Cohutta Prep, Two Days Out

I feel like a giddy 7 year-old with xmas two days away.  Cohutta is on Saturday.  Today is packing day.  I am a list maker by nature so I have about a half dozen packing lists (things on the bike, things in the pack, things in the car, things in the toolbox, things in the drop bag ... you get the idea).   I ***think*** that I have it all packed in the car or in my last remaining suitcase; famous last words.   And at the end of the day, I really just need to get on the bike and go.

The weather looks perfect.  Sunny today, tomorrow and Saturday.  So the course should dry out nicely.  That area was in the swath of tornados that swept through there yesterday.  I have visions of some guy spending the better part of a day toting a chainsaw through the single track to clear fallen trees.

JG converted my bike to tubeless 10 days ago.  I've had to fiddle with things a little (an extra ounce of sealant, replace a bent presta core) but things are dialed in now and the tires are hardly leaking any air.  I did a shakedown ride on Monday night ... dropping down stairs, launching off a wall, smacking up a big wall, etc.  I couldn't get the tires to unseat so I am pretty sure they'll stick during the race.  I'll be packing extra tubes as a backup.

Tuesday I did 10x hill repeats on Mt. Parnasus (did I mention how much I like my KM SS).  Last night I did a light lifting session and then spun for 30 minutes on the trainer.  Today I did a little commuting, just to keep the legs fresh but warmed up.  I haven't managed to lose quite as much winter heft as I planned, but otherwise my training has been smooth and on target.   Mostly I just want to have fun kicking butt on the big mountain climbs.

Two Weeks Out

Very windy today.  Sustained winds of 31mph with gusts well above 40.  I am two weeks out from Cohutta and needed badly to get a longer ride in.   So I set off this morning about 8:15am on my cross bike to get a day of LSD.  I was planning on meeting T.F. and his crew for their 55 mile ride at 9am.  So I did 40 min of hills to get warmed up.   I noticed my rear wheel had a minor shimmy so I slipped back home to tighten a spoke or two.  But I found that one spoke was completely loose and another had fallen out altogether.   That was it, no go on the cross bike.  So I switched shoes quickly and put air in the road bike and went out a minute late to meet up with the crew.  

Funny how I have so many bikes but was scrambling to find one in operational condition.  My old mtn bike has no brakes since I pulled those off to put them on Eli's bike.  I now have replacements but haven't put them on yet.  My new mtn bike had a flat front tire from last week's race.  I tried to replace them last night but struggled to get the bead over the rim.  J.G. used this as an opportunity to talk me in to going tubeless (a decision I hope I don't regret).  We couldn't get the bead to seat without a compressor so J. G. took the tire with him.   My cross bike rear wheel is kaput.  So that leaves only my road bike and my SS Surley.   I need to get to work to get the fleet operational again.

So I now set off on the road bike with T. F. and two others.  We did bike path miles at first since it was the most sheltered from the wind.  But the other two guys bowed out only a few miles in.  I guess the wind was scaring them.   Then T.F. decided to turn back worried about making the distance in the wind.  Certainly it was blowing hard, but I guess I was determined to get the miles in so I pressed onward into the teeth of the wind.  I caught up with another crew about 10 miles later and was glad to be in their wind-breaking paceline.  They were a little slow, even with my conservative LSD pace so I broke off a few miles later.   I circled back eventually to the East and started enjoying the stiff tailwind.  After a small meal at Wendy's I ramped up the effort and hammered the last 25 miles averaging about 20-25 with bursts up to 35.   I caught up to another group heading toward Granville and they upped the pace to stay with me for the last 12 miles.   Ended up with 17.2 mph average over 77 miles and I had plenty left at the end.   A good training day -- bring on Cohutta.  

Simonton Challenge at Mountwood

Last weekend I drove down to WV for a tune-up race at Mountwood Park outside of Parkersburg.  It was a lovely course of about 23 miles with almost all of it flowing single track.  There were a few significant climbs and the rest of it was appropriately rolling.  The most unusual thing was the 85 degree temps -- it was a hot, sticky day that stands out remarkably against one of the coldest and snowiest winters/springs we've ever had.


About 200 or so riders showed up for the event.  There were a number of different categories, but you had to register with the big boys to access the 23 mile distance.  So I signed up with the pro/expert category instead of the sport riders doing only 16 miles.   I had to stand in line for the better part of an hour, so my prerace routine was a bit rushed even though I arrived two hours before the gun.  I also suffered from a slow leaking front tire and noticed it only about 25 minutes before the start.  It was one of those dilemmas about whether to just go with it or to quickly change it.  I decided to change it even though it ate up my warm up time.

So I toed the start line with about 30-40 other much faster guys.  I was not warmed up and was thinking mostly about that incredible heat.  At the start, I immediately floated to the very back, and I mean DFL, on the first gravel road climb.   I cannot believe how fast people shot off at the start.  I do know there were faster riders there but I refused to believe that these guys could really hold on to this pace for 2 hrs or more.  I decided to play it conservatively.   Even with that strategy I knew they were launching the sport riders 2 minutes later and I could here them coming fast.  So I still went out faster than my liking and put myself into my lactic acid zone.  This would have been suicidal for a 100miler but I figure I could hang on for a 2 hour race.



I got passed by the fast sport riders, about five of them, only 16 minutes into the race.   I maybe picked off about 2 or 3 guys in the first hour, but mostly I settled in to a good rhythm and kept an even keel.   Then in the last 90 minutes people started to come back to me in droves.  I was riding decently on the climbs and making big ground up in a hurry.  People were nicely spaced so I could chase another rider down every 10 minutes or so.   I think I picked up about 12-15 guys in total and finished right in the middle of the field.   If maybe I hadn't gone out quite so quickly I could have placed higher as my full leg strength never quite came back to me after burning them out quickly on the start.

But for someone who has done LSD all winter and spring, this was a good speed workout.  And I needed bike handling practice.   Mission accomplished.

A Contrast in Purposes

This week has been an interesting contrast in the many ways I cycle.

I used the Surly SS to commute to and from work and to haul some groceries home.  Then I went out later that night to do hill repeats on the same steel steed.

Tonight I went in to New Albany to hammer with the Thursday night crew.  24 miles at a high rate of speed, my second real outing on my road bike.

Coming up Sunday is a B-race aboard the full-boinger mtn bike in WV.

A few days ago I got my son, Eli, to ride up the hill.  We did a fun set of stairs, see video:



Eli Taking the Stairs from Matt Kretchmar on Vimeo.

Another Tough One

Did 88 miles today heading NE out of town. Lots of it was flat bike path miles, but I also did a nice foray into dirt roads that criss cross the hills and frame the valleys. The temps were a bit nicer today (45ish) but the forecasters got the wind speed very wrong. They called for 7mph winds all afternoon but instead I suffered through 2.5 hours of pushing into 20mph steady headwinds.  It was miserable. I must admit that I don't have any desire to get back on a bike any time soon. Everyone long ride I've had this year has been super windy, freezing cold and/or raining. I know, I know, this adds to "mental strength". But I also have to balance this with my desire to keep things fun, and fun this wasn't.

When you are pedaling your own two wheels, it forces you to engage in the landscape in ways very different than in a car or even on a motorcycle. You become so much more attuned to the geographical shape and layout of the landscape. Obviously, because you are acutely aware every time the road aims upward. I've noticed that the big state routes generally follow valleys. The little roads generally criss cross hills ... big uns. And you can usually do a good job of guessing ahead of time which ones are paved and which ones are gravel.