A 6.9 on the Toadstrangler Scale
So I had this great window open today. My wife got sick and stayed home. Therefore I didn't have to pick my son up from day care. Thus I could ride all the way to and from work. Her loss, my gain. She just was tired and had a cold, nothing to mourn over. Our cats got lots of lap time and she feels better.
Not much of a story here except that there was rain in the forecast. Possible thunderstorms. You hear that a lot around here. Last June it was for real. Man cats and dogs ain't the half of it. It POURED. Haven't really seen that kind of downpour since. Thank goodness. Well today we are riding home just after the trail junction near East Falls Church and it starts to storm. So as we ride along I dig my jacket out of my pack and put it on. By the time I got it on it stopped. So we get to Lee hwy about five minutes later and I take it off, and put on my Ricky Rudd hat. I went to a NASCAR Busch series race like 7 years ago and I bought a hat to fit in. It has this really long duck-bill brim and it rocks for riding in the rain. Plus I dig the confused looks I get from people because it clashes with my kit real bad. Real splashy letters across the front, in yellow: RICKY. Or RICKEY, don't know about that E. Anyway.
Then it starts into full on Toadstrangler, thunderstorm mode from H. E. double toothpicks. Real loud thunder. Real splashy lightning. It almost seems to make the sky flash red it is so close.
One of my friends starts getting nervous, as he is riding an aluminum bike. He doesn't want to get hit by lightning. So is the other, also on aluminum, in fact. But I'm on carbon, since there is no wagon pulling on my agenda. No lightning magnet beneath me. I smirk and tell this dumb joke: These two guys are camping when they are awakened by the enraged roar of a crazed grizzley bear. One stumbles out of the tent slightly and shines his flashlight upon it, revealing blood dripping from it's claw. Evidently they are about to become desert. Dude with the flashlight looks at his camp-mate, who sits there calmly but rapidly putting on a pair of shoes. "You're not going to outrun that bear, why are you putting on your shoes?" His buddy says: "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you!"
One buddy is so worried he actually pulls up and decides to wait it out under some shelter, but we other two press on. The rain starts hitting us so hard it stings. It gets really dark. What a treat, I love the thunder storms we get here. So epic.
Then my wife treats me to a home-made pizza with turkey and spinach and feta and onions and it was so great. She saw it on the food channel and had to try making it and she did great. And I weighed in and I lost four pounds. Good day!
Also I found this (warning not work safe - contains one utterance of the F word) on the internet, clever:
Floyd Landis Raps His debut single "Bikin' Dirty." Be careful, it will get stuck in your head.
And there is this
great post on Racing Union's blog There is this ad featuring this guy, who was a rocking six-day track racer in his day, who was whoring himself out for a cigarette sponsor. Don' forget to check out the comments.
The Great Debate Over The Crash
So since my post about the crash at Turkey Day was questioned on the local listserve, I've done a lot of asking around about the crash and I think I've come up with a consensus so I'm going to talk about that now.
Lots of times if you are leading the pack in a bike race, you are willing to take a pull but you don't want to sit on the front for the rest of your natural life. So you pull off to one side. But sometimes if you are sitting second wheel in a bike race, you don't want to pull through and put yourself into the wind. So when the guy swings off you just follow him. So sometimes he swings wayyyyyy over to one side to try and shake the second wheel. Heck sometimes first wheel will even brake to force second wheel to overshoot a la a fighter pilot move. When these guys start snaking often times then the whole pack follows these two souls.
Now sometimes if you are not having a great race, and you're kind of a bit farther back than you want to be and there are just a few laps to go, you decide to take a calculated risk to move up and get yourself into position for the sprint. So you come up the inside, the place between the edge of the pack and the near curb. Now maybe you've done this before in the very same bike race even in the very same spot and it was no problemo. So maybe the momentum at the front of the pack is stalling a bit and you see some daylight on that inside and there you go. I've done this a bunch of times in my racing career. Usually it will either work and you move up (yay-whee!) or you get shut down and go nowhere (ohhhh darn!). But while it can be nerve racking it is has never had a catastrophic outcome for me, and I don't think I've ever even seen anybody stack it this way. But what can happen is the pack starts switching/snaking right just you make this move into already thin air, and then, Houston, we have a problem.
Now sometimes if you are down the line a bit but still up near the front, you can see this situation is developing, and you know some opportunist is going to take is gutter ball shot. So you jump in and plug the hole before he can pass. This is a defensive tactic on two fronts. One, you keep people from moving up and passing you holding your position, and two you keep them from putting you in position to bump and possibly crash. (Or as my son says 'bump' and 'nonny'.) If you are doing this responsibly you look back to make sure nobody is there yet when you move over. But what if you're in a double file and the pack starts snaking, you have to move over, you're on the inside, and somebody's gutter ball is rolling real real fast between you and the curb, and you've gotta have that space yourself or you're going down?
So this kind of gives you the type of situation as I understand it at Turkey Day. I'm not 100% sure about how things transpired from there but that gives you the basic idea in a general sense. And somewhere along those lines with the moving up going on on one hand, and the switching on the other there was a touch and ka-blamo, John Hebner went down, then Tim Lung went over top of Hebner's bike and went down, and so did about a half dozen other fellas. Mr. Hebner was very unfortunately seriously injured, breaking a collarbone severely, and three ribs. So that is a total, total bummer. He has three kids and I'm sure it is not fun to be in that situation to say the least. I've spent six wheels in a wheelchair followed by six weeks on crutches, and had one other very long period of convalescence involving almost four months on crutches, so nobody has to tell me what that kind of situation is like. BTW the wheelchair gig came from a car crash, and the long crutch time was from a bike wreck, solo, but involving a car.
I'm sure we can all draw some conclusions on this race situation, defintely in a general sense and possibly in a particular sense. Personally, I'm not into trying to pass judgment on anybody because it isn't my job, and I had a distant vantage point at best, just enough to see the pack switching. Some others are trying to place blame. Still others will simply say "That's racing." But I hope the primary lesson will be that almost all of us do not earn our living at this, and even if we do, we have to stay injury free in order to train, and we must train in order to be at our best. Therefore it is incumbent upon us all to consider safety to be the most important consideration when riding our bikes, while we are racing or training, and I hope that is something we can all meditate on, as Sting said, 'How fragile we are.'
Turkey Day
Thanks to Kevin Dillard for taking that photo. (www.velophotos.net)
I didn't particularly 'enjoy' the Turkey Day races this year, but I had some fun. That is I wasn't fit and flying like last year. But, like last year I rode my disc. Last year I rode it for tactical reasons, this year 'cause my rear 404 was flat. I rode up behind Bo Lee and he says. "Is that you back there Mark?" "Yes, it's me."
Regarding the crash in the Master's race, I'm really glad I decided I wasn't going to contest the sprint in the race, so I dropped out right before it happened. I had been unimpressed on the previous lap by a certain rider in blue and white (NOT JAMES BELLORA, who despite his sharp tongue, rides pretty safely from what I've seen) who was bouncing off other riders for no discerable reason. Near the back of the pack, it makes no sense to fight for wheels. Don't know if it was the same guy, but the next lap a guy from that same team tried to go up the inside near the start finish. The pack hooked to the left for some reason and he evidently got squeezed there in between the curb and Dave Osbourne and went down. A bunch of other people including one of my teammates went down too. The first guy, who I don't know, suffered a badly broken collarbone and three broken ribs. I don't know if he was the guy who precipitated the crash, but I do know that moving up on the inside there, when there were tons of other places to pass on that course, was a dangerous move. Before you make some kind of move like that, please think about whether doing so is even necessary. With three laps to go, there would have been lots of other opportunities to pass, and taking a big chance that resulted in 10 guys crashing was a poor choice.
In preparation 'for to' drop in a bigger engine into the Compartment
So I've pretty much had a light summer as far as riding goes. No results in August at all, and only a couple races. Only one result in July. Am I losing my touch? I hope not, all part of the plan my friend. Last season I rolled it until the wheels came off, winning money in races held in October ($80 bucks bro - not bad) and entering the winter as a total wasted wreck. Toasted adrenal glads, limping around on a gimpy leg, just totally trashed. By then most people have had their rest period and are starting to do some long rides to get ready for the next year. This didn't really work out for me and I think it really messed up my season to a point. I sort of recovered, kept up with my riding to work through the winter a lot gig, and came out banging and blazing in April and May, blasted away a little in June, but then totally flamed out with my crash at Reston. Hurt my shoulder and was just all tired, put on five pounds and just never really got back into Bunny Hop/Poolesville weekend shape. I really attribute this to a lack of rest and that crash was just sort of the manifestation of everything else that was wrong.
But this year I will end the season really fresh. I'll do Turkey Day on the 17th and send in my upgrade the next day, and spend the winter as a cat 2, contemplating myself as a member of Evolution Cycling's elite squad. So the first thing I have to do is get good enough to go training with those guys. Here is plan A:
I am riding with my son in the 'bike wagon'. He totally loves it. It takes me 1/2 an hour or so to ride to or from his day care with him in tow. Then it takes me about an hour to ride to or from work. A friend of mine has a 'pain train' that tops mine.
When I do one of these toddler commutes my left leg at the hip hurts a lot with stiffness for about a day, so that limits me to about three times a week, plus a ride on the weekend. But I think if I can keep this up for the next six weeks or so, that will set me up well to be ready for the 'training season.' It is work, but we have a lot of fun too. If you have a kid, you owe it to yourself to do it. He giggles like crazy when we roll out and makes helpful comments like 'bump' and 'big car.'
See you at Turkey Day (Bobby Phillips annual race on the 17th of September).
