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And they’re off…..

Last Night WSI Team Active Racing got together to kick off  planning for the 2014 Season.  Eric Cook was nice enough to host at his house and, since I was driving from out of town, I convincedWSI Team Active 2014 Kick Off him to go for a ride in advance of the team meeting.

That may not have been the best idea.  Dwight  joined us and is (for some reason) at mid season form and Eric is, well what Eric always is…a machine.  I was a bit late for our departure time after making some much needed purchases at Team Active, although I was dressed and ready to go, my bike still needed to get prepped and I wanted to put toe warmers in my boots and hand warmers in my gloves.  Not sure what the temperature was, I remember seeing about 20 degrees.  While I was prepping my gear, I told Eric and Dwight that I needed about 5 minutes.  Dwight said “Okay, you get all ready, then we will start spinning and warm up on our way to the ‘Dump’.”  I thought he meant, we would have time to warm up, not that we would get on the bike and proceed to ride at 22 mph right out of the driveway!  I got warm, but not much of a warm up.

We met Kathy at an intersection about a mile from the entrance to the Dump.  It was too cold to socialize too much, but very good to see her.  I had not seen her since she returned from RAAM.  The Dump is a great technical morass of cement, tar and tile and, if you go down, something gets scratched or broken.

Last time I rode the Dump was 3 years ago, that was in the middle of the summer and I was much more comfortable handling my bike than this ride when the ground was frozen and I was cold.  Nobody fell, though I did do some sight seeing a couple times, but all in all a great ride through the woods.  On the way home, Dwight pulled and I locked on to his wheel as if my life depended on it.

My feet were so frozen, that they were numb, and (you know the feeling) I wanted to cry they hurt so bad when they started to thaw out.  But then we went to Crazy Horse for some pizza and a beer…then all was good.

All got much better when I saw the team that I started riding with 5 years ago.  Mike, Eric, Kathy, Dan, Danny, Hannah, Devin, Chuck, Charles, Dave, Dave Sr., Eric, Cameron, Dwight, April, Keith, JJ, Groat, Josh, (and I probably forgot a couple guys), have all been around since I started riding.  (JJ brought his daughter with him, it was great to meet her too.)

There is something about the internal fight you have with yourself while you are putting out a big effort (or fighting the elements) and then get together with friends who do the same thing.  It is a fraternity and sorority and a family.  It was great to see everyone, go for a ride and talk about all of the great things coming for 2014.  I value our friendship and look forward to an awesome 2014.  For those who could not make it, we missed you.

Go WSI/Team Active Racing.  Jack.

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Summer Races – LJ 100, Big M and Ore2Shore

UPAs any of us have experienced; work trumps life, in fact, I try to operate in the exact opposite hierarchy- but it happens.  So far this year, training has taken a big hit and it shows up on the weekend races.  My goal this year was to try to crack the top 3 in the Sport Tailwind series (last year I finished 3rd, but this year, the race organizers pulled out my strongest race-the stage race) and I now currently sit in 6th after finishing the last race that I can make for the series.

 

Race season is far from over, but I want to catch up with a few notable races.  In mid June, I competed in the Lumber Jack 100.  Or rather, I showed up hoping that I could mentally overcome a huge lack of training (the volume in anticipation for the LJ100 is huge—at least it should have been for me).  Eric Cook and Charles Elder joined me and a buddy of mine (Kayo R.) at my dad’s cabin to prepare for the 100 mile race.  Without belaboring the details, my legs cramped so badly that after 50 miles, I knew my day was over.  I stopped at the remote aid station, hoping to find a short cut back to the start, and they told me that the fastest route was to follow the course.  I completed about 60 miles of the LJ100 and felt that I wasted my entry fee.

 

Early August, I returned to the Big-M to exercise some demons only to find that the demons were laughing at me all three laps of the Tailwind 18 mile race.  I finished DFL in 7th place for my category.  (Prior to this I finished 3 races in a row one out of the medals-a completely discouraging reality check.)  I had signed up for the Ore2Shore the following weekend, so I stayed in the cabin to work out, stretch, eat well and focus on Life and cycling (I had recently been honored with a promotion to Director at the U in our Tech Transfer office).

 

The next weekend, August 10, was the Ore to Shore Mountain Bike race.  The Ore2Shore was in the beautiful back drop of the Upper Peninsula’s Marquette with a  crystal blue sky and crisp morning.  I love being in the UP and the 9:45 start helped keep it from being too miserable of a morning start.  The start was a bit of a wonky roll-out on pavement with a lot of eager riders trying to get to the front of the race.  I did not witness any crashes, but I saw some really stupid moves.  Some challenging short hills at the beginning of the race helped line us up into 2 threads of bikes and riders heading up the Negaunee country side.  I was feeling okay, but felt like I was losing places even though it was still early.  We then came to a train (yes a train) that was across the race course.  The race piled up as if we were salmon at a dam until the leaders saw that we were only yards away from the front of the train, so we rode quickly to get in front of the train before it started to move again (which it did right after we crossed).  We were bunched up and walking for quite a while until we got into the really steep climbs (one hill called misery hill) which was impossible to ride up due to everyone walking their bikes in the middle of the hill.  In these hills (about 10 miles into the race) there were some short steep down hills with some huge rock outcroppings.  My font wheel found a crevasse in one of these down hill rocks and I end-o’d and hit harder than I have ever hit before—so hard that my vision began to narrow because of the pain on my left side.  (I knew that the best thing for me to do was to just ride and hope that the adrenaline would mask the pain until we were done.)  This worked until a guy stopped in front of me in a huge sand pit 5 miles from the end, I slowly fell to my left side in the soft sand but the pain all returned as a reminder of my age and lack of training.  With a few miles to go, the effervescent Angela Bowers came flying by and made me forget about the pain and think about how lucky I was to be doing this.  I pushed this race as much as I could possibly push, hammering all the way through the last 2 miles of winding pavement to the finish line.  I finished in 3:30, which was 36th of 63 Men age 50 to 54…not bad,  but then the season has been a series of races against myself anyway.

Jack Miner, WSI Team Active Fan and part time racer!

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Thursday 2 by 20’s

Woke up Thursday morning and it felt like my legs were beat all night long with a baseball bat.  Although Advil PM helps me sleep through the aches and pains of a good day’s effort, I am certainly groggy when my alarm goes off.  I was thinking, TRX is definitely going to be a game changer…if I survive.

Packed my road bike and complement of trainer, water bottles and bike clothes into my car and headed off to catch up with a half dozen guys who I have been riding with every Tuesday and Thursday night in the off season for the last 4 years.  Without these masochists and a leader who lives in the hurt locker, I would be a puddle of goo when the first race occurs each year.

We warmed up nicely and then defined our workouts based on our abilities as measured by our power meters.  This device has kept me from becoming my historically delusional self.  Just because you don’t get dropped when everyone is on a trainer, does not mean you can keep up with them on the road…the power meter creates the mathematical equivalent of the difference between a Cat 4 and a Cat 2…just look at your watts.

20 minutes at a medium plus effort can be taxing, even if it feels relatively easy in the first 5 or 10 minutes, toward the end of the effort, I am always wishing it were over.  2 twenty minute efforts are a good wake up call when facing a 2 hour race in just over 6 weeks.  I finished my 2 by 20’s and kept my watts right about where I was hoping…the TRX put pain in my calves and quads..again, hoping that the next few weeks will change my prospects in the upcoming cycling season.

Go WSI/Team Active Racing

Jack

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Waterford Race 7.18.12 “Mind over Mechanical”

Both the A race and the B race last night at Waterford Hills were very strange.  Maybe it was just me and a couple other guys that I ride with there, but we all agreed that the races were very schizophrenic. The stats on my bike computer showed that we averaged about 24 miles an hour for 1:10 minutes or so, but the feeling I had in my legs was that we were going 30 mph for 10 hours!  The group was very nervous and there were a lot of quick line changes that kept everyone on edge.  We would power up to 30 MPH and then sit up a mile later at 18 MPH.  Based on what Devin and Danny have been reporting, this seems quite typical of a CAT 4 race, but it was more pronounced last night than I remember it at Waterford.

While I was awaiting the race to start, I heard a strange vibration in my bike, but looked at my hub (new power tap hub) and figured it was just the sound from the hub.  I should have looked at my brakes…more on that later. The first 30 minutes were the usual settling into a pace and getting to know each other, some new faces were there from Bay City TCC Racing and a guy from North Carolina (who thought the course was comically flat!) but these fresh faces seemed unusually uncomfortable in a pack, creating over-braking in the turns and wacky line changes over the splits in the cement.

I am loving my new GARMIN and Cycle Ops Power Tap, I get more data than a Formula One Pit crew chief (too bad I cannot fine tune the engine to put out more horse power.)  Power, Cadence, Heart Rate, Distance, Average Speed were all very similar to the last race, which surprised me—as I stated, I thought last night was a huge effort compared to 3 weeks ago.  Or, maybe it is the fact that I continued to hear a hum from my bike and with 10 minutes to go, I loosed my rear brake and realized that it had been rubbing the whole time.  The brake was a little off-center and there was just enough of a wobble in the rear wheel to cause it to rub, even with the brake released.  Unfortunately, I debugged that too late, if I had realized I was having an issue, I could have taken a mechanical lap, but not in the last 10 minutes of the race.  The hum from my bike and fear that my bike was having a mechanical wore on me the whole race and I think made it seem like a larger effort than it obviously was.

It was a pack finish for me and the IPA tasted extra good at the finish.  GO Team WSI-Team Active.  On my way to Bloomer Park to pre-ride the course for Sunday’s race.

Jack Miner

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Ft. Custer, Waterford and Turning 50.

I find it fitting that this is the evening of my 50th birthday and past due to update my race reports.  It is fitting because cycling keeps one young.  We have all gone for rides with 60 and 70 (some even 80) year old cyclists who are amazing in their fitness and ability.  Seems the older you get on a bike, this also means that your core needs to be engaged the whole race.  I also felt as if I were riding very high and since it was the first time I was on the bike (ever) and it was a race, my bike handling skills suffered even more than usual.  I thought that the most important thing I could do would be to push it as hard as possible on the straight sections and take a little off in the technical sections.  It was a great day, a lot of TAR/WSI team members on the trail and I was able to steal a 9th place finish.

Tonight was one of the Waterford  Hills Race series road races.  I am looking forward to pulling in the data from my new Garmin bike computer to see what actually happened, but what I felt was a nice 60 minute race on the 1.5 mile course with a small hill and fighting to stay in the first 10 or so places.  There were nearly 40 of us racing tonight and the wind was pretty strong from the south and the race temperature was about 90, ensuring that positioning in the group would be key for the race.  Not very eventful race, I think I finished in the top 20 or 25, but then some knuckle head cut in front of me at the end of the race…putting me on the turf after the race was over.  So much for an injury free race, but a very happy 50th birthday—especially since my wife and daughter were there to cheer me on.

Happy trails my friends.  Life is better on our bikes.

Jack Miner.