Mountains
Posted by mattcrane | Filed under Uncategorized
As far as potential training routes go, Athens, GA has enough possibilities to satisfy even the most discerning of those that demand day to day route deviation. I personally am fairly easy to please, as I have a loop for any distance I want to cover, and will ride more or less only the prescribed route for a given day’s workload. Also, the choice always exists between paved or gravel roads, and if one is so inclined, and has a bit of pioneer spirit, there are dusty, fast, rock strewn gravel roads all over the area to bomb through and hope not to break a bike on.
All of this is well and good, but unfortunately, there are no climbs longer than around 2km in the area. For real climbing, I have to drive up to Dahlonega, GA, about 60 miles away, to park and then ride in the fantastic North Georgia mountains. It may not be as convenient as, say, living somewhere with mountains at your doorstep, but the day can still be a lot of fun if approached correctly, and if nothing else, the hour drive before and after the ride is almost like training for pre and post race transfers. Although probably true, I don’t think I would actually use that to justify the pain in the ass that is the pre, and especially post, ride drive. Anyway, at least I don’t have to live in Boulder…
Well, yesterday I decided to make the trip to Dahlonega, so I packed the bike in the trunk, threw my double Americano in a travel cup, and was good to go! Except that I am a colossal klutz, and somehow managed to knock my coffee over while in a cup holder that no doubt took German engineers years to create, resulting in me back at the house not five minutes after leaving. I went with a triple shot to replace my fallen double, and after a quick scan of the Ipod, had my music set for the slog through police infested Georgia backwater semi highways.
A quick aside: Summer is the time of year when driving with all windows and/or sunroofs open is not only most enjoyable, but mandatory. To complement the mixture of high speed wind noise and rebel excitement stemming from shunning the a/c, the perfect music choice must be made. To this end, I recommend Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti. I’m a huge LZ fan, but had not gotten serious about PG until just recently. This album rocks harder and better, and with even more developed and creative musicianship than House of the Holy and “IV” combined. Good thing I use cruise control, because this is the kind of stuff that makes your right foot HEAVY. Almost as if it was made of lead (led)…hahah…nevermind.
So anyway, the Dahlonega routine goes like this:
1-Park car at supermarket, and begin changing amidst looks ranging from curious to terrified coming from gun toting, stereotype fulfilling, southern backwoods grocery shoppers.
2-Mount bicycle and begin pedaling as per usual. Do not be alarmed by continuous upward tilt of road. Expect extra strain on hamstrings and glutes.
3-Follow whatever the names of those roads are to do “6 Gap,” which climbs Neals, Jacks, Unicoi, Hogpen, Wolfpen, and Woody’s Gap. (6 climbs, 150km…7 and a few more K’s if you’ve suffered a minor head injury recently and decide to ride Brasstown while you’re at it)
4-Stop with an hour to go and ponder over large Coke whether it will be physically possible to make it back to car with 2 climbs remaining. (Ok, backside of Woody’s is like 4 minutes, but still)
5-Arrive back at car unable to get off bicycle for fear of full body cramp.
6-Shower with water and dubiously hygienic towel.
7-Savor sodium content of recovery Burrito while silently wondering why you don’t live in Boulder.
8-Roll windows down, restart PG, drive home without catching attention of ticket giving piggies.
So there you have it, training in the mountains Athens resident style! Driving aside, the training is amazing, the scenery is stunning, and the people won’t shoot you as they drive by as long as you keep your hands on the bars and refrain from giving them the bird.
Coming up, I’m driving back North on Thursday for Fitchburg and COX Charities Classic. If you live in N.E. and hear Robert Plant doing his thing loudly in a race parking lot, follow your ears and come say hey!
Peace
Crane
Just Kickin It
Posted by mattcrane | Filed under Uncategorized
Well, Nature Valley is over and really couldn’t have gone better for the team! Its great that our teamwork and hard efforts are now coming together with a nice surge of confidence and results. Unfortunately, I was unable to help the boys on the last day, which is a course I was really looking forward to riding/suffering on.
I took myself out of the race on Saturday with a touch of wheels during some nervous pre-crosswind jostling. Its the kind of thing that happens, and is usually avoidable with a simple flick of the bars, but I was definitely in the box a bit after we got to the front on the previous section of wind and drilled it. I didn’t want to say anything at the time for fear of seeming soft, but damn Roman, matching 58kph turns with you was miserable, especially when you damn near had your mouth closed!
Anyway, the pack shifted hard to the right, and all it took was a split second of delayed reaction to find myself (I imagine) yelling shhhhhiiiiiiiittttttttttttttttttttt as I went down on my right side before bouncing off the road to do a full on ten year old asian gymnast style flip onto my back into the ditch. My right hip all the way down my leg was numb and “out of sorts” (My tentative replacement term for ______, a word TJ has forbidden me to use) when I was able to start getting back up, and I was at that point convinced that I had gone and broken something. Tamayo picked me up out of the dirt, and after the docs prodded me for a bit, they determined nothing was broken. I got back on the bike, but after 100 meters, my hip was making it almost impossible to pedal. I had two seconds to decide whether to keep pushing it solo in the middle of nowhere, or to get in the car. I played it safe and pulled the plug, because at that point, my body was definitely telling me that it was not a good idea to ride my bike.
Anyway, I’m ok now, I just had a particularly hard wreck, but got off really easy with nothing broken and nothing worse than a few scrapes and 2 stitches. I’m at home now resting for a fews days, before doing some longer rides and a bit of TT work to get ready for Fitchburg.
I love being back home after 2 weeks away, and I don’t think I’ll be doing much outside of coffee rides and couch time for the next few days. Oh wait, and going downtown and drinking multiple alcoholic beverages of Belgian origin. By multiple I really only mean a few, because I’m too tired to handle much more than that.
Oh, and shout out to D. Mott for hooking up the best burger I’ve had in a long time down at The Nook in Saint Paul. For those who can understand the implications of a freak cross between an In N Out Double Double with a burger from Clocked in Athens, you will understand why I am still tortured by the lingering taste of my “Nookie Supreme.” mmmmm, supreme nookie…
“The phone rings
It’s just some friends of mine that say
‘Hey, what’s the matter, man?
We’re gonna come around at twelve
With some Puerto Rican girls that’s just dyin’ to meet you
We’re gonna bring a case of wine
Hey, let’s go mess and fool around
You know, like we used to”
Ya Dig?
Crane
Double Day
Posted by mattcrane | Filed under Uncategorized
Waking up from a nap is never comfortable for me, because I always do so with an unpleasantly strong, and always very specific, food craving. Luckily, today’s yearning was available and close at hand: Silk chocolate soy milk (staple of many endurance athletes). I didn’t slack on slaking my yen; I pounded that shit straight from the carton. After a short time trial this morning (to be exact, 13min 06seconds for yours truly) we now have Murphy sitting in second overall after his third place ride, and Rory and Kirk aren’t far behind that.
Tonight we have a 40km crit, which will be one of three opportunities for us to overhaul the top place on G.C. Bissell is leading the race with Jacques-Maynes after he won the T.T., and they have a really strong team, so all of us here on Health Net are on call for full sell out. I’m more than happy to be in that position after we went all out to lock it down on the circuits last night, which resulted in us getting the win thanks to The Champ’s finishing kick. I think there is going to be some aggressive and interesting racing in the next few days, so I’ll be needing all the chocolate soy I can get.
Anyway, this is blog post #4 take two, because I wrote a longer, and I think, much better entry before it was deleted during a saving/server re-routing fiasco. We roll out to the race in ten minutes, and I still have things to do, so I’ve got to run, especially as I was last out to the van this morning.
The Jan says: Keep it Real, Ride on Steel
P.S. By selling out, this is what I’m talking about: http://velonews.com/photo/77509 (Kurt captured me perfectly in “get me off this bike” mode)
Nature Valley Day 1…or Not
Posted by mattcrane | Filed under Uncategorized
The race report isn’t up on Cyclingnews.com yet, so if you want to hear what happened at Nature Valley today, you’ve come to the right place.
Except nothing happened, seeing as how our race got nullified for reasons I am still bewildered and definitely annoyed about. This would be due to the fact that we had our main crit man Kirk O’Bee (a.k.a The Champ) off the front with Aaron Olsen, and the entire team represented in the 30 something rider chase group; meaning that, obviously, we had a sweet situation going on. However, after a motorcycle official crashed (I hope the rider is ok), there was chaos in the bunch as we came around and not only had to contend with that, but also the lapped and/or crashed riders strewn about the course. This was on lap 19, and coming through on the next lap, we, the front split, as well as the remains of the field, were called to a halt by officials.
This is where the situation upsets me. Having now created a royal clusterf*ck, the race officials-and really, I don’t mean to rag on them exactly, as I owe a lot of gratitude for what they do-proceeded to ask the riders, with a show of hands no less, if they wished to continue racing. Well first off, all the guys dropped, who outnumber those still racing by like 6 to 1, are obviously going to say no, and thats not including the softies in the front group who seemed to feel that wet roads and a few manhole covers constituted overly dangerous race conditions.
Anyway, all of this resulted in the race being called off. Nothing to be done now, but I have to say I am lamenting the fact that we were called to a halt for reasons that don’t line up with the reality of the situation. To be fair, given the number of riders out of contention so soon in the day, had the officials wanted to square things up a bit, assuming they had let the race continue, they could have just given everyone the same time on GC and handed out the time bonuses and stage placings as per usual
Regardless, the team rode well today, and I hope that sets a tone for us for the rest of this week. Thanks to choosing good lines and our faultlessly grippy Maxxis rubber, we all kept it upright today. Unfortunately, a large number of my fellow competitors went down, so here’s hoping they are all ok to start tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll have the stage in its entirety, and I’ll let you know how that pans out.
Later On,
Crane
Song recommendation from my pre-race Ipod jam sesh: “House of Cards,” Radiohead.
Tension at Blog Headquarters
Posted by mattcrane | Filed under Uncategorized
We had a big staff meeting at www.mattcrane.missingsaddle.com this afternoon regarding policy for future posts. Words were exchanged, not all of them pleasant, and tensions were high before it was agreed upon that “good sensations” will no longer be appropriate subject matter for this blog, at least until a suitable way to de-jinx such exclamations can be figured out. Given my dismal performances in the past two days of racing, I have no choice but to blame everything on having jinxed myself in post #1.
I felt good for the first hour or so of both Allentown (Tuesday) and Reading (today, Thursday), but was unable to meet my expectations of performance later in the race, whereupon you would see me looking fairly miserable if you were on the side of the road on either day. I’m not disappointed about this much for my own sake, as bad days are certainly going to be out there, like it or not; but I’m unhappy about not being able to be more useful for my team’s sake. I will be looking to pull myself together better for Sunday.
Despite not feeling as solid as I had hoped going into this week, I am still enjoying it a lot. The race courses are dynamic and the racing is aggressive, and the size and quality of the fields here makes for some good, fast racing. It seems like the spectators are enjoying things too. On both days there has been a lot of enthusiasm coming from the side of the road, especially today in Reading. I was getting plenty of cheers even after getting dropped. Actually, it was almost a bit much, because I wasn’t sure how to respond to hearing “you can do it, dig dig dig, get up there, etc” when I was already out of sight of the caravan. I guess I shouldn’t complain too much about getting encouragement to turn the pedals over, however slowly, on my way to the feed zone to pull out.
I wasn’t originally supposed to race Philly, and was instead on the roster as a reserve, but we had some really bad luck today when we lost Menzies to a nasty crash. I was already in the feed vehicle on the way to the finish, and when we passed the accident, with familiar black and green on the ground and ambulance at the ready, my stomach did a drop. Karl is pretty banged up, but if anyone can handle it, I’m sure he can. In a way, I’m also worried about the particular piece of sidewalk he landed on, as he may have irreparably damaged it on impact. Seriously though, I hope Karl is doing ok, but like I said, if anyone can handle a bad wreck, I’m sure he’s the one. I can only hope that they serve ice cold Yuengling at the hospital he’s at.
Anyway, I’m sitting here in my hotel room, and still haven’t showered, such is my dedication to updating this blog for you, my loyal reader(s). I ate some pretty respectable supermarket sushi, and since then I’ve been sitting here in all my grimy glory banging this post out. I need to eat some real food though, as in calorie heavy, so I’m going to wash off and then take care of that. Dinner plans will likely also include a mint chocolate chip milkshake from Baskin Robbins across the street. Correction: dinner will be a mint chocolate chip milkshake from Baskin Robbins across the street.
Ok, I’m off to do all that. Send out some good vibes for Menzies, and if you can throw in a few thoughts for me having good legs, it would be appreciated, as I will need them come Sunday.
As a Pennsylvanian friend of mine once said:
Take her easy, and if she’s easy, take her twice
-Crane
Here Goes…
Posted by mattcrane | Filed under Uncategorized
Ok, first post of my first blog! I was hoping something would come along and shake my world up a bit so I could start this thing off with a bang, but I’m afraid I’ve had a fairly run of the mill time of it since getting back from Mount Hood almost two weeks ago. I arrived back in Athens elated that I had helped out with pulling off the win, but also pretty knackered. To this end, I decided a good period of rest was in order, and rest, by which I mean riding occasionally and drinking a little more often than that, is exactly what I did.
By the beginning of this week, I was raring to get back on the bike properly, and I felt 100% recovered after having been cracked just a week prior. A few hard hours on Monday confirmed that I was not only good to go again, but had a nice new plateau of form following Hood and my subsequent time off.
I can’t reveal the top secret training I put in this week, as doing so would undermine the potential value of the advice I plan on selling to fledgling third world state sponsored sport programs. Not that I have ever considered doing such a thing to subsidize my post racing lifestyle and therefore help me avoid real work. But the point remains.
So I did my top secret training/race prep, which may or may not have included motorpacing, and may or may not have included some tempo and intervals with very high gears. Regardless, following whatever it is I was or for all you know was not doing, I am feeling fantastic. Really, my job title, and the purpose of my existence, is to be as good at riding a bike as possible. So at times like these, when things are starting to fall into place nicely, I couldn’t be happier.
I’m looking forward to having my first taste of Philly Week, and I’m glad it will be with good sensations in the legs. Actually, I’m really looking forward to doing a big one day race, as they are somewhat scarce in America, and I haven’t done many since coming back over here. We have a lot of guys who are feeling good, and I’m sure that Health-Net will be at the sharp end of the race, so look out!
Well, thanks for reading! I’ll no doubt have some interesting things to report from next week, and here’s hoping there’s good news in there too.
Peace,
Matt C
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