Another Race Canceled

Thanks to Mother N, I'm writing this with only one road race under my tires. Unprecedented rain in Southern California. Los Angeles is sitting at 33" or 84 cm. Hell, the record was set in 1884 at 38" and the winter is not even over. What does this mean to a racer - washed out races, that's what. I should have been riding in the Valencia Road Race today but the 68 mile raced was called on a mud slide in the middle of the road. European racers would have just sneered at the mud and the race would have been on - but we have lawyers, and heck, the Valencia Road Race is no Paris-Roubaix. At least that's what I'm assuming stopped the race. I biked over the course yesterday and it looked pretty good. I did have to grit my teeth a bit as I squished over the mud, and my skinny tires threatened to wash me out and send me to the pavement, er mud. Went over the course again this morning with my wife - the tandem handled the race course easily but I did notice that a road grader was busy on the bad muddy section and the tandem was able to find a path through the mud.

I was supposed to race in Phoenix last week but family matters took front and center and I had to cancel - I wasn't too concerned as I knew I had the Valencia race this weekend. Then the rain started again...and five days later it finally stopped. That was a couple of days ago and here I sit typing on my desk top. My high school students will be disappointed as they wanted to watch their teacher race. Of course, I didn't see a single one at the race start point when I went out on the tandem this morning - I'm sure they must have gotten the word the race was off...

So I rescheduled another race - I need something to write about in this blog. I presumably do want to race at 48 years of age. So next Saturday I'm going to travel 4.5 hours to Northern California and race in Merced. Merced has the McLane Pacific Cycling Classic with the Foothills Road Race on Sunday, March 6. The Merced area was my racing "stomping grounds" 20 years ago - I'm looking forward to my return. So look for a post on how my 2nd road race of the season went. Speaking of races, I need to update my post on my racing schedule. I've added new races and took off some. Talk to you in the next post.

Just checked the weather; a new storm due in tonight or tomorrow. I live in a fricken desert but it might as well be Hawaii. I'm moving to El Paso...

Training in the Rain

What a pussy - a little rain and I'm crying foul. Back in the summer, I was reading a posting on the "slowtwitch" web site. The writer was complaining about not being able to ride what with all the hurricanes that were blasting Florida and the South Eastern U.S. I posted back that I would give anything to ride in the rain. Hell, I had just finished a typical summer desert ride; 105 degrees F and dry as a bone. We hadn't seen rain in 7 months. Now I would give anything to see a little sunshine. If you read my post on the latest road race cancellation then you already know what I'm writing about. Southern California is about to set a record that has been around since 1884. I live in the high desert of Los Angeles County, we're lucky if we see 9" of rain all season. I think we're going on 20" right now. So what is a rider to do with all this rain.

First of all, any rider worth his rubber is going to ride in the rain. But that's not the problem. The problem in the desert is that the ground here can't handle 20" of rain. Streets just disappear or appear to be moving. It takes me forever to get home from work in my car because of all the street closures around here. Most of the great riding areas like "3 canyons, 3 Points, etc. have been wiped out - no roads anymore. This last week, it started raining on Friday and didn't end until Thursday, two days ago. So what do I do?

I usually set up my trainer and hook my bike up to it. But I lack the patience to deal with the trainer. So on Sunday, during a downpour, I got in my truck and headed over to "24 Hour Fitness" one of the local gyms in town. I like to use the "Lifecycle" as I can program it to be a pretty tough ride. I can also look at the "scenery" in the gym. I find looking at women with tight tops give me another 15 minutes on a trainer. At home, with Laura Diaz - my favorite news lady, I can last about 35 minutes. At the gym I can make it 45 to 50 minutes (I'm glad my wife thinks this blog is a waste of my time, "don't you have better things to do.", and doesn't read this thing.) Anyway, I set the life cycle for a hill workout, put it at level 12, the maximum and then sweat all over the floor. I'm sure other gym members think I'm a bit strange with my tight black shorts and the diaper that appears to be in my crotch. But they usually have the life cycle set to level 2 and are reading a People magazine or the like.

On Monday, during a downpour, I just lifted weights in my garage - no bike, no trainer.

On Tuesday, during a lull in the downpour, I did some hill repeats about 4 miles from my house. My workout called for 8 repeats on a 3-5% grade, at full speed. I got about half way through them and the skies opened up again. I finished the workout with 7 repeats and biked the 4 miles home with sweat and rain in my eyes.

On Wednesday, during another lull in the downpour, I set out on 23 mile easy ride - the sun was actually shining. I got about as far away as I could get in the ride, when I noticed some real nasty looking dark clouds heading my way. Lightning was lighting them up and the wind just came out of the blue. It looked like I had ridden into Kansas, and I was waiting for the twister to drop out of the clouds. The next lightning strike reminded me that I was rolling around on a bunch of aluminum and would probably make a tempting target for the rain gods - I did a quick U-turn and started back home at full speed. The rain was right on my heels. By the time I was 3 miles away from home, it hit me with a vengeance. But I was literally laughing with the storm. It actually felt good to be drenched by the downpour until the hail started...with about a 1/2 mile to go the hail came down - damn, that hurts. I raced into my garage just as a tremendous hail storm started. It seemed like 4 inches of hail came down in 10 minutes. Too bad I wasn't 20 miles out in the middle of nowhere - what a story that would be for the blog.

Racing Categories

My race posting on the Nelson Stage Race in Las Vegas talked about categories; I caught up with a “Cat 4”, we started behind the Cat 5s, etc. The title of my blog is Masters 45…what does all this mean?

I’m sitting at my computer in a driving rainstorm. I live in the high desert of Los Angeles County and rain is usually a rare thing here. But this has been a long winter for rainstorms and associated road washouts and closings. In short, I’m sitting on my butt instead of riding my bike – a good time to post to the blog. So let’s talk about how categories work in bike racing.

The current system is set up to allow all levels of ability access to road racing. By having categories you can be reasonably sure your riding with other riders that are at your level of ability. The system uses numbers, 5 being the lowest, and 1 is the highest. If you’re a beginner you will start out as a “Cat 5” or “Cat 4” for women. The difference between the cats for men and women only reflect the relative numbers of racers for both groups. There usually are more male novice racers out there than novice female racers. As your ability progresses you move down the categories until you reach Cat 1. So it pretty much works like this:

Cat 5: beginner or novice
Cat 4: beginner (women) or novice with at least 10 races under their bike tires (men)
Cat 3: Expert
Cat 2: Expert or semi-pro
Cat 1: Semi-pro
Pro (There is also a category for professional riders)

I’m a Masters 45, this means that I’m 45 or older. It can get a little strange here, in that all categories can exist in the Masters group. Master racers can start after age 30. So that means there is a category called Masters 30. So if you were a Cat 3 when you were racing in your twenties and you joined the Masters 30, you are really a Masters 30 “Cat 3” racer. In my case, I was out of bicycle racing for 20 years, so when I restarted this year, I went in as a Masters 45, Cat 5.

Just to make it more confusing…I can also enter races as a “regular” Cat 5 and skip using my Masters designation. Why would I do this? Because I would know that I was riding with novice racers instead of a bunch of “old guys” that have Cat 1-3 ability. In fact, Cat 40 or higher racers tend to be pretty tough, which makes the Masters categories a difficult category to race in. Though I haven’t raced in 20 years, I’ve chosen to stay with the Masters group because of their bike handling skills. Cat 5 racers tend to spend some time on the ground, as accidents seem to be much higher in this group. I’ve made the choice to get my ass kicked with the Master riders than add to my scars that I collected 20 years ago when I started out as a Cat 5.

Try out the USA Cycling web site for more information on categories.