Category Archives: bike

RACE REPORT #11 Cherry Creek TT series – week 6 CAT 4

There is one more week to go, but this was my last race of the series as I will be on the road to Utah next week. It was good to go out with my best time yet – 25:25, which put me 23rd out of 46. Mr. 50% again… I had ridden pretty hard up High Grade last night, sacrificing a little bit of leg freshness tonight for extra training in advance of my big race next week. I felt pretty decent, finally getting my heart rate up over 180 like it should be. I tried a new strategy – my teammate Marco said that an average speed of 24.7mph was needed to get below 25 minutes. I set my computer to display the average speed and focused on keeping it as high as I could. With a couple miles to go, it dropped to 24.6 – I cranked as hard as I could and went faster, and faster as the line closed in. By the time I crossed it, my average was up to 25mph. I was pumped! Then I looked at my time – dang! Didn’t break 25:00, but got my best yet. Need to check Marco’s math, though…

I ended up 29th out of 62 in the series.

Posted in bike, race

High Grade observations

May 18

Posted by chrisboyack

You’ve probably noticed by now that I’m pretty obsessed with my times up a climb that I live near. High Grade is a good test of fitness and has been my measuring-stick over the last year and a half. The wind can influence times a bit, but I still like to use it as a point of reference.

On my climb today, my time was 59:54 – which wasn’t very spectacular. It just amuses me to think of how HARD I tried to break an hour last year, and never came within 3 minutes. Now, it seems like on any given day – even with a headwind and average legs like today, breaking an hour is almost a sure thing.

On the steepest part of the climb, I was in a 19 tooth cog holding just under 10mph. Last year, I would climb this section in my 25 tooth (granny-gear) and struggle to grind out 4-6mph while thrashing around all over the bike. Guess that’s called taking it to a new level.

Posted in bike, training

RACE REPORT #10 Last Chance at Castle Rock CAT 4/35+

May 15

Posted by chrisboyack

My recipie for a great race. Get up at 5:30 on Saturday morning, pack all the gear in the car, drive 40 minutes to the course. Pay money, go through warmup routine, line up with 40 other bozo’s and ride fast. Then mix a little of this, with a little of that, and you get a big one of these.

Fun while it lasted – which was about 6 minutes to be exact. Didn’t even finish the first lap!! I was lazy and didn’t bring pit wheels, thinking that if I flatted I would just fix it and possibly line up for a later race in one of the other categories. I didn’t count on destroying my tire! Oh, well – that’s bike racing for ya.

My teammate Steve narrowly missed the win! He did snag a new pair of Rudy Project glasses by winning an intermediate sprint, though. Nice work, there.