Preemptive strike

Hunger killing me at 10:30? NO! I preemptively at a whole tub of an old standby caloric bomb when I got in. My weight is back up to just under a double century but heck i'm tired of being hungry and i've got some crazy notion that being hungry a few days in a row before a bike race isn't good for your energy stores needed for an event like a cross race. Might as well keep the tank topped off up and through the race. no? seems sort of to make sense to me. No hard science to back it up but all the articles from all sorts of different points of view seem to support my gut feeling. that and my gut likes it when i'm not hungry. more focus.

Urban velo popped a post titled "Why Bikes Have Gears." I kinda like gears. And most gear heads know power is a combination of torque and rpm. So that graph they have up there was rather eye catching. Sure that page has been around as long as solobreak's been polluting the internet. Still makes ya think for a minute. But then you can also judge that the curves aren't anywhere close to hard and fast because of the variation shown for the power curse for different cyclists. But it also helped me kinda go, hmmm. You can work on leg speed and generate power, or you can work on force to generate power. But if you do all of the former (like I did from the spring on with that 40tooth big ring) you may have enough power at high rpms for TT'n but lack the oomph when cross comes to town and ya need to jump out of the corners with all the torque you can muster. To make power w/o monster torque in cross you really need to be shifting all the freaking time, constantly. So you can stay in your high rpm power band. Lemme tell you that sucks, it isn't that bad but having a nice broad power band is way nicer. Sort of the difference between a hopped up TDI and a stock Vtec honda. Both may have a peak HP of 130-150 (non Si) but the TDI can make 200-400 ft-lbs of torque at 1900 rpms, the vtec needs to be pretty close to the redline to make power. Straight line drag race, power is speed. In an autocross (closest analogy to a cross race i can think of in motor sports) you've got to accelerate lots, and with the high revers you need to constantly keep it up in the high power band, most shifting. With the TDI you can just park it in 2nd gear instead of bouncing back from 1st to 2nd on the slow hairpin and tight turns. Sure there's lots more to it than that, but I've seen a few oil burners do pretty damn well on courses, bettering equally skilled drivers with more horse power but less torque.

Time trials are basically drag races. You may need some torque to get going and your RT and acceleration out of a corner could be benefited from some low end grunt but you can do just as well or better with a super smooth cadence around 120 rpm.

Woah. Didn't expect that tangential mental wandering.

Hey a NY senator is giving the verbal beat down to the heads at USA Cycling for turning a cold shoulder to Dieter.

That race SHOULD be a UCI event. That is a brilliant area for a Pro race. Sure it is wicked far away from anywhere and that, i know, is a reason not to hold a big national level event following some logic i used at one point but heck i will retract that statement. It is well worth the trip to places like Cambridge NY for a big ass bike race. A brutal ego killing race. Turn yourself inside out in the first 15 miles and hope to hell you stay on the pack because that middle stretch is lonely if you get dropped.

Too soon to be even trying to decide if i want to make it three years in a row at Battenkill. If i go this year I'll race with the cat 4s where i should be. I just don't think i'm quite ready to haul my hugeness up and down hills at a speed that would let me hang in the 35+ masters field, those dudes are f'n fast. Not just fast but wicked f'n fast. I'm okay on the cross bike but a hilly road race I'm a bit out of my element but damn is it an epic event.

focusing on NBX though. Here's to hoping we get sand and more sand and more sand. Three sand sections would be AWESOME.
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