Patterson Pass

Patterson Pass was my first race as a 3 last year. It's a hard man race, and I don't really belong to that category of rider. This year there was no wind so the climb was extremely selective. Being my first real race back in a long time, I hung in until the 3rd lap then got dropped as the heat and pace got to me. I soft pedaled to the top, caught a bunch of riders going back to the finish and slotted in at 12th. Nothing much else to report except that it was HOT. No water at the finish this year so I was parched by the time we stopped at the first gas station to BUY water. I'm not at all a believer in buying something that comes virtually for free from a tap, so it was a painful move for me to buy a liter of water and some V8 to replace all the salt that was all over my kit and face. Good stuff.

I got a new power meter. I have two sets of nice wheels, but since I'm a geek, I rarely use them so I can get power data from races. This, of course, being suboptimal, needed to stop, so when Quarq released their compact Cinqo, I jumped on it. I'd been saving the money since March, when I originally thought they were going to release it, so even though it's an expensive toy, it didn't hurt too badly. The first one broke on me during my crazy ride of the year (3x Diablo with Everest Challenge teammates) but Quarq's customer service came through in two big ways:

1) they answered email on a Saturday. They have this funny habit of apologizing for answering late, you know, because 2 hours is a long time to wait for help. I'm used to vendors taking forever, so I'm already impressed.
2) they overnighted a new crank to me. I barely missed using it. Awesome.

The Cinqo and powertap agree very well. I have Tukey mean-difference plots to prove it, but those who actually read this already know I'm a dork so I won't plot that here. I will, however, update you on how I measured my drag coefficient and rolling resistance in the next post.