Bit bad at Snake Alley

Today was the 30th running of Snake Alley in Burlington, IA. A few guys from the team and I traveled up here Friday and we were pumped for the race. If you call yourself a serious racer and you have not done this race, and you live in the Midwest, then you suck! This race is awesome, epic, classic, horrible, hard, and beautiful.

Friday we took a look at the course and road part of the road course to get the legs loosened up from the four hour drive. I was feeling amazing! There was pop, speed, and I also fet the Snake was nowhere near as hard as I remembered it. I told the guys I was going to have a good day.

This morning we took our time getting ready and reached the race around 11am. We went on a long warm up riding for about and hour and a half. My legs took longer to break in today but my everything looked good by the time we lined up for the start. I was 210 putting me on the second row, as they have call ups for this weekend's races. I had a great starting position on the left of the road and the rider in front of me left a wide gap for me to get through at the gun. I was in 3rd or 4th when we hit the snake and I knew if I took the short route around all the turns I would move up fast. It didn't make a lot of the other racers too happy, but I got there first, and rubbin is racing right....? When we hit the top I sprinted for a few meters and then got aero taking time on everyone else. I actually slowed down to let everyone catch me as I didn't want to battle through the flats on my own. The next few laps went well and I help my position comfortably. I was alway trying to remember to downshift in the small ring before even hitting the start finish so that if I had any issues I could fix them before the hill. About 4 or 5 laps in I forgot however. About halfway up the Snake I felt like my legs had turned to shit and I needed about 5 more gears. I look down and I'm big ringing it and I am losing spots fast as well as energy. By the next time up the hill I was done, I had nothing left having put it all on getting up the last bit of the Snake. I pulled over on one of the switchbacks and I couldn't see straight, couldn't talk, breath, even think. After a few minutes I walked the rest of the way up and a nice man helped my with water and ice. That was really nice as I didn't even realize how overheated I was until I started cooling down.

I watched a little bit of the rest of the race trying to cheer on my teammates who powered through placing 17th and 25th. It was a hard, hot day, and just about everyone suffered a lot.

The only positive I can take from today is that I have two shots tomorrow. I tend to push myself harder after a bad race as well. I don't like to quit and I have been able to dig a little deeper after a bad day. Tomorrow is Melon City, not an easy race by any means, but something I can handle a little better. I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm back

Have not been writing for a while as you can tell. Just didn't have much to talk about at the time. After the L10 national championships where my athlete did very well, I have been pretty burned out. Normally we at the gym take the week off to recharge the batteries. This year however St. Louis is very lucky to be hosting the Visa National Championships and we decided to take the week before so the staff and athletes could all enjoy the competition.

I was not really able to ride over the last couple weeks while I was coaching. I was home for such a short time, and too busy at the meets. This meant my fitness was dropping. I was a little concerned with this as I have worked hard to get where I am and didn't want to lose it. There was a race that I was going to be able to get into once home from Virginia, and I was excited and scared to see what was going to happen.

MO Pro, or Tour de Grove as it was once know as, is Missouri's biggest race during the season. It brings in many of the countries top pro teams, and showcases some of St Louis' best neighborhoods. I was going to race in the last day of the event in the Dutchtown Classic. Now I have lived here for 3 years and never knew about this place. I had never heard about it, never been there, and it was GREAT! What an awesome neighborhood! It was small, close-nit community that was very supportive of the race.

The day before I heard of the races on Friday and Saturday. They were tough, fast, and dangerous. Multiple racers from the team went down in crashes, one broke a carbon frame. Luckily know one was too seriously hurt, just a lot of scrapes and bruises. For Sunday we were ready for more of the same.

The field was large, and had a ton of fire power with a good number of Cat 2s. There was a plan for the team, and after about one lap it was scraped and most of us were just trying to hang on for dear life. With speeds so high and so many riders there was a lot of fidgeting and moving in the bunch. I hear often how there are a lot of young riders that have come up with tons of power but not a lot of control. I don't know if that is true but it seemed there were a lot of young guys and not many seemed too comfortable.

I started to notice that I was in over my head pretty quick. I wasn't able to move up in spots that I usually do like turns, or if I did happen to get moved up I couldn't hold my space. It was taking too long to recover and I know that stupid things happen when people get tired and try too hard. So with about 20 min to go in the race I called it quits. I was disappointed in myself, as this was my kind of course, technical and fast turns. But after a few minutes I decided to stop pouting and get on with getting back in shape.

This weekend the team was racing at the O'Fallon Cup in O'Fallon, MO. It is put on by Momentum racing in a very nice park and they offer free beer! The course is a rolling park road with great pavement, no real turns, and two hills that on their own really are nothing to write about, but after 20 laps and just about sprinting up both, they get hard. Momentum tried a new lineup for their race which I thought was pretty cool. In an effort to get more people to see the top level race, Pro 123, they put it in the middle of the day with the Cat 3s going last. I thought it went well, their hosting of the race, and our racing in it.

The first race I was in was the Cat 123. I was still not sure about where I was in terms of fitness so I was just going to wait and see. Also both of our team's Cat 2s were not in the race so that left it pretty open for the rest of the team to see what would happen.

I remember DogFish lighting things up right away. At one point I tried to get in a move with Cameron Rex and Zach Reed, I was dropped almost immediately when we hit the hill at the start finish. That hurt, mentally and physically. That was the move of the day and I think it was in the first 5 laps of an hour and fifteen minute race. Justin Maciekowicz and Jim Vandeven bridged later as well as another Gateway Harley rider made their way into said break and left the rest of us to pretend we could catch. Team strongman Eric Finks did get into a small 4 man break that looked strong and would also go the distance. And it seemed that every time the pace slowed just a bit there were more attacks. So to me it seemed like to me that there were 20 guys up the road.

For me I never felt comfortable, and really I was ready to quit about 20 min in and couldn't believe we had so long to go still. But every time I though my race was over, it eased just enough to let me back in. After a strong attack up the start finish hill halfway through the race the field was destroyed and I was left chasing. Finally a group of us got together and with guys trying to jump off the front of our group over and over we kept getting closer to what I thought was the second chase group. Then they were there, right in front of us. We closed the gap and things got easier. I still thought there were men up the road but when I saw Finkszilla I didn't know if they had lapped us or we had caught them. I still had no idea who was still up the road but I was happy to just try and finish in the field. Then we rolled through for a $100 preem. I have never gone for a preem this high before. Most of the time they are hotly contested and with the firepower still in the field I just put it out of my mind. That is until I was on the wheel of Finkszilla. He kept looking back at me, I gave him a nod and off we went! Up the right side of the road at a blazing speed. We had a small gap on the field and I was really thinking I had this one. I was barking at Eric to give me everything he had and he did that and more. It was just a little too early for me to go but I had to jump. I started sprinting while turning around a long sweeping left hand turn. This is a strange sensation and kind of scary. The bike dips and wants to turn left hard every time I rocked the bike and I thought for a second I wasn't going to have enough road to complete the turn. When I did though I was still in the lead and saw two front wheels coming at me on both sides. The one on my right closer than the left. Perhaps my mistake was not taking the whole road as the rider on my left (Matt Brant) snuck through and beat me by a wheel at the line. I was dejected and super tired, but I just thought "what would Finkszilla do?" and the answer to that was he would jump back in the race and hurt some more. So I jumped back onto the back of the pack and held on. Then end of the race for me was more anticlimactic as I was just able to finish in the field. But Jason Wulff and Murphy held their own and sprinted for the field spint and did very well.

We had a few hours to rest before the Cat 3 race so in the mean time I messed around with my headset that was creaking like crazy and driving me nuts. I also had a chance to watch one of our Cat 4 riders who I coach Grant Erhard demolish his race. Grant was looking crazy strong last weekend but didn't have the best results. He was a little unlucky, and made a couple mistakes. He is very determined and wanted to make sure he didn't make the same mistake again today. He was going to save his matches and made sure he won on this day. Well he did it in one of the best ways a racer can, on his own, and just about lapping the field. When Grant took off, myself and teammate BJ Keane were going to yell at him that he was wasting energy, but BJ yelled if he was going to go to go hard! And boy did he! In one lap he had 25 seconds. By the end of the race he was 20 meters short of lapping the field! His only mistake was he didn't zip up his jersey when he posted up for his finish pose! This guy could be pretty good, and I am excited to see how he does over the next few months and years.

For the last race we had almost the entire 3 team lined up. We were only missing Chris Connolly who had to work at our great sponsor shop Mesa Cycles. The plan was to make people hurt. About halfway though the race Keith Vogl took off. Keith is a diesle engine and he put in some good distance and stayed away for quite some time. Next I took off, then it was Brian who took second earlier in the day during the Masters 35+ race and won the first cash preem of the race. After that, Eric took off, he was quickly way off the front and was out of sight before people finally started to chase. After that we all caught our breath and started to get ready for the finish. We were all feeling the fatigue from racing multiple races during the day. Then Jason Wulff looked over at me and told me he was going, and BAM he blasted off the front. Everyone was all over it and he sat back in for a lap and then BAM he did it again! This time only a few guys could go with him and the rest of us were racing for the last 3 spots in the money. I'm not quite sure how it ended but Wulff was able to pull off a 3rd place. At the same time the rest of the field was rolling down the back stretch and Finkszilla was once again right in front of me. And once again we took off, and again I was yelling at Eric and trying to get every last ounce of strength I could get out of him. This time I rounded the last corner seated and headed right for the left side of the course. Luke Bligh however snuck between Eric and the opposite side of the road and another rider came up on my left to both beat me in the sprint. I was able to make it in the money however, and the team raced as a team better than ever. It is the right time for things to come together as we get ready for races over the next few weeks.

I'm pretty excited about the rest of the year. We are only going to get better and have more fun. I am also pretty pumped about this week at the gym. I have had the girls taking it easy for the last couple weeks and now we are going to get back to learning skills. I get just as bored as they do doing basics. Time to start dreaming about next year's National/Western Championships.

photo credit: Elizabeth Rangel. Proof of me being dropped by the winning move.

Grant posting up for the win, no one else in the frame. Didn't do up his kit though.......

He got it right her however. Looks good on the top step.

Brian Smith took 2nd, it was a great result.

History Junky

I am a big fan of history. I love to hear the stories about all places. There is so many interesting things that have happened throughout the history of our country. I am in one of the oldest anglican settlements in the US. Hampton, VR is at or near where the first settlers from Europe tried to set up villages.

Yesterday I was extremely bored and decided to go walking around. I really didn't know that there was so much history here and just happened on some plaques that told the histories of certain proporties in the city. I just kept walking around looking for more plaques to read about the history of the area.

As I am walking around I see a very old looking cemetery. There were some signs pointing to the cemetery and the church in the middle so I assumed it was something of interest. I don't generally go walking through cemeteries but the few times I have I am always interested in seeing the old dates on the stones. It is just a small glimpse into this persons final resting place. They may have lived a full life, or died young, and all they have left on this earth is a stone, and most of the time just a few dates. Some of the stones however tell a tale of their lives.

The first thing I noticed was how the oldest part of the cemetery seemed to just have stones placed willy nilly and looked like people were buried on top of each other with no effort to have some sort of order. There were head stones right up against the church, one who belonged to a captain who died before in the year 1700!

Another interesting thing I noticed was how many families were buried near each other. I have always wondered why families would have family plots. I guess it might have been more popular when people never moved away from their home towns. The saddest thing was seeing the graves of young people, babies, young solders. There was one group of stones that belonged to a family. All were babies who never made it to their first birthdays. They all were within a few years of each other too. Must have been horrible for that family. Some of the baby burial sites looked like baby carriages sunken into the ground.

Another interesting thing I notice was it looked like the type of stone used was sort of what was "in" at the time. Certain areas all had very similar stones even though they were not family. There were also some stones that looked brand new but were actually very old.

The final part of the cemetery that I looked though was where old confederate solders were buried. I had never really thought about that. These solders were all buried with nice head stones that labeled them as patriotic confederate solders. It must have been a horrible time for the country back then, it is hard for us not to think about the confederates as good patriots. But it is all about who wins in those types of wars. The winners are patriots, losers are traitors.

The great part about being on the east coast is that the history goes back hundreds of years, far before the birth of our country. In the area I live the history goes back a ways but not that far. More about the time before the civil war. When I am around places like this it makes me want to go to places like Europe where the history goes back thousands of years. To me that is amazing.

This was the Confederate section of the cemetery

This looked like the oldest section of the cemetery. I didn't look like there was much order to it.

This was one of the larger family plots.

This was a babies burial site in a family plot. 

More orderly over here

This guy was a big deal, he needed two of these stones to tell his story.

The Art of Number Pinning

Numbers are not a regular thing in gymnastics. We only really see them at big competitions, like Easterns/Westerns and National Championships. In cycling most guys get pretty good at pinning their numbers on. I think it is more from necessity of not making it into a parachute when you are riding around. Since I have had to pin on a few hundred numbers over the last few years I have gotten pretty good at doing it for my girl's in gymnastics competitions. Here are the do's and don'ts when you want to get that number looking good, and stay looking good all competition long.

1) Crumple that number up and do it a bunch of times. This adds thousands of little creases that will make the number move more like cloth. Once you flatten it out again and pin the number on people wont ever notice.

2) Get the number centered. The best way to do that is place the number where you want by hand, then put one pin in the center to hold it while you do the first two corners.

3) If you are pinning a gymnast DON'T HAVE THEM BEND OVER! Pin the number on while they are standing straight up and make the number a taught as possible. Remember a leotard stretches and it will stretch when the gymnast moves. The paper used for athletic events is very tough and generally wont tear. (except at the holes made in the number, but more on that later)

4) DONT USE THE HOLES IN THE NUMBERS!!!! At my invitational we use numbers to help the photo people with orders, and to help people know which gymnast is which. I told our parent organization to forget the holes as they always tear and they actually cost you more money. They were afraid people wouldn't know how to pin on the numbers then........I know we are not rocket scientists but I hope a person could realize you can push a safety pin through a piece of paper. Instead, when pinning on the numbers, pinch up a corner with some of the leotard fabric behind it and then pin through all of it. You would then have two pin holes at each corner. With this method you will have a hard time ripping through the number, even if you wiggle around on it.

I know this is kind of a stupid thing, but it is something I care about for my kids. When you never have a number on you don't want it to be flopping around and distracting your athlete in the most inappropriate time. When all else it equal, sometimes it is the little things that make the difference.

Thoughts of a season's close

There are only 5 days left in my 2012 gymnastics season. It has been a long one with our first competition being last on the first weekend of December 2011. The length of the season can often times make it feel like years have past. The improvements that are made, the changes in the athletes, it all seems like too much to have happened in the last 6 months.

Yesterday was a busy day. I had 4 girls competing over the course of the day in their national championships. All of them started the day very well appearing to be quite confident in their competition to come. None of the girls had won an event coming into the competition so I was just looking for them to all hit as best they could. There was an outside chance that one of two of them could bring home a medal if they hit a special routine. But I think the pressure of the day kept them all from being at their max. We did have a few falls, and one athlete had a slight meltdown. But all were able to hang on and finish with dignity, and all of them seemed proud of their accomplishments, and happy to be moving on to things to come.

This was only my 8^th national championship, compared to; I have no idea how many state and regional competitions. I have learned over the years how to prepare for those competitions. But when you make it to nationals you are seeing the best of the best. And all of these very talented kids are separated by tenths, not points. It can, and is hard to stand out from the crowd and prove yourself to be the best. I could see where we needed to go to perhaps get on the level of those girls who stood on the podium. It will just take time, patience, and athletes who believe themselves worthy of that distinction. The athlete who stands on the top step of the podium, doesn’t get there in spite of the pressure, they rise to the challenge and embrace it.

On Wednesday I leave for the level 10 national championships in Hampton, Virginia. In some ways it can be easier to stand out here I think sometimes. You get more freedom to showcase an athlete’s talent. Girls can use more skills with higher difficulty, and sometimes that can make up for shortcomings in other areas. This is really just a hypothesis on my part though. My own level 10 is very good but will still have to have a fantastic meet to be seen on the podium. The one thing that could keep that from happening is her head. Like the others, she has to know she belongs up there, rather than hope, or even just think she could get up there. The mind is the ultimate tool in determining your athletic outcome. When all else is equal, the champion is the one who wants it more, and never doubts their path.

This is the first year I can remember where I was not dreaming of the end. I’m not sure what the reason really is. Maybe it is that we had so many girls go on to championships this year. It has been nice having six of our thirteen girls (four of which were injured) still training. In past years it has been more like two or three moving on. The success of the girls keeps feeding me with the desire to keep going. It is going to be hard for me to not push the girls in the gym and keep my plan of resting them. But like I have said before, less now, could equal more later.

Out to dinner the night before the competition.  The girls looked great, and had a blast.

Tough Ride

I am out in Boise ID this week with my level 9s who qualified to the USA gymnastics Western Championships. The last few years I have brought my bike out with me to get some riding in while I am waiting for sessions. Yesterday I had a bunch of free time so I took what I thought was going to be a nice ride though the mountains of Idaho. Everything was good until the road turned to a rough sand, gravel, and rock road.

This was the first really tough uphill section and compared to what was to come it was pretty tame. Now this would have been a fine ride if I was on a mountain bike, or a cycle cross bike. But I was on my SL4, not make for this type of thing! I climbed for well over an hour before finally making it to the top. Then I had to go down sections that we just as bad if not worse. Again if I was on a down hill mountain bike it would have been a great road to bomb down, but on the road bike I was barely moving, my hands were cramping from continually breaking. As slow as I thought I was going I still managed to get a pinch flat on my front wheel. I tried to just pump it up to make it to a good spot to change out the inner tube but I was losing air quick. I stopped at the first intersection I had seen in a long time in a little place called  Robie Creek. The only building they had looked like a shack that turned out to be the fire department.

Shortly after Robie Creek I made it to real road again. I was now wet as it was not raining, freezing, as I had been going downhill for a long time not really doing any work, and full of sand. Robie Creek did have a landing area that went up to the Arrow Rock Reservoir. I walk down to it and dunked my bike in it to wash away most of the sand that I had kicked up over the last hour and a half.

Soon after I was on highway 21 or the Ponderosa Pine Scenic Route, and boy was it nice! There was one final climb left that was nothing bad, just long and steady. At the top I snapped a couple pics and caught a rainbow.

The rest of the ride was mostly downhill. I only wish it was a little steeper to give me more speed. I was only coasting at 40mph and pedaling only brought it up another 3 or 4 mph.

At the bottom of the mountain was the damn that held back the waters of the Arrow Rock Reservoir. They were releasing water out of these huge tubes, like 15 feet tall or something. It was amazing seeing the power, and amount of water coming out.

I have a video but I am having trouble uploading it. Maybe some other time.

For the next hour the weather was great, but I was running short on time. The last problem I had with the ride was I was using my Garmin 500 to help with directions. It was terrible! I have used my Garmin 705 on trips like this before and it was great. You cannot use the 500 like a real gps. If you put in a pre made map it will show you a line to follow, but if you get off that line you are screwed. Well that happend. Luckily I had my cell phone, bad news was it was running low on power, of course, and I was worried it wouldn't be able to get me back to my start. I also only had about 40 min before I was supposed to meet with my girls and their parents for dinner and drinks. If I was late they might worry, and I didn't want that to happen. I pulled up directions on the phone and hauled ass for the next 10 miles and made it with time to spare.

In all it was a good ride, it is always good to get lost sometimes and test yourself. That happened for sure and I made it out the other side just fine.

Now it's time for some gymnastics.

feeling good.

Having some fun with my kids moms, they are a little strange :-)

Less now could equal more later.

The end of a season is always a strange time for me. There have always been conflicting ideas about what one should do, as an athlete, and as coach. Do you take time off to rejuvenate the body, or do you take all the fitness you have gained over the last year and start plowing into new skills? Or even just increasing your strength? For the most part I have always been a believer in the later. As a gymnast I couldn’t wait to get in the gym and work on new skills. I was so bored of doing routines and was excited for the things to come. Even in cycling I have a hard time staying off the bike when the season is over. The time, or miles might decrease considerably, but I still get out there and puts around.

This year I am going to try something new. I am going to make my athletes take time off. At least a week, some will be longer. In an effort to decrease injury, and allow these girl’s young bodies to fully recover from the long hard season. They are going to do almost nothing in the gym. One athlete of mine took the last week totally out of the gym, and for the next month will just do basics and conditioning. She had a tough season fighting injury, and her own mental roadblocks. Last week was more of a time for her to decide if she was going to stick it out for this last season. I was really happy to see she wanted to stick it out.

It can be hard to ask privately trained athletes to take time off. Their parents pay a lot of money for a service, and some could view taking it easy as not getting their money’s worth. But I think they, and I, have to think of it as a whole process. Not just a month of light training, but how this month of light training plays into the rest of the season. In cycling, the pros and those wily old riders who know what is what, say that, “To go fast in July, you need to go slow in December”. This is because your body can only take so much at a time. You cannot continually break it down.

I had a talk with my dad about this idea a few months back. He used to race bikes when I was a kid, back in the early 90’s. When he saw me seriously racing again this past year, it lit a fire under his butt, and he got back on the bike. He called me one day to tell me about his ride and said he went faster on his route than he had ever gone, something like 19 miles per hour. I told him that he was going faster than I ever do for an entire training ride. He was amazed that I road so slow but had been rising through the categories in USA cycling. I asked him about his intervals that he was doing, (he had never really done them before) he said the first few were really good but by the end he was having trouble. He also said that he was riding pretty hard between intervals. When I explained to him that he was going too fast between intervals he all of a sudden realized why he was so good at time trials back in the day, but never had the “jump” to be really competitive in crits or road races. He was wearing himself out before he was able to do his workouts correctly.

So it stands to reason that if I take my girls back into the gym as soon as we get back from nationals and start training hard for new skills, they will wear down, be too tired, and perhaps get injured because of it.

I think this idea scares people more than anything. How can not doing something lead to being better at that same thing in the long run? I think most coaches and athletes would rather error on the side of doing too much, rather than doing less and perhaps being perceived as lazy. You have to be very secure in your abilities and your plan to pull it off. You don’t want to go into something like this not knowing when you will start, how to build up again, and what is expected at each juncture. Otherwise you may wait too long and not give yourself enough time to train your new skills properly. This also means that you and your athlete(s) must know what it takes to learn these skills. If you don’t know the steps to learning a Jeager, you might not know how long it should take to learn, how many steps are involved, and how long each step should take.

As a coach these are things that I have picked up on over the years. I give myself more time on some skills than others because I am not as seasoned at coaching them. While others I know how many turns a girls needs to take, what each turn should look like, and when it is time to move on.

As we move into next season I am excited for what is to come. I will have a new set of athletes to work with, new goals to achieve, and always something to learn. The goal is to always be improving, never settle for 2^nd best, but accept what is there. The future looks bright, and I can’t wait to get there.

p.s. I am out in Boise this weekend for my level 9s Western Championships. Good luck girls.