It was a good weekend in Southampton, NY for OC athletes.  Congratulations to Amy Dombroski for her first wins of the season; she took 1st place both days.  Congrats as well to Georgia Gould who put in two solid rides to finish 3rd and 2nd place.

Congratulations to Amy Dombroski on her 2nd place finish in Louisville this weekend.  Her 3rd and 2nd place finishes this weekend were consecutive personal bests.  Next up is the Boulder Cup...

An informative, practical article from Monique Ryan on the topic of bone density in cyclists.  She outlines some good ways to keep your bones strong.

August and September have been pretty good months.  Some folks are winding down the mtb season and others are just beginning preparation for cyclocross.  Below are some noteworthy results:

Seamus Powell - 1st Overall Pro Men, Root 66 MTB Series
Tim Faia- 1st Men's 35+, Frisco CX Day 1 & 2.  1st, Boulder CX Interlocken
Jim Komarmi - 2nd Overall Cat 3 Men (Road), Tour of the Catskills
Heather Irmiger - 10th MTB World Championships & 1st Singlespeed World Championships
Georgia Gould - 3rd place CX Vegas and Madison USGPs
Amy Dombroski - 4th place Madison USGP
Barry Wicks - 2nd place Cincinnati UCI CX Day 1 & 2.

Gretchen Reynolds wrote a nice synopsis in the NY Times of some research studies regarding the use of Ibuprofen during exercise.  The most common reason that I have heard for using ibuprofen during exercise is to prevent soreness and hasten recovery.  As it turns out, it is detrimental during exercise and actually increases inflammation.  Read the article here - its a great summary with numerous research studies to support it.

Trial by fire for Amy D at Worlds in Australia this week.  Her race report is below:

I flew to Australia with a solid head on my shoulders, feeling confident in the training I had done in the preceding weeks and looking forward to good legs at a world class race.  Little did my coach, Ben and I know that I should have been spending those weeks hucking myself off cliffs and preparing myself for a mix between downhill and trials racing.  I left the US on Thursday the 27th and arrived in the capital of Australia, Canberra on the morning of Saturday the 29th.  A crew of us rode to the venue, as it was about 8k from our hotel.  Keen to check out the course, we ignored the threatening clouds which came back to nip us with pelting hail!  Beyond being stung from hail, frozen from numbing wind, I was also flabbergasted by the first 3k of the course.  I kept desperately looking at Marc (Gullickson, the cross-country coach) with hope that he would say "oops, we're on the downhill course!"

The course began with a fun little twisty-turny single track climb, with dirt I would compare to riding in CO or CA...dry and ventilated, but tacky so you could rail it.  This dropped you out onto a fire-road climb which looked ideal for passing before dropping back into single track.  The second single track section looked yummy, as it had some rocks and maneuvering sections, but it was stuff I could handle no problem.  And it was straight up, lung bursting, just giving er' to get the pedals turned over; appropriately named Cardiac Climb.  For the first few minutes I was licking my chops.  Then it all went downhill...literally, into Cadaver Corner.  When the climb topped out, you immediately went rocketing into this slick boulder field descent.  If your butt wasn't back, you'd go over the bars.

Look closely to see what I mean:   http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/uci-mountain-bike-world-championships-cm/stages/stage-3/photos/86137

From this drop it started a mellow pitch of a climb which switch-backed a bunch and was plagued with big boulders where weight distribution was key.  It's this fine tuned movement of picking the weight up off the front wheel then quickly moving forward and kicking the back wheel up...supposed to be fine tuned but mine was roughly hacked.  I tried and tried to make this section flawless because with my legs feeling climby, I thought this could be a section to excel on.  Unfortunately I never linked the whole section together...just bits and pieces, and a whole lot of most-excellent cyclocross mounts and dismounts.  Finally I had a brief 2 seconds to take a deep breath before more internal whimpering (http://www.canadiancyclist.com/races09/mtbworlds/partfour/index.htm).  Next was the "Hammerhead", and I think I would rather come face to face with a hammerhead shark than come to face this drop again.  It was an infestation of medium sized boulders, all placed inconveniently enough, serving as the lead-out to two vertical granite rock roll-ins.  And the B-line didn't hold much more optimism for me.  I hammered my head on this section, literally and figuratively.  I crashed enough times to know what not to do, but actually nailed it a few times (the B-line that is...I never bucked up enough to go cliff jumping).  Eventually this section became fun in a drugged sort of way.  It challenged me so much that I kept wanting to try it again and again, because each time it would be a tad bit better.  By race day, I had the "cautious" B-line down pretty well.  At this juncture, we're only a third of the way through the course!  Good news is, it gets fun from here.  The nightmare stuff is out of the way.  Shortly after Hammerhead, there was another triple rock drop which was mellower.  It took some time to actually attempt it, but it was tons faster than the B-line, and gave me the opportunity to go head over teacup a few times too.  From here the course turned into a mock-luge for the majority.  A wicked fast banked descent, into some fun whoopty-doos, into a dual slalom type track that gave the opportunity for you to go head-to-head and try for a pass.  This dropped you into a field where the tech and feed zone was.  Then a 600m fire-road section into twisting single track on that grippy dirt.  From here it was all about rhythm from berm to berm and jump to jump, bringing you back down to the event village for the 6k of fun to begin again. 

I've raced cyclocross at an international level, so I know what a fast start is, and this I was definitely expecting.  Unfortunately call-up was based on UCI points, which I was at the bottom of the totem pole on.  But the field was only 35-deep, and sitting 4th row really ain't that shabby.  For the start there was a fire-road extension to allow a drawn out fight before entering the single track.  This fire road seemed to be narrower on race day.  I was darting back and forth to sneak up the sides, but always found myself brushing the fence or getting washed and pinched out.  The roadie and 'cross rider in me kept looking for those gaps to squeeze into up the middle, but mtb bars are so wide!  I moved up a bit but still entered the single track around 20th or further back.  Cardiac Climb was wicked bogged down and people were basically track standing so I decided to dismount and jog it, which allowed me to pass a couple, especially as people were flailing like wet noodles through Cadaver Corner.  All that technical death-like stuff was a cluster on this first lap so I even ran down the A-line of Hammerhead, again moving in front of people who refused to step out of their pedals.  Finally the field spread out and we weren't nipping at each others wheels too bad.  Chloe (Forsman, the other US rider) and I were together for a bit until the second time on Cadaver when she left me wrestling with my own bike. 

It quickly became a game of the emerging-gutsier-Amy versus the cookie-monster-Amy.  In the final lap there was a sizable gap in front of and behind me, so it was all about keeping the power on the pedals and riding the technical stuff as smooth as crunchy peanut butter.  In the end I finished 18th, about 10 minutes back of newly crowned Polish World Champion, Aleksandra Dawidowicz.  Although my legs are battered and various shades of black and blue and pink, although my bike looks as though it careened off a rapidly moving truck, although the course will continue to haunt me, although I am still in disbelief and utterly humbled by the technical abilities of everyone who congregated in Stromlo Forest Park for the 2009 World Championships, I am still in one piece and had a great many laughs with athletes from all sorts of disciplines...downhill, trials, 4x, and cross-country.  I walk away knowing I have a lot of work to do, but I look forward to building on the improvements I made in the short amount of time I dabbled on this course. 

Thank you for reading.  And thanks also to all who made this possible: Coach Ben Ollett, massage therapist Ed Westhead, Excel Sports, Kona, Stan's NoTubes, Oakley, Lake Shoes, Skins, Fizik, USA Cycling, Webcor Builders.

In one of the most exciting races of the weekend, Amy Dombroski held off Chloe Forsman in an uphill sprint to the line to claim her first National MTB Championship jersey.  Amy's race report is below:

Early Friday morning was the Under-23 Mountain Bike National Championships in Granby, CO at the small ski resort of Sol Vista Basin.  Just an hour and a half drive from Boulder, I made it a goal of mine to race as my final year in the U23 ranks.  Given that Tour de Toona was canceled this year, the time was allotted for the race as well as for a little bit of practice on the knobbie tires. 

The race consisted of 3 laps of a 4.5 mile circuit.  Sounds short in roadie lingo...but each lap took about 30 minutes to complete.  The start/finish was at the foot of a lung-busting jeep road climb which brought you onto more climbing, this time on twisty-turny single track.  You climb and climb for a good 20 minutes before opening up to a beautiful and wide-open panoramic view of the mountains (which I was able to appreciate in my inspection of the course...not so much in the race).  At this point you breath is either taken away from the lack of oxygen, the beautiful view, or the nerves of dropping into a ripping steep, technical, loose and twiggy descent.  Next is "The Drop".  It's a rock-laden, dusty and loose descent that weaves through trees, ultimately leading to a cliff-like drop, where you then need to take a hard left out of the woods.  My method here was basically to lean so far back that I was almost sitting on my rear wheel, grab some brake, and surf the sand...hoping and praying to keep it upright.  Finally through the Dirty Drop, we hit some more twisting single track before a wood-chip based grind of climb with very little traction.  This, I had thought was the final place to pass...whoever led into this final switchback descent had the race in the bag.  So into the woods for switchback single track, then a very quick jeep road descent of maybe 100m, before the final 5 switchbacks into the finishing straight which definitely did not allow much chance of overcoming in a sprint finish. 

My original strategy was to climb away from the start.  This I achieved, and after all the single-tracking ascending, I had a pretty sizeable gap going into the initial descent.  But then I started hacking.  The lines I was riding the day prior in my inspection seemed impossible and I couldn't get out of my own way.  When I was hitting the Drop I was already hearing the rattling of Chloe's (Forsman of Luna, reigning champ) chain coming fast upon me.  She flew passed me and I grabbed her wheel.  It was the most concentrating I have ever done in a bike race.  In a road race you can grab someone's wheel and just keep an eye on it, whereas here, I was intently studying her wheel, her weight distribution, and her body language.  I had to keep it close enough so I could ride her exact line, but far enough so I wasn't grabbing a handful of brake so as not to crash into her or lose momentum through the switchbacks.  It went like this for the remainder of the first lap and into the second lap, and it was exhilarating because it was like a lighbulb coming on - "Ohh, so this is how it's done!!"  The lines I was riding from my practice laps the day prior, to the final lap of the race were drastically different and faster. 

Coming down the final switchbacks into the third lap however, I got a bit too close, overlapped wheels, panicked, and grabbed a metric-sh*!-ton of brake and somersaulted over the bars.  The adrenaline picked me up quickly as I saw her sprinting out of my battle zone.  Now in freak-out mode I started hacking terribly again, braking at the wrong times, almost crashing again, shaking...before I got the better of my racing heart.  I made myself chill and established a flow again.  As we embarked on the final lap, Chloe was just a bit in front of me going up the climb, but I chewed her advantage away.

We entered the single track together and I decided to try an attack.  I established a tiny gap, but she closed it down before the descent and hopped in front of me again.  Twice more, before the wood chip grind I tried to get in front, but every time she would surge and move into me, successfuly blocking and leaving me scrambling to hold her wheel again.  We entered the switchbacks and after an effort to come around, I was losing ground on her.  I had one more ethereal hope of getting around her on the 100m jeep road section.  So I got as close to her wheel as possible, and as we shot out of the woods, stood up in my big ring and accelerated as hard as I could, barely sneaking passed her before entering the single track again.  With all that speed, I was hauling into the switchbacks and almost dumped it several times, riding on the very edge of my ability through the loose corners.  I felt her right beside me through some of the turns as we were battling and bumping wheels.  I led through and had the prime line for the left turn up to the finish.  We were sprinting hard, and Chloe ultimately pulled out of her pedal in one of her final pedal strokes. 

Neck and neck the entire race, it was a truly exciting race to race, and also to watch.  I am stoked to have won, but need to offer mad props to Chloe for her racing.  Thank you to Coach Ben Ollett, KneadEd Massage, Stan's NoTubes, Excel Sports, Oakley, Kenda Tires, Williams Wheels, Hudz, Chamois Butt'r, Skins Compression, 1st Endurance.

Congrats to Heather Irmiger on her first National Championship win at the US Marathon Nationals Firecracker 50 last Saturday in Breckenridge, CO.  She won convincingly with a time of 4 hours and 6 minutes - 16 minutes ahead of 2nd place.  Congrats also to Heather Holmes, who took the last spot on the podium at the Firecracker with a 5th place finish, and to Andy Schultz who took 6th place in the pro men's field.
Georgia Gould, along with Ryan Trebon, won the mixed category at the BC Bike Race, a 7 day stage race in British Columbia, Canada.