Race started with five of us. Neil Fortner, Larry Johns, Rick Riley, Joe Essig, and myself. We got a good starting spot up front on the line. I’ll just preface this with, it was raining the whole race, so keep that in mind. We rolled out for the neutral start easy enough. There wasn’t a very clear indication, at least to me, where the actual race started. They said it was at the bridge but when we passed it there wasn’t any reaction from the group. The pace was decent so I figured we’d just hold that for a bit. About a mile later the pace started to pick up a bit and two groups started to form. I was at the tail end of the front group for quite a while but eventually drifted back a bit in between the groups. I never fell back to the second group. At around mile 5 there is a quick descent with a SHARP left uphill. As I came down there was a rider on the side of the road changing a tube. I started to brake but had nothing. I clipped out my left leg to give me balance as I went through the gravel and on to the shoulder. My front wheel was going left to right at 20 degree angles but somehow I managed to get back onto the road before the rider with the flat but I was in the worst gear for the uphill (50/14). I was standing on the pedals and trying to shift out of my mess. I see one of two guys blow right through the turn and into the ditch behind me. I have no idea if anyone went down or not. This whole ordeal probably lost me a minute or so as I was at a crawl trying to get into a gear that I could actually spin at. I’m really just happy I didn’t go down.

I rode solo for 3 or 4 miles and was making time on the group of three ahead of me which included Rick. I don’t remember exactly when but all of a sudden Joe was with me. We worked together for a long time and were making good time on the three riders ahead of us. Unfortunately the Pro/1/2 leaders passed us. The Pro/1/2 pack was about a minute behind them. When the passed us we lost a lot of time as they squeezed us to the side of the road as probably 75 of the 100 field went by. One of the riders ahead must have just pulled out of the way because once the Pro/1/2 field went by a rider was right ahead of us. The three of us as a group worked well together but by this point there wasn’t anyone ahead of us in sight to catch. We did pick off a few solo riders or two including one or two of the Women’s field that started 15 minutes before us.

Towards the end of the race there was a rather long downhill. I was on the front and just decided to power through the downhill. Joe and the other guy must have coasted because when I got to the next hill I was alone. I rode the last 3 miles or so solo. I passed a handful of the women’s field on the bricks and a group of three guys from the Pro/1/2 field that must have decided to sit up. I couldn’t tell if anyone crashed or if they just decided the conditions weren’t worth another two laps.

I thought I saw a 5 slow pedaling up the road so I jumped into a sprint hoping I could pip them by the line. I ended up catching them well before the finish but it turned out to be women’s 4. There were a few others too but not from my field. The first set of results they posted had me at 35th of 50. Later they posted another sheet that put me at 36th. Not sure why, but oh well.

The guy that Joe and I worked with came in about 15 seconds behind me so I’m glad I sprinted since he was close enough that he might have gotten me if I slow pedaled. Joe finished another 1:30 back. I don’t know if he blew up, had a moment, or just sat up.

Upon finishing I came to the team and found that Neil possibly won and Larry was in the top 10. It was later confirmed that Neil won. According to him the sprint was almost non-existant. Hopefully he’ll post to give us his report too.

It was an awesome race and I can’t wait until next year. Hopefully the rain will hold off next year and I can race it without the nasty conditions. Nice job to the team and especially Neil.

Karl’s Video of the Cat 5 finish.

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’ll start off by saying O’Fallon was expecting record high temperatures and the weather did not disappoint. The high was 98F but I think it got to 102-103. My Garmin got as high as 110F on the road. I have no idea what the heat index was.

The Cat 5 race had 36 registered and 2 no-shows. Furmi (Tom) was also there from Wild Card. I started about a 1/3 of the way back in the pack and stayed there for the neutral start. It picked up pretty quick after the ‘real’ start. I was able to hang on for about 5 miles. I think Furmi lasted 8 or so (IIRC from him telling me after). The hills combined with the heat is what did me in. The pace wasn’t much faster than a normal Wednesday night ride, so all things equal I feel I could have hung with them. Of course, if the temps were lower I’m sure the faster guys would have set a higher pace a dropped me just as quickly.

There were about 3 of us in the group that fell off the back around 5 miles in. Several more fell off around the 8-10mile mark and I started to catch them. I pulled within 30 seconds of Furmi and sat there pretty much the rest of the race. At about 13 miles I caught another guy (can’t remember team) and I sucked his wheel for a bit before I rode around him for a pull. We traded pulls for a while but never really gained on the guys in front of us. A third guy (white t-shirt, tennis shoes, toe-clips) managed to bridge up and sucked our wheels for a good 8 miles. This guy refused to take a pull and eventually rode around us to bridge up with Furmi.

The group of three of us took turns dropping each other but we would always bridge up and recover for a bit before the next guy fell off the back. This continued until about the 2000m to go mark. There was a hill that wasn’t particularly steep but by then I was cooked. I ended up slowing way down and go caught by a guy that was way back and pretty much soloed the whole race. At 500m I decided I was close enough to try and take my position back. Like a rookie I started my attack/sprint too soon. I pulled about 20m on him by the 100m line. He cranked it up and ended up beating me by 0.04 seconds (according to the chip timing).

Final result for me was 33 out of 34. The guy behind me was another 8 minutes back. I finished 17:52 behind the winner (1:26:01.992) who finished in 1:08:09.362. Furmi finished 29th at 1:24:31.551.

The whole experience was a good one. I’m actually pretty happy with my result for my first ever road race and only riding in any competitive manner for a little over 3 months (and only having a bike for a little over 15 months).

Next weekend, Tour of Galena with nearly twice the climbing but luckily the highs are nearly 20F lower and a few miles shorter. After that I’ll be joining the Wednesday and Saturday rides again. I’ve been skipping Wednesday to conserver energy for race day.

Next year I hope to ride at least 2000.

It’s a great workout in a compact time. This will be a great workout for mornings or when I am running short on time at night.
Also with my workout tonight, I’ve officially logged 500 miles of cycling since March. Not too shabby considering I had practically not been on a bike since I was a kid. The break down is 400 miles on the road bike, 100 on the hybrid. Not surprising since I only really ride the hybrid to work and the occasional ride with Maranda. That will even be less when we get Maranda a road bike next spring.

Side Note: I think I’m going to set a goal of 2000 miles in 2011. Comments?

I hope I can keep this up. Right now I’m pretty motivated, we’ll see how it goes in a few months.

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.