Archive for the ‘Race/Ride Report’ Category
Friday, August 1st, 2008
See how much weight I have lost! Oh, wait, that’s Little Guy in the blue jersey…the big tubby on the measurement line is me I guess. I am smarter than Little Guy because I ride low on the track and end up riding less distance than he does. With extreme age comes slightly more wisdom. Someday Little Guy will need to have some tricks when he gets old and fat and loses fitness.
I started all four races last night but really only participated in 3 and one half races.
First up was the Sprint Eccellente Veloce e Muto. 18 riders started the event which was divided into a Miss and Out to cull 9 riders and then a Scratch Race to determine the winner. I was the first rider pulled out of the race. Sayonara.
Next up was the King of Whatever. Three laps, three heats, one final. The only thing I was able to accomplish was to drive Crosby up to the rail on the first lap. He then accelerated and the whole field matching his acceleration and I pretty much sat up and started laughing because I was so unmotivated.
The Madison was unique in that the slow guys were matched with fast guys as team mates. I was paired up with Snowball and was a bit nervous about it because he’s a pretty fast guy and probably wanted to do well…and I am all slow like. But Snowball turned out to be pretty cool about things and, other than wanting me to concentrate a bit more on our exchanges, just wanted to have a good time and ride safe. Sounded good to me. So that’s what we did. The longer the race went on the better I was feeling. Kind of like a big diesel that needs to get warmed up before it really starts running well. Kind of like what Paul and Phil kept saying about Cadel Evans during the Tour, but I don’t have the squeaky voice or a dog that you might step on. I was even able to put in an attack late in the race. So it was somewhat awesome.
The final race was the 252 Drag Race. I was paired up against Phanna and was a little intimidated as his ride was much nicer than mine. But I was not going to shrink from the challenge. We both eyed the christmas tree for the countdown. I shifted from automatic into manual tiptronic so I would have total control over the gearbox. The light went green and we both lurched off the line. I kept the accelerator down and let the tach go into the red zone at 6500 rpm before shifting into 2nd. I had about half a hood length on Phanna through the next gear. Maybe he was being conservative but I was able to keep the gap on him across the line. VICTORY! Somewhat totally awesome.
All in all it was a fine time. Frye has some photos posted from last night.
Posted by Smithers at 12:45 pm in Race/Ride Report | Permalink | 10 Comments »
Friday, June 27th, 2008
Track report for June 26 2008:
Everyone enjoyed another fine display by the local Little League Dad. He likes to yell at his daughters and make all the other riders feel uncomfortable. I didn’t feel uncomfortable, I want to hire this guy to be my coach! The next time I hear him yelling at his kids on the infield I am going to immediately yell the exact same things at Skibby. It will be inspirational.
The Taint spoiled everyone’s good time by wearing a totally illegal helmet in the team pursuit. WTF dude? Who do you think you are, Patrick Swayze? You may think you are above the law…blah blah blah. Phanna took a picture of the offending lid:
Thanks to the totally illegal helmet The Taints team totally waxed the Speedfix team. Speedfix was caught after 30 meters and The Taint and his crew lapped them 10 times in 4 kilometers, all thanks to his totally illegal helmet. What a gyp. If only he had not been wearing that helmet it would have been a much closer race. Poor Speedfix…now they know how Al Gore feels.
There was lots of crashing going on. I was able to drum up and offer some sympathy, but no cash. Maybe next time.
Bob was not at all interested in my litany of complaints. Bruce was sorta interested.
I was creamed corn in the chariot race but I decided that I was going to use the Point Race for big training in zone twelve. No pulling out and no getting lapped more than 4 times. Noble goals indeed. I only got lapped once so I was tres stokered.
I have been trying to upload all my GPS data from last night so you can check out the course but Motion Based is failing me. Too bad, it was a really interesting course and it would be fun to open it up in GooGoo Earf.
Next time for then, ok? OK!
Ciao.
Posted by Smithers at 12:58 pm in Race/Ride Report | Permalink | 4 Comments »
Friday, June 20th, 2008
Photo Credit: S1
It was Madison night last night at the track so I teamed up with The Body of Knowledge for some hash slinging slashing.
I did not feel particularly fast, and I did not ride particularly fast, but one either suffers now or one suffers later…or both. I hope that I am getting the suffering in now so that I won’t have to suffer as much in the fall cross season. But I suspect that I will suffer then as well.
First event was the 30 lap Madison Scratch Race. Got destroyed and finished last.
Second event was the 6 lap individual Scratch Race. The Madison teams were split so that the black numbered Madison partner raced against the other black numbered riders, and the white numbered partner raced against the other white numbered riders. Crosby offered me a leadout so I figured I would take advantage of it. I think he was probably joking but I went ahead and tried to keep his wheel leading up to the sprint. The Man in Black did a better job of keeping Crosby’s wheel so I kept TMIB’s wheel instead. I was close in the sprint, TMIB winning the heat and Crosby finishing 2nd. But Crosby beat me by less than a wheel in the sprint so I am happy with that.
Third was the Madison Miss and Out. Miss and Out is hectic to begin with so when you add exchanges between different riders it can be a bit of the fuster cluck. But things went smoothly in this race. I was able to help keep us in the game and chase down a few breaks. We finished 4th.
Final event was the 60 lap Madison. Got destroyed and finished last. But the Body of Knowledge and I only missed one exchange and I think I only screwed up the exchange of one other team. It was a great interval workout and if I could get Motion Based to drain the syrup from its servers I could post some HR data.
Jordan was making fun of me because I had a GPS unit on my track bike. Hey, you never know when you might get lost out there in Blaine.
Posted by Smithers at 8:28 am in Race/Ride Report | Permalink | 13 Comments »
Friday, June 13th, 2008
With my current fitness level I went up to Blaine expecting the worst, and I was happily surprised.
Turn out was a bit light with the big pro race in town. Lot’s lots of the track regulars are helping with race organization and therefore not able to attend the weekly track spank session.
I have been hearing rumors of forced downgrades for those in the Cat 1/2 category if you are not able to cut the mustard. So my goal was to test my fitness and determine if I should consider downgrading to Cat 3 if I was not going to be up to the job.
First race of the night was a 15 lap scratch race. It was fast but not too fast for me to hang on. I even put in an attack with 7 laps to go to test things out. I was caught pretty quickly and finished at the back of the field but I was happy to be in there.
Next up was the unknown miss and out. While I do not have the fitness for the super and double top secret miss and out technique, I did have enough strategy to make it to the final 3. (BTW, I have decided that the super and double top secret miss and out strategy is not a strategy but a technique. See me for a more detailed explanation if you care). I stayed to the back and to the outside just keeping ahead of one rider to stay in the race. The best part was when Franz (or Hans!? I can’t remember which is which) got boxed down on the black line behind Hans (or Franz!? I don’t know…let’s just say that Franz was behind Hans.) Franz would beat me in a sprint probably 100 out of 100 times but I knew that if I could keep him boxed down there he would have no where to go and I could pip him on the line. Franz knew it too and yelled at Hans to move up and give him room. Hans didn’t move and I snuck just in front to give him the knockout. The race came down to Hans, the man in black and me. I was looking back to keep track of the man in black but he and Hans took off and I couldn’t respond so it was 3rd place for me.
The final race was a 60 lap points race. I got no points, and lost a lap to the leaders but so did most of the rest. I did not go down a lap on the field and I still had some fuel in the tank at the end so I was happy.
All in all I think I did ok and I don’t think I am in danger of getting “the talk” from Bob Williams.
Hopefully it will stay day so I can get back up there next week.
Posted by Smithers at 10:04 am in Race/Ride Report | Permalink | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
I did not even make it the 15 minutes that I predicted.
I was curious about my fitness level and got all the answers I was looking for by lap 3 of the crit tonight.
Fitness level: not good
However, I stayed in the race longer than Super Rookie so I can’t say that I did not accomplish any of my pre-race goals. He was lipping off to me before the race started about being glad that I was there so he would not be last. So when things started to hurt I kept my eye on him. As soon as the group unloaded his worthless ass off the back of the field I knew that I only needed to ride another half lap to get it on the books that I had smoked him. His usual post-race (or post getting dropped) blather was for the most part unrecognizable except when he clearly uttered the words "even Smithers beat me." Mission f-ing accomplished.
It was still discouraging to roll out with a group of people that in previous years I would have been able to ride with and then finding myself unable to keep up. Between work and kids it’s one of those years I guess.
I would be all sad and lame about it except for the fact that I love my family. When I feel all fat like I just spend a few minutes with my son and he makes me laugh.
I still want to ride my bike for fun and fitness, but at the end of the day not hanging with the Cat 1/2/3 race at the State Fair Crit is not that big a deal to me. I should have just ridden long with scotterob tonight anyway. It would have been more fun and more valuable for my fitness.
Not to say that I did not have any fun at the race tonight. I saw…
- Lisa Hunt, director of the Value Act Capital Team. Said hi.
- Daniel Ramsey, from THE break of the Philadelphia International Classic, and the rest of the Factory Development Team. Said hi.
- Reb, who is riding to find a cure for MS. You should help. Said hi.
- Joe and Steph. Joe sez I should get a new computer monitor bracket. Steph asked if I was Twittering with my new Garmin Edge 305. WTF? How would that work? Said hi.
- DS and Little Ninja. All I could do was shake my head, but it was an awesome show. Especially when they totally missed the end of the Cat 1/2/3 race and decided to comment on the cool down lap. "Look at those guys rest!" Said hi.
- Phanna. He had no answer when I asked why those blue squad dudes were sprinting for 23rd place last week. Said hi.
- Snide. Mentioned something about the only riding he is doing is commuting to work and beer rides. Smoked me in the race and then told me that he rides 100 miles to work each direction and rides to Iowa for beer. We were watching the women’s race and I made some comment about how Snide likes fast women. He agreed. Said hi.
- Wah. Was interested to know if I had sorted out the cyclocross brake dilemma. I told him "yes". He then went into great detail regarding someone that does not like him. Said hi.
- Billy Billy Billy. He don’t Twit much so it was good to see him in person. He had some constructive criticism for the racers. Said hi.
- Jordan. He was also interested in an update regarding my cyclocross bike. I told him that I just needed to hook up the brakes and derailleurs and then it was done. I then told him that he could have it once it was all put together and I took the last photo for my blog. It’s a bit big for him but check it out this fall when he is riding that thing around, it’s super light. I asked him if he was racing the Cat 1/2/3 race and his eyes lit up. He then explained that he was a junior so he was racing the junior race. But I could tell that he is totally ready to race in the Cat 1/2/3 race. Said hi.
- P Max. Barely said hi.
- B2B. He saw me and said "my oh my". Did I even say hi? I don’t think I did. Sorry dude.
- Little Guy and (dis). I see (dis) all the time so I did not say hi. Said hi to Little Guy instead and stood for a bit admiring his bike.
- Teresa and Cam. They are ready to grind their adversaries into dust. Said hi.
- Said hi to the Flanders team and told them they had nice bikes. They talked smack about the "rep". Big laughs.
- Some people said hi to me that I did not recognize. Said hi back.
- Super Rookie wanted me to hang around and race the Cat 3/4 race. Or at least watch him in the Cat 3/4 race. Dude, bring your own fans. Said bye and rode home.
Stopped at Starbucks and bought an espresso and a pumpkin loaf but dropped it in the street as I was crossing 54th and Lyndale. I thought that was hilarious.
Posted by Smithers at 12:33 am in Race/Ride Report | Permalink | 10 Comments »
Tuesday, August 14th, 2007
I got stung in the head by a bee or a hornet least night during my ride to pick up Toddler Smithers from school and ever since it’s like my brain was struck by lightening.
Headache, lack of concentration, general malaise and lethargy.
I was happy to discover that I have not developed an anaphylactic reaction to stings in the past decade or so since my last bug encounter. I knew a guy that was once stung while riding to work and the reaction came on so fast that he could not get inside his workplace before his throat closed up on him. He was certain that he was going to die right there and then until the owner of the company happened to see him lying on the ground in front of the entry.
They gave him the afternoon off.
Maybe that’s what I need.
Posted by Smithers at 11:36 am in Race/Ride Report | Permalink | 6 Comments »
Friday, August 3rd, 2007
It’s amazing how the lack of training and racing can affect ones fitness.
I still have some top end speed but the endurance is not there right now and I am suffering big time in the longer races.
I am not going to post heart rate data for this race because it was so pathetic.
I don’t have that much to report about my racing, I was 4th in the 15 lap scratch race and did not place at all in the Belgian Win and Out when the chairs ran out. Skibby and Super-Rookie were smart and took the early places in the BW&O but decided to hang back and see if my sprint would get me a higher placing. Unfortunately Kruser took off and nabbed 3rd, Skidsy took off and took 2nd and Big Dubay took off and won. I should have been more heads up and tried to go with Big Dubay when he jumped but I didn’t and by the time he made his move it was too late for me.
Skidsy and I teamed up for the Ken Wood Memorial Madison and things were going well for us early on. There was an unfortunate crash involving The Little Guy and Little Dubay and while their team mates were trying to figure out how to stay in the race Skidsy and I were able to win one of the sprints and take the lead in the race. Big Dubay did an amazing job of staying in the race by himself until his team mate Little Dubay was able to recover from his crash and get back in the action. Little Dubay broke his shoe in half in the crash and had to spend a few laps cobbling it back together before he could get back into the race. Little Guy was not able to recover and so Skibby rode the entire balance of the race himself. The officials kept trying to pull Skibby out of the race after he lost a couple of laps but each time rode by the finish line he would hide behind another rider on the track so the officials would not be able to see that he had not pulled off.
The pressure of trying to maintain our lead caused me to over work a little bit and I cracked big time half way through the race, just about the time that a couple of teams rolled off the front. These guys, including Mehus and Kruser, would eventually gain a lap on Skidsy and I which left us in 4th place for the race. I was riding so slow that we would have finished 5th if The Little Guy had been able to get back into the race to relieve Skibby. There was some speculation after the race that Little Guy crashed out because he was tired. We all argued about it for a while and then went over to ask Little Guy, who was still lying in the same spot where he landed after his crash sleeping. We could not wake him up to get his opinion on the issue.
I am hoping that now I am back from vacation I can spend some more time hauling Toddler Smithers around in the trailer and get some endurance back in the legs.
JimmerC and his son Jorgan joined us on the infield for some exciting spectating. Jimmer’s son is actually named Jordan, but he is so tough on the bike that his name should be Jorgan because Jorgan sounds like a dude that could drop your ass at the drop of a hat. And I am pretty sure that if Jordan is not Jorgan yet he soon will be.
So Jordan was all excited to meet me since he is an avid reader of this site. By avid I mean that he looks at it once and a while, when there is nothing else interesting on the rest of the internet to see. I could tell that he was totally pumped to meet the one and only Smithers but once we were done with the introductions and conversations I could tell, as he walked away puzzled, that he was significantly less excited. Sorry to let you down kid, it’s sad for sure but I am much more interesting on this site than I am in person. You’re not the first to discover the truth. Mrs. Smithers found that out a long time ago and much prefers reading my website to having an actual conversation with me.
Anyway, I kept bugging Jimmer as to when he is going to get back on the track for some real bike racing and he demurred each time finally saying that his wife did not want him on the track due to the fact that the last time he raced a mass start event on the track he got knocked off his bike and had some dudes chainring roll across his face.
Phtt! Jimmer is out doing those road races and criteriums all summer long and track racing is totally safer than racing on the road. I see dudes getting their faces run over with chainrings all the time on the road but it’s only happened to one guy ever on the track. Just because Jimmer is that guy does not mean that he should never race on the track again. If another dude had his face run over by a chainring on the track sometime, and that dude happened to again be Jimmer, track racing would still be about a thousand times safer than racing on the road.
Besides, Jimmer’s face looks totally fine now. Fine as in normal, not fine as in I want to go on a date with him or anything.
So get that hockey goalie mask out Jimmer and come out and race track.
After the racing wrapped up for the night Big Dubay and I talked about the Coon Rapids Senior High cross country ski team and all the local XC ski personalities that I knew and he still knows. I was amazed to hear that, 20 years later, a lot of the same names are hanging around the sport. Give it another 20 years and global warming will take care of XC skiing and these people can go back to leading productive lives. Maybe they will all join Jimmer at the track for some real competitive sport.
Posted by Smithers at 9:02 am in Race/Ride Report | Permalink | 8 Comments »
Friday, July 13th, 2007
Click for larger image.
Who’s the man!? That’s right bitches! Who’s the man!?
Not me. Apparently Ben Dubay is the man. He gets decked in the Miss & Ownt (I have to credit SanDiego81 for coming up with that one), gets up, dusts himself off and proceeds to lap the field more than once along with Colivita pro Adam Bergman in the Points Race. Incredible performance. Not to mention that both the crash and the Points Race took place after Dubay took part in a 16 lap pursuit along with Skibby, The Dad in Black, and Der Kruser versus the SuperTeam of Bergman, Timmer, Flooder and The National Champion. Everyone expected that the SuperTeam would lap their competition but the smooth squad of Kruser/Dubay/Skibby/TDIB made a fantastic ride to keep the SuperTeam from even catching them before the end of the event. Impressive stuff for certain.
So who’s the man? Not me.
Although, in fairness, I have to give myself a few snaps for executing my Miss & Ownt super secret strategy to absolute perfection. The dark spot of the race was the aforementioned crash that took out Ben Dubay and The Man in Black. I actually pulled off the track to make sure they were OK when the officials neutralized the race. Official Bruce told me to get back on the track if I wanted to finish so I did but was a bit disturbed not to know if everyone was all right. The Donimator, Flooder and The National Champion were left on the boards when I joined back in for the restart and I was able to hold off both Donimator and Flooder to go head to head with The National Champion. It was him and me, me and him. I dogged him for the last two laps hoping that I would be able to get the jump on him. I knew that if he jumped me I would probably not be able to come around him. With 200 meters to go TNC looked back to check my progress and when he looked back forward with 190m to go I jumped for all I was worth and was able to hold him off for the W. I was pretty stoked.
I don’t have much to say about the first race of the night. It was a Snowball race and I scored 0 points.
I don’t have much more to say about the Points Race. I scored some points and screwed up my final sprint which I was not too happy about. Bergman punked me on a sprint which cost me a couple of points that would have made the difference in the final so I shredded my membership card to the Adam Bergman fan club last night when I got home.
Ped joined me for the racing and I was really happy to have his help in the Points Race. When we are able to execute our lead out tactic it is a beautiful thing to behold. People were crying in the stands because it was so lovely. The only point of conflict with Ped was when he was asking why I have been so hard on Tom Boonen the last few days and I told him it was because BooBoo was not living up to his potential and I won’t tolerate it.
Tuffy was at the track but he did not race. He just walked around and talked shit to everyone. Kind of like Ray but not nearly as polished. Maybe he could be Ray’s apprentice.
(dis) rode well last night, I think he took a lap in the Point Race.
That’s all I can think of right now.
Posted by Smithers at 1:37 pm in Race/Ride Report | Permalink | No Comments »
Friday, July 6th, 2007
Click for larger image
Not having ridden for over two weeks, and not having raced in three weeks, I was not sure what to expect last night. I did not expect to get the worst case of race jitters in recent memory. Maybe it was due to the time off, maybe I had been thinking too much about the crashing last week, don’t know. I was fine once the racing was underway but in between each event I was a jumble of nerves. Not really that enjoyable.
Before the racing even began Skidsy broke off the valve extender on his hoopty rear wheel. Being the generous and gracious type guy that I am I immediately offered him the use of my spare rear track wheel. I told him that if he crashed he was going to have to pay me full retail plus 50% as punishment.
First race of the night was the 15 lap scratch race. So how did I feel after all that time off? Sluggish. It really took a lot to get my legs turning. Various fast dudes went off the front and other various fast dudes chased them down. I was in neither group. I noticed that The Man in Black was sort of hanging back, riding in the group and watching. So I decided to take a calculated risk and track TMIB for the rest of the race. Sure enough, the race all came together with 3 laps to go and TMIB started to move to the front. On the final lap TMIB began his sprint and I jumped right when he jumped and the two of us fought it out to the line. TMIB was able to hold me off by a few centimeters for the win, I was left with second place and a bag of peanut shells.
My heart rate hit 206 during that sprint. I know when my fitness is off the boil when my heart rate hits that high a mark. It then took me 10 minutes to recover from the effort.
Next up with the King of the Shit (KOS). Bob Williams refers to it as King of the Sprint but we all know what it really is. Standing start, three laps, first three advance to the finals. I finished third in my heat and fifth in the final. I wish I had more to say about the KOS but I felt like crap and don’t ever want to talk about it again.
Final race was the 60 lap Madison race. I teamed up with Der Kruser as neither of us had a partner on hand. I warned him that I was not feeling too good and he told me not to worry about it. Turns out we ended up doing just fine. All our exchanges were smooth, we stayed up front the whole race, and despite some cramping the I experienced towards the back end of the race we ended up second in the Madison.
Ben Dubay and Tom Haggerty won the Madison and rode really well. Ben and I were both riding relief and every time Tom threw Ben into the race I wanted to cry because Ben kept the pace so high. When Ben/Tom and Kruser/myself were off the front I think I recall Ben telling me to keep the steam on to assure that we would stay off. I stayed at the front as much as possible as I found it much easier to set the pace rather than try and follow Ben’s wheel.
The Donimator was back in action after being away for 6 weeks or so. He has had some knee issues that have kept him off the bike so it was good to see him back riding.
Skidsy ended up crashing in the Madison race. He was fine and more importantly my rear wheel was fine so he did not have to crack open the check book.
I can’t remember much else from last night. I did not eat any pizza. TMIB had an incident in the Madison so someone bought him some ice cream to make him feel better. He said that was nice but not necessary so I offered to eat his ice cream for him and he said no. Ice cream would have made me feel better.
Posted by Smithers at 3:51 pm in Race/Ride Report | Permalink | No Comments »
Thursday, June 21st, 2007
You know, having a race canceled does not bother me so much. Sure, I love racing at the track and I hate to lose a night of racing, but no big deal.
What I absolutely despise is the utter and complete waste of time it is to go up to the track and then not be able to race. This same thing happened last year.
The weather looks mysterious most of the day but then things start to look good around 4pm. I load up the car and fight through traffic from south Minneapolis all the way up to Blaine. Once at the track I begin the process of lumping all my junk out of the car to the infield of the track. Additional lumping of junk from the storage container to the infield. Just about the time that I get everything all in place, pumped up and dialed in to start warming up here comes the rain.
A little at first, just enough to be annoying but not enough to discourage the thought that racing could still happen. So it starts raining a bit harder. It would seem that the writing is on the wall as the surface of the track is now slick with water. It’s obvious that set up should stop and break down should begin. As a final punishment for bothering to show up at all the real rain starts to pour down now soaking everything and everyone.
Oh well. At least no one got struck by lightening and at least Ray was smart enough not to bother showing up.
Posted by Smithers at 9:17 pm in Race/Ride Report | Permalink | No Comments »
