Long rides/ 2013 MIT X-Pot ITT preview

Lots of riding lately: 65 hours in 3 weeks, with intensity. A good bit more than I've ever done before. (The purpose of this post is really just to upload this image, to link to on bikereg)

Snow Biking!

Winter 2013

This year, I decided not to let the snowy weather force me on to the trainer. The collegiate road race season begins in early March, so January is a key training time, but riding a road bike in the winter in my hometown of Jackson, WY is nearly impossible. Typical winter road conditions look like this:

Right after landing in Jackson for winter break from MIT, I eagerly snatched up my dad's "snow bike". It is a Surly Pugsley that weighs about 40 lbs, looks like a dirtbike, and has no trouble whatsoever riding over packed snow and ice, albeit at an excruciatingly slow pace.

In a high-volume training week back on campus, I ride 500km many weeks. However, during the Rapha Festive 500 challenge (#festive500), I was stuck on the snow bike for the first 3 days so didn't think my chances of completing the challenge were very good. (I did end up completing it, by riding a lot in CA on a family vacation for the last 4 days -- 26 hour riding week, in total, which was exhausting!)

Anyway, I decided just to enjoy the snowy conditions and do some fun rides. One memorable excursion took me and my dad to Granite Hot Springs, a pool located 10 miles up a U.S. Forest Service road that was only accessible by snowmobile, dog-sled, or snow bike. Road conditions were awful; it had snowed recently, and the snowmobiles stirred up the powder so that it felt like riding up a mountain through sand that randomly moved and slipped around. By the time we reached the hot springs (over 2 hours after beginning), my upper body ached from stabilizing myself and minimizing slips and falls. (I don't get much upper-body exercise now that I'm focused mainly on road biking, hah). We dipped in the pool, then bundled up again to begin the descent:

The descent was not relaxing. In fact, it took just as long to ride down as it did to ride up, so slow were the road conditions! After a grueling riding down, we finally reached the car, freezing with our wet clothes and the setting sun.

Much more of an adventure than riding on a trainer!

Dead Dog Classic - 6/20-6/21/12

Dead Dog Classic Stage Race

Laramie, WY

6/20-6/21/12

This was my first non-collegiate road race. It consisted of a 55-mi road race, a 40-min crit, and a 10-mi ITT around Laramie, WY. I raced as a cat 3 in a P/1/2/3 field, and the incredibly strong women totally flattened me; it was a good weekend, quite an experience despite an abysmal placing.

Road Race: 53 mi, 4500 vertical, 3:30, last place (8/8 W3, 18/18 P/1/2/3)

I expected that as a not-so-great climber not fully adjusted to the altitude and racing in such a tough field, I would be dropped on the first big climb. I did not expect to be dropped on the flats. Yet, that is what happened; 14 miles (30 min) into the race, I was pushing my 5-min power even drafting, and we certainly  had more than 5 minutes of that stretch left…so, I fell off the back. This was a pretty unfortunate occurrence, because we were riding into a crazy-strong headwind (typical of Laramie), so I continued to struggle and lose more and more time on the main group.

Heading up the mountain, I actually gained on some of the women, but didn’t realize that until I saw them after the turnaround (at 10,800 feet in elevation). I kept up a steady zone 3 effort for the climb, and though men from fields who started behind us passed me, was in no danger of finishing after the time limit; you had to finish each stage to move on to the next, and since I’d driven a couple of hours and set up a campsite in the mountains, I had no desire to be kicked out after the first day!

I set a new record speed on the descent, hitting 53 mph – good thing my Garmin wasn’t actually showing speed, or I would have probably freaked out and started to worry about crashing! In any case, the downhill was very very fast, and then came the final 12 miles back up to the finish. That part was miserable, because the headwind was blowing at a consistent 20-30 mph and I had no one with whom to draft, so it went very slowly. I started “bribing” myself with a sip of water or HEED every 5 minutes to make it seem like I was making progress; this strategy is one that I continue to use on long, slow climbs now.

Anyway, I finished a few minutes behind the nearest W3, but not as far behind as I’d expected. Brutal race, basically a 30-min easy ride followed by a 3-hr ITT. Too bad I’m not doing a Half Ironman this summer, because that would have been perfect training.

Then, I went back to the campground and stood in the icy cold lake for a while. It was nice.

Crit: 40 min, 4/7 W3

After the road race, I was pretty terrified for the crit; those women were all so strong! (And I also had by far the heaviest, least-nice bike out of the entire field, which isn’t a good excuse but probably did make a difference on those long climbs). Actually, the crit was fine; it was flat, had a fair number of not-so-technical corners, and I pretty much just sat near the back the entire time until it came time for the finish, where I moved up early in the last lap and ended up placing decently. I didn’t bother sprinting for any primes, because the “prizes” were gains in GC time of 5s, 3s, 1s, and I really needed a gain of more like 5 MIN in order to move up, so…

ITT: 10 mi @ 8900 feet, 29:24, 5/7 W3

I usually excel at ITTs, but upon seeing everyone’s gear I became quite intimidated; every single woman except 1 had either a full TT bike or a full-carbon road bike with deep wheels and aerobars and aerohelmets and skinsuits. Well. I didn’t even have my aerobars or helmet (in Boston still). That was an unfortunate disadvantage, since the course was fairly flat and windy. It really bothers me how spending more money can make you do better, just like that, regardless of strength. Anyway, I taped some makeshift pads (bike gloves) to my handlebars so I could at least go into aero position a bit without bruising my arms (didn’t work – they bruised anyway), and raced hard. I was pleased to not get last.

Summary

A week after that race, I bought a “new” bike from an ultra-endurance mountain bike racer on Craigslist. It is over 5 pounds lighter than the old one, beautiful, and feels fast. In preliminary tests on a 10-12-min climb, it seems around 5% faster and much quicker to accelerate. I look forward to competing in races in the future where I have no excuse of gear slowing me down, just my own strength/endurance J

Easterns - UNH (ECCC #9)

Easterns – UNH

4/28-4/29/12

TTT: I originally wasn’t going to race the TTT, since the women needed to practice with their Nationals team of 4; however, Laura decided to rest in order to recover from a knee injury, so I got to take her place! As the weakest rider, it seemed I would sit in the entire time then be dropped on the final finishing hill, thus contributing nothing to the team. Instead, we decided I could give some hard pulls on the first half of the course (which had more of the downhill and flat sections), then drop off if need be later on. This turned out to be a good strategy; after a rough start to the race (someone dropped her chain at the very beginning), we flew the first half of the course – I reached my new max speed record of 49.0 mph! After some decent pulls and once I could tell everyone would have to wait for me on the next hills, I dropped off, and the team won by over 2 minutes.

Road Race: 

This was my best road race ever. I upgraded to A’s finally (after 14 complete weekends = ~42 races as a B!) but figured it would be pretty embarrassing, seeing as I usually am dropped off the main group on one of the first climbs; that was OK when I was still mid-pack in B’s, but would feel worse as back-of-the-group in A’s. Last year at this race, I was dropped after 8 miles (20 mile loop, 3 laps, fairly hilly) so hoped to at least do better than that.

Well, the first time up the hill, Katie and Yuri went hard and broke away, really stringing out the rest of us. I slid toward the back but then pushed very hard over the crest and through the next section and managed to get back on (incidentally setting my new 3 minute through 8 minute power record). After that initial surge, we continued to set a pretty good pace, but I definitely had no problem staying with the group. I kept worrying that next time up the hill they would drop me, but I guess everyone else was tired too, since we never went quite that hard again.

We did let 3 strong girls get away, and we were very disorganized and couldn’t manage to chase them back quickly; there was about 10 miles where a couple people tried to teach the rest of the pack how to form an efficient paceline, and some frustrating moments when it seemed like only a couple of us would do any work, and thus we failed to get them back even though at least a couple of us could have probably stayed with them if we caught up.

Heading into the final lap, no one would do any work, so I sat on the front and ate a gel and drank a bottle, which was really good; I only consumed around 400 calories during the entire race (and expended 2100kJ), so without that little boost then I definitely would have bonked. There were around 12 of us left at the final lap, and I decided to attack after a very sharp left-hand corner with 3 miles to go; the finish rose after an uphill, and in such an uphill sprint I would probably lose.

I made my attack and time-trialed into a very strong headwind on a false flat. It felt excruciating, my legs were pretty dead after 57 miles, and I was certain everyone would catch back on. (The time-trial position did feel pretty good, though, since my double-wrapped yellow handlebar tape felt pretty plush). Coming past the 1k to go sign at 60.0 miles (ahh! I thought it was only 60.0 total!!), Leslie and another girl rode past me, and I reached a sort of physical/mental breaking point. I pushed as hard as I could into the finish and ended up 6^th/37 A+B finishers, exhausted and totally elated to have done my best.

Crit:

My legs felt less tired than expected for the crit, possibly because of the tapering/peaking. It was mostly a test of how close I could get with other sketchy riders without crashing around corners – more fear than fitness. Our plan was to organize leadouts for the primes and finish, with me pulling hard on the back and side stretch, then Katie coming around, then Yuri and Chris sprinting it through. The course consisted of 4 left-hand corners with a strong headwind into the finish and a bit of an uphill after the first turn. I didn’t position myself correctly for all of the primes, but luckily our women succeeded in capturing most of the prime points without me; the leadout did work for #2 and #4, which was really fun – I’ve never really been part of a strategy that I successfully managed to execute! A big crash on the turn right before the finish slowed me down (almost crashed into the hay bale, but didn’t fall, thank goodness), so I didn’t place well, but overall it was ok.

Prime Leadout Train

This has been a fantastic season. Now that I’m not getting dropped in every single race, cycling races are so much more fun! I think I’m going to take a bit of a break from triathlon training (though will probably still do some running and open-water swimming, since I like to) and hopefully do even more riding.

Triathlon Nationals 2012

Collegiate Nationals 2012

4/21/12

Tuscaloosa, AL

Training background: This season, I spent the vast majority of my time training and racing for cycling, generally riding 10-14 hours per week while running and swimming 3 hours combined. This was certainly less than ideal for overall triathlon fitness, but my swim generally doesn’t suffer too much as long as I swim a lot the last few weeks before the race (which I sort of let slip this time...), and I did keep running consistently ~10 miles per week all winter and through the cycling race season. I generally went out for a long (7-10mi) moderately hard run each Monday and added as many short (1-2mi) transition “bricks” after cycling workouts or Sunday criteriums as seemed reasonable. This year I acquired a Garmin 310XT GPS watch and a Powertap, and using these gadgets for training and racing greatly improved my motivation for doing fast runs (I started running& gt;1 min/mile faster once I could see my pace on my wrist!) and also gave me great enjoyment since I’m a numbers geek.

Travel and team: MIT sent 9 athletes, 4 women and 5 men, as well as our friend Leslie from Dartmouth. This year, each team had to qualify to send athletes to Nationals, so the weakest teams no longer could compete, raising the overall standard. We flew to Birmingham on Thursday and drove to Tuscaloosa, where we stayed at a hotel filled with other triathlon teams (several of which looked far more intense and organized than our own, with gorgeous bikes and trainers and coaches). Friday we rode the course and I did some openers, with my legs feeling pretty sluggish after taking a few days off (proper tapering for once!) but power pretty high. We jumped into the river for a quick swim and found the water temperature to be nearly perfect, 69 degrees and much warmer than last year; this served as a relief, since many of us didn’t have a chance to try open-water swimming in the frigid New England waters yet this year.

Race day: We awoke to very nice weather conditions, with temperatures in the 60’s F and mostly overcast. Compared to last year’s extreme heat and humidity, this felt fantastic. Women raced first, with the first wave leaving at 7:30.

Swim: 1500m, 28:19

I was in the second wave and had a really awful time right before the start; a few days before, I had essentially torn off my knuckle with an Allen wrench while removing pedals (note: if you forgetfully take wheels off the bike before pedals, don’t be lazy and decide you can get them off anyway). Anyway, the invisible skin I’d been using completely came off as soon as I jumped in for the warmup, so I had a bleeding, torn-up hand right before the swim start. After running around frantically trying to find a medical tent or something, I found someone with electrical tape and wrapped it a few times around the hand to hold it all together. This worked sufficiently, but the whole experience left me extremely frazzled, and I swam really inefficiently, exhausting myself for a pretty awful swim time.

Bike: 40k (actually measured at 25.5mi)/1:13, 21.0mph

I really looked forward to the bike leg, since I thought I should be faster than last year and it ought to be the leg I exceled at. After a very long and inefficient transition, I took a while to get into the bike, legs feeling quite tired from the swim up until the first turnaround (the course consisted of two out-and-back loops). However, even feeling slow and low-power, I passed a large number of women who looked intense and rode with gear many times more valuable than mine, which felt satisfying. The second lap I sped up a bit, and in the end the bike time was pretty decent, 3 minutes faster than last year and averaging 21.0 mph (according to my power meter – the official time included a 1min run next to the bike to the transition mat, which slowed the average pace down).

Run: 10k/51:01, 8:07/mi

Upon starting the run, I thought some pretty negative thoughts along the lines of “Why am I doing this?” and “I don’t even care about running fast; the bike is already done, so maybe I should stop while I’m ahead”. These thoughts were not helped by a steep hill right near the beginning combined with shin pains and barely-held-off stomach cramps. Even so, I ran OK, not as fast as during my training runs but faster than last year.

Overall: 2:37: 43, 132/469 women

Overall, I did better than last year, with a similar swim, faster bike, faster run, and much slower transitions. Unfortunately, one of our team members had bike trouble and didn’t finish the race, so the MIT women’s and combined teams were not eligible to place. Even so, some individuals did quite well, and the men placed in the top half against very intense competition!

Collegiate Nationals is always a fantastic event, one of very few gatherings of all the strongest, fiercest young triathletes in the country. Sharing a venue with such amazing athletes is really neat, and it becomes better every year as I get to know more and more people from other teams. After seeing University of Colorado’s complete domination of the team omniums, I look forward even more to living and training in Boulder this summer and coming back for more road races and tris in the future!

Yale (ECCC #6)

Yale (ECCC #6)

4/7-4/8/12

Shaena Berlin

Yale always seems to be a great weekend; the weather always cooperates, the courses all start in the same central location, and the drive is (relatively) short. I last raced here two years ago as a C rider, and it was the last race I won before upgrading (and never winning again), so it brought

back fond memories. Overall, it was an amazing weekend for a good number of MIT riders; we took home KOM/QOM jerseys for Women’s A, Men’s A, Women’s B, and Men’s C!

ITT: The ITT was as expected; I went hard, paced myself well, and thankfully improved from two years ago…not much else to say, pretty boring (I do love ITT’s though).

Circuit: I was pretty worried for this circuit race, since it basically involved laps up and down a not-huge-but-definitely-there hill, and with the exception of last weekend at Penn State, I have never NOT been dropped from the main A/B pack on a hill race. However, just before the start, Andrew told me that I won the ITT (which went up the same hill), so I felt much more confident; if I got dropped from the main B pack, it could only be because I wasn’t pushing myself hard enough and not because of a strength differential. Also, knowing my ITT placing put the prospect of winning a QOM jersey in my mind, which motivated my greedy self into really not wanting to be dropped ;)

The first time up the hill, the front group of A’s went hard and gapped most of us. I stayed with the first group behind them, though, and was pretty content to be sitting near the front of the B women on an uphill. It felt great knowing that Katie, Yuri, and Christina were all up in the very first pack; we haven’t had many women come out to races yet this season, so this weekend’s strong showing reminded me a lot about team strategy. Anyway, my usual flaw in road/circuit races is going too hard – either TT-ing off the back or pulling too hard on the front of some group. In this race, for some reason I never seemed to have to pull; there was a pretty big group, and I always stayed in the top 5, but every time it would be my turn to pull we would reach a corner or a new uphill or someone would ride around me, which was great! I did not have any trouble staying near the front on the uphill, probably because it wasn’t super steep, and on the somewhat-sketchy descent everyone communicated well and took the turns cautiously enough that it didn’t feel too bad.

The final time up the hill, no one really attacked, but someone started riding harder out of a corner and we dropped most of the pack. Then, one turn before the finish, two pedestrians walking on the inside of a sharp turn startled a girl, and she and two others fell right behind me (they did get up and finish, luckily). At that point, I was third in my group behind Leslie (who just upgraded to A’s) and one strong B woman from Colby. I got a bit startled by one of the girls hitting my rear wheel when she fell down, which isn’t a real excuse but threw me off enough let a gap open behind the B woman. Coming into the finish, I nearly caught up, but not quite, so took second and my best mass-start B race ever.

Crit: With the arrival of Laura for the crit, MIT now had 5 women in the A/B race, with the potential for some serious domination. Our strategy was to practice a lead-out after the first prime, then if successful do it again at the end, unless some of us got away in a break. As the weakest member of this group, my only task was to try to drive the pace up very high on the straightway on the backside of the course; unfortunately, though I moved almost to position, a Temple girl started going hard, and I didn’t feel snappy enough to make the break. It worked out for the other 4 MIT women, though, who got away with just one other rider off the front. I was by then at the front of the pack and slowed up the pace a bit, then tried out blocking (although they almost certainly didn’t need my help, with such a strong group!) That was really fun, basically sitting in third wheel and letting two women rotate through pulling without me doing any work, then every once in a while getting prime points. Eventually we came down to a pack finish, and I came through the last lap in bad position then didn’t do well on the downhill sprint, but overall it was still a fun race and MIT took 1^st through 4^th place!

I’ve been doing well in ITT’s for a while now (*coughtriathloncough*) but not in mass start races, but after a few decent weekends I think it’s finally time to try to upgrade to A’s/Cat 3. Can’t wait for next weekend!

Penn State (ECCC #5)

Penn State “Black Mo”

3/31-4/1/12

Shaena Berlin

Penn State contains perhaps the only real mountain in an ECCC race; Black Moshannon, which rises ~1800 ft over ~6 mi. It was a long drive to get there (~7 hrs) but a great weekend.

TTT: 9.5 mi/27:20 I competed in the TTT with Yuri, Katie, and Jen; I was really nervous, since we had to finish 3 riders and Jen is still a C woman, so it would fall on me to keep up (particularly on the uphills). It went well, though; we took the first hill easy to try to keep Jen with us, then accelerated on the way back and down through the second half of the course. I actually pulled a good deal on the flats/downhills and felt pretty good. The pace slowed a bit on the steep uphill at the start of a triangle, as expected, but I did OK and we finished strong, passing several other teams along the way and placing 1^st in the A women by almost 1:00 (without aero helmets/equipment).

Road Race: This year, the road race consisted of 2 21-mile laps, each of which included >2000 ft of climbing. I was dropped from the lead pack by the start of the first hill (unfortunately dropped my chain, and by the time I recovered they were gone on the flats right before the hill), but still stayed ahead of the second pack (which contained most of the B women). I slowly, steadily climbed the hill, trying to keep my average power around 200W, which I knew I could maintain. Doing this, I passed two other girls and gained much on the next group in front of me, which contained the first 3 B women and 2^nd group of A’s. I couldn’t catch them on the rolling hills at the top, even TT-ing quite hard, so resigned myself to riding the entire second lap by myself (hopefully – assuming a group from behind didn’t catch me with less fatigue than I had). Luckily, coming past the starting line at the start of the second lap, the group in front slowed down a fair bit, so I caught back on and happily traded off pulls throughout the rest of the flat and downhill section. Starting the second climb, I fell behind the three top B women, who were pretty clearly better climbers than me, but stayed ahead of the other A. Thus I crossed the finish line in 4^th for B’s, only ~1 min behind the leaders. This was very successful for me, considering last year in the same race I did terribly.

Crit: This crit was pretty scary, though not as sketchy as last year. It contained a couple of fairly sharp turns, with a chicane in the middle. At the start, they asked us to all move over to our left so the pace car could get through, and we must have repositioned badly because I locked handlebars with someone and almost went down at the start. A bit shaky, I struggled to catch back on to the front group but did make it there. Then, a couple of laps in, I clipped my pedal on the road on the left turn into the chicane. I should have gone down and am shocked that I didn’t; however, the girl behind me did crash (luckily, she was OK and went on to take 2^nd in the race). After this, I really didn’t trust myself or my cornering abilities and took the rest of the race overly-cautiously. I won 2 primes and got points in the other 2, and ended up 4^th in B’s (one group behind the lead group of A’s+B’s).

Overall, very successful weekend for me, and I ended up first in the B’s omnium by a fair margin. However, I still don’t seem to have any upgrade points, and besides I would rather actually podium in some mass-start races before trying to upgrade; I know I’m strong, but I’m still getting dropped by the main group in many races, and since we get to race the same distance as the A women anyway and I don’t have time to go to Nationals this year, I don’t see any particular rush to upgrade. It’s nice to be near the front of the B’s, an OK to be in the middle of the B’s, but it would be embarrassing to be dropped/near the back of the A’s.