I have ridden in a few crits now and I have come to expect a certain experience.  The empty industrial park, a cavalcade of riders circling warehouses and dormant semi-truck trailers and even the pedal drag/wheel touch crashes have all become standards for my experience.  Of course this does not include the Cirque du Cycling Crit, I am still not sure what went on during that race!

Anyhow, I digress.  The NWX Crit in Bend was in one of those newly developed neighborhoods that provide new construction homes (that were not cookie cutter looking by the way) with the shopping center build at the entrance to the neighborhood.  The lawns were all perfectly manicured and families were gathering in their front yards, lawn chairs and barbeques in toe, ready to watch the race.  It was a July 4th picture postcard kind of milieu.

My wife and I arrived late because we are teachers on summer vacation and who cares about what time it is anyway.  However, due to our flakiness I had to hurry to prepare and didn’t eat/drink enough prior to the 6:30 start.

The Race:

The 4/5 race included about 30 participants.  The first couple of laps were fast and the field split considerably.  Apparently there were quite a few individuals that were yanked off the course.  The course was pristine and really easy to navigate.  It was a bit surreal as we raced passed the wine bar (wine tasting garden included) and the families cheering the riders along.  There were a lot of “Go daddies” from the Zoeys (our name for children of parents in their early 30s).  The race went as expected.  The locals went hard for the preems that included a massage, an expensive haircut and a gift certificate for a local bike shop.  After the preems, the pace slowed down in the pack considerably.  I knew that I didn’t have the goods to go solo.  In retrospect I should have went for it anyway.  I am not sure anyone would have chased.  It seemed like the pack was pretty tired.  It was 87 degrees on a Friday afternoon after all.  The only problem during the race that was evident was that someone in the neighborhood began to water their lawn and the water started to pool right in the middle of the last turn before the finish!  However, immediately one of the organizers (I assume) was running with his broom toward the water.  Within two more laps the water was a non-issue.

The last lap arrived and I was riding in about seventh position when a few of the chaps from behind decided they wanted to mix it up and take their chances.  Of course someone pedaled through a turn, scraped and there was a crash.  I had to go wide and basically come to a stop to avoid it.  It is my own fault, I should have worked harder to be in the first 3 or 4 in the pack!  I finished a disappointing 12th but with my epidermal layer in tact.  Luckily my lack of satisfaction with the results was nothing that the wine bar couldn’t cure.  While I would have preferred a Horse’s Neck from Mississippi Station instead, the Pinot Gris satiated my needs.

Thanks to the organizers for a great race and course.  It was well-organized and a safe race that I plan on attending in the future.

jeff

So I spent all last week fishing, camping, eating, and generally treating my body poorly. I figured it would be good to get out and race the toxins out of my system. On Monday I showed up at PIR and generally put myself into a lot of pain. My hamstrings hurt so bad I could barely walk around the house afterwards. Wednesday found me sitting watching TV after work wondering if I should race Tabor or not. My legs didn’t really hurt anymore, but they felt really tired. My wife got home and asked me if I was going to race, I told her I wasn’t sure. She promptly called me a wuss and the decision was made. I went up, changed into my kit and piled the gear into the car. 30 minutes later found me at Mt Tabor where I paid my money before I could talk myself out it. I watched Colby kick booty in the Cat 5 race for a few laps (great job Colby!!) and then made my way up the hill to do some warm up laps around the top. After a few laps my legs actually started to feel better. I eventually went back down the hill and circled around until it was time to line up. I knew I wanted to be in the front to try and keep a repeat of the first week from happening where a bunch of guys broke right away. The whistle blew and I clipped in and shot off up the hill, there was one guy ahead of me and I quickly reeled him in on the first downhill. Ahhhh, there I was blowing down the hill at the front of the pack, an unimpeded view of the road, the wind in my hair… what’s left of it…. Then I thought, “hey, I don’t want to pull all these guys…” so I backed off and forced some of them around me. The first half of the race was going pretty good, the legs were holding up and I was hanging with the pack, then on the hill after the start/finish line on the 5th lap my legs started to rebel. I just couldn’t keep up and got gapped. I couldn’t quite get back on going down the hill and the gap got bigger when we started up back up. I finished the last 2 laps with another guy who was dropped and crossed the line with a nice bike throw to call it a day. All in all I felt pretty okay with the race. I hung in there for 5 laps after a week and a half off and a race on Monday… The plan is to at least finish with the pack by the last race. It sure was a good time. Afterwards I hung out and cheered on Stephen to his ninth place finish. Great job Stephen!!

Here are some quick results of NRR racing so far this week. If I’ve missed anything, gimme a holler.

Cheers!

PIR Monday 6-23

Master 1/2/3 - 22 707 Long Steve

Master 4/5 - 18 1027 Anderson Dean

PIR Tuesday 6-24

Men’s 4/5 - 9 2050 Harwood Jeff

Men’s 4/5 - 13 955 Wait-Molyneux Colby

Men’s 3/4 - 30 345 Cipale Joseph

Tabor 6-25

Cat 5 - 12 955 Wait-Molyneux Colby

Cat 4: - 33 1027 Anderson Dean

Cat 3 - 9 579 Fitzgerald Stephen

Jon Kraft sent in this photo of his assault on the Tour De Blast this weekend along with Sam Porter & Co.

6240 vertical feet over 82 miles… yeah that had to hurt!

The big news this weekend was the Elkhorn Classic Stage Race. If you are a dedicated racer, you were probably there. I was not. Many of the NRR crew did the Tour De Blast ride up to Mt. St. Helens, and I eagerly await some pictures to post here (hint).

I wasn’t in the mood for an epic road tour, and there were no local road races this weekend, but I went to OBRA and saw something called “Picketts Charge” on the calendar. Apparently it was a cross-country mountain bike race.

The last mountain bike race I did was when I was fifteen. It was at Mt. Hood Skibowl. My training consisted of my paper route and trips to Seven-Eleven on my bike. That race didn’t turn out so well: I bonked, collapsed, had an asthma episode, and wretched. That was the end of me and XC MTB. I did race a good number of downhill mountain bike races after that, because of the mistaken notion that I could just coast down the hill without exertion. I hung up that sport after the dropoffs on the course got larger than 4′ and the bikes climbed past $4k.

Like a lot of roadies I do have a nice shiny mountain bike languishing in my garage, and I feel guilt every time I go in and look at it. Picketts Charge was an opportunity to shake that guilt and reclaim my cross country racing dignity, so I went for it. My buddy Drew and I packed up the car and headed for the race, which was being held in paradise… which we all know is Bend, OR.

this post is a bit long, so if you want to keep reading it, click below
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You’ve been warned. Our Man Colby, still under the age of 14, grabbed a 9th place at Mt. Tabor in the Cat 5s on Wednesday. When you think about that, its pretty incredible: He’s racing against grown men on one of the hardest circuit race courses in Oregon, and came in top-10. Rock on, man! Like I said, keep an eye on him!

I saw Steve Long there but I don’t see him on the results page. It must have been a glitch in the results. I’m not sure how he fared overall but I do have first-hand knowledge that he made a huge attack on one of the laps and certain spectators were permanently blinded by the awesomeness of it. Let it also be known: Steve Long is a man of steel.

I raced also and still felt the lingering effects of my OBRA Road Race beat-down the previous Saturday. I had to fight the urge to mentally drop out, and kept myself busy by trying to compare lines up the first part of the hill. Two weeks ago I liked the right line going into the hill, now I think left may be better. In the end my little experiments paid off in the final sprint when I got run off the left shoulder into the little ditch and hammered for about 30 feet in the ditch. I had accidentally done on an earlier lap, so I didn’t panic. This kept me out of some of the congestion on the last left and I thus managed to keep my momentum and wheeze into 11th. This was the first Tabor this year that I still was able to stand up and pedal going into the finish line, so I think maybe that means my condition is improving.. Hope so ’cause there are three more Tabors left!

A big NRR Congratulations goes out to Colby Wait-Molyneux for winning the OBRA State Championship Road race on Saturday in the 13-14 division! Nice work!

Here’s our man standing tall at the top of the podium. We have a feeling there will be many more of these pictures for him…mostly at the end of a certain three week stage race in France.

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The rest of the NRR crew had varying levels of success at the race, which was amazingly brutal from where I sat… which was pretty much way way way off the back in the 30-39.

Results below:

13-14

  1   955    Wait-Molyneux        Colby          North River Racing

Master 30-39

 17   366    Goodrich             Scott          North River Racing

 18   579    Fitzgerald           Stephen        North River Racing

50-59

 12   707    Long                 Steve          North River Racing

40-49

 26   326    Brigham              Ronald         North River Racing

 41   466    Kraft                Allen          North River Racing

At some point there may be a more in-depth post with a race report from my race, but I’m still to tired and sore. Lets just say I went into it thinking I was going to rumble, and instead I got rocked. hard. I was so shelled off the back I’m surprised they didn’t send out search and rescue. A big props goes out to El Presidente for giving me the stink-eye and making me soldier on.

cheerio!

I was the only NRR guy racing at Tabor last night (that I saw), so here’s my monologue:

I’ve said it before, but the Mt. Tabor series is definitely my favorite race series and course of the year. Tabor seems to reward both the sprinter and the climber. How many other races can say that? Lap after lap (hill after hill) you’ve got to earn your right to stay in the group. If you aren’t strong enough you get spit out the back. I’m rolling evidence that in a normal crit you don’t have to earn much until the final sprint, and if you’re sneaky or lucky you can snag some glory. The same goes for many road races. Tabor, on the other hand, seems to genuinely reward the strongest rider… period. There doesn’t seem to be a way to cross the line first other than simply being able to pedal your bike faster than every body else in your race. Pretty cool!

Last year in the 4s I tried race after race to crack the Tabor nut. From the first race I thought I had a chance to win it, but I had to figure out how. I tried sprinting with the group, I tried breaking a way with two laps to go, I tried skipping the prime laps to save energy, etc, etc. I never won, but I managed to whittle my way to 3rd on the last race of last year.

Going into the course this year as a newly minted 3 was a bit of a shock last week because it was definitely a whole new pace from the 4s. It was faster faster faster, and I never really recovered completely from each lap’s efforts. I surfed the first race near the front and ended up pretty spent on the final sprint, where I ended in 21st. This week I was determined to try tackling the race from a different angle, so I avoided huge efforts for the entire race and tried concentrating on keeping my heart rate from exploding until it counted. On the last lap I said to myself “okay, sprint your own sprint and don’t get caught up in the herd mentality”.

On the bell lap at Tabor it seems that the speed ramps up down the last hill, cruises through the flats at the bottom, the almost slows down just before the hill kicks up. (why slow down before the last hill, anyway?) Then on the final uphill sprint its chaos as people try to get position, and the pace is up and down until the last left hander where the people who still have legs explode off the front. None of that works for me, I just can’t find my rhythm that way. I actually used my breaks on the final uphill sprint last week because of the erratic pace, and this week I decided to just sprint my own sprint and hope for the best. I knew if I went a little early I would pop before the line, but at least I’d avoid the riff-raff and maybe I wouldn’t be passed by that many people. So, on the final lap I opened it up about 100 feet into the hill as soon as I saw a clear line. I passed everybody and gained speed all the way up as it veered right and then started turning that final left. Nobody had caught me yet. “Hey!”, I thought, “This works”. Then my legs started sputtering. “Doh!”. “Okay. Damage control!” I said to myself as I started slowing down. 1…2..3,4,5..6.. they passed me going into the final right. “Okay thats not so bad, I’m still up there”. 7…8..9… “ahhhhhhhh!”

Finish line.

 10   579    Fitzgerald           Stephen        North River Racing

Whew. The hemorrhaging stopped. I’d managed to squeak into 10th. “Top 10! I can live with that!” I thought. 11 places better than last week was good enough for me.

I immediately started thinking about next week. How am I going to crack the Tabor nut? What is a realistic goal anyway? Do I really think I could win this race? Probably not, considering the competition, but I’m going to keep trying. 7th 8th and 9th passed me inches from the line, so maybe I can go for at least that.

I’ve got four more races with which to figure it out.

p.s. The helmet cam will be back in a week or two. This time hopefully in HD.

Howdy world!

We’ve just activated online registration for the 2008 NRR Vancouver Courthouse Criterium. Just click the link below and you will be directed to the Signmeup.com registration page for the event. Turnout is always high for this race, and some categories do fill up, so we encourage people to sign up early and sign up often… or maybe just sign up once but at least sign up early. For more info on the event including the full flyer and testimonials, check out the Crit page via the link above.

link to signup:

After being in a funk for the last 3 weeks, everything came together for my very first win. In attendance this evening for the Cat 3-4 race was just me. Jeff and Colby were mixing it up in the Cat 4-5 race and finished up in 5^th and 13^th, respectively. Both looked like they were riding well together, but I missed the finish due to my event starting.