

My pre-race plan was to get a good warm up and use my 200 meter qualifying time in the omnium as my final preparation for the points race. Well because of Atlanta traffic, it turned out that I warmed up for the 200-meter by pinning on my number. For the points race, I decided that I would sit out the first couple of sprints and then start sprinting. My tactics would have to be sharp as I was the only AMD/Discovery Masters rider in the field.The weather was 90 degrees and humid as thirty riders started at the boards at 5:00 PM. The race started fast with attacks and a break of five went clear after the second sprint. I was following some wheels and after using the last one up, bridged from the pack to the break at the start of the 4th sprint with 41 laps to go. The break swung up the track after the sprint not realizing that I had made contact. Sensing that they were trapped up track by a slowing rider, I came through in the pole lane and got 1/2 a lap advantage before the break reacted. Although riders in the break had teammates, they were all back in the field and the break never got organized. They attacked each other and tried to bridge solo. With 21 laps to go, I decided to hold off lapping the field so that I could take race leader points. Lapping the field would have meant that the break would then be taking all the points. The field finally disintegrated in to 2s and 3s around the track and I went through them and attempted to catch the break. According to new points race rules "the field" was now the break and lapping them in the last 5 laps would get me an additional ten points. I looked across the track and could see a Jittery Joe's rider doing most of the chasing in the break. Once the final sprint started, the break stayed ahead of me and I rode in at the front of riders I had lapped for first place in the points race.

My win in the points race placed me 3rd in the omnium behind Tim Burton (Biogenesis), the 2006 Best All Around Rider at the track, and just ahead of Steve Hill, the Senior National 1 km Champion. The omnium was cancelled after running the 200-meter qualifying time and the points race because of heavy thundershowers, but the promoter graciously paid out half of the prize list.As a part-time volunteer coach for juniors, women and old men, I usually tell riders that you only do pursuits in races if you are 4 km from the finish with your team mates blocking at the front of the next group behind or as a last-ditch effort to make a break and keep your team on the offensive. Just doing them for grins is stupid racing. So what about doing three in a row? I am certain that I will never be able to repeat my lack of tactics at this velodrome for a while.

Kent Bostick

SoCal TT Champs--5/19/07

Drove down to Mojave Desert to poach on the SoCal District TT Championships. The good news: placed first in the 45+, a little ahead of Eric Sternlicht, 2005 Masters Natz TT Champ in Salt Lake. The bad news: got to have a look at Thurlow, and what I saw was impressive. The guy just keep getting better, putting about 1:30 into the pro/1/2 field. The worse news: because I'm out of district for SoCal, I can't be SoCal district champion. So no snazzy jersey for me!

The boring part: the course is 5 sides of a rectangle (eg, you ride Side 1 of the rectangle again before you finish; the start and finish are not in the same place like in NCNCA champs). The cool part is that if it's windy, you usually get a tailwind on the Side 1 (which you ride twice), versus a headwind on opposite side (which you ride once). This can get very fast, and is essentially what happened after our Masters 45-49 group finished. So as the day progressed times got faster and faster. This probably helped when Thurlow broke his old course record by nearly a minute.

When us geezers went out on the course, there was a 1/4 headwind the first time through Side 1, then full head wind on Side 2, modest crosswind on Side 3, tailwind on Side 4, and slight tailwind/cross on Side 1 again. Times appear to be about a minute slower than prior year for Masters 45 and older.

Lesson learned: double-register for pro/1/2 and masters, so you can cherry-pick the best start time. Or call the promoter and find out which category races last.

Berkeley Hills Road Race Jr. 15-16

After tactical mistakes in both the Wente Road Race and at Cat's Hill, the AMD-Discovery Channel Junior team turned to the more experienced masters for tactics advice. One week and two dozen helpful emails later, we put up our best result so far this season. With the advice from the masters, we made a game plan before the race started, which was to form a small group of elite riders by riding tempo on the hills. Then we would take turns attacking and attacking until the opponents cracked. Never have I seen a plan work more to perfection (then again I have not seen very much).

As usual at this race, the start times were pushed back 20 minutes, so no one was really warm at the start after waiting around for so long. After the short promenade on the service road, the race kicked off with Daniel going to the front and riding tempo to keep the pace high. He had said before the race that he was there to help us, and he did just that by covering all the early moves and keeping the pace high when no one else wanted to. Nothing really happened until the first significant climb of the day known as Mama Bear. Sticking to our plan, all four AMD riders (Joel, Daniel, Davis, and me) went to the front and set a pace that only a few could follow. At the top of Mama Bear the group had been reduced from 35ish to about 12. On Papa Bear, we put our plan back to work and took turns attacking and counter attacking until the group was down to seven riders: the four of us, Edan (Davis), Peter (Tieni Duro), and Ryan Eastman (Team Swift). AMD kept the pressure on with a high speed attack by Joel on the downhill and then counter attacks by the rest of us. Edan attacked just after passing the start area and we decided to let him dangle out in front of us for awhile hoping that he would run out of gas. We actually lost him a little ways up the road because the Pro 1-2 field passed us at that point. Just before turning right off the main road we caught Edan and the group was back to seven. After the right handed turn, there is a false flat/small hill which goes for about 3/4 of a mile and I decided to test my luck again by attacking. I think I caught the three opponents by surprise and only Ryan got onto to my wheel. I noticed we had a gap on the rest of the field so I put my head down and accelerated again this time dropping Ryan. As I crested the small hill, I had about a 15-20 second lead. I was still about 8 or so miles from the finish so I did not expect to stay away, but the gap grew wider and wider until I could no longer see them behind me. There were so many other groups on the road that I was not sure if they were still chasing or not. I kept it up until the finish notching my second win of the season and my first since coming back from a broken hand. Joel brought in the field sprint for second and Daniel was close behind him for third. Davis rolled in for a strong 7th place finish. It was truly a strong performance by the team and everyone contributed to the sweep in the podium. Nice ride guys!