GamJams Racing

Saturday Team Ride: Rescheduled

While the entire GamJams Racing team was ready to roll out with spiked tires and shoulder pads, the legal department at GamJams World Headquarters and Low-Velocity Wind Tunnel Testing Facility has advised us that the icy conditions along our planned route tomorrow are less conducive to team training and more conducive to impact testing.  To be more specific, they said "if you bring someone out there who's not on the team and has not signed our hold-pointless agreement and they break their butts open slipping on some black ice just because you idiots call 'sprint point' for an abandoned car battery or something, don't look for us to defend you against their frivilous lawsuit.  In fact, look to us as the ones who will box up your carbon fiber frames and hand deliver them as an apology."  (or some sort of legalese like that.)

Thus it is with sadness and regret that we announce a reschedulization of tomorrow's planned ride.  So, if you were planning on meeting us in the morning, change your plans and meet us next time.  We'll still be here.  If you want, feel free to use this as the excuse next year every time you don't win.  "If only it hadn't snowed and those namby-pamby lawyers from GamJams Racing hadn't'a forced them to cancel that ride, I would'a won.  Dead certain."

Photo Finish for 3rd at Crystal City

Courtesy of Bruce Buckley:

Jose Nunez nips GamJams/Pre-Reg p/b Cutaway Clothing's Mike May at the line for a podium spot at the Crystal Cup. May vows to begin a regimen of rigorous bike throw intervals next week.

Hard Lessons from Fort Ritchie

There is typically a rash of post-race chatter on the GamJams Racing private internet (which is very much like the regular internet, but with ceramic bearings) at the end of every weekend. Normally the theme of each synopsis can be paraphrased as either, "Man did I crush it!" or at least "Man was I about to crush it until...". But after Fort Ritchie most of the conversation wasn't about what we did or why we didn't do what we wanted to do, but what we learned. We left a lot of prize money on the promoter's table, but here's what we did walk away with:

1. Course "Awareness" -- This was a technical course - six turns, one tight curve, one short uphill, one short downhill.  The wind made it all the harder. A 5M gap that would close by itself on an office park crit required burning a full match at Fort Ritchie.
2. Warm-up -- This was a day (as are most technical courses) where it was important to go to the line "hot," with those first tough efforts already in the legs, a day when the discipline to take a trainer and set it up, go through a good 45:00 warm-up, throw in a few hard efforts, and come to the line pre-sweated would have been the right thing. We did not do this, taking the easy, social way out. Then we paid for that in the first chunk of laps which were needlessly brutal while we waited on my legs and lungs to open up. 
3. Mindset -- Some races require really aggressive racing and mindset from the beginning. A technical crit like Fort Ritchie simply demands an attacking mentality the whole time to do well. Leonardtown is another example, if anyone is doing that this weekend. And Clarendon, Reston and some others. In the office park crits, you sit in most of the time, and then look for opportunities to attack. With Fort Ritchie and the others I named it's the opposite - you have to be on the attack all the time, and rest only opportunistically.
4. Line-up / Start -- Even though the pack was small, lining up near the front would have been advisable. Instead, we lined up in the back and spent the first few laps (maybe 10 even) on the rivet.
5. Showing up fatigued: A hard technical crit is made all that much harder if it follows a heavy training week. Not that we should taper for every race, but knowing that you're carrying some training stress should certainly influence your game day plan.
6. Showing up stale: Getting the legs to open with no real warm-up is even more challenging if one hasn't been on the bike since Monday. Rest is good, but knowing that your systems have been on vacation for a week should certainly influence your game day plan. 
7. Biofeedback is important. I always race and train with my power meter, but I was on the new Kazane on Saturday and didn't have time to install it. In races, I pay a lot of attention to my HR - when it hits a certain level I know to dial it back or I'm going to blow up. I think at Fort Ritchie I passed my limit, but didn't know it.

Please re-read all of this before Leonardtown on Sunday.