The past 2 editions saw warm temps and dry & dusty race course. It was only fair that this year was 50 and rain. Turning many of the long dirt road climbs into quicksand. It certainly felt like the brakes were on while climbing for sure.

The race started off with a new section this year, that I was totally unprepared for. Right off the bat we climbed rt 53 and Ramone gunned it hard. It drew out the pack and I was quickly gapped (need a better warmup) but we hit a new fun and muddy descent that I was able to use to my advantage to bring the front back to me.

Once we rolled back through town a 2nd time and started the first climb we were a small group of 6. Staffo, Ramone, Duncan, Andy August, Jonah D and myself. Staffo and Ramone turned up the heat and slowly our group split. First Jonah, then me then Andy & then Duncan. Duncan managed to rebridge & the 3 rode the rest if the race together.

I started off in pursuit of Andy & Jonah soon bridged up to me. I dropped my chain in my spokes going up the next steep climb and he slipped through my fingers and ended my chase of Andy.

For the next forever miles, I chased Jonah. Up and over Canen hill, down Ridge road descent and up Hungry Hollow climb. The whole time Rob Dietrick was chasing me just as fiercely as I was chasing Jonah. I managed to finally catch Jonah on Hungry Hollow just before the steep pitch at the end. For a moment it looked like we were a group of 3 as we were diamounted and running up the super steep and loose climb. But I managed to get a good gap and hold em off. At least until after the descent and passing by the onion fields. Jonah rebridgend and we hit the singletrack together. I led, and managed to have a great cartoon esque faceplant on the descent, but still kept my lead. I got out front at the exit of the singletrack with a small gap and less than a mile to go. But the forever tenacious Jonah continued to pull me back in setting us up for a Mano e Mano sprint showdown. It all came downtown the last 50 meters where I narrowly edged him out by about a tire width for 5th place!!

All in all it was a killer race! Conditions were truly epic and hopefully I’ll have some pics from the moto crew soon to post.

I can’t really complain. I quite enjoy it back here. Plus the road riding is just as good if not better!

Onto the workout; some 5 x 1 minute intervals, not all that hard, but not all that easy. But, big changes! 40 watts over last years workout, ya ya altitude counts (but when I came back I saw about 5-7% improvement). But a few other things weighing in, I’m nearly 5kg lighter than last year and my CTL is -35 from compared to where it was then! That’s a fairly stout improvement!

Enough of the geek speak, time for the pretty pictures…..

I’ve still got lots of work to do before racing really kicks in, but so far pretty happy with how things are progressing. This weekend is the last weekend of Giros’, then a big weekend of training and time for both my road and mountain bike season to kick off!! Battenkill and then Dryer Rd Mountain bike race. It’s gonna be a busy month in April!!

I managed to get in some great training and more importantly just have some fun on the bike!

The fun even carried into this past weekend. I went and did both Giro Training races on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was doing pretty well hanging with the bunch, but the extra lap and mis-fire on my shifter had me coming off the back on the hill before the finish line about the 4th lap. Seems like the 5th lap was pretty tame though, as I sat up and was really only rolling behind the pack for most of the remainder.

Sunday, even with the tired legs decided to go race. I was berated by my teammate “Big House” (who had just won the Philly race the day before with utter dominance) to come out and ride. So I did. We had a bit of a smaller group and played around a bit with some attacks and had some fun, but it was destined down to a field sprint. Even made it over the hill and was able to sprint in the bunch for 5th, while Big House took the W. Been a while since I’ve been in a big ol’ group sprint, but don’t think that I’ve really lost too much of my edge A few more and I’ll be nice and sharp. Next weekend is the last weekend of the Giro’s, who knows what’ll happen then but I’ll at least be there saturday to mix it up again. Maybe even sunday too….

Amazingly temps have been incredible for riding in March, we got crushed with a snow storm, then bam 45-50- even 60 degree days with loads of sunshine!! I’ll take it!!.

Cause with Sunshine comes loads of motivation. Getting out there and drilling it for some “Over-Unders”

Fun intervals but, they are painful!!

Then of course, my tried and true Criss-Cross Intervals, these are even good for roadies as they help simulate riding in a paceline. Plus these aren’t boring by any means. The tempo part goes by quick and the hard part isn’t really super hard either.

In mountain bike news

The Dryer Rd. Mountain Bike Race is on!!

April 11th presented by Genesee Valley Cycling Club & Full Moon Vista. Will be a kick ass course at Dryer Rd. (designed by myself!), CA$H-MONEY prizes for Expert/Sport category!! Even the beginners walk away with some nice medals. No tube & lube for the winners here!! GVCC is really stepping it up and helping bring mountain biking up to the level it belongs. Go Pre-Reg on BikeReg.com and save $5. See you there!!

Gonna be a big weekend on the roadie!! Giro’s & some hill climbing in Naples. Hoping I can skirt the rain and stay dry!

Few days last week I managed some early morning road rides along the lakefront. Something quite serene & peaceful about it. Everything is still & it’s nice to have the solitude. Unfortunately so early in the am causes some unawakened legs also, but just takes some getting used to.

This weekend was great. The sun was out & got to race my bike on Saturday & get in a good ride again on Sunday. More importantly spent loads of time with Lake! Bridget is in NYC for a few days so we’ve been hanging out. Went for a bike ride, played some snow soccer & played some indoor hockey (don’t tell Bridget!) & all the fun stuff that little dudes do. He’s way too much fun, gotta keep it coming in doses though!

Thus week should be another killer week. Fitness is rapidly climbing & another giro again this weekend. Might skip Sunday & go climbing the hills of Naples for a big ride. Gonna be gorgeous! Maybe I’ll even get some pics up on thus thing & blog more than once a month!

Luckily it never came, but I nixed the intervals and railed it home just in case! Gotta love spring in NY.

Forgot my waterbottles today, haven’t done that in a long time

The other day the weather was finally nice enough and managed to get Lake out on his tow behind bike. After a bit of complaining, he enjoyed himself and had a blast!

Spring time temps are here, and the sun is trying to make it way through the clouds!

Seeing the above deer had me pondering: Do you let your environment shape you? Or do you choose your own settings that suit the environment you’re currently in? That is, do you do intervals that suit your racing style and race courses or are you just doing intervals in the hopes of getting faster?

I’ve been utilizing what I call “race simulation” intervals for my xc based athletes for a bit and I think they have some superb fitting for mountain bike racers. Basically, after looking at power files from xc races for a bit, we’ve kinda drawn out exactly what happens at the start of a race. Sprint>Vo2>Threshold>Upper Sweet Spot. Basically, this interval replicates the first 15-20 minutes of an xc event(or even the endurance races that are starting fast nowadays).

I did the below interval on the road bike, but can be performed off-road and should be as you get closer to your A race. In fact, if you can recon your course a few weeks ahead of time it’s a perfect workout to do on the course. Start out and sprint off the line, then hold at vo2 max wattage for 2-3 minutes, into threshold for 5-8 minutes, then Upper Sweet Spot for 8-20 minutes. This is a pretty advanced workout and I’d typically only prescribe 1 of these intervals as a workout. Start at the lower time periods and work your way up!

As you can see, I actually felt really great and a other than a little power drop after the initial 2 and 5 minute efforts, I actually reworked it and was able to raise my power up during the interval, letting me know I had paced myself very well.

Basically, find the demands of your races and train for them!

I decided to head south to Naples to hit up my favorite climb, West Gannet. It’s pale by Colorado standards, but still a good climb. 10k and averages about 5%, but it has a good kicker at the start, and a few small bumps near the end that make it tough. Having a brutal headwind all the way up the climb didn’t help today, but it wasn’t all bad.

Was a nice fast ride down with the tailwind. I felt really good going up the climb and throttled myself waaay back on the start so as not to push too hard. I gave it some gas when needed, but really struggled to keep the power up when the climb fell flat (something I’ve always struggled with), but managed a nice solid effort up the climb fully. Took me 28:10 (PR is 23:30), I’m pretty sure the wind killed me and my power while super high and PB for the season was great, I really never ‘suffered’ and held plenty in reserve. I felt really great heading up the climb and definitely this thing called ‘air’ helps one to breathe when going uphill.

After the climb it was pretty much, man vs headwind the final miles home. I finished strong and felt really great. An awesome day of training, so inspiring that I signed up for an actual road race. We’ll see if my Cat 2 license still holds true

Tomorrow, I’ll go play in the dirt on my road bike and pretend I’m chasing some fools down around the Arenberg Forest, then watch it for real on Versus.

Oh, found the results from Ouachita Challenge, 15th place. 36 finishers out of 100, not too bad. Pull the 30 off for the flat debacle and I’m easy 7th overall, some racing and maybe coulda cracked the top 5??? So I’m pretty happy with that.

I got to Arkansas on Thursday and spent the evening hanging out with the Chainwheel Gang, chilling at the the shop, then later with some mexican, beers, Halo 3 and Rock Band till the wee hours of the morning. The next day we hit some local trails “camp” as they were known, on the local military base, a good shakedown of the bike and the legs after being in the car for 2 days and Lizzy was happy cause she got to run for the first time in a bit also.

Friday afternoon, I headed out to the “Henne Compound”, where I was staying for the weekend. I made my way over to the course and managed to squeeze in a pre-ride of the first section with the Ergon Crew for a bit and get a nice preview of the opening climb and the first section of singletrack. The legs were good and I was happy. After being treated to a nice homecooked meal by the Henne’s and Sarah, I was ready to go. (BTW, hugest thanks to the Henne’s for putting me up for the weekend, and you should all thank Todd as the 80 is his baby!!)

Sunday was go time, it was a bit chilly at the start and would stay mostly cool and quite windy all day for the race. At the start as usual the front runners massed up and got ready for the charge into the singletrack. I saved a little bit on the dirt road climb, but picked my way back through to the front and could see the top 5 or so just ahead. Rolled it into the singletrack and carnage right away. Flat!!. Stans wouldn’t seal the hole, so I pulled the rear as I was ready for a fast change, but it wasn’t meant to be. The nut on the valve stem for my tubeless was fastened a bit too tight. Spent very near 30 minutes on the side of the trail (27 I believe to be exact) bashing at the valve stem trying to break it with my multi-tool or just beating something cause I was super frustrated!! Every single rider in the race passed me. Though the sweepers never got me, they must have been sleeping!

Just as I was about to give up and covered in mud, stans and blood cause I gouged the hell out of my fingers with the knife and screwdrivers, it popped loose like it was free the whole time. I got the tube in, inflated and took off. I gave a frantic chase for the next 40 miles to aid station #2. But there was sooo much lap traffic on the trail and it was all singletrack that it became nearly impossible to pass people. Surge like hell the wait the 30 secs or so to find a spot to pass. Thankfully most were on the 60 and that was over with at the first aid station. I rolled in to the first and second aid stations 30 minutes down, which was pretty much my time on the side of the trail in the beginning and probably was riding a bit faster than leaders as I was picking my way through the riders, and not losing any time from that. But it wasn’t meant to be. The tough singletrack and my frantic pace, brought me to my knees between aid station 2 and 3. I realized, I was never going to close a 30 minute gap, and I was definitely not drinking enough (5.5 bottles over 8.5 hours!). I rolled it back a bit and returned to a good pace and finished out the ride/sufferfest that was to be had.

I was pretty happy with the ride (8:01 of ride time, and most of the loss coming early in the lapped riders and a bit of a slow when I realized I wasn’t going to catch anymore). I think the leaders were somewhere around 7:40ish?? someone correct me?

All in all a solid first race and I felt good and ready, so who know what the next one will bring!

Tuesday night was the final wrap-up of the Farmall Series. I finished 3rd overall, and 2nd in my age category for the series. Congrats to Corey Knowles on taking the series win! I felt really great racing and the power numbers were pretty good for the event. While short course racing isn’t my forte anymore, I actually felt great and worked the course to the best I could. I had it handed to me fair and square.

Memorial day weekend was a great time to get loads of training in. Saturday was a little short due to Lake’s birthday party, but I snuck out on the road and got some time in the sun.

Sunday was an awesome day. Jim Hogan joined me down at Bristol to kick off a nice killer ride. We climbed up Stid hill and then dropped the tower drop. We both managed to make the final chute (straight drop!) and headed over to OCP. At the Ontario County Park, we ripped up the new trails. With some time those trails are going to be great and can’t wait till a race is hosted on them. We crushed the Orange trail descent and headed over to Cutler. There’s still a few trees down there, but hopefully they’ll be gone come race day for the Hardcore.

Jim ventured on with me into Naples, where I made the mistake of not picking up any water or taking any of his. As he headed back to the car and I pointed towards Parish, he offered me water, but I was sure the store in Italy Valley would be open, right? Climbing Parish was fun, but not nearly as fun as dropping the jump-off/hanglider trail into the valley.

From there I climbed up Burke and that was a good suffer-fest, and started to get really low on water. I was rationing it out as much as I could. I blazed it down past the outback inn and up to Brink/Basset, where I managed to run completely out of water. Still having to charge on through Hi-tor and then down the DEC, I finally made it into Naples 40 minutes after running out of water and nearly 2 hours after rationing. Needless to say, I was a bit dehydrated. I grab some refreshments and got an immediate “ice-cream headache” from the gatorade it was so cold.

After fueling up and re-hydrating I turned and climbed Griesa-to Gannett and back to OCP. Descended off that and headed towards the backside of Bristol. I really love that climb and I was flying up it and putting out awesome power considering I was nearly 7.5 hours into my ride at this point. I wrapped up the ride with a killer descent down the face of Bristol. 8 hours/135k, somewhere around 10-11,000′ft of climbing. 8 major climbs……

Monday was a tempo day on the roadbike, plan was to ride around Seneca Lake. After 60k of fighting a massive headwind I decided to turn around, only for the wind to pull a 180, 20k later and give me another headwind the whole way home, ugh!

No mohican= time for another epic this weekend.

I leave you this pic that sums up our society: Amar-Ricaaaa