There were two diverse elements that went into my abrupt decision to attempt the hour record. The first was the fallout of the pandemic. 2020 was motoring along nicely, cycling-wise, until March 16. I had put in some good preparation for the upcoming races and felt quite ready. On March 12 I raced at The Driveway and was quite pleased with my results. Then the race calendar was erased. Not in one fell swoop, but as it turned out, all my practicing went for naught. Racing wasn't the only casualty. Group rides also took a hit. Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with solo riding and did a lot of it. But riding with a bunch of youngsters who are faster pushes me beyond what I do when by myself. And the outlook for 2021 was just as bleak. It wasn't in my conscious thought, but I knew my fitness was deteriorating and I needed some goal to get me back to peak performance.
Let me back up a bit. In 2019 I felt the need to strengthen my upper body, specifically core and triceps. Especially triceps, since in longer time trials they complain much sooner than the legs (the neck actually complains even before the race starts). In a previous post, I explained that I had one session using Activtrax, a computerize trainer the Y offers, before the Y closed down for a few months. But it came back and I'm there most weekday mornings.
The second random element was a post by my friend, Carolyn. She displayed a picture of her new bike, a fixed gear track bike, and noted that it was fun riding around the veloway. Carolyn is a competitive cyclist and former national champion and probably will be again next year. I saw her a few weeks after that post and casually mentioned that I already knew one hour-record holder and would be delighted to know two. We chuckled and moved on. Shortly thereafter, one early morning sitting at the computer, that remark returned and I wondered how fast my friend, Clif, went to obtain his record. Fortunately for me, Clif is about twenty years my junior and regularly abolishes his competition in Senior Games time trials. Well, the list of record holders is displayed by age-categories, so I wandered down to the 75-79 and 80-84 categories. When I got to the 80-84 and calculated the speed (it's shown in distance), I caught my breath (figuratively). Then I pulled up ( I have a spread sheet with all of my races) the Heads or Tails Time Trials from 2018. This race is the only 40k TT I've competed in, and I've done it three times. My speed, outside, with an incline that kicked my butt in the latter part of the race, was the same as the hour-record. Eureka! A goal for me to train toward.
First I had to find out if I could even ride a fixed gear bike without injuring myself or others. As it so happened, my friend, Brian, had a commuter fixed gear that was sitting unused in his garage that he was happy to loan me. This was perfect, in that it had front and rear brakes. Track bikes have no brakes. I took it out to Old Settlers Park, to a deserted parking lot and pushed off. It had old-fashioned cage pedals and for the life of me I couldn't flip the left pedal up in order to insert my foot. So I ignored it and slowly pedaled around the lot getting the feel of never coasting. Once back home I switched out the pedals for mountain bike clip-ins. It took a month of practice before I determined I could ride a fixed gear at speed, as long as I didn't have to stop quickly. This was in February, 2021.
As we learn in Business 101, in order to satisfactorily attain your goal you must have a plan. You implement the plan, but be willing to deviate or revise if the plan isn't working. Part of my plan was to have benchmarks that had to be reached if I were to continue. So far, my goal hadn't cost any money. But now I needed a track bike. And a coach. I contacted Carolyn and inquired who it was she knew who could help me out. She put me in touch with Willy, now my coach.
Just because it's a bicycle doesn't mean it doesn't have it's own lexicon which was entirely foreign to me. I had zero idea of what to look for in a bike, what components I needed, zilch. That was part of Willy's job, which was done admirably. Willy's "track" is the veloway, a three-mile loop restricted to bikes and roller-blades. His assessment after our initial ride was I needed more time to get acclimated to fixed gear without brakes (at this time I was still on Brian's bike) and lots of time on rollers. I would also need aero bars.
Back in 2000, in anticipation of my coast-to-coast trip, I obtained rollers and used them in the winter months to train. I might have been on them a half-dozen times since, preferring to use a trainer, which requires less concentration. While I highly recommend rollers, until you get used to them, they can be daunting. Getting clipped-in can be tricky. At first I'd have to hold on to something with my right hand as I warmed up. After two minutes or so, I'd let go and hope I wouldn't veer off the rollers and crash. I never did, but it was still sketchy and adrenaline spiking. After about a month I got to where I could let go after twenty seconds and keep it straight. Then I could practice going from the hoods to the drops, because the final goal has me in an aero position. The benchmark of facile use of rollers gets a check mark. BTW, the implementation of the rollers is to increase my cadence from where I'm most comfortable at 80 rpm, to 90 rpm. It also makes me a more balanced rider.
All of this riding at the veloway is good, but the record attempt will be made in a velodrome. I was at a velodrome in our coast-to-coast trip but didn't ride on it. The slanted sides were quite imposing. That was the next benchmark. If I couldn't ride around a velodrome, there was no point in continuing. I suppose that should have come before purchasing the bike. In any case, Brian and I ventured down to Houston to the only velodrome in Texas, Alkek. Stuart is the track manager and was very helpful in getting me the information needed to decide when I could get in my initial velodrome experience. In order to ride a velodrome, you must take a class. Let me say that Carl did a superior job in putting on the class. We had a lot of fun, learned a lot, and came out feeling that riding a velodrome was no problem at all. In fact, Brian is making noises about coming down and racing.
My plan is to make maybe a half-dozen trips to Alkek. After which, I will determine how many more times I need to go. To that end I purchased a Silver Pass which allows me to schedule unlimited practice sessions. Because I'm retired, it doesn't impact the track calendar at all to schedule a late morning weekday session. Stuart was available on my first trip, to show me what I needed to do. But subsequently, I would have the track to myself. The only requirement is there must be at least one other person in attendance. My first trip after the class was just for an hour, consisting of a warm-up, thirty minutes of concentrated riding, and cool-down. The goal was twenty miles per hour and keeping the bike steady close to the black line without going under it. I was very pleased to have met the mph goal, not so much with keeping steady. Just like the rollers, this will require more hours of velodrome riding than I first thought. Plus, this first ride was in the drops and I needed to obtain aero bars and see if I can control the bike properly. I'm confident I can, the question is how much practice will it take. But that is why I started a year early. I graduate to the 80-84 group next year.
Let me say a few words about Stuart and Carl. Complete strangers when we met at the class. And yet they immediately took it upon themselves to do whatever they could to help me achieve my goal. Carl happily supplied me with articles on track racing when I inquired about gearing. I peppered Stuart with questions which he graciously answered. As we were leaving the track after my session, I mentioned that if Stuart knew anyone with an aero cockpit (combination handlebars and aero bars) they had in their garage and would like to lend, rent, or sell, have them get in touch with me. He thought a moment and said the track might have one, and walked up to the storage area to see. He came back with cockpit in hand, a very nice Zipp. I could take it with me, see if it worked, and if so could pay for it online or just bring it back next time I came. The price was extremely reasonable.
Back home, I installed the new addition and took it out to Old Settlers Park to give it a try. Previously, in order to practice taking corners in the aero position, I used my time trial bike doing ovals that approximated the velodrome. Time trial bikes are not known for their agility, but I had an acceptable workout on it. I was quite pleased with how much more control I had on the fixed gear. Because I had a strenuous workout the day before, my legs weren't up to pushing hard or long, but two fifteen-minute sessions convinced me that the transition to being aero was not the problem I anticipated. Now I needed to see how that translated at Alkek.
My next session on the rollers brought an unwelcome, but not unanticipated, hurdle. By now my roller sessions had progressed from four fifteen-minutes to two thirty-minutes. And, as previously mentioned, I could change hand positions from the hoods (there aren't really hoods on a track bike, but the area where they would be if there were) to the drops. It took several weeks before I became proficient in going from one to the other. With the new cockpit, there are no drops. I was too chicken to move to the aero bars. As a result, after twenty minutes my hands started to go numb and at twenty-five minutes I lost feeling in a couple of fingers in my left hand. I stuck it out for the full thirty minutes before safely coming to a halt. My next session consisted of practice getting on and off the aero bars.
By July my confidence was quite high. The practice sessions at Old Settlers and on the rollers brought me to attempting a serious hour attempt at Alkek. I had also opened a dialog with Felt and had received positive feedback on my inquiry as to having them loan me their $25,000 track bike. That bike plus being on the track in Colorado Springs should add at least two mph to my Alkek speed. So with high hopes we ventured to Alkek on July 18th. Marilane was with me because you cannot ride at the track by yourself.
As I warmed up on the track I thought how lucky I was to have moderate weather in Houston in July. I warmed up for ten minutes then took a short break to hydrate and prepare for sixty uninterrupted minutes. For the hour record you don't hydrate. The goal was 85 rpm which should generate 20 mph. As it turned out, I averaged 84 rpm and 19.8 mph and my lap times were very consistent. Clif, my mentor, told me the first twenty minutes would seem easy, the next hard and the third excruciatingly difficult. I breezed through the first twenty minutes with a heart rate in the low 130's and the next twenty in the high 130's. My plan was to hold the heart rate in the mid-140's, so I felt extremely pleased with myself, knowing I had enough energy to complete the whole hour. Because of that, I wanted to separate the last twenty minutes in order to evaluate just how much more difficult it was.
This is where the old wives tale comes in. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. During my practice at the Veloway and Old Settlers Park I would occasionally forget I was on a fixed gear bike and attempt to cruise. This would result in some pain in my knees and perhaps an awkward turn of a corner. As I hit the computer button, muscle-memory kicked in and my legs stopped powering the pedals. With one hand not on the bars, my knee jerked and hit them (I think) and I instantly went down. Both feet were stuck in the pedals, and I had pain in my clavicle. Still on my side, I gave a thumbs-up to Marilane who saw I had gone down (opposite side of the track) so she could lower her anxiety level just a tad.
She loosened my shoes so I could get my feet free. After a few tries getting to the car and not having the strength to walk, she went to get it. Once in the car, we rode back through the narrow gate and stopped to load the bike. Fortunately for us, a gentleman and family happened to be going by the velodrome and had come in to let their child ride around. He was helping with the bike and I got out of the car to instruct to put the back end in first. Big mistake! As I was talking, I fainted. According to Marilane, he caught me before I hit the ground, picked me up and settled me back into the front seat. Without him, we would have been at the mercy of Houston's 911. As it was, Marilane thanked him profusely, locked the gate, and headed to the hospital. By this time I had come to and was able to sit quietly while she navigated first to the Children's Hospital then a bit further to the ER. Several hours in the ER revealed no broken bones, a separated AC joint, no concussion, a surprisingly small amount of road rash, and a whole lot of bruising. The bike has not a scratch on it, the left shoe is scuffed, the skin suit has a few holes in it, and both gloves are torn. There is a shallow dent in the helmet smaller than a dime.
A whole lot of logistical problems would have needed to be overcome before an actual attempt at the hour record could be mounted, and there is no doubt in my mind I could do it. However, there was also no doubt that I would continue to have lapses in concentration. The next time I might not be so lucky. Therefore, my fixed-gear adventure has come to a close. Should anyone be wanting a slightly used, very good track bike for Christmas, I will give you a super deal on it and various accessories.
Meanwhile, time trialing and road racing are still on my agenda. My fitness has taken a hit, but I have until May to get up to speed, so to speak.
