Doctor says...

Doctor: Wow, you have really good lung function. 118% of the predicted value for someone your age, height, and gender. Of course, you're an athlete. OK now go ride your bike for a half hour let's see what changes.
Me: Sure thing, Doc.
(30min later)
Doctor: Hmmm well it looks like your exhalation has dropped 3% or so over baseline, that's short of Asthmatic by the usual standards but often in athletes it takes longer to really show - but wow your inhalation figures here are way off. Let's do a little laryngoscopy to check that out.
Me: Ummm... OK whatever you say.

(5min later)

Me: (Coughing, Sneezing, Eyes Watering) Holy Jay-sus what the F*ck was that about!
Doctor: I just shoved an 8 inch tube with a light and a camera up your nose and down your throat to take a look at your larynx and see what is up. You have more mucus than I have ever seen. I can't even make out your vocal cords. That's probably what's been bothering you.
Me: What can I do about it that doesn't involve a tube up the nose?
Doctor: Here, try a Neti pot and some Flonase. Meanwhile go get a needle shoved up your arm to do a blood test for allergies, in case that's what's causing all this mucus. Like I said, that's a crazy amount of mucus, man. It's amazing you can breathe.
Me: Awesome. Great. Where's the door?
Doctor: Straight ahead. Oh, and here's your bill...
Me: (blinking) Holy Jay-sus!!!!!

And that didn't even have a happy ending ... now I feel like someone Rufied my nasal spray. What happened and why is there a tiger in my bathroom?

Enumclaw

Looong drive up to Seattle to crash with Jordan from UW (thanks man!), then race Enumclaw. Saturday morning TT - did a mediocre ride and that was that. Then I drove around and sat in various places doing school work until the 730pm crit.

The crit... was a sh*t-show. The rain started dumping down, cold, during the cat 3 race and those guys were sliding all over the road. The downtown course is an 8-corner, figure 8 type of thing with manhole covers in just the right places and a few bumps that make it pretty safe if you pick your line well, but sketchy when guys touch their brakes in corners or move a few inches off the line. So I was on the fence about trying to finish and after the first pile-up on lap 2 or 3 I thought "this is pretty dumb" and stuck to the field until 10min were up, then let go and rode around just hard enough with some other guys to make it another 10min and then sat the hell up. 25min ride, pretty chill, totally safe, and no issues. Now, purposely getting pulled is a bit controversial as a strategy but the way I look at it, I'm not in GC contention, I've got no-one to work for and bike racing isn't my job, so what would the purpose of finishing be? All I really wanted was to get through and ride the road race.

The road race was a blast, but selective and hard. It was basically on flat roads with on longer climb, a flat ridge up top, and a high-way descent. And some wind. I think we rode 50-54km/hr until the base of the climb on the first of five laps. On tight, one-lane country roads some of which had no centerline so the moto kept riding next to us honking and yelling. Then we hit the climb, and McKissick and some others set sail and people started blowing up all over the place. It regrouped, then went at a more reasonable pace for the next four laps but still kept spitting guys out the back every time up the climb until the final field had maybe 40 riders - we started with 93. Then the finish came super fast again on tight roads back to the crit course and I just rode in. All in all a good race though I didn't do so much.

Campagnolo drivetrain, Shimano 10 wheel - no pulley.

That's the underside of a Campagnolo Daytona 10spd derailleur. A little creative bolting makes it now work beautifully with a Shimano 10 speed wheel (I don't own Campy cassettes or wheels). Since a Campy cassette is wider than a Shimano one, and the derailleur correspondingly travels further between shifts than Shimano, I had to increase the leverage of the cable over the derailleur to reduce the travel just a little bit until it matched up. A few minutes with some washers, a 5mm Allen wrench and a small pair of pliers tweaked the rotation of my little clamp until the shifting was spot on - or at least pretty dang close, which is just as good since all derailleurs have a little float in the top pulley anyways to compensate for misalignment.

And voila. Not very hard to do, takes only a little adjustment to dial in. One could conceivably sell special-made clamps to do the same thing, now that Jtek isn't making their pulleys anymore (which work really well - I have one on my race bike for the same purpose).

Oh me feel so clever right now.

Holy Asthma, Batman

This lung thing is still around and it's really weird - some days are fine, other days air just doesn't go in. Today I was breathing so fast while putting out so few Watts that I actually cramped up my side in the TT - totally bizzare. Last week, no real issue. So I've got a date with a pulmonologist to get it sorted out and get me a TUE for Natz for whatever they end up giving me.

At least I can say I seem to have the aero thing almost settled - given the watts being way down I'm still riding well over 28mph with no troubles so a little visit to analyticcycling.com gives some positive drag numbers. Now if the O2 comes back in next week and the watts go where they have in the past - it'll be quick. If not, so be it.

And, I registered for the Mutual of Enumclaw today to go explore Washington racing and get out of Oregon - I had no desire to try and three-peat the TTT or do circles around the Volcano at Mt. Tabor this weekend. I'd rather do a stage race that just might suit me if all goes well - nice flat hard TT, a crit to sit in on, and a road race with a solid rythm climb to decide the final day. Fingers crossed I get my crap together and perform decently.

Silverton: 95%

That's how I'm feeling: 95%. The missing 5% is anything and everything involving accelerating my bicycle. Endurance is back, sustainable power is back, lungs are almost back. I can grind a big gear again, close gaps, ride fast. I just can't dance on the pedals and match surges anymore. So Silverton was all about getting gapped off my groups, and grinding my way back on. Three times: on the second climb headed towards the back of the course, on laps 2, 3 and 4.

Lap 2: I'm right at the front when the hammer goes down, I can't match the jumps, find myself behind the 2nd group on the road, with 20-some guys ahead of me and the race blown up. Uh-oh crunch time. Keep grinding it out, end up pulling away from the couple of guys I was with and riding on to the back of the 2nd group. Then jumping away from them and bridging solo to the break of the day. Nice, except that it took way more energy than it should have.

Lap 3: We've caught the two early solo breakaways, now there's about 12 guys in the lead group here and some silly beggar throws down an attack. I'm gapped big-time along with maybe 3-4 others. I just keep grinding along at the same pace, Carlson and I trade turns ride ourselves back to the group again.

Lap 4: The beggars do it again, and I go right off again and there are 5 guys ahead of me and I'm alone. 2 guys up front get their own gap and they are gone. Browning comes up and we pull ourselves through the 20" gap to the 3 guys left ahead of us and we all stick together until the line. Where I promptly get gapped when they all sprint. Damnit. It's worse than usual, like any fast twitch I ever did have all atrophied and died. Sad. Those are kind of useful in bike racing.

Recombobulation

This sign hangs just past the X-Ray machines in the Milwaukee airport. This is one of the first signals I have ever seen that the TSA actually “gets” it.

I used to think (and have stated) that TSA stands for Thousands, Standing Around. And every time I go through security at an airport I see both silly letter-of-the-rule applications and failures to follow their own policy (in 4 flights no-one asked me to open my metal coffee container, which is x-ray proof, but they did give a teammate grief about his 8oz of hummus. He was let through.)

Now I almost think that there is someone out there who gets it.

What I don't get - if you can be discombobulated, and you can now also be recombobulated, what does it mean to be just combobulated, period?

Post-Race

Saturday night - banquet. Listened to John Burke tell us how awesome Trek is. Wondered why my teammates here picked the clothing that they did.

Sunday - rode to Waterloo. Saw the Trek headquarters. Saw all of Waterloo in about 8 minutes and failed to find anything but some cheap bars. No coffee, no outdoor seated anything, no nothing. Lots of houses for sale - if it weren't for the great Trek Bicycle Co headquarters there couldn't be much there, as even the dairy cows were looking for work.

Crash Fail, Tire Fail

Sort of. It all started with a sketchy descent in pouring rain and people's carbon wheels (including mine) not braking a well in the wet as they do in the dry. So I battled up front from the gun and took the safe position rolling down the hill. But a crash in the pack on the first kicker of the day left me in a ditch pointed the wrong way and overgeared, I got going again and chased back on at the bottom of the big climb and everything exploded. Then I flatted out of my chase group. And Shimano had no more wheels, and no-one would give me a ride ("There 'might' be a broom wagon" the Shimano guys shouted from the back of their warm SUV with a spare seat - there wasn't) until Lenny's Dad found me and helped me get back to the van.

That's OK though, there's three more days of riding around here and plenty of coffee shops. Not to mention a mid-western brew or two to try out.

Madison

Dave and I went for a shake out ride this morning in Madison. We did a nice 38mi loop, after bumping around through town and ending up at some Trek concept store where a nice guy named Bryan directed us to Old Sauk Road, which we proceeded to ride around and make a loop out of in America's Dairyland.

After catching the morning rays and waving at the cows we found a little coffee shop to sit in and do our school work for a few hours, then when I asked the cute little redhead behind the counter at 530 as they were closing if they sold their day-old pastries, she said no, but she would be happy to give me a bag of rolls and cakes and biscuits that they just pulled out of the counters, no charge. We each walked away with a paper bag full of comfort that will get us through the week.

I am definitely going back to that coffee shop tomorrow.

Madison, Wisconsin. This is a town I can get behind.

Kind of funny

... to be riding 27mph, nothing hurts, HR is low, but you just can't push the gas pedal any harder. Like being stuck in 3rd gear. More than a mile an hour slower than my 40k speed last year, 30Watts below threshold, heart rate ten beats low. Easy, just not fast.

That's the first Coburg TT in a nutshell. Good news is, the lungs are clearing in a big way, bad news is, I'm feeling 90% strong. Good news is, that's better than three days ago, and miles ahead of 5 days ago, and a light-year ahead of a week-ago. So on that trajectory, all should be good for Collegiate Nationals on Friday.

Sure hope so... 8,000 ft of climbing in 70some miles, but at least that's my only race and I get to spend another three full days doing long rides and sitting in coffee shops / breweries in Madison and wondering how I got so lucky.

Results? Meh. It's about the good times.

When a finish is a triumph

The lung infection thing kicked my butt this week. I didn't ride until Wednesday, and that was a disaster where I began to feel bonked (though I had just eaten a good lunch) about 20min into the ride with David and Azul, and proceeded to absolutely suffer. Feeling completely weak, having a hard time breathing, my HR was depressed yet I could barely ride a steady wheel. Thursday was better, and I ran into the Thursday Nighter that started off "club pace". So I barely hung on over Welders while they were going far easier than we ever race it on a Thursday.

Friday was much better though my legs felt terrible, so I decided to give the Roubaix a go today for the heck of it. I already was on the volunteer list for the afternoon, so my AM race was comped and it was looking to be a warm day. And, surprise surprise, I finished with the pack, despite my legs hurting at every effort all day. They felt like they had a four day training block in them. But the lungs worked and I got almost all the air I needed, so I just rode it out.

The next two days will be embarrassingly slow coffee rides to try and wash the soreness away. Then the first Coburg TT, two more days and a plane flight to Madison, and then Collegiate Nationals. Hopefully this will all be nothing more than an unusual taper and everything functions properly in Wisconsin.