Well the last poker tournament was held a couple weekends ago and the final tally of them is now determined.  In all the nine tournaments raised over $1000 for the Lance Armstrong Foundation and my Livestrong Challenge ride.  Thats above and beyond what i expected for the tournaments and a testament to those that played in support of the efforts.  The last tournament had 14 players and I lasted till about fourth.  Some of the money came from people playing just putting money in the LAF jar as well as donating their winnings.  Any funds I won went back into the jar for donation and some players did the same as well which was awesome.

Next month ill have the finale tournament where each player will have a chance of winning the entire pot amount since the fundraising will be complete.  Those that have garnered points through the year will get the extra chips they have earned to help them in the finals.  Ive also decided to get a keg of some type of beer as an extra treat to the players and a way of expressing my appreciation for them playing.  Finally ill also be giving the winner a pair of Carolina Hurricanes tickets that I won on the radio last week.

All in all i highly reccomend the Poker Tournament as a fundraising method.  It worked beyond my expectations and will be a staple of my fundraising efforts next year.

I was able to play soccer Monday with no knee issues and was planning on running yesterday when the rain came in and put a damper on that.  My night was once again booked up so I wasnt able to get to the gym.  So this morning I made sure to wake up and get into the gym so that nothing can come up to keep me from at least doing something productive.  After all its three weeks to Austin and Im still not where I want to be.

I decided to try out the stationary bike to see how my knee would react to pedaling since it seemed to have no qualms about running.  Yes, im personalizing my knee since it seems to have its own attitude lately.  Anyway it performed ok when the “terrain” was flat but immediately stiffened up and twinged when the course profile moved to hills.  I was pedaling the random setting to simulate Austin a little better by mixing in some simulated hills.  It wasnt a pain but I could feel it building just as it did when it first started up in New Bern so i cut my ride short to 30 minutes and 10 miles.  Im going to keep my bike time down this week to 30 min sessions and try to squeeze in a 40-50 mile ride on the weekend.  Next week ill push the stationary up to 60 mins and the last week before Austin Ill drop back down.  Hopefully stepping up my distance slowly will keep my knee recovering and on my side.

So since my knee collapsed on me in the second day of the MS 150 I started nosing around to find out what was the cause. The setup of your saddle can be one cause for knee pain. If your saddle is too high or too far back this can lead to knee pain. The saddle should be at a height that you’re leg is slightly bent when at the bottom of the stroke and your knee should be centered over the pedal axle when the pedal is horizontal. If you do both these things then your saddle position should be fine.

Some will remember back last month that I did a lot of research into saddles and postioning so Ive discounted this as the reason my knee acted up. My pain was on the inner side of the knee which I have found to be caused by pedaling in a higher gear ratio than one is used to. If you remember from the 150 posts I was using the big gear for the first time and exclusively over the course of the ride. So that seems to have been the culprit, or at least the one which fits my symptoms. The fact that I pushed 153 total miles over two days in a higher gear than I was used to caused the strain to my knee and the subsequent pain.

So how to get around this? Pretty simple, which is probably why I learned it the hard way. Build up your distances gradually and also build up your gears gradually. Dont drop into the big chainring and grind out 100 miles, drop into it and do 20, then 30, etc. building up your distance. This allows your body, and knees especially, to get used to the new stress and build the muscles appropriately to deal with the new workload.

Here’s a good explanation from About.com:

Knee pain is usually associated with a seat position that is too high or low or far forward or back. Improper bike shoe or cleat position can also cause knee pain.

• A seat that is too high will cause pain in the back of the knee.
• A seat too high will also cause your hips to rock side to side, which may cause discomfort.
• A seat that is too low or too far forward may cause pain in the front of the knee.
• Improper foot position on the pedal (or improper cleat alignment) can cause pain on the inside or outside of your knees.

Individual anatomy may also result in knee pain. Cyclists with slight differences in leg length may have knee pain because the seat height is only adjusted for one side. Shoe inserts or orthotics can help correct this problem.

Another cause of knee pain is using too high a gear. Try to use a gear that allows you to pedal quickly, from 70 to 100 strokes per minute.

The second day of the MS 150 started at eight am rather than 8:30 like saturday. I signed on to the MS 150 as a member of the Cycling Spoken Here team, a local bike shop in Cary that my friend Ron works at. The CSH team was having a team photo that morning at 7:45 but as usual I was running late and missed the photo by a few minutes. Overall I was feeling decent about the ride Sunday but wasnt enthusiastic. I knew I could pull it off and would be fine once the ride started but getting going wasnt the easiest thing to do. I was able to catch up with Ron and Brad, who both did the 24 Hours of Booty with me, as well as Dave who did the Ride for the Roses last year with Ron and I. I had also met up with Dave the previous day but forgot to mention it. He headed out early in the ride Saturday and did the 100 mile ride at a pace of 18.8 mph. He said that he ended up having issues with his gut which slowed him down and he decided to do the 75 on Sunday.

Ron and Brad were heading out with the goal of completing the 100 mile option Sunday in under five hours while Dave and I were shooting for the 75 option. Dave decided to lead the paceline that Ron and I had ridden in, and Ron led, on Saturday. My goal was to hit the 75 miles as fast as I could using my heart monitor as the pace setter. On Saturday I never pushed into the my second zone of my monitor which was 60-80% of my heart rate. I started the race with Dave and his line as we headed out of town but when we got to the edge of town I said my goodbyes to Dave and started pushing the big gear. I jumped from pack to pack over the first 10 miles, grabbing the wheel of each line as i passed. Most lines were going slower than I wanted to go, or my heart rate showed I could do, so id move on to the next. Mainly I found myself pushed into the middle of the line and felt pretty uncomfterable with other experienced cyclists so close. I would find myself coasting up on the rider in front or dropping too far off the wheel. While it may or may not have been the case, I felt I was irritating those around me so would push on. Somewhere in that span I hit my max speed of the day which was 28 mph and passed quite a few cyclists in the meantime.

I finally caught a line that was going the speed I felt was good for me after that first 10 miles and we were moving at about 23-24 mph. The group was in side-by-side pacelines when one of the rides said we should start a chain, which was the first time id heard of this. Basically the left line would ride slower than the right side and the right leader would pass the left leader slide over and the process would repeat while the last rider in the left line would move behind the last rider on the right as he past. This let everyone pull the line equally as well as rest after their pulls. We started with the right at about 22-23 mph an the left at a mile per hour slower. Over @40 miles we gradually dropped it down to 19 on the left and 20 on the right. Point is that we were moving and passing groups one after another while keeping our teamwork going strong.

Now for the problems, as we were pushing that pace I could feel my right knee twinging more and more as we went. By the lunch rest stop, the halfway point, it was starting to really become a pain and I was having difficulty taking my pulls in the front but not to the point I was incapable. We stopped for about 10-15 minutes and then got the line going again. Initially we got right back into the chain and pushed back up to about a 22 mph avererage. Each rotation I was getting slower and even on the left resting side I was opening up a gap in the line. I held on to the pack for about 7 more miles even attempting to just hang onto the slow side while passing on moving to the right pulling line before my knee and my body tanked and i was popped off the back of the group at about 25 miles from the finish.

Because we had past so many riders I found myself in a no mans land between groups with only a single rider here and there. I was able to keep my speed up at around 19 mph but I was facing the wind alone for the first time on my own and it pushed me alternately slower and faster depending on the direction. Sometimes down to 15-16mph and others back up to 20mph. Turns became a nightmare because as any cyclist knows you tend to stand on a turn to push back to your pace and sit back down. Due to my knee I was incapable of standing and pedalling and trying to sit and pedal was just as painful getting back up to speed. Even normal pedaling was becoming a strain. After i was dropped I had to hit each of the two remaining rest stops to give my knee a break. It would stiffen up in that time and hurt as I got going again so the break wasnt always a blessing.

Over the final miles I was caught by two members of my main group of the ride that had been pushing so fast, somehow they had gotten behind me at a rest stop and I hadnt noticed. They recognized me and the two of them slowed down and pulled me to the last rest stop 7 miles from the finish. I was suffering pretty badly at that point so they were a god send. The last seven miles were rough as I was back in New Bern and catching stoplight after stoplight which meant stopping and starting which basically made me want to drop the bike because my knee was a searing pain by this point. Any smarter person would’ve quit but Ive never been accused of being smart. By the time I crossed the finish line I seriously considered the medical tent, but off the bike my knee was functional so basically it was the motion of pedaling that aggravated it.

In the end i finished the 75 miles with a saddle time of four hours and four minutes at an average speed of 18.7 mph and got back to the start/finish at 12:36. I really wanted to hit 12:30 but the lights and my knee kept me from it. The average mph was also a disappointment because at the halfway rest stop my average mph was over 20. In the end it was a pretty good finish as everything was better than I had performed before but I had set my internal goals a tad higher than I should have.

Ill be doing the MS 150 again next year and look forward to pushing the 100 mile route on at least one day. The event gives me a good idea of where i stand on being ready for the Livestrong Challenge. Ill finish but ill suffer.  The bright spot is that i got 125 miles under my belt before my knee collapsed and Austin is only 100 miles, but unlike New Bern its one hill after another.

Im back and gimped up from the MS 150 this weekend. It was a fun weekend and pretty uneventful until 125 miles into the ride. Since it was a two day ride I’ll make the report split as well. The ride was well marked and supported with rest stops every 12 miles or so, averaging out to about an hour on the bike between each of them.

On the first day we got into New Bern about 7:30 in the morning with the race set to start at 8:30. I was able to get up with Ron after finding a parking spot and he gave me the infamous booty bunny to attach back to my handlebars. I dont know if i mentioned them for the 24 Hours of Booty post but we attached bunny horns to our handlebars for the ride. The bunnies never fail to attract attention and photographers and are pretty popular with other riders. All in all there were about 1400 cyclists there for the ride which made it one of the biggest Ive been in. I was able to line up with Ron and his group in the 15-20mph line for the start. The start was staggered to try to let the faster riders out first to avoid congestion and the possibility of wrecks. We finally got onto the road close to nine and headed out over the bridges to go east for the day. Each day of the 150 was divided into 75 miles east and 75 miles west which loosley formed a figure 8 centering in New Bern.

Ron took up the lead till we reached the first rest stop where i got in front for about 10 miles before Ron claimed the point position again. He had been training a group over the past few months which I was riding with. He set the pace at between 17.5 and 18.5 mph for the day. The course was extremely flat which let me move into the big chain ring for the remainder of the ride. As we went along Ron would offer to any rider we picked up to catch onto our pace line and he’d pull us all in, at one point he was pulling a line of about 20 riders. I offered to pull for him some but he was set on pulling the line the whole way, enjoying the challenge of it.

At one point we heard a car coming up behind us playing music and slowly moving up the paceline of riders. By the time it got to us we found out it was a Highway patrolman urging people on. Pretty cool and unexpected. There was one point where we came to a county line and I took off to try to “win” it. Ron told me the first time we ever rode together that it was tradition to take a county line. I got it but only because I was the only one that remembered to take off, or more likely the only one interested. Ron’s friend Angela took the opportunity to catch up and see if i wanted to pick up the pace for a while. She took the point and moved us up to 20 mph before i swung around for my turn. It felt good to open up and I got us up to about 24-25mph before I heard her say that 23 was her top and we slowed it back down. We kept the pace up above 20 till the next rest stop where we stopped to wait for Ron and the rest of the group. The flatness of the course is what allowed us to go so fast as Ive never been able to manage the speeds on the normal routes i ride.

The last ten miles we caught another pace line which formed onto the end of our own. We stayed together till there was about five miles to go when the leader of the pace line that hooked onto ours broke off on a breakaway. Ive heard Ron tell the story several times about how last year someone did the same thing to his group and they chased him down. I asked Ron if I should go and he said that if i could I should. I could tell it irritated him that the guy had sat on our wheel and taken off. I pumped up the gears and took off getting up to 29.7 mph, closing down over @75 yards quickly, and caught him at the base of the bridge over the rivers and back into New Bern. I did the Lance Armstrong/Jan Ullrich look from the Tour De France when i caught him looking over my shoulder like Lance did to Ullrich to see what he was doing then kept going. I got up and over the bridge quickly before taking the final turn into town over the last small bridge and into the start/finish line. I stopped by the entrance checked my watch and waited for the breakaway guy who crossed a few minutes later.

Pretty fun ride and a very good one. My stats for the end of the first 75 mile day were an average speed of 17mph, 77 total miles, and about 5 hours. I neglected to write down the final saddle time for the first day, but factoring in rest stops im pretty sure 5 hours is pretty close.