A Big Week

There has been plenty happening lately (I am bicycle racing some and I’ve done some driver coaching), but I haven’t taken any time to write about it.  This, however, was an important week that capped off an unusually strange year…

Last Sunday was my first visit to Alpenrose Dairy since I broke my femoral neck there, almost exactly a year ago.  I managed this while previewing the opening race of the 2009 Cross Crusade bicycle racing series.  Thursday, I strapped into a race car for the first time since before the cycling mishap.

Part of the fall-out of the cycling crash was the necessity to make some difficult decisions.  The first was to yield my place as a driver in the Miatacage.com effort to win the 25 Hours of Thunderhill in December – it was the best thing for the team, but also put me on a path that lead away from being reliably effective as a race driver.

The nice part was that it allowed me to focus on rehabilitating my injury and regaining some of my fitness more quickly.  I was racing the bicycle again at Tucson in March (5 months after surgery) and I feel very healthy – that is a reasonable accomplishment with which I am very pleased.

Return to the Scene…:

Upon arriving at Alpenrose on Sunday, we walked toward the place on the course where I had fallen.  There is a concrete stairway on the grounds that makes an interesting (but totally treacherous, in my view) feature for a cross race.  As last year, the morning was a bit damp and at 9:30 (before the start of the second race) there was already lots of wet dirt on the black-top where riders must dismount their bicycles.

I stepped onto the course and ran my foot across the dirty surface where the racers would leave a grass area to make a 180 turn on the approach to the dismounting zone – F*** ME, it was super slick!!!  I didn’t need this – let the two hour long freak-out session begin.

My race (Masters 50) would start at 11:40.  We watched the start of the Clydesdale (200 plus pounders) and Cat C (like Cat 4 on the road) race and observed the carnage.  Every third rider was hitting the ground – HARD.  How smart would it be for me, knowing how dangerous this course can be, to race here?

There was a break scheduled for after the Cat C race, so I returned to the car to get kitted up and prepare to have a look at the rest of it – but especially the stairs.  Everybody and their brother (and sisters and all of their kids) was out there.  It was mostly okay, but the course also utilizes the famous Alpenrose Velodrome which is concrete on the apron and is painted on the smooth banked concrete surface.  So – lots of hard surface with dirt and / or mud on it (or wet paint).  Perfect…  Even better was that because of the slow movement of the preview caravan, I was diverted from the course before reaching the stairs.  So, I wouldn’t have the peace of mind of some perspective and having done one low speed dismount there prior to lap 1 of the race.

I had, by now (and sensibly), managed to persuade myself that racing this day was a bad idea.  Ken, Carrie and Emma Sutherland had come out to see about this sport that was filling the void left by auto racing, and I informed them that I would be able to explain it to them during my race, because I wasn’t going out there just to entertain the Portland hippies.  Carrie was understanding, but Ken thought it would be good if I started at the back and just rode around – after all, I was entered and everything…

I did have a pretty good starting draw for riding around at the back – so, what the hell?  My number in the “starting lottery” was picked seventh of ten.  What that means is that everybody with a number that ends with a “2” would start together about two thirds deep in the field.

I’m glad that cross is popular, and eventually it all sorts out, but it can be frustrating (and a bit dangerous) when lots of guys that haven’t been on a race bike since last December are starting in front of you.  No, I don’t have a plan that you would like and that would also solve the problem…  But, what this means is that the faster guys starting at the back (like my friend Gregg Leion who drew the eighth number) would be blowing through the field at the start.  Gregg is retired so he doesn’t have to bother with being at work Monday morning and therefore can take big risks…

It all turned out okay – some of the 130 Master B’s that started 2 minutes ahead of us ended up on the ground before reaching the first turn (or the actual start line), but we were fine.  I had a good race and after starting somewhere around 60^th of 84 old dudes, I not only stayed upright, but I also made it to 17^th place – which gets me 2 points and a call-up for the next race in the series (meaning that I start nearer the pointy end).

That’s one demon slain.

And then, back at the race track…:

The Miatagace.com Race Team has been preparing for the 25 hours of Thunderhill pretty much since, for the second year in a row, we led most of the race only to have a mechanical failure within sight of the finish.  Part of that preparation has included renting the car to other drivers so that the team budget can be supplemented – money fixes everything…  Well, the car has been knocked around a bit as a result, and it would be useful to run it.

As this weekend is the final SCCA Regional Race of the year (two of them, actually) at Portland International Raceway.  Race weekends always begin with an un-official test day, which would be Thursday.  This would be the best last chance to do any testing before Thunderhill, and there were some new suspension bits to try and decisions to make.

Drivers Will Schrader and Jonny Davies would handle that task along with crew member Josh McKinney.  Chuck Hall had made lots of changes to his Spec Miata for this season, but had only run it once.  He was in town to evaluate any other changes to make over this winter.  He invited me to come out and do some laps so that he could have a second opinion.

I suppose that driving a Spec Miata, for me, is a bit like riding a bike – it’s not a sure thing that I’ll do it properly…  The car ran well earlier in the year, but we would have the challenge of running on two sets of questionable tires (a mostly used up set of R-888’s from last year, and some RA-1’s from 2003).

The good news for me is that I’ve spent a lot of time racing on tires that others would have thrown out (or had).  We started on the 888’s which some guys didn’t care for, but I liked the couple of times I raced on them last year – they feel a bit more like “real” race tires.  We did air pressure and ride height adjustments to get the balance right and the car was a comfortable “loose-ish” – just like we want it.

One of the coolest things I saw all day was an old (mid – late 1970’s) March Formula Atlantic car.  In my first session, it passed me leaving the chicane and it was neat to see the massive rear tires (those cars were only low 200’s on horse power).  All of that mechanical grip made them a blast to watch when there were fields of 50 of them “back in the day” – aerodynamics, schmerodynamics.  Cool stuff.

The first laps on the nearly eight year old RA-1’s felt like the dirty, damp concrete surface at Alpenrose.  After a half dozen laps they began to gain some grip and the lap times started to come down.  I ran a good series in the high 1:32’s and low 33’s with a handful of laps within 2/10ths of a second – I was pleased with the consistency and the behavior of the car, so we called it a day.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to me was that I was comfortable in that particular car.  I’ve spent a fair amount of time in it over the years, and the driving position and mirror set-up have always been a challenge.  Cyclists can think of this as a seat being too far forward, or handlebars that you don’t like the feel of – it makes a difference.

Today, however, everything was fine even though the car hadn’t changed.  I think that not having the recent perspective of something that I was used to contributed to that.  This makes me think that I could have done better adjusting to such changes in the past.  I learn something every time I go to the race track.

Thanks Chuck.