Mountain bike school took a turn for the worst, or actually I did. Hitting a rut, smacking my hand on a big tree, flipping over and really f’ing myself up. Bloody and sore, I finished up mountain bike school, ate a burritto at Sellwood and jammed home.

Thursday I felt like hell, sore back and scrapes and bruises. I bashed my teeth a little too, got a cut up lip and gums. Pity me, I know. But then I got a haircut at Salon 220 from my friend Kim. Total butch haircut. Looks like I’ve just escaped from the penal colony on some distant planet and have been fighting aliens and space police.

I did the Thursday lawyer ride for the first time in a while. Those guys ride scary fast down through the Portland Zoo. That stuff is scarier than Zoobombing. We are railing it through traffic, I’m trying to bridge up to the 2 riders off the front and they are weaving through cars and blowing intersections. I was getting in the zone and descending like a maniac and then I realised “what the hell am I doing?” when I had to put a foot out and skid through a turn just missing a car. I backed off and let Brad Ross and Mark Ginsberg lead the way down.

Well, moving on. I’m still dealing with some annoying lung-allergy-breathing stuff. Coughing a lot and stuff. I went to the gym for the first time in a couple weeks (since I’ve been sick) and it hurt. I really had to push myself to finish up my workout. I skipped the gym this morning, my back just hurts way too much to do any good in the gym.

I’ve been so damn busy, the weather has finally turned into something consistently pleasant and the shop is busy as shit. Ira and I have a good flow going on. I administrate, he gets his hands dirty. Or something like that.

I went out to the velodrome last night to pick up a couple framesets and snag a track locker for myself. The turnout for the first night of racing was huge! 70+ people racing and the stadium seating actually looked to be pretty full! My teammate Mark Blackwelder put in a stellar ride. It was his first Kilo ever and he beat a bunch of track fast guys.

Some recent reader suggestions for blog topics:

-what the new pink is
-contents of a perfect cookie
-why Steven Hunter insists on a wet noodle of a fork setup
-introduction of a masked rider team/cat so that track racing can be like an
anonymous orgy instead of dance social
-out TooVanillaForYou

So about that:

The new pink is apparently carbon fibre.
The perfect cookie shall contain vegan. Just plain raw vegan. Don’t ask me what it is…
When you weigh 130 pounds wet, you can run your fork like you ride. Noodly.
I have no comment on the track orgy. Why can’t we all just get along?
And, yes TooVanillaForYou is an Al-Qaeda side project. You think I’m kidding? Do your fucking research!

I entered the Bear Springs XC today feeling upbeat! I was excited to start racing again.
I started off well, heading into the first single track section in 4th position. Got through a few potential bottleneck sections (the “run-up” and, the “fallen bushes”) where I wanted to be ahead of the mayhem and I tried to get a rhythm going and catch back up to the lead.

I started losing my breath quickly, I guess I’m not quite over the cold…

When it became clear I was not going to be going fast today I waited up a bit for Brian Ellin (who I knew was also NOT feeling so hot.) to ride past and we both finished the course and then hopped in the car and headed home.

The funniest thing happened during the race, we are bombing down the trails and Timmy Evans comes running up the trail the wrong way asking if “this is the right way?” It was’nt. A good ten or so of us went off trail, which I hear is super common at the Bear Springs race.

Then I got a flat.

My year is off to a good start. DNF at the first road race I do. DNF at the first XC I do.

No “rockin’ the baby” here.

I’ve been fighting the cold Ira had for the last week or so and I finally succumbed Saturday night. We had an epic mountain bike ride planned for Sunday and even though I should have stayed in bed, I went anyways. Oh, do I feel like crap. I’ve never taken nyquil or dayquil before and I snagged some while skipping coffee on the way out of town.

Tony Kic and I drove his sweet race car out and met up with Kevin Condron, Jeremy from Hood River, Matt Hall and Slaven, ping-pong, Cary and Jesse.

We split up, with the slow posse (matt, kevin, tony, jeremy and I) taking the long route from White Creek or White Salmon or something. A sweet gradual singletrack climb all the way to the top of Sincline. It was really, really great. We all had funky mechanical issues and apparently all of us “just built” or put together some part of our bikes the night before. Me, new wheels. Tony, new disc brakes. Matt, new bar/stem. It was kinda hilarious after a while, we all had these ridiculous crashes and mechanicals and they just kept happening and happening…

The dayquil apparently worked great. I felt decent during the ride. Popped a couple Ibuprofen too and we did an easy 4 hours riding the super rocky Sincline trails. I felt like I could have kept going for a while.

I passed out on the drive home. My cold kicked in super hard last night. Pete just got back in from a Seattle road trip and took really good care of me. But to no avail. I tossed and turned and got zero sleep. Woke up early this morning to meet up with a sponsor at Stumptown and luckily he emailed to say he could not make it.

I feel worthless. And, I have a horibble sunburn! I was so out of it yesterday I forgot sunscreen. My arms look amazing! So I am wearing my red Food Fight t-shirt to minimize the effect.

Bike racing?

When did Landis become the man? Matt Hall predicts Landis in the top 5 at the TDF. No way. I say it is going to be Basso-Ullrich-Valverde.

I think my teammate Mark Blackwelder was 2nd at one of the WVC stages this weekend.

Thats all I got. I am super wiped out, thinking about popping some more dayquil though I really hate taking pills. I hope I can beat this cold in time to race the Bear Springs XC this Sunday.

Keeping tabs on the Cycling news live Tour de Georgia coverage:

“13:01 EDT 90.9km/100.5km to go
Ollerenshaw has also attacked the break and is currently between the three leaders and the rest of the break. The leading riders have 4’35″ on the field.”

holla!

Ate dinner last night with Tony Kic, the Miller kid, Brian Ellin, and Emily Klass from Providence, RI. She built frames at Circle A cycles for a couple years and is in town visiting for a few days. Emily was also part of my east coast support crew last cross season. Dan and I drove her Volvo around to races (when she was not available to drive us around). Tony Kic is interviewing for a job at Chris King sometime soon (best of luck!) and Cary got hit on like 3 times while we were sitting at Stumptown coffee last night.
Whats playing right now?

T.I.
Justin Timberlake
Ne-yo
Tiny Hawks
Britney Spears

Organic athlete.

Thats me…

Ira and I bickered at work today. So to make up for it I took him out for a burrito. We met up with Cary Miller (aka: “the miller kid” Sorry, I’ll try to keep everyone up to date on the sweet nicknames) well, the Miller Kid was waiting around for us and I lagged, per usual. Cary had headed home already.

I called him and he dragged his butt back to the Laughing Planet and met us for food with Kevin Hulick, and then Sacha rolled by on his bike, then we went to Stumptown and had some espresso and I got really hyper and started talking about cyclocross. Kevin is going to be racing for Vanilla bicycles with Shannon and I next cross season. I’m pretty excited about it. So we are all standing around in Stumptown and more and more people just keep dropping in and saying hi. It gets out of control, I panic and leave.

Just kidding. It was really nice to run in to all those sweet people in one night. I felt like crap all last weekend so took Monday off from training and just decided to relax after work. Now Brian and I are watching “Lost” at home scheming about Belgium in the winter.

Don’t bother watching “Hustle and Flow” it is pathetically offensive. Kinda like a parody of a parody of a genre. And just too fucked up to women.

After what was a long wait, the demo version the limited Veloshop team helmet arrived and I tried it on and took some photos for all to see. Don’t I look intense? Totally.

Look like Jan. Or Shannon.

The team version is going to be all white.

There you go.

Serious.

I totally forgot to put my booties AND my chamois creme on this morning. I should have known I was doomed. Damn! I met up with Doug, Timmy, Dan from hardCorvallis and Carl H. at Stumptown and we started a ride up Saltzman and out the West hills.

Damn it, I have not been so cold in a while. My feet and hands got all numb. I did 2 hours and turned back with Dan. Which ended up being a smart thing. We battled a crappy headwind and freezing rain the entire ride back.

End whine.

Belgian ex-cyclocross pro Ben Berden exclaims “keep lying!”. Doh. The article does not mention why his suspension was lengthened. And, he’s got a contract waiting the second his suspension is up. With all the recent examples: Filip Mierhage, David Millar, Berden, it is making more and more sense to dope, get super fast, get some results, admit it (or get caught), and feel pretty confidant about getting a contract when your suspension is up. It is a win-win deal apparently.

Mmm. I ate 6 cookies yesterday. I wonder if EPO does anything for that.