Wednesday, November 5, 2008

so long afternoon sun, hello morning chill

42F is truly the wake up call everyone should experience. as i roll out of my garage with my additional clothing options: leg warmers, long sleeve winter jersey with arm warmers on top, thermal booties, thermal vest and long fingered gloves, i am reminded that even bundled up you still feel the 42F.

coffee, hot shower and two hours later, i'm still feeling the chill on my body. i really enjoy these morning rides, less cars, less people, just me and the bike and the forty degree morning air.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

racing in late fall

workouts, cold air, dark afternoons and the weekend race with the club. had good power numbers and most importantly finished mid-pack with ease, if i really wanted to move up i knew i had the reserve to do so.

back to the race, did a few efforts, worked with a few team mates learned some new tricks that i shall off-line. i had a blast, looking forward to the next few events.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

and then the sun disappears

with only 5 more days of sunny afternoons, the realization of riding in the mornings before work has kicked in. have to get a red bike light so those who haven't had their coffee intake won't slam into the back of me. gotta get out the thermal layers, leg warmers and long fingered gloves.

as cold as it gets i come to enjoy it...i know sick in the head, but riding the rural roads alone, there is something to that. of course it takes me all day to warm back to normal human temperature.

Monday, July 7, 2008

this crit has a hill

race: Vacaville Grand Prix
category: 35+ Masters 4/5
field: 61
conditions: warm, 80s at 9a
time: 16 laps
team mates: none

course: is 1.1 miles in length, a good series of right left turns before you approach the climb. the climb is similar to Benecia

goals were simple: finish with the pack and stay seated on the climbs,
which basically equals, don't get pulled and don't blow up on the climb.

Arriving early I was surprised to hear that the event was running on time. My race starts at 8:50a while I was warming up I was watching guys get off their trainers at 8:30a, I stayed on for another 10 minutes opening the legs for the amount of climbing necessary to finish 16 times up that hill.

From the start we shoot off with speed, nothing horrible just guys fighting for position for the tight right hand turn and good placement on the first climb. It ended up being pointless since the hill was closed for traffic, there was plenty of room to go around those blowing up on the incline. In past years that would normally be me.

For most of the race I sat in the middle, we go fast we slow down we go fast again only to slow down to a crawl on some of the tighter turns, only with four to go did we start to build up speed, while I swear I was in the middle I suddenly was on the back, that's because a good 20 guys were gone from the race. I moved myself back up just in time to watch a Davis guy shoot up the hill, I revved up and moved up to the front middle.

With one lap to go I was sitting in about 30, we were all strung out, there was several attacks on the climb it was all I could do to just hang on. I moved past a few guys on the flat right before the line, finishing the day in 24th.

For those interested in the power data, I attached the training peaks snap shot of yesterday's race. In cycling peaks I was able to take off my warm up and cool down which my normalized power ended up at 287.

short term memory loss

short term memory loss was in full affect in my races at the davis criterium. i raced both the 35+ masters 4 and elite 4s while the e4 have a reputation for craziness it was the 35+ 4s that were not recalling the last lap. it was a combination of solo crashes, pedal scraping and overcooking the turns. somehow i survived that race taking 44th. waited for 2.5 hours for a fast e4 race, full field came in 48th.

Monday, June 30, 2008

odd feeling... i was physically ready

before I show up to the start line with a good feeling that I would last the entire race but most of the time I finish the race but towards back of the pack. The gas tank would just dry up and I be fighting to get that 60th place.

here's how it went on Sunday at the Burlingame Criterium

Memorial Day Criterium announcer tells us that there is a delay due to a crash in the last race, we'll get you guys started as soon as we get the all clear. Since I'm towards the back I take advantage of riding some loops to keep the legs warm, after 10 minutes of that they finally tell us the rules of the road and start the race.

Knowing that the majority of the guys are anxious to get warm, I knew that there would be crashes, yep on lap 2 or 3 we had 2 crashes in the back stretch, one was a solo and the other involved at least 5 guys, after finally being neutralized the pace finally became reasonable. Sitting comfortably towards the back, but still able to see the front of the race waiting for the surge. The surge finally took place with 6 laps to go, I figured okay I'll play along moving myself up to the mid-pack, with 4 laps to go Steven Woo (LGBRC) puts in a huge attack to get himself to the front, I wait for the Synergy train to get organized and hop on board. With 3 laps to go I'm sitting in top 25, as we hit the final lap, I have good position to get my goal on top 30.

As I enter the final turn a Synergy guy bumps into me and proceeds to lean on me for quite some time, I tell him "take it easy - hold your line" and slowly he returns to his original line, afterwards he thanked me for being calm and instructing him how to keep it upright.

Back to the finishing stretch, I get a good draft from some guy, as soon as he starts to fade I go around him to find Mr. Zig Zag, I pass him on his zag and without getting out of the saddle I power through the finish line, knowing that I got my goal of top 30 but now I'm thinking I got top 20.

Place 21
Avg HR: 157
Avg Watts: 202

Friday, June 20, 2008

the fitness is returning

tuesday night's goal was to stay with the B group for every lap, no matter how painful it was going to be. the first few times up the climb were painful as the climbers desperately tried to create the break, about 6 laps into it they did. now that we had 2 guys in the breakaway, i immediately positioned myself up front to block, but this meant i was in the wind possibly jeopardizing my chances. what you do for teammates!

but this week I did it, I lasted all 15 laps with a lot of help from my team mates. i glued myself behind scott, todd and maurice and derrick shouted out encouragements, whew I needed every last letter on the last time up the hill.

i even broke the 1000 watt mark, scoring a 1019 on one of the climbs.

next week, i'm going for the same goal, stay with the pack and perhaps give a few others a chance to block some wind.

Friday, June 13, 2008

if i dont attack look what happens

since that hill normally destroys me, sjbc tuesday night crits, i normally attack and go all out for the first 5 laps, this week i decided to see what would happen if i didn't attack. holy crap, i lasted 12 of 14 laps and if i didn't have to put on the president's hat and speak to someone in the fricking wind, who knows might have lasted the full 14 laps.

next week...

Friday, June 6, 2008

putting on a bike race is tough, try doing two

after six months of planning and worrying about if I had forgotten anything the Mt Hamilton Classic and Memorial Day Criterium happened with great success. The sheer amount of support that I received both from volunteers and sponsors was beyond my wildest hopes. Sure there is registration and results items to be fixed, but now that I know all the aspects on putting this weekend on, I'll be better prepared for 2009.

next year we are thinking about adding a 3rd event and creating a points event, it will be fun...

Monday, March 10, 2008

first race in the books

i slept just fine, had a good breakfast, did everything that i normally did before an event. got to the event with plenty of time to walk the course and cheer on our cat 4s. set up the trainer, started to warm up during the last bit of the 4s race and the w4 races. hydrated and gel-ed up i was ready to race. 5 laps to go i start moving towards the start line, only to hear, we'll be placing the ladies under neutral while the ambulance takes care of the fallen cyclist. so back to the car i go for warm clothing. with not knowing an exact amount of time, i do micro laps in a parking lot.

10 minutes go by and i start to see guys of my race on the course, well by now I'm starting to get a bit dizzy. a few laps around and they were ready to get things going.

finally its my turn to race. all i want to do is clip in. let me clip in and ill worry about gaining ground later. first lap came around and i assume i must have been last when michael announced me and "pulling up the rear jonathan from sjbc". i get back to mid-back of the pack for now, where todd is starting to get closer, i know im not moving up, maybe he's coming back to see how im doing. i ride up to him then get in front of him to bring him back up to the middle. but he tells me that its not his day, i move back to stay near the guys i know when all of a sudden that noise you dread is getting louder, the mad dash to brake. from 30 to 0 in a matter of seconds, as i roll by the start/finish line there is a pile up. this one is gonna take a while to clean up.

after 20 minutes or so we are back on to ride 7 laps. first 1/2 lap was ok then the pace quickly shot up, i was pushing 500+ watts to stay on reaching 650 and 31 mph in the saddle in the last lap, to finish 62nd/100, but upright and ready for more.

a few more months of training and by memorial day i should be back to do multiple races in a day.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

then there was outside

decided to test the legs, the bike, the mental game of it all by riding two days before I took a long ride with the Saturday gang.

getting the helmet out of the car was the sure sign that this was real. after so many days riding on the trainer and going absolutely no where it sure felt good when we turned out of the parking lot and headed down towards central expressway. the goal of the two days was to get that lung butter up and boy was it coming out.

saturday's ride - i wanted to be on the bike for as long as i could. decided to ride from my house to the saturday ride, that would get me warmed up and ready to roll. i over estimated the time it would take to get there, so i had to ride around the neighborhood to stay warm. by the time the ride leaders said let's go, i had 13 miles logged.

riding to gilroy was a lot of fun, tailwind, pushing us along with folks attacking and i had a blast chasing them down, by the time i got to the gilroy golf course, i was pushing close to 42 miles. as we started heading north we all got a taste of what we will be riding in for the next 20 miles, fierce headwind. i was immediately dropped, and rode alone for 18 miles. at one point the wind was pushing me sideways, and riding down the cinnabar hill, i was pedaling as hard as i could and only getting 29mph. eventually i made it home, logged 73 miles and 4:36hrs on the bike. it was total bliss.

sunday rode 33 miles and tuesday another 27 miles.

conclusion: flat roads are fun, hills its a sufferfest, though with after work ride team mates, steven and john, they will get me ready for may-sept ncnca races.

Monday, February 25, 2008

retiring the trainer

208 miles in february and another 49 in january all on the trainer in either the garage, driveway or in the back yard. enough. i'm ready to ride outside.

Monday, February 4, 2008

2 sessions, 33 miles

did my 50 minutes on the trainer before my sports therapy appointment totaling 18 miles. my appointment is with vertical empowerment which offers active release techniques (ART), its extremely helpful in relaxing tight muscles and removing knots but it is also the most intense 30 minutes one can have, yea it hurts, but my rationale is that the injury hurt first, so its got to take some measurable amount of pain to make it feel better.

after the treatment, I could already feel an increase range of motion, i'm back in 7 days for more. this was my 12th appointment so i knew what i was getting myself into. i drove into los gatos in search of a good espresso and a bite to eat. afterwards i was still feeling motivated to ride, so i drove home got back on the bike and rode for another 45 minutes = 15 miles. now im tired, but that's the most amount of miles in a day in a long long time. tomorrow i think ill go for 37.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

firsts for 2008

preparing drinks for the trainer workout, getting to wear the new kit, clipping in, spinning past 20 mph and of course applying butt balm to the shammy.

good first workout: 20 miles in 62 minutes, with an average of 19.3mph and a 84 cadence.

Monday, January 28, 2008

am i or am i not healing

Well today was the day to get the news on when I can
get back on the bike and to hear that everything
healing correctly this time.

10:00a appointment and upon registering they announce
that they are running 30 minutes late. As I move from
the general waiting room to the xray waiting room
there are already 10 people ahead of me, so I sit and
wait. 30 minutes pass, 45 minutes pass, an hour goes
by at about the same time the xray technician comes
out and says we're running about an hour behind now,
70 minutes go by, and finally on the 80th minute, my
name is called.

xray takes 2 minutes, take this green card and go to
the general waiting room. i stop by the cafe for a
snack and coffee cause who knows how long is the next
wait is gonna be. luckily its only ten minutes, they
bring me to the exam room and pull up my xrays, as far
as I can tell it looks good, though then again i'm
staring at my collarbone that is held together by a
plate, 8 screws and a piece of my hip.

10 minutes go by and the doctor arrives, he scans the
xray and says, "Everything is healing better than I
expected!" Go ahead and start doing more range of
motion, go ahead and start working out your arms and
shoulders with light weights, and go ahead and ride
your bike in the garage. It's everything that I hoped
for. Better news he says, come March 1st go ahead and
go ride outside.

Saturday 1 March, 9a
If you are not doing anything that morning and want to
witness pure joy, come and ride with me. I plan on
doing the club ride route but probably at a nice
relaxing pace.

Monday, January 21, 2008

the return...

i'm back on a bike

stationary bike that is. spinning at level one with a few minutes on level two but its something. i'm riding for about 30-36 minutes right now alright i rode once for 30 minutes and the other time for 36 minutes.

doctor appt is next monday, x-rays to be done, will determine if spinning on my bike in the garage will be allowed. if not ill be on the stationary.

Monday, January 14, 2008

january 28

the two questions I get the most are: 1) how are you doing? and 2) when can you get back on the bike?

1) I feel so much better than I did pre-surgery, though there is that occasional reminder that I had surgery on two spots. The hip has healed very nicely and the shoulder/collarbone has become less numb.

2) January 28 is the day I get either great or good news. Good news will be everything is healing give it some more time, great news will be everything is healing you can start riding in the garage again. To which mid march becomes the new date for even better news, you can go outside again.

2 weeks to go...

the healing that wasnt

the doctors said that the break looked normal and in 6 weeks there should be significant progress, well after a month I was feeling this strange sensation that just didnt seem right, then again how am I supposed to know what is happening since it had been 28 years since my last broken bone.

6 week follow up appointment proved my odd sensations, the bone had overlapped and they wanted to operate within a week. procedure: break collarbone, take a graft from the hip, carve out the two bones of the collarbone fill in with bone graft from hip, plate it and place in 8 screws, simple.