Holidays in California

On Tuesday afternoon I left Boulder, caught the bus to Denver, and then flew to San Francisco, California.

Here's my gear for a California trip: jacket, waterproof bag, backpack, helmet, glasses, and mittens.  By packing light, I can was able to go to the bus station by bike.

During the last couple weeks in Colorado, I had some more interesting adventures.   At work we built up a circuit board that I designed while I was on my last trip.  It is pictured below.

The green circuit board set a record for fast turn-on: less than 7 hours from the board being delivered by FedEx to having been populated, powered up, and programmed.

Guinness was pleased by progress in the lab.  He sometimes lies on his back in the middle of the floor and takes a nap.

The weekend before I left Colorado, I took a trip to Colorado Springs.  On the way back, I stopped off in Castle Rock and Denver.  While I was away from Boulder, the conditions outside my apartment turned from slightly annoying to outright hazardous.

Here is an ice-covered sidewalk where I lost my footing when leaving for work on Monday morning.  That was an unpleasant surprise.

Yesterday I went for a bike ride in the coastal hills here in the San Francisco bay area.  I climbed up Old La Honda Road from Portola Road to Skyline Blvd, then descended the west side of highway 84, and then climbed the west side of Old La Honda Road back up to Skyline.  Here are a couple pictures from the ride:

Looking west from Old La Honda Road over the coastal hills.

Here is a view looking south from the same point.  The road in this view is where I climbed up.

Here is the view looking east.

With snow falling in Boulder, it is really nice to enjoy some warm, sunny, California weather.

How I almost quit racing on Oct. 7, 2010 and goal setting for 2012

There is a story that I mentioned briefly on this blog back in October 2010, but at the time left out some of the excruciating details.  I felt it might be interesting to fill in a few of the details so that readers can see, for better or for worse, what goes on in the deep dark corners of my brain.

The story, in its original form, is fairly mundane.  The specific story that I am referencing here is detailed in the paragraph beginning with "I think it is safe to say..."  Employing some British understatement, my campaign in Manchester started with a rough first few hours.

At the time, I was rather insulted by being required to take an introductory-level track riding course.  I appreciate the need to follow rules, but rules should be applied with good judgement, not blindly.  After my personal experience and then going to the masters track world championships this fall and seeing riders (who did not go through the accreditation course) slide off the track and cause crashes made me wonder just how well those rules are applied.  Luckily, I have thick skin, and while the accreditation requirement felt like a stinging insult at the time, it's not a big deal anymore.

Further along in the story, I mention being caught up in a crash on the track.  When I composed my blog post on Oct 11th, I still had a large scrape on my hip.  The scrape and associated impact hurt quite a lot, but have both healed.  There is still a 2-inch diameter scar on my right hip, which is an interesting souvenir from that experience.

Where the episode back in 2010 became a real mental test was after I left the track surface.  The person in charge of bike storage space rentals was gone for the day.  I asked the remaining staff if I could leave my bike for the night and sort out the storage rental in the morning.  They said, "No."  I pleaded.  They were adamant.  So, as I went to disassemble my bike and put it back into the travel case, I had tears welling up in my eyes from a combination of pain from the crash and frustration with the bike storage and equipment damage situation.

Finally, after packing up my bike, I began the walk to the bus stop to return to the Manchester City Centre.  It was late in the evening, cold, and raining as I left the veldrome.  As I walked through the parking lot dragging the 70-lb bike case, I thought to myself, "I can leave the case here in the parking lot and come back for it in the morning.  Maybe it will still be here if I come back early.  But if it's not?  Maybe I wouldn't care.  I could forget about being an athlete and just be a tourist for the next two months."

Then, standing there alone in the dark, 7000 miles from home, feeling cold, wet, exhausted, battered physically, and shaken mentally, a smile crept across my face.  I said to myself, "Karl, this will make for an amusing story later.  You need to harden the #@$% up and get moving."

So, I continued.

Jumping back to the present, I am in the midst of formulating goals for the 2012 season.  They're still a work in progress, but at the moment I am planning to turn my focus back to the road and earn my cat-2 upgrade there.

After that, I will turn my attention toward some endurance events.  In the last six years, I've completed several hundred races on the road and track, without the question of whether I was capable of finishing ever crossing my mind.  This season, rather than just seeing how fast I can go, I want to test my physical and mental limits.

I'll write more about my 2012 goals as plans firm up, but I can say right now that the 2012 season will look very different from all my previous seasons.

Back to Colorado and off-season racing

On the way back to Colorado, I stopped in Rawlins, Wyoming for some fuel and a chance to get out of the car and stretch my legs.  Right there on the I-80 business route, I saw something that took my breath away, and had to take a picture.

If Motel 6 doesn't quite do it for you, Rawlins has a Motel 7.

At the end of my first week back on the Colorado front range, I was able to compete in two races.  One was a track racing event at Boulder Indoor Cycling and the other was a run/bike duathlon at Cherry Creek State Park in Denver.

First Friday track racing
Boulder Indoor Cycling, 2-Dec-2011

I jumped in for two races at the December edition of First Friday at Boulder Indoor Cycling.  The first event was a 20-lap tempo race.  He had a field of 6 or 7 riders and the race started off with a moderate pace but quickly became quite brisk and shattered the field.  After bridging over a split in the field, I picked up a few points in the 2nd half of the race, including the 5 points on the finishing lap.

Due to some confusion about which riders would be in which races, I wound up sitting out until the final event of the night, a 70-lap points race.  Colby Pearce and Alex Howes wound up dominating the race, although I felt pretty good about the attack I put in following the first sprint at 60-laps to go.  By the time the field caught me, several riders had dropped out and the field was splintered.  I'm satisfied with how it went for being my first ride back at elevation after two months at sea level.

Only tangentially related to the racing, I walked from my apartment to Boulder Indoor Cycling and then back to my apartment after the event was concluded, 1.8 miles each way, carrying my track bike.

The next First Friday event should be held on 6-Jan-2012.  I'm looking forward to it already!

Chilly Cheeks duathlon series, race #1
Cherry Creek State Park, 3-Dec-2011

There was snow overnight, and the morning was characterized by cold temperatures and more snow falling during the race.  The first race of the Chilly Cheeks duathlon series was a 4-mile run and a 10-mile bike ride.

I started the run at a comfortable pace, intending to increase my tempo at each mile marker.  Many racers started too fast, so I wound up passing people right away and continued to do so throughout the run.  The run course transitioned from road to trail to bike path and back to road at the end, so we had a variety of surfaces to keep things interesting.  Having snow all over the ground required being careful about where I placed my feet.

With the cold temperatures, I had to make a conscious effort to keep my hands from going numb.  In order to stay warm, I wore wool socks, cycling shorts, leg warmers, two base-layer undershirts, a short-sleeve jersey, a long-sleeve jersey, a vest, and a cycling hat. For the run, I wore lightweight windbreaker-style gloves.  They worked well, although midway through the run I pulled my fingers out of the gloves' fingers and wore them more like mittens with my hands clenched into fists.  By the end of the run, my hands were nice and toasty so I could manipulate shoelaces and Velcro to change from running to cycling shoes and operate the buckle on my helmet.  The last step in the transition area was to put on my heavy mittens to keep my hands warm with the windchill on the bike.

Heading out on the bike, my glasses immediately fogged up.  Arg!  I spent a couple minutes fooling around with the glasses trying to clear them of fog while riding slowly (I could barely make out the snow-covered road).  Once my glasses cleared up, I picked up the pace as conditions allowed.  I felt much more comfortable on the climbs than the flat or downhill sections (something about that just seems wrong).  The course wrapped around the lake at the park, with a turn-around on the east side and then headed back to the west side for the race finish.  On the way back, I managed to drop my chain twice. On a fixed gear, a dropped chain means I had no drive and no stopping power.  Needless to say, it was quite exciting as the first chain drop happened on a downhill.

Each time the chain dropped, I coasted to a stop, dismounted the bike, and lifted the chain back onto the chainring and cog by hand (despite being an engineer, I still do some things by hand!).  The first chain drop was on a downhill section.  Riding a fixed gear bike downhill on a snowy ride is an exercise in vaguely-controlled chaos.  In light of the low chain tension I was running, that first chain drop was largely unavoidable as I bounced, slid, and rolled down the hill.  The 2nd drop, however, was due to sloppy pedaling technique.  Following the second drop, I focused on a fluid pedal stroke with steady power for the remainder of the race and kept the chain properly seated through the finish line.  I even managed to catch the two riders who passed me while I was re-setting the chain the 2nd time.  One of them was the winning woman.

The next edition of the race will take place on 21-Jan-2012.  Between now and then I will have some more time to re-acclimate to high elevation exercise (it's been just 1 week since I returned to Boulder after 2 months at sea level) and do a bit of run training (a couple of interval workouts on the track would serve me well for an event like this).  I'll also be able to adjust the chain tension on the fixed gear road bike so it is less susceptible to jumping off when the course is bumpy and figure out a solution for foggy glasses when I am stopped in transition between segments of the race.

That's it for race reports.  I've also been back to the lab, and should have some interesting pictures of circuit boards and measurement systems in the next couple weeks.