CRCA A race 9/20/2008

 

One of the things that I didn’t realize about getting older is that with every passing year the opportunity for a “first” gets smaller and smaller. And by “first” I mean, the first time you get to try or do something, events like your first kiss, for example. My first kiss was with a brassy girl named Tammy, who today could either be a grandmother or in a minimum security facility – either scenario wouldn’t surprise me. Sadly, I never saw Tammy again after our brief rendezvous – so I would have to surmise that she was overwhelmed by our tryst and that I had ruined all other boy smooches for her, forcing her to sequester herself away from all contact with unworthy man lips. That, or she was too ashamed to ever show her face with me again – but that doesn’t sound probable – does it? 

 

But my point is that as you get older, you lose the chance to experience things for the first time. You don’t get the chance to listen to your favorite song for the first time again; you don’t get to try sweet, sweet gin for the first time again; and you don’t get to see your favorite movie for the first time again. This lack of opportunities for “firsts” is what leads otherwise sane people to try new thrills like skydiving, mountaineering, or part-time rodeo clowning. It’s a sad fact of getting older – along with the phenomenon of ear hair. And why didn’t anyone tell me about that? It’s like I’m growing a pair of beards on the sides of my head. Ugh, if anyone tries to tell you the human body is a beautiful thing – walk away from them as they speak to you – because it’s not. I am living proof of that fact.

 

So when the rare opportunity to try something new comes along, I jump at it. Saturday morning I decided to see how little effort I could put into a race and still finish. I did the “lazy off”. Of course, the name lazy off implies a head to head competition, but my alleged nemesis, Miheal Ginghina, has been absent from cycling, so I decided to try and set a baseline of lazy using the last race of the CRCA calendar. The rules of the lazy off are pretty simple, do as little work as possible and finish with the pack. Mihael and I came up with the concept of the lazy off because he claimed he was very good at conserving energy and sprinting at the end of a race. I challenged him to see who could expend the least amount of effort, and the lazy off was born. We would use our power meters to record our wattages and then the lowest watts per kilogram would win. Then Mihael proceeded to disappear from bike racing, supposedly because he had a new job and was busy with wife and family – but I know that he feared a humiliating loss in the lazy off – you can’t fool me Mihael.

 

The A race was set to be 6 laps. We rolled away and I planted myself in the mid-rear of the pack. On the downhills, I crouched into an aero tuck. On the flats, I looked for large riders to ride behind (and thanks for nothing, Jeff King, who decided to jump up to the second group), I coasted whenever possible. The first few laps were fast, but after the break was established, we were rolling at a lovely lazy pace. A pace so lazy, in fact, that we were pulled with one lap to go, as we wouldn’t finish before the park time cut. Near the end of the race, I was flirting with a sub 200 average wattage, and I was doing everything I could to do as little s possible. As we came to the line, the pack began to string out as riders were inexplicably looking to sprint for 17th place. The surges were putting my sub 200 average in jeopardy! As we crested Cat’s Paw Hill, it was looking close. I searched frantically for a big guy to tow me to the line. I tucked in behind the largest rider I could find and coasted to the line.

 

And what tale would the numbers tell? Well I weighed in that morning at 153.6 pounds (69.81 kilograms), I had an average wattage from the race of 199 watts (Success! But that wattage normalized to 255 watts, so let’s just conveniently ignore that number, shall we?). The average speed of the race was 24.8 mph, I expended 875 Kjs in a race that lasted 1:13:42. And my watts per kilo for the day? 2.85! Let’s put that into perspective. According to this graph, that’s just above Cat 5 fitness for 20 minutes. Cat 5!

 

Schmalz race report

 

A two. Cat 5 laziness! Can it get any better?!

 

Head song from the day

 

Sublime’s “What I got” which does not allow embedding from the youtube video.