Preparing for S2S

That's right! This year I finally caved and am doing Ski to Sea. For those of you outside the know, S2S is the Olympics. Of Bellingham. Since I finally decided to become a patriot, I also finally decided to do S2S.

Ski to Sea is a adventurous relay race that has two different types of skiing, a run, a road bike, a canoe, a mountain bike, and a sea kayak. It starts somewhere in the snow on Mt Baker and finishes in Fairhaven. Then Bellingham goes crazy into a city-wide party celebrating our abilities to travel 100 miles by something other than cars. Speaking of which, there are teams that are doing S2S weekend entirely car-free. Props to those teams, but y'all are crazy. This includes coming up from Everett via bike, towing canoes and stuff like that. Yeah, I'm going to get a ride to my start.

Since you all are curious, I'm doing the running leg. I really like to run in my spare time. My favorite part about running is how you don't go very fast and your legs and feet and ankles and back and arms and nose and personality and spirit hurt after running for just one minute. Which is why I just quit running and am going to do the road bike leg. To each his/her own.

Now here is the unique part. The road bike leg is basically how you get from the snow to the lowlands for the canoers to do their thing. I've said it many times before, I'm no meteorologist or geologist, but my basic knowledge of weather patterns is that the higher elevations have more chance of snow. That means to escape this, I must go downhill.

It is a 40 something mile (I should really figure this out) TT with a large portion of it being slightly downhill. The profile looks something like:
                                                                     \
                                                                       \
                                                                         \
                                                                           \
                                                                             \
                                                                                \
                                                                                     `
                                                                                         `  ` ` - - - - - - ^ `
                                                                                                                     \
                                                                                                                        \ ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `  ` ` `

That is my best analysis of the course. You can use TT bikes, drafting is legal, aero wheels are necessary, my bottle will be filled with Hammer Monster energy drink, and I will NOT touch my brakes on the 2% downhill sections. Here is where things get very interesting. The only rules are that you can't use headphones and your bike can't be motorized. INSERT TACTICS HERE!

• 14 bottles filled with coins. Since that would be more money than I have, I'll be filling bottles up with sand or dirt.

• I have been working for like, 2.5 years to build a Red Bull build-your-own-flying-machine type fairing for my TT bike. I figured that if I attached some wings to the top tube, the likelihood that I will legitimately take off the ground and fly is quite good. 

• I'm going to wear tall socks. TAKE THAT UCI!

• Using only plastic wrap soaked in Lemon Pledge (light/wind slippery) (and packing tape), I've created a way for me to be one with my bike. That's right. No longer am I a separate entity to my bike. I will be wrapped up in the plastic to my bike in the most aerodynamically efficient way possible. Someone please wait for me at the finish with a knife so you can cut me out of the wrap. Thanks. (This is similar to the following picture- except cooler (style wise, I'll be EXTREMELY warm wrapped in a saran wrap body suit. Getting skinny!), cheaper, and faster) And yes, I did just use a parentheses inside of a parentheses. Grammar-ception.        

 If you like running, sorry.  I'm too soft for that. Speaking of being soft, ever since breaking my chest my music tastes have changed 180º. I'm pretty sure that when the sternum broke inwards, it pushed my heart outwards, making me more sensitive and emotional. 

I'm not saying that listening to music like this makes someone soft, but I'm just saying compared to the last music video that I was in, this is quite different for me.

me rapping

Get Rich Schemes #9

First things first, I updated my cover photo. I figured it was time to use a different picture than one of me in a race that I ended up crashing in. It (Hammer) Fizz what it is. Thanks to http://www.Winger316studios/Wingfieldproductions.Gov for the photos and thanks to myself for putting it together all fancy huh. Let me know what you think.

Things are getting real. I mean this not in the sense that I've finally secured that initial investor for all of my get rich (sensationally amazing) ideas, but in the sense that I have another plan on how to get rich. Everyone who knows anything about me, or everyone who knows anything about bike racing, knows that I spend an un-quantifiable amount of time driving places. Like, 1000 hours a week or something like that. This is fine when you roll in style in Sprinter Vans, Jetta TDI's, and 1993 Toyota Camry's, but often I yearn for more. I don't mean that I would rather drive around in different cars, but I strive for accessories that make driving more efficient, safer, more pleasant and less time consuming.

My last couple of car-related Get Rich Schemes (here and here) have involved two different aspects of driving. One touched on the actual road that you drive on, and the other was a way to remove some potential road rage in a wondrous way. I'm now going to take us down a different path. Unlike the previous driving Get stanky Rich Schemes, this one is somewhat more productive. Instead of hinting at fear like idea one or passive aggressive LOL'ing like idea two, this idea aims at helping those poor souls confused with their lives. This idea is a genuine pat on the back for those drivers lost without direction, driving with no purpose. Hey you genuine road-hazards, this one's for you babe.

I introduce you to..........

LASER SPEED LIGHTS

That's right. A simple mechanism that is integrated into your car's speedometer, this device incorporates road data from speed signs and compares that to your current speed. It then projects a friendly message X amount of feet up the road. Confused, let me paint you a picture of examples.

You are driving your Red 1997 VW Beetle on I-5 heading Northbound. You are listening to Shakira blast out of your EXPENSIVE 6-cd disc changer (the other albums are the Beastie Boys License to Ill, Kanye West's College Registration, Arcade Fire's The Suburbs, Weird Al Yankovic's cd that made him money for some reason, and finally, You Raise Me Up by Josh Groban). You just had a wonderful weekend with your friends and are heading back home. You cross into the 70mph speed limit zone outside of Marysville and gradually increase your speed to 70.8 mph. Just driving, having a good time while your hips don't lie. Taking a sip of your latte, you come across a green Honda Civic going much too slow in ANY lane. For the purpose of this story, you are in the center lane, there is a hooligan party in the left lane, and the right lane is filled with truckers. Glancing down at your pearl white and shiny dashboard, you now see that you are going 64mph. This is dangerous, inconvenient, and annoying. But you are a people person. You believe in people and you believe that people are genuinely good. Unlike that book Lord of the Flies where ish gets cray and there is nothing that the fat kid named Piggy can do about it.

But what do you do? You aren't going to tailgate, screaming angrily and flashing your lights. You aren't going to abruptly change lanes, causing a chain reaction of braking in the fast lane. You were going 70.8 mph. You belong (with me, you belong with meeee) in the center lane.

Here is where Laser Speed Lights comes in. Since you love people, the only explanation is that this person DID NOT NOTICE the speed limit change! They are genuinely unaware that they are being a road hazard by driving much too slow in a fast speed limit. They are sitting in their car, thinking that they are speeding at 64 and that the rest of the drivers on the road are crazy speed maniacs. You must let them know somehow!

With Laser Speed Lights, you can politely inform that slow moving car in front of you that the speed limit has changed. Projecting a "Speed Limit: 70, your speed 64" sign in front of them in bright red lights will let them see that they missed something important! Then, any human being speeds up. It's like when people see the speed signs that tell you how fast you're going. You see that, and are either "wow, I'm a BAMF. 41 in a 35, take that society!", or you see that, SLAM ON YOUR BRAKES and go 35 for about 12 seconds until you are past the signed, then accelerate again to 41. Either way, there is some sort of reaction. The goal behind this product is to give people the opportunity to speed up before you unleash the sarcasm gun.

The real exciting part about this is how it works. You get a large lever installed on your dash, similar to an airplane. It is very difficult to push and gives off a satisfying noise when you push it up. Then, two LED projectors appear from your roof rack, projecting a 5ft by 5ft box with the necessary information in front of the car that needs to know their speed, and VOILLA.

Traffic solved again.

You're welcome.

Since people are so willing to pay a 520 toll to avoid traffic, why don't you invest in this instead? That way you don't have traffic anywhere instead of just that one bridge from Seattle to MI.

Only 6 bills.

($100 dollar bills).

(For all you concerned with abuse of power, it is smart and takes the data from the road signs so you can't tell someone that the speed limit is 120 mph. Unless it actually is. Also, the smiley faces show the person that you aren't being mean and are a nice, well dressed, Shakira listening, VW driving, sensitive superior-Samaritan).

Tour De Grove

Welcome to Nellyville, where all newborns get a half-a-mil, son gets a tan deville, soon as he can reach the wheel. And ALL get diamonds the size of their age. E-I

Turns out that this song is entirely true. St. Louis: Big fights, Fitz Rootbeer, people getting escorted out of restaurants by police officers, three bike races, real live dinosaurs, the SECOND best zoo in the states, the STD capital of the world (actually the 5th in the states), home of Nelly, and a host house with zero pets. These are all things that NEVER HAPPEN but actually in reality they happen at least once. More on this later.

Steve, David, Danny and myself journeyed to the Mid-West for some good ol' fashioned crit racing. What I mean by this is that we wore wool jerseys, cut-off jean shorts, hairnet helmets, and had Albert Pujols' baseball cards in our spokes. About mid-week leading into this Tour De Grove weekend, I decided to man-up about the... injuries... that I got at JMSR. With about 4 feet of Kinesio tape strategically wrapped around my upper body, the ribs and sternum were doing allright so I had a good couple days of training and went into this weekend feeling... rested.

I love adventure, and we were greeted by adventure. First part of this adventure? We were due to land in St. Louis around %:#) (that's code for 5:30) and we raced that evening at 9:15 ( (:!$ ). For non-mathletes that left us with less than four hours to get picked up at the airport, go to host housing, build bikes, ride to race, race, then not sleep for SEVERAL hours. This adventure involved transportation. However, score one for our hosts. They brought three cars to pick us up. Adventure OVER. With three cars, we were able to get four bike boxes into 2-door Accords and Mazda Miatas and roll.

Before I talk about bike racing, let us peruse through the rest of the trip for exciting details. I think I was karmically rewarded for missing "the best trip ever" last weekend (Dana Pt). I say this because overall, this was a pretty great trip: Cool hosts/host housing, entertaining flights, proper television viewing, fist fights, good races, TWO different Mexican food establishments, lots of down time, and again, NELLY.

 

That will be the last time I mention Nelly in this post. But if you want to go and take a ride with me, because it's getting hot in herrre, you'd know that I am number one, and that two= not a winner, and three nobody remembers. Because you know this, good gracious, that a$$ is bodacious AND I'm going down down baby yo street in a range rover. Nelly's highschool was in sight of our housing! Wow!

Some other highlights I'd like to share are as follows: Cool TV, The Office, Step Up 2, Fitz's, Dinosaurs, dangerous activities and mustaches.

Cool TV-
One of few TV channels at our housing. This is not a bad thing, because Cool TV has everything you'd need. It's like MTV used to be when I was 7, except with stranger music and Beyonce songs that no one has heard of.

The Office-
Over the course of the weekend we watched one complete season of The Office. This also marks the most Office that I've ever watched, and my theory that it's funnier while watching with other people stands true, because I did my fair share of giggling.

Step Up 2-
Infinitely better than Step Up 1. We finished crit racing Friday night and got back to host housing around 11. After eating, we were of course not even close to tired, so our hosts suggested/forced/made us watch Step Up 2. I'm glad we did because I learned many lessons from this movie. Lesson one, follow your dreams. Lesson two, take it to the streets. Lesson three, use your clothes as props while dancing. Lesson four, the soul of a person is not defined by their metaphorical relationships within the educational system, yet by the creation of dual-personas reinforced by anti-stereotypical messages within that of a greater common goal.

Fitz's-
WORLD FAMOUS ROOTBEER. That is all. Steve cornered extremely dangerously then sprinted his brains out for a prime on Friday that won him some gift certs to this Fitz's place. We went there on Monday, and Steve ruined the progress that he has made by only eating vegetables for the past month.

 

Dinosaurs-
We were just riding along and Danny was attacked. These were roaming around in a park so naturally we visited.

Dangerous activities-
There was a fight in the street outside of our host house! There was probably 6 guys circled around two guys fighting. Our host was about to run outside to try and break it up, which we didn't think was a good idea. So instead she called the police. Then we learned awhile later that she is a fourth degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. I think she probably would've handled herself just fine. That'd be like someone trying to rob Floyd Mayweather on the streets. Surprise!

Mustaches-
Well, this happened-

Meaning that Danny's LA Kings Playoff mustache continues to thicken.

Ok back to bike racing real quick-

We did that, three times.

Friday- Loop de Loop Gp

Advertised as 5 corners? But really only three, this was a dark, poorly lit, bumpy festivus. I felt terrible, Danny and David were involved in crashes, and Steve won that previously mentioned Fitz's prime. On the positive note, David got 20th, which was TEN DOLLARS of prize money!!!! On to the next one.

Saturday- Tour De Grove

The big money bike race of the weekend. We were all very active, I was in a move that I thought FOR SURE was the right one, but then we got caught much to soon for my liking. Then I was involved in a crash with 4 to go, got in the pit, got back in the race, had Danny tow me to the front with two to go, fought for position, and then was involved in a crash on the last lap! Steve and Danny were also slowed down by the crash.

Sunday- Dutchtown Classic

I really like this course, it's decently long and has a kicker climb of a finish straight that makes it pretty difficult. Danny spent the first twenty minutes doing things like winning primes and riding in breakaways and getting his name tweeted, so I thought I should do the same. I followed this up by spending the middle portion of the race riding in breakaways, getting SECOND on two primes (which by the way means nothing except for the fact that I'm the loser in this situation) and NOT getting my name tweeted. Then my break group was caught, and the move that countered ended up being the move that stayed away. Luckily, our teams smallest member pedaled his way into that move and ended up fifth on the day. Nice riding Steve! And continuing with my trend of late, I went down in a crash with two to go, ending any chances of sprinting. Luckily I landed directly on top of someone, so no damage for me!

Then, since it was HOT and we were extremely dehydrated (I drank two bottles during the crit while Danny had ONE SIP OF WATER) we stopped for slurpees on the way home. This was needed, since with riding to and from the race we were doing a 3.5 hour day.

So an alright weekend for us. I think we're really clicking on riding as a team and helping eachother out, and it's only a matter of time before we crack something good.

We'll try again at Tulsa Tough in a couple of weeks.

Thanks again to our hosts Carrie and Claire.

Making trades

When you're a kid, your baseball card collection says a lot about you. If everything is messily thrown into a shoebox, you don't have much respect for the cards. There is much to respect about baseball cards: Their glossy faces, sharp edges, and crisp colors ; their statistics and pictures ; and their symbolism. Baseball cards represent a passion for something. They represent a deeper connection with something as simple as a sport. They allow for kids to be part of the game. If your baseball card collection is organized into folders and sleeves, categorized by alphabet or team, player or position, you have respect for the game and for the cards. And if you didn't have baseball cards, that meant that you had friends. Kidding. What do your cards represent?

At JMSR I crashed. This is not new news, but a type of news that you already knew (I just wanted to say new knew news nooze). I was pretty messed up, but did the 115 mile race the next day (also crashed again). The following morning I tried to race the crit, but it was too much. I needed to breathe, and I could not.

I found out yesterday that I have two broken ribs, a bruised lung, and a bruised/maybe broken sternum. Until about one hour ago, I was planning on racing the Dana Point GP in California this Sunday. I went riding, did an interval, crushed the watts, raised the heart rate.... then promptly stopped doing intervals.

I'd like to think that I'm pretty tough. One time in P.E class in school I broke my toe in a violent soccer collision with the class nerd and CONTINUED PLAYING! Then I walked home, went to the hospital, followed by several weeks spent walking around in a boot. This might have been the day that I decided hospital visits are for sissies*. What I'm getting at with this story is that metaphorically, bike racing is nothing but P.E. soccer. Really though, bike racing is the greatest thing ever. It's just like when you go to school with the sole purpose of getting to play dodgeball in gym class. And to eat a spicy chicken burger in the school cafeteria. I figured that shit, if I can deal with the pain, I can do the bike racing thing.

*I don't condone this behavior

Four minutes into my first five minute interval of my ride today, I was riding where I should be power wise. I was stomping the pedals, but a strange sensation was creeping through my body. Starting in my lips, resting in my chest, crawling down my back and towards my toes, and circulating back to tighten slowly, strongly and sharply in my chestal region. I coughed and spewed this away, trying to overcome the inevitable. My legs felt strong, and I celebrated the snot running out of my nose, dripping down my face and over my shoulders like a bulldog drooling before a huge feast. I haven't been able to blow my nose in several days because of, the ya know, the ribs.  As my heart rate climbed (strangely enough the breathing pain increased with every increase of BPM , hmm) I prepared myself for the final 30 seconds of the interval- an all out sprint till failure. I tend to pull hard on my right hand first as I'm getting out of the saddle. This is similar to an archer pulling back the string on their bow. If you pull that string with the right hand, you will always pull with that right hand. I took 1.8 pedal strokes and sat down, calling the interval off.

I hate exaggeration. Which is why I'm not going to tell you about how I spent the next several minutes of my ride looking for bullet wounds in my body from what I'm sure was a drive-by shooting. Short story short, I could not do any sprinting, nor any accelerating. Long story short, 20 minutes after my ride I felt worse than I did before riding.

If you're wondering, my baseball cards were sleeved, foldered, and sorted by position. Within each position, I organized the cards by my favorite player in that sub-topic. Organization within organization. Snacks on snacks. Baseball cards and the sport of baseball were my life as a u-13 year old. Now, bike racing is my life. I didn't keep my cards in a shoebox, because I loved the sport. Now I don't have folders or sleeves, organization methods and favorite players, but I do have a similar respect.

Sure, I could go to Dana Point. I could deal with the pain, I could sit in and let the race happen around me (something I hate), and I could try and do some form of seated gimp sprint for 20th. I would be no help to my teammates, I would be no factor in the race, and I would not feel good about my performance. I love bike racing. I want next weekend, and the weekends following that to be bike races. Not fast bike rides with groups. It sucks to pull the plug on a race that I was looking forward too, but out of respect for the sport and for my body, I'm going to stay home. And sleep.

I don't actually know if baseball cards can in any way be related to bike racing. Sorry if you're confused, just try thinking about it as pokemon cards instead. That will help.

Missed opportunities part 2

Joe Martin stage three. This one we did laps with some hills and some downhills. I'll be really honest here for a second, I wasn't so sure that I'd be able to start the stage because of my crashing incident yesterday. Road-rash wise I'm good, but not so good in the entire upper body region of my body. Here is a funny story about that.

Kennett broke a wheel in the crash that I was in. He didn't fall- he did this by running through the chaos and using his girth to stay upright. Flash back to me- I'm most hurt from someone running into me VERY hard. Rewind back to Kennett- "I hit SOMEONE reallllly hard. I think it was a Competitive Cyclist guy. They had a white jersey". I'm not one to point fingers. BUT KENNETT RAN INTO ME! In order to keep the peace within the team, I'm just going to assume that by hitting me, Kennett actually pushed me out of the way of a much worse, more extreme, deeper into my soul pain. So let's just role play this really quickly- Me, on the ground, spinning/sliding uncontrollably on my back. Kennett sees that there is a dinosaur and an alligator waiting and drooling with mouth opened fury directly in my path of slide. He only has one option. Run into me to push me away from this impending doom. So Kennett, thank you. Thank you for two things: 1) Saving me from dino-death 2) Proving that my core muscles are strong enough to CRUSH WHEEL WITH BODY!

Ps- large props for not falling also.

OK, so on to stage three. Woke up in the morning unsure of my life. Rode to the other house, unsure of my life. Rode to the race, unsure. My plan was to try and survive, Bear Grylls style. The good news is that my legs felt fantastico. The contrasting bad news is that breathing, getting out of the saddle, twisting to get into my pockets, and my broken saddle were really troublesome. I discovered quite early in the race (about 2 minutes on the first climb) that my legs were great, it was just that... other stuff... So I knew that if I could just man up and deal with the upper body pain that I would be good to go in the leg department. Insert distraction strategies heeere-

1)  We rode through the town of Hogeye. I decided that a good way to distract myself from the stabbing pain in my chestal region was to decide on the reasoning behind that town's wonderful name. What occurred to give it that name? I was excited to spend long amounts of time having an inner monologue deciding, but one minute later I had decided that the first settler had a dear friend who was swine-ish. They were best of pals, did everything together. If hogs have manes (I'm not sure), this settler would braid the mane of his hog. Then one tragic day while fishing for bass and trout , the settler accidentally hooked the eye of his beloved while casting out his line and plop! Out goes the hog's eye. The settler cried for days, then buried the eye underneath the old oak tree in the soon to be town square. The end.

2)  In order to distract myself from the deep pain in my backish kidney region, I decided to memorize people's numbers. This took longer, because I had roughly 100 numbers to go through. #1 frank pipp #2 vennel #4 BJM #7 Eric Young #8 Paddy Bevin. Etc etc. #11 mancebo, #13 Olheiser #23 parrish #32 sweeting #47 Sam J #41 Morgan S . I could go ALLLL day. Heeley-91 DF-92 Gabe-93 This Guy- 94 Bro-cal- 95 Kennettron- 96 Steve- 97. This took quite some time, and I'm convinced was the reason I survived laps 2 and 3.

3)  Seeing just how hard I could clench my teeth together. In an unrelated side note, my jaw is really sore tonight. Turns out the harder you bite your mouth together, the less you think about your ever tightening right glute muscle.

4)  The last hour was mostly adrenaline. Race finishes are really fun, so if I survived the last hour then I had a chance to put together a sprint.

Needed a picture

There were more, but I've already forgotten them because all my energy is going into digesting my food. Also, it's 11:37 right now and I am WIDE awake. My race today finished at 7:15 pm, and it was a 115 mile road race. This means in roughly 2 hours I will start yawning. I decided to compose this blog tonight, instead of tomorrow, because I have done zero school work this trip. Every morning, I sit down to read PDF files of things I don't care about in order to write papers and end up writing blogs instead. So new theory- if I write the blog TONIGHT, maybe I can watch Modern Family tomorrow morning. I mean do homework. Sorry teachers.

Back to the bike race. I survived the four laps and instead of turning right to go up the hill that made me hurt we turned left to ride the ~20 k back into town. This was chaos, so I tried to be patient and coast a lot for the first 15 k of that. Fast forward a couple K and I'm on the tail end of the FAST moving Kenda train and we are moving up the side. We get to the front with very little left to race and then the front of the race made a crash. Here we go again. For the second time in two days, I am power sliding trying not to fall, and fail to avoid it, crashing AGAIN. I was totally fine this time around, because Kennett wasn't there to run into me. But actually, I was good because some poor gentleman landed on the ground before me and he was MUCH softer than the pavement.

So chance at making a sprint foiled again. Someday.

EDIT! I'M FAMOUS!!!

"One of the most under-rated stages in NRC stage racing did not disappoint again in the men’s race where unfortunately a crash took down a big number of riders at the front with less than two kilometers to go. Reported down were riders from Bissell, Kenda/5Hour Energy and Hagens Berman" - Podiuminsight

Let's lighten the mood up a little bit. There is an important GC battle going on. Not the actual one, but the GC battles for the people who say nay to size 52 bike frames, and instead go for 60's and up. The ones who laugh in the face of 1500 watts, and shiver at the thought of 30 minute climbs. The guys who are EXACTLY who you want to follow when it's windy and probably don't choose to share a bed with when you have to pick roommates for a hotel room that requires bed sharing. Here is the leader board going into the last day.

GET HIM DAVID! BRING HOME THE BIGC

Well that was fun. It's almost tomorrow, yet still today, and I'm still wideeee awake. The good thing is that it's a LAPTOP PARTY!!!!!

Catch all you friends of mine after I race a crit tomorrow.

Missed Opportunity: JMSR Stage 2

 Here's something new: I started a bike race from a Walmart (TM) parking lot yesterday.

Stage two of JMSR was a 110 mile loop that had a bit of everything: Wind, short power climbs, one long 10 mile climb, and heat. Wind was predicted for 20-30mph from the SSE. What this meant to me was about nothing, because I'm not a meteorologist. We started and instantly were faced with about an hour straight of extremely hectic, nervous head cross-wind riding.

Here are some of the positive pieces of information from Friday.

-Look! It's Danny and his friend! Danny was able to harness the power of the stash and dropped back for bottles probably 30 times.

-Gabe got bottles, covered moves, and made the final split, continuing to help Steve and I. Also related, he was the friendliest, kindest guy in the front group. Seriously.

-Jon and David towed me around all day. Actually. Every time I was farther back than 20th wheel one of those guys would be there to bring me back to the front. Then, rumor has it that as Jon and David's day was ending, Jon yelled "I'm crampin' bro!" towards the direction of Joe. Bike-swag.

- Kennett, being the days most muscular and intimidating member of the team, growled and grunted whenever anyone got close to us. He also made the front split and I think at one point I saw him look over and snort like a bull at a semi-truck that had been pulled over for the race to pass.

- Steve, this song goes out to you-

It's funny because he's gotten 22nd two days in a row!

- The first 4 hours were great!

Negatives:

- After cresting the decisive 10 mile climb with the leaders and hanging out for the next 10-15 miles conserving energy, I crashed with 10 k to go! Hooray! We were guttered in a cross wind and someone ~5 guys ahead of me pretty much rode off the road. Then crashed, then everyone near him crashed. Then I finished four minutes down!!!!!!!

So crashing sucks, but besides that the race went great. Our team rode really well together and the guys made Steve and my lives very easy. I had good legs and good sensations and was pretty excited to make a sprint against the remnants of the field.

Moving on!

The greatest thing I saw during the race was a dead snake. If I had to guess, I'd say it was probably an anaconda. The thing was at least 4 feet long and about the same circumference as my thigh muscle. David thought it was a car's muffler lying in the middle of the road. I passed it on the left as an Aussie passed it on the right and I'm pretty sure he stopped to get it to BBQ later.

Today is 4 laps of a 23 mile loop. I'm anticipating the pedaling will loosen me up and I will stop feeling like Quasimodo at roughly 2:45 today.

100! slash JMSR day 1

This is post number 100 here. In celebration, someday in the future I will change my heading/main photo. Celebrate! I think that this is some sort of milestone because most blog sites die out after two months and 7 posts, according to a survey I made up for this blog post. Actually though, as per scientific data, the average lifespan of a blog is equivalent to that of a fruit fly. Did you know that fruit flies can live for up to 30 days in optimal conditions!?!

We did a TT here and it went. Steve rode well for 22nd, which is as referenced on twitter by Professor McNett as "on the outskirts of ballerville". I personally did a ride I was happy with for 37th. Let's talk about things more interesting than Lil'Steve and I.

1. All throughout the day, I kept hearing things like "OMG times are sooo much slower than last year". This seemed to be true, since Mancebo won last year and this year, with his time from this year being 13 seconds slower than last years. However, one man says NO to these limitations, NO to these "times are slower" boundaries.

One of those is from last year, and one of those is from this year. Bravo!

     2.  After we did our race, Steve, David and I went riding for a bit of a cool down. A racer soon to
          be competing in the women's race asked us for the time. G-Shock time- 2:00. We informed  
          her that it was G-Shock time, and I think she misheard us. G-Shock Time. Because she got
          confused.

     3.  It is possible to lose about 20 seconds in an uphill timetrial. In a kilometer. Thanks to Strava
          and Sebastian Salas (2nd place on the day) for letting me know this fact.

     4.  Post TT we went to Chipotle (sorry Lang) with Wheeler and some other famous professional
          cyclists. Celebrities even. I ate dinner. 10 minutes later was hungry. Based on the future
          duration of the bicycle race the next day (which is now today) we knew we needed some
          snacks. We found a healthy co-op type place, and all spent more money there on snacks than
          we did on dinner. Oops

     5.  I had a dream last night that I had a terrible experience at a Starbucks. Let me tell you about
         it. First things first, I ordered a cappuccino with SIX shots. On a side note, did you know that
         there is actually a drink name for the QUAD SHOT with just A LITTTTTLE bit of water on
         top? Yes, it's called an Italiano. Ok, moving on. My cappuccino was $5, and I payed with a
         twenty dollar bill. That's probably the strangest part of this dream- that I had a twenty dollar
         bill. That's a lot of money, and it does indeed weigh less than the two rolls of quarters that I
         was carrying around as cash last week. Back to the dream. My change is returned to me and  
         what I am given is $1.73. Now I'm no mathematician or accountant, but I'm pretty sure my 
         change should have been 10 dollars. Or something like that. So I politely ask the barista for
         my change and he leaves. Peace out, bra. Then I sit down with a manager, an excel
         spreadsheet, and my cappuccino and discuss business. I'm not sure why this took an entire
         dream, but eventually a deal was struck. I would not get my change, because the barista is
         ALWAYS right. However, instead of that change, I would get 40% share of Starbucks. All of it.
         Ummm. I guess deal.

    6.   Apparently here in R-can-saw they fish for snapping turtles. So they turtle for snapping
          turtles. Which is potentially the most dangerous game to try and capture, because those
          things don't cut your limbs off gently like a tiger, lion, or piranha would. They pretty much have to crush the digit, then rip it out. I can only imagine that fishing for snapping turtles, and
getting your finger bitten, is like when you are way too excited to get to that Black Friday sale and you slam your door shut on your Escalade and in the process get your finger caught in the door. Then suddenly the Escalade dives under water, pulling you down with it to the muck and the mire of the lake floor. And then you name your Escalade "Snappy", train it to walk on a tight rope while smoking a cigarette,  and travel the country with your new best friend and your missing right pointer finger.

That's as far as I can count this morning. So now I'm going to go race with the power of Snapping turtles and my lucky dollar from Vegas. Catch you on the flip-flop, ya hooligans.