So Nice, I Got One Twice!

The new ride. I picked it up yesterday. The guys at Yeti were super friendly as usual. It's pretty much the same as the old one. New paint job and ti bolt kit. Thanks BikeSource and Yeti!

Yes, this is the bottom of the downtube. You can take pictures when I huck it over your head. Yeah right. Pretty sweet.
The head tube badge. Nice!
The badge on the back of the seat tube.
New Light weight race wheels. Hope thes puppies work out ok. I'm a little apprehensive. YES! The rotor is made of gold. It's the latest hot cycling material.
A little off topic here, but this is me after getting caught out in a quick snow storm while on a ride. This is after a little thawing out. Gotta love March in Colorado. Explanation for the eyes. A car pulled out in front of me, scared me, and my eyes froze open like that. I'm not sure about the tongue.
The iced up drivetrain and spokes. I'm not sure why I took pictures of this. I've had a much more fozen bike many times before. This was one of those sloppy wet snows.

I need to get my ass to cleaning my bike (yes, it's still dirty from that ride two weeks ago. Poor thing) so I can actually ride today.

Stupid Blogger

This thing can be kind of annoying when you are trying to create a post with pictures. I spent 30 minutes on a post and it ended up all fucked up. I'll try it again later.

Bitchin

No no no. Not the good kind like "that's bitchin dude." Complaints here. That's all.

Bitch #1) How many more times do I have to hear, "Wichita State Shocks Tennessee." I don't even like The Univ. of Tenn., but shit I heard that phrase 100 times this past weekend. Every time someone said this the person thought he was brilliant of thinking of it. Get it? Wichita State's "mascot" is a Shocker. To all you media people, stating the obvious headline is not creativity. What the hell is a Shocker anyway? Hellfire I done stuck my finger in that there light socket and got a shocker. Or did every student upon admission to the school receive some bit of surprising news? A prerequisite maybe?

Bitch #2) There isn't 12 inches of snow on the ground. All freaking day yesterday every forecaster in the Denver area was saying we were going to get a foot of snow or more. They never relented. It was supposed to start at 3 PM and keep going through today. Well, it didn't start at three. In fact, it didn't start snowing until around 9:30 and was barely sticking. Still the meteorologists persisted with their 12 inch forecast. Seeing as I literally had no food in my place, I headed to the store to get some just in case work was called off. I even got inspired and picked up stuff for breakfast in the morning. Buckwheat pancakes, bacon (I don't even remember the last time I bought bacon. Has to have been at least a year or more.), and some tasty grits.

Well, I woke up this morning and opened the door. Much to my dismay there was barely a couple of inches on the ground. No unhealthy, fattening breakfast on this morning. Bastard meteorologist.

Loser

I often bitch about how certain friends don't keep in touch and how I'm always the one that has to make contact. Well, tonight I was invited to a party, and I can't peel my lazy ass off the couch. Between the training and being busy as hell at work (take note because this is about the only time I'll use that four letter word here), I don't have much energy to do anything else. I wouldn't have been much fun to be around tonight anyway.

I dropped my laptop today. Needless to say, it's acting a little funky now. Fonts changed. Firefox freezes up all the time. Damn, I've got a lot of broke down shit right now. I don't even know where to start with it all, so I ain't going to start.

Mennonite Power!

Way to go Floyd! 2 races. 2 wins. I hope he isn't peaking early. Could this be his year for Le Tour? I was on the Basso vs. Ullrich wagon (leaning toward Ullrich), but my boy has some form.

And The Season Begins

Mountain bike racing is a long way off, but the local road races officially began today. There are a series of crits the next few weekends, and today was the first.

I had only done about 3 crits prior to today. There is a certain art to being successful to these things. You have to be more than just fit. You have to be tactical. Today was my best result in a crit, but I still have a lot to learn.

Crit is short for criterium, but if you look up the definition of criterium, it doesn't quite fit the North American version. On this side of the pond, the courses are usually about 1 to 2 miles long with several turns. They last anywhere from 45 minutes to a little over an hour, so they are really fast. High speeds and tight turns make for a lot of action.

I ended up racing Category 4 today. I made a feeble attempt at racing the 3s, but the promoter put the kibosh on that. That's another story, and I understand and respect the promoter's position.

A group of about 70 guys started doing our circles at around 11:15. There was one pretty sustained and fairly steep climb in the race. Sustained and steep for a crit I should say. They are usually fairly flat. It was definitely a big ring climb and only lasted about 30 seconds of each lap.

About 15 minutes in, I decided to test the ol' legs a bit. I opened it up a bit about 20 meters from the top of the hill, and powered over the tap. I got a solid gap on the main field, which, is a first for me in a crit. I hammered it a bit, and managed to get some more time on them. As I looked over my shoulder, and/or under my arm, I saw another guy bridging the gap to me. I'm thinking, "sweet, someone to work with and see if we can make this thing stick." Well, apparently he didn't have the same idea. He comes flying by me without even a consideration of doing any work together. I was kind of baffled by it. Especially in a crit where big breaks aren't usually too successful. I wasn't even remotely ready to try to get on his wheel. He was gone, so I decided to drop back to the pack and see if I could organize a chase. Better to do it with someone and not alone. Nobody else seemed to like that idea though. I would pull hard and peel off for someone else to pull through. Never really happened. Some guys would take the lead, but there was never a real solid, consistent push to catch the guy off the front.

After a while, I gave up on catching the guy. I decided to sit in the pack for a while, but some riders were getting a little crazy on their bikes and there were constant decelerations. I went back to the front and tried to push the pace again.

I'll take you to the last lap. The finish was stationed at the top of the hill I mentioned before. The group started picking up the pace down the hill for the last lap, but as we hit the flat straight section at the bottom, everyone slowed up again. By this time I was frustrated with that crap. I decided to power to the front. I knew it was kind of early, but I thought, "hey, maybe it will stick or I'll at least wear those guys out before the sprint." Well, it worked for the most part, but a few guys got around me in the middle of the hill. I ended up holding on for 6th.

Not such a bad result for a tough training week and a four hour ride the day before. I need to get over the mental hump of, "I'm going to hard right now. I'll never get away with it." I need to try to make a break stick or when I decided to hammer a bit, just be smart about it and keep a solid effort. I guess that is part of leaning the whole crit thing. Hope none of those other guys are reading this. Ha.

That's it for today. I've some music that I want to write about, but that will have to wait. Here are some Google Earth Images of the race course.The course went clockwise on these roads.
This gives you some idea of the hill.