If It Hurts It's Probably Good For You

Gorge Roubaix, Day One

BikePortland.org checking out my bike before the race.

As any competitive athlete knows, there are three ways you can practice your sport: you’re either taking it easy, training or you’re training. So far this season I have been, for the most part, training. Just training. I’ll go out and ride up some steep stuff if I feel like it. Maybe I’ll ride around Sauvie Island as fast as I can or hit up a fast cat group ride. Or maybe I’ll just go for a ride with my Dad and ride the Tour de Thai Food carts at a nice Zone 1-2 pace. This kind of training is nice, and at my first two races of the season – Dirty Circles, where I easily claimed fourth, and Cherry Pie, where an eighth place finish also didn’t require much sweat – it seemed to be working fine. And then, I raced The Gorge Roubaix.

The first day of the race tasked the 4/5 field with a stage barely more than 30 miles long. There was a pretty steep gravel climb and a gravel descent, but I wasn’t too worried about it. I think of this as the type of course that suits me well and I was feeling optimistic about my results. The peloton rolled out fairly mellow, with no one wanting to do too much work into the headwind. Lower category races tend to be cursed by heavy individualism; rarely are racers working for anyone other than themselves and so no one wants to grit it out into the wind alone and risk making the race interesting. But once the road turned up, that all changed. Two riders from Washington immediately attacked off the front and the field jumped in responses. I worked hard to stay with the front group, digging deep and feeling my heart rate hit the roof. But no matter how bad I wanted it, a lack of training left my legs without the stuff to stick with these crazy Washington sandbaggers.

I fell off the front group and was soon riding in the sad limbo between breakaway and chase. I wasn’t ready to give up just yet though, and a Rukus Test Team rider up the road provided just the carrot I needed to keep digging the rest of the way up the climb. With no small effort, I managed to reel him in just before we started the long gravel descent. This would prove to be a key moment, because as I would later find out this hairy legged cat 4 was also an old hand on the dirt. We bombed downhill faster than I would have alone, sliding through corners and pedaling the whole way. Following his line motivated me to rail it way faster than I otherwise would have, and we even caught my housemate Hayes Kenny, normally a much faster dirt rider than I am, at the bottom of the hill. He had gotten spit out of the front group shortly after me, but now reunited again we were ready to do some work towards the finish. 

The Dalles provided a gorgeous venue for racing. Photo by Adam Lapierre.

In the long, flat, windy final ten miles or so that proceeded the gravel section we caught some more rejects from the break and soon had a group of six pacelining together smoothly. We kept up a solid clip until one of our members jumped with 1km to go. Hayes was pretty toasted, but I still felt like I had a solid sprint left in my legs. So as we neared the line Hayes “The Daze” Kenny gave one last solid effort to bridge me up to the rider up the road. I grabbed onto his wheel with 200m left to go as the road shot up towards the uphill finish. Sucking his wind until the last moment, I slungshot myself past and crossed the line first of our small group for a decent result of eight place.

I was satisfied with the effort, but was disappointed I hadn’t been able to stick with the climbers off the front, a group I like to consider myself apart of. But this race has left me excited for the season to come and motivated to put in more hard efforts, to get down to some serious training, so that I can be the wheel people are grinding their molars to hold on to.

Check back in the coming weeks for more adventures and to find out how the rest of my season goes!

Until then, Ride On.

Kyle McCall

@UpwardProgress

The Unemployed Athlete

Having a hobby with the tendency to consume as many hours as a part-time job is a minor comfort when unemployed. The past few months I've been able to give myself fully to training, which in turn has given back a sense of meaning to an otherwise aimless period. Most mornings I wake up to a completely empty schedule. Usually this would grant a sense of relief or a feeling of relaxation, but when this day in and day out emptiness becomes normalcy it begins to feel draining and almost crippling. What am I going to do today? The economic hardship that comes with unemployment and the constant need to be looking for work rule out most adventures.

Post ride cafe: all the more delicious when you can't really afford it.

Having a training schedule puts at least one item on my list for the day that gives it some sort of structure. Having a race on the calendar gives a long term goal that gives my life at least some sort of meaning. If it weren't for cycling and running I don't think I'd be able to face the drudgery of unemployment or the repeated disappointments of "we're moving forward with other candidates" with half the candor that I've been able to. Still, unemployment sucks though.

Until next time, ride on.
Kyle McCall

Just Warming Up

The weather has been getting warmer and the protour has gotten full under way. After seeing the Tour of Romandie live a couple weeks ago I have a new respect for the beastly men who make up the elite peloton. There were a few days in the Swiss mountains that were near freezing with snow only freshly cleared off the ground. The climbs weren't so bad, but the descents were just brutal. Numb digits and chattering jaw are way worse then the steepest of hills, IMO. The whole experience added a new level of motivation to my training though, and I'm excited to return to the states and start racing in June.

I finally read Hunter Allen's Training and Racing with a Power Meter, which is something I should have done months ago. The six month training plan my coach designed for me ends when I get back to the states, at which point I'll be working more on my own. But I feel like I've gotten a handle on what my body can do and what it needs to improve, so I'm not too worried. I'm predicting a great season this year, hopefully moving up some categories. I compared my Critical Power curve to a chart Allen includes in his book and it ranked me along side his tests of Cat III cyclists, so that could be a fun goal. Of course there is a lot more to bike racing then power output, and as this will only be my second season of road I am definitely still wet behind the ears.

Here things are just warming up. The grand tours are getting underway, my legs are feeling stronger, and the weather is becoming brighter. I'm excited to see what the next few months bring.

Kyle McCall
@UpwardProgress

Focus

Wait, what was I gonna talk about? Oh yeah...
FOCUS!
Before I do that though, I should check my facebook, and my email, and listen to that new JT song, and water my cats, and eat more carbs. You've probably been told this a million times before, but we are just to distracted nowadays. I myself struggle with being in the moment. In class, talking to friends, or even on the bike I am there but it can be challenging to keep the mind focused on the task at hand. There are broader levels of focus too. Beyond just being attentive to the moment, there is long term focus. This is an area where cycling has really benefited me. Maintaining the discipline and the focus to train every day and live the healthy lifestyle that supports recovery is a constant challenge. There are days when its easy and other days – when it is near freezing, raining, and I didn't get enough sleep – that it can truly be a challenge. When we lose focus, in the moment or in the long term, things can become overwhelming. What was once a passion that stirred excitement to think about becomes a dirge. It's easy to get lost and forget why we ever set out towards a distant goal in the first place. This is when a strong sense of self discipline and focus becomes most important.

Young rising star Joe Dombronski exhibits some complete concentration at the end of this time trail. Photo source: http://provelopassion.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/passion-prize-joe-dombrowskis-all-in-gila-time-trial/

Whatever I've done in my life, there have been times when I've wanted to quit. Whether it's school, or a relationship, or a job, or cycling. Sometimes it just becomes so hard that to continue doesn't seem worth it, no matter how motivated I once was. I can't go on. I must go on.

There are times when I loose my focus with cycling. Times when I get up and the last thing I want to do is pull on my kit and do the scheduled workout. When those times happen, I take a deep breath and meditate on the things I love about my sport. I think about the joy of motion that brought me here in the first place. And while there are times that it is hard, my journey with the bike has been one of the most rewarding challenges I've ever undertaken. This is directly related to how hard it is. Nothing easily gotten is worth having, as they say. It is the inherent challenge in many tasks that gives them value. This what we need to remember when we start to lose focus. It may damn well be hard, but sometimes that's just how life is. Accept that, buckle down, and do the work. After it's done, you can look back at what you've accomplished and feel the pride of knowing that your could have quit at any time, and a lot of times you probably wanted to, but you didn't. And you may well find that this is addictive. Before you know it, your innate response to challenges will be to overcome them. Focus leads to focus.

Wait, I wasn't already on vacation?

I know it's hard to believe, but I'm actually in school right now. Like, I spend about 20 hours a week in a classroom learning French and European culture stuff and do a little bit of homework too. But, this week and next I am on vacation. I'm taking the opportunity to do a little bit of traveling around Europe, so I'll be off the bike for about 10 days but that's the price you pay to see the world. I'm jetting off to London tomorrow and from there it'll be Amsterdam and then Berlin. Quality Eurotrippin'.

My vacation started on Friday though and I've been taking this first part of it to cram in the miles before I go. That's a valid form of training, right? I did a nice long team ride and some beautiful spins on my own as well. The team ride was mostly without incident, until some dude crashed on one of the corners in a little village and snapped his rear derailleur off. Ouch! The bike was fine though, that's why they make the hangers out of aluminum. Easily replaced and then your good as new. Oh, the rider was okay as well.

Man down! Also, is it fucked up that after this happened the first thing I thought was, "I should get a picture for the blog?"

The best part of my week was probably this killer long ride I went on on Monday though. I headed East into Germany in search of the little range of hills there that offered about as much elevation gain as I could find in the area. My regular readers will probably know what I'm going to say next. I got hella lost. You can see that ride on Strava and it looks pretty silly, it's basically a big loop with little spines coming off all over of roads I started to take but than realized they weren't going where I wanted. Navigating is a bitch man, I need one of those fancy ass bike computers that tells me where to go. "Uphill!" it would say and point me towards the sky.

Das Rhine

Honestly, it probably wouldn't help though. The "bike paths" here are usually pretty poorly marked and I doubt they would even be on the digital maps. A lot of times they will be just dirt or gravel. In fact, I'm pretty sure I figured out how the sport of cyclocross was invented, but here they just call it winter training. It's partially due to my sense of direction often leading me towards the edges of cliffs, but I usually find myself riding onto unfinished roads, through construction sites (seriously, half this damn country is under construction), or on trails through the woods. I've just given up trying to avoid it and write it off as some quality bike handling practice, but man am I gonna need a new chain when I get back stateside.

Das Flatland

Anyway, yeah German excursion. I eventually found some real pretty vinyard hills. None of them were more than 1,000 feet, so I don't want to call them mountains, but it was really nice to get a chance to do some climbing. I live next to the Rhine and pretty much everything around here is flatland. It was a beautiful day too, which made the five hour ride a breeze. It was really the sort of thing I'd been praying for these past couple weeks of consistant shitty weather. Midway through I even stopped and grabbed a slice of pie and a coffee from a little bakery in the country. Sun, hills, and pie? Now that's my kinda vacation.

Das Fuel

Cheers folks, I'll see you after the break. And remember: Live to ride. Ride to live.
@upwardprogress
Kyle McCall

Bonus !  Want to see some more pics? Check out this album.
Probably be posting some more there during my travels, so check back often.

You Must Believe in Spring

Things have been trucking along nicely this past week, but I'm getting damn tired of the snow and ice. It's pretty and all, but it's a pain to ride in. Sometimes I actually miss the rain! This past weekend the clouds parted for just long enough to thaw the frozen crust on the land. Both Saturday and Sunday had beautiful afternoons. Saturday I set off on my own, but some group ride swept up shortly into my ride and I decided to hop on. Why not? I'm here to meet people after all. It was a slower paced ride than the other ones I've gone with, but the riders were a nice group of older club guys who still set a decent pace. I'm really impressed with all of the teams and clubs here, there are just tons of groups riding around. Sunday I met up with my usual team for a quality long ride, but nothing crazy this weekend. I just appreciated the breaks of sun I was able to get and some quality long rides.

That's all a really want, the sun. Spring is only a couple of months away. I can almost taste it! There is a girl on my program here who hails from Southern California and we talked about the weather. She says she doesn't really like the weather there, "it's too sunny all the time." This is a sentiment I've heard echoed by other SoCalites, believe it or not. I think they just get engorged on Vitamin D and can't handle anymore after a certain point. As an native Oregonian, however  I am habitually Vitamin D deficient and so have a fetishistic love for the sun. That's probably one of my favorite things about Oregon in fact: what a bunch of sun worshipping hippies we are. There's the slightest cloud break and people start playing ultimate Frisbee, having vegan picnics, and walking their labradoodles. Yes, it's as Bill Evans always said, You Must Believe in Spring.

This weekend. Real perdy.

Today. Also perdy, but less fun for riding.

Oh, My Portland

There is this magical effect that has been prevalent in my life whenever I travel that I call the "Portland Curse." Basically, the curse is that wherever I go the Portland weather follows me. I can travel to San Francisco and it'll rain. I went to Nice in the French Riviera and it rained. Whether it's Germany, Israel, or Hawaii in the summer, even if it's supposed to be blue skies, it'll start raining when I get there. So it's been pretty rainy in Strasbourg because it's in Northern France and it rains here all the damn time. But today I was reminded of the Curse in a uniquely charming way.

The infamous David Guettler of River City Bicycles generously sent me one of their kits to enable the looking pro and as well as spreading the love of this awesome shop to Europe. Pretty cool deal. And a fine looking kit of I don't say so myself:

So, the first thing I did this morning after I got it was the same thing I do every morning: I went for a ride. It was beautiful out, a veritable rarity in Strasbourg. I did some jumps, worked on the leg speed, and spun down the canal. A real nice ride. Then, after about an hour, the clouds started to roll in. Damnit, I thought to myself, there's a lot of white on this kit. The sky opened up and it didn't just rain, it started to freakin' hail! Luckily I was wearing an RCB cap too, which I flipped down to semi-protect my face from the icy bullets hitting me in the face at 50km/h.

I felt so at home. I had already turned around at this point and threw in some impromptu threshold work to keep the blood flowing and get out of the freezing rain quicker, but it wasn't an all bad experience. I was actually kept pretty warm and dry thanks to the weather resistant fabrics of that fancy new jersey (as a side note, this is perhaps the only construction of a sentence where the word "fancy" can appropriately be placed adjacent to the words "new jersey"). After I got home was a little dismayed at the dirt soaked into my new duds, especially the white leggings. But, they rinsed clean real nice with just a little bit of dish soap, so they will be looking fresh to rep this weekend on the team ride. It's all in a days work. And you gotta love the work.

A little on the bike vanity. You can see how sunny it was when I left the house.

Disclaimer: This blog is not sponsored by River City Bicycles, Castelli, or the State of New Jersey. I just think they do/make great things. Except the State of New Jersey.

Kyle McCall

@upwardprogress

Motorpacing

The pros do it, so it must be good.
Motorpacing, the practice of a single or group of cyclists drafting a motorized vehicle, such as a car, motorcycle, or scooter. It's a great way to simulate the high speeds and varying paces of a race in addition to allowing a coach to have a more hands on interaction with his riders during their training. For this Saturdays ride I joined up with team Eckwersheim again. They brought about 20 of their riders and the team coach, who was in their team car (I know, what?).

So, needless to say, it was pretty badass. We met the coach out near a little commercial area that was pretty light use. For our main workout we were going to ride a ~5km loop with him motorpacing us from the team car. Well, a recurring theme with my experiences with the Euro cyclists is that nothing is ever that simple. The ride evolved very much like a race. From the start we were tucked behind the car going nearly 40km/h (25mph) and the pace rarely dipped below there. On one particularly open flat stretch of the road, that brutal pace was matched with a strong headwind so if I got even slightly out of the draft I could feel myself being torn away from the group. The challenge wasn't in staying inside the constantly rotating echelons on the flats though, but keeping the bunch together out of the turns. Our route cornered through a couple of round abouts where the pace car would shoot out like a criterium racer. Pummeling winds were followed by explosive sprints in a constant battle to keep in the group behind the car. 

There would be no respite though and the pace just got faster and faster. Eventually, coming around a corner, I couldn't grab back on and got spat out the back. Fortunately I wasn't the only one who got dropped, so me and another team mate trucked on along the loop, waiting for the car to come back around. After a few minutes we I could see it coming around a corner and down a long straightaway toward us. We built up speed, preparing to jump onto the back of the pack. I gritted my teeth with the effort as the group thundered along side of us. Like jumping onto a freight train, I hurled myself up and into the draft. But the pace continued to quicken and my legs were considerably drained. After a few more minutes of sprints and turns the team car unforgivingly rolled over my legs. Metaphorically speaking. That is to so, I felt like my guns had been crushed and I simply could not hang on any longer. 

As the train thundered away down the tracks I was actually relieved to see a dozen or so riders – more than half the group – scattered around the road within a kilometer or so of me. The sight of others alone or in small groups around the loop told me I wasn't the only one who's legs had given out on them. It wasn't long after that point that we all regrouped back together and rode the loop a couple more times at a well earned relaxed pace. I talked with some of the other guys about are high intensity workout.

"Yeah, it was fast," a team member said to me, "I've never done that before."

Oh yeah? For some reason I had assumed this was the reg, but it was some great threshold work either way. The rest of the day was pretty moderate riding around the area and then back into town. Overall, it was a great day for cycling: forging new friendships and elite fitness. That's what I do.

-Kyle McCall

@upwardprogress

Team Eckwersheim, lookin' Pro