Friday, February 06, 2015

Helmet Cam - April 13, 2014 Zwiedzanie Bethel, Field Sprint

The last of the Outdoor Sports Center Bethel Spring Series clips from 2014, and the last of the Series since it is done at Bethel.

The venue at Bethel had become too busy over the last few years, after the land was re-zoned for retail use in late 2009. Although the town of Bethel fully supported having the Series, I felt it would be unsafe for the larger fields to share the roads with heavy and steady vehicular traffic. The continued development, introducing new businesses at other points of the course, seems to have reinforced my decision.

Going into this final race I was still hoping for some kind of miracle but I'd basically resigned myself to this being my last race in a Bethel Spring Series. I'd started thinking about a July 4th race here, to pay homage to the memorial and the history of the races while not stepping on any retail stores' toes, but on April 13th I really wasn't talking about it much.

However I was doing some informal surveys to see what the racers thought of a move up to New Britain or other points slightly north, ultimately asking for help publicly in October 2014. Ultimately this all came to fruition when we secured two venues, New Britain and Rentschler Field, for the 2015 Aetna Nutmeg Spring Series).

With that, here's the final clip from Bethel. I had a feeling it would be it and I hoped to win the race. When a break went up the road I briefly contemplated trying to bridge but the reality was that I'd barely trained and I'd be fortunate just to hang in the field. I felt super motivated for the sprint though, sort of a desperation I haven't felt since 2005.

Here's the clip.

Enjoy!

Thursday, February 05, 2015

Training - A Cat 3 Diet

No, I don't mean "A Cat 3's diet" although I suppose that's what I'm referring to in the title because, you know, I'm a Cat 3 and I'm dieting.

Rather than literally I mean it in the sense that I'm talking about a simple, no frills diet. It's the same way people talk about "what's a good crit bike for a Cat 3?"

That question has all sorts of implications built right in.

First, the assumption is that the rider, a Cat 3, will be buying the bike. It'll probably be discounted, maybe as much as an employee discount, but the bottom line is that the rider is paying for the bike. No fancy bikes unless the rider can afford it.

Second, there's this thought that the rider will crash the bike. When you think of what a Cat 3 crit rider should ride versus, say, someone doing a Gran Fondo, you think of different things. The Cat 3 crit rider "needs" something bombproof and easy to maintain. The Gran Fondo rider might be using a more delicate tool, more precise, more refined, perhaps gaining a touch of fragility in the process. The Cat 3 bike needs to be replaceable.

Third, the bike will be used hard. It's not a sunny day bike, it's a tool that the rider uses to propel themselves forward on the road. There will be bumpy road crits, the rider will use the shoulder to move up in a race, and riding through manhole covers and sewer grates will be normal and expected. The Cat 3 bike needs to be durable.

Workingman's bike 

You know where I'm going with this.

Diets can be based on a lot of things. Cleansing, protein, whey, no carbs, Atkins, all sorts of anthropological models, yada yada yada. To me those are all a bit more fragile than I want. They require more thought, more energy, more dedication.

They're not for me.

I've been dieting for 81 days, according to MyFitnessPal. 81 days. I emphasize that because when I started I was thinking 30 days ("a month") might be my max, maybe 45 days ("a month and a half"), and definitely nothing over 60 days ("two months").

I'm currently 18.5 lbs lighter than I was when I started, 160.3 lbs this morning. I'd started 81 days ago thinking that losing 10 lbs would be a dream.

Yesterday I ate about 1434 calories of food and went to bed not hungry. The day before that I did a ride and realistically had a net caloric intake of about 800 calories.

If you told me I could do that on Day 2 of my current diet I'd have said you were crazy.

I've been thinking a bit about why the diet is working. If I can put some of those reasons down here then maybe it'll help you with your diet goals.

You know, because I want everyone to beat me when I race. Haha.

Okay, maybe not. So if you promise not to get too much better than me, or at least hide it discretely when you're accidentally riding me off your wheel ("I'm sorry, I was thinking about that clip you had where you bridged that gap and the music that you use in the clips got me all psyched up and I started pedaling too hard" would work), I'll share my thoughts with you.

Keys to a Successful Workingman's Diet.

("Workingman" referring to the nickname for Cat 3 racers, i.e. "The workingman's category". Substitute woman for women.)

First, you have to be fat.

I see guys talking about how they need to lose an extra 10 pounds or whatever and I look at them and think, well, maybe if they cut off their arm they could lose 10 more pounds.

Because they're already skinny.

I'm not talking ProTour diet tips. I don't have anything to offer the skinny people. I'm talking about us regular folk with rolls and stuff. Heck, even after losing 18 pounds I'm still fat - right now I'm realistically at 20% fat, minimum, more like 22% fat. When I started I was in the 28% range.

You with me there? Then keep reading.

In 2010 I was realistically 13-15% fat at my lowest and I was in the 155 lbs range, seeing 149 lbs after a longer ride. I stopped weighing myself once the season got under way because my weight seemed to be stable at 155-158, so I lack the numbers from later in the season, but I suspect I got lighter. However I steadily gained weight from September that year.

So for me the key is to be fat first because that's the only kind of start point I've had for a diet.

Second, don't spend a lot of time thinking about food.

Be aware of it, sure, but don't spend the whole day thinking about it. I don't go about my day thinking about this food or that food. Food is a functional fuel for me, not much more.

A Cat 3 bike isn't the kind of bike you think about. You get to the race, put the wheel or wheels on, check the tire pressure, and ride the thing. It's a rock solid bike that doesn't need babying. Do you care what bar is on there? What post? What chain? Not really. If it isn't broken then you don't need to fix it. Get fancy stuff here and there to reward yourself, like a set of cool wheels. Overall though your mental energy goes elsewhere, not the bike.

My diet approach reflects that. I don't think much about food. I'm aware of when I last ate only because it's easy to eat 3 hours after a meal without realizing it. Making it 4 or 5 reduces the number of meals by one and that makes a significant dent in the total caloric intake.

However I don't go around thinking of what I am not eating, that I can't eat, or particular foods for whatever reason. Even when feeding Junior I manage to separate what he's eating (he likes pizza, fruits, bread, cheese) and what I'm eating (not much pizza at all, not much cheese at all).

Third, don't make it hard on yourself

This is key. Don't make your diet hard on yourself. I remember a friend telling me that "Such and such is serious about racing this year. He's on a diet - this morning I saw him eat some toast with a slice of tomato on it."

Yeah, if I did that I'd be eating my second breakfast about 20 minutes later.

The other thing that wouldn't work for me is "Hey, this is how you make this great food! Just gather these 22 ingredients, combine this, mix that, pour here, and voila, 114 minutes later you're ready to eat! It's fantastic!"

Right.

I timed how long it took me to get breakfast ready this morning. Yes, timed.

I was up at 6:30 or so, maybe 7:00? I don't remember. I wasn't 100% awake so that was normal, but Junior was asleep so I had less distractions.

Luckily I used a timer of sorts to prepare my breakfast - a microwave. This was my breakfast prep:

1. Pour coffee out of the very nice carafe (basically a sealed and insulated carafe so the coffee doesn't taste acrid, and as a bonus there's no hot metal plate thing to burn dripped coffee) into a coffee cup that I pulled out of the cabinet. Time: 20 seconds.
2. Put coffee cup of coffee into microwave, heat. Time: 1:37 (I've been trying to use something other than the 0 for the last digit and I've been using the 8 for a while so now I'm on 7).
3. While coffee is heating put the following in a bowl: 1 cup old fashioned oats, 1/8 cup raisins, 1 tbsp sliced almonds, 1 tbsp brown sugar, water to cover it all. Time: 0 (since I do all this while the coffee is heating).
4. When the coffee is done switch the coffee and oatmeal. Heat/cook oatmeal. Time: 2:30 (using the 0 there).
5. Move coffee and oatmeal spoon to the table while oatmeal heats/cooks.
6. When oatmeal finishes bring bowl to table.

Overall time required to prepare breakfast? 5 minutes, max. It's easy. It's not taxing mentally. Easy to log in MyFitnessPal. Easy to eat.

454 calories. And I'll be good for 4-5 hours.

That's a Cat 3 breakfast.

Fourth, avoid sugar or sugar substitutes.

I'd have argued with this before this diet but now I'd agree that eliminating sugar seems to be helpful. As a corollary eliminating sugar substitutes also seems to help, because the sweet taste makes me miss sugar. Eliminating the taste altogether works better for me.

In 2009, my first diet, I adopted the "bike shop diet" at times. We said that if we were tired a great pick me up was getting a Hostess Twinkies and a Coke.

Bam, instant energy.

And an almost instant sugar crash.

Of course there was an easy remedy - another Twinkies and Coke.

So in 2009 I drank Diet Cokes or Diet Pepsis. One of my standby meals was jam on bread (aka "sugar on carbs"). I ate 100 calorie snack bags of sugary snacks. I had sugary protein shakes. So on and so forth.

I spent a lot of time in a bonky state, dizzy with hunger. I was working a job that required moving around a lot so that helped stave off the bonkiness. I'd sometimes walk around virtually blacked out vision-wise because of these massive head rushes when I stood up.

The reality was that I really wasn't dieting in any kind of sustainable manner.

This round of dieting (which makes it sound like I diet all the time but this is only my second diet in my life) I inadvertently left out sugar early on. I was on such a strict low goal that even a teaspoon of sugar in my coffee seemed wasteful.

So I cut out the sugar.

I also cut out the diet sodas, inadvertently. I decided separately, before the diet, that I really didn't want to pay for drinks, whether going out or even for home, so I for a while I've been drinking just water when we go out. Additionally I hadn't bought sodas or seltzer for a while from the grocery store.

The combination of not much added sugar (and no fake sugar) significant changed my energy levels. I've kept some of the same foods in the diet rotation from 2009, so many of my foods I'm eating now I ate back then. Carbs and proteins, mainly, with certain vegetables and fruits. The changes have been the elimination of regular sugar/sugar-substitutes. This has led to a much more consistent energy level.

In the low calorie days, early on, I definitely had my share of head rushes. For the first week I was fighting the normal bonkiness, with the accompanying shaking and dizziness and cold sweat. However this changed pretty quickly. By the second week of my dieting I realized that I wasn't bonking. I was hungry, okay, but I wasn't dizzy or shaking or breaking out in a cold sweat.

As the weeks went by I realized that I was getting to noon or 1 PM or even 2 PM without feeling excessively hungry. I thought it might be the lack of (added) sugar in my diet. The couple times where I had a (deliciously sinfully incredibly good tasting) sweetened coffee I had a ton of energy for a bit and either got really bonky afterward or went 1000 cal over my goal (I did that once).

So for now I'm avoiding sugar.

For those that see me downing Cokes and RockStars and coffee muffins before races you may wonder what I'll do before races. You know, I don't know, this is uncharted territory for me.

Summary

Overall my diet is pretty straight forward. A Cat 3 diet, if you will. No frills, only a few interesting out-of-the-ordinary things (for me it's the Greek yogurt smoothies I make), easy to prepare, easy to eat, no real mental energy expended.

The reality is that I may be able to extend this kind of diet for a while. I don't have aspirations to turn pro or anything but I race for fun and, trust me, it's a lot more fun when I'm not groveling at the back of the field, praying they slow down. Fitness helps, of course, but I have no idea how much training I'll be doing because I don't know what my schedule will look like even in a month or two from now.

However, regardless of fitness, being light goes a long, long way toward making races more fun. When I accelerate an extra 10 or 20 pounds of weight out of every corner it gets a bit tiring.

 Early 2010, 155 and getting fit. The red bike before it was red.
Double Peak in San Marcos, CA.

I even see off-the-bike benefits. For example carrying Junior has become easier. I had that epiphany after carrying him around a model railroad show for an hour or two. At that point I was a good 10-12 pounds lighter. Suddenly Junior, who tips the scales at about 29-30 pounds, was more like a 17-20 pound kid. That's a huge difference in carrying weight when walking around the Big E.

Another benefit is I can wear the almost new clothes I had in 2010. I only had one year where I fit those clothes and the "heavy" (bodyweight) clothes I have are pretty worn out. Now I have a stack of clothing to choose from that are virtually brand new.

I can see this round's diet being sustainable even during some decent training. I had started the diet with the expectation that I wouldn't be able to train. However, after doing some "make up rides' to expend some excess calories, I find that I'm more fit now than I was during the summer. Even just six weeks into the diet, when I did a few warmer Christmas rides, I felt great climbing the hills with lower weight and higher sustainable power. I went looking for comparisons in climbing the hill out of the complex but ran into a problem - I was pedaling with much more power in December than I was in August or whatever. I climbed the hill on Christmas Day in 0:58 or so, even slowing at the top, and in August/Sept I did it in 1:15-1:20, 2-3 mph slower.

We'll see what happens in the races. In Blackhawk Down one of the characters says, "Politics goes out the window when the bullets start flying." Likewise all this talk about weight and calories and training and stuff goes straight out the window when the race actually starts.

After that it's all about using what you got.

See you out there!

 Picture from a finish at the Rent from slightly skinnier days (2011 or 2012).

Wednesday, February 04, 2015

Helmet Cam - April 6, 2014, Circuit Francis J Clarke, 9th

Here's another helmet cam clip from the 2014 Outdoor Sports Center Bethel Spring Series. In this one there are a few off the front. However I thought there were a good 15 or so riders off so I thought we were sprinting for 16th place or so. Finishing 5th or 6th in the field I figured I would be lucky to have cracked the top 20. My math was pretty bad though and I ended up 9th in the race, 5th in the field. A jumbled sprint, I could never actually go.

Second to last of the Bethel Spring Series.

Enjoy!


Tuesday, February 03, 2015

Helmet Cam - March 23, 2014 Bethel CDR Gold Race, 7th

I thought this was up since I watched it regularly on my computer but when I looked for it for someone else I realized that no, it wasn't up.

It's up now.

Although the Bethel Spring Series won't be happening this year we're moving to New Britain and hopefully one other venue for the new Aetna Nutmeg Spring Series.

I hope this clip helps get you psyched to go racing soon.

Enjoy!


Sunday, February 01, 2015

Racing - Mental Freshness

1986, somehow made the GFox flyer.

2015 marks the beginning of my 33rd season of racing.

Now, I can't boast about my palmares like many other riders. I have zero national titles (in fact I never entered a National Championship race), I have never won a race between May and August, I've never won a one day race per se (like a once-a-year race), and I routinely get shelled by brand new, never-raced-in-my-life-before riders.

But I love to race. I just love it. I've loved it since I started racing, through all sorts of trials and tribulations. This January I did a couple 3+ hour rides and a whole slew of 2 hour rides.

On the trainer.

For me I enjoyed it, but others consider a 3 hour ride on a trainer torture.

Front row in the Tour de Michigan.

So what's the secret? Why am I not burnt out on racing?

It's hard to say but it's a number of things.

First off, I love to race.
Second, I have realistic expectations.
Third, I accept that there will be off years. Years, not weeks or days or months.
Fourth, I set some long term goals.
Fifth, I accept life events that are out of my control.
Sixth, I do no structured training.
Seventh, I reassess my own abilities and do occasional honest, no-BS self assessments.

I Love to Race

I love to race. I love the technical stuff (aero, fit, stuff like that), the tactics (drafting, cornering, permutations of drafting and multiple people around me), the fitness aspect of it (when to burn what matches I have and if I burn too many can I find another match somewhere?), and finally the human part of it (some of my most satisfying races have been so because either I worked for someone or someone worked for me).

I've stayed fresh racing for most/all those 30-odd years. I've never wanted to quit racing per se. I've had a number of years where I didn't want to promote races (I've promoted races since 1994, mainly the Bethel Spring Series), but I always, always, always wanted to race.

1988?
Marty, in the middle, just soloed to a win. I won the field sprint, Ed, to the left, got second in the sprint.

1988.
No team kit as we didn't hold a race the prior year.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. Let me do some base miles in the winter and then let me race 3-4 times a week for the summer. I'll be happy doing all my rides in races from March - September. For easier days I'd just sit in or drop off, harder days I'd attack and such, and on target days I'd try to do well.

Managing Expectations


A big part of my enthusiasm is understanding my limits or, in corporate terms, "managing expectations". I see a lot of riders quit when they hit their developmental plateau mainly because of a combination of genetics (most important), time, and focus. The rider can't accept that they're close to their genetic limits (or sometimes time limits etc) and they stop.


I understood my limitations long before powermeters existed. My best 40k TT was a 1:03:30, my fastest ever TT was a 25.5 mph 7 mile effort. In hills I get dropped by M50+ women who don't race but who are fit cyclists (M50+ is a polite way of saying "a 53 year old woman"). I did a 10k mile year early in my life and DNF 44 races or some stupid number that year. Decades ago I accepted my position as a weaker rider who could sprint and worked with that.


A newer racer asked me why I don't lose a bit more weight and do more hilly races. I asked him why he didn't lift more and make his 1000w peak a 1500w or 1800w peak. He said that was a bit ridiculous and then realized that he was asking me the same thing, albeit in a different manner.

I can't think of a better way to explain that than the following: if I was close to 0% body fat, with a lean body weight of about 130 lbs, my w/kg number would still be in the 3.6 w/kg range. This is at ZERO percent body fat, 40+ lbs lighter than I am now.

The reality is that I won't be a 4 or 5 w/kg rider, ever. Heck, even if I doped I wouldn't get very far. I understand and accept that. That other racer took some time to assimilate what I said, to accept that it's not realistic for me to try to become a 4 or 5 w/kg racer. Ironically he used to be an elite athlete in a different sport, looking like a sprinter, all muscular and stuff.

A different way of looking at it is to say that my FTP is so poor that even a 50% increase (talk about a lot of doping!) would only put me in middling Cat 2 or "a pretty strong Cat 3" territory.

Crashes/Risk


Others also stop because they can't handle racing in a field, have a crash, and stop because they don't understand what happened in the crash. Without understanding why a crash happened (and potentially how to prevent it) it's very easy to become so neurotic about crashing that racing becomes impossible.

It's critical to learn and practice field/peloton skills, things like bumping and touching wheels and such. Without those drills there's a huge unknown area of riding that you can't possibly understand. If you practice bumping and touching wheels then those situations become a little less foreign.

It's like driving a car - if you never lose control of the car then you won't know what it's like to do so. I went to a parking lot in the snow to learn how to drive in the stuff, doing laps in a school parking lot for literally 2 or 3 hours one night. Fortunately everything went safely and it gave me a lot of time to learn. I did the same with my first girlfriend when I was helping her learn to drive. The first few times she let the car go it was a bit scary because she didn't have any of the right reactions in her head. After an hour or two of drills in a deserted, snow-covered parking lot (including a drive by and short conversation with a curious police officer), she was fine. She counter steered into skids, she could modulate the brake pedal much better (pre-ABS days), and she could pump the pedal if the tires locked under braking.

We were on the road, maybe a day later, when the tail end of the car went sideways while on a pretty busy road. My girlfriend immediately counter steered and regained control of the car. I was a bit freaked out but she'd handled it just fine. All the practice she'd just done came in handy and we continued on without a problem.

In bike racing I've had my share of crashes. It took until 2009 to break a bone, in a pretty hard shunt in a training race. Someone swerved across my front wheel so hard it was practically horizontal before I realized what was going on. I actually can't believe the rider could swerve so rapidly so far, it was that quick and violent.

Putting a good face on.

I understood what happened, I understood how I could have avoided it, and I've made some minor adjustments to how I race based on the crash.

However that was my first broken bone. Risk-wise I know that this kind of incident will virtually never happen. I accept that risk. The Missus trusts my judgment, both during races and in situations like this where I assess risk. Without her blessings, without a deep understanding of the risk assessment thought process, I'd have been a racing statistic as well.

Accepting Underperforming Seasons


Another aspect is my Zen approach to a season, if you will. After about 10 years of racing I got much more casual about writing off a season. I have an idea of how I'll go for the year based on March and April and if it's not that great then so be it, it's not a big deal. If the season doesn't start well I don't think it's worth it to train like mad to have a good August or whatever. I did that once or twice and the amount of work and sacrifice to have a few weeks of good racing just wasn't worth it.

In 2012 at Bethel in the last race I stopped after a couple laps to say hi to Junior.
Absolutely worth it.

If I'm underperforming (meaning any year except the ones where I've been on fire), I try to have fun with the racing, do what I can, and think about a better year in the future. In 2014 I barely trained and I had fun until I had 3 DNFs in a row in August. This year I'm almost as light as I was in my second best year 2010 and I have a lot of hours (for me) in Dec and Jan. I have no idea what my season will be like but I'll find out in March and take it from there.

Long Term Goals

I try to set realistic goals for myself. My last major goal thought was in 2010, when I simply wanted to see how I did. In 2011 I told myself no serious racing until 2017 when my racing age would be M50+, so I essentially wrote off 6 seasons immediately (because we wanted to start a family and I figured only when our kid went to kindergarten would I be able to train a bit). This year I hope to do okay, and if my first races go okay then I'll think about specific target races in the summer.

My long term goals include stuff like actually winning a summer race, something I've never done, or being in a break that makes it to the finish. I'd like to be able to pull. I'd like to be able to help teammates. I'd like to be part of some spectacular teamwork during a race.

Accept Life Events


One thing is my racing has gone up and down naturally with life events and I never really fought these ups and downs. When I was single/dating but otherwise not committed (no kids, no marriage, etc, although I did own a bike shop) I was racing tons, training tons, etc. All my money went into bikes. I had this reverse snob thing going where if a rider's car was worth more than the bike rack on top of it then they weren't as "hard core". I realize now that that's not necessarily true, but at the time I was driving a $1 car with a $500 roof rack and about a $1250 bike on said rack.

$1 car, $500 rack, $1250 bike.

There were years where things were tougher outside of cycling, like when my mom was sick and then passed on 3 years later. I started that period, 2000-2003, weighing about 155-160. I spent all my free time with my mom (my parents were living overseas when she was diagnosed so she moved in with me for 2+ years - I brought her to all her appointments etc for a while). Toward the end we had round the clock bedside time with her, taking shifts sitting next to her and talking or whatever, and I really didn't think about the bike much. When my mom died I was 215 lbs or so and rode maybe once every 3 weeks, still managing to place here and there (Cat 3 Crit Champ 2002) even though I had to size up my bike (to a size M Giant) so my legs wouldn't hit my gut as hard. I was so fat I didn't recognize myself in a picture from that era.

About 200-205 lbs in this picture, spring 2004.
Note the size M Giant - I had to use it to keep my gut from getting in my legs' way.


I had promised my mom to win the Bethel Spring Series and the Cat 3 Crit Championships just before she lost awareness of her surroundings. After she died I trained hard again, driven to do well. It took a couple years to win Bethel (two Series before I could win it, and then I barely managed), another year passed before I got the (2006) Cat 3 Crit gold medal, but I did it.

No Structured Training


I've gotten burnt out on training so I don't do structured training. The last time I did intervals with any regularity was probably 1990 or something, in school. Nowadays most of my attempts at intervals blow up after 20 or 30 seconds. I JRA when I train, do whatever I feel like, I motivate thinking about racing. I train only so I can race.


2010, best year since 1992. 155-158 lbs.
Photo John Specht


Readjust Based On Changes

Over the years I've lost a solid 20% of my top end speed in a sprint. I virtually never break 40 mph nowadays and often I'm sprinting at only 37-38 mph.

A good sprint toward the end of the SUNY Purchase Tuesday Night Sprints.

I remember being upset that I didn't break 44 mph in any of the 10 or so sprints I did that night. A fast sprint for me there (slight downhill, cross tailwind) was 46 mph, and there were a number of riders that were as fast as me.

For the past few years I've struggled to sprint well against the 3s but I can hold my own with the M45s. I'm starting to accept that and am starting to do more M45 races.
 For me this is huge, as I still don't think of myself as a Masters racer even though I'm closer to 50 years old than 40.

This clip was the Nutmeg State Games from 2014, same course as the above link from 2006. I missed the break (teammate and former M35 Canadian Cross champ in it - he won), I missed the chase (Frank McCormack, ex-pro, driving it), but I could handle the field sprint. This was the first Saturday of June. On the same course against the 3s I got something like 20th in the field sprint, and I was so far behind the winners I didn't even see what team they raced for.


In terms of training for the above race I actually did very little, due to life stuff. I rode 50 min in the week of June prior to the race. 8 hours in all of May. 7 hours in all of April. I knew I didn't have much training in my legs so I did what I could. I suffered here and there, I took joy every time I could make an effort without shelling myself, and getting to the field sprint was an unexpected bonus. Winning it was an absolute shock.

Goals for 2015

Right now my goals for 2015 are as follows:
1. Do reasonably well in the Cat 3-4 races in the Aetna Nutmeg Spring Series. And promote some good races in that Series since I'm the promoter.
2. Try to win a summer race. This is a forever repeating goal so it's automatically on the list.
3. Be strong enough to finish or partake in some of the races that I couldn't finish or partake in during the last few years. In 2013, for example, I was in at the end of the CCAP Kermis. In 2014 I got shelled a lap or so into the race.
4. Help others (teammates, friends) in races.

Danbury Crit, 1991? I got 4th, another summer race I didn't win.