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Beat the Clock at the Tour of California
Newsflash — Beat the Clock is branching out and will be providing starters/timers for the public time trial that will take place before the pros zoom through on stage 6 of the Tour of California.
At this point we seem to have enough BTC volunteers, but you can register to ride here: https://www.bikereg.com/Net/19062.
Below is some information from the organizers:
Registration for the Silicon Valley Time Trial Charity Challenge presented by Splunk, SunPower, and Suffolk Construction is now open.
The Time Trial charity ride will follow the same course as the professional ATOC cyclists, giving our 400 amateur riders an exclusive opportunity to ride the same 19.6 mile course that the professional riders will follow later in the day. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compare your time to the pro racers.
To keep the entry fees low to encourage the widest participation, the entry fee is the same as last year’s King of the Mountain ride at $50 per Open Category rider. This includes breakfast, lunch, and your racing bib.
Here are the event details at this time, and once you register, I’ll be providing you with additional information regarding the parking location.
9:00-10:00 a.m. Parking, bib pickup and continental breakfast. Our parking, bib pickup and breakfast is located at the corner of Santa Teresa Blvd and Bailey Avenue in San Jose.
10:00-10:30 a.m. Cyclists “stage” in groups at the Start Line, which will be located near the IBM Santa Teresa Research Facility at 555 Bailey Road. The riders will line up under signs according to their bib numbers. We will place company teams together. The CEOs/public officials will be the first group to start the ride.
10:30 a.m. Start: all groups,except CEOs, will proceed in “waves” of approximately 25 riders.
11:00 a.m. All riders have started and are on the course.
12:30 p.m. All riders have finished the course. The ride will end at the Santa Clara County Motorcycle Park located at 300 Metcalf Road. After finishing the course, riders will proceed into the Motorcycle Park to the Picnic Area for their lunch. Awards will also be held there later shortly after the ride finishes. All riders must be off the road by 12:30 p.m. when the road will be closed to everyone due to the start of the professional Amgen Tour race.
12:45 p.m. The ATOC race begins at the start line, and the ATOC Time Trial will continue until all riders have reached the finish at the Motorcycle Park. Our amateur riders will have a perfect view of the entire ATOC Time Trial, and they are welcome to stay the entire time until the Time Trial finishes at approximately 3-4 p.m.
It’s not about Lance
I wrote this last October, but except for the first (rhetorical) question, it still applies.
Beat the Clock and Help Beat Cancer 2013 Schedule
Beat the Clock and Help Beat Cancer 2013 Schedule
| January 26 | 7:30 am | Time Trial | Cañada Rd., Woodside CA |
| February 9 | 9:00 am | Enduro Time Trial – Low-Key Series | Paicines General Store in Paicines |
| February 16 | 7:00 am | Time Trial | Cañada Rd., Woodside CA |
| March 16 | 7:00 am | Time Trial | Cañada Rd., Woodside CA |
| April 25 | 5:30 pm | Time Trial | Cañada Rd., Woodside CA |
| May 18 | 7:00 am | Time Trial | Cañada Rd., Woodside CA |
| June 13 | 5:30 pm | Time Trial | Cañada Rd., Woodside CA |
| July 20 | 7:00 am | Time Trial | Cañada Rd., Woodside CA |
| August 15 | 5:30 pm | Time Trial, Raffle Drawing | Cañada Rd., Woodside CA |
Beat the Clock and Help Beat Cancer 2013 Time Trial Schedule — NEW: Thursdays!
2013 Schedule – NEW: Thursday evening TTs!!!
Jan 26
Feb 16
March 16
April 25 Thursday
May 18
June 13 Thursday
July 20
August 15 Thursday (Raffle Drawing)
We’ll still need to work out the details for the Thursday evening logistics, but it’s likely that these will be show-and-go, i.e. no pre-reg, just evening-of registration, and with a skeleton-crew of volunteers instead of the full contingent. Timing accuracy will likely be lowered by a couple of seconds due to fewer timers, but all records will count. But again, the Thursday evening logistics are not fully worked out yet, so stay tuned! The dates are firm.
For more information on Beat the Clock, visit our blog at http://www.beattheclock.us/
Last call – Shindig, Aardvark, Silent Auction – Alpine Inn, Portola Valley, 2pm, Saturday July 14
Live music by Aardvark
Baked goods by Beat the Clock
Silent auction with a ton of awesome items from bike stuff, food, gift certificates, health and beauty items over astonishing artwork and software to Olympic memorabilia. All items start at around half price.
All proceeds go to Livestrong.
Shindig!! Alpine Inn, July 14, 2pm
Aardvark, Rancho Obi-Wan, Light & Motion, Specialized, Ritchey, Snap On, Revolutions in Fitnees, Matadorvino, Bucks, Clean Bottle, … nuff said.
Alpine Inn, Portola Valley, CA – July 14, 2pm
Century record at Livestrong Challenge Davis
I haven’t posted here in a while, except for cross-posting Beat the Clock stuff, simply because there was nothing of note to post. I wasn’t really racing due to a few oral surgeries followed by a few mishaps that included getting stung by a bee IN the eye and breaking two toes sleepwalking into a door (I wish I had a better story for that incident!). Until yesterday, when I not just broke but completely obliterated my previous century record. Peter Tapscott, Andrew Valko and myself rode the Livestrong Challenge Davis in 4:17 ride time and a total of 4:24:49 total time (according to my Powertap)! It was “only” 97 miles, so not quite a century, and nearly dead flat, but windy enough so that you needed to be able to output a decent amount of Watts.
Andrew’s report is here, but he is way too kind to me. I managed to take a single millisecond pull at my sprinting power right at the start, the rest of the way I was hanging on for dear life to Andrew’s and Peter’s monster-pulls at or above threshold, according to my Powertap, sprinting a whopping 50 minutes above threshold. But, let’s start from the beginning.
Before the ride I was grumpily complaining to the BTC team that the new tracking app they introduced this year at the Livestrong Challenge was just plain stupid because then people will go into race mode and do all sorts of stupid things like running red lights, and that any sort of chip timing will only be reasonable if they provide the same police support and rolling road closures like they do at Gran Fondos or Marathons (that’s what Fondos are called in the German speaking part of Europe) — not to be confused with the so-called Fondos here in the US, which are simply renamed regular centuries. Well, I admit I was completely wrong this time. The CHP/police support was nothing short of awesome and I regretted the whole way that I threw the tracking chip into the trash before the start.
The BTC Team – from left to right: Jan Mock, Peter Tapscott, Patt Baenen-Tapscott, Carole Sykes, Libby Rouan, Carola Berger, Lisa Hern, Kim Boester, Debra Paulsen, David Paulsen; and Trudee Gardner, who rode with us in form of a very un-aerodynamic tag on Carola’s bike
But now to the ride itself. The 100 milers went off first, but Peter Tapscott and I missed the staging due to some breakfast delivery complications. Thankfully, Peter is more resourceful (and American) than me, because we snuck into the front line-up somewhere we shouldn’t have. It’d make more sense, esp. with the new tracking, to stage people according to expected speed, not according to other criteria. In any case, we followed a half dozen or so Team Fatty members in the front group who led the riders out of Davis, with a CHP officer in her car in front. At the outskirts of Davis, the pace picked up, Peter and I were still in the top 5 or so. Then, 3-4 miles into the ride, a Team Fatty triathlete, who we’d later get to know as Andrew Valko, put in a monster pull which only Peter could follow. I thought that I didn’t want to get dropped by Peter in the first few miles and bridged up. As soon as my cross-eyedness allowed, I looked around, and there was nobody anywhere near us. Mrs. CHP stepped on the gas, as did we, and poof — there we were, like one of those breakaway groups you see on TV in the Grand Tours, with our very own CHP escort. Except better, cause none of us had to do a Hoogerland, Mrs. CHP knew how to drive. I was barely hanging on as we had a 28mph average in the first hour.
We continued at the same speed, and picked up another CHP escort on his motorbike about a third into the ride. The two CHP officers led us safely all the way. Unfortunately I was too cross-eyed and brain-dead to get names or car/bike numbers, but we owe you a beer or two (when you’re off duty)! We beat the lunch crew to the 50-mile stop, they were just pouring water into the containers as we arrived. After the mid-way stop, we did not stop at all anymore. On the only 3-minute elevation of the day I went backwards really fast, but luckily, Peter had just ingested a Honey Stinger, which kicked in and he gave me a Madison-throw up the hill.
This is what happens when you feed Peter some Honey Stingers: He motors away on a climb at 30mph nearly dropping his two breakaway mates and then performs dance moves at the finish because he still has too much energy. (They should have a warning label on these things!)
As mentioned repeatedly above, I was barely hanging on to these maniacs, and was cursing my “brilliant” idea of putting the tag “We ride for Trudee” on my bike. This tag must’ve cost me quite a few watts, especially since my Powertap file looked precisely like a 4+ hour crit, not like a usually more steady-state century ride, and therefore every millimeter of aerodynamic savings counted. I was glad I had put on my race wheelset.
“We ride for Trudee”.
We passed the 20 miles to go sign at roughly the same time we flew by BTC team member Libby and then the rest of the BTC team, who were riding the 100k distance. This sign inspired Peter and Andrew to kick it up a notch and ride 30+ mph instead of a mere 28, all the while I was praying for either the finish or a ginormous headwind so I’d be able to hang on till the end. Somehow I made it, but if there’s a pic of me crossing the finish line, I bet I strongly resemble a character fresh out of a Stephen King zombie movie.
Thanks to Andrew and Peter for not dropping me and pulling me all the way! I promise, I won’t sleepwalk into doors anymore so I can actually train for next year and will hopefully be able to contribute something to the effort. And many thanks to the police officers and the many volunteers who made this event as awesome as it was!!
Beat the Clock invites you to the Tour of the Bay Area
With the Tour of CA and the Giro going on, Beat the Clock and Help Beat Cancer figured, we’d put on our own multi-stage Tour of the Bay Area. OK, it’s not a real stage race and not on subsequent days, but we can guarantee you nearly endless fun for a good cause. All proceeds go to Livestrong.
Stage 1: BTC Canada Time Trial – THIS SATURDAY, May 26
As always, everybody is welcome – TT bikes, fixies, non-aero Merckxs, World Bicycle Relief bikes, Olympians, World Champions, recumbents of all styles, tandems, unicycles, flying sausages, and anything non-motorized with at least one wheel – dead or alive!
Of course, we prefer our participants and volunteers alive, but I suppose if worse comes to worst, we could prop up a few mummies with a flag at the Edgewood intersection. So come on out! If your shifter breaks, no matter, borrow Grandauntie Petunia’s washing machine! We don’t enforce UCI 3:1 rules or measure your sock length. We don’t even care if you eat too much beef. Though out of respect for the organizers of whom at least one is vegetarian, we ask that you bring the meat in already processed form.
Pre-registration only – closing THURSDAY (no exceptions!)
Stage 2: Redwoods to Waves, an epic hike – 25.6 or 15 miles – June 16
We’ll provide fun, lunch and transportation back to the start since this is a one-way hike from Saratoga Gap down to Waddell Beach. This is a hike, not a race, we won’t time you. However, I will personally give away a pair of our fabulous Beat the Clock socks to the person who makes it all the way to the beach with the least amount of blisters. Should you get blisters – do not despair, we’ll provide medical aid and you can always purchase a pair or two of Beat the Clock socks yourself.
Pre-registration ONLY (we need to figure out the transportation logistics) – only about a dozen spots left: https://www.bikereg.com/Net/15863 or http://www.active.com/outdoors/los-gatos-ca/redwoods-to-waves—an-epic-hike-presented-by-beat-the-clock-and-help-beat-cancer-2012
Stage 3: Shindig! Party! Auction! – July 14
Party till you drop and get bicycle and other items for a ridiculously low price. Further details TBA.
Beat the Clock socks are in!
Order yours now – shoot us an email stating your size. $9 a pair, all proceeds go to Livestrong!
You can also order on bikereg while registering for the next time trial – though there we have to increase the price due to the bikereg fee structure.
Beat the Clock and Help Beat Cancer Socks
Redwoods to Waves
Radfoan 