One more cup

At the risk of violating Colin's sensible guidelines for meaningful blogging, I'm banging this out while taking in one more cup of joe before shaving and heading to work. This is still a bike racing blog, so even though I've got nothing much to say, I want to change the subject from the last post. Also, before starting, I'll note to whom it may concern that I rejected your comment on road races versus crits because its negative tone conflicted with what was intended as a humorous and entertaining post. As most of you know, I'm a cheerful and uplifting sort of spirit, like a ray of sunshine coming through your bathroom window on a chilly day. Warm, pleasant, positive, compassionate, supportive, and all that. We have a theme here people, in case you haven't noticed. Besides that, the comment was completely wrong, heh-heh. Go ahead and love your crits. There are reasons why big league bike racing doesn't involve them. Everyone knows who won Paris-Roubaix or LBL, but nobody knows who won the last crit, because nobody cares. If you can't road race, sorry. That wasn't why I did not publish your comment though. Here at solobreak, we are F.O.Ps, and by that I mean "Friends of Promoters," not the greying folks who clog the aisles at Stop and Shop the day SS checks come out. Saying road race entry fees are "a rip off" implies some form of deception. This is not the case. You have a $4000 bike. Stop whining about entry fees. The only person who is deceiving anyone is the rider who enters a hilly road race and thinks they are prepared to stay in the group, but then gets dropped. Bitching about prize lists? Please. People used to bitch about the prize list at Killington, which was only about $1000 in the lower categories, against a $120 entry. Well, do you know what the police bill was for Killington? Would you believe $140,000? That's what it was. You want a safe, epic race, or another $20 for the tenth place finisher? OK, now back to our regularly scheduled ray of sunshine, warm your hearts, newborn kitten with a ball of yarn programming...

Bike racing this weekend was fun. Originally, I did not plan to do any. Friday night, Feltslave and I played email tag while trying to coordinate our schedules for a big ride, but it did not work out. I wanted to get in six hours or so, even contemplating a trip to Vermont to pre-ride two-thirds of the infamous six gaps route. That got nixed by iffy weather and the high cost of travel. Saturday morning the weather still looked kind of shitty here at home, and being near the coast, the winds from the storm promised to make local cycling a bit too miserable for your hero to tough it out for six hours. Fearing complete wussing out on riding if it rained, I made a game day decision to book it up to Sterling for the road race. The 45+ was only 40 miles, but the 35+ was 48, so that would at least get me a decent floor for the day's training. The race started at 8:30. I got there at 8:20. GCD was working the registration table, and he was like "dude, you're way late for the 35+, the officials already took the start list." Oh well, still time to get in the 45+. Then at the line, Kristen informed us the distance had been increased to six laps, same as the 35+. Cool.

Dougie already covered the race in detail from his perspective as a strong climber at the front of the bunch. All I can add is that we (the illustrious BOB team) lost three of our six starters the first time up the climb. I did not even see the break go, and did not know who was in it until I heard Curley talking about it. I gave some thought to helping with the chase, but when I headed up front on route 12 and saw four guys from Dougie's team lined up in paceline, I felt like I would just be in the way. Besides that, Gearworks and a few other teams had greater numbers than we did. You can read between the lines for the real story...

After the 80k race I felt unusually fresh. I headed up to Nashua with thoughts of doing some shopping, but after a sandwich I made an executive decision to keep the plastic in the wallet and get my fat pathetic ass back out on the bike. The Cronoman had already put in 160k during the morning, so I went out on the familiar roads of Hollis and Brookline solo, gathering up another 70k or so, bringing my day's total to five hours, just one short of the original goal.

Sunday I went to Well's Ave with the Cronoman. Murat's team was out in force, except their leader was absent. There were a horde of CCB riders there too, as well as what seemed like the entire NEBC women's team. Chris Ryan was running the race. If you don't know Chris, he was the guy who kind of looks like Capt Kangaroo and was ringing the bell and screaming "$5 pack prime" until he was hoarse. He has been one of the kingpins running Wells Ave ever since I first raced there in 1986. Then as now, he rode his bike over from his home in Milton. Talk about giving back to the sport. These are the people who make it happen, not the selfish racers who whine about entry fees at road races. Anyway, Wells has a two place $15-$10 prime at halfway every week, and upon this I set my sights. Rather than sitting at the back, I rode aggressively and sat on every move for the first eighteen laps. At 22 to go a couple of guys made a move, and I foolishly drove it up to their wheels. On the prime bell, I was already a bit gassed, and even though I was able to follow the next move, I had nothing left for the sprint and crossed the line fourth, empty handed.

Once I retreated to the field, the winning break quickly went off and that was that. This was fine with me, because I had already got in as much quality work as I thought I needed. I still put in a few more efforts for the remaining pack primes (again not getting them) as well as a solid effort to get up near the front in the field sprint. It was fun, and that's what this shit is about. The coffee is gone, and now I'm late, so thanks for reading.