Got a Buck? Save a Bread Truck!

My wife is very good at marketing. She sent this email out yesterday  to some friends and family. I'm posting it here in hopes to drive some random traffic to the Richmond Cycling Corps site and solicit a few donations. There is not a better non-profit in the world. I mean that. Please help if you can!

Hi Friends,

I'm sending this along to you because I think it's a cause you'll find important.  A friend of ours runs a nonprofit organization for kids in under served communities in Richmond, VA and they are in a bit of a tough spot.  If you can do anything to help, however small or large it may be, the organization could use all the help it can get. 

Even if you don't want to or can't donate, maybe you can help by spreading the word around.  I'm hearing that this social media thing could be pretty powerful, so tweet to your friends (and follow @riccyclingcorps), post on Facebook, whatever.

We are trying to get these guys back on the road so they can keep helping kids!  

Details below...

Thanks!

Jill and Landall

We need your help! 

Richmond Cycling Corps is an inner-city program in Richmond that uses cycling as a tool for leadership and character development. They promise their youth that if they stay with RCC, they WILL get out of the projects. 

In order to transport the bikes to the kids they use an old converted bread truck that has recently broken down. Without the bread truck, they simply can't get the bikes to the kids and the program is at a stand still. These kids count on this program! 

Here is a link to some videos about the program: http://www.richmondcyclingcorps.org/video/ 

Here is a link to the local news story about the bread truck situation: http://www.nbc12.com/story/18062724/broken-down-truck-halts-non-profit-kids-cycling-program

Even a donation as small as $1 would help, so if you would like to donate you can do so on their website: http://www.richmondcyclingcorps.org/

Peanut Butter Energy Bars

I should preface this with giving credit where credit is due. This recipe is basically just a variation of the recipes Georgia Gould put on her website. If you want her varieties, you should check them out here, http://georgiagould.com/blog/2012/02/the-best-homemade-energy-bars/. Her directions are also probably a bit better than mine.

When my mom was visiting she made two varieties of Georgia's recipes and they were awesome. My wife remade the fruits and nuts bar with some variation based on what we had on hand. They turned out really well also.

Peanut Butter Energy Bars --

Ingredients:

2C (cups) rice crispies
2C rolled oats
1 package of bacon (fried, then chopped into small pieces)
1C peanut butter chips (chocolate chip pieces but in peanut butter flavor. sometimes hard to find. I use chocolate chips as a substitute)

1C creamy peanut butter
1C brown rice syrup

Directions:

Put your dry goods into a large mixing bowl and pre-stir.

In a sauce pan, heat the peanut butter and brown rice syrup over medium heat until it's combined and pretty runny.

Pour over dry goods.

With a spatula or wooden spoon mix the rice syrup/pb with your dry goods. Work quickly because when this stuff starts to cool it's going to get hard really fast. After about a minute, ditch the spatula and use your hands mixing it all together into one big clump.

Pour your mixture into a greased (crisco works if you got it) brownie pan.

Press the shit out of it to flatten it as much as you can. You want to try and get it about an inch thick. This will make sure everything holds together later.

Set it aside to cool for at least 1 hour. 2-3 is better. You can even leave it over night if you don't have time to mess with it.

Once cool, use a butter knife to cut equally sized bars of whatever portion you want. Since you wont' be trying to eat them on a bike you don't need any fancy wrapping instructions. Aluminum foil will work just fine. Store them in the fridge, though I'm not sure this is actually necessary.

Roughly 200 calories per bar if they're about 2" squares.

If you want, you can basically substitute any dried fruits or nuts for the bacon and peanut butter chips. You can also use almond butter or sunflower seed butter instead of peanut butter if you wanted. The more ingredients you add, reduce your rice crispies and rolled oats to 1C each. I've done tons of varieties and haven't found anything that isn't good.

Jefferson Cup. Not Good.

The Race: Jefferson Cup Road Race
The Course: 6, 11ish mile laps. 1 climb, the rest steepish rollers w/ a long false flat to the finish.
The Field: 3/4 Men
The Finish: Not DFL but not sure I actually got scored either.

It's less than 24 hours after I watched a group of guys pedal away from me up the climb at Jeff Cup. I guess I knew it was coming but, ever the optimist, I decided to start the climb at the back telling myself I could definitely at least just stay in contact over the top.

Well, that didn't happen and I had the pleasure of rolling it in by myself for the last 75% of that lap. Weird thing that I can't figure out is after the decent, I rode at threshold, by myself, avg about 24mph for the rest of the lap. My ability to go 200% of ftp for a sustained period on the climb which is what was required to stay in the group was zapped, that's a fact. But still riding at ftp for another 20minutes or so means that I definitely didn't bonk. I think this points to an even worse scenario, total mediocrity.

My teammates Thom and Mike rode really well. Thom well above where he expected himself to be and ended up 7th. Mike was strong and it's really too bad that I sucked so much and couldn't be there at the end to help him. That's definitely the worse part about sucking when you have teammates attempting to race as a team. The feeling of letting 3 other guys down is way worse than any embarrassment of pedaling in solo after everyone else has already started to explain to their friends why they didn't win. Mike had to avoid the crash that was in the finish but still ended up 8th. Luckily he didn't get tied up in that.

The positives:

- Not crashing when the kid in front me missed his bottle in the feed and it immediately went under my rear wheel.

- Not crashing when the junior forced me off the road and into a gravel driveway with a mailbox at 35+mph on one of the descents.

- Seeing Jill holding Hudson and the mesmerized look on his face as the group rolled by every lap.

- 65 miles in around 2:45 is a good training day and I suppose that's how I should look at it.

The negatives:

- The race was basically 2 laps too many. If we'd have done the 4 in the morning and not the 3/4 in the afternoon I think we'd have come to line with 4 guys, organized and able to win. (It should be point out that it's my fault we did the 3/4 as I made the sell and convinced everyone it was a good idea. Another reason I feel pretty shitty about how my day went).

I didn't see anybody taking pictures but if I end up on You Got Dropped I'm retiring and taking up bowling.

Black Hills Circuit Race

The Race: Black Hills Circuit Race
The Course: 10 laps a of 1.5 mile circuit
The Field: 4/5 Men
The Finish: 8th

I read another local guy's description of the 4/5 field that was pretty accurate, having taken part in that race. His observation was that we rode around slowly for 9.8 laps and then really fast for .2. That's about right, but hopefully a trend we can buck.

Not sure if it was the hill or what but there just wasn't a lot of motivation for a lot of guys to ride hard. I suppose I'm just as much to blame as anybody because I was at the front and on the front several times but never really drilled it, not even up the hill. And because of that we all came to the bottom of the hill in a big group with 30+ guys confusing themselves for a Alejandro Valverde type.

My job coming into this race was to stay at the front and play defense against any dangerous looking moves. Nothing really ever took off. We let two guys dangle for two laps but when we did bring them back they had both completely dropped the anchors, clearly a move that wasn't going to go to the line.

The pre-race plan was to drop Mike off about a quarter of the way up the hill if it was still groupo compacto. It was, but I couldn't find Mike in the group so the plan changed to follow wheels and hope for the best result I could get. I also had no idea where Thom or Jay were but before the right sweeper that leads to the hill I heard Thom tell me he was behind me and he had Jay on him. At that point, it made sense to try and drill it and lead Jay out as best we could. In theory that would have been great, in practice we left it too late and by the time I got room to go, people were sprinting.

Jay is VERY fast for 5-10 seconds, just like a good sprinter should be, and he used that burst to get through the traffic and finish 4th. Thom came by me right at the line for 7th and I got 8th. Mike came out of no where picking his way through the chaos for 15th. It wasn't the plan we drew up but 4 guys in the race and 4 guys in the top 15! Not too bad and a great start to the season.

From an entirely selfish perspective I think taking the split second to make the decision to try and find a hole to lead out Thom and Jay cost me a few spots. I had the wheels I was going to go with as my own lead out and abandoned them. Though, after watching a very grainy video of the finish I don't think I'd have won because I wasn't aware that the French National Champ was even still there so obviously I'd been following the wrong wheels.

All things considered I think everybody on the team did exactly what they needed to do to be there at the end. Thom and Jay weren't sure how it was going to play out on the hill so they were being conservative in the field. Since it never got really hard they were still there and were able to take high placings because of it. I was able to stay at the front, watch the moves, play defense and still had plenty left at the end. I'm looking forward to being the aggressor in a few of the upcoming races. Eventually some move has to stick right?

Video of the finish:



A few photos:

The Greatest Cycling Coaching Company EVER!

And, I need to link to the image for our race team blog. Which you can check out here: http://veloworksspokes.wordpress.com/

3 more Race Reports

The editors here at Team Landall are doing a pretty terrible job of actually updating and writing race reports. They're going to blame it on fatherhood.

Schooley Mill CX | Maryland | 11.13.2011
This was a pretty cool race. Upon pre-riding the course I thought it was nothing but turn, turn, turn, turn, turn and wasn't going to suit me very well, but during the race I felt like there was a lot of actual pedaling which I generally like. I started really close to the back because of my late registration. I was number 68 or something. The start went up a hill and wasn't very fast, which didn't actually lead to much opportunity to pass. I rode the first lap pretty aggressively to pick my way through the field. I continually passed guys the entire race and then on the last lap made contact with one of the better placed riders in the series. He was on a different bike than he started so me must have had a mechanical. Instead of trying to ride by him I decided to follow him to see how he cornered, since I assumed he was better at that than I am. This strategy also let a guy I had previously passed catch back on and we had a group of three in the last half of the last lap. We all came onto the pavement pretty much together and he opened it up right away. I ended up winning the uphill sprint for 12th. This was the first race I felt like I pedaled hard and sprinted out of corners for the entire 45 minutes. I was really pleased with 12th, especially considering my starting position. This also meant I'd score some series points and get a better starting position at my next Super8 race.

Bloomer Park CX | Rochester, MI | 11.20.2011
We went to Michigan for Thanksgiving and luckily there was a race in their CX series going on in the same park where Jill used to play softball as a kid. We invited all of her friends she grew up with and I couldn't believe it, but they actually came out to watch. It was awesome having a cheering section and was definitely motivating to keep the gas on.

The race had a really weird mulch pile feature. There was a dip in the middle instead of just being one pile. That dip got really rutted out and going into it on the first lap I stacked it pretty good. I was able to get my bike and get the chain back on while running out of the mulch pile, jump back on and start the chase. I lost probably 3-4 spots there.

It didn't take too long and I had moved my way up to 2nd. I chased as hard as I could but couldn't bring the guy in first back. He was their series leader and ended up beating me by about 30 seconds and I beat the guy in 3rd by about 45 seconds. Except for the mulch pile it was a really fun course and I even got heckled by strangers at the top of one of the hills. That was pretty cool too.

Capital CX | Reston, VA | 12.4.2011
I was really stoked to start on the 3rd row for once but I did not have a very good race. At least not physically. Not sure what was going on but I felt completely gassed after the first lap and just never quite felt like I was riding fast through the hard pedaling sections that I normally do pretty well through. I ended up sprinting for 11th, won the sprint, but the judges recorded me as 12th. Upon not seeing a camera I decided not to file and official protest, but probably should have. I just wasn't sure how I'd prove that I beat the guy other than saying, "I know I won that sprint." Oh well.

My favorite part of the day wasn't the insane drop-in with snow fencing to catch riders gone astray. It was the guy who on the 3rd or 4th lap chose to cut the course after the tape had been broken by someone else and rode straight into a giant hole filled with leaves. Karma will do that to you.

That may be the end of my 2011 CX season. There's a race in Luray this weekend but it's a 2 hour drive and with the baby that is sort of a logistical concern. Jill has been so great about letting me race this year, and really so quickly after Hudson was born. He was only 3 weeks old when I raced Kinder Kross. I realize how lucky I am to have such a supportive wife. She's always on the side of the course yelling words of encouragement and telling me where I'm at in the field. It's really awesome. The racing side of me definitely wants to race Luray. I've managed to eek out 6 upgrade pts and there's a decent chance I could get the remaining 4 I need for my 2 upgrade. The husband in me thinks I should probably count my blessings and not push it by asking my wife and baby to sit in the car for a 2 hour drive while I race for 45 minutes and turn around and drive 2 hours home.

Either way, I'm really happy with the way this season went and I'm already looking forward to next year when I've had to time work on the limiters. I'm confident I'll get my 2 upgrade and start racing for 60 minutes. It's just a matter of time.

3 Race Reports and a Rant.

First, here's three race reports:

Kinder Cross, 10.30.11, Cat 3/4:
First race back after the birth of Hudson. About 2 weeks off the bike and the entire week going into that race I rode indoors on the trainer. The first time I rode outside was from the parking spot to the reg table to get my number. Got a good start despite being on the 6th or 7th row and went into the first bottle neck in the top 15 or so. Fought my way up to about 5th and then starting making mistakes from not having actually ridden my bike in a while. I ended up dabbing a lot more than usual which forced me to chase harder than needed which caused more dabbing. I finished 9th out of 40 something starters. Not bad for the first race back.

VCU CX, 11.05.11, Cat 3:
This was a smaller race with only about 20 guys on the start line. The course was awesome and had a bunch of really cool features. It was also short so we rode 10 or so laps for the 45 minutes instead of just 4-5. Moved into the top 5 by the end of the first lap then into 3rd by the end of the 3rd or 4th. I got caught by a guy somewhere around the 5th or 6th lap and I tried to recovery a bit while keeping him in striking distance. He was cornering better than me but I was riding faster through the pedaling sections so I figured I just needed to come to the pavement with him and I'd beat him. That's what happened and I out sprinted him for 3rd.

Ed Sander CX, 11.06.11, Cat 3/4:
At the MABRA races the staging takes place based on the order in which you register. The only good thing about this policy is that at least it's transparent and everybody knows it. The bad thing about this policy is that it's dumb but I'll get to that in my rant in a second.

I started 89th, third from last row. I couldn't even see the helmets of the guys in the first 5 rows. I liked half of this course but the section through the Lily Ponds I didn't really find very useful. It wasn't hard as it was just a series of 90 degree corners through the ponds, but it was almost impossible to ride fast because it was turn, pedal twice, turn, pedal twice, turn. I think you get the idea. The other half of the course actually required some fitness, some bike handling skills and concentration. That part of the course was much better.

I ended up in a group of guys and had almost nothing left on the last lap. I was hoping I could hold them off but I gave up a few spots late. I finished 26th on the day, which, in retrospect isn't terrible considering I started 89th. On the results sheets they had a column marked kills, which, in theory is the number of guys you beat based on where you started. I had the 2nd most on the day. The guy with the most started on my row and ended up on the podium. I have no idea how he got through traffic to get all the way up there. Hats off to that guy! http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

And, my rant.

Staging is supposed to act as a means of pre-ranking the riders based on their achieved results that year. At UCI races you are staged based on your UCI points and so the person with the most points it's 1st and it goes from there. At these local races each race assigns series points. And I think that's a good system and those people should get call ups and priority staging. But, after that, staging should be done based on a scoring system that ranks every single rider in the field against one another. But, you may ask yourself, how would the race promoter know how to rank people in that fashion? Easy, crossresults.com already does this work for every single race promoter who uses bikereg, which, all of ours do. All you have to do is copy/paste the url for the confirmed riders into to the race predictor tool and it automatically spits out a list of registered riders based on their crossresults score. In theory, and obviously this wouldn't be absolutely perfect, but you'd get a much more accurate staging line up based on riders previous results. This wouldn't even be any extra work for the race promoter because you're already using an excel sheet to assign race numbers, all you'd have to do is copy/paste the race prediction into an excel sheet and carry on like you previously did. This, would make for a much more accurate race and would still encourage online registration, because you could revert to the old system for anybody registering day of by making those people start in the back, first come, first served.

Obviously this rant is based on the fact that in races where I don't start 3rd row from the back I have all top 10 results and 2 podiums. When I have to fight through rows and rows of people I'm faster than I'm just out of the top 25. Again, I'm not suggesting extra work for race promoters to do a better job with staging at these larger races, but this solution would fix the problem and create a much more accurate race. I just don't like that people get rewarded for sitting at their computer and trolling for registration to open instead of out training. You shouldn't be penalized for pre-registering even if it's 1 minute before online registration closes.