Ah...Unemployment

There were no bike races this past weekend, so I officially made $0 in the last week. So I'm officially unemployed, looking for work and having none. How have I come to join the ranks of thousands of auto workers? The simple answer is neglect, the compacted answer is thus: I assumed that I would have a certain job when school got out for the summer, and having a heavy course load furthered my motivation to hedge all my bets on an unsure proposition. It didn't work out. So now that I am perusing the wonderful wonderful sites such as craigslist.com wondering how bad it could really be to take care of an 89 year old person, I am realizing that finding a worthwhile job does unfortunately require some sort of forethought. 

On top of that I failed my Spacecraft Dynamics class AAE 440. If you know this class, and you know Mrs. Howell and her 'I'm not going to give you a decent book and just give you half blank notes' teaching method, you might just understand and hold some sympathy in your heart for me. Since I failed the class, I will now not be able to graduate in just one semester. I suppose I could suck it up and risk failing another class by adding an additional class to my current work load, but if I failed another class I'd still be graduating next spring. I always have thought that college has been the best time of my life and I've learnt the most from being there, but somehow the prospect of spending a whole additional year waiting around for my undergraduate degree doesn't make me want to go out and jump with joy. I'm really ready to be done, I need to do something different, and I need to not be living in Lafayette, IN. You know start a new chapter or something cheesey like that.

I came home to Northville this weeknd to see my brother graduate and win a district highschool baseball tournament. The graduation ceremony was as all Highschool Graduations are, the principal told the class how special they are and how they have the potential to change the world, Mr. Rumbell (the HS band director) looked like he was having great time conducting 'Pomp and Circumstance' for the thousandth time, and the class president gave the absolutely most cliche speach I've heard in my life. As I was half dozing to "Our class can change the world..." and "I know you have all touched me in some way and I hope I have done the same to you..." I was trying to think how I could inspire myself to reach for the stars, and land on pluto or something. Well...I couldn't inspire myself, however if you can be inspired by graduation speeches and motivational posters consider yourself either very lucky or seek help immediately. Despite my lack of inspiration summer marches on to Fall semester (or more importantly deadline for Summer Semester registration) and I still don't have a job, and 100% of good internship prospects were gone in March. So next week begins my regression into seeking jobs I have already had or thought I've moved on from to simply give me something to do for the summer, I'm not quite a P-R-O cyclist just yet.

Snake Alley Criterium and Stuff

Spent the last weekend in Iowa racing up the world crookedest street. This was my second ever time racing the Iowa Memorial Day Races. However, this time I unfortunately did not get to meet a cycling legend before heading off to the races. This year's races were slightly different, because of road construction last year, the Burlington Road Race was not held. The Burlington Road Race was a glorified out and back course, with two turn around in small towns north of Burlington along the Mississippi. In a nut shell the race was very fast, easy, and boring...and I liked it. How could it simultaneously be all those things? Well, If you've ever watched a sprinter stage of Le Tour it was exactly like that. We averaged nearly 26 mph for the 80 miles of the race, there were no major hills except for a five mile false flat that simply made you ride tempo, and finally a day long breakaway got caught in the last km. The run into the finish had a small climb followed by a very fast 800 meter downhill straight to the finish. However, as the breakaway was being reeled in, while they still had about a 30 second gap, Greg jumped across like it was easy and gave the escapee's a second life. The world's fastest old man was seriously impressed. I was able to mix it up in the sprint getting 8th. It was a crazy sprint, after the pack crested the hill and accelerated you could not move up or around people because everyone was spinning 130 rpm in their 53x11's going 45mph, so the real sprint was over the small hill before the finish...oh well, live and learn. 

The next day was the infamous 'Snake Alley'. Cannot say to much about tactics for this race, you basically have to ride your brain out for an hour. The best part of the race was when the field got called up to the line. After calling up all the important people to the start line, the announcers started the most important race, the race to the start line. It went something like this: The announcer says 'And the rest of today's field may roll up to the start', everyone frantically clips in and sprints all out for three pedal strokes, then slams on their brakes so they don't slam into the important people already sitting on the start line because they're important. However, today it was wet, which meant when everyone went to slam on the brakes the entire field of 120 riders skidded across the wet pavement and ether stopped just short of or completely slammed into the riders already lined up. That was the fun bit for Snake Alley, Panther 'retired' rider Paul Martin got 2nd, Dan Campbell was 7th, and Vince was 16th. 

After the snake, we packed up our stuff to move race HQ to the worlds worst named hotel: The Muskie Motel. However it was really nice in the fact that the motel was across the street from the Mellon City Criterium. The crit went decently well, I was the designated sprinter, but finished 3rd from our team in 21st. That's what you get for making your move too late, you get boxed in. 

Finally the Quad Cities road race was the last chance to get another big result for the team. I played no part in this because I clipped a pedal and rolled my tubular. However this gave me the chance to watch Greg get a ridiculously large gap in the closing laps of the race and get a cool video of the last lap (including Texas Roadhouse f-ing up everybodies day by crashing in the second to last turn). Pay no mind to my poor commentary, I was talking to the corner marshals at that corner and giving them updates as to what was going on. 

Tour of Kensington Valley

So you'd think that after traveling to Colorado and driving 16 hours back to West Lafayette, I'd want to take a break and relax a little. You'd be thinking wrong, after a day I packed it up all again and headed back home to Michigan to relax at home and visit with Ashley and the family. One of the best and worst things about being a competitive cyclist is the traveling. Every weekend you're in a different town in some different part of your particular region. I'm sure that by the time I become a 'veteran' cyclist I will have visited a motel in every single city, big or small in the Midwest at least once. In the course of going to nationals and then back home we drove through 8 different states (Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Michigan). 

Anyway on to racing action, returning to Kensington MetroPark. We had three guys in what turned out to be a much improved field over last year. What I mean by much improved is that there were two PRO's (yeah capital P-R-O) from the Bissell team in the race. The race was oddly quiet for the first 40 miles, with a group of three getting a two minute lead over the field. Since Bissell was the primary force in the field and they had two out of the three riders up the road they were chilling out watching the moves from the field. Because of this it was sort of left to us to shake things up, after the gravel turn around on one of the laps Paul Martin and I got into a group of six riders, including three Bissell riders. Apparently for the Bissell riders having five riders out of nine wasn't quite good enough odds, so Paul and I...but mostly Paul towed up the three Bissell riders to the three leaders. Once the two groups merged Bissell started launching attacks, fortunately both Paul and I got into a group with two of the Bissell riders and we worked pretty well for the rest of the race. I was pretty gassed by the end of the race and finished last in our group. Unknown to us Vince had broken away by himself and had come within spitting distance of our group before blowing up. It was a pretty good result considering how outnumbered we were. 

Here are the results...I've added some notes to help clarify the results.

Place       Name                                     Team/Club 

=====   ===============           ==============

1            Derek Graham            BISSELL/ABG

2            Paul Martin                Panther

3             Sheldon Deeny            Bissell Pro Cycling  <<===PRO

4             Chris Uberti              Panther

5             Nathaniel Williams      BISSELL/ABG

6              Tim Farnham             Bissell Pro Cycling<<===PRO

7              Alan Antonuk              Essex Brass

8              Ben Whitehead           BISSELL/ABG

9              David Williams           PRIORITY HEALTH

10            Dan Klein                   Larthrup Industries

... ... ...

14           Vince Roberge            Panther

I'm not too bummed about getting out sprinted by a PRO who came from Ft. Collins, Colorado to race Kensington.

Here's a Video of Panther getting out sprinted by fresh legs twice in a row:

Meanwhile in Kentukah: Jeremy, Greg, and Dan went 1-2-3 in the Capitol Crit. 

Snake Alley, along with a couple other sweet races are happening next weekend. I'm really excited to get to race with a big squad of guys who are obviously riding really strong.

What a Bunch of Whimps

I'll stand by my claim that there is no such thing as an unsafe bike course, just unsafe riders.
But apparently those racing the Giro disagree
Here's the course

Obviously they haven't raced many crits

Nineteen First Places!! (Nationals Post)

Well, not exactly, Derek and I didn't win the nationals nineteen times, but we did both net a top ten finish in the crit. Before I get ahead of myself I'll start with what I'll call my $50, 70 mile training ride (also known as the Collegiate Nationals Road Race).

The race started off like most nationals races, sketchy as hell. Fortunately there was only one major crash on the straight flat road going out from the start. The course took two left turns, then whoever was on the front drilled it for a click before the pack headed up the first climb. My positioning was not the greatest going into the first climb, so as a result I spent the next 5 climbs chasing wheels to attempt to re connect with the second group, the first group of about twenty was long gone. I really lost it when Kip, and a few others got away from the small contingent of six riders that we'd established. We tried to catch back on, but it was over. The four remaining riders were all gassed, myself included. We were caught by a larger group of about thirty riders that were all content to soft pedal for the remaining 50 miles. At this point in the race I was really pissed, and was riding pissed too. I was yelling at people to pull through. When people stopped pulling through, I started to attack in the feed zone, which was 'not cool'. Whatever, if these 'National Level Racers' who spent all that time and money on getting to Colorado were content to go for a group ride, I was going to attack in the god damn feed zone. Anyway I was able to vent by myself for the last ten miles of the race when I got away by myself, It wasn't all that redeeming because I was caught by a reduced group on the last climb before the finish, at that point I had got my hard group ride in and cruised in to 62nd.
Derek dropped out of the race after getting shelled on the first climb, Joey also got shelled on the first climb but toughed it out to get into the top 90. Needless to say he was a tired cookie afterwards:
So, since that hilly nonsense was done with it was time for redemption in the crit. However, I was completely fried, which meant I was going to race a sprinters race. Which, in case you're wondering how to do, check out my Garmin file for the Nationals Crit:
That's right, taking it easy until it mattered. Anyway there were absolutely no crashes in the crit which, as anyone who has raced a Collegiate Natz crit can attest to, usually looks like a battlefield with bodies and pieces of bikes strewn across the course. Our former club adviser, and uber official Boris, gave Derek and I the best advice I've ever heard for crit racing. Stay in the first half of the pack during the race, with a quarter of the race to go, move up into the top quarter of the field and begin slowly moving up in the pack so that you're top ten with five laps to go. Then just stay there in the top ten for the last five laps and sprint. It worked remarkably well, and I didn't even have to work hard. Although, this kind of advice only really works for the big time crits that are flat, you know, the type where it's always a field sprint but people still bang their head against the wall the entire race trying to get away. Big crits like these are not really about how strong you are I am finding out, but how more about how many tight holes you're willing to stick your handlebars into (That's what she said!), and paying attention to where the hell you are in the pack.

Most of all I'm pretty sure Derek and my success can be attributed to the religious watching of one of the most inspirational videos I've ever seen, about struggle and overcoming adversity...on a boat.


Anyway after the race we all enjoyed a few of the free Dale's Pale Ales that was available after the race, Derek enjoyed a few too many and had a little too much fun riding after the race.
After our well deserved reward, we got a little group of Midwesterners including the entire U Mich team, Illinois Tech, and a few others to go ride Rist Canyon. Rist canyon was apparently the big climb that all the Colorado State guys did out of Ft. Collins, so we figured that since we were in Colo-frikin-rado, why not? The climb ended up being ten miles long and climbed three thousand feed...at 8000 feet there is still snow on the ground. Not that it wasn't a sweet road, it started out by following a canyon up out of Ft. Collins through the first foothills of the mountains and was rather scenic. Any bit of strength any of us had was completely gone by the time we reached the halfway point in the climb. We were all pretty happy to get to the top.
Notice we're all in shorts...when we were climbing we kept on seen dudes going downhill in full winter get up. There was a pretty good reason for this: it was about 40 degrees at the top there. After a chilly decent we all got showered and ate and then hit the town of Ft. Collins with the Michigan guys to further celebrate our two top ten finishes (you can never have too much celebration after a big race).

Now it's time to chill at home and visit Ashley and the Family and the Dog. You know, myabe do a little local race known as Tour of Kensington Valley, whose hills will hopefully be speed bumps after Colorado.

Colo-Frickin-Rado

So far it's been two days at altitude. We got into Loveland on Tuesday at midnight. On Wednesday we drove up to Ft. Collins to scout out the course. For all the non-racers out there, 'scouting' entails riding the course, but it sounds a lot more Bad-Ass. Anyway the course runs in the reverse direction from last year's course, which means it rolls out for 7 miles completely flat. Then the course hangs a left and does some twisty rolling roads before hitting a pretty gnarly (think 11% for 2 miles) hill, and follows the Horsetooth Resivoir, climbing up and over 5 move decently sized climbs before reaching the 10-mile pankake flat circuts.





Today we rode up this road called Pole Hill Road. We left from Loveland climbing a steady 1% out of town for about 10 miles. I knew the road had a mountian pass, but the contours on the Colorado Gazetteer. Anyway we got to the base of the climb and it looked something like this:
The road passed between the two peaks in the picture, doesn't look too high right? Once we started the climb we realized our terrible mistake, try 1500 ft over a little less than 4 miles (a little above 7% average, with sections up to 14%). Needless to say it was a little overkill the day before a race, but the human body is an odd machine, and throw altitude into the mix and I have no clue if this hard ride helped or hurt. Once we got to the top it was totally worth while, the view was awesome, and it was the most killer decent I've ever done.

Yeah it's okay to be jealous of such a sick road and landscape:

And we finally did make it to the top without too much pain

The view from the top, Rocky Mtn park in the distance:

And then we begin the fun part of the ride, the downhill:
Derek's in there, just really tinySo now we're resting the legs for natz. Joey got the last available spot to race in the road race and was pretty happy about it:Finally, and potentially the coolest thing, is that nationals might have Live Streaming Video Coverage of the racing going on this weekend, so check it out tomorrow and Saturday.
Who knows what it'll be like, maybe we'll have 5 moto bikes, a helicopter, and phil liggit announcing...or it might just be a video feed of the old dude announcing the race, who knows check it out. (RR-11 am Crit-noon(mountain time) )

School's Out for Summer

School’s Out For Summer

But it’s not yet out forever, just yet. Unlike many of my fellow class of 2005 grads, I still have another semester (hopefully) of collegiate learning. However, for the time being, school is out. Derek and Joey both got their finals moved, and since my only final was on Monday morning we were able to leave Monday afternoon to go to collegiate nationals in Fort Collins Colorado.

Last night we stayed with a Purdue Cycling Alumni who started the MWCCC in 1989 outside of St. Louis. He was a really cool guy who had a lot of stories about the Purdue Cycling back in the day. He told us about how a team had to have a least one girl to win the conference, about all the cycling guys dragging their girlfriends to cycling parties and boring them to death talking about/watching cycling, about the Purdue team spanking the IU team…looks like things haven’t changed a bit.

Anyway were currently halfway through Kansas and I’m struggling to write a technical report about building a freaking instable combustion chamber. Kansas is very flat, and very boring and there’s still about 300 miles left of it. There are a lot of cows, which are really like thousand pound law mowers, it seems like everywhere you look there are golf courses as far as the eye can see. However the border of Colorado is not the finish line, as the entire Easter half of Colorado is flat as a pancake but not as tasty, and the front range doesn’t start until you reach Denver. But by the time we get to Fort Collins, we’ll be at altitude, because even though the East side of Colorado is flat, it’s a lopsided pancake, and climbs very slightly up to Fort Collins and Denver. Thanks to that altitude all our heart rates will be through the roof, we won’t be able to breath, and all those mountain kids will drop our Midwest asses.

There’s some new blogs that I’m linking up, and I found a really cool website where this dude highlights pro races and talks about the race tactics that were used during the race, and in this particular episode below, rips VeloNews a new one:

How the Race Was Won - 2009 Gent-Wevelgem Video Analysis from Cosmo Catalano on Vimeo.

Also we finally got our sweet BIO's put up on the Panther/RGF website