FAIL

That about sums up the 'cross season. Nittany I rolled a tire while floundering in about 10th place. Whirlybird was a amateur hour. Crashed while in 3rd place half way through lap 1. Wouldn't matter anyway since I got side stitches for the next 45 mins. Crashed around corners, tied up in the tape, tripped over barriers. I rode better in my first Cat. C race.

Really need to get my fucking had in the game. Not sure how to get there though.

This pic sums it up... FAIL

Sok it to me

Me so horny for 29ers. After much deliberation I've decided to sell my Santa Cruz Blur. It was like a fwb. It was good while it lasted but it just wasn't meant to be. Mainly I was sick of clogging up the derailleur and cursing and screaming in the middle of the woods all winter. Seriously.... bullshit. It's off to a nice home in CA where the guy said he bought it to "ride around with his young kids." Ummm... ok. You bought a all XTR race sled for $1550 so you could ride with your kids in the driveway. Whatever dude. Good luck to you. Can't imagine what his kids are riding.

So I'm saying goodbye to derailleurs, goodbye to shifters, goodbye to rear suspension, and goodbye to 26" wheels. Hello to 29", single speed, hardtail, pure sexified mtb goodness. I'm going to ride the shit out of this thing ('09 SS Bianchi Sok).



Only problem is I'm getting this at the beginning of 'cross season. So I'm going t have to forget it's there for 3-4 months. Right... Totally going to screw up my head for 'crosss season. Focus! FOCUS!!!

Burnt out *EDITED*

I think I may be burning out. Not sure how as only ride 300 miles a week lately. I've scaled back over the last month to try and fend off this ugly burn out beast. One day my legs feel ok and the very next I can barely turn the pedals over. That and I've been training alone which sucks. Having ADD doesn't help the situation out on the road. It pretty much goes like this in my head:
"Ok sprint for the next 60 secs, GO!!"
"GO GO GO GO!!!"
"Ughh this sucks.."
"What it's only been 24 secs?!?! Fuck me.."
"Hey I've never seen that house before. Hmmf.."
"I wonder how much a house like that costs"
"I'll have to look it up when I get home"
"Yea, right I'll never remember"
"Fuck I stopped sprinting, damn it!"
"Ok rest fora min and try this again, idiot"

So that's why I can never get a good block of training in. And the guys I ride with are all either too slow or too fast that I don't want to burden them with having to pull me along for 80 miles so I don't even ask. Yea I know there are much bigger problems in the word but this is mine, ok. I need to find some fast local dudes who can put a hurt on me without dropping me.
Whatever it's 'cross preseason I need to change my training plan anyway.
Good thing there is Grass Track Monday's. Kelly Cline is m new hero. He put this simple impromptu race on and it's more fun then a 3-way. That and I also got the word from G that there is going to be cx practice on Tuesday coming up soon. It's all coming around. Now I just need to get the legs working again.
Maybe I should take a week off and get fat and drink beer?

**EDIT**
New Rule, don't blog after a bottle of wine and a pain killer. I'm a gigantic ass. First off the people I ride with are not slower then me at times they are much stronger then me. I just think I'm faster then everyone after downing a bottle of Cab. Secondly, I would never take a week off to get fat. While it is true I've been drinking alot more lately (mainly due t the fact that this is the few weeks of the year when I'm not racing or training) I'm not going to stop riding. Although it wouldn't hurt. I'll just ride like a normal person for a week to give the legs a break. I also noticed I swear a lot when I'm drunk. Ok a lot more.

True Love

I may have said this before but I love Cyclocross. No I mean it, I really really love it. And while I’ve only known about the sport for a few years now I’ve actually loved it since I was a little kid. We just didn’t call it ‘cross we called it riding our bmx bikes on the numerous homemade tracks that we had built in the woods (all of which have been bull dozed and paved over). We used to take our bikes back in the woods with wheelbarrows, shovels, picks, and saws. We’d spend all summer building up burms, obstacles, jumps over big pits. We even had steep kickers dug into the side of the hill. And if you didn’t get the right speed coming out of the corner it became a runup. We were constantly falling off our bikes and running with them to get back in the race. Sound familiar??
‘Cross adds in the sadomasochistic element. Even before I wrestle for good starting position, my stomach is churning and turning realizing the impending doom. I’m not sure if it’s cold sweats or the 40 degree air that has my skin crawling. “Why am I doing this” is usually a thought that goes through my head moments before the gun goes off. That’s when I remember as I unleash my best sprint. The whole time grinning from ear to ear. Or at least in my head I’m grinning like I just got away with something. The stomach settles and spend the next 45 mins trying to drop or chase somebody through the taped course.
Did I mention there is mud, blood, and beer all being mixed together? If you’re lucky it will start raining at a ‘cross race and the attitude usually turns from trying to kill the guy behind you to laughing at the racers sliding all over the course as the race magically turns into a muddy slip-n-slide. You suddenly turn back into that 12 year old kid in the woods laughing and playing with your friends in the mud with your bikes. Everything is right in the world just for a few minutes.

I love ‘cross.

Here it comes….

ToLC

Tour of Lancaster County(ToLC):Course: 55 miles with about 600ft climbing per 10 mile lap. Nice long flat section through a shaded valley alongside a creek followed by a steep but short climb. Then some nice rollers followed by 2 wicked descents hitting 49.8 mph (p.s. I saw a nice Garmin at the bottom of the one descent. Hope that dude recovered it). Some more rollers out in the 90 degree farm country of Lancaster which leads back into the shaded valley. Finish is a separate climb that starts at about 10%-12% and then levels off to about 4% for the finishing sprint (500meter short climb).
Did the 3/4 ToLC on Saturday. Started the day off badly by having a real bad bout of the runs. Spent most of my morning on the porcelain god praying for an end. Got to the race and spent my pre-race in the port o jon. Made it to the start line without soiling myself thank God.
So that should sum up how I felt physically. As the for the race itself it started off slow with a few guys going off the front. There were a few guys patrolling the front that weren't on a team and had us going ridiculously slow. So I went to the front to try and get some guys working to pick up the pace. I figured the breaks weren't going to last with 50 miles still to go and some short but steep hills in the way. Of course no one would pull through as I lifted the pace and so I just kept it at a fast tempo but nothing that would burn me out. We hit the first climb and my teammate went pedaling by me with another guy. So my team and I immediately went into blocking mode. We slowed the pace down for the next 2 laps to a laughable sped. Until finally the other teams decided enough was enough and swarmed us. By then the break had a few minutes and with good luck would last to the end. I spent lap 3 trying not to defecate myself and swallowing a small amount of puke. Yo-yoed off the back a few times. Considered quitting. But then I realized this is almost as painful as 'cross and I never quit that. So I went back to the front and whined to my team hoping to get sympathy. I got none.With 2 laps to go the Local Shirks team drove hard at the front but didn't really bring back the break that much. Although they did launch a guy off the front who ended up catching the break somehow. Kudos to him for an amazing ride. With one lap to go every guy was trying to break away and of course no one is letting them with the finish a few miles away. I sat in and waited for the final "climb"/sprint. Moved my way up to the front when we hit the base. I think 2 guys got ahead of us at some point as I saw some guys pedaling way ahead of us. Then with 200m to go no one had made a move so I figured that if I sprinted now and got last place then at least I tried. So I hit it as hard as I could. My teammate grabbed my wheel. Two other guys were able to come around me right away but I was able to hold off everyone else including my stomach.All in all a fun race. Bad day for me. But worth another shot at it next year.Gratuitous pic of me about to collapse as I cross the line (that guy on my right really was trying to pip me for some reason. I gave it one more hard crank to hold him off)

Part 2

So where did I leave off? Oh right, mile 5... So Jenny drives me to Martin's place with the replacement bike on the roof (did mention I married the greatest woman ever?). As I'm swapping out the pedals I remembered the C'dale only holds one water bottle. It's going up to near 100 degrees (mind you it's been 81 degrees for the past two weeks until this day) and I'm only going to have one bottle. So I stuff one in my jersey and pray or frequent water stops.
We get through PA and into DE and it doesn't get any flatter. At around 3,000 feet of climbing in just 60 miles I start worrying how I'm going to do 170 miles. Then comes Newark. I've been all over the world and I can say for certain Newark is one of the worst towns I've ever been to. This place should be napalmed on a daily basis until it's just a burnt spot on the map. Shithole would be a good way to describe it. It was like riding through a white trash version of east LA. Of all the things that went wrong this day Newark was the worst one.
After pedaling through said shithole we finally make it to the canal. The only way to get over the canal is to ride on 896, a local highway. That wasn't all that bad. It wouldn't have been bad if it was the only highway we had to ride on. But after all the DE bike route signs had been torn down we found ourselves riding down rt. 15 which Martin was sure would bring us out "somewhere around where we want to go". Great.... At one point rt. 15 was closed and we had to detour back out to a highway. This was starting to get annoying. We got back onto rt. 15 when that stooped being rt. 15. We ended up on random back roads wandering south. At one point I knew we were in trouble when Martin said not to worry "as long as we keep heading south" at which point I looked down at my computer and noticed we were heading West. Martin simply replied. "Oh... Well then we need to turn left." We were approaching 6 hours in the saddle and we had no clue where we were or how to get where we were going. A call to my sister, a google map search, and we started heading in the right direction. A few more calls, a flat tire, hearing Martin say we have 4 more hours to go and I threw in the towel. We weren't going anywhere fast, DE roads are ridiculously bad when it comes to being marked, and I couldn't bear the thought f arguing with my sister and mom about this trip. So I called Michelle (sister) and had her drive up and pick us up in some hick town. By the way, if you ever want to have a good time, get dressed up n spandex and hang out at the only gas station in a rural DE town. People gave us looks like we had two heads. To be fair there were some cool kids who gave us direction to Dover.
I can honestly say I will never ride a bike in DE again. F* that!

F Delaware Part 1

So Martin and I decided to ride down to Rehobeth despite the forecast. I should have turned around and cancelled it at mile 3 when my chain dropped.
And let me go into this chain thing. I took my bike to the Bike Barn (now Phoenix Cycles)when I first put this derailleur on because it wouldn't shift into my 12 ring for some reason. I had this happen on the bike when I first assembled it and Roy at the Bike Barn had fixed it in just a few seconds, no problemo. This time I took it in and the other guy "fixed" it. The entire time trashing me (although I didn't tell him it was me) for my adjustment of the derailleur. Saying who ever did it was an idiot and if I rode it like this (which I was) that it'd throw the derailleur into the wheel (which I obviously hadn't). Whatever dude, just fix it and shut up. So he "fixed" it and charged me a couple bucks and I was on my way. Soon after that I was riding and shifted into my small front ring and my chain dropped. WTF? Why did that happen if the guy was just "fixing" my derailleurs?? Whatever, maybe it was a fluke and I never need to use my small ring anyway. Well then Nebo came and I did need to use my small ring and guess what my chain dropped twice in that race and I had to bail on the 4th lap (albeit I was dropped on my own lack of fitness anyway and ready to quit).
So at mile 3 on my way to DE I drop my chain as I shift into the small ring. "Damn it!" Ok settle down it won't happen again if I shift delicately. Approach another hill at mile 5 and slowly down shift into the small ring and "BANG, KAPOW!!" my chain drops and also gets wrapped around the rear cog and rips my rear derailleur right into the rear wheel. Yea, way to go fuck face. You're a hell of a mechanic. Telling me I had it all wrong. Well mine may have been ass backwards but my chain never dropped and I didn't ruin a brand new Dura-Ace derailleur. Fuck you ass hat! I'll be paying you a visit soon to tell you what a great wrench you are.
Luckily I didn't break the frame on my Tarmac or I'd be in jail for Assault and Battery on a mechanic. So I called Jenny and had her bring out my spare bike (yes I have spares, thank God). Well Jenny never loaded a bike onto the bike rack and I tried to calmly in my non-calm state explain to her how to put it on the car. She seemed to understand how it worked (best wife ever by the way) after me yelling at her for a few mins. Then I receive a call a min later from her frantically telling me the bike had fallen off of the rack and onto the car. AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! What else could go wrong??