Sunday, 12/12/2004 - Nationals!

Pre Race:
I got to bed somewhere around 10, I rolled over once at 4:30, and awoke again at 5:00. The body clock is quite amazing, on a work day it’s painful to get up, but today I'm bouncing out and it’s still dark out. I hope the start of RAO feels like this. For racing I like to be just on the cool side of warm, so this time of year that will entail: wool socks, bib tights, bib shorts, arm warmers, a jersey, summer gloves, and a hat. For breakfast I ate one medium bowl of regular oatmeal, and a peach yogurt. After which we threw everything in the mini van and took off, right on schedule 6:09 AM.

While riding up in the back of the van, I slurped down a little coffee. Caffeine has been shown to boost performance. The boost is enhanced by not consuming caffeine regularly, which for the last few months I have been highly guilty of. For RAO I will stop drinking caffeinated tea, coffee etc no later then the end of February. The one real negative side effect of caffeine is it will dehydrate the body. But for an event lasting ~45 minutes, I'm not to worried about hydration, and for RAO, well there is a crew to provide fluid on demand.

Previewing the course:
It was still dark when we arrived at the race course and there was a real strong wind blowing. On our drive north the wind would shake the van around. It wasn't raining, it had been off and on for the last two days, but man was it cold. I threw on a few more layers, polar tech and a jacket, and hopped on the bike to preview the course. I had an hour before the first race, the single speed race, and then another hour before mine. While I was previewing the course, my parents went over to pick up my numbers, and scout out the area.

My race was scheduled to be the second race of the day, but it was on the third and final day of the championships so the whole course was one huge mess of mud ruts. It was so rutted that in many places the only ride able lines were right along the edge of the tape outlining the course. The course had two runups/hills that were two steep to ride up especially with all the mud and a bunch of sections of course that were just too muddy to ride through. After a few preview laps, I knew there was going to be more running in this race then there had been at any of my previous races. I found as I road around, that the lower I deflated my tires the faster I seemed to go through the tricky spots, thank you Tufo.




After the single speeders started, I borrowed a trainer from some Redline guys and continued to warm up for another half hour while my parents helped me loosen my breaks and pin my numbers on. At this point, I shed the jacket and polar tech, consumed the bottle of Heed, and half the bottle of Cytomax. Then off to the restroom and back to the starting line to line up for my race. My parents had saved me a spot, in the second row, so I was going to be starting in great position. The USCF officials came out, we all rolled forward and awaited the whistle.

The Race:

I was a little slow to engaged my pedals, so a few guys slipped around me at the start. For some reason I was a little nervous right at the start, as the pack sped down the opening stretch. There were maybe 15 - 20 guys ahead of me. When on the first corner, three guys collided and went down hard. I went right, and zipped around them, and was up in with the lead group just hitting the first run up. I ran down the other side of the run up till the ground got firm, then hoped on the bike and sped down the remainder of the hill, then around a corner and into the mud.

The next stretch of mud was virtually un-ride able, so I again was off the bike running through the mud. Early in the race I would shoulder the bike here but as the race progressed I would just push the bike as it was seemingly too heavy to shoulder. On the other side of the muddy stretch, the ground got just firm enough to ride on again, up a hill around a corner, and back into the mud again. Off the bike back again on my feet running.


I've never run so much in a cross race, the course then twisted around over firmer ground went down and up a very steep hill (second run up) and back around through the starting line with the wind. I'm fast on the bike, but running is not one of my strengths, and re-starting on the bike is also not a strong point. All that said I by the end of the race I ended up finish a very solid 17th! Not to bad for nationals!


After the race, I felt really sick to my stomach; my dad washed my bike off as I went off to change. A little over an hour later, I felt completely ravenous. As the rest of Portland was just getting up my parents and I stopped in Portland for "second breakfast", after which I still felt famished. I was really glad I'd brought a bottle of Perpetuem, it hit the spot during the drive home.

Well this is the end of the cross season. Now everything is going to be focused towards RAO.

Saturday, 12/11/2004 - Day before nationals..

With tomorrow being the big day, today was spent doing final preparation.

I threw some slicks on my cross ride and put in around an hour on the rollers, real low intensity, just loosening the legs up.

On the equipment front: I used to use wax based lubes on my road bike, but I stopped using them a few years ago, switching to wetter higher performance/maintenance lubes. This has left me with a few fairly large containers of old wax lubes just gathering dust in my closet. Well, for cross the wax lubes seem to work great. Between the racing and the cleaning necessary after each cross race I have to fully re-lube everything between races, so today the white lightning bottle came out one final time.

On the nutrition front: Today is the final day of my sodium phosphate loading. Hammer Nutrition produces a supplement, "Race Day Boost", which is basically branded sodium phosphate. When loaded right before "A races", sodium phosphate allows the body to buffer around an hour of lactic acid. The literature talks about 10% performance boosts on 40k time trials. Now, I wouldn't go that far, but if it’s safe and legal and positively impacts performance I'm all for it. For longer events, like say RAO, it would do very little other then giving a rider a little nicer start. The loading protocol is to take 1 teaspoon for times a day, for the four days leading up to the event. One important note on sodium phosphate is if its constantly used the body will cease to benefit from it’s, so it’s recommended that there be at least a month between loading cycles. In my case, I only use it 2 -3 times a year and only for my "A+ races".

I mixed up the beverages I'm going to take with me tomorrow to drink before and after the race. I'm going to take one bottle of Cyctomax (tropical fruit, one scoup), one bottle of Heed (mandarin orange, one scoup), and one bottle of Perpetuem (one scoup). I have just started using Heed and really like it, its even less syrupy then Cytomax and goes down a little easier right before intense efforts. I'm not sure I will use the Perpetuem, but it will be nice to have incase I get any hunger pains..

Sunday, 12/05/2004 - Cyclocross

With cyclocross nationals in Portland this year (next weekend). I thought if I was ever going to do cyclocross this would be the year. Wanting to race on the cheap, I found a bike on EBay. Took a course from our local ex-cross pro Craig Undem at www.cycleu.com and hit the races.

What is cyclocross racing? Well it’s basically off road road racing. From 50 ft, the cyclocross bike looks much like a typical road frame. But then when you get close, you see the differences. Because of the whole off road nature, the frames are much beefier, larger tubing and stronger welds, etc. Unlike a traditional road frame in which the bottom bracket is the lowest point in the frame, the cyclo-cross BB is about level with the rear drop outs. There is a little extra clearance for larger tires with nobbies, cross tires are generally 30 - 32 mm and are run at mount bikeish pressures. The bikes all generally have cantilever breaks. The UCI band disk breaks last year, though in my category they are very legal.

In some ways cross its about as far from ultra distance as you can get. The races are short, super short 30 - 45 minutes. The races involve lots of tricky terrain wet grass, mud, leaves, etc. There are barriers that require a dismount and that you run / carry the bike over, think steeple chase but with a bike. The courses are real twisty and as a result the rider is constantly re-accelerating through the race and the whole race feels much more like a power workout.

Since I'd never raced cross before this year I, started in the Men's C bracket.

First Race (North SeaTac)

On my first race, I had a great starting position and was actually the first rider to the single track. Being new to cross, I looked at my tires, they said 80 - 100 psi, so I pumped them right up to 100, and went.. Well at the first bump I was thrown from the bike like a PBR cowboy, pro bull rider. After the crashed I lost a few places and a ton of momentum. By the end of the race I ended up placing 18th, not too bad for a first race.

Science Section:
Back when I was taking a physics course at the University of Washington ( ~6 years ago), I remember seeing a brief discussion of the physics of a bicycle wheel in motion in, Halliday, Resnick. When a wheel spins in the air, no friction, all parts of the wheel move at the same speed. But what’s really cool about wheels, is that even though the rim is totally connected when the wheel is rolling over a surface with friction the bottom part of the wheel will go slower then the top. This is not so intuitive. In the picture above notice how the spokes on the bottom of the wheel are in focus, and those at the top of the wheel aren't. You can also see how the linear speed of the spokes changes as its distance from the hub increase.

Second Race (Marymoor Star-Crossed)

I had great starting position yet again, and lead the race through the first turn, all was going well till I missed a corner and crashed! By the time I was back on the course I'd slipped 3/4 back. I definitely have the power, but my bike handling isn't quite adept enough. I crashed a few more times through the race, and ended up finishing somewhere in the middle. After this race I'm going to make a few changes to the bike:

• Switching to Tufo tires, they should run better a lower PSI’s

• Switching from V-Brakes (what the bike came with) to traditional cantilever breaks. My breaks to keep my breaks from getting clogged.

• Swapping my pedals from Speedplay Frogs to Time Atac, should work better in the mud

Third Race (Evergreen)

I missed a few races, and by this point the starting positions were getting decided by point standings. So I started in awful position, way in the back of the field. In cross this is a real disadvantage because it can be very hard to pass other riders. I spent the majority of the race boxed in and fighting to move up. There was a fairly good size run up, and a tricky decent. For once I had gotten to the race early enough to scout the course, so I had practiced the decent a few times. I only crashed once during the race, I must be getting better. I was closing in on 4th place when, I hit a tree on the decent. My front wheel slid out on some pine needles. By the time I was up 4th was long gone, I ended up finishing a very solid 5th!

Fourth Race (State Champs, Magnusson Park)

I got to the course early, and did a good warm-up on the course. The course had a very wide starting section, that narrowed and twisted around on some wet grass, and then opened to a long paved section that led to the back of the park.. Here’s where things got medieval. In the back of the park there was a huge mud lake that the course went across. The mud varied between a few inches deep to a foot deep. It was so murky there was no way to know what to expect. After that and a short ride able run up, the course went out and back over thick mud, over a barrier and around again. I practiced traversing the mud lake 10 - 15 times, and then watched the Masters Men C's race traverse the tricky spots.

On the line up for my race I again started back; in the, you have too few points to matter position. A bag piper started the race, and we were off. The course was wide enough that I was easily able to get in the top 10 by the first few corners. Then we were on the paved section, here's were I made my move. Hello road skills. I moved from the top 10 to 1st position. I wanted to be first through the mud lake, to avoid being bogged down by other riders, or worse crashed out. On the start of the 2nd lap I still held first. I sorta eased up a bit. No reason to work too hard :). And then I slipped on a muddy grass corner, ohh noo, and by the time I was up I was back in 6th. By the time I passed the starting line again (end of the second lap), I was in 4th position, and then the announcer said "There are prizes for the top three", prizes! Well, at that point I thought 4th place would be just the suckyist place to finish. By the end of the 3rd lap, I was in second, with the rider in 3rd right on my tail. When I can put out power I do fairly well, but he was faster over the barriers and through the twisty stuff then I was. So when I hit the paved section on the final lap, I knew I needed to put some distance. I put the hammer down, and 2nd place was mine. The prize, a cool silver medal USCF State Chap. First thing I've ever won for cycling.

Fifth Race (North SeaTac)

This was the same course I had previously placed 18th at. The previous night it had rained heavily so the course was quite muddy, and there were a number of very tricky muddy cement intersections. I crashed once while previewing the course, on a twisty decent, when my wheel got caught I slab of pavement. It hurt, but not too much. Thank goodness I was going slowly. The race started, I was still back in no points land and unlike the previous race this one had lots of single track making it very difficult to pass. I spent the whole first lap, just stuck behind a bunch of team REI riders. After an age I finally got by them and worked my way up. I was very cautious every time I passed over the section which brought me down during my scouting, and it paid off, I never actually crashed DURING the race! I ended up finishing 7th, if the course had been another 10 ft, I would have snagged 6th.

Cross has been real fun, but I haven't been taking it too seriously. Training wise, I have been doing long hard training rides the day before all my races, and just been treating cross like very short intense days. Some weeks, I've done a second real training ride post race too. This next weekend is my last cross race for this season, Nats in Portland! I think I might take this final one a little more serious...

Thanks for reading,

Kenneth