Wednesday is Dirt Day

Lots of good dirt stuff going on tomorrow. Think I'm going to blow off my friends' ride up at Patapsco in favor of Wednesday at Wakefield.

This week, I'm hoping to avoid running through the poison ivy that has made my legs itchier than a congressional committee chair with a stack of blank subpoenas on his desk.

Not a lot to report this week so far. Took Monday off after the HellRide on Sunday in Armageddon-ish heat. Found out I placed around 20th or 21st out of 45 or 50 riders at Wakefield... time to bust my ass on the start tomorrow. May be time for an all-out, cyclocross style sprint to the first turn, and let others eat dust and get stuck in lines at obstacles instead of me. Knock two minutes off my pace with a good start and avoid the three chain drops, and a top 10 should be within reach. FWIW my lap times would have put me at about 30th percentile in Sport. They put me at 60th percentile in Beginner. Gotta improve on that.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, Big Nick goes on the blogroll, along with my teamie, Jon Burns. Nick writes well and he faces some of the same struggles I do - he's a genuine clyde, and a damn good rider, but the odds are against him. Didn't keep him from winning Reston, which is a damned hard crit. I'm pulling for him, and he's fighting the good fight. Jon gets on there because Jon is a *damn* good writer and a solid rider who comes from a family of successful, track-bound clydesdales. He's making a decent go of it in his first year of serious roadracing, and again, we have some issues in common so I find his way of getting at his issues interesting.