Thursday, September 27, 2007

Deer

I just got a call from Shonny Vanlandingham, who was talking to a friend of mine at Interbike. Keeping in mind that Shonny is magically babelicious, I'm glad she couldn't see me because I'm sure I had the deer in the headlights look once I realized it was her.
Sweet.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

All smiles

Well, my legs felt pretty good when I woke up. Not great, but good. Having a 3pm start time was pretty nice. No big hurry in any way. Hell, even when I flatted on the pre-ride I just walked back to my car and changed the tube.
Anyway, I got to the grid about 2 minutes too late and ended up pretty much DFL. Awesome. Mental note: Get there faster. Anyway, I gassed it at the gun and picked up quite a few spots, but didn't force anything. I figured everything was about right when halfway through the second lap I wanted to quit. To add to this, I tried just a little too much on an off camber corner and lost my front wheel, going down in the process. Naturally, I lost about 6 positions in the 4 seconds I was down and back up.
About 5 minutes later I was feeling good so I started pushing it a little more. Started picking guys off slowly. Then about 50 minutes into the race, I all of a sudden heard a noise. Turns out it was JP and his buddy from Switzerland. Holy crap they were flying. I guess that's what getting paid to ride you bike can do for you. About a quarter of a lap later, I saw a few friends that were watching from the sidelines. They told me I had a huge smile on my face as I was uttering the words "Yeah, I just got lapped by Jonathan Page!"

Back to it. As the race was wearing down, I was reeling some guy in, but every time I'd get within 10 seconds of him, my chain would fall off. I need to fire my mechanic. Alas, 37th out of about 80 starters is not too bad for my first Elite race. Not great either. More to come.

Later-

Friday, September 21, 2007

All Crossed up

I have this long standing belief that there are two kinds of runners; the first is the kind that when you look at them you can say "wow, they are quite graceful when running," then there is the second kind that when you look at them, you wince and say "ooo, that hurts me just watching!" I fall firmly into the second category. Not only is it painful for the onlookers, but also for me. No getting around it.
So I guess I started 'cross training a little later than I should. I've now done 3 full blown running exercises for less than 30 minutes each. Two days after each run, my legs feel like I've never run before in my life. I must look like an 80 year old man walking down the street now. This sucks.
With any luck, I'll wake up tomorrow feeling fresh. This is fairly critical since I'm starting my first CX race of the year tomorrow. I have no UCI points so I won't have a starting place to speak of. Well, that and I fully expect to have my ass handed to me by none other than Jonathan Page, the World Champion Silver medalist and a whole slew of others, but that's besides the point. All that being said, I still don't want to get pulled in the first 15 minutes. Having shit legs will not help this cause.

Alas, the show must go on and I will nevertheless show up with the intent of ripping somebody's legs off. Sorry for your luck if its you.

the ATM

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Missed Opportunities

Today's race was opposite of yesterday... 10 miles of singletrack followed by about 55 miles of road after with the other 5 peppered in 3 grassy parks. I was feeling good and got a good jump into the single track. The trail was uneventful, but immediately onto the road I had a flat. Nice way to start the day. Big up to my teammate, Will, who gave me his wheel so that I could bridge up a whole lot faster.
The rest of the day went pretty smoothly, and the pack was whittling down. Unfortunately, I only ended up with one teammate whereas they had three. Ugh. Eh well, figured I would leave it to the last park to makeup the time since I felt strong and had been nailing all the other grass sections. Wrong tactic. I needed 75 seconds and only had 15 towards the end, then missed a turn that brought it back to zero. I still hit him onto the road but he clawed back again. We rolled onto the final straight where we were sprinting for pride, er I mean 2nd. I lost. My earlier attack had done a good job of softening legs, but they turned out to be mine.
3rd on the day and 2nd overall, not too bad, considering last year I popped for good with about 10 miles to go.


Tired, I'm going to bed.

the ATM

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Wow, that was a brutal race... Got in the winning 3 man break with about 60k to go. Sweet. With about 15k left, we hit the gravel road except there was a SAG about 3 ft in front of the turn. WTF!? So I missed the turn and got gapped. Luckily there were still 7 miles of single track in a bit, so I pushed hard once I got there. Got back to about 15 secs then blew. Took some time to recover but it didn't help. 2nd on the day, 1:15 down with 70 miles to go. Bring it

Headed to the Huntington 140

On the way to the huntington 140. SPD and the ATM ready to kill it