Thursday, June 25, 2009

Happy Birthday, Blog

 

Finally had a few minutes to sit down and update the good old blog, and realized it's birthday had come and gone.  As a present, I'll make sure to actually update a few times this month rather than once. :)

Where to start, well... my wife got a gorgeous new Track Bike that the weather gods have not allowed her to race on Friday yet.  Hopefully tomorrow will fix that.

PIR on Monday nights in the 1/2/3's have turned into a total clusterfuck of late and I have better things to do than be taken out by a sketchy-ass rider who isn't paying attention.  Yes, I'm talking to the guy who put my teammate into the fucking concrete wall on the last lap of the 6/22 race.  Thanks for not bothering to see if we were okay after!  Ass.   I DNF'd my last two races (one mechanical, the other the crash) so I figure its time to step back and relax and do something safer.  ShortTrack maybe? :p

Speaking of mechanicals, huge thank you goes out to Mark Duff from VeloForma who light a knight in tight spandex came to the rescue and assisted with the fix of my front derailleur hanger on the VeloVie.

We've been cleaning out our garage, and recently sold Traci's old road bike to a good friend of ours, its her first "big girl bike" (her words) and she's absolutely in love with it. 

We also recently parted ways with my 350z, which literally had been gathering dust over the past 2 years.  (1700miles put on the car since Oct 07.. 2400miles put on my new VeloVie since March 1st of this year.)  Ironically we owned the car for *exactly* 6 years, with the purchase and sale date being 6/20.  With the TT bike being demo'd by Burke (dude, you back from the islands yet?) The garage looks spacious even with the Mini in it.  Hmmmm we could possible fill it with...

A Tandem!  Well, at least a borrowed one.  Last Saturday Traci and I celebrated our 11th Wedding Anniversary.  I was on the tail end of a rest week and I wanted to ride with her, so I borrowed a tandem from our good friends Dean and Barb and we rode with the 21's on the Saturday ride.  I'm happy to report we are still married, and I have both my kidneys intact.

In non-biking related news, the 2009 edition of Bridgetown's "Stumptown Tart" will be released shortly.  Last year this beer (a Marionberry infused Belgian) was my favorite beer of the summer.  This year they went with a Yamhill sour cherry rather than Marionberries.   I look forward to seeing it in the market soon.  I'm also happy its just about the end of allergy season.  After previously posting this season wasn't to bad, Murphy drop-kicked my sinus multiple times over the past few weeks.

Stay tuned for some exciting news about the upcoming months!  I'll give you one hint.  Cross.

Monday, June 1, 2009

One and done...

 

For those in the cycling community, the TTT stands for "Team Time Trial", an event where a group of riders work as a team to through a set course as fast as possible.

For those in the cycling community who have actually done a TTT, I put forth that the definition should be known as "Team Torture Testing", where you push yourself as hard as you can without shelling your teammates, knowing that they will be doing the same to you in a matter of moments.

My team for this endeavor were Bigwood, King, and BRat.  Basically PV Fast Twitch.  Our goals were to finish together, ride smoothly as possible, and have the fastest final K of all teams (a joke).. and if possible have fun.

We had practiced a number of times as a group and got a good feel for each others riding style, and cornering abilities and are roughly the same strength so we felt we had a good chance of accomplishing what we set out for.

The day started at Longbottom's to load up the caravan, and relive stories of my attempt to kill the entire team on Saturday by spooking a cat that was sitting on the side of the road.  We hit the road with a single stop in Albany for traditional pre-race cheeseburgers from McDonalds (seriously, we got cheeseburgers.  It's sprinter food.)

We arrived at the Allergy Factory staging area got setup and started our warm ups a bit late.  Our start time was 1 minute behind the real PV TT team, so with 8 people watching the clock we managed to get to the start line in time.  My start was a humorous showing of "how not to clip into your pedal" which was unfortunately captured on film by Mary-Kay Babcock.

After we got settled in, we started our motoring.  I was slotted in behind BRat, which really started to hurt by Lap 3 when he was making monsterish pulls.  Bob trailed behind me.  I felt good on Lap 1.. 2 things started to hurt.  3 I questioned my sanity. Lap 4 we were all getting tired and our bike handling started to suffer.

I was probably the weakest rider of the group, but I can ride corners very well, so tried to time my pulls so I could pilot the team through one of the many corners that broke up the course then peel off.  By the 4th lap, patterns started emerging in our riding styles.  I found myself at the front in specific locations on almost every lap.  Unfortunately that meant I got dumped off in the head wind coming back all the time!

We came in as a group, just a bit spaced a part.  My hamstrings pretty much seized up about 200m after the finish line and I was barely able to get back to the finish line let alone ride a cool down with the team.  My skin suit was crusted with salt.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon laughing with the other PV folks who were down there and trying not to cramp up in the increasing heat.  The journey home had us swing through Carl Jr's, which Bob swears is the official sprinter recovery food, and was punctuated with sneezes, groans of soreness and lots of laughter.

It was a sadistic sort of fun, and a good way to finish my career in the world of Time Trialing. (Yes.. I'm done with TT's.  Anyone want a bike?)