Joe and I lined up at the front. I slipped to about mid pack as I got pinched going around a corner during the neutral start. The neutral start was a gradual incline of a couple hundred feet over about a mile. This got us out of town and onto much less crowded roads. The race officially started atop the first climb. This is where I probably could have been a bit more warmed up. I stuck with the pack as we descended the first climb and worked our way towards the next. The pace wasn’t horrible fast as we started the second climb (250ft). I worked hard to stay with the pack but slowly fell off the back. At the top I was pretty well cooked and wondered what I had gotten myself into. I was riding caboose by this point.

I descended pretty well but had to brake pretty hard as there was a hard turn at the bottom. The third climb (200ft) was up to a nice almost flat that made for a decent chance to recover before the biggest climb. This is where I finally got my legs. The third climb didn’t seem as bad as the first two. I went up it relatively quickly but still felt like I was going to die at the top. The ‘flat’ at the top was still a bit of an incline so while I was able to recover a bit, it wasn’t as much as I could have used.

The fourth climb (410ft) was a killer and probably hurt a lot of people throughout the day. I passed my first rider a bit before the beginning and could see a rider walking his bike about halfway up. That didn’t do much for my confidence as I approached. I passed another rider (female) that was dismounting as I was about 50% up. I was going somewhere near 5mph and barely turning over the cranks. I got to within 50m of the top and simply couldn’t turn them over anymore and hopped off to jog to the summit. I don’t have any shame with this as my Garmin was reading a 24% grade.

The descent was just plain awesome. I pedaled myself over the top and tucked in for the ride. I never saw my speed as I went but the Garmin tells me I hit 43.1mph. I didn’t pedal a single stroke the whole way down. Had I pedaled i could have reached 50. (Next year!)

The last climb (250ft) is a blur. I passed a few of the Women’s 4′s and a few of the Masters (40+ 4/5). This was giving me confidence and seemed to put a few extra watts back in the legs. I started to lose track and figured I had passed around 6 riders from my category and another 6 or so from the groups that started before us.

In the last 4-5 miles of the race I could see two men ahead of me by about a half a mile and a mile. I made it my goal to catch them by the finish. I rode hard and caught first guy who ended up being a Master in two miles. The second guy was in my class. He took a bit longer to catch but I passed him around the 2k to go sign. I glanced over my shoulder a few times between the 1k and 500m signs and didn’t see him. I eased off the pedals a bit as I was navigating the last few turns into town. In the last 100m he must have been digging hard because he was right with me at the finish. To be honest I have no idea who finished first as there wasn’t a clear indication where the finish line was. My wife said I was only about 15 minutes back from the winners. I’m happy with this.

All in all it was a great race. I’ve decided I need to warm up a bit more in an effort to try and hang with the pack. If I had to guess they pulled out pretty quick on me until about halfway through. Then as I gained my legs the gap stayed pretty steady. The hills were extremely humbling. Nearly 1400 feet of climbing when all I’ve ever ridding is Central Illinois is crazy. I can’t wait to go back next year.

Congratulations to Joe for his 9th place finish, even after a crash and some road rash on Wednesday.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/91721664

I did about 45 of the 80 minute DVD. My knee was starting to get a tiny twinge in it and my quads were pretty fatigued. Likely due to my lack of stretching before the workout. I could have finished but decided to live to fight another day.

I like this workout. It’s not too intense as its goal is increasing aerobic function, but I can tell it’ll help my legs too. Once I get disciplined to riding every day I can see this as a decent recovery or “Don’t feel like getting my butt kicked today” ride.

It’s been a while since my legs were jello after a ride. Felt good.

Excerpt:
The real problem is a php function called getmyuid() which “Gets PHP script owner’s UID”. Ok, so permissions and ownership may still be an issue for you, and you may not even have the right temp directory set up that file.php is looking for, but if everything else is correct, go edit wp-admin/includes/file.php and change the getmyuid() call to posix_getuid() instead. You can expect to have access to the functions, but to avoid any warnings or errors it checks if the functions are callable first, so you may as well change that one too. See below for the detailed change:

function get_filesystem_method($args = array()) {
$method = false;
if( function_exists(‘posix_getuid’) && function_exists(‘fileowner’) ){
$temp_file = wp_tempnam();
if ( posix_getuid() == fileowner($temp_file) )
$method = ‘direct’;

Some google work found that I need to delete the files contained in: /Library/Caches/

Another reboot and I was able to log in again. All is good.

New Jersey scraps idea to host Formula One race in 2012. An event that would bring in millions of revenue.
I guess they’d rather continue to be known as America’s armpit.

“Multiple Choice.
If I had a Koenigsegg, the door styling would not bother me because:
A) I would never want to get out of it
B) I’m rich enough to replace dinged doors
C) I will be exiting the car via the Jaws of Life.”

I would personally go with D) All of the above.