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Intense cycling! What a great start to the new year! And I
started it right with the annual Lifesport New Year's day time trial,
surprising myself with a 5th place finish, less than 10 seconds off the
3rd place pace and only 4 seconds slower than my 2005 time. After
the year I had last year, I'm quite happy with that! I think I did
so well because I spent a lot of time on my bike building quality base
miles between Christmas and New Year's day (4 rides out to the end of
pavement past Tortilla Flat helps with that! My favorite local ride...).
The time trial reinforced that my form is coming back nicely. I still
have a bit of weight to lose before I'll be back at my 2006 performance
level, but I'm pretty optimistic I'll get there within a couple months
and with the P90x workouts, I will probably actually be quite a bit
stronger at the same weight levels. :-)
So, I was feeling good for Saturday's Casa Grande Ruins 200k Brevet. I
left my house early and arrived at the start in Casa Grande 30 minutes
before the 7:30 am ride start time and had plenty of time to check in
with Susan and get ready to leave. A quick side note ... I plan to
do several ultra distance, very remote, limited support events this
year, so Annette bought me a "Find me spot" personal satellite tracker (www.findmespot.com).
The device will send a location update to a web page every 10 minutes so
people you send a link to can watch your progress in real time. It also
has a "Help" button that allows you to send a page with your GPS
coordinates to whomever you've identified asking them to send you
assistance. It also has a "911" button that goes to emergency services
if you have a real emergency. Very handy in areas without cell
service. I'll put together a full review on the device after I've had a
chance to use it a few more times so I can figure out a bit more about
how it works. Anyway, I turned on tracking before I left so Annette
could see where I was during the ride.
There were 38 riders for this brevet, so we had a pretty good turn out.
The group stayed together for the first 5 miles or so riding at a very
easy pace. When we turned onto Pinal Ave (SR93/SR387), the group split
in two. I rode with the front group of 8 or 9 riders. We kept a
relatively quick pace, but I didn't have to work too much since there
were enough of us to allow a long time drafting between pulls. We stayed
together for another 6 or 7 miles until we got to the gradual ascent
after crossing the freeway and turning onto SR387. I was taking a pull
and think I kept the pace a bit too high. When I pulled off, there were
only three of us left. Me, Mike Sturgill and Dennis Freeman.
Dennis was riding incredibly strong and pulled us most of the way to the
rest stop at the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument. I don't think I've
stayed in a draft that long in quite a while. It was awesome! We were
pretty quick at the stop, taking a moment to use the facilities before
heading out again. Mike and I took a couple good pulls, then Dennis took
the lead again and pulled us almost all the way back to the Round Trip
Bike Shop in Casa Grande. Wow. We pulled up to our cars to shed some
clothes (it had been pretty brisk at the start, but had warmed up nicely
and was turning out to be a great day for a ride). The parking lot had
been taped off so new lines could be painted, so we were parked pretty
close to a number of store fronts. The store owners were not happy at
all about us taking up all their parking spaces and said they would be
calling tow trucks. I asked if it would be ok if we moved to the other
side of the tape and they seemed to be ok with that, so I told Mike and
Dennis about the problem, then moved my car. Susan was at the bike shop,
so I mentioned the problem to her as well (she later checked with the
Casa Grande Police department and they determined we were ok parked
where we were originally parked).
Mike and I both took good long pulls when we left Casa Grande, then
Dennis took over again. We were making pretty good time, so we were
pretty surprised when a couple guys passed by. Mike asked if they were
with our group then made the jump to stay with them. I got on Mike's
wheel, but Dennis wasn't able to make the jump. He'd been working pretty
hard all day. Thanks Dennis! Anyway, right before Mike and I bridged the
gap, one of the guys dropped off the lead guy's wheel. That left Chip
Keyes, Mike Sturgill and myself riding at a pretty high pace with Chip
pulling most of the time. Either Mike or I would be pulling, then
Chip would move to the front and take over. What are the chances
of finding two fast guys willing to do most of the pulling on one ride??
It was great! We were about 10 miles or so from the turn-around
when a strong headwind hit. Our pace dropped significantly and we
started rotating pulls more, but Chip still stayed up front the longest.
I took a hard pull, realized I over did it and dropped off at about 2-3
miles from the lunch stop. I watched them slowly pull ahead until
they finally moved off the road for the lunch stop.
I was only a minute or two behind Chip and Mike, but I wasn't ready to
leave when they were and I didn't want to eat my turkey wrap (thanks
Susan!) while riding. Besides, I was looking at a really nice tail wind
for the return, so I wasn't too worried about riding alone. I showed
Susan the Find Me Spot while I finished my lunch, then headed back. With
that tail wind I made great time until about mile 115 when the wind
shifted and became a nasty headwind. My cell phone rang, but I ignored
it. Then it rang again. Crap. Guess I needed to check it. It was
Annette... She called two times in a row. Uh oh, what was quite unusual.
I tried calling her back, but my signal was pretty bad. The phone would
connect, Annette would say Hello, then I'd lose the call. Hmmmm... I
tried 3 or 4 times, then went back to riding. My pace was significantly
slower with the head wind. I still felt ok, but didn't feel like
fighting the wind, so I went into recovery mode for the rest of the
ride.
Mike was already changed when I got to the finish. Chip set a fast pace
and was the first to finish. Mike was only 2 minutes behind him but I
finished about 20 minutes back with a time of 6:52 over 125 miles. Mike
and I chatted for a bit at the finish then I called Annette. She said
the Spot tracking stopped working, so she was wondering if I was done
and had turned it off. The tracking lights were still blinking, so it
should have been working, but for some reason it appears to have stopped
right about at the lunch turn-around stop. Don't know if I did something
bad when I showed it to Susan or if it was getting interference from my
phone when I put it back in my jersey pocket, but I sent an email to the
Spot support yesterday asking about it. I'll use it again on the 300k
and see if it works better.
Interestingly, the last time I did this course was in 2006 and I
finished in 7:10, so I was about 20 minutes faster this year. Of course
in 2006 I wasn't drafting behind strong riders for 3/4ths of the route!
:-)
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