#snakealley Slip'N'Slide

Every road racer knows how to check the weather report. Admit it, 99% of those signing up for a race at the very last minute are watching the weather report as the final decision points for the go/no-go. When the pre-race registration closed earlier this week the weather report looked pretty decent. Cooler temperatures with partly cloudy skies seemed pretty typical for Mermorial Day weekend.

Fast forward to the morning of the race - that weather report not only looked worse, I at first thought I was headed to a cross race. Mid-50s and almost constant rain in the forecast and I was ready to put on my mudders and claim my stand in the pits for bike swaps. I didn't have to muck to the pits, but I did have to think about tire pressure - something you rarely expect in crits. With the cobbles up the snake tire pressure had some impact - if you slipped, you walked. Suddenly I wasn't 'over-prepared' by bringing my battery powered CX pump with super-accurate gauge.

Snake Alley is one of the larger junior races in the Midwest, if not the country. Spencer, Kenz, and Nickzilla all met kids from other parts of the country last year. The boys 15-18 field in particular is a large and very competitive race - with over 50 kids registered to race. The kids have a huge interest in doing well. Having the skies open up prior to the race put some of them at ease - with a good CX background your mindset doesn't shift when a little rain comes to the game.

The focus of the race is on the snake, and the steep, cobbled turns. While many kids would slip, fall, and walk the snake, the descent was far more important. Traditional road hazards play havoc on this day - manhole covers, road paint, potholes filled with water. These traditional hazards could send someone sliding down the descent on the seat of their pants at speeds that impact recovery time.

Names familiar to the OVCX cyclocross scene dotted the front of the Juniors 15-18. The race selected 8 racers at the top of the field, 3 of those were 15-16s and those there were Haley, McShane, Petrov. Not only are our local juniors kicking our adult butts in OVCX, they are kicking butts at big events in the road scene.

Return of the Juniors, Tour De Lazy Eyed Llama

To them January seems like an eon ago.  For adults involved in junior cycling, the time has passed quickly between Cyclocross Nationals and our upcoming Memorial Day trip to Snake Alley. When we last left our duo of Spencer and Mackenzie, they had  finished a successful cyclocross campaign with a trip to Madison, WI. Now it's May and it's hot.  Packing the trailer, it's out with the propane heater and in with an extra ice chest.

After a short but needed post-cyclocross break, Spencer and Mackenzie got back to riding, this time with a full road schedule in mind: more miles, more hours and a return of intervals.  On tap for the summer are road trips to the Snake Alley criterium, back to Madison, WI for Junior Road Nats, and on to Rimouski, Quebec for a junior stage race in Canada. This meant a TON of riding. A TON of racing. Many adults find riding relaxing and rejuvenating, but making 10-12 hours of riding per week not feel like eye-rolling annoying work to a teen with a very important social media life is like a Grand Tour in itself.  So, we come up with ways to make the training fun.

For those familiar with the Cincinnati riding scene, there is a llama farm northeast of town along a road frequented by cyclists. Mackenzie, under heavy influence from her giddy female Biowheels teammates, stopped and talked to the llamas. Imagine their excitement when they realized one of the llama's had a lazy eye.  Sometimes the joys of cycling are found off the bike.

It became Lazy Eyed Llama ride.  While we've ridden past the farm multiple times this spring, we rarely get up close to the llama. Sometimes he's in the distance grazing comfortably on the farm.  Sometimes, he's out of sight leaving us to question his whereabouts and what the farmer may have done with him.  Regardless, the llama makes the miles and hours pass quicker.  Suddenly, the summer road race trip is here and cyclocross season is "sooo last year Dad."  Mission completed.

Over the coming days, we welcome you to follow Spencer and Mackenzie on their tour of junior road racing.  Since this is their trip, the kids decided the llama must have a place in the upcoming blog entries.  To honor the llama's place in their training, welcome to The Tour De Lazy Eyed Llama.

To kick off the 2013 travel season on Memorial Day weekend in the Quad Cities, we are hereby titling these entries "The Tour De Lazy Eyed Llama". Heck, if it makes the kids giggle and feel better kooked up in a car for hours with a sea of corn out the window, then by all means we'll do it.  Stay tuned.

While you're here, enter the Cremo Cream Hairiest Hairy Leg Contest.  Send in a photo of your legs to win a Cremo Cream shaving gift set.  Click here for details.

Racing Snake Alley

Looking at all the pictures and listening to all the lore, Snake Alley's focus is on the fabled climb of the crookedest street. The climb certainly doesn't disappoint and watching racers through the day it certainly is a difference maker.

We saw more than one instance of racers getting cut off in corners, falling over and being forced to walk the uphill cobbles in road cleats. There were several instances of racers being weighted too far onto their front wheel, slipping the rear tire, losing all momentum and pretending to have Turrets Syndrome for a few moments. All caught by someone on camera to live in infamy on the internets over the next few days. If you kept track of riders you could also track guys that nailed the start, were first up the hill, and then got lapped about 4 laps later.

One of the unseen parts of the race, everyone is up on the hill to watch, is the cyclocross start. The first time through Snake Alley is less than 1/10th of a mile from the start with a 90 degree corner along the way. In crits you always want to be toward the front, but in this crit you HAVE to be up front immediately.

Having just completed Ault Park this past week you get a false sensation of what starts are like - no one seems to ever be in a hurry to get moving right away. At Snake Alley guys are sprinting off the line to get to the hill in the front ten as if they were OJ Simpson trying to get through an airport.

The climb is the evident focus of the crit, but as they say what goes up must come down. If you step back and think through the logic and do some calculations you realize half the course is about having the kajones to descend through four corners of a crit at break neck speed.

After climbing up a 21% grade, bringing your heart to near explosion, you have to take a right turn, stare down an 8%-10% grade, turn right, descend more, turn left, descend more, turn right, carry all your speed and turn right again. Doing this alone might be fun and interesting. You could Strava your downhill speed and brag to your neighbor. But here you have to do it with all your freshly minted racing friends, whom you have never raced with, surrounding you.

The climb at Snake Alley gets all the attention, but the descent is underrated.

What is a "Snake Alley"

Snake Alley is one way going down
 except for the race.

Before we left Cincinnati we mentioned we were heading to Snake Alley to several cyclist and the response was a pretty unanimous "oh, really?" The kind of response that says "I heard of it, but I ain't never been there." Which, before this weekend, is exactly what I knew of it - there is an alley and it snakes - and of course OVCX regular Drew Dillman has won the hotly contested Juniors 15-18 race two years consecutive.

Today our mission was to find out exactly what this Snake Alley really entails. A preview ride the day before the real race should at least tell us what some of the hub-bub is about, but the real race will be a new experience to all in the car.

Some research on Wikipedia revealed some information about the Alley - or at least I am hoping this specific Wikipedia page wasn't hi-jacked.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_Alley

Spencer and Kenzie headed up the bricks

According to the Wikipedia page the alley was constructed in 1894 to connect downtown Burlington, IA to the close by neighborhoods. Due to the steepness of the hill, the alley winds in a serpentine fashion about 275 feet, rising about 58 feet vertically over that span. The resulting grade is approximated at 21% - though that appears to vary if you take the outside line on all the curves. The pictures on the internet give it a Lombard Street from San Francisco feel to it. Wikipedia says, again hoping it is accurate, the crooked section of Lombard is about 1300 feet long, making Snake Alley about 1/10th the size.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lombard_Street_(San_Francisco)

To prepare for this race we had to find something local to Cincinnati to practice. Through discussion and research we found that Adams Road is relatively close to Snake Alley in dimension. If you haven't been up it, head up the Little Miami bike trail to Loveland and head up the hill just north of the downtown Loveland section. Many of you have done this and groan audibly when someone suggest starting a ride up Adams. Now go race up it a few times with about 2 minutes between attempts and your heart rate already spiked.

Closeup of the pavers used

Many of you will agree that sounds hard, but what brings the lore that Snake Alley has earned is the fact that the climb is also cobbled. Yes, it is laid brick from bottom to top creating the opportunity to lose your traction, fall over, slip and have to run up a 21% grade in road cleats. 


I bet this Alley could tell quite a few tales and I hope to capture some to share tomorrow.