4Th Overall, best result to date!
Quick post, full report later...
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Sunday, July 27, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Its been a little while. Last week we were getting ready for "Cousins Camp", a yearly family reunion my grandparents put together, it started when I was like 5 or something and there were already like 7-8 cousins aka grandchildren, plus some friends of the family's kids so since then my grandparents have called it cousins camp. Now with 28 grandchildren and all us older kids getting married and having kids and involving people its really turning into a huge yearly event. The last few years we have rented out spencer lake bible camp and its just amazing. My grandpa being world class tri-athlete, an Olympic trialist in the modern pentathlon, and a coach for 30 years+ is all about sports and competition. Since we started using the camp my grandpa started doing a duathalon with a TT run and a TT bike. Everyone that wants to participate finds a bike to use, mountain, hybrid, P.o.J., road, even a tandem participated this year. This year grandpa added in a swim which made the triathlon official. I found "cousins camp" feeling a little more like "training camp this year", as lindsay and I did 2 TT's, one on teh tandem and one on our own. Our tandem time smoked my personal time bike like 30 seconds, that things just flys!
With only 2 meals a day and snacks in between breakfast and dinner I was able to shed a few pound over the weekend in preparation for the climbing races coming up at Crystal Ridge and Sunburst. Lindsay, Hannah, Kyle, Caleb (Hannah's fiance), our buddy Ben, and myself all made it over to Nordic mountain for a few laps since it was only 20 minutes down the road from the camp. That course is just amazing and it was nice to enjoy it with family and friends.
Did the Crystal Ridge race the last two weeks and feeling really confident for the race. I guess there is a big change in the course though. On Wednesday nights we climb craters on the backside of the hill and descend the switchbacks. It seems that since the alpha trail is water logged we will be climbing the switchbacks and then all the way to the top of the hill to add the some time to the course. I did the climb to the top once and its the equalizer just not washed out and without the flat before hand instead it is after climbing the entire ski hill.
Beside the hard TT this weekend and the Crystal Ridge races I just been throwing down some good base miles to build back up for a peak later this season. Just got done with 3 1/2 hours at about 19 mph avg. Nice little route O-Town -> Hartland->Pewaukee->Brookfield->Tosa->New Berlin->Waukesha->Wales->Dousman->O-town. Like 65-70 miles, not sure cause my computer was on the fritz and would just stop recording at times so i think my average was closer to 20 but idk, all that matters on those rides is Heart rate anyways, but I always want to have the HR in the right place and still have a good avg speed, that pride thing sneekin in there.
I even took my camera with me today and I just always to forget to use that thing....
Well thanks for reading and probably see ya ll this weekend,
Nathan
ps kits soon...better late then never!
With only 2 meals a day and snacks in between breakfast and dinner I was able to shed a few pound over the weekend in preparation for the climbing races coming up at Crystal Ridge and Sunburst. Lindsay, Hannah, Kyle, Caleb (Hannah's fiance), our buddy Ben, and myself all made it over to Nordic mountain for a few laps since it was only 20 minutes down the road from the camp. That course is just amazing and it was nice to enjoy it with family and friends.
Did the Crystal Ridge race the last two weeks and feeling really confident for the race. I guess there is a big change in the course though. On Wednesday nights we climb craters on the backside of the hill and descend the switchbacks. It seems that since the alpha trail is water logged we will be climbing the switchbacks and then all the way to the top of the hill to add the some time to the course. I did the climb to the top once and its the equalizer just not washed out and without the flat before hand instead it is after climbing the entire ski hill.
Beside the hard TT this weekend and the Crystal Ridge races I just been throwing down some good base miles to build back up for a peak later this season. Just got done with 3 1/2 hours at about 19 mph avg. Nice little route O-Town -> Hartland->Pewaukee->Brookfield->Tosa->New Berlin->Waukesha->Wales->Dousman->O-town. Like 65-70 miles, not sure cause my computer was on the fritz and would just stop recording at times so i think my average was closer to 20 but idk, all that matters on those rides is Heart rate anyways, but I always want to have the HR in the right place and still have a good avg speed, that pride thing sneekin in there.
I even took my camera with me today and I just always to forget to use that thing....
Well thanks for reading and probably see ya ll this weekend,
Nathan
ps kits soon...better late then never!
Monday, July 14, 2008
Sunday, July 13, 2008
After the Doc ride Saturday we went to our friends 80's theme party, best I could do was an old school descent jersey, some short shorts of Lindsay's and a pink headband with orange work glasses. Lindsay went for the Poofy bangs too much lipstick look..and Asa sported the fraggle rock shirt, which was and is the coolest kids television show ever made!
My Mom called and wanted to hang out with the kids, so we took the opportunity to try this things out. Its a mountain tandem, but it has slick and no shock. Jerry Leair borrowed it to us and it can get going pretty good with a tailwind. we were out for like 3-4 hours. We rode out to the Muir trails and tried a 1 mile red loop with the slicks on, we managed it well, only out of the clips once,not bad for old school and slicks. I wanted to try some more trails but with the slicks we were going pretty slow and we were trying to do some sort of an endurance ride, so we needed to be working a little bit harder then soft pedaling. After the red loop we saw Holly and Christine in the parking lot, chatted a bit and then took off seeing what we could average on the way home.
On the way home we averaged about 23, with a head wind most the time. I wonder what we could do with a road tandem thats not so old school. Its a lot of fun though. It seems to be way more of a force workout then anything else,my heart rate was not sky rocketing but my muscle felt really worked. At the end of the ride i kinda hit a wallafter we tried hanging onto this IsCorp guys wheel who was moto pacing. That lasted about a min. Thats when I realized how toasted I was...I was low on water and sugar and had about 3 hour of semi hard work in the legs, but it was so much fun seeing what we could try and do together.
Thanks for reading,
Nathan
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Dopers
I totally Love this commercial!
The other take back the tour one is cool too. Maybe I will get that up here.
a few Challenges...
Name riders being focused on in each scene.
Are they all dopers?
What were they caught for?
Year they were caught?
If your really bored and wanna show how much of a tour buff you are include the year and stage of the scenes of riders.
Also I would love to hear peoples opinions of the commercial. I am assuming the shorter one on TV is due to cost, but some people are saying its because not all the people featured here are dopers?
All for fun and my own interest.
In the riding world, I just came off a rest week or transition week as some call it, no riding and lots of rest. Time to build another peak. Started off with the sat. morning doc ride with kyle and Lindsay today. It was fast and pretty hard efforts, especially when I waited for a guy who flatted and me and 2 other riders pulled a group of 6, that were nice enough to wait back, up to the group. I did a lot of work at the front and it hurts to walk down stairs now. Guess I got a muscular endurance and anaerobic ride out the way for the week.
Found my camera so should have more pics for you guys now. Eventually gonna get to this tag thing holly marked me for, I think to much when it comes to stuff like that...
Thanks for reading,
Nathan
Monday, July 7, 2008
OOOPS
This weekend I learned the hard way why this
Is called PRE-race and not just called RACE.
Been using this product as an energy kick before my races and so I figured since a lot of gel companies are putting caffeine and such in their products, I would improvise on my hammer gel, put a serving of the PRE-race in.
Out of the many mistakes I have made in racing this one I am having a bit of regret about. I planned a peak around this race and with how I was feeling the first 2 laps I am slightly frustrated with why I would try something different then I have been doing.
So it went like this,
Start was good, in the break, Landon biffed on the rock garden, subsequently back four turned into chase. I think it was Dallas, Tristan, Landon and me. We caught up to Travis, and eventually Travis, Landon, and myself got away after chasing down an attack Landon put on. At this point I felt great and thought it was a fight for 5th place over the next two laps. I started in on the gel and BAM, I continually felt like I was hyper ventilating and my heart rate would not go down at any point, it was like being on Cocaine. I slowed and let Travis and Landon go, thinking maybe it would subside. MacIej and an MN rider came up who I think was Josh Shivley, I had a little kick left so I led them a bit but it was the same thing after a minute or two, hyper ventilating and HR not coming down. Slowed again, after about 3 different efforts of trying to hang wheels and shorter times to blowup, I just spun around. I knew better but I thought maybe it was a bonk...I asked for a gel from the team and of course I was handed a bottle of Hammer gel I had setup for my sister as a pre-race shot, after downing it I realized from the taste that I was in for more spaz effect... During my fourth lap I started to get a little worried as I was getting really light headed on any uphills, and this was climbing in my smallest gear...I slammed as much water as I could get my hands on remembering when something similar, but not as severe, had happened about a month or so ago. I recovered enough to hang onto the last guys wheel passing me before the finish and sprint for a place that really didn't matter in the overall picture. In that situation I wonder, should I sprint with him to let him have it but not feel like I gave it to him or take it cause thats racing and thats the fun of it for both of us. Kinda torn on that move. After I sprinted i could hardly hold myself up, and this was after pretty much relaxing/spinning easy for an entire lap with a very short sprint, couldn't catch my breath for ten minutes or so. Seriously the second half of this race was like a flashback to my using days, I better stick to the PRE part of the Pre-Race before I end up like this guy.
31st overall, guess thats not bad for just spinning around the course for 2 laps. THANK YOU SO MUCH EVERYONE WHO CHEERED ME ON, I really needed the motivation to even keep pedaling. I just kept thinking "this ones for the team", since 31st in elite is solid team competition points.
Now to figure out what to do with this poorly planned peak..3 weeks till next WORS, and I don't exactly have the life style at the moment to head east with the top five from this weekend for some NMBS action. Maybe I should mix it up with some local road racing since superweek is upon us.
I will get some pics and race reports for the team up later.
Thanks for reading,
Nathan
Is called PRE-race and not just called RACE.
Been using this product as an energy kick before my races and so I figured since a lot of gel companies are putting caffeine and such in their products, I would improvise on my hammer gel, put a serving of the PRE-race in.
Out of the many mistakes I have made in racing this one I am having a bit of regret about. I planned a peak around this race and with how I was feeling the first 2 laps I am slightly frustrated with why I would try something different then I have been doing.
So it went like this,
Start was good, in the break, Landon biffed on the rock garden, subsequently back four turned into chase. I think it was Dallas, Tristan, Landon and me. We caught up to Travis, and eventually Travis, Landon, and myself got away after chasing down an attack Landon put on. At this point I felt great and thought it was a fight for 5th place over the next two laps. I started in on the gel and BAM, I continually felt like I was hyper ventilating and my heart rate would not go down at any point, it was like being on Cocaine. I slowed and let Travis and Landon go, thinking maybe it would subside. MacIej and an MN rider came up who I think was Josh Shivley, I had a little kick left so I led them a bit but it was the same thing after a minute or two, hyper ventilating and HR not coming down. Slowed again, after about 3 different efforts of trying to hang wheels and shorter times to blowup, I just spun around. I knew better but I thought maybe it was a bonk...I asked for a gel from the team and of course I was handed a bottle of Hammer gel I had setup for my sister as a pre-race shot, after downing it I realized from the taste that I was in for more spaz effect... During my fourth lap I started to get a little worried as I was getting really light headed on any uphills, and this was climbing in my smallest gear...I slammed as much water as I could get my hands on remembering when something similar, but not as severe, had happened about a month or so ago. I recovered enough to hang onto the last guys wheel passing me before the finish and sprint for a place that really didn't matter in the overall picture. In that situation I wonder, should I sprint with him to let him have it but not feel like I gave it to him or take it cause thats racing and thats the fun of it for both of us. Kinda torn on that move. After I sprinted i could hardly hold myself up, and this was after pretty much relaxing/spinning easy for an entire lap with a very short sprint, couldn't catch my breath for ten minutes or so. Seriously the second half of this race was like a flashback to my using days, I better stick to the PRE part of the Pre-Race before I end up like this guy.
31st overall, guess thats not bad for just spinning around the course for 2 laps. THANK YOU SO MUCH EVERYONE WHO CHEERED ME ON, I really needed the motivation to even keep pedaling. I just kept thinking "this ones for the team", since 31st in elite is solid team competition points.
Now to figure out what to do with this poorly planned peak..3 weeks till next WORS, and I don't exactly have the life style at the moment to head east with the top five from this weekend for some NMBS action. Maybe I should mix it up with some local road racing since superweek is upon us.
I will get some pics and race reports for the team up later.
Thanks for reading,
Nathan
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