Single Speeding

My ’67 Schwinn Supersport single speed bike has been getting a significant amount of use of the course of the last few weeks.  As noted in my previous blog, I managed to crack the right rear seat stay on my 2010 Trek Madone 6.9 during the first race of the Tour of America’s Dairyland.  The picture below is slightly hard to see but the crack is between the “R” and the “E” of Trek.

Extreme Ski & Bike sent my frame back to Trek for analysis on June 27^th.  Trek, being the best bicycle company in the industry, is warranting my frame and has currently has the frame in the paint department.  Yup, the paint department!  Trek is going further out of their way to put my ProjectOne yellow and black colors on the Madone.  This type of customer service has definitely won me over and I will only be riding a Trek road bike for the rest of my life.  The new frame should be arriving in the near future; however, my patience is starting to wane because of not having a geared road bike for almost 3 weeks during the middle of the racing season.

Being without a geared bike for 3 weeks left me with little options on how to precede with training after late June, so my vintage single speed bike became the training tool of choice.  Whether it was a good choice or not is currently up for debate though.  Riding a single speed is good for smoothing out and increasing cadence; however, is not a good training method for keeping up fitness for criterium racing.  I suppose that a short period of time training solely on the single speed would be beneficial, may a week or so, but after about 2 weeks the point of diminishing returns is established.  

Yesterday I participated in my first race during the month of July.  I borrowed a teammate bike and tried to set up my fit dimensions on the bike to help ensure a bit of comfort.  Race started out fine but by half way through I could tell my fitness level had decreased.  Turning a big gear over like I was used to has become a bit of a struggle.  Sluggish muscles didn’t allow for an easy race, even one in which most of the time we didn’t work that hard.  Any hard acceleration had me going from the front to the back because of having to take a while to wind up the speed.  Finished mid-pack, did even try to contest.  Good race nonetheless to open the legs up a bit.

A few good races are coming up this weekend with the Downer Classic in MKE on Saturday and the Evanston Grand Prix near Chicago on Sunday.  Should be a good time and an enjoyable weekend in the racing community with my best supporters, my wife Amy and my son William!

Play The Hand Your Dealt

Holidays have come and gone and so has the month of June so I figured it’s time to update this blog.  The end of May and all of June have been extremely busy resulting in my lack of providing updates.  Or is it my pure laziness that led to the neglect of this blog?  I’ll let you decide the verdict on this one but I’ve got plenty of evidence to acquit myself from the latter.  Anyway, May ended with a few races in the Mississippi River area of Illinois and Iowa with Snake Alley and Quad Cities criterium.  Snake Alley was tough as usual and bumpier this year than last.  Rain caused mayhem and overfilled tire pressure caused some climbing issues.  I finished the race nonetheless but managed to crash after the finish thanks to a an idiot stopping an pulling a u-turn 30 meters after the finish line.  I clocked him at over 30 mph but I took the hurt from the crash.  Broken helmet… ouch.  Confidence wasn’t shaken though and two days later I was able to race to 5^th place at Quad Cities criterium on a 8 corner, hour glass shaped course.

June came and disappear in the blink of an eye.  No racing in the first half of the month and travel to Florida for work made for a relaxing setup before the Tour of Americas Dairyland (ToAD).  My category for ToAD this year was 2/3 which made for tougher and faster races than regular cat 3’s are used to.  One would surmise that the races would be fairly safe with experienced racers partaking in the events.  That conclusion would be on the opposite spectrum in the terms of safe riding.  Each race with exception to the individual TT was marred with crashes.  On the opening day I managed to use a guy’s bike as a ramp to do some tricks in the air.  I didn’t exactly stick the landing though, but did stay upright.  While not an elegant landing and not crashing, the bike took some strain of some sort that cracked the seat stay on the drive train side.  Being a determined racer and knowing that the area the crack was in wouldn’t cause a catastrophic failure if the seat stay completely broke apart, I continued to race on the frame for the remainder of the Tour. 

The highlight of ToAD for me was having an absolutely fantastic day on the bike during the individual TT.  Placing 3^rd I got the chance to stand on the podium.  Overall my average result for the series was between 10^th and 20^th.  Those somewhat consistent results landed me in a tie for 10^th place overall.  I’ll take it considering I was racing with guys a level up!  After a bit of research I was able to identify that I placed 3^rd overall for guys that were Cat 3’s!  Definitely a confidence booster!

With a broke frame I had to send the bike back to Trek for evaluation.    The owner of the shop I race for (Extreme Ski & Bike in Thiensville, WI) sent my frame to Trek a little over week ago and I just got word yesterday that I’d be getting my new frame either late this week or sometime next week.  Trek prides itself on great bikes and excellent customer support.  Their bikes and in my opinion, world-class support have definitely made me a lifetime customer of Trek bikes.  I can’t thank Extreme Ski & Bike and Trek enough for the continued support they’ve provided me over the years.  Two top notch companies!

Going back to the title of this entry, one thing I’ve learned over the course of the last few months is that you have to play with the hand your dealt.  Crashing and coming back to place well in the next race, racing on a broken frame, and dealing with the fact you’ll never have full use of your arm again.  Yes, after analysis by a specialist in neurology, there is nothing that I will be able to do about my right arm in which I only have 40% range of motion.  Long story short, had a small surgery that may have caused scar tissue to develop on a nerve that provides electrical signals to the shoulder muscles.  This is only in theory because the recent MRI didn’t show any nerve damage or excessive scar tissue buildup.  The specialist noted that only a small layer of scar tissue may compress the nerve enough to interrupt transmissions to fire the muscles.  Any further surgery to investigate the problem could result in more severe consequences so there’s no option but living with having to compensate with other muscles to utilize my arm fully.  Play the hand your dealt.  Better yet, I’ll just change the rules.

July will be another month full of racing starting with the State Criterium Championship.  I may not be able to participate in the championship due to lack of a bike but being that I haven’t participated in this race for the last two years, it doesn’t bother me too much.  It’s only one race with a title of a championship.  There’s bigger races out there that mean a lot more to me.  Speaking of those, ICC-Superweek starts at the end of this week.  I’ll be looking to participate in a number of the races around the MKE area.  Those races will make up the majority of the racing in July.  And a few of the biggest races that I have my eye on for the remainder of the 2011 racing season include the Tour of Elk Grove and the Gateway Cup, a 4-day racing series in St. Louis over Labor Day weekend.  Those races are what I call championships.

Check back periodically on this blog.  I’ll try to be a little more consistent with updates