Ronde van Burns

The Ronde van Burns Summer Criterium Training Series starts in Little Rock this week and it is time to decide what Team Edge is going to do.  The CAT 5 race is only 20 minutes plus 3 laps and it starts at 5:00pm Wednesday night!  The Cat 4/Cat 5 race will follow at 5:40pm and will be 4o minutes plus 3 laps.

Competitive Cyclist, which is a really cool online store, is hosting the event this year.  They will be giving out gift certificates to the top four places each week and they will keep up with point totals to award a series champion when it is over.  I follow Competitive Cyclist’s tweets and they posted this a couple of weeks ago

compcyclistroad Scouring ebay for trophies for our impending crit series. Torn between 7ft tall BMX trophies from the 70’s & kitchy bowling trophies.

Like I said, they are a pretty cool place.

I am definitely attending and riding the CAT 5 race.  If Jason Haak is going, then I intend on riding the CAT4/CAT5 race after I ride the CAT5.  Even if Jason doesn’t want to go and enough people want to do the double, then I could certainly be talked into going in both races.  I believe that this would count as two races towards your CAT4 upgrades, but I will have to check that out. The entry fee for each race is an incredible $5, so don’t let finances make your decision.  I can skip a subway this week and spot you a race.

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What we need is info on who is going and how are they getting there.  We could carpool or caravan or get there on our own, we just need to know what the plan should be.  Brady mentioned today that he was interested.  Tim is unavailable this week but is planning on making it next week.  I am going to try and make all four weeks, especially if I can eek out any points in the first week or two.  If we have enough riders, I will gladly volunteer to attack and attack often to try weed out the competition and help our sprinters.

Here is a link to the info on the race.  This is a USCF event so, NO advertising on your jerseys.  Also, monetary prizes are only available for CAT4 and up.

http://www.competitivecyclist.com/ronde

Saturday morning is drawing near and I want to suggest another morning of interval workouts.  This week we’ll introduce some more sprint-type workouts that should improve our bursts of speed.  We met at Timothy’s last week at 9:00 and had 11 riders.  I look forward to at least that many this week.

The Bulldog 100 5k race is Saturday morning at 7:30 at TCC, so I may be a bit late to the ride.  If I’m not at Timothy’s go ahead and leave without me and I’ll meet up with y’all down in the bottoms where we worked out last Saturday.

I have an idea… We have scheduled training rides listed on our website and the occasional email goes out reminding everyone when we’ll be training. But, I know that there are several of us that ride individually at random times during the week and would like to be able to ride with a group if possible but it’s hard to call around to see who may be riding. Enter Twitter… Twitter is a way for us to keep with each other instantly by entering a “Tweet” that will go out to everyone that is following that individual. The messages are very short oneliners that could notify everyone participating via text messages and or emails. That way if I plan on riding today at 5:00 o’clock the message will go out and if you want to join me you can message back. That way we can send out one message to everyone instantly. Let me know if you are interested. You can check out the website at  www.twitter.com .

Kale

Tomorrow morning is going to be a great opportunity to get better for next month’s crit series in Little Rock.  Our Saturday rides have fallen off considerably and Saturday morning will be our first dry opportunity to workout as a team in a month.  I would like to invite everyone to come out and work hard to try and better themselves.  I would like to use tomorrow morning as a training session to deal with the issues that are going to present themselves in the upcoming crits.

This will not be a normal Saturday ride through the countryside.  We will warm-up for thirty minutes and then start doing some drills.  Unfortunately for us, crits place an intense demand on your respiratory system, so we WILL be doing intervals.  We will be working on increasing our lactate threshold and improving our recovery time after efforts.  This will keep you in the pack when the surges happen.  It will be painful but it will be helpful.  If you have a heart rate monitor  . . . wear it.

We will also work on our sprinting in case one of us makes a breakaway this year, we need to be able to finish it.

One of the nice things about this format, is that NO ONE will get dropped.  We will do most of our work down in the bottoms and we will likely go back and forth over the same stretch of road, so even the slowest riders will be with us the whole time.

Of course, if you would rather just do a ride through the countryside, that is completely acceptable as well.  I have no real authority here to change our format, but Dee had asked me to start pushing the Saturday rides more so  . . . push.

Well, we all enjoyed the weekend of racing and we need to get started planning our next events.

On our racing calendar our next event is the Arkansas State Championships in Lincoln Ar. That race is near Fayettville, but it looks like they found a course that misses all the real hills. This race doesn’t look any harder than what was at Rocky Mount and the feild is never as strong. That race is June 13th.

On June 6th there is a Road Race in Alexandria La. It is 29 miles of “rolling” roads. The Cat5 race starts at 10:00am. All though this is not one of our designated races, it is closer than many other races and we would be racing against some of the same guys we just raced.

Also in the month of June every Wednesday at 5:00pm there is a criterium in Little Rock that would be good for our team. Some riders have already decided that they are going to try to go to each one.

 I really encourage each of you to look at your schedules and try to make some of these races. The season is 1/2 way over and I don’t think any of us have five races to our credit. We can have even more fun as Cat4 racers next year.

Lastly, do not forget this Sunday’s World Championships Race at Crown Leasing (if it is not raining).

Thanks for making this year SO much fun so far,

Dee

Final Results of CAT 5 from the Rocky Mount Stage Race

Rocky Mount Results

Here are the results from this weekend.  Check out how you did . . . enjoy it for a moment . . . and then focus on doing better next year.  Saturday morning is our next workout.  Leave your bike helmets at home and bring your hardhats.  It’s time to get to work.  We have four crits next month and we WILL be better than we are now.

mis-er-a-ble – adj.

1. wretchedly unhappy, uneasy, or uncomfortable
2. manifesting misery
3. worthy of pity; deplorable
4. criteriums in the rain

When I arrived at the Centurytel Center at 6:30 Sunday morning for a 7:30 crit, I was amazed at the lack of cyclists there.  This was because the crit was not at the Centurytel Center this year.  That explains that.  I figured that little fact out about ten minutes later when I called and asked Dee where he was.  It was when he said, “Oh, man, they changed that this year” that it really hit me. 
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Pffffff….

It was absolutely the worst sound you could imagine hearing at that point.  Most of the CAT5 racers entered in this year’s Rocky Mount Stage Race were already at the starting line for Stage 2 and were simply awaiting their turn in the “race of truth”.  Several riders were already out on the course, including Team Edge’s Eric Smith, and Dee Bell was at the line.  Unattached rider Khari Omalara was “in the hole”, which metaphorically meant that he was third in line to start.  Of course, when we heard the previously mentioned sound, there was no question what unnatural phenomenon produced it and what “in the hole” literally meant. 
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It’s 10:15 and I have just finished getting my bike ready for tomorrow morning’s 7:30 crit in Shreveport, but I thought I would post an update on what the team did today.  The results for tonight’s Time Trial are not available at Lambra.org yet, so we still don’t know how the TT came out.  Dee felt that he did his best TT ever, but amongst all his other duties and getting ready for the weekend, he neglected to bring his bike computer for his sweet TT bike.  Eric posted a “thirteen something” time and I posted an 11:36 time.  The time trial was into a crazy tough headwind for the first two miles and then you had a 2.8 mile finish with a nice tailwind.  My average was 24.1 mph so we’ll see where that gets me.  The GC from the Saturday morning road race was posted at the TT, so I was able to find out that they did in fact give me the same time as the first group.  I was concerned that there might have been a large enough gap between my group and the final sprint that I might lose some time . . . but I didn’t.  I got third in the Hot Spot sprint which netted me zero bonuses.    However, with the bonuses factored in, I am currently :03 seconds out of a three-way tie for fourth place and :10 seconds out of a three-way tie for the lead.  Dee is 1:02 off the lead and Eric was 6:35 when I checked tonight.  That is, of course, before you factor in the TT.

The guy that raced for Tri-City Cycling and got third in today’s Road Race posted a ridiculous 10:55 time in the ITT, so I have no hope of catching him in the GC.  I am hoping that my TT can move me up the GC, but there was no way to find out what time was posted by the other riders tonight.  I’ll find out in the morning when I get to Shreveport whether the TT moved me up or down in the standings.

I do want to mention that it was absolutely fantastic having a full team there today.  I took great pride in knowing all of you were there as we rolled out.  I kept my eyes on the other teams mostly today, so I didn’t see when certain edgites got dropped, but from the post-race stories, Team Edge should be proud of their showing today.

P.S We missed you guys at the Time Trial.

Here is the link to register for the Rocky Mount Stage Race.

www.bikereg.com/events/register.asp?eventid=8380

We need everyone that can to attend and race! Register for the “Senior 5″ race at 8:10 AM.

Kale