Rollers and a T-Test

Last night after dinner, home made pizza (lots of veggi’s no meat), I hopped on the rollers to snag some more base miles riding to disk 1 of the 2004 Le Tour De France. I had thought I’d just do an hour but, the hour mark came and went and I ended up sitting on them for another half hour. Hardly a marathon session, but more then enough for a school night, particularly when I still had some statistics home work finish. After the rollers it was time for some stretching, ahh the quads are tight. After which I plugged into the Compex Sport, and started a recovery program on my quads while finishing up my statistics, gota love the T-Test..

Beaver Fever Duathlon

A few weeks ago, I was scouting the late season racing opportunities looking for a late season TT. Not really sure why, but I was, and low and behold, I found something similar right in my backyard. The OSU Tri club was going to be holding the Beaver Fever Duathlon on the 23^rd of October. For those of you like me who are unsure of what exactly a Duathlon is exactly, it’s generally a run, bike, run event. Not being much of a runner, and really just wanting to TT I thought this would offer a great chance to team up with someone from my department, who would prefer to run and enter the Duathlon as a team. Enter Johanna, when I first asked Johanna if she would be interested in running I had no idea that she was an Olympic caliber marathon runner, well it turns out she is.

All of a sudden, I started to look at the previous race results, and quick math said that if I didn’t suck it up, we might just be able to take the course record for the top Team Duathlon, besting both a three person men’s and three person women’s team times. I had total confidence that Johanna’s times would be easily on target, but could I hold up my end?

The 5k of the Duathlon started with a mass start. A little over 17 minutes later, the first two runners were coming in, some how I knew, that I wasn’t going to have anyone to chase on the road course. Johanna and I slapped hands, and I was off, running to the starting gate, jumping on the bike, and zipping out onto the 30k course. Having no one to chase, I just focused on my heart rate and speed. About halfway through the course while slogging up a extend climb my pace dropped a bit. Coming down the back side of the climb 45+ mph in my aerobars, I recovered, brought my pace back up and started to bring it in. I was feeling good, I was motoring. Soon I would be in.

When I had started the TT, the course was dry, but while I was out it had begun to mist, and the road was now quite damp. Three corners from the end (~2) miles out, a corner marshal was signaling a right turn. I entered hot, and while going through the apex of the corner, my rear tire slid, and then the whole bike went, and I hit the pavement. DAM! DAM! DAM! Everything had been going so well! I hurt a little but ignored any discomfort, jumped up, and spun the wheels. Thank god the zip’s were still true and no brakes were rubbing. I went to mount the bike, shit! The chain had come off, two attempts at mounting it and I was back on. I tried to kick it back up but couldn’t get it to where I had been prior to the crash and I was much more cautious through the next two turns. I brought it in, slapped Johanna’s hand and she was off, and I was off to see the EMT.

It took 17 minutes for the EMT to finish cleaning out my right thy, calf, and arm or just enough time for Johanna to finish her second 5k. Of special note the EMT found a metal staple I’d picked up in my arm. Oh joy.

So how’d we do? Well we’d trounced the previous co-ed course record and beat the previous men’s and women's team relay records. I would like to take more credit for our great time, but with my crash I only finished a little less then a minute faster then the previous all men’s record.

Course Records:

Team Category			5K Run	30K TT	5K Run	Total
Male	J Xtream, Xavier Garcia and Jeremy Long		0:19:11	0:47:51	0:19:45	1:26:46
Female	Rising, Kirsten Norgaard and Rebecca		0:21:23	0:54:03	0:21:34	1:37:00
Co- Ed	Johanna, and Kenneth		0:17:49	0:46:01	0:18:36	1:23:08

Race Photo's from Fireweed Posted..

http://home.myuw.net/bhl/photos/fireweed_album/index.html

Fireweed post is finally up!

So remeber back to this last July, when the weather was warm and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Well back in July, Team Tartan, was in Alaska raceing at the two man at the Fireweed 400, race report + photo's is finally up as prommised.

For the full race account + pictures go to (http://www.teamtartan.com/) and read how it was Tartan Time in July..

Velowear Legwarmer's Arrive!

On Friday the Velowear legwarmers I'd won at ROF arrived in the mail. With a constant afternoon rain and emergency broadcast radio interruptions indicating flash flood warnings in different parts of the state, I suddenly got a crazy urge to go out and turn the cranks. I suited up and headed out decked out in style in my swanky new legwarmers. Pedaling to some crazy tempo, I cruised out toward Mary’s peak. Yeah, it was raining quite hard now. Pedaling through the rain and doing a fair amount of climbing, I began to think about the question, how does the amount of rain hitting a rider change going up hill vs. down hill or on the flats? This question kept me busy for a while; soon I was at the cut off to the peak. About a mile up from the cut off, three deer walked out from the edge of the road and just stood in the middle of the road and looked at me dumb founded. It was really dumping rain at this point. It soon occurred to me that the deer must have thought that I was absolutely crazy to be out in that weather. So three miles up from the cut off, I whipped the bike around. Coming off the mountain, my arms got quite cold, but my legs, ah they were perfect, gota love the Velowear. I flatted just on the edge of Corvallis, gota love the glass, ok maybe not.

Anyway it’s Tartan Time!

Newport Loop..

This last Sunday, the day before classes would start I pedaled out towards the Oregon Coast. The route I chose was to head out on hwy 20 and come back on Hwy 34. Nothing too huge, just a good Sunday afternoon ride ~130 miles. With that route in mind, I hit the sack the night before and was on the road a little after 10:00 the next day. I was excited, the Oregon coast is a destination I’ve really wanted to ride to for quite some time.

Riding out of Corvallis the weather was perfect, maybe a tad cold but otherwise perfect, clear sky, clean roads, and with the wind in my helmet I spun down hwy 20 towards the coast. A little after noon the traffic began to pickup on hwy at first it wasn’t all that bad, RV’s. Then a few miles out of Toledo, Oregon the shoulder of the hwy shrunk down to nearly nothing. Now at this point I hit upon what I’d like to suggest is the First Law of Passing Motorists, The larger the vehicle, the closer they will pass.

Bcw = ((Wl – Wv) / Wc) - 1
Rpd = Bcw - (Wv/Wl) * Bcw + Df
Wl: width of lane
Wv: width of vehical
Wc: width of cyclist
Df: amount a unique driver will move to the left. I would suggest that Df scales inversely with the size of the vehicle.

While climbing the final hill before Newport, I noticed my rear tire was running rather low. I thought, if I could make it to the Newport before it went flat that would be a preferable spot to fix the wheel. I moved my weight as far forward as I could and continued on.

Corvallis, had been sunny, but the coast was overcast, not to surprising. After replacing the tire, changing an inner tube, and grabbing a bite of quiche, I headed down the coast to Waldport to catch hwy 34 back to Corvallis. The route down 101 was something like 17 miles in itself wouldn’t take long but when combined with a tail wind felt nearly instantaneous. From Waldport I grabbed Hwy 34, a slightly longer alternative to 20, taking me back to Corvallis via Alesa. For anyone riding out to the coast, I highly recommend 34 over 20, 34 was a much better road over all.

The one mistake I’d made on leaving the coast was not taking quite enough water for the ride back. About 10 miles from Alesa, I flatted again, this time on the front, joy. After replacing the inner tube, I was back on the road and soon in Alesa, where I stopped at a mini-mart, to re-hydrate (1 can coke, 1 bottle Ice Tea, one bottle water).

After Alesa, it was over a climb by the cutoff to Mary’s peak and then finally back home.

Recovery: 2 scoops of hammer whey in milk.