I'm going to miss all you boys and girls at AVC's Breast Cancer Awareness Cross, and at the new Kelly Acres Cross.
Why?
Well, aside from heading to Upstate NY to visit the family, I'll be participatin' in the CX@Brewery Ommegang.
It seems that America's premier brewer of Belgian-style beers began a cross race last year. Along with running it up and down and all around on the brewery premises, the course ran into a fest tent, pulled a tight hairpin turn, and ran right back out of the fest tent, much to everybody's amusement.
I have no idea what the race will be like, but it looks damn promising from where I sit. There's a strong possibility that my race weekend will involve the consumption of Dubbel, Tripel, Hennepin Ale, and a return trip to D.C. with a couple cases of fine, fine Belgian brew. Throw in a little diversionary trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and we're talking about a good little outing.
So I may be on radio silence for a few days. I'll try to have some pics and give you a full report, providing it all works out as planned. If not, I'm sure I'll have an alternative story for you...
Good luck this weekend, y'all.
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Bonus Coverage: Kalidurga or her buddy took this picture.
Yeah, that's my tree stumps. Yeah, that's Ed Sanders' finest all over my bike.
Yeah, that's a live worm that got sucked up and thrown into my front derailer.
That is just an epic shot, isn't it?
Go check out the TeamEstrogen forum for more great shots by Kali and her buddy.
Update: Turns out that Kalidurga's friend Jeannine took that shot. Here's one that Kalidurga took, an artistic shot picturing some guy out for a ride in the country, enjoying the scenery. Nice shot - thanks!
It seems that there is going to be a Kid Rock-branded beer hitting the market in the spring. Sounds good to me. While I wouldn't want to live like the K-to-the-I-to-the-D, there is a debauched, drunken lunatic inside of me, somewhere deep down inside, a guy that I generally keep good and monkey-stomped, who looks up to the Kid as a hero. I didn't say that side of me was a smart or good guy, just that he's in there, yearning to take his shirt off, funnel 6 beers, and run around the neighborhood hollering and waiting for the cops, and a film crew from Cops, filmed with the cooperation of the Men and Women of Law Enforcement, to show up and put on the zip tie cuffs.
Me and Hoovis at the Annual Lance Armstrong Charity Golf Tournament Not Really. But It Easily Could Be
One thing about Kid Rock that is worth taking seriously is his ability to get inkstains all over starched shirts. One of the food bloggers at Amazon.com has this to say about the K.I.D.:
Kid Rock's beer will undoubtedly harken back to our watered-down roots. Afterall, the guy lives on cigarettes, Budweiser, and stripper sweat. Does anyone really think he'd put his name on something tasteful?
He "lives on cigarettes, Budweiser, and stripper sweat. . ." That blogger says that like it's a bad thing. I sure hope it tastes decent - the new beer, not the smokes, Bud and stripper sweat. If it doesn't taste good, I'll have to reserve it for spraying on Elite riders at cross races if it sucks. That said, I wonder if anybody has told the guys at Dogfish Head about this - seems to me that the K.I.D. would be a perfect match for a beer cold-filtered and fresh-hopped through Randall the Ceramic Animal...
I have, of all the inglorious things, a malignant hemorrhoid. What color bracelet does one wear for that? And where does one wear it? And what slogan is apropos? Perhaps that slogan can be sewn in needlepoint around the ruffle on a cover for my embarrassing little doughnut buttocks pillow.
P.J. O'Rourke, funny guy / libertarian author / gonzo journalist, has butt cancer. Apparently, it's one of the funniest things that's ever happened to him. I've never seen anybody deal with it quite that way. I wish him well.
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We've Got Big Balls...
Big surveillance balls for observing the surface of Mars. As it turns out, we're not going to land little tiny rocketships on Mars to check out the surface. We're going to drop tons and tons of balls packed with surveillance equipement to map the surface, basically cosmically teabagging the entire planet. Y'know, for science. Naturally, the surveillance mission will use "rovers" to supplement the inflatable balls, which will bounce all over the Martian landscape. There's no indication that NASA will use a rover to fetch the balls, but I suspect that is planned. It begs the question about which kind of reconaissance device is more effective - does a rover lick balls? It's too soon to tell. Man, these balls are going to be big.
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A quick rundown of One-Item-at-a-Time discount sites for you:
GearTrade - not a single item site, buy, sell, or trade used outdoor gear
Backcountry.com - not a single item site, but kind of like a discount REI, or an upscale CampMor
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Odds & Ends
- A horrible end in every sense of the term. But for the grace of God, there go I.
- Is it cheating to root for a team you don't like, to beat a team that you hate the everloving crap out of? I don't think so. In a perfect world, you'd like both teams to lose, but in lieu of that, the enemy of my enemy is my friend... this week anyhow.
- Lindsey has a nice writeup of her race at Ed Sanders. She podiumed. Yay!
- Elden can't handle being Girled. I guess he'd better avoid racing the local B races against Georgia Gould, huh? Or for that matter a lot of chicks in MABRA. Hey, if you can ride faster than me, you can ride faster than me. Doesn't matter what your plumbing looks like, you got my respect. At least until the next time we ride, then it's on.
Ed Sander Cross offered something we don't often get here in the D.C. area - a classic, European-style fast course / mudfest. Held at Lillypons - which, no shit, is a water lilly farm, with all the attendant ponds - the ground was sodden with nearly three straight days of rain. Additionally, I think NCVC held a 'cross clinic there yesterday. So there were some sloppy, muddy sections, and the bits that were a little technical were very slimy indeed. Stretches of slippery, ice-like wet clay especially on a little dipsy-section on the back nine, grinned upwards in a manner that suggested, "Roadie: It's What's For Breakfast."
I pre-rode the course a few times, figuring out a couple decent lines through the pond section and the back nine, which featured a grassy couple of chicanes with a couple semi-runups (semi, because you could ride them if the course were dry enough). The mountain biking has really helped, I have a lot more confidence in my bike handling, and it also helps to have that Redline Team Conquest, an honest-to-goodness cross bike. I ran Michelin muds with about 42 PSI in the front, 45 in the back, high but what works for me, sorta. High pressure works for this fatboy to cut through shallow mud and to grip on slimy stuff. It doesn't work so well in heavy, deep mud, of which there were two sections. But we race with the course we have, not the one we wish we had.
What is now becoming the usual warmup went fine. I got there two hours early, pre-rode and spun easy for an hour, got my number, pinned up, changed clothes, ate a Clif bar and an Espresso Love Gu (Now With 2X Caffeine!) and downed a bottle of Accellerade, and some water. Then I did some 30 second and 10 second efforts up to the start of the race. My legs were plenty open when the whistle blew. Not super powerful feeling, but not clogged up either.
After the whistle I got passed a bit, passed some guys back going through the prologue, and came out of the barriers and into the ponds. All went well until I hit the mud pit, where I got stalled behind somebody and had to run the rest of the way. I muddled through, as it were, and got up the little hill (it seems smaller this year) and out onto the gravel road, passing a few people who fussily rode around the huge puddles before the gravel road.
From there it was steady motoring up the long gravel road up into the technical section. I'd either pass people, or just kind of chill out, resting while they struggled up the road into the wind. I'd make up ground and pass right before we got back into the mud and grass, recovered enough to make attacks stick.
From there it was a little up and down action, until I was approaching Joe Jefferson, who was giving running commentary on the race. Up the hill I went, and then the wheel slipped. I stomped the pedal again, and it slipped again. And again. And down I went, still clipped in, bike and legs up in the air, like a 'cross racing dead cockroach. I took my time getting up, since I didn't have a choice. Unclipping is tough when you're upside down and the bike's aloft; each time you twist your leg the bike twists, because there's nothing to brace it against. Four or five guys passed me. Eventually I got rolling and worked it down the slimy little hill, up the slimy set of kickers and over the top, and down past the start-finish.
And so it went for the better part of an hour. I would utterly die through the mud strip in the ponds, pick up some spots on the gravel road and even on the runup, crash in an innovative manner - basically from pushing it really hard on the slippery bits to pass people - and then lose a few or four spots. I have no idea where I finished - (-1) to about 8 guys on the lead lap, but among a bunch of other people including Joe M., who seeming trains to race 'cross by just showing up and hammering.
Overall it wasn't a bad race for me. The mountain biking is definitely paying off, I was able to navigate around hitting the brakes only three times per lap, which was really efficient, and I could tell where I would have braked last year because I was zipping past people at those spots.
On the other hand I truly need to work on the runups and to lose some f***ing weight. Power to weight kills me in deep mud and in sand, and if you can clear the hills that are optional runups in 'cross, you get around the course *tons* faster. Still, I must be doing something right - a couple guys that I used to race around last year commented that I seem to have found another gear. Which is ironic, because there was so much mud and grass stuck into my jockeys and front derailer that I could only three gears by the end of the race. But still...
Maybe so. I don't know. In terms of what was in the cupboard, I emptied the bastard out today. I was pretty nauseous until dinner time, and that's a good sign that I gave until it hurt. I can do this stuff. Gotta suck some weight, but I've got the engine, got decent bike handling, got the poor judgment to be willing to pass damn near anywhere, got the ability to suffer. Oh lord, can I suffer. So we're going to start working harder on the push-a-ways this week. Gotta do it, I'd rather be clawing my way up in mid-pack, than fending off DFL. By far.
Other good stuff - hanging out with Gwadz after the race and chatting while we waited to wash bikes. Getting to meet Kalidurga in real life for the first time - she's good company and the cheering was very much appreciated. Finding out that Johnny Frites upchucked on the first lap - he says it was a virus but I think it was the result of the blazing fast pace I was setting and neither he nor his breakfast could hang on. Seeing Seph (Teh Beast What Rides) and Scott T. kick ass in their races - didn't see much of Scott, actually - and hanging with my other teammates Art, Andrew, John, Joaquin, Dave and briefly Lindsey. Watching Ryan suffering like a pig in the B race and cheering him on as if it made him anything but more miserable... Good times, good times. Then going to the Back Nine and cheering for Nystrom and Mike Birner, both of whom had very good races.
Yeah, it was a day packed with fun. That's the cool thing about 'cross. It's not just a kind of racing, it's a whole scene that goes along with the racing. Even if the racing wasn't the best damn thing since sliced bread, the races rock because you get to see so many of the people you'd just as soon be riding with or hanging out with anyhow. It's easy to see why it's the fastest growing cycling sport in the U.S. - there's so much to commend it. Maybe best of all, you don't have to be on the latest machinery or on a particular kind of bike to try it out. Throw some skinny knobbies (check out Bikeman) on an old roadbike, or bring a mountain bike or whatever, and you'll be ready to go. Doesn't matter if you're up front, or fighting to avoid DFL, you'll have a race on your hands. It's great stuff, and you should check it out if you haven't yet.
In honor of Ed Sander 'Cross, hosted by my favorite team in red accented unis, NCVC, and acknowledging the crep weather we've had for the last two days, constant rain, here's a little Peter Gabriel, "Red Rain". Seems appropriate.
And here's a little Mud, with their hit - probably the only one - "Tiger Feet".
Too bad Primus is all uptight about copyright, because "My Name is Mud" is a perfect theme song for tomorrow's race. I guess one of the most insanely jacked up videos of all time, Winona's Big Brown Beaver, would probably be fitting too; everybody's going to be brown by the end of the day. PRIMUS SUCKS.
And if you need something non-mud themed to amp you up, have a little John Lee Hooker, "Boom Boom Boom Boom." Yep. I'm going to be thinking that tomorrow if I can manage to pass anybody. That, and "haw haw haw haw."
Bring a couple trash sacks - one for the muddy clothes, one to wear as a raincoat. See ya out there kids.
That's right - somewhere in the world, some advertiser has seen fit to post enormous billboards featuring vintage bicycle racing art. It's hard to get the perspective in this picture, but I bet the racers on that billboard are 40 feet tall. Amazing!
Family Bike Shop shop ride tomorrow (Saturday) AM. ~30 miles, easy with maybe a couple short efforts, midway stop at Annapolis for coffee. We push at 7:00. No news on numbers, could be small, could be bigger.
If the weather is really vile, it's a no-go, and we may spin for an hour on trainers in the shop at 8:00 AM... mmmmm... roller derby! Damp roads or a little spitting rain, we go.
Scott Keller at the excellent 'cross blog, Mud & Cowbells, has a great writeup of what it's like to race at Cross Vegas. He is normally an elite master racer (FasterGeezer class) but rocked the Elite race at Interbike this year, and as a reward got to spend part of his Cherry Blast in UCI C1 wheelsucking... I dunno. Some guy who rides for this new team, "Unaffiliated." Never heard of them though you see that team represented pretty heavily in Cat 5 roadraces. But this dude Scott is riding behind looks familiar. Used to date Paris Hilton or one of the Olson twins or something.
I know who that is. It's Zack, Mark-Paul Gosselaar from Saved by the Bell, right? I heard he'd taken up roadracing and became a Cat 2, but I didn't know he'd taken up 'cross too.
Way to go, Zack!
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Care for a little blues? I do. Have a little Robert Johnson, "Crossroad." Listen to this and understand you're looking at the source of the river. There may have been music before this, but in a lot of senses, all the modern music we listen to is connected to this guy. Before this there was what we call classical today, and there were the pop tunes of the era. Most of that music was in a major key, harmonic, and focused on hitting the notes in time to meter. The music was judged by how well it stuck to a predictable script, and the most delectable of the music - Mozart, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Bach, and so forth - was judged by its ability to construct an extremely complex yet precisely ordered, disciplined script. Listen to Bach for a half minute and you know where the piece is going. The playing of notes slightly off-time, or skipping them here and there to draw you in, a change in the middle of a song from one melody to something totally different and seemingly unrelated musically as part of a story - not as a little twist in a piece but as the main melody - that was revolutionary.
There had been some other exotic stuff floating around in America - Negro spirituals, some African or Asian music, heavily Celtic-influenced bluegrass. There was also some interesting stuff floating around Europe at the time - Celtic/gypsy music, middle-eastern influence music - - but that blues stuff was its own genre. Ragtime and Jazz were growing up at the same time, and they cross-pollinated with the Delta Blues, maybe they grew up in a little incestuous family down in the deep, deep rural mid-South. But blues didn't wear a tuxedo with jazz or go to the races with swing. Instead it grew up in the juke joints and the little shanties that the black working men and women frequented, to forget about their hard lives in the Jim Crow South, to cut loose for a few hours.
B.B. King talks in his autobiography about how he'd sneak up next to a juke joint in his town on a Saturday night just to listen. Don't over glorify the life - it was tough; children weren't allowed in the juke joint, it was a grownup place where bad things like knife fights sometimes happened, but the next generation of bluesmen like King would sit outside the window and listen to the music, transfixed. B.B. King talks about how the blues spoke to him, and he couldn't stop listening.
He's not alone. That's the magic of the blues. While jazz speaks to our higher nature - you can only understand jazz if you understand music well enough to understand classical, because you need to know how the note *should* be played, to understand the script well enough to anticipate what comes next in the normal scheme of things. Otherwise, you really can't appreciate a brilliant improvisation. It's like basketball - if you understand the three man weave on a fast break and know the ball should be passed left with a chest pass, but then the guy in the middle passes right behind-the-back, throwing the defense while the guy on the right wing pulls up for a 5 foot jumper - you appreciate the play a lot more. Blues speaks directly to your purely human physical nature. You may not consciously know what note a bluesman will hit next but your foot damn sure knows how to keep time, probably without you having to tell it.
The raw emotion in a lot of blues lyrics, honest lyrics coupled with raw music, is potent as well. It speaks to heartbreak, to losing a job, to the death of a friend, to leaving home, to being isolated and alone. Modern tragedy tends to be minor compared to the stuff people lived through during the great depression, especially when you take segregation into account - but if you've been done really really wrong you know *exactly* what B.B. King means when he says, "I've been downhearted baby, ever since the day you left." A Wynton Marsalis instrumental can sort of say it, but the jazz version is sitting around in a chair thinking deep thoughts about it. "What about all those fine feelings of heartbreak?" The blues version is sitting at the bar with a couple buddies, looking at your drinks, and you say you miss the woman and you're pissed, and they don't ponder what you're feeling, they *know,* and order another round. Because it communicates directly and honestly, the blues genre connects very squarely with us. It puts out raw emotions and thoughts for you to look at and doesn't ask what you think, it just says, "there it is." There isn't a lot of ambiguity about shooting a man dead in Memphis and getting hanged for it, or for your woman leaving with your best friend. There it is... deal with it. Maybe if you tapped your foot and had some whiskey and just got it off your chest, you'd feel better.
B.B. King is a direct musical offspring of Robert Johnson, as are Muddy Waters, Robert Cray, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, the Stones, Led Zeppelin, Link Wray, James Brown, and a couple tens of millions of other people who play blues, rock, soul, funk, and some types of hip hop. Today's pop - and yesterday's - wouldn't have been possible but for the Delta Blues musicians who took spirituals and chanties and bluegrass and the rudimentary jazz of the day, and maybe even some creole sound, and fused it into a raw, lukewarm-shot-of-bourbon-in-a-fingerprint-smeared-glass sort of sound that is uniquely American.
Crossroad is one of Robert Johnson's signature pieces. Listen to this song and understand it's the Model T, the Wright Brothers' first plane, a Little Boy and Fat Man dropped on a musical scene that had become banal and stale after the last great wave of classical composers in the late 19th century. It went to the places that ragtime and N'awlins jazz and the mild swing of the era, coronettist Bix Beiderbecke and the great Louis Armstrong, tamed down for the mass consumption of genteel folk and the mild tastes of the age, could not go.
As for rumors that Robert Johnson went down to the crossroad and sold his soul to the devil to be able to play that way... well, I don't know. Blues speaks to man's fallen nature in a way other types of music can't touch. It doesn't bemoan the Garden of Eden story, it looks at Eve and says, "well, even though we ain't in the Garden no more, you're naked, I'm naked, and we standin' here, and I don't have work tomorrow, so..." If the rumor about Johnson isn't true, it should be.
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And while we're at it, it's a 'cross weekend. Let's have a little Lightnin' Hopkins, "Lonesome Road." Think about this song when you're pounding up that long gravel road at Ed Sander, in between the group you just got dropped from and the group trying to catch you.
One last bit of Lightnin' Hopkins. "Baby Please Don't Go."
Coppi Cross practice just isn't practice without a good crash or two. This is the rule. I did my best with a good low side in the grass.
Question: How fast can you go around the twisty grass chicane we engineered with cones? Answer: a little slower than I was going.
But my crash was pathetic, pedestrian. A true crash artist creates art when he goes down, making it a thing of beauty.
For instance, when Cross-riding (therefore dirty) Masters racer (thus old) Friend of the Coppi Kids (i.e. FOCK'er) Pete L. crashed this morning, he wittily threw his bike down in front of Scott T., perhaps to keep Scott from crashing on the same spot of slippery grass. I thought this was very generous of Pete, to offer to provide traction for his friends.
Scott, being the truly sensitive artistic type that he is, ran over Pete, narrowly missing his genitalia and skull, but scoring a direct hit on the wheelset, which made a crunchy noise as Scott did a Full Forward Lindy, Layout/Superman position, degree of difficulty: 4.6. (The bike was in layout position, Scott in Superman position, a difficult combination).
Together, Scott and Pete collaborated to make a thing of beauty, a piece of rolling sculpture that probably doesn't roll well or really work as sculpture, but a thing that could at least pass for art at Burning Man, providing it was late enough at night and you were standing close enough to the communal marijuana campfire.
I give you:
Bikehenge
Okay, it's not that spectacular, but it goes to show the innate brilliance of 'cross bikes that these two bikes landed in that position, upright, while the riders bit it hard. Not content to have engineered themselves into a machine which the "rider" carries around half the course, 'cross bikes have clearly evolved, turning into vehicles that are capable of remaining in a standing position even though the riders crash.
Given 'cross bikes' proven ability to evolve, and to learn skills that help them outwit their riders, I have a serious concern that if anybody fits the new Shimano electronic Dura Ace gruppo to a cross bike, we could be facing a Skynet-type situation.
I think the UCI should enact a rule immediately prohibiting the installation of electronic Dura Ace to cross bikes.
You simply aren't racing cross if you don't crash hard once in a while.
My man Steve, who is a great guy and a stone cold hammer on a single speed Bianchi, had a *great* race at Nittany Lion 'Cross, right up until the finish, where he broke a crank or de-chained, and stacked it, missing the win by a nose. Here's the photo sequence - it's an *epic* crash:
Cross gives us many embarassing and humiliating moments. Rest assured Steve, knowing that, I'm marveling at your crash here, not laughing at you. I know better than to laugh; the Green Ripper visits me once in a while too, and I wouldn't want to tempt him by laughing at your misfortune.
Do you ever have the feeling, standing at a 'cross race, like the feeling George C. Scott's Patton got when he was overlooking the site of a great battle between the Romans and Carthaginians - that you were there, that you were born to it, that it's the most natural thing in the world to go out there and get your nose stuck in the fight? That there's something a little bit mystical about a bike race, especially a 'cross race where the tragedy of the self-inflicted suffering is so epic that it's damn near transcendental? Man, I love a good 'cross race. For some reason it resonates with me the way that few other things do. The day I met my wife I had that feeling in spades. Seeing live opera, or playoff hockey gives me that buzz. Getting a really good long section of flow on single track does too. But opera sometimes is lousy, with bad set design or subpar singers. In hockey, sometimes your team just dies, and you're in the second game and there's 2.5 more beatings to come. Getting to the point where you flow on a mountain bike, where your mind just disappears in a moment of sublime relaxation is hard to achieve. But 'cross does it for me every time, just focuses the mind and if I'm racing, engages the body. If 'cross resonates with you, if you're on the same frequency with the sport, it draws you in like few other things.
See what I mean? You can't look away. You're hooked.
We got a dirt track date, Demolition derby figure 8. Eatin' food off a paper plate, Eliminations start at 8:00. . .
So get your hair piled up real high, I want you baby by my side, Now they're rollin... sonofagun! Take what you win, run what you brung.
In every turn we'll tempt our fate... We've got a dirt track date.
I raced Charm City 'Cross this morning with around 90 of my closest friends in the B Master division, the SlowGeezer class as one of the NewerBs called it.
Off the start, I was in too high of a gear and got swarmed, totally losing my mint third row start position. Later on in the lap, I got to this little hairpin that was a total bottleneck. I had a good line through it but the guy in front of me pretty much stopped dead. So I trackstanded for a moment, then when he moved I stomped it. My front wheel came up in a lurid wheelie, and I tipped over, feeling a sharp knee pain. As soon as I got up I recognized what the pain was - a bit of a sprained knee. Yuck. This took me off my game a little more. A bit further on it was time to get into the interminable sandpit. My knee really hurt, and I had trouble unclipping. I didn't have trouble flying into the sandpit at speed akimbo under the bike though, doing a Superman imitation and coming in for a wheels-up, knees-down landing. All I can say, is it's a good thing sand isn't abrasive at all and doesn't taking off whole layers of skin when you fly into it, otherwise my knees would be shredded and I'd be sitting here in bigtime pain typing this at 9:00 PM. Because nothing would hurt worse than a bleeding, sandblasted, abraded sprained knee.
Where was I? Oh yeah, the race.
I kept motoring along, had a pretty decent race. The course was smoothed out a bit, and it had a lot more flow than last year. Part of this is that I've been mountain biking a lot - stuff that used to throw me is very rideable this year. The other part was the massive crowd of racers and riders there cheering for me - I heard "Go Jim!" at just about every turn. For those who were cheering me, thanks so much, I can't tell you how much that helps. For those who were cheering Jim from Proteus Bikes, who spent half the race on my wheel then passed me, to stay a little in front of me the rest of the way, well, thanks for leaving some ambiguity in it and not cheering for "James." Johnny's comments on lap 2 cheering me on were particularly welcome - thanks big fella! Picked me up when I was very, very down.
The pace was a bit faster than the usual C race. I could count on a finish between 25 and 40 last year in a C field of this size, I was much closer to the back in the B Masters - as it should be. One other big difference is that everybody can roll in the Master B race, and does. I went through the top thrid of the course past the start finish on one lap nailing every corner, keeping on the gas, not hitting the brakes, and in general doing really well. As soon as I slowed... three guys railed past me. That would never happen in the C's except right near the front. In the C's you can rest a second. Not so in the SlowerGeezer... those old guys are mean and don't cut anybody a break!
There's nothing of import to discuss about how my race unfolded. It hurt a lot and I was proud I got through a couple laps with a badly messed up right knee, persevering though I wanted to quite worse than in any race I can remember. I tried to get into a zone at the start, and did. I could have gone a lot harder if I hadn't stacked it hard twice on the first lap, but if if's and buts were candied nuts, Christmas would be merrier. On my last lap, tail end of my fourth lap, I was yelling at myself to go harder. It seemed to me that I had a lot left in there that I wasn't using. So after coming down the hill from the runup and crossing the road, I worked incrementally harder up the hill to the tall barriers - just a little bit of a dig. I remounted, went down the hill and back up again, and across the regulation barriers. At that point I got *real* dizzy and it suddenly became clear that my authoritative inner voice ("Drop and give me 50, maggot!") didn't know what the hell it was talking about. I had been working very hard indeed and didn't have much, if anything, left in the tanks. It was clear I was crispy like last week's toast. Just then the 55+ national champ blew by me with another guy, and I realized it was over, or would be real soon. Two more guys passed and into the finish line. I wasn't waved off, I could have probably done another lap, but my official score would be -1 anyhow, so I pulled off at just under 40 minutes, spent. Final score was 73 out of probably ~90 [update: 104] starters. Trevor managed 63 or so, and Jon scored top 10. Way to rock it, boys!
I think I'll stick to this class. It's a harder race and I do worse but it's forcing me to ride harder, to push the boundaries and find the limits of my skill and the bike's handling.
After doing a 20 minute cooldown spin with Art, I got changed and hung out a bit. Seeing buddies I hadn't seen since last year during cross season was one of the real highlights of the day. You may not be best friends but you get to know a lot about what people are made of when you do a 10 or 15 race series with them, especially if they're in your field. After saying some hellos, we had a bit of lunch, watched the Masters Elite race and the L'il Belgians, and then I took off for home to look after a slightly under-the-weather spouse & offspring.
It was a great start to the season and I look forward to building on today's race. I know I don't have the form I had at the start of last year but also know that my handling is much improved thanks to the mountain biking. The plan is to focus on diet, the high intensity parts of my training, and doing all the little things right - proper warmup for the race, studying the course and truly learning it in warmup, paying meticulous attention to equipment and things like hydration and pre-race feed. There are many details forming the basis of racing well, and along with executing the simple things like training and the simple but hard things like diet, I'm trying to study and do the subtle things that pay off in the long run.
For example - the freshly glued rear tire clung to the rim like an investment banker hanging onto the Secretary of the Treasury, somewhat desparately and extremely tightly. That little change made all the difference. Full confession - in addition to getting off most of the tape, I did a couple other things in prep - acetone scrubbing of the rim with a rough cloth, a good sanding with 220 grit emery paper, and all the other little detail things like blowing it up to 75 right after install and taking a very short mild ride, then leaving the tire inflated at high pressure for 36 hours... the tire was money even though I saw several other rolled tubies. Another helpful detail was knocking back the highly caffeinated version of Gu before the race - that caffeine reduces the sensation of suffering, and the little episode of dizzy made it pretty clear that I was deep in the hurt bucket, on the ragged edge, but it didn't feel bad. Gotta remember the caffeine. The final detail was to bring a trainer and really use it. That sucker is staying in the truck until December.
A good routine from last year that I'm perfecting is to get there at 7:50, get the number and get the race jersey pinned, ride a couple easy laps, paying close attention to the technical portions. Ride the trainer after that up until 20 minutes before race time. Drink Accellerade the whole time on the trainer, easy spin with a number of 30 - 45 second spinups either at high power or high RPMs. Get a dry jersey on, then ride around for a few minutes, doing two or three 30 pedalstroke efforts at near max power. Then do a cooldown ride after. That routine works.
So thanks to everybody who offered a kind word, and to the friends who took time to renew our acquaintance today. Final thanks for today go to Jon and Trevor for being good travel and race companions, to my teammates, and to the organizers and refs who put it all together. There was a good scorer and the refs were all on the same sheet of music so the scoring and pulling debacle of past years was avoided. It was up to standards, four-square all around, and an event worthy of its marquis reputation.
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Check out a new blog by Friend of the Rouleur Lindsey. It's very new, but her first significant entry relates to an awful experience she had at Hains Point with a persistent obnoxious wheelsucker. She totally pwned him... in her mind. Oh well, can't win 'em all.
Don't bother me tonight. I'm busy attending Friday Night Services. It's the church that many 'cross racers attend the Friday night before a Sunday Morning service.
Yeah, we're more dedicated than Baptists.
Our sacrament?
This: We administer it primarily to those in need, those weak tubulars in need of reinforcement, those that are not yet set in the ways of righteousness. Our gospel:
Yea, verily, I say unto you, he that taketh not the sacrament three times three times, shall not enter the promised land but shall be condemned forever to run to the wheelpit, in search of clinchers that have been spared.
For both the wheel and the tape shall be covered; covered shall the tape and wheel be, three times three. Between each time thou administereth the balm, shalt thou partake of the Belgian unguent, for to fortify thy loins and make stout thine heart.
Although I ride through the valley of the Shadow of the Rolled, I will fear no wobble. For Vittoria is with me, it's ride, and it's staff.
Seek not the counsel of Tufo; for Tufo walketh not the paths of strength and righteousness.
Seek not either consort with Conti, for Conti are the sons of men, and weak.
Comfort not Tubasti neither; for Tubasti hath sinned in Bablyon in calling itself superior to the others when it was false, and for that hath the Lord made Tubasti weak.
Yea, shall ye administer the balm to all tubulars, both Grifo and Dugast, Tufo and Vittoria, bless its hallowed name.
Indeed, administer the balm sufficiently, and ye shall roll, yet not get rolled.
For I confesseth to thou the truth. Once was I deceived by the Great Deceiver, who spouteth all manner of lies.
And in the year of our Lord two millenia and four tenths score, did the Deceiver say, "even for those like unto large horses, shall tape and a single layer of the balm be sufficient."
Yet it were not, and though my field were level ahead and behind, it was not level to the side, and after I rolled, I could roll not and thereafter walked for the rest of my day.
Be thou not deceived; the road unto sufficiency is three times three times, and pauseth thou for thirty minutes between each application of the balm, to meditate upon its visage and to apply the Belgian unguent to thyself.
Then must thou make fast the tubular, filling it with the air of the fields to no less than three score pressure, no more than four score.
Rideth thou gently that wheel that thy tire is more bedded than the Madonna; see how great His works are, that the tire is made fast, and that thou art made faster.
Leavest thou then that wheel, full of the air of the field for one day. Rideth not that wheel in its repose.
On the second day shall it come to pass that the tube shall be made mostly empty. Release the air of the field back unto whence it came, until no more than one score five remains.
Then marveleth thou at the wonders of the balm.
Though his way is rough, it shall be made smooth. Though he slips mightily, he shall have foreknowledge of the rate and distance of the slip. Though his competitors be mighty, he shall be mightier still and overcome all suffering.
And verily sayeth the Lord's minister, he that followeth these laws and administereth the balm three times three before the cock crows, shall ride, and he shall not walk back to the wheelpits admonished.
Blessed too are those who listen to his prophets; for they shall ride and not be as weary, run and not stack the barriers.
Happy are those who apply the balm, and the unguent. For they shall roll and be happy, and yet shall not roll at times inopportune. Because that is how we roll.
Either the pressure level in my life is going down, or I'm learning to cope with it. Either way, three rides in a row hit the sweet spot this week. It felt good, like the train got back on the track and started to chug along...
My threshold intervals on Tuesday were... well, nice isn't the way to describe threshold intervals. They were efficiently done. I got power up to threshold, and held it there. For a while, I wasn't even breathing too hard. This is probably due to my training absolutely sucking for the last few weeks, so my legs were super fresh. Did the workout though, rode the chart, and it felt absolutely wonderful. No, it didn't feel wonderful physically, threshold intervals don't, but it felt wonderful to finally have my head in the game enough to maintain concentration to be able to keep it at threshold level power for the prescribed interval. The mind is where good racing starts, so it's the keystone, the foundation. It's been lacking for a few weeks, good to have it back.
Wednesday, we had a good 'cross practice. A few non-Coppis joined in, and that made it interesting. The total crew was about 15, which made for some good group start action and a little bit of traffic here and there. I took it easy on the first two lap set, trying to warm up. On the second two laps I went moderately hard, trying to get some work in. On the third set, I decided to go fairly hard at the start, not all out, but then to try to hurt a bit going into the second lap and really nail it on that lap. Nothing really noteworthy happened until that final lap. I went into it gasping, a bit heavy legged. That sounds bad, but it's good. That's how you should be working 'cross intervals, and it showed I had done serious work on the first lap. I really pounded down the pavement on the second lap and started to catch up to Mike, who had gapped me considerably at the start of lap 1. I used him as a rabbit and began closing. He stepped it up too. So I stepped it up again. Coming down off the runup, he had a big lead - really steep runups are total kryptonite to me. But I worked the downhill super hard, did a really lurid two-wheeled powerslide in the grass, and started to catch him on the long grass straight. Up the hill, I was standing, and then got within about 8 feet of his wheel. I caught my rhythm, and that's when it happened - my face went really, really numb.
Bella! Bellisima!
Sounds sick but that's how I know that I was working it properly. It was just a minute or two of that feeling, the total dizziness you get from VO2 efforts, but it was there. It means my mind is in it enough to maybe put together a decent race season. I can still go hard enough to race well - that numb face is what I get for maybe 25 minutes of any cross race where I work really hard. After the last month or so, I was happy to be able to hit that sweet spot, the point where I'm going all-out.
In fact I was so happy, I did a standing effort through the second-to-last section of off-camber in a desparate attempt to bridge the last few feet of gap up to Mike, and rolled a tubular. Dang! It wasn't that unhappy of an event; better to do that in practice and discover the weakness, than to do it in a race. Plus nothing was going to erase my happyness at having gotten it into the zone properly for the first time this year.
The final sweet spot ride was my recovery ride at Rosaryville this afternoon. I needed to do about 40 minutes with no significant hard efforts. I've been missing the woods, so I headed out on the single speed 29'er. The new front wheel - a Salsa Delgado to replace the whippy and taco'ed WTB - totally changes the handling. It's much more solid up front, more planted, partly a function of the Delgado's weight (it's stout...) and partly a function of Jon's solid build. Not like I was pushing myself or that wheel at all though. I took it real easy on the hills, and focused on not touching the brakes. Going into the last 20 minutes of the lap, I got into a groove in this one section of basically rolling, very smooth single track. I kept telling myself not to hit the brake, and keep looking ahead.
Then all of a sudden, I just dropped into a sort of trance-like state. Five or ten minutes just passed by, flowing. I don't remember thinking anything, just rode along, with a totally blank mind, not a stupid form of empty mind, just a relaxed mind. The weather was nice and I recall how good the breeze felt, how I felt every bump in the trail but nothing took the bike off track, leaning and swaying to get through narrow gaps in trees with my wide On One Mary bars... but not a conscious thought in my head. I must have been turning the pedals because there were some little rises in the trail, but the sensation wasn't memorable enough for me to retain it. After a while, it occurred to me that I need to pay attention, don't crash, people rely on me to have a functioning bonce, watch that turn, etc. I started thinking about riding, and slowed down right away. But for 10 minutes, I was somewhere else, just totally in the moment. It was mentally refreshing enough and so hedonistic that I hated ending the ride and coming home, at least for a few minutes.
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Charm City 'Cross is coming up on Sunday. It marks the start of the Mid-Atlantic 'Cross season. I know there's a race the day before, but Charm City has become the traditional kickoff. Go register for it here. Even if you don't race, please do come out and spectate and help the rest of us have a good time. It's very well-attended, situated in a nice, huge park, and it really embodies a lot of the good features of the local 'cross scene. Along with two or three other really classy events in MABRA and MAC, Charm City is what's best about 'cross. See you there.
And, in honor of racin' in the grass, let's have a little Southern Culture on the Skids, let's have a "Dirt Track Date."
I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face...
Did I just read that? Yeah, I guess I did. Thing is, you get in my grill and start arguing with me - not discussing your thoughts on issues and at least pretending to give me an opportunity to state my case, but arguing and getting in my face - my patience will be sorely tested and I don't think you'd like me much when I lose patience. I don't care if you're to the right or the left of the guy linked above; I'm not making a point about his policy positions, just about that screaming and infantile Olberman/Coulter style of politics. It's sad because I have accomplished, brilliant friends who I'm not going to be able to talk to between now and election time because they take that kind of advice to heart. God forbid their side loses the election - they'll need a six month cooling off period after that before I can deal with their baggage. This includes people who agree with me, by the way, as well as friends with whom I have profound differences. Being around them is just intolerable because they either need to be proselytizing for their cause, or getting reinforcement for their beliefs by preaching to a rapt choir. I'm considering giving up ever even discussing politics - people tend to ask "what do you think" which apparently is actually an opening for "whatever you say." In the past, up until quite recently, I've always taken the words at face value. All responses other than "I'm on the same sheet of music as you" are apparently interpreted as, "get in my face and argue with me."
You see this a bit in the bike community, when commentary about Freds or commuters or tri geeks or carbon v. steel goes past a little chiding, and evolves into scorn. It's got to be tough to live your life going around hating on everybody; I don't know how you can actually be content with anything. There's always somebody different to go hate on, to get into their face. Maybe it's just because I'm getting old, but I'm more critical about the details of different approaches, but less willing to treat differences in approach as grounds for having a big fight or personal condemnation; able to poke fun (including at myself) but not take it to personally. A lot of people seem to start from the point of personal affront, however, and then work their arguments out from there.
I'm making a point about manners and civility and lifestyle here; I don't want to be around anybody who thinks it's appropriate to get in my face in an attempt to force me to believe or act differently. You really feel strongly about it, discuss it rationally and we'll take a vote. Or produce a better bike to your way of thinking, and see if we'll buy it.
I wasn't looking forward to road guarding, hanging around the registration table, cleaning up, or other hellish race support duties, having put in my time writing refund checks, sweeping the course, and handling general oddball duties in the buildup to the race and during the morning's races. Instead, I was looking forward to 3+ hours of undiluted merriment, sex talk, lies about racing, and incidentally watching the 1-2-3 race when I finagled my way into Giacomo's PT Cruiser. Turns out, he was suffering from bronchitis, so in addition to getting a front row seat for a 55+ mile breakaway, I got to watch some real suffering. He wasn't half as entertaining as usual. Get well Giacomo!
The race started out with a couple attacks. Nothing happend until one got 30 seconds away. Per instructions, we zipped up to ride with Moto 2 (the ref) and hung out for a while, but the attack was absorbed coming up to the start/finish line, so we dropped back into the tail-end position. We tried to help some guys bridge up to the pack but when you're shelled on the second lap, it's probably not in the cards. As we came down to turn right on Comus, this idiot on a bike with aero bars comes flying down from the left, cuts in front of us, and begins a desparate chase to try to catch on with the pack, passing some guys who were toast. James and I pulled up next to him and may have said some impolite things, asking him to please not try to insert himself into a race or he'd get badly hurt. (Okay, fine, I dropped about 50 F-bombs on the guy during a 20 second verbal machine-gunning). Didn't matter that much, he was dropped by the next little rise. He wasn't the only recreational cyclist we had problems with obstructing the road during the race. Why do people have to do that? It is *so* dangerous. If I found myself in a race with a rec rider inserting themselves into the pack it would take every fiber of my will power not to curb them, immediately.
Moments later we saw SuperDave pull off at Peachtree in the middle of lap 2. You reckon the pace was hard Saturday? Dang.
Around this time a Harley guy and a Maryland guy got well away. Soon, another Harley guy bridged up. They worked well together and got 30 seconds, then were quickly at 45 or 50, so the Moto called us up, and that's where we sat all day, watching the break. Ken Johnson was in the break, plus another Harley guy I didn't know and this Maryland guy who did really well, but who was clearly working hard just to hold the wheel.
It looked just like this... For three hours!
After a couple laps, the gap was up to 1:58 or so. We were having problems with comms, so James would stop the car on a hill, we'd time the gap back to the pack or chase group, and then drive at a socially unacceptable pace to catch back up. Around this time we realized it was 95 in the car, we were cooking, and didn't have any water. There were some emergency cokes in the back, but nothing actually thirst-quenching. We rolled by the feed zone and snagged a bottle. That was all we got.
James kept saying, "oh, my head... it feels terrible." It was like when that guy rolled his car a few years ago and got trapped in it, and his CD player was stuck on Duran Duran, and it played "Careless Whisper" several hundred times before the police found him. I think he started listening to Danzig after that. Eventually we were rolling through the feed zone and begging for water and people thought we were joking. We weren't. I got really pissed at some teammates who kept thinking we were joking around. Sadly, we were actually cooking in the car.
About 4 laps in, it started to get interesting. After some pre-emptive bridging attempts the group seemed to start to chase a bit harder. The gap came down pretty quickly - within a half lap it dropped from nearly two minutes, to ~40 seconds, and the three struggled to stay away during the 5th lap. But the chase group never caught on. Talking to Kirby afterwards, it seemed pretty clear that Harley decided to launch the pre-emptive bridge move and sort of fake a real chase. Hey, NCVC and Bike Doctor are famous for running down their own guys in the break, why not Harley?
The effect was to chew up the pack and make it impossible for any legit bridge moves to work - we'd hear reports of 3, 5 and 7 guys trying to get across, but they never made it. Kirby said it was extremely hard to hang on when Harley dropped the hammer.
I don't think it was clear to the three guys in the break that it was Harley leading the chase. So when the gap got down to 40, the break started visibly working a lot harder on the hills. They would quickly get the gap back up to 1:30, and every time thereafter it started to come down, they'd roll harder.
On lap 5, the three in the break were looking pretty dead, so we rolled up to them and handed them ice cold Cokes. They picked up the pace significantly after that. Coke adds life they say. After that the Motos started hitting us up for Cokes, and the head ref hit us up for a couple which he brought back to the break in the Women's 1-2-3. I heard later the Cokes were money.
Around this time we ran across a lapped rider who was trying to drop back to help his teammates. The ref radioed back his position, and we yelled at him to get off the course. He didn't listen, said he wouldn't compete and was just riding around, and the last we saw of him, he was hammering trying to get up to speed, as the pack overtook him. I think Moto 1 may have caught him and pulled him. The jerk.
On lap 6, going up the first hill past the start on 109, the Harley guys attacked mildly. The Maryland guy was utter toast. As we saw the gap develop, James asked how long I thought we should wait. "Go now. He's finished." And he was. For the rest of the lap they kept their gap at a minute or a little over or under that. They eased up noticeably on Old Baltimore and just sort of cruised it in, with Ken taking the win. Brian Butts, former Coppi and a good, good guy, came in a minute later in third.
The second most impressive performance of the day... Battley Harley takes 1st through 6th
The tactical lesson I took from that is that if you have buddies in the break, one good way to help them is to launch a team attack that is hard, but which doesn't go real far. Do it repeatedly. The sharp accelerations will shred the pack and discourage it, and protect your teammates. You don't want to go hard for too long, you don't want to catch up to the break, but you want to make the pack spontaneously decide to bunch sprint for 4th instead of trying to win. That was a really smart tactic, and Harley probably found it easier to control the pack by hurting it and letting it decide to slow down, than by trying to get in front and block.
Lessons learned: bring water in the car. You make friends with Coke late in the race. Really think about which teams are in the break and who is leading the chase / making the bridge move / doing the pacemaking, they may telegraph their moves. Be nice to the refs, they have a tough job.
Final note - the ~55 mile break by those three guys was just a frickin' magnificent effort, it was amazing to watch that. If you ever have a chance to ride pace car or support for a long road race, I highly recommend it. You'll get some interesting insights on race dynamics. Just remember to bring some water for yourself. It gets warm.
I am finally getting my head un-twisted from a lot of pressures going on in my life right now. I managed the first decent set of intervals that I've had in about a month, other than a microburst workout (which is the ultimate workout for people with ADD, by the way). It felt really good to be back on track. I still won't be race fit for 6 weeks or so but that's fine. Whatever. I ain't in it to win it right now, I'm in it just to be in it. Other parts of my life, I have to be damn competitive and winning. Cycling - I only have to show up. Yeah, I ride hard but the results don't matter in the long run, so I do the best I can. Sometimes, that' plenty when your full time job is real life.
I got to ride in the wheel van at the Giro di Coppi in the 1-2-3 race. Local monsters Battley Harley showed up and started laying it down in the middle of lap (about 15 miles in to a 75 mile race). Ken Johnson made a little break with a guy in a U of Maryland-looking jersey, and Sean Barrie, another Harley rider. After the gap went up to close to a minute, we zipped around the pack and bridged up, where we sat riding support for the next 55 miles or so. The Harley boys kept the other guy in it for most of the race but on the last lap, attacked a little bit and dropped him. Harley appeared to do a really smart team tactic to break up the chasing pack, which contained some major league legs like Ramon Benitez and Michael Githens of Artemis, and young (and strong) Kevin Gottlieb of the Squadra. Starting on the fourth lap, when the pack seemed to be getting frisky and serious about closing down the 1:50 gap to the break, the Harley boys ratcheted up the pace to painful levels, splitting the pack into a couple chase groups. In the support wagon we relayed the info to the moto ref, who passed it on to the break. As the 'pack' attacked, led by Harley, the Harley guys in the break gassed it. A couple times, the gap got down to 35 or 40 seconds, but darnit, it never got closer. Y'know why that is?
Because the Harley guys in the pack were using accellerations to shatter the pack to discourage it from organizing and bridging. 8 or 10 guys working together, accellerating smoothly and just gradually upping the pace could have closed the gap. But a series of rapid accellerations, little splits, desparate little bridging maneuvers and every-man-for-himself efforts probably made organizing a steady chase impossible.
This paid off for Harley not just in Ken Johnson's win (Congrats, Ken!) but also in Harley taking every position from first through sixth. Special honors go to former Coppi and current Battley Harley rider Brian Butts. Way to work Brian!
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I got to meet a few regular readers on Saturday, including John K who is both a sweaty, Independent Fabrications-destroying rider and a motor ref. He's about to get a new Crown Jewel, he tells me, as he's getting ready to hop onto his Ferrari-red Ducati ST-4 and tool around watching a bike race. I didn't ask what he was up to later because I bet it involved knocking down some Woodford Reserve with a Chimay chaser, or something equally lascivious and fun. Damn, but the boy's got good taste.
It would be easy to be jealous but the way he talks about his hill climbing, I can't afford to be; if we ever get a chance to ride I'll need the company back there on them hills.
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I hit up the AABC 'cross practice on Sunday AM. It was about 85 out, and maybe 75% humidity. We were dripping wet.
Ohhhh boy, was it hard. I am so not in racing shape right now. Things were coming together pretty well but some changes in the job situation laid some stress on me, my training has kinda sucked, and I've held steady or slipped backwards in the last month.
I seem to be getting back on track, and those efforts - I did 4 efforts of about 7 minutes duration - were enough to remind me that I need to buckle down and to cover that long distance that I have to go.
The downside of this is the first month of my season is going to be hell. The upside is late October through December should be better than it usually is, with me coming on form as many people are fading. So I'll still suck and finish way back, but not as way back as I might.
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I'm still grappling with this insane current political season. The bottom line is I'm tired of hearing all the bullshit about how awful the presidential candidates are. They aren't. They're decent enough people who have to grovel for votes from people who either don't care, or who care way, way, way, way, way too much. They have legitimate differences in opinion, and different ways of operating. No matter which pair gets elected, the republic will survive. Politics is venal enough without 30% of the people I know turning into whining little children over the deal. If you place your hope and faith in politicians, you need your head checked; the Fed Gov simply isn't good enough to do everything that everybody asks it to do and in most instances can serve the public best by staying out of the way. A good study discussing these differences in outlook in a non-insane manner is here. I have some quibbles with it, but on the whole think the scholar - a very liberal scholar FWIW - has it about right. Enjoy the article and then when you get done reading it, come back and tell me whether you feel like heaping the same vitriol on the heads of people you disagree with. I sure don't. People disagree about shit. A lot of folks need to emotionally get over that fact.
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I need to give a huge hunka hunka burnin' love to Chainlove.com. That's a site that sells one item at a time, at a deep discount, until it's gone. The other week, I got an email saying that they had my favorite shorts, Castelli Ergo Due on sale for $32. So I ordered a couple. The good folks at Chainlove threw in a third pair, absolutely free of charge. Granted, it's not in perfect black lycra - it appears to maybe be a factory second, with some gray-ish lycra in lieu of black. It's still a lovely, amazing pair of shorts, and even in the dark gray very attractive and perfect for training in. Total cost to me? $71, shipped. What's the normal retail? About $80/pair. The Ergo Due is last year's model. The nearly identical Wicked Short retails for $119. You do the math about what kind of a bargain I just got. Granted, you can't get what you need right away at Chainlove, you only get what they happen to be selling right now. But if you keep your eyes open you can save a couple bucks - and their throwing in an extra set of bibs was just gratuitous love that I very much appreciate.
Many thanks to everybody who made the Giro di Coppi what it was yesterday - a great race worthy of being the MABRA Championship. Thanks to the officials who did an outstanding job keeping us in line, to the volunteers who prepped the course, ran registration, kept the riders organized and staffed the many pace & support vehicles, and thanks to the riders who came out and made it the race it was. You guys support Coppis' racing for the rest of the year, we love hosting you and paying you back. I hope you enjoyed the sweet, sweet misery that we doled out in extra large bowls, with a side of suffering.
I spent the morning sweeping off the course for the club's big roadrace. Most times I've done this, it's entailed getting about halfway around the course, then having to jet into the woods to drop a major bomb. It's tradition - ride the Muffin Ride, drink about 6 shots of espresso, then let nature take its predictable, distressing course. I even packed a bunch of napkins stolen from local fast food restaurants to deal with just such an eventuality.
This year, because the original race date was canceled, we're running the race about two months late. Due to increased rain and whatnot, the sweeping seemed a lot easier, like there was less gravel on the road. (Because in reality, there was less gravel.) So we got halfway around and met the other sweeping team in just 90 minutes or so. Thus I failed to keep up the tradition of a mid-sweep potty break, we were just moving too fast, and we had no reason to stop at The Traditional Location. Which is sad because I was looking forward to seeing if my efforts to fertilize the neighborhood had resulted in great fields of lillies blooming just up over the rise.
After dropping the guys off at the Middle School, I parted ways, explaining I was about to drop one myself if I couldn't find some facilities, stat. So I hauled ass, as it were, up to the nearest convenience store about ten miles away. There's no telling what would have happened if I'd been stopped by the cops - I was doing about twice the legal speed limit, had a bag full of empty beer cans we'd swept off the road, and had opened my top button and undid my belt in the hopes of relieving some pressure and making it to the store without a major disaster. It wouldn't have looked good and would have been hard to explain. I would have to start with the California Burrito I ate for lunch yesterday. Black beans, chicken, jerk spices, and then slathered in a hot sauce rated "9," which left my mouth, nose, throat and stomach burning for several hours. (Whoops, overdid it big time with the hot sauce, but I was too proud to admit my mistake to my wife, and I ate the whole damn thing. Had a bad stomach since the precise moment that I finished the damn thing...)
So after a mercifully traffic-free run, I got to the convenience store and parked in the fire lane. I'd say that I ran in, but nobody can run in that condition. I hobbled in feeling doubled over in pain, though I was probably merely bent about 20 degrees from vertical on the upper body, doing up my belt as I staggered into the store, as if I was doing some goofball pilates exercise. Yeah, this was a good exhibit by Joe Upright Citizen. Criminy.
I waddled into the bathroom, locked the door, then double checked the lock because the last thing I needed was somebody walking in on me, mid-Dresden firebombing. A quick courtesy flush to eliminate the remnants of the last customer - not exactly remnants, more like main inventory - and a quick wipe to get all the last guy's pee off the seat. Apparently the seat must have been on fire because it appeared to have been hit with a fire hose. Gosh - did he pee while standing in the Candy aisle? Pretty soon, I was ready to go.
And I let her rip. It was glorious relief though lord knows, the full sensory assault would have supported a no-knock probable cause warrant. Cops can get those when it's clear the occupants of an area, even though they may have a substantial expectation of privacy, are up to some extremely unwholesome activity.
After probably setting several world records, both in the main event and other related minor activities, I buckled back up and did a world class hand washing. I didn't want to take any chances, y'know? I staggered out of there bringing a hazy cloud with me, only to nearly trample one of the local residents of that town, which shall remain nameless. The resident was accompanied by a little girl, her daughter I guess, who said, "Mommy! I need to pee right now!" She ran into the unisex bathroom of the little convenience store before the door could shut.
The mommy shot me a nasty look, a look so sour it probably curdled every product in the dairy case, and then stumbled mutely into the bathroom like a shell-shocked and mustard-gassed WWI soldier, and gave me one last nasty glance - "screw you, Kitchener!" before the door shut behind her.
Knowing that I would be getting more scathing looks and maybe even some nasty commentary if she and the girl made it out alive, I knew I needed to get the hell out of there fast. I needed a drink though. I snagged a small bottle of skim milk, a great snack, and beat feet to the register.
The proprieter, a middle aged gent of Asian extraction, ambled up to the register. As he did so, I grabbed a little bottle of 5 Hour Energy, a 2 ounce vial of liquorice-tasting energy drink comprised primarily of vitamins, caffeine, and faintly disturbing-sounding ingredients that will probably ultimately cause me to fail a drug test at work, like Guarana which sounds like something bats leave in a cave.
At this point, the proprietor asks me if I've ever tried it before. I said yeah, sometimes when I'm a little down. He then winks at me two or three times. I said, "I can only drink so much coffee." He then winks at me again. At this point I realize I'm probably stuck in a Monty Python sketch and it's only going downhill from here.
"What do you mean?" I asked. "I have girls stopping by here all the time," he said, "for their boyfriends. It makes them... you know..."
Then he held his right arm adjacent to his body, made a fist, bent the arm at the elbow and extended it out to 90 degrees, and slapped his forearm with his left hand.
"Um, I'll have to try that some time. How much?"
I heard the bathroom door unlocking and realized it could get real ugly, real uglier, real fast. This was getting very uncomfortable.
The store owner said it would be 6-something. So I threw seven bucks on the counter, turned and hoofed it out of there.
"But your change, sir!" he said.
"Keep the tip!"
I got to the truck as fast as I could, peeled out of the parking lot and got back on the road to D.C. Around the time I got on 270, I started laughing uncontrollably, and could not stop laughing for several minutes. Definitely the weirdest set of convenience store interactions I've ever had during daylight hours.
Next year, if nature calls again mid-sweep, I'm going to ditch the chain gang and run into the woods to do my business. I've learned my lesson here: when nature calls, listen. She knows what she's doing.
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Here, have a little Richard Cheese for this week's musical interlude. See you at the races.
People always wonder how I get bikes to survive the beating I dish out. I'm a big dude, and I ride pretty hard, and occasionally pretty fast, providing I can find a steep enough downhill to cartwheel down with the mountain bike, or a long enough flat to let me get up to takeoff speed. They wonder also how to take care of their 'cross bikes.
I'll let you in on a secret.
Bikes can talk!
Yeah, it's true. Weird, but totally true.
You just have to understand what they are saying, to commune with the bike, in order to get the best performance out of them.
No, you don't have to talk to the bike, most of the time. People will only think you're nuts, and bikes don't want to hear your stupid shit anyhow. But you do have to listen closely.
In the case of my 'cross bike, what the bike says is really, really clear. It tells me exactly what it's thinking, and what I need to do to get it in shape to ride. Then it lets me know when it's ready to go. I'll show you what it says. Check out what my bike had to say tonight, as it sat there all encrusted with cross practice mud, grass, spit and blood:
Clearly, this bike was in need of a wash, a dry, and a little bit of a lube job. So I set to work with the hose, a soft cloth, and a little bit of TriFlow. An hour later? Totally different tune.
See? All you have to do is listen to what the bike says. It will practically tell you what you need to do to get it squared away.
Had a nice email exchange with FatMarc today that picked me up, and I hope it picked him up. He's blogging up a storm lately, and y'all should check him out if you haven't recently. By way of thanks, here's some hippies wailing in particularly foolish fashion, Marc. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. I am pretty sure you will.
Ps. Thanks also Chris. I feel better now. Hic quoque transiet. Nope, doesn't refer to the (R) Veep pick's husband's choice of race vehicle, though that would be a good guess. Look it up.
I'm dealing with a few situations lately, and it's got me to thinking.
If a man has lived a bit, he gets to a certain point in his life and he's seen just about everything significant there is to see - maybe not Mount Everest or the bottom of the ocean, but pretty much all there is in workaday life. Like Ted Williams, who could see not only a pitch's trajectory but the location of the seams on the ball and where his bat made contact, you can call life's pitches ahead of time. In fact, after a while, you are so deep inside a lot of other people's OODA Loop, that you know what pitch is going to be thrown next, and maybe the next couple pitches after that. This is not happy knowledge to have.
I'm starting to understand why my dad became taciturn around my age. He knew when the next bullshit story, knife in the back, or outright failure was coming, and just didn't want to hear it any more. He'd sit there and watch somebody roll out a pack of lies, silent, with his head tilted a little and this quizzical look on his face. I think that look may have been spite, the feeling a great sprinter gets when he turns around at the end of a 100 and nobody is within 4 strides. There is no way to make the other runners faster, and there wasn't a lot my dad could have done with a few dishonest clients, some slippery colleagues, foolish kids about to do something dangerously stupid, or a wife with a temporarily blown gasket. Nothing to do other than just sit there and look at them. He couldn't be bothered to try to stop them by throwing his own bad self under their Stupid Bus because, knowing the immediate future, he realized a man cannot stop a rolling bus by climbing under it. (The Stupid Bus is like the Who's Magic Bus, but stupider). Nor can you dodge stupidity - when life's Stupid Shotgun is aimed at you, you are going to get sprayed with a load of #6 shot, and there isn't much you can do about it, except run before the bastard reloads.
I've become aware, as my father obviously was, that there is no way to stop major stupidity or minor malice until the act has been consummated, and at that point, why bother? Might as well let it play out. The sole consolation is that people riding the Arc of Stupidity generally cause their own spectacular crash eventually. It may take some time and they may inflict a lot of damage on others, but eventually they wind up unintentionally enforcing Nature's Laws against themselves; the inadvertence of their Epic Fail does not make it any less piquant.
I bring this up to vent and because maybe some of you have insights that might raise my morale a bit, or tips on dealing with the malevolently stupid. Maybe I'll toss you more interesting details later once the situations are resolved in the next few months - they are not bike- or blog-related. Just needed to get that off my chest and rationalize to myself why I am more frequently sitting there silent, head tipped, glaring at some moron.
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Speaking of stupid - I see this guy on the Cap Crescent occasionally, rides decently enough, commutes at pretty high speed (your basic 20 MPH commuter, who can go no faster or slower than 20) but he never wears a helmet. Occasional helmet-skipping is one thing, but if you can't be bothered to get a helmet, you sort of give away the fact that the only purpose for your brain is as a life support system for your legs and your schwanze. Your brain is only worth what you put into your helmet. If your 'helmet' is "hey, cool Cinzano cycling cap" then your brain is only worth what the cap cost you. If it's "nice bargain-bin-Bell," then I bet your Walmart special, which regularly overheats and makes your hair smolder, is all your stir-fried, half-cooked brain is worth. If you have a decent helmet, well, then that's what you must think your brain is worth - a decent investment to protect it.
No helmet, of course, means you just don't give a crap. Which is cool, but but it's dumb, especially if you ride frequently, hard and in traffic. Like commuter guy.
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Apropo of nothing, Volvos are still by far the most dangerous vehicles on the road. The only people who buy cars known primarily for crash-worthiness are those who intend or expect to crash them. Stay away from them, especially if they are parking and the driver is also talking on the cell phone. You've been warned.
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Nearly got run over by a nice lady today who looked at me then pulled over into the lane where I was standing, waiting for the light to change. I had to hop left quickly to avoid becoming Road Pate. My "you can't drive for shit, lady" didn't get much of a reaction from her. She wasn't the only bad driver this afternoon either. Seemed to be an epidemic of that going around.
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What with the additional stress I've been under lately my training has sucked. Those studies about how all stress and training is a central nervous system load, are definitely true. I'm not riding hard enough to really blow out my legs; the bad legs have to be stress-related.
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That's all. Isn't that downer enough for one sitting?
Oh, you want some happy stuff? Okay. How 'bout this. Lance Armstrong is going to race again, it appears. In honor of that...
Don't call it a comeback...
One of my favorite old school hip hop songs, and if you listen to the lyrics, there's a lot in it will remind you of Lance. "Don't you never, ever pull my lever, cuz I explode... and my 9 is easy to load..." Ask Ulrich about that. I don't think Lance will be the same, may not even come out on top, but he's capable of making things interesting. Whether he rides clean or not, I can't say. What I can say, is you don't want to find yourself in his gunsights. Welcome back, Lance.
