Another dumb crit, and some cool moto photos...

I did the Suisun Criterium the other weekend. I was really looking forward to it after Timpani seemed so easy. I have no idea at this point (well, at any point that i've been racing actually) how to tell w/ any degree of accuracy how i will feel on any given day. I felt like a total slug this time. The course was really tight, only 2 blocks long and a really short block wide. Almost felt like being on the track at one point. I was bummed to hear that Hernandez got all broke the day before...he's a great guy and is really fun to race with. Well...i'm sure he's fun to race with, but i'm not really ever there to participate in his antics as he's usually off the front and i'm buried in the pack. But anyway...i had a teamate in the race, Herve, which was cool. Less than half way in our pack was blown to bits by a 2-man break. I, of course, found myself trying hard to stay in, and got shuffled to the back of the last group, and then dropped completely a few laps from the end as we were getting lapped by the break. Blah. That was that, i changed and got invited to have some food w/ Holly, Mary-Ellen and some others. After a nice breakfast, i headed home and stopped at Infineon to check out the kart and motorcycle road races. I managed to get some cool shots and headed back home, still trying to figure out how to get ready for a damn bike race. Oh yeah, don't forget...if you want to look at the rest of my photos, they're here. Have fun browsing, and buy some pics of yourself if you find 'em!

Motorpacing is cool...

even for the guy riding the scooter. I motorpaced Kat Carroll around Nicasio Sunday morning on Kelly S.'s scooter. Holy christ, that girl can pedal a bike. No wonder she's on the...what the hell is it called? The womens national development-go race in europe a couple of times a year-super studette team, right? And that Aarons pro team, too. I've motorpaced racers a bunch of times before, but Kat was definitely cranking out the watts. Since it was a nice-ish Sunday morning, there were tons of recreational riders out Nicasio way, and we passed all of them. At least once. It was great to see the look on their faces in the mirrors as we blasted past. A couple of guys tried to jump on at one point, and i wanted to tell them to back off since they really didn't know what we were doing, and it's probably not the safest thing to have some weekend warrior sitting on your wheel at 30+ when you need to slow down or avoid something in the road. Not to worry, the one guy only lasted about 28 seconds before he blew, his pal not even that long. Kat is leaving for a 2 wk stint in europe tomorrow...i wish her the best of luck and hope the session behind the scooter helped a bit.

First mountain bike ride in a loooooonnnnnngggg time...

Got to ride the new Ibis Mojo full sus bike last week. Full carbon frame, big 'ol Fox fork on the front, 5.5" at both ends. Big tires, big brakes, big wide bars...big fun! The last time i rode a mountain bike previous to this was back at Deer Valley where i did 2.3 runs of the super-d course on a borrowed Kona demo bike. This time i got to take our shops' Mojo demo bike out to the single track at Tamarancho, up here in Marin. At least i could ride it on trails that i sorta know... a little bit.
I met one of the guys from the shop at the Javahut in hippy-ville at 8.30am and we started up Iron Springs to the Boy Scout camp. Holy crap... that bike is soooo much fun, i think i need to own one. But not 'til the shop sells our demo and i can't ride it anymore. Hell, i'd probably buy the demo, it's even a cool green color that Chuck calls "pond scum". It's got the new '08 XT stuff bolted on, and nice DT wheels w/ some sticky Kendas w/ Stan's inside. We rode all kinds of terrain and i messed around w/ the Fox fork and rear shock; the one w/ the ProPedal set-up. I had everything all locked up for the road climb, then opened it up for the trails. Both ends are really adjustable and easy to set up for great performance. Everything was going great 'til we had about 10mins of riding left and i flatted. No big deal, being a pro mechanic/bike shop service manager type guy, right? No big deal 'til both of us realized we had spare tubes, but in our haste to ride new demo bikes we both forgot to bring any way of getting air into them. Dohhhhhhh. At this point my mountain bike ride turned into 20mins of cx training, w/ the emphasis on the running part. I ran/pushed up single track. And down single track. Then i said screw it and i jumped back on and rode the flat on some smooth stuff. Then i ran some more, before we finally reached the road back down into town, which i rode down verrrryyyy slowly.
I'm riding that bike again tomorrow night and you can damn well bet i'll have a spare tube AND some CO2 cartridges w/ me!

Finally...sort of

After getting uncerimoniously dropped from the last 2...no wait...3 races i'd entered, i finally managed to hang for an entire race. I seem to have discovered a new way to prepare for a race. I used to think i needed to do a "race prep" ride, and a long warm-up to have any chance of racing well. After this weekend, i'm not bothering w/ any of that. Saturday i rode to work (15mins) in street clothes. After work i rode to my good buddy Tim's 40th b-day bbq in fairfax (10mins). I managed to put away quite a few beers, no water at all, and a bunch of food...including one of the biggest burritos i've ever seen and a slice of wonderful chocolate b-day cake. At about 11 or so i rode home, w/ a possibly legal b.a.c. (about 25mins), for a total of 50mins on the bike, all in street clothes. Sunday Niki and i drove down to Santa Clara, w/ me underestimating the drive time by about 10-15mins, leaving me about 45 mins to change brake pads, reg, change and warm-up. After about 10mins on the trainer, i rode to the start, w/ just enough time to pull in and turn around before we started. The first lap or 2 weren't the usual pop-the-slackers-off-the-back type, they were pretty mellow. The pace picked up some, but i was pretty surprised that i never felt like i had to work hard at all to stay in. At one point, about 5 laps in, i rolled up the front right as 4 or 5 guys took off. I figured what-the-hell...and jumped on the back. The group didn't get organized and never got much of a gap. A lap or 2 after that, i rolled back up the side of the group again right as everyone slowed and the pack mushroomed to take up most of the road and ended up off the front by myself. It was a pretty windy day, so i just looked back and swore i saw a couple of guys laughing at me. So, of course, i sat up and waited for them to catch me and pulled back in. We rolled around w/ nothing really happening 'til the last couple of laps which sped up some, and saw a couple of guys flat. And me get chopped into the cones on the short straight after the first corner a couple of times, losing a bunch of spots in the process. So much for feeling great for the whole race! I ended up rolling across the line in 38th or something, out of 54 finishers. I felt i could have easily finished up in the top 10-15, if i had been a bit more aggressive. Another lesson learned, i guess. And the other lesson? Don't run over the really shitty manhole cover w/ your Zipp 303's, 'cuz you'll crack the front rim just like me. That little instant made this easily the most expensive crit i've ever done.