Armstrong Road is a short road of about 3km in North Langley. About half of that is smooth, good pavement, the other half is rough and bumpy. Over the first 2km or so, it raises 80m in 3 stairstep pitches. 12%, 10% and the last, on the bumpy pavement is something like 8%. This feature utterly dominates the Armstrong Road Spring Series race.

Not being someone who handles sustained climbs very well, I expected this race to be over fairly quickly. The last truly hilly races I had done, admittedly a couple of years ago, the Ottawa Grand Prix in Gatineau Park generally ended up with me being shot off the back on the first major ascent. I saw no reason why this race would be any different.

The race starts at the top of the course. A straight downhill gets the speeds up nice and  high. A sharp right hand bend into a further downhill. This next stretch is great fun as the road lazily winds down the hill. Bottom of the hill is a hard right, then onto the flats for a couple of kilometers for a few turns. After River Road, you take a turn to the right and head up the hill. The first pitch is the steepest and it tops out with a long false flat. Then it kicks up again. The second false flat is short and is noted by the road surface going from great to horrible. One more climb and then the finish line.

I started out at the front intending to remain in the top ten or so places as long as possible. Going into a climb at the front means you do get a bit of a chance to drift back and use a touch less energy. I hit the hill in about 8th place and to my surprise stayed there. A couple of attacks went off and various people ramped up the pace to bring them back but nothing doing.

I could have been done after that first climb. My heart rate was in to the mid 180’s for most of it, which is well into the not sustainable level for me. If the remainder of the climbs were this fast, it was just a matter of time.

A couple of laps later, a couple of guys rode a fairly serious tempo up the hill. I basically hung on for all I was worth to a chase group and we all came in contact again on the final uphill before the finish line. I was sitting in about 10th place, looked behind me and saw nobody. Great, I was in a break on a climber’s course. This was going to end well.

Due, I think, to some poor rotations and some serious effort on the part of the remainder of the race, the pack made contact again about 5km later at the base of the climb again. I made it to the top in the main pack again, but at this point, 4/7 climbs through the race, I could tell that I was getting into trouble.

I was shelled on the second pitch of lap 5. The lights went out and I lost 50m in probably a minute. What remained of the pack slowed over on the bumpy roads, and I closed most of the gap, but I never actually got back on. I very, very seriously debated climbing off the bike there, but decided I’d at least ride to the corner where I parked, which was about 800m past the finish line and flat/downhill.

“Well, I only have to go up that hill two more times, there are some other dropped guys ahead of me to maybe ride with and I can totally bomb down this descent with guys flagging me through corners. Yeah. I’m going to finish this race.”

So I did. Rode hard on the flats, survived up the hill and bombed the descent. It was awesome.

Placed probably around 20th, based on the size of the peloton that went up the road. 40 starters so that’s pretty good. Considering I spent some time in a break and was riding at the front until said lights went out, I’m pretty happy with the whole thing.

The Chicks Cycling Club hosted what is best described as a mass start time trial up Cypress today. How could I say no to that? I did my research on the course and decided that at a steady grade of 5% my cassette that was currently on the bike was going to be suitable. Extended stretches of 7-8% would have led me to switching cassettes for better climbing.

It turns out that you should not believe the Internet.

My measurements of the race showed that there were a couple of false flats totalling something like 2km over the course of the race. This means that instead of 700m of gain over 12km, it was more like 700m of gain over 10km. Uh oh. So when it was all said and done, the average grade of the real part of the climb was about 7% with smaller portions reaching 8-10%. So I totally had the wrong gearing. That said, I’m not trying to say gearing had anything to do with my slowness. That’s all in the legs.

The announcements before the race made it clear that this was not a road race, despite the mass start and that it was a time trial so treat it like one. In a TT, the idea is to keep a steady effort the entire way as that’s the fastest way. So we roll out and a bunch of the guys at the front were sort of looking around. Uh, guys? It’s a TIME TRIAL. So I just settled into my pace and pulled the slackers for the first km or so until they actually started racing at which point I was promptly dropped. I did what I wanted to though, kept my heart rate pretty much pegged in the high 170 range for the thing, which was pretty much my goal.

All in all, I’m glad I did the race, coming down that hill afterwards was awesome. Don’t think a hill climb TT is really going to help my most common race of the year though, flat industrial park crits. Ah well.

But by the time January rolls around, I am itching to get back on the bike, which is a great situation to be in. In the wintertime in Canada, this means a large number of hours indoors on the trainer which is far from the most exciting way to get into shape. Fortunately, it is offset somewhat by the better part of a month of fairly sedentary lifestyle so I can approach it with some enthusiasm. So January is my month to ramp up some volume and get some hours in, followed by starting to ride a bit harder in February and March.

I’ve got a few goals and things that I want to do this year. I want to do more road racing this year than I did last year. An injury took me out of commission for a month or so in June which kind of did a number on my 2008 road season. Fortunately, it appears I have tons of choice for grassroots level racing in Vancouver. I’ll start the season off by doing a couple of the Team Escape Velocity Spring Series races. Later in the year, Escape Velocity also holds a series of Tuesday night races, which sounds awesome. I haven’t yet found out about any sort of regular time trial series, but I would expect that there is one somewhere in Vancouver.

I will also be doing a couple of endurance mountain bike races this year. I intend on racing the BC Bike Race in 2010, which means I have to get back into the mountain biking somewhat seriously. So far, I’m likely going to be riding the Salty Dog, but beyond that I have not made too many plans.

Cyclocross is a long ways away, but there is a series in Vancouver and thus I will be racing it.

Of course, this is all theoretical at this point. All I really know is that I intend to continue to get faster and hopefully actually be competitive within the next, oh, decade.

Last year, there was about a foot and a half and I took the path of cowardice and stayed at home. It seemed a good idea at the time, but a couple of months later, I found myself regretting it. Races like that are the stuff legends are made of. At the very least, they make decent war stories to tell and re-tell. I made a vow to myself that if there was a snowy race this year, I would definitely do it.

If I haven’t mentioned it in the past, I am a fair weather cyclist for the most part. I feel no shame in admitting this. I do not gain enjoyment from going out for a long ride in the rain. Even in the summer, if the weather is terrible, I am more likely to ride on the trainer for an hour or two than go outside. This is mostly pragmatic. My wrenching abilities are horrific and I have a general lack of manual dexterity. Bad weather almost always means you have to spend more time re-greasing and cleaning all sorts of fun parts of the bike. Since I like my gear to be at least in decent shape, I feel that the wiser course of action is generally to keep my bike out of the worst of the rain and it will generally last longer.

The point of this is that as a fair weather cyclist, I spent my few training hours in the last week or so indoors. Not outdoors in the snow. And in previous years, when I wasn’t going to ride in the snow anyhow, well, I didn’t ride in the snow. Today, there was somewhere between 6 and 10 cm of snow on the ground, this was far more than I had ever ridden in. This snow covered the entire course, save for a couple of very short sections in the parking lots.

I was able to come to the following conclusion: riding in snow is very difficult.

That is, of course, when you can ride. Much of the first lap was spent running. Later laps riding the entire thing was in order, but still. The bike does not go where you point it. If you get off balance slightly, the bike washes out from underneath you. You can actually go pretty good when you are on the hard pack snow in the middle of the course, but if you veer off that 4 inch wide trail, watch out. In terms of time, one section that I was clearing in about 45 seconds when I stayed on the little packed down bit took me nearly two minutes when I slid off of it. In hindsight I should have just stopped and put the bike back on the narrow bit, rather than try to ride back onto the hard-pack ridge, but at the time I was in pain and not thinking too terribly clearly.

Ah well. Last race of the season. I have some epic blisters on my hands from something, my lower back is basically locked up from all the pulling and pushing trying to mash the bike through the deeper bits of snow. But the bike is cleaner than it was before I started, so that’s good. I used some good old MEC brand cold weather chain oil and there is still a nice thin film of the stuff, so that’s awesome. I’ll just have to pull apart a few other bits of the bike, regrease everything and let it collect dust for a couple of months.

Probably my last OBC Cross race as well. Though if we end up coming out this way some fall, I will without question bring my cross bike out to enjoy the series again.

I’ve been on the bike about three times since the last race, all inside on the trainer. While riding on the trainer isn’t too terrible, it does get old fast. Still though, it only generally takes me a week or two without riding before I’m feeling that I need to get back in the saddle. I find that planning out the next season during period of low intensity or no intensity is often the best time. Energy is up, I’ve forgotten the pain of training and am only looking forward to the next set of races.

Next season is going to be a different one for me. Hillary and I will be moving to Vancouver in the next couple of months, so I am going to have to find entirely new series of races to keep me busy. My long term goal is to do the BC Bike Race in 2010, so next year is going to be my return to mountain biking to start getting ready for it. It sounds like my season is going to start out with The Salty Dog and, if I can get myself registered (sells out quickly I am told), the Test of Metal. It will be fun to get back into mountain biking more seriously again. My technical skills will be pretty rusty I think, but I’m hoping those will come back as the season progresses.

I’ve already been told that I will have to spend a weekend or two in the Rossland area and ride the Seven Summits as well as several other trails in the area that are best described as epic.

I’m fairly excited about road racing as well. There is a pretty impressive March series of road races put on by Team Escape Velocity that I’m planning on doing my best to attend most of. That and I fully intend on riding several of the major mountain passes that I did in 2007 in the cross Canada trip again. Hope-Princeton is definitely a doable ride and if I can talk some people into it, there are lots of good day trips in and around the Okanagan.

This was the first race at the Kanata course where we were not sent up the gravel climb up the side of the main hill (according to my GPS, that climb hits about 14% at parts). Instead, the main elevation gain was up the other side of the hill and running. Even more entertaining was the fact that immediately after the run up, a pair of muddy switchbacks were presented. After scoping out the route through the switchbacks, I ended up electing to not remount the bike until I was through the first two. Most people tried to ride, but I found that running would tend to move me up a place. Considering I am an absolutely terrible runner, this was saying something. I also did not fall, which was nice. Some say that in cyclocross, if you don’t fall, you are not trying hard enough. I do not subscribe to that point of view yet. I much prefer to keep the rubber down for the time being, I don’t bounce as well as I used to.

Personally, it wasn’t my greatest race. I slogged through it, but it was far from stellar. I got lapped by the top three guys and that was about it. Second best result this year I suppose, though it was a longer lap, so perhaps not. I evidently just wasn’t with it mentally. I’d hit the long into the wind power sections and just wasn’t able to dial it up as high as I usually can. Ah well, they can’t all be good races.

I most likely will not be attending the Upper Canada Village race next week, which means one more to go this season. Too short it is, but the weather is just getting more and more unpleasant.

A code post is in the works, this week’s topic is going to be a ramble on how I feel about how Java has changed since I started using it in 1998.

The first race is a rude awakening. It hurts, in ways that cycling has never hurt before. You get lapped by guys who fly over the bumps in ways that appear to defy physics. You get lapped by the top riders, as does at least half of the field, but if it goes well enough, you come back next week for more.

The being lapped become a regular occurance. In my local series, we have actually had the national champion show up for a couple of races. However, sooner or later, as the skills improve and the speeds go up, eventually something odd happens. The fast guys don’t come around you. This is not always as nice as it sounds. As has often been quoted by famous cyclists, “It doesn’t hurt less, you just get faster”. What this means is, rather than being able to stop a lap early after the eventual winner has finished, you get the honour of doing the same distance as them. You get to suffer longer.

That has only happened to me a couple of times and in general in the races with longer laps where you just don’t get lapped as often. I didn’t get lapped today.

The race, the second one of the year in Almonte was a mud pit. After I had finished, I had mud caked at least 3 inches up each of the spokes, to say nothing of the incredible amount of grass and mud that had made it’s way into every nook and cranny of the bike. I easily carried an extra 2-3lbs of mud around by the end of the race. That made things much more fun, believe me. On the plus side, they did not put the bottom part of the park into the race, so the climbs were not as long or quite as sharp, which was nice. The mud made up for it though. I found that for large parts of the course, I couldn’t actually go at full power without crashing or just spinning my rear tire.

With a major race happening in Toronto this weekend, most of the top guys were not around for our little grassroots race. That said, there were at least a couple of riders who lapped me in Kanata the week before, so it was still going to be quick. It was. With far fewer riders this week, things got lonely fairly quickly. I spent most of the race falling behind the guy in front of me and pulling away from the guys behind, not much in the way of tactics, it was just technical and ride as hard as you can.

The last third or so of each lap was mostly on a series of fields, so you can see around you and who is coming up behind (or ahead). With 2 laps to go, officially anyhow, I could see someone coming up who was definitely not the guy who I’d had behind me all race. “Oh well, here comes the lap.” At the same time, I was also thinking that this was pretty close to the end of the lap, I might actually survive. I was somewhat torn. I could slow the pace and end my suffering, or I could continue to go as hard as I could and hopefully stay ahead.

In the end, I couldn’t slow down. I held the pace and while the eventual winner of the race was closing as if I was standing still, I managed to punch it and cross the finish line before him. For my efforts, I earned the privilege of doing another lap.

All in all, I ended up ahead of a few of the guys who had beaten me in Kanata, I finished on the lead lap on the most technical race of the season thus far and managed to dig deep and stay ahead of the winner. I should note that in no WAY am I saying that it was a close race between him and me. In the final minutes of his race, he probably closed 100m+ on me, it just so happened the the convergence would have happened several meters past the finish line.

Don’t matter though. I’ll take it.

Generally, a cyclocross race starts out very fast and then disintegrates into a bunch of individual time trials for all competitors. As the speeds are generally quite low, drafting does not play much of a part. In that respects, ‘cross racing is much closer to mountain bike racing than road racing. With all this in mind, my strategy in most races for the past two seasons has been pretty simple. Go as hard as I can for as long as I can when the inevitable happens, just keep going at the limit until the race is over.

The major downside to this strategy is that it tends to mean that after the first ten minutes of the race, I am pretty much useless. From then on, I generally just slowly get passed and drift towards the back. This week’s race, I took a different approach. I would start hard as normal, but make a more concerted effort to stay within my own abilities and try to avoid blowing up too badly.

It worked, sort of. On the one hand, I placed in pretty much the same place I always do, around the same group of riders. On the other hand, I actually felt like I was a part of the race with a couple of attacks and clawing my way back up to these riders when they attacked. I don’t know what to make of it yet. My splits were also nice and tight. The first lap was my fastest, but even between it and my slowest was only 30 seconds. Not counting the first lap, the rest were within 6 seconds. I even managed to finish strong, nearly closing a 20m gap on a pair of riders in the closing half lap.

All in all, productive. Hopefully with a couple of good workouts this week, next week in Almonte, I can actually move up a couple of places. On the other hand, Almonte also has several climbs of doom, which are often my undoing.