Stinky Shooz

If you are gonna race in the rain... you better dry your shooz.

Sunday's women's cat 1-3 race was in a deluge. As soon as the 1-3 race was over, of course it dried out. Danielle and Gilbert wanted another official on the other side of the race course, so I got off my bike, threw it on the rack, and got into an officials shirt and khaki shorts and headed to the other side of the course.

Oh, yeah... I threw the shooz in the back of the truck.

Now like every card carrying woman I have multiple pairs of shooz, so Monday when I went out for a ride I just grabbed a spare.

Tuesday it poured and I didn't get to ride.

Wednesday J and Cliff came over and I grabbed yet another pair of shooz. Oh, yeah, and it rained on us again....

When we got back from dinner I saw the shooz I wore on Sunday... and then smelled them. And passed out. Or close to it.... But I did take the insole out. And water literally did come off of it.

Word to the wise. If you are gonna race in the rain... you gotta dry out your shooz. Otherwise the smell will create a hazmat situation. Honest.

How J rules racing in photos...

J giving our new find instructions prior to the race. Christine is a great mtn biker and is gonna rule crits, too!

J showing Col. Sweatsalot how to scowl and look fierce...

J has scowling down pat...

The finish line after J launched her girls on the back side... We wanna be like J!

Sprint into Spring

You gotta hand it to her, Col. Sweatsalot puts on a fine race. Things ran smooth, there was tons of help, games for the kids to play, a bike raffle, race announcers (Mark King, you should go pro...), top notch officiating, and more prizes, swag and primes than you see at anything other than an NRC race. Natures Path bars, Chipotle gift cards, Wawa Gift Cards and more...

Of course, there was that pesky little shower that seemed to dump 3' of water on the women's 1-3 race and the mens 3/4 race... but for all the water, the course was not slick, and the water was soon gone. Gone in one corner thanks to Cliff, Steve, and Tom, who pushed the water off the course between each lap for 3 races. They rock, big time.

A special thanks to our buddy Kevin Dillard who made the trip south to photograph our race. We love Kevin. I'm sure the photos will be up in a day or two... patience.

Of course I would be terribly remiss not to salute the big race of the day... the under 10 junior race, and especially the little 2 year old rider, Luke, on his Trek training wheel bike who made it around the WHOLE mile long course, up and down. The entire crowd was on their feet, with Gilbert ringing the bell for this little future champion. All around the course his Mom ran beside him telling him that he was a BIKE RIDER. I just wanted to eat him up.

And the hardest working domestique of the day... my bud J. She pulled my lazy ass around the field and set me up again... but I could just manage to get 3rd in the 40+ race. All that work for me. Sharon took full advantage of it, and threw her bike to take 1rst in the 4 race. Sharon rocks.

Then J did her best to help our buddy Pave Maria in the 1-3 race. Selfless, but wickedly fast, thats our Julie.

And what about Jake in the 1-3 race, who attacked, and attacked, and attacked, and attacked and finally on about the 100th go, got the right guy to go with him and just obliterated the field. One too many attacks and Jake had to settle for second, but I think he's going to be upgrading here to a 2 soon. Jake is a monster.

So another great race in the books, and when I finish the books I think we'll have a few thousand to donate the welfare fund for the soldiers on the base. Its all good.

Now I'm going to bed. Before 6-almost 10 pm with 2 races, and half the day officiating. I'm whooped.

Wintergreen Congrats

As a non-climber, I can sincerely say that I had my best day ever on the mountain... I was the STARTER! The 30 seconds between riders was tough, but I think I got thru it relatively unscathed. I sure looked fresher than just about anyone on the top, thats for sure.

There were some wicked fast times up there with both Dee Dee Winfield and Jeremiah Bishop breaking the course records. I heard that the air was soupy mid-way, but I cant imagine that it was anything near as bad as the headwind and heat from last year.

So congrats to C'vill Racing and all their volunteers for putting on such an epic sufferfest... I volunteer to be the starter again next year!

Dumb Ass Award

Down here in Va, the lists have been burning up with people demanding satisfaction for the lack of prosecution of motorists when they hit cyclists. I'm all for it.

But to be fair, I'm going to start handing out dumb ass awards...

So award one goes to the cyclist in the yellow jersey on Hugenot Rd today about 12:15. FYI, Hugenot is being repaved and there is one lane open in each direction. No problem for our hero... he made his own lane and was just zipping up the line of cars. There was some debris on the left side of the lane, so I started to swing right, and if I hadn't have gotten a glimpse of the jerk would have nailed him.

Uh, its a two lane road. A work zone. One lane was closed. Just because you are on your bike doesn't mean the rules don't apply...

Kind of like the two motorcyclists on 64 E a week ago... who decided that since both lanes were going slow, that they'd just make their own lane up the middle.

We call you... organ donors.

You know its bad when another cyclist calls you out.

The other side of races:

You know, the race promotion side! Good ole Sharon is the real promoter, mover, and shaker behind our Sprint into Spring race, I'm just the money bags who has to deal with the Army bureaucracy. Bless her heart, she took 3 days off work to deal with the last minute stuff for the race and wouldn't you know it, she had to be in meetings (you know, for WORK!) on her days off when she was going to get stuff done.

So I love the panic emails that I get from her Crackberry when she remembers something vitally important mid-meeting.

Some how, some way, everything will work out just fine. It always does.

This is going on while I'm doing the pre-work for the State Senior TT. I get the flier up earlier than everyone else, and suddenly I have multiple emails asking when the race will be up on Bikereg. Damn, the race isn't until mid-June. I know no one is going to enter that early! I can't get people to enter until the last possible moment!

This year there is no tandem category at our tt. I really tried, honest I did. Every year I'd work over the RATS (Richmond Area Tandem Society?) and every year they'd swear that they were going to enter. Yes, it really does cost to have the category. I never charged extra for the tandems, even though I'd pay per rider fees. And with the category at the end of the day, with a big break from the last single rider (to discourage um... drafting...) I paid thru the nose for police.

So if you want your category at races... enter. Don't bemoan the fact that there isn't a 80+ category if no 80+ riders ever enter. This year I added a 70+ category as I know that they are out there. So if you'd like to see it again, ENTER!

The New Specialized Transition?

Front view: Damn, its hard to find a bike in that picture!

Side View

Diamonds might be a girl's best friend, but I sure do love tt bikes. Every year, our friends come up with the latest and the greatest go-fast machines. Taller, skinnier, thicker, thinner, sloped, not sloped, sharp edges, smooth edges, you could drive yourself silly trying to keep up.

Cervelo P3 is the best bike in the world because Spartacus rides one and hands out whoop ass to everyone. Then he rides a Specialized and beats everyone on the Cervelo P3 (cuz for some reason no pros are riding the P4...). So does the fact that he still is fast on the new bike make the new bike a better bike than the old bike? Or could it possibly be that he smokes everyone else because he is just fast as shi*?

I have this theory... sometimes when people buy that $10,000 bike, they BELIEVE it will make them faster. So they train harder, and voila they are faster! Hey, if a placebo works, go for it!

When the MIT study came out I bet a lot of manufacturer's jaws dropped... an aero helmet, worn correctly, gives the same time advantage as a disc wheel. So why do so many people shell out a ton of money for disc wheels, but ride in a regular helmet?

And the uber-expensive disc wheels? If they are so good, then why when the fine folks at Cervelo were designing the new P4 did they design the bike so that those wheels won't fit? Cervelo says that their bike doesn't need them. Can anybody really show that the sub-9 disc is really an advantage? If so, how much of one? Is it really $1500 more aero than a $500 Renn disc? Or how about a Hed Jet wheel with a disc cover... at least there you get a wheel you can do crits on and a wheel that becomes a disc wheel. All at a fraction of the cost.

I love all the new bikes. I'm pretty sure that I couldn't ride anything that low, and I'm pretty sure that 99% of the tt bike market couldn't either. (Which is why most people sell their P3's or put a ton of spacers under the bars) They sure are pretty, and I'm sure that whatever Spartacus rides that he will hand the competition his can of whoop ass.

I think I'll keep my out of date Scott, and bank that money for bad times.