Down Time

I am currently taking some time off the bike. I have a good cold and I know if I rest my body will be able to recover from it faster.
I am going to do a mountain bike race in October. It is the last WORS race of the year, and Team Extreme has quite a good showing. I borrowed a bike to start hitting the trails, hoping to get some off road handling skills. I used to ride mountain bike a lot, but it has been about 10 years. I will be racing a much nicer bike than the one I am currently borrowing. I am hoping to hit the trails (Greenbush, New Fane, and the one in West Bend) on Saturday's. Riding mountain bike once a week should be enough to help my skills.
I still plan on riding plenty on the road as soon as I get over this cold. Sunday's I will look to do longer rides and during the week I will be just winging it on how I feel. I have a charity ride that I am doing in September and the Loberg 100 in October.
Labor day weekend Tammy and I will be headed to Oxford and we will be taking our bikes with us, so, we should be able to get some good rides in. I am really hoping I feel 100 percent better by then.

Race the Lake 2012!

2012 Race the Lake was my fourth year in a row. This race is a 90 mile road race that starts in Fond Du Lac and goes around Lake Winnebago. This race starts at 5:45am, that is too dam early! The weather started off a bit cool, but I was able to warm up quickly. This year my goals were to make it up the climb (High Cliff) with the lead group, stay towards the front, and top 3 in my age bracket. Last year I finished 6th in my age bracket, so I figured that this could be a do able goal.
OK, this is how the race went for me in my eyes. I started in first wave 2nd row, great starting position, but if you were to start in the back of the pack, this would be better for timing. Anyways I am not going to dwell on that. The pace wasn't bad and kept towards the front, as long as I could see the front I was happy. There were a couple times when I knew we were coming to more of a dangerous section and I would move closer to the front. Oh by the way there was a small break that went off the front from the start, but we caught them later on. When we were getting close to High Cliff I started making my way towards the front as much as I could. The pace at this point was pretty fast. All I can say about the climb is that I did it to the best of my ability and that kept me with the group. I was in the hurt locker though, but hey I made it. From this point it was relatively boring and was waiting for the fireworks to happen. Nothing, OK, maybe when we get close to St. Peters where there is a $700.00 cash pay out to the first person that crosses the line. Good payout right? I thought so, and was waiting for some of the teams to line it up and make everyone suffer, but that never happened. I wish me and my teammates would have planned to try to go for it, I think we could have had a good chance. Oh well, St. Peters was like 80 miles into the race. Now that we are getting close to the end it is going to get interesting, mainly because there were so many people in the lead group. When we crossed over Hwy 151, now with one guy off the front, it is going to start to get crazy. We never catch that guy the went off the front. It was crazy though, people were fighting for position and making really big stupid choices. With two turns to go, I saw an opening and went through that corner and then I was 2nd wheel, from here it is probably like 700 meters to the finish. I was waiting patiently to go, even though I had someone behind me telling that everyone was coming. This guy was trying to get me to go early. I did wait for others to start the sprint and then I went, and could have been a lot better but, there were 2 people that were leaning up against each other like crazy right in front of my and thought for sure they were going to crash, so that screwed up my sprint. That being said I am still happy with the result. Team finished 3rd in the men's class and I finished 14th overall and 3rd in my age bracket.
o.a. age   bib    name                                                               time          avg. speed
14     3     130     Werbelow, Jeramey West Bend, WI M 30-34   03:26:28.0        25.7

I am not going to do this race next year! I fear for my life every year. I just don't find it as fun as I used to.

ElK Grove, IL

First off let me say that I was talked into doing this race by a team mate, and I am glad it did it. Race was in Elk Grove, IL in a residential neighborhood. Course was great, smooth roads, and the corners were easy to handle if you new how to ride your bike. Turn  one was a  180 degree corner and many didn't know how to take it, but we all made it through with out crashing. Turn five was another one that people had a hard time with too. Weather was perfect, sunny and warm!
I picked Travis up at 7am (team mate) and we headed down. Race didn't start till 11am, but I always like to be @ 2 hours early. This leads to plenty of time to get ready and no rushing around. We were there plenty early, we walked the course, pinned our numbers and relaxed a bit before warming up. I happened to fall again landing on my bad wrist and scrapping my elbow pretty good. What happened was we were headed to the bathroom and there was some one walking on the sidewalk towards us and didn't move over. I went off the sidewalk and when I tried to get back on the sidewalk my tire caught the edge of the concrete and I fell over, distinctively trying to break my fall with my hand and my bad wrist that just doesn't flex like it should. OUCH, didn't even care about my elbow bleeding, that really didn't hurt, but my wrist sure did. And now I have to race my bicycle, how the heck is this going to go?
Anyways we lined up and again I was towards the back. I need to plan my starts better, and start further up. Race started pretty fast and it took me a little while to get comfortable breathing super hard. I started to move up in the pack. I managed this very well staying off the complete front. I played around with many lines through the corners figuring out where I can apply the "X" factor the best. Travis wanted to try a break and he did twice, but it wasn't going to happen. Everyone was being very attentive and aggressive with every move. This allowed me to sit in and just move though out the pack where I was comfortable. The race wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. I was waiting for the pace to lift up at the end and it did multiple times. I timed the sprint the best to my ability and was able to squeeze out a 4th place finish to collect a $100.00 check. This was a great day of racing for myself. I wish Travis would have felt better, but his fitness will come back around quick.
Up coming, a team ride meeting at Juniper 61 on Saturday (one of our sponsors). Race the Lake is August 19th, so this is just around the corner. Looking forward to it.......I think.

Double Race Weekend

Saturday's race was in Bayview held by Superweek. Course was rough but awesome. Weather was great, but there are very small fields. Our field was combined with the Pro 1,2 women. I raced very hard, chasing breaks and trying to make a break. Didn't play the sprint out right and placed 4th.
Sunday's race was in Whitefish Bay also held by Superweek. I have done this course before and I really like it. So, I thought I would give it shot again. Like Saturday's race the field was very small and again raced with the women. Two people broke off the front, 1 guy with 1 woman, I couldn't chase it down. I did have a little help, but no enough to bring them back. So, they eventually caught back up to us. I did manage to win the the field sprint and collect $20.00.
Next race isn't for a while. I will be doing Race the Lake in the middle of August. Now, I will be trying to work on longer rides along with some good intensity work outs too.

Catching Up!

Yeah I know it has been a long while since my last post. I have been really busy and haven't really had the time to blog. Now, let me see what I can remember since it has been so long.

Downer race was very very fast for me. I started on the line a lot further back than I would have liked, making it hard to move up. I sprinting out of turn two every lap. I was caught behind a crash screwing up any momentum that I had going. After the crash it seemed that the race really got hard. I was in a group that was split off of the leading group and there were a lot of racers that didn't want to do any work. I thought that there was only like 6 of us in our group, but when I finished the race I was told there was close to 30 or so racers. If only we all could have worked together we might have been able to catch back on. Anyways, our group did get pulled with 7 laps to go, overall I didn't place that well, but I still had fun and got a really good workout.

I skipped Sundays race in Madison around the capital. I did go out for a 36 mile ride. If I recall I went out with my wife for a bit and then kept going.

July 4th I went out for a 74 mile ride w/some team mates. It was nice to get in a bit of a longer ride in.

July 7th was the State Criterium Championship. This was a great course put on by LAPT, but the Cat. 3 field was tiny, I think there were 15 racers. Travis my team mate wanted to get into a break. He did get into a break and I would like to say that part of that break was made because of me letting a gap build and making others chase. There was a 6 man break leaving me with the rest and by the end of the race there were only 2 of us. Travis finished 2nd and I finished 8th. I think I could have done a lot better if I would have been in the break, but this is how it ends up sometimes when you are trying to be a team player.

Superweek Downer race on July 14th! This was a combined Pro, 1,2,3 along with Masters, which I believe is due to lack of support from the City and community. They ran 3 races ONLY, Cat. 4/5, Womens and then the race I did. Racing was suppose to start at 6:15pm and I was suppose to start racing a 7:30pm. I believe that we didn't start till after 8PM! This was a 90 minute criterium race which was the longest criterium race I have done so far. It was very fast and I remember looking at the clock at 33 minutes and saying to myself I should just pull out. I didn't and I am really glad, I was able to finish the race, not any results but did finish. I know there were others that pulled out. Believe it or not I am really satisfied with how I raced and it was really fun racing in the dark too!

Tammy is getting a new bike, how exciting is that? I am definitely more excited than she is. It is a Trek Madone 4.5 which is outfitted w/Ultegra and 105, I did upgrade her wheels to Bontrager Carbon/Aluminum aero wheels. I can't wait to see it and ride with her.

I am planning on racing again this weekend, still Super week races, but Cat. 3 races, New Berlin Saturday and Whitefish Bay Sunday. After these races I will be putting in some longer rides and get ready for Race the Lake.

Back to Racing!

Grafton T.o.A.D. race was very fast. I raced the Cat. 2/3 race and held on for dear life. I avoided a big crash with 6 or 7 laps to go. I was pleased just to finish with out crashing, I finished 35th.

Waukesha T.o.A.D. race was even more hurtful. I did the same category race and to was glad to just finish with out crashing. There were 3 crashes in the race and one being on the final lap in turn 1. I finished 27th. A good weekend of racing in my book.

T.o.A.D. is so much faster than WCA races. I am having a lot of fun and am looking forward to Downer this coming Saturday. Should be another barn burner!

I know these race reports seem short, but hey, what can I say? I didn't do any attacking, no chasing breaks, all I did was try to hang on and not crash. These races were really fast, so fast that I have some new record power numbers!

Cross Training

I have been cross training. Not because it is what I need, but because my wife had a so call weekend project that she wanted to do. Which requires a lot of help from me of course. Project was to make a short retaining wall for a flower garden. This is going to give our house some curb appeal.
We started it Saturday the 26th of May (Memorial weekend). I have worked on it everyday and finally finished it June 3rd. Well, not completely done, I still have some piles of dirt to clean up. I posted some before/after pictures.

Now it is time to get back to my bicycle training. I was hoping to get back on track this past weekend. Saturday though I did get out and ride for @ 3hr 30min. I met up with Jim S. and Ryan P. and we rolled down to Thiensville to meet up with what was suppose to be a Team Extreme group ride. Only one other person showed up and we started be heading east then north. He was only able to ride with us for a bit and then he turned around. We kept going north to Fredonia and then we headed west to come back home. When we hit Newburg we were all pretty tired, but pushed on and finished the ride. I ended up with @ 65 miles. It was good to be back on the bike, the last time I rode was May 24th.

Sunday, I was planning on racing but, I needed to help with the front yard. So, I didn't race or ride. I am hoping to get back to consistent training soon. Only thing in the way is the dirt piles that I need to get cleaned that will require a skid loader and dump truck.