Americans (only) in Vermont, racing mountain bikes

This last weekend the Mountain bike National Championships were contested at Mt. Snow, Vermont. I got to add another state to my list of places-i've-been. It took most of the day to get there, leaving Oakland Intl. at 6.40am wed. My flight stopped in Kansas City for a while to let some people get off (not sure why they'd want to, but whatever) and take on some more passengers. Then we flew on to Baltimore, and a 1.5hr layover. Got on another plane and made the short flight to Albany, NY. Got picked up by Alex, the manager of the Velo Bella/Kona Women's Professional Mountain bike team. We had to pick up Barb Howe and Shannon Gibson later, so we did the professional thing to do, and headed to the bar for a couple of cold ones. We went back and picked up the girls and their stuff...well, some of their stuff. Barbs' bike showed, but not her bag. After we determined that the bag was for sure not in the immediate area, we took off for Vermont. We had directions, maps, people who had made the trip before, we were set. Why we ended up getting sooooo close to Canada is beyond me, but we really took the long way to Mt. Snow. We'll just say we were a bit later than we expected in getting to the house. Thursday was a pretty mellow day, the girls rode the xc course, and Rachel Lloyd (who had come out to win the Super-D) took some practice runs. It started raining in the afternoon, and turned most of the mountain into a wet/grassy/muddy mess. The XC championship race for the women was Friday afternoon at 2.00. The course was in much better shape, but most of the racers had to dismount a few times per lap. Mary M. got a great start and never looked back, taking the win in great style. Three of the Bellas rode, Barb finishing 23rd, and Erika in 38th. Shannon had a tough day and went down pretty hard, not finishing and hoping to save something for the short-track on sunday afternoon. Following the Women's race, the U23 womens race started at around 5.00pm. The Bellas had one racer entered, Natasha Cowie. Her main goal was to beat her arch rival, a competitor she raced against many times this year and had yet to beat. Natasha got a great start, and was right at the front on the wheel of Chloe Forsman (Luna Chix) through the feed zone after the start loop. She ended up beating the rival and finishing on the box in 3rd, a great result for a great up-and-coming racer. I guess i was doing my job as 4 racers had hit the course and no mechanical problems had surfaced yet. None of the girls raced on saturday, but they did some riding and got the bikes muddy again. Good thing Mark Matson (the Kona factory team mechanic) had his nifty electric pressure washer on the trailer at this race! Shannon discovered the lock-out on her RockShox SID had stopped working, and i figured i'd fix it Sunday morning before the short-track. Sunday dawned clear and warm, perfect conditions for the Super-D. I had put some new brake pads on Rachel's bike, and made sure everything was working nicely. This was only her second Super-D race, the first being the NMBS race at Firstone earlier this year which saw her notch a win. She was fairly confident going into the race...with good reason, she killed it! After a hard start (the officials make every start different, this one a lemans-style start that involved much running up and down the start hill) Rachel was on Marla Streb's wheel in second place. On the first fire road section she attacked and passed Marla and took the lead. Marla ended up crashing, so Rachel rolled across the line w/a 28" margin of victory (which would have put her in 8th place in the Pro Mens field!). After 10 years of racing xc, downhill, and cx, Rachel had her first national champions jersey! One of the Bellas (Jennifer Tilley, who was sick but at the race anyway) had offered her Kona hardtail to Rachel to use in the short track, so they got to work changing pedal and other stuff to get it set up for Rachel. I began working on the SID on Shannon's bike, which baffled me despite my 3 day stint at the SRAM race shop earlier in the year. I ended up getting a bunch of help (and parts) from the 2 Gary Fisher/Subaru mechanics, Matt and Nick. Just about all of the racers run RockShox Reba forks, so we don't work on the SID very often. It took the 3 of us about 2 hours to get the thing working right, but we eventually won the battle of mechanic vs fork. The girls finished their warm-ups and took a couple of laps on the course. They do call-ups at the mountain bike races, Barb and Erika taking their spots somewhere in the middle of the field. Due to the fact that this was Rachel's first short track of the season, she was called up dead last. Funny thing was, as i grabbed the spare wheels and pump, i didn't see her at the back of the pack as the national anthem was played. I looked around a bit, and found her on the far left side of the pack of riders waiting for the start...in the second row! As she rolled up, she noticed a big gap on the left side of the field, and just kind of filled it. The girls got off to a quick start, and Rachel came through half way through the first lap in 4th. A group of America's most elite women formed, with Mary M, Willow K, Georgia G, Shonny V, and Rachel. Mary has been racing mostly World Cups this year, and this was Rachels first ST...so the usual Gary Fisher/Luna Chix crowd had some new company. Rachel stayed in the top 4 the entire race, looking very fresh and looking very comfortable riding right on the wheel of the racer in front of her. With about 3 or 4 laps to go, Rachel went to the front and drilled it...this move put some real estate between her, Mary and Willow and the slightly fading Georgia/Shonny. The 3 kept the small gap 'til the last lap, and Rachel just missed getting second by a half a wheel to Willow, w/ Mary getting another win. It had to be the best short track i've seen, fast paced and a lot of action. The race announcers were going nuts as they knew Rachel from her previous racing career, and knew that she had been mainly racing on the road this year. It was great to see them get the crowd really into it! Shannon ended up staying in for the whole race, finishing 16th, and Barb finished in 24th, probably a bit tired after winning this years edition of the (in)famous Mt. Snow Naked Crit. the previous night!

First Kilo ever...ouch...

I used to have a real nice track bike, even took it down to Hellyer a couple 'o times and messed around on saturday mornings. Great fun, but i didn't think i'd get into racing down there so i sold it so i could buy a big lens for the Nikon. As this years masters championships got closer i kinda got swept up in the excitement of niki preparing to win herself a few jerseys, and at the last minute decided i'd bring my cheap-ass Bianchi Pista to the track on sunday and try to do the kilo. I rode it around Paradise saturday morning, then brought it to work and stuck a hodge-podge of aero bars on it. Changed the gear from what i ride on the road. And i threw the Zipp 303 from my road race wheel set on there for good measure. We drove down and made multiple trips to and from the car to get all the stuff set up. Canopy, chairs, trainers, coolers, camera bag, kit bag. Since this was only the second track race i'd ever been to, i just kinda wandered around took a bunch of photos, and asked some people what i should try to do in my race. Funny, they all just said "oh, the kilo? just start fast and go fast" Sounded pretty easy, just insert myself into the pain cave for a little over a minute. Having not much of a clue about warm-up, i just jumped on the trainer for a while, then as my start got close i went and rode around the warm up circle. I got called on deck and sat down on the podium to wait. Ruggy came over and sat w/ me and we joked a bit about bike racing stuff. He held me up for the start, and i took off. From what i heard later, i had a very un-track like start. I guess i did the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do, but i stood for the first half-lap, then sat down and got into the aero bars. The first lap was no prob, and most of the second felt ok. I could hear a few people yelling encouragement from the apron (thanks donna, niki and lorraine!). Then...the dreaded last lap. The back straight seemed at least twice as long as the previous laps...i wobbled around the final turn and heard donna screaming something about going faster, finishing hard. Yeah...right. I put my head down (not very aero!) and hit the line. I didn't really have any goals for the race as i had nothing to base anything on, but i guess i wanted to be on the fast side of 1'20". I just made it, clocking a 1'19.2", which initially put me in 4th, but i guess someone else in my age group clocked a slightly faster time at the very end of the session and i ended up 5th of 9. I was the only first-timer out there, so i'm happy w/ the result. I figure if i keep training, learn how to start better, and get some cool black wheels, i can do a bit better next year. I think i'm gonna have fun racing on the track...

The home-town race...

Right...about that race in San Rafael. I sat on the trainer in the expo area for a good warm-up, then jumped on the course for a couple of laps. Rode around w/ Glen M. who was a pro on KGSN when i worked for them 2 yrs ago. Now he is the DS for Priority Health and according to him doesn't ride much and gets dropped by 3's on training rides in Santa Rosa. Yeah, right. He thought he'd sit in for about 20mins or so and see what happened, then maybe have a go. Tom blew the whistle and we were off. Pretty quickly, too. Funny thing, Glen was right at the front. I managed a decent start and was up there too...for about a lap. Then i dropped back to the middle (or maybe i stayed in the same spot and everyone went around me) and a couple of laps later i was in the last 5. Guys were getting popped off already, but i really wanted to stay in, so i was trying pretty hard. After about 20mins i was last in line and right about the same time as Glen and a few others attacked, i got popped. I think i need to spend some time actually going fast and get a bit more power. Any and all advice/comments are welcome at this point!

The Davis 4th of July human bbq...er, criterium

Hell, why not? Seems like everyone else has one, and myspace kinda gets on my nerves. So...where do i start? Wed. was the lovely and charming 4th of July Davis Human BBQ/Criterium. With a description like that, you can probably guess that i didn't win. Didn't even finish. Hot. Middle of the outback kinda hot. At this point i'm quite sure that i no longer funtion properly when the temp hits triple digits. I did the 3's race instead of the masters so i could be done in time to get things ready for the ProMan girls. The pace was pretty reasonable, but i had nothing. Nobody i knew in the field had anything. My teamate (Gary Stein) dropped out...the other photographer racing that day (Chris/Jamphoto) dropped out. But...some guys did have something in their legs, and they managed to finish all 35 laps, and one of them won the damn thing, not sure who...but hearty congratulations 'cuz he deserves them. ProMan Shelley warmed up by doing a bunch of laps in the Pro-1-2 race. Didn't look like she had any problems staying in...very cool. Six of the all-powerful ProMan ladies took the start of the Women's Pro-1-2-3 race: Shelley Olds, Nicola Cranmer, Tracey Ford, Kristin and Helene Drumm, and the eventual SOLO winner (yep, that's 2 races on the trot won in that fashion) Rachel Lloyd. To say they totally handled this race is pretty much the understatement of the year. They started launching attacks about a lap in and never let up for the duration. They won ALL of the primes, and Rachel got into a 2-up break after the halfway point. With 9 to go, she took off and stayed away for a great win. Helene took care of second, and her sis Kristin managed second in the field sprint for 5th.
Tomorrow is the Carrera de San Rafael. Fun course, and it's only about 4 blocks from my place. Very convinient. Hopefully i can manage to actually finish this one...i'm hoping the fact that masters' nationals are happening this weekend will mean the pace is reasonable enough for me to hang. Just go fast on the last couple of laps, ok guys? Race report to follow...