I'm so NOT a Roadie .... & You've Been Warned

Drumroll goes to a road race this past weekend (and not the big crit in Bingo btw). After the race, the "spread" includes some fruit, water, & cookies (likely home-made according to his well trained eye). As Drumroill is deciding which cookie should be his second victim, some roadie dude walks up, looks over the spread and says, "ooooh, cookies". The lady standing there, who very possibly made them, nicely responds, "aren't you gonna have one?", Roadie quips in a somewhat condescending tone, "ohhhh no, I can't have a cookie, nope, no cookie for me", and he walks off. WTF was that? Drumroll was about to jump on this SOB and force a damn cookie down his throat. In fact, how about a freakin dozen donuts slathered in embrocation shoved up your pretentious skinny arse with a quart of egg nog just to add a little flavor.

With this in mind, Drumroll hereby decided he is NOT a roadie. Yes, he may still participate in road races but only as a "UN-roadie". In fact, he's considering letting his legs get all hairy and wearing loose fitting, all wool apparel and putting duct tape on his cycling shoes ... not because they need it but because it would be "UN-roadie". Right now he's probably in his garage, peeling off a little handlebar tape so it flaps in the wind and wetting down his chain so it gets rusty and makes noise just to piss off the roadies. Roadies beware ... if Drumroll catches you at a CX race this fall putting down cookies, ice cream, donuts, pizza, or heavens forbid .. beer, he may not be restrainable .. you've been warned.

This One Time . . . At 'Cross Camp . . .

http://www.cycle-smart.com/coaching/camps/crossclinic_ma2009.html

I'm sitting in a hotel having just registered for this camp, hoping that the dude two rooms over was too busy looking at porn to bother stealing my credit card number.

Having written that, Adam's clinic is worth the risk. I went to his camp last year and it was the best money I've spent on CX by a wide margin. New wheels, nice but who cares. Spankin' new bike, nice try, good luck getting any faster. Adam and Alec . . . they will make you faster. Dismounts, mounts, barriers, starts, handling . . . I repeat, they will make you faster.

I've written this before, but my first year I had some respectable results. Year two, I had a new bike and wheels wasn't any faster. I was just "that guy." The guy with equipment I couldn't live up to. Year three I went to Adam's camp and learned more in two days than I had learned in 2+ years of racing. The results were immediate and I didn't feel so bad about the new bike anymore.

The good thing about CX is that you're never done learning, so I'm headed back. Feel free to cash in all of those empties and we'll split a hotel room.

Call me FOAIB

Lined up at Windham for the Cat 2 XC race and was called out by the announcer for being the only SS in the field. He wanders toward me w/mic in hand and says, "whoa, fully rigid, a true idiot bike". He goes on a bit and somehow I'm a "freak" now cause I'm gonna ride the "idiot bike". I did get him to plug Ommegang and my Soul Cycles Dillinger as payback though. So, ahh yes, Drumroll is also a Freak On An Idiot Bike or FOAIB for short .... and as I noted to another about my new name Foaib .. kinda sounds like an African tribal name or something.

I am Foaib, member of the SS clan, MTB Tribe.

btw .. Foaib suffered mightily for a so-so 4th place (outta 6 in Cat 2 40-44) as an overgeared, underpowered dumbarse with poor gear selection and solid lesson learned.

Agri-Pacing

So Drumroll tells Ms. Drumroll he'll ride his bike out to their friends camp down to the west side of Otisco Lake. Just west of I-81 heading west on Rte 20, a humongous combine pulls onto Rte 20 and Drumroll catches up to it as he just descended at about 50 mph and still had some good momentum. The combine's doing about 23 -24 mph so Drumroll pulls within about a car length or so behind it and laughs as there is an amazing vortex sucking him along with virtually no effort. The HR monitor says 88 bpm on the flats at 23 mph with wheat chaffe and dust galore rolling outta the back of the big green beast. Then the next climb started and Drumroll shifts down and is surpised how fast he's able to climb the steep pitch in the draft of the combine. About half way up Drumroll has to let go as he's big in the red zone and there is still alot of climb left and he waves goodbye to the combine. A little further along and Drumroll notes the combine had to shift down too so heck, now he's closing the gap and the race is on. Drumroll pulls back to within about 20 yards as they crest the hill and catches on during the descent -- woo hoo. The next hill isn't so bad and Drumroll hangs on until they crest the hill and the combine turned off. He waves goodbye to the combine and laughs again at the wheat chaffe all stuck to sweat on his arms. Ahh, life in the country is good. The aromatics of the local farm, the sticky sweet smell of summertime cornfields and a big green combine to agri-pace ya for a few miles.

CX Starts Today

I did my first CX specific workout today. I went running actually. When I took a look at this weeks workouts, I had two days dedicated to CX. A run today and a skills workout on Friday. Life is good. Very good.

On a less positive note, Ridley came up short on X-Fire's in Phil size, so I'm going to go one more season on the SuperCross. At the end of the day, it's still an awesome bike and the only reason I was upgrading was for a lower BB and for the sake of something new. The BB issue can be resolved by learning how to ride my bike. In the interest of something new, I'll have new Challenge Fango's on Williams Cycling CX tubulars and some shiny new TRP EuroX Mag's for bling. The white and gold ones are on sale since the 2010's will be white and red. Gold is fine by me. I might get a matching gold tooth to match . . . especially if I bust a tooth on a warm up lap like Bob did a couple of seasons ago. He ended up racing with half a tooth. The man is hard. He could be Belgian.

Go get your CX on, the future is now.