Tour de Parc

Not much to say, just writing my race reports so I can refer back to them later.

Molly came to watch the races. She described my race style as a cat chasing a feather. A good analogy but not exactly a compliment to my cycling prowess. In the masters race I chased everything and was always at the front... but not in the winning break.

Cat 4 race, no breakaways. Contested the prime but otherwise I rode conservatively. Final result: 8th place (in the money!).

Masters 35+. There was a break early on. We were caught. Then a few small attacks followed by the successful break that started at around the midway point of the race. At first I let it go, thinking they'd get brought back, but when a few other riders bridged I decided I really wanted to be in it. I buried myself for 3 minutes trying to catch up but couldn't quite make it. I had waited too long. I saw a strung out field gaining ground on my solo effort so I sat up. A few more times I tried to go with other guys to catch the break but alas, unsuccessfully.

Overall a great weekend for Kissena.


early in the cat4 race


small break, goes nowhere


a few more laps to go...


Sprint sprint sprint sprint, coming around the Setanta rider on my right


It was a close one

...Master's 35+

Working hard to catch the breakaway group, it never happened.

credit: These are Skip Straub's photos that he posted at velocitynation.

Floyd Bennet training race

Wooo, last night was fun.

It was the first night of races at historic Floyd Bennet Air Field. The category 3/4 race was 10 laps (just over 22 miles). The finish line moved to the east side of the airfield - where the roadway is only about 1/2 as wide as before.

I tried to get away once or twice but it didn't work out. The data makes it look like I attacked 7 times, but some of the attacks were defensive, not offensive attacks. I spent a lot of time at the front burning matches with a few other guys who don't like to piddle about at 21mph. We kept the pace fairly high but our average was only 25.3mph.

Busting my ass off the front trying to make something happen. (more on flickr)


The sprint was a bit crowded and fast even though we were headed into the wind. I wanted to contest the sprint but was in a poor position and didn't.


The day before (Monday) I did 10x1 minute sprints up the great hill in central park. I should have been more tired but going for a 35 minute light and easy ride in the morning really helped clear the fatigue.

Lesson learned: Racing fast is fun, but being patient (seems to) beget victory.

Power numbers:
Max: 16.02/kg
Max 5s: 14.68/kg
Max 30s: 7.76/kg
Max 1m: 5.85/kg

Fixed gear bicycle de-conversion, 8 gears for cyclocross!

The trend is to take remove brakes and multiple gear mechanism from a bike, install a fixed gear cog on the rear wheel, and ride the original bike "fixed." This is commonly referred to as a conversion. About two years ago I converted an old Peugeot as a fixed gear beater because it was simpler, less maintenance, easier to lock up, and I had the parts laying around. The PX10 was a very nice bike in it's day, sold as peugeot's top of the line racing bike.



This weekend I "de-converted" my 1970's peugeot "conversion" bike to a cyclocross bike. I rode the horse trails in prospect park last night and had a blast. I even fell off once and couldn't stop laughing about the absurdity of riding a road bike on horse trails going at full speed. So I picked up some serious tread cyclocross tires and will try my hand at cross racing.

Despite having spent a lot of money on a new carbon fiber road bike recently, this is now officially my favorite bike.