I am planning to race a more complete road schedule next year, the integration of USA Cycling and the American Cycling Association should make this a bit easier with only needing one license, knowing that points are going to count, hopefully fees are less than what ACA was charging last year ($50 for a crit), not worrying about faulty chip timing, and maybe we can convince people to travel outside of the People’s Republic of Boulder to race.

I think that a heavy road/track racing schedule will be a good training addition as I seem to thrive on racing and I think there are endurance gains to be had from racing for 1-4 hours instead of just the 20 minutes I get in a fast 10 mile scratch.

The Para PanAm Games began Saturday with opening ceremonies and I am not competing. I’ve been asked several times why I am not attending so I thought it would be easier to write it here and direct people this way. The short answer is that the team did not need me to go to collect nation’s ranking points for the Paralympic Games.

This is my attempt at recapping the season without being too longwinded.

After my reclassification at Worlds I was deselected from the team that would be racing the road World Cups because there was already a rider on the team in my category with a better history on the road. The team staff did this in an effort to maximize Paralympic Qualification points but it left me in a bit of a holding pattern. I talked to my coach and decided to dedicate all of my effort to the track through London in an effort to maximize my results. I received a fair amount of criticism for that decision and decided to go under the radar for a while, hence the 5 or 6 month blogging drought. I needed to put in the work without a lot of distraction.

The early season was complicated because the Velodrome was closed well into May. I went to Minneapolis in June for the Fixed Gear Classic. My club team, Speedfix Racing, is based out of the MN track and hosted the event. It was my first big ProAm race and I spent the weekend on the steep end of the learning curve and thinking those guys were just really fast. Learn by doing, right? The rest of the season was spent training a lot and racing at the track on Thursday night. I progressed from getting dropped, to hanging on, to being part of the race, and eventually pulled out a Win in a Points Race near the end of the season. I also raced a bunch of Madisons, I kind of suck at that race because I can’t do proper exchanges but they are really great for training. The Madison might be the hardest race format I’ve ever done. It always seemed to be a 45 second full gas effort followed by 45 seconds of recovery, and this was repeated for 25-40 minutes.

I ended my season at Para Track Nats which was held in conjunction with Elite Nats. I strongly considered racing the Elite Points Race but decided I wasn’t quite fast enough and sat out the event. It was a tough decision, but out of respect for nationals I think it was the right choice.

With my focus being solely on the track this was my main race for the year, I needed to be in the top 5 to be automatically selected to the World Champ team.

I was disappointed to ride a poorly executed race in the Pursuit qualifier, I qualified 2nd in my category and would ride for Gold/Silver that night. I rode a much better race in the final and won the National Title, I was happy with the win and the sound ride. The morning times were used to rank riders across all disability categories and I was 3rd, so I was on course for World Champ qualification.

I had a decent ride and won the Kilo. My time against my standard was the best amongst the male bikes from both days of racing. It felt really good to back up my track training like that and to have such a solid base of track preparation going into Worlds.

All that to say that I’m going to work on being a better blogger.

There is a lot of talk in disabled sport about inspiration.  Someone will complete a race and people will gush about how inspiring the display has been and how much this person has overcome, but what does that mean?  What good is accomplished by simply calling someone inspiring, I think it’s a far overused word.  Simply being a crippled kid doing a sport I love is nothing inspiring at all, I’m just like a million other people doing a hobby or sport they love.

They difference, the only way I feel worthy of being an inspiration, is if someone looks at what I have done and decides to put in the hard work to become a better athlete or a better person.  That is true inspiration, to look at what has been done and making the effort to become better.

Even more importantly, I would feel that my efforts and time in cycling had not been completely selfish if one kid with a disability looks at what I have done and realizes the barrier to sport is just another obstacle to be overcome and goes on to lead a healthy, active lifestyle they may once have thought unattainable.  I would love to be the catalyst behind some child going on to win a Paralympic Gold medal, but being the nudge towards a more healthy  lifestyle is the sort inspiration I want to be.

Para-cycling was generally broken down between brain injuries and localized muscular disabilities/amputations until 2010, so at the 2009 World Champs I was racing in the CP4 category with a bunch of other guys with Cerebral Palsy, Stroke, or other brain injuries. I was initially classed into the new C5 category which is comprised mostly of arm injuries and upper limb amputations, but I was to be reviewed. I was reclassed as a C4 which is made up of a mix of below knee amputees and every other former CP4. It is probably a better fit in terms of classification and disability level.

The level of competition was improved markedly from the previous Track Worlds; in 2009 I lined up against 12 other competitors. There were a total of 25 this year and everyone is getting faster, it is a very exciting time for para-cycling.

Individual Pursuit

This is the event I generally claim as my own and the one that gets the largest chunk of training focus. Training for the IP had been going pretty well so I had high hopes, but also a lot of nerves at the start. By the time I heard my split for lap 2, the first flying lap, I knew the track was slow and I was going to have to manage my effort to produce a decent ride. I rode across the line in 4:55.5, a personal best by 7 seconds but a fair bit slower than my coach and I had expected. Still it was a sound ride and it’s nice to be under 5 minutes. It was also good enough for 5th, so I just missed out on a ride for a medal. I didn’t quite have the endurance to ride out my early lap times and that will be something to work on ahead of next year. As for the new classification, I lead the charge of the old CP4s with the highest placed finish and a time better than the CP4 World Record. Small consolations, but still nice.

Kilo

The Kilometer was my worst race of the event. I know what went wrong but I don’t know why it went that way. I started perfectly, I timed the gate just right and was on my way without a bobble. I went through the first lap in 20.9 seconds, a competition PR and close to my all time best lap. My race fell apart on lap 2, I never really got on top of the gear and felt like crap all the way through the end. I’m not sure if I sat on the seat wrong or if my legs just didn’t have the pop that day. Even though I set a PR, I wasn’t satisfied with how I rode the race. I finished 6th and less than .9 sec out of the medals so it was tough knowing proper execution could have placed me on the podium. On the bright side, this was only my 6th Kilo and there is room to improve.

Team Sprint

This race was as near a perfect race as I rode all weekend. Because there were Paralympic Games qualification points available 15 teams raced as opposed to 6 at the previous World Champs. It was a huge field, but Team USA went in knowing we could make the final. Will started us off with a blistering first lap and a PR and all I had to do was wait for Sam to finish his lap before unleashing as much fury as I could turn out. I treat these effort a lot like I would treat sprinting from the front in a points race. It was a good mental strategy and I rode about .8 sec faster than I did for my lap in Manchester. We qualified 4th, just .2 out of 3rd, so we had a good chance to podium in the evening. My warm-up went well, but there were some shenanigans at the start of the race. We were paired against the Czechs for Bronze and it took them forever to get on their bikes. Team USA were on our bikes and in our pedals for about a minute before the Czechs were ready. Now, I have no idea what they were doing, but they need to get that mess straightened out. Putting the other team (that was prepared) on ice like that is bull. They finally got on their bikes and the clock counted down, we got started and were well into the turn when I heard the double gunshot. Something was wrong on the other side of the track so I hit the kill switch right away and had to yell at Will to shut it down. The story is that one of the Czechs pulled out of the pedal. Why it took the officials so long to shoot the gun is beyond me, we were several seconds into the race before it was stopped, it was far too long. The second attempt at the race went off cleanly and I poured everything into the pedals. We were faster in the final, but it wasn’t enough, we had to settle for 4th. We were beaten, and I do not think the issues in the first race attempt cost us a medal, but I do think both situations should have been handled more professionally. As for me, I was .1 faster than in the morning and very pleased with my effort.

I’m in danger of becoming a pretty fast bike racer in the future, and that is exciting! I set Para-cycling American Records and Personal Bests in each race with room to improve across the board. I’m excited to take some rest and start planning for the 2011 season. Because of my reclassification to C4 my race schedule may change so I will interested to see which direction my training will take.

The catch is that Colorado can be cold so a lot of my rides are on the trainer and rollers. Keeping my head in the game while riding inside has been my biggest challenge, but I’ve come up with some ways to manage it. I can’t watch movies on the trainer, just doesn’t work for me. I love to watch bike races, though, I think it makes me feel like I’m not suffering alone. I prefer watching hard races, whether it’s a race over cobblestones or a mountain-top finish. I also like listening to music, it’s a better way to gauge how long an interval has lasted than watching the clock. I’ve have spent the longest 15 minutes of my life watching all 900 seconds count down to the end of an interval. I know I can listen to 4 or 5 songs and be done with it. Sometime I’ll even lie to myself, I’ll say that if I get to X minute or through X intervals I might let myself be done. It’s such a good sounding lie when I am in the pit of suffering, but I always end up gutting out all the intervals. It’s interesting, the fact that I will lie to myself, but I suppose spending so much time training indoors will drive you at least a little mad.

I have also taken a trip up to Boulder Indoor Cycling to ride the Velodrome. It’s a crazy little track at 128 meters, but if you can ride that track on the black line you have to be a bike handling ninja. The turns are very short with a severe transition from straight to turn. To turn at BIC at speed you have to ride high and drive the bike down into the turn and let it wash up out of the banking. It’s a fun track to ride and it’s a great place to work on legspeed and handling skills.

I seem to be responding well to the new training. I’m tired a lot, more tired than usual. I think the weights are contributing to the fatigue, but I’m throwing out good power numbers on the bike and my legspeed is coming around.

I wrote, here,  a couple months back about the Madison and how it’s a race I want to be able to do, but I wasn’t sure I am able to execute the exchanges. About 6 weeks ago (yes, this is late) I was on the Sunday group ride with Karl, who’s blog you can read here, and he asked if I was interested in practicing some exchanges to see if it was possible. I said yes and I was both nervous and excited.

We started off in the infield with Karl throwing me, and after a few successful, but slow, exchanges we came in for a chat and some suggestions. We were moving pretty quickly after a while with a fairly traditional exchange technique so it was time for me to throw Karl in; this proved to be more difficult so we had to improvise. I wasn’t getting a lot of power out of my throw so we figured out a way for me to keep both hands on the bars while Karl grabs my arm and slings off of it. It didn’t take long before we were going too fast for the infield track so we moved onto the track. We skipped the apron and went straight to the banking for several laps of practice. Another trip to the infield and a chat about some changes saw us going even faster on the next set of laps on the track. Mark Tyson had the motor at the track so we practiced our exchanges with the added speed of the motor for our last effort. It felt like we were going pretty fast, and it felt awesome to nail an exchange at a speed much faster than I ever imagined I’d be doing on my first day of Madison throws.

The verdict is that I can and will be racing Madison next year, I’m stoked! Everyone keeps telling me that it is one of the hardest and most fun ways to race a bicycle. I already love Point Races, and it seems like a natural compliment, so I’m sure I’ll like it.

I owe a big thanks to Karl for taking the chance and helping me out.