Northfield Crit Info

can be found here (MCF) and here.

Enough already

Yesterday I got back on the bike after 2 days off from the biopsy. I knew it was going to be painful because while I was doing some work down at the boat house I started getting cramps. The only way I know how to get ride of them is to ride them out. So that is what I set out to do. I failed miserably. It took me 20 minutes to get to a place that should usually take 5. My heart rate was at 150 (out or 197 or so) going 15 km/h up a shallow incline. At the top I could not take the pain and collapsed on a side street. I sat the for a bit then tired again, still intense pain. Then again and again and again. I wanted to do an hour at least, so I just kept trying to push through the pain. It was the most painful hour of my life thus far. right around the hour mark I was able to move a bit, I thought I had achieved victory so I started heading back out. Shortly following I got hit with another attack and did whatever it took to get home.
When I woke up this morning my legs were still tight, but not nearly as bad as they had been. I thought maybe today I will be ok, since the cramps have never lasted more than one day at full intensity. But again at rowing, while simply walking around the boat house I cramped up.
As soon as I got home I got ready for my ride and went. I made it about 100 meters before being slammed by cramps just as bad as yesterday. So more stopping and starting it was. Again for another hour and 15. For some reason my right leg almost relaxed for a bit, I was riding with only it for a while since my left didn't work. I thought I was halfway there (getting rid of cramps), but of course my leg was just toying with my and it cramped up again.
Another of the most painful hours of my life.
I am just so sick of this, all this pain after 2 days off the bike. What the hell...it is just ridiculous and really needs to stop. Even if the muscle biopsy does figure out what is wrong with me, and prove that I do have metabolic myopathy or some other dumb thing, who knows if it is even treatable.
I don't even know if I will be able to race on the 4th. It is less that a week away and at this rate I will still have cramps. My plans to go to Super week might also not work, there is not point in going if after 4 hours in a car I cramp up real bad.
I am just so sick of all this.....

My first stiches

I forgot to mention in yesterdays post that my muscle biopsy was this morning. I got to sleep in until 7:30 and then went and got chunks of muscles cut out. Hopefully that will tell me what is wrong with me.
It was an interesting experience, I think the doc. did not wait long enough to cut into my leg the first time after giving me the shot. It hurt. When he started cutting out the muscle my other muscles would contract, very strange feeling. I could also hear the tissue being cut. Ha. Very pleasant.
Anyway other than some pricks and muscle spasms it went well. While he was stitching me up I looked at the chunks he took out. They were not very big, but big enough to leave a hole. I took some pictures when I got home, don't worry, the samples removed were no where near as big as my incision.
The doc. said that I can return to normal activity tomorrow. But should take it a bit easy this week on the bike. That is fine with me, my legs need a bit of rest.

Don't look at the pictures if you don't like blood and bright white skin!

Something worth writing about.

This weekend the racing finally was on again. There has been a couple week pause, and I was not happy. I enjoy racing to much.
Anyways the races were in conjunction with the Nature Valley Grand Prix. Which made it even more fun then normal.

Saturday:
Ill start with my race.
I rolled on down to Mankato for a 2/3 crit. I knew it was not going to be that great of a day, when I woke up that morning my legs were tired. Not good at all. After arriving in Mankato I registered, while doing so I met a guy who just graduated from DU out in Colorado. He was at nationals and all as well. Raced D II also. So We went to preview the course. The line was at the bottom of a pretty big hill. I thought we might go up it, so up we went. About halfway up the "death cramps" came on. Today was going to be painful. Up we went then following the hay bales we found our way back to the start. It was a really long circuit, far to long for a crit. We found out soon after that we in fact did not go up (nuts) but stayed down in the flat downtown.
After that I went and warmed up. I found some flat and put the pace up to try and work out the cramps. It worked a bit, but not enough.
It was soon time to start. It was a big field, 50 some I think. So off we went, and it was sketchy right from the start. I almost got taken out on one of the first few corners. I went to the front for a bit, but then started to cramp. I could not do much so I slowly drifted back. I may have gotten to the front a few times in there, but was not nearly my normal self. Then a bit more into the race I started to get normal racing cramps. Not because I was dehyrdated, but because I drank to much plain water and flushed all the electrolytes out of my system. Oops.
Anyway, as is apparent was not very fun. Eventually it came down to the last laps, I managed to get a good position on the long straightaway and hold it through the final corner. And despite feeling like crap I got 10th and $15, which made for a free race.
After the race I ate 4 or 5 packs of Jelly Belly sport beans, I felt much better. Thanks Jelly Belly!
Not long after finishing the pro men came into the circuits. They went up the big hill 4 times. I just watched at the line.
It was fun to watch them fly through the line area.

Next came the pro women, including the current World Champion Kristin Armstrong. She just lit everyone up on the first lap, and extended her lead each time.




Sunday:
After a good meal and bed thanks to Jennie and her family I was ready to rock and roll this morning. I have always heard about the infamous Stillwater Crit, but I had never experienced it. I got to the course nice and early, one of the first racers even. I got ready and took off on a long warm up. I was going to need it since the race started at the bottom of the big climb (22% for about 40 seconds at race pace). Not long but steep! After a nice 45 min spin I registered and rode a couple laps of the course to get a feel. I have been doing hill repeats the last few weeks, and one of the hills I have been doing was very very similar. Wahoo! At 11 it was time to go rip off some legs. The field at the start was again large, a good at the very least 50. Including a bunch of sketchy people...
The race went from 0 to 100% right away, and right away it got safer. Horray! I was feeling pretty good, so I was hammering the hill. I set the pace a few time at the start of the race. About half way into the race the leading group was down to about 15. Each lap a guy or two would drop. Slowly but surely it came down to 7 or 8 of us. It was great. With 4 laps to go there was a prime and one guy kinda rolled off the front. I think everyone thought he was just going for the prime, but he just kept going and ended up winning. After he went off I was setting the pace up the hill with the remaining Grandstay guys doing the rest. It was good fun. At the top of the course a Grandstay got took off and his team did some good blocking. By the time I got around to the front he was to far off to catch, especially being gravitationally challenged. I was in good position in the finally corner, got some good speed going into the hill and held it. I was quickly gaining on the Grandstay guy, but he was just to far up. I just pushed it all up the hill. Another Grandstay guy had a great sprint and got me on the line. I ended up 4th. It was a great race.
The Women Pros were next.
Mara Abbot and Kristin Armstrong were amazing off the front...
Armstrong ended up winning.



The Men Pros were flying (at least the lead pack), by the time they were racing the hill was packed with people. It was really cool to see at a race here in the US..

Nice and steep!

It was a good day at the races. And thanks to the Langelys for lunch and a beer!

My work

at work at work...haThe bike rack that is. I have time before 8 am down at work to do some other stuff, so I build a bike rack out of wood. It works pretty well.

I made this awhile ago, but never showed it off

The weather has finally gone from...

This (fog, rain, cold)
to
This (sunny and windy)

This weekend there are finally some races. It has been way to long since the last. And it is the races that keep me motivated to train, so without those riding hard gets hard. Hopefully I have trained properly to do well. The races are in conjunction with the Nature Valley Grand Prix, which started today. I get to race the "infamous" Stillwater crit. So the last few weeks I've been working on my climbing.
It is now time to roll off to the Ski Hut ride, and hopefully rip some legs off.

But before that, the flyer is posted for the Northfield race on the 4th of July. I expect everyone to be there! I also need volunteers still, so let me know if you can help out. Also check out the Northfield Crit website.

Congratulations

to Dave Langely and crew for completing the 200 mile slog from fields to fish (Zumbrota to Duluth) today.

Also congratulations to mother who finished her 13th half marathon yesterday. That is more then I will ever do!

Other than that fun news, not much has been happening. I had my MRI for my legs the other day, I fell asleep during it. A good nap it was. I finished up my second over 20 hours of training during the week week today. Now I'll tone it down a few so I can race fast this weekend (finally). And finally I just set my new record time for Lake Ave. hill climb here in Duluth. Today was 20 seconds faster then my time earlier this week somehow. It is now 3:47. Short and hard. I am confident I can get under 3:40, and hopefully under 3:30 sometime soon.

I may have...

metabolic myopathy.
fun stuff...

Cold by the lake

If you haven't heard. I got a job for the summer. I am a rowing coach. It's been awhile since I have rowed. But it is coming back pretty fast. I get to get up early for the entire summer. Lucky me...

Today riding it was around 80 out in the country. 51 by the lake. and 74 and my house. Talk about a range in temp. Going up Lake Ave. (big steep straight hill). The temp change was very apparent.

Tomorrow I have an appointment to hopefully be told why my legs are dumb. I recently found out that they are tearing up the muscle (I think). A normal person has 40-240 units of this muscles stuff in the blood. I have over 6000. Yes, over six thousand. Fun eh?

Why is it

socially acceptable to wear a purple Vikings jacket, but not a pink T-Mobile hat?

Capitol Crit

Today was the State Champ crit in St. Paul. It was a great course right down in front of the Capitol building. Very cool.

4/5's heading towards the line
The other way

I got my upgrade last week, so I could do the 1/2 race. It was well worth it too. The race was a great time, nice and fast with lots of attacks and good racers. There was only one crash, which was a really bad one, but that was because a metal barrier was moved out into the field somehow. Tone, from Duluth (my breakaway partner from last weekend ) went right into it. He broke a couple of bones in his arm and got pretty banged up. It was bad enough that the race was neutralized. I've never had that happen before. When the crash happened Sean, a Flanders guy, and I were off the front, very lucky. When the race finally did start up again we got a few second head start. It was pretty entertaining.
The race went well for me, I got in a break as I mentioned above, and had some time on the front pulling back some breaks. Maybe some pictures will surface sometime soon. But it was a fun race, a bit short at only 55 minutes of racing. But nevertheless quite fun.
After the race I went over and hung out with Sean and the Grand Stay team. Dan Casper had his firefighting gear with, so we were bike riders from the apocalypse. Good times...

Bugs and black trees

Dad and I went up to the Boundary Waters for a few day, we got back yesterday. Here are a few photos.

dinner

Calm water

Portage through fire area
more fire

I mentioned bugs as well, because there were quite a few. I honed my mosquito killing techniques, beware!
It was a good trip, besides the bugs. Caught plenty of fish, heard the loons. Good times.

I did not ride for a few days in there, so no surprise I got death cramps while on a few of the portages, I have been fed up with these cramps for awhile. But this is just plain dumb, I can't take days off because I'll cramp up and then expend more energy getting over the cramp then I did from taking a day off. I also can't take days off to do anything else. I love the bike, but I don't want to be a slave to it.
Right when I got home from the BW I went out on a ride with the goal of cramping. I did so in order to get some blood tests done while cramping. I succeeded, after getting blood drawn I went out and rode for 2.5 hours to make it a total of 3.
Tomorrow it is off to the Capitol Crit. Should be a good time, hopefully my upgrade went through, then I don't have to get up so early!