WebGuy's Blog

Norton Commons Race Report

steven@bikeclicks.com — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:26:00 GMT

First off - this was a great venue for a crit. We arrived early and stayed all day and had something to do or watch or eat or whatever the entire time. The whole main street alfresco cafe style start/finish area and the fans throwing parties and picnics on the backside of the course gave the place a pretty cool feeling.

Many of the other racers I talked to thought this race was pretty cool too. Even the Race Director for Toyota United told me his guys thought this was one of the cooler courses and formats they have been to this season.

For those that didn't make it to the race, the course was a short course (3/4 of a mile) with 6 turns. 3 of the turns on the backside were in short succession and each turn rolled onto an increasingly narrower road. Turn 5 was the most technical turn. It was a left hander with a curbed island on the right and a greater than 90 degree exit (the exiting road curved back in on itself a little) At best you could go through 2 at a time, but this series of turns really rewarded the single rider or small single file break. Like LMPD it was a good bet that the first three riders through this turn would be on the podium. Our goal/hope was to train up TL for a sweep before this turn.

The race started well for me this time. I got a spot on the line and clipped in right away with no problems. In all honesty I think this was because I was just WAY more relaxed on Sunday than at LMPD. For some reason, LPMD was a pressure race for me and Norton was a "fun" race.

In any case, right from the gun TL started working hard. Duane and Logan executed our pre-race plan perfectly and jacked up the pace in those first few laps. They launched some great surges while Tim, Ike and I just sat on. We'd let a few guys go up after them and then grab onto their train. Logan and Duane took some turns and then came back to rest for a while. Ike, Tim and I then started working the front about midway through the race. I couple of other guys launched up the road from time to time and rather than just covering it we'd wait, force riders around and then catch on.

After a while Ike and I took some full laps on the front. It was pretty hard getting anyone else up there. Bolla took some short pulls and few of the others too but just when we needed it - and out of nowhere - Logan shot up the right side of the course and slowly drifted in front of us. He pulled an entire lap, giving all of us a much needed rest and then fell off. (I later learned he flatted but man his timing for that pull was just perfect).

With about 4 to go Tim took a flyer for a while and Ike and I sat on the chase. They caught Tim and he settled back into the line. Based on John's advice for the LMPD and our experience the previous day - the plan was to get together around 4 to go and jump with 1.5 - 2 to go. On the backside of the course Ike and I could not find Tim so we just jumped up the little incline and got to the series of turns first.

I still can't believe how fast we went through there, but we started really stringing out the chase and gapping off a little. Things we working perfectly and we sailed through that technical turn. Ike used all of the road, and stood up to pedal coming out - but stood up maybe one pedal stroke too soon as his rear wheel hit the lip between the asphalt and the gutter. He hopped his wheel up (think bucking bronco) and dropped his chain but managed to stay upright.

I passed on his inside with two other riders in tow. I knew Ike's bobble would slow the chase in that narrow turn so I just jammed it down the straight and then "encouraged" the other guys to pull through. One guy looked at me like "there is no way I can stay here" but the other guy came around and pulled through the first turn and up the little incline. I caught my breath and heading into the last series of turns jumped around him. I kept the first two turns as tight as possible and gapped off the other guys. Setting up for the final turn I heard a bike coming up my left side. It was Tim.

Now, this turn had pretty much one fast line through it. It was outside to inside. It's hard to explain just how hard this turn was to judge at speed unless you've ridden it - but suffice it to say that more than a few crashes happened there yesterday and a few even happened on warm up laps.

Tim came up and shot into inside of that turn super fast. About halfway through the turn he (and I) realized he wasn't going to make it so he leaned it over just a smidge more. Well - his rear tire slipped out and he slid into the curb hard.

I locked up both wheels and did a little Tokyo Drift for a second. There was a moment when I started picking out a nice section of grass to land on - but I scrubbed enough speed to clear Tim as he basically slid out of the way. So I was still upright - but had lost all of my momentum on a bike geared for a sprint. It was an all out sprint to get back up to speed from there.

The guy we had gapped off (was running in fourth when Tim passed me) got to that turn last and just rolled past all of us into first. The guy behind me grabbed my wheel and I basically brought us both up to speed by the stop sign on the downhill finish (gave him a hell of a lead-out). He passed me there and got second. I could see more guys coming so I just TT'd as hard as I could from there and held onto third at the finish.

Despite Tim’s crash and Ike’s mishap – I think this was one of best races the TL 4/5 squad has had this season. We had a plan and we executed it. Our teammates Duane and Logan gave themselves up for the overall team. We all rode smart (instead of hard) worked as a team and even with everything that went wrong in the final laps we still got a podium. While there are bunch of things we coulda’ shoulda’ done I have to say this was one of my favorite rides with TL this season.

Thanks to everyone who raced. I could not have made the podium without everyone’s amazing efforts.

I made sure to thank the folks from Norton Commons and as many volunteers as I could find for hosting this event. We need more communities to open up to bike racing right here in town.

My New Felt FC Frame from Cyclers

steven@bikeclicks.com — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 22:56:00 GMT

I've been buying Felts for a while. I started out on Cannondales in my teens and have ridden a number of nice rides along the way. Most recently I had a Felt F4C which was pretty much the nicest road bike I've ever owned. I've been riding and racing it for about a year. It's a great bike and a great value for a full carbon bike with Dura Ace on it.

All was well until Joe at Cyclers pulled me aside before one Tuesday Night Worlds and said "I have a deal for you on a new Felt FC Frame". A couple of conversation with my wife about how upgrading my felt meant she could have my F4C frame for herself and I pulled the trigger on the new bike.

I've been riding it a lot and raced it last weekend and just have to say that this bike rocks.

Commuting to Work (or how to save $3.75 a gallon)

steven@bikeclicks.com — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:32:00 GMT

I've been cycling long enough to know I should really ride to work. I don't have any real excuses. I live close to the office (under 6 miles), I can ride on surface streets to get from point A to B, I own a bunch of bikes that are suitable for communiting (my cross bike is my current favorite), we have showers at the office and I hate spending $3.75 gallon for gasoline.

My only excuse (or the one I've been using lately) is that I didn't have a bag gthat could hold all of my stuff. My laptop is one of those widesreen jobs and once I put all of my clothes, shoes, etc in there things don't really work. Well, my wife took away my last excuse last night be presenting me with this for my birthday.

So, this morning we both hopped on our bikes and road to work. All in all it took about two more minutes than driving, we chatted away riding two up on Norris and we both felt pretty good about it when we arrived at the office. So the new goal is (weather permitting) to ride to work at least three days a week.

I hope it lasts.

Adding Ride Planning to BikeClicks

steven@bikeclicks.com — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:04:00 GMT

Our next big technical hurdle is to add some ride planning functionality to bikeclicks. It'll be hung off of the members and bikecliques features we just launched. Essentially you'll be able to create a "ride" and then either make it open invitation (anyone can join), invite only (meaning you send out some evites to specific members you want on your ride) or only for a specific bikeclique.

Members can find rides either from bikecliques they belong to or hang out in, or from a new "Rides" page we're planning. The new Rides page will list upcoming rides and show a ride calendar. Members can also search for rides and maintain a list of rides they've signed up for on a personal calendar.

The ride function will also allow people to post rides that have a fee associated with the event, so things like a tour or century or even a race can collect fees from members who sign up for the event. Members can pay via paypal to the ride owner through PayPal.

Once we get things a little more setup I'll post some screenshots.

Tuesday Night Worlds

steven@bikeclicks.com — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:38:00 GMT

I know every community in the world has one of these rides. You know the ride..the one where all of the top local racers gather and have a nice leisurely ride [err race] over a well known course. Well this year is my first time riding the local weekly "Worlds" and all I have to say is WOW is it a fun time, Fast, furious, lots of ridiculous surges and breaks and chases.

My current goal is to ride and stay with the main pack from start to finish on this ride. Last night I didn't accomplish this as I found myself in a chase off the front on River Road and burned up my matches early. While we did eventually catch the break but I snuck to the back for a few miles then dropped off to recover and picked the group back up as it turned around on Witherspoon to head back up the other way. I ended up in another chase on the return leg (stupid, stupid, stupid) and burned up again by the climb at Mockingbird.

Ended up finishing with some team mates a few minutes behind the leaders and sprinted to the end in a respectible place. I can't believe those 1,2,3 guys can ride that fast!

Next week my goal is to sit in more and get a pack finish. Lesson learned...don't work that hard when you don't have the heart and lungs for it yet. All in all a great ride. Can't wait until next week.

Seperating Communities on BikeClicks

steven@bikeclicks.com — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:20:00 GMT

You have probably noticed a number of big changes around here lately. We've updated the look of BikeClicks, we've added new functionality like member profiles, friends, bikecliques and soon we'll be adding ride planning. (we'll be posting some more information on these new features in the coming days).

One of the items on our list is to improve the community sections for members. Right now everything is in one large community forum. Then we show a "view" of each group (KyMBA, OVCX, etc) on a special page setup specifically for that community. We also show a list of "latest posts" on each community page along with photo galleries, etc.

Well, the feedback we've gotten has been that this has been pretty confusing. Especially when you click on a latest post in a specific community, only to be taken to the main (and much larger) community forum.

So why not just implement more than one forum? Well, this is the ideal situation because each community would have their own separate forum which can grow independently of all of the other. But, until recently we had an issue implementing this because things like your avatar and your post rankings were specific to each forum.

So, if you posted heavily in one forum (KyMBA) but then posted something in another (OVCX) your avatar would not show up and if you had posted 231 times in KyMBA, you would only have 1 post in OVCX.

Since our goal from the start has been to bring the many cycling communities together, and make it more convenient to members of multiple communities, we needed to find a way to give you a single profile and keep track of your participation across all of the communities within BikeClicks. Well we worked it out and now we have a way to set this up where each community has their very own forum and each forum uses your member profile information for things like your avatar, posts, etc.

So, now that you are confused….you’re thinking, what does this mean to me? It means that this week we’ll be splitting up the current forum into separate communities. There will still be a “BikeClicks Community” but it will be generic and more about the website, tips, how to’s etc than about trail maintenance in Cherokee Park. That information will be on the KyMBA forum on the KyMBA Page in the KyMBA Community. It will also mean you need to setup your avatar on your member profile. This is pretty easy to do….just login to the site and navigate to this page: http://www.bikeclicks.com/Members/ManageMyProfile.aspx

Then upload your avatar using the “Specify Photo File” and click update. You can also fill out more information on this page if you’re interested. This new profile is what we’ll be using going forward for posts, articles, friends list, bikecliques, etc. Clicking on your avatar from multiple places will take users to your own personal profile page.

So, please continue to bear with us as we resolve some of these last little issues and continue to improve BikeClicks.com for members.

Owensboro Race - How to go from Second to Last in three hundred feet.

steven@bikeclicks.com — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 15:09:00 GMT

Ownesboro turned out to be a really fun course and our team did pretty well in three seperate categories (men's 4/5, Men's 3/4 and womens). However my race was over within three miles.

New Look Implemented

steven@bikeclicks.com — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 03:15:00 GMT

The new look has been implemented. I still have a lot of loose ends to tie up with navigation and changes in the site structure, but things have gone fairly smoothly through this process.

Tomorrow I'll be racing in Owensboro so I won't do too much to the site until Sunday.

BikeClicks ReDesign Continues...

steven@bikeclicks.com — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 02:38:00 GMT

It's funny how web design just sort of finds it's way. We've been working on a new look for BikeClicks and have been tuning and tweaking from the last "new" design. Here is a sneak peak at the current new look.

Back on the Bike

steven@bikeclicks.com — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 18:08:00 GMT

Finally back on the bike after a week of feeling like crap. Rode about an hour in the park with WebGirl and felt terrific. We just worked on some paceline skills and had a blast. Saw a few team mates in there and got caught up on yesterday's race. I'm glad I didn't completely go to pot in a week.