Like a Boss

Boss Cross 1 & 2 were this past weekend. I was only able to race on Saturday but managed to pass by on Sunday to spectate for a little bit. Saturday's race was tough, lots and lots of running. I had a great start to the race, I think about 7th or 8th until we reached the first set of sand. Running is not my thing, it brings my heartrate way up especially when running thru deep, soft sand. I managed to hold about 11th or 12th place until there was 2 laps to go and I started to fade. The race was 40 minutes long versus the usual 30 minutes. I know I would have placed better by 2 or 3 places had it been 30 minutes. My friend and fellow teammate Levon was in the race with me and he was starting to gain ground on me on the last lap of the race. I really started to worry that he was going to pass me, the amount of  time he made up on that last lap made me feel like I didn't have a chance against him. It did force me to push myself even harder near the end and I did manage to hold my place. Levon and I have used each other to gauge how well we are doing in a race. Last year I was only able to beat him in one race. Ironically enough this coming weekend is that race. I hope he is there for a rematch.  My legs felt pretty good and I was able to run a higher gear and get up off my saddle from time to time. I do need to work on my heartrate, it really sucks. I get winded much quicker than my legs give out. 

 I think I am being converted, I have become a cross person. It is a lot more fun than road racing. I am going to have to figure out how I can get my hands on a carbon cross bike with carbon tubulars.

One last thing, my buddy/fellow teammate Jon Peck was good to me on Saturday and Allowed me to once again race with his bike. Carrying that thing thru sand was much easier than my steel bike. He also took an awesome photo so credit goes out to him on that too.

Manion's Cross

There is no better way to have fun on a bike than cyclocross. I heard somewhere that this sport was invented by pro roadies in Belgium a long time ago to help them stay in shape in the off season, but here in K.C. you will hear people say that they do road racing in the spring and summer to stay in shape for cross in fall and winter. This sport is huge here in Kansas City among many other places  in the U.S.. Lots of people say the colder and muddier the better. It also helps that there is usually free beer at most races. This will be my second full season of cross and although I am not all that charged about training I am excited about racing. There are races in this area pretty much every weekend until after the first of the year and the first ones were this past weekend. Manion's Cross is a race put on by my bicycle shop sponsor Volker bicycles of Kansas city. Two days of racing out on the hills of Manion's auction house. Cross is spectator friendly as the courses are usually between 1.5 miles and 2.5 miles long wrapping around the inside of a park, so if you sit in one spot of the course to watch you will have the racers pass by you multiple times in one race. So as you can imagine, it is more of a family atmosphere. This past weeked the wife and baby came out with me on Saturday and sat on a blanket to enjoy the fun and cheer dad on in his poor result do to my rear tire having a leak. I had to stop every lap in the wheel pit and pump up my tire. I knew I wasn't going to do well but I also didn't want to DNF(did not finish). Much to my surprise, I managed to finish 31st out of 34. I thought I was dead last. Sunday was a much better showing for me. I borrowed a teamates awesome "geared" bike with carbon tubulars. In my race I finished 17th out of  30. Middle of the pack is not bad at all for me considering it was a climbing mans course.   

Everybody Limbo

This weekend is Gateway Cup. 4 days of crit racing in St.Louis. I went to watch one race last year and loved the energy the town had for racing. Before this I didn't have a very positive opinion of St.Louis, but we had a great day off watching friends race and having lunch in the Italian district of town.  In the beginning of the season I had put Gateway Cup on my radar but to be honest I lost any interest in doing it weeks ago. It has been a long and hot summer and this past week I did something that I hadn't done in over a year. I took a week off of cycling. I have not been on a bike in 6 days. My right knee has been a little achey and I have not had much desire to ride either. This is the time of year where we are winding down road racing and starting to prepare for cyclo cross. Right now I am not excited about that either. I really don't like winter and I am not looking forward to the below 50 degree weather. Last winter seemed to last for ever. I did try to excite myself for winter by buying a compression long sleeve thermal base layer. I guess I will have to wait until the first cross race to really jump start my excitement. I am making plans to do the Tour de BBQ this year. This is the 3rd year of this ride and from what I hear it is only getting bigger and better. Last year they had Smash Mouth performing at the rap up party. I will be doing the 62 mile route and for those of you who don't know about the ride, the route is designed to go to all the BBQ joints that wished to participate. The first year had 7 stops with food being served at each and every location. All the big names are on the route like Gates, Arthur Bryants, Oklahoma Joe's, Jack Stacks............ this should be a lot of fun and well worth the trip if you are interested. Here is a link for more info. http://tourdebbq.com/

For A Good Cause

I have a friend and fellow teammate who is riding the MS150 this year. He has chosen to ride on Kate's(my wife) behalf. follow the link to his blogspot and read Kate's story and if you can give, please feel free to do so.

http://somethingclassicinkc.blogspot.com/2011/08/bike-ms-im-riding-for-kate.html?showComment=1314113450460#c4672128380867139438

How Far?

Sunday July 31,2011 was Volker bicycle's 100 mile Grand "Fundo" ride. I woke up at 4:30 in the morning to be at the shop by 5:45am. I decided to ride my bike from home to the shop. I had packed the night before and managed to fit everything I would need into the three pockets of my kit and my saddle bag. light had just started to sneek out into sky when we all set out for Lawrence at 6am which was our out and back point. I have had my bike for over a year now and I have had the same bottle cages for that same amount of time but for some reason this is the day that the front one decides to pop off with bottle in it and all and go rolling down the road just about 2 miles into the ride. I stop and pick it up because I knew I would need 3 bottles of water and not just 2,this would turn out to be a very wise choice. I was able to get the cage to pop back on without having to unscrew or screw in anything. I work like mad to catch back up to everyone. We are going at a pretty good clip and we get maybe another 10 miles down the road when we go over a set of railroad tracks and you guessed it, the cage comes off again. I once again grab cage and bottle and snap back on and I look up and can't seem to see anyone down the road. I didn't really know the route to get out to Lawrence but figured I would wing it. So I continue alone heading west. I reach Bonner Springs within the hour and I just happened to look to my right and I see a group of cyclist that were with the ride just starting back up from taking a bathroom break. I speed up and latch on for the remainder of the ride. There were 7 of us total and we all worked well taking turns pulling. Up until now the ride was super flat but now begins the "rollers". They weren't too bad but I would certainly feel them on our way back.When we were about 10 miles from town some guy in a SUV came to a rolling stop at a stop sign and because of the sun he claims he couldn't see us so he started to speed thru the intersection, he suddenly sees us and slams on his breaks causing a rider to stop short and the guy behind to go down. Luckily no one was hurt.We arrived in Lawrence just after 8am and we rode thru town and stopped at a gas station to refill our bottles, stretch, and eat. At this point I had 48+/- miles on my computer. I felt great and I was ready for the 48 or so miles back.  The sun was up higher in the sky but the temps were still tolerable. They were calling for 97degrees plus the heat index for the day. 8:30 am and we start our way back home, about 35 to 40 minutes into the ride one of the riders has a blow out so we stop to repair in the shade. She gets the new tube in and we all roll out again when no more than 5 miutes later she has another blow out. This time she takes her time to really inspect her tire and realizes that her side wall has a slice in it. Aubree suggests to use a clif shot wrapper to patch the hole. She said to put the wrapper between the tube and the tire on the inside of the tire, they do so and put everything together. That darn thing held the whole way home with out any other problems. At mile 83 we stopped under a bridge to check on someones tire and while we sat there I began to feel pourly. We were all low on water so we found the nearest gas station and filled back up. I took some sport beans and a packet of "Emergen-C". I was amazed at how well I felt after that. We made it to the shop at 12:00pm. The sun was blaring although it would get hotter into the day. Pot-Pies restaurant and Volker bicycles had pasta and vegetables, fruit salad, and Cokes waiting for us. Most of the other riders took a longer route and they did closer to 115 miles for the day because of a couple closed roads/bridge. After eating a little and sitting in front of the fan to cool off I decided to ride home. By the time I got home my computer said 97 miles. This was by far the longest ride I have done to date, I have done numerous 65 mile rides but never this many. I am glad I did it and now look back at the first time I tried doing 18 miles and how far I have come from bonking at 18 miles versus bonking at 83 miles. I am still a little impatient with my progress but when I look back and think how I smoked for 18 years and was 30 pounds heavier just 1 and a half years ago, you know I am not doing too bad.

Thank you Britton for putting this ride on and thank you John from Pot-Pies for cooking the food. Who ever supplied the Coke, I thank you the most!

It's too hot

It has been triple digits hot here for over a week now and not much cooler than that for a couple of weeks before that. The heat is really starting to wear me down. I managed to get a ride in last night. It was about 120 degrees with the heat index. My car read 103 at 6pm and 98 degrees at 8:15pm. The last time I got on the bike was 6 days before that. That is not a very good thing, but my mind and body was not into it like it usually is. I decided to listen and stay off. I took the opportunity to take the bike in for complete tune up and I also cleaned her up. I hadn't realized just how dirty she had gotten. It is amazing how happy it makes me to clean the bike up, it almost feels like I just got a new one.

I haven't been writing or riding much lately because I have become a little discouraged. I wasn't very happy with my turn-out in Topeka. I really thought I was going to do much better than I did. So I have decided to take it a little easier until I get all gung-ho again. I have also been spending a lot of time with Lucy. She is almost 3 months now and all smiles.

Cross season is only a couple of months away. With that means cooler temps. I can't wait to see how well I do this year in cross.

What A Waste

This past weekend was the 4th of July weekend and we had my brother and his girlfriend visiting from Florida. This was a great opportunity for me to show my brother what cycling is all about and why I am so enthralled by it. They were flying home on Sunday the 3rd so that meant that I had to race on Saturday instead. This weekends venue was the Tour of Lawrence. I love this venue simply for the amount of spectators that come out and watch the races. It is two days of racing, Saturday is a campus circuit and Sunday is a downtown crit. Last year I did the crit and managed to finish last. The funny thing is that my results were never posted to my rider profile on USAcycling, not sure if this a good thing or a bad thing. The campus circuit is the toughest race I have ever done, it has several climbs with one long one at the end of the course about 300 feet before the finish.  I know that the pros did a total of 9,000 feet of climbing in their race. If you read my blog you know that I am not made for climbing, but since I have been doing my hill intervals I know that I did better than I thought I would. My race started at 10:00am so I knew it was going to be an early start to the day since it wasn't going to be just me driving out. We managed to get there and set up with only about 15 minutes to spare after I checked in and pinned my numbers on. This is not good. I had no time to warm up at all. A friend of mine on another team who had just finished his race offered to show me the course and all the "bad spots" in the pavement. We thought we had enough time to ride the course, well this turned out to be a huge error in judgement as I missed my start time by at least 45 seconds or so. I managed to make up 12 positions out of 47. If I think about it, this is pretty good for me considering that I never had the protection of the peloton and all the climbing that was invloved. I am just dissapointed with myself for missing my start time. No telling how well I would have done if I had just been in the front of the start line. I only have 2 more races in my road schedule this season and then it is cross training for me.