WEMS weekend

Jesus didn't want us to go to the WEMS race this past weekend. But we said screw that hippy. The Hypocrite wagon broke down on us on the way home from Suamico last week. Luckily we had 350 miles left until our warranty expired so the fix was 300% cheaper than the cost of the tow back to Madison. Thursday when we picked it up it promptly broke on us again, so we spent our Friday waiting for the truck when we should have been on the road.

Evil prevailed and we arrived at LT Friday night just in time to catch a pre-ride with some Chainsmokers. Sheri promptly assumed the registration duties which continued all weekend. When she finds a dropped ball she likes to run after it, spike it and dance. Props.

Race day. Lots of fast people showed up for the SS race so I was starting to wonder about my top 10 chances. Slow start. I haven't ran since last August save for a few sets of barriers in November, so the Le mans start had me feeling goofier and slower than I already am. I hopped on the bike close to the back of the pack then passed 6 or 8 guys in the first couple of miles. I then rode most of the race leap frogging with Roger from Muddy Cup. Through the entire first lap and part of the second, I would power past him in the open areas and on climbs then he would go by me in the twisty stuff. At the start of the second lap, Roger said something to me like "if you had some bike handling skills to go with that big motor, you would be(something flattering that I forgot)". I took that to mean that I was riding the singletrack like a wuss, so I stopped being such a wuss, eased off the brakes, and kept him behind me for the rest of the race. He stayed close until the switchback climbs up to the Levis top out. I stood up and jammed with him 20 yards back or so, and heard him blow apart like a General Motors product. He said something admitting defeat and when I looked back he was walking. I didn't want to screw this up so I kept laying it on thick for the rest of the race. In the end I really wanted another lap and felt I could have caught one or two more. 11th place behind some pros and fast guys ain't so bad, but it was again a learning experience. I learned not to be so damned lazy in the singletrack, and not to make Roger's mistake. If you tell a competitor he sucks, he will try harder not to suck and kick your ass in the end.

Rowan took a solid 4th place in the under 6 year old 1/4mile Solo class. He is so ready to lose the training wheels. I think we will give it a good shot over the long weekend at Eau Claire. Sheri rode the 3 hour race at a social pace but crashed her bike hard enough to spew hydralic fluid and fork oil all over it. That crash earned her a nice brake upgrade to the Magura Martas and a rigid carbon fork. The Vassago is rigid again too until Hayes fixes the noisy dampener problem. I was louder than the gearies out at Levis with that fork. Lots of racin' action to come and everyone is feeling fine.

It was a very cool event and a good time. I like the WEMS scene. Drinking beer and laughing at the guys packing up their cars like zombies after 12 hour solos is fun. I think I just about made a couple of guys sick while flipping over my kabobs as they were staggering around sipping gingerly on juicy juice.

1 part visualization, 6 parts beer.

During our weekly Friday night tearing up of fine Mexican cuisine, Sheri was talking me through keeping my season from spiraling out of control. She told me when we got home I was to take a long shower, shave the legs, and visualize jumping into the singletrack in front of Jerry. I was pretty sure I was going to need more than just visualization to pull that off, but I tried it anyway. At this point I'll try anything to get my head screwed on straight again.

We arrived at Suamico yesterday just in time to set up in the rain. The beer hour came around quick with no hope of a pre-ride. I think I had six beers total before the night was out and slept like a..... half drunk bike racer I guess.

Warming up with an ipod full of Slayer should be outlawed by the UCI. Slayer inspires an unmatched sense of urgency, and it set me right for a good race. Just a mile or two into the first lap it looked to me like Jerry was under geared, so I figured I would use the 36x16 to my advantage and try to put a bunch of people between us on a long slightly downhill section. That worked for a while but I wondered how soon it would be until I would see him again. I worked with Dave Bell (okay he did most of the work) for the majority of this lap and on and off for the rest of the race. Jerry showed up before the 1st lap finished up and we managed to stay together until I could yo yo no longer just before the start of the 3rd. We had a group of gearies with us that kept snapping back and forth like an accordion. The little rain shower we had during that second lap was killer, and only added to the grin factor for me. After the elastic snapped I sat in no man's land for much of that third lap, trying to close on that group which I could only catch a glimpse of on long straightaways. Turns out that after I fell off this group, Jerry commenced to nuking what was left of the gearies with his turbo-cadence. I came in for another 4th and another 21st overall. It was the most fun I've had in a bike race by far, and I'm pretty jazzed for the rest of the season now. The Vassago/Manitou combo sang sweet melodies to me for 36 miles. I could not be more happy with this setup. Thanks to the Chainsmokers injured reserve again for the support, Dave for the pulls and the encouragement, Momma and Rowan for kicking ass, and Slayer for more of the same.

Free your mind....

...and your ass will follow. One would think that coming into a race with low expectations would lead to zero disappointment in the outcome. Not so. The truth is that the low expectations are part of the problem, perhaps even the root. More saddle time and less bitching is forthcoming. The Jaberwocky is awesome even though I wasn't having much fun on it's shakedown ride. I'll be putting a boinger on it when it arrives at Willy tomorrow and calling it done.

Sheri didn't get any photos of me because I'm a quitter, but these guys were representing.When I was trying not to tip over, the Daves were some of the first to come by me with some words of encouragement. Then they killed it together for 2 hours. I want to be like them when I grow up, minus 26 gear choices of course.

I think I will be skipping the race at Suamico next week and playing superfan/babysitter while Mom lays it down for the Cit women. I'll we be using the trails though to dial in the bike and get a bunch of off-road miles in. I'm putting some Hi-rez focus on the SS champs race and the 12 hours @ Blue Mound, with Eau Claire sandwiched in there. It is also time for some weekday racing to keep the motivation fresh. The WORS Comp SS points race should be interesting all year, and the class has been populated with a bunch of fast guys each race. I'm happy that I went with my gut and didn't upgrade. I think I need a couple more years of miles on my legs and quite a bit more experience. I'm getting better at learning to enjoy the journey. It is becoming easier for me to span time gracefully with my family. The ride could not be what it is if it weren't for every individual root and rock.

I am a regular feller

I haven't been doing much liberal jabbering on here lately. It is partly because it is dirt season and I have been busy at work, but mostly because others do it so much better.

Long and lean, clean and mean

• Steel.
• Black.
• Named after both a demon prince, and the legendary beast of gibberish poetry.
• Fits my monkey armedness.
• Black.
• Frame costs less than the crankset from a citizen racer's $6000 Trek.
• Wet Cat geometry is well suited to post apocalyptic riding that might require riding over or negotiating around lots of skulls and burned out cars.
• Steel.

Put away wet

Since mental toughness is my greatest limiter, I have difficulties with the 12 minute muscular endurance type cruise intervals. I like the short, nasty, power and VO2 max type efforts just fine; since they are over before you know it. Those longer digs though, they are long enough for the brain to be a factor. The nagging doubt and nausea associated with longish threshold efforts make them a real pain for me. My head tells me to stop:

Why are you doing this?

What's with the Sally watts?

Why don't you just grow a throat beard and do trail work?

You have nothing to prove.

Your body will never recover from the brutal thrashing that was your 20's.

Take a nap.

Those kinds of things. I read somewhere that counting to 100 over and over again by 5's helps to cope with this, but I keep forgetting to try it, and slow down instead.

Rolling through this weekend, 5 of my 7 hours on the bike must have been at my threshold. It seems nature can be quite the motivator when the weather begins to get violent. Trying to get around, away from, or through a nasty storm with tornado sirens blaring in the background; was quite effective at buffering the pain and doubt from the mind.
I get to build a bike tomorrow night with a warm satisfaction from this weekend's riding. The Kona is being retired. I'm gonna hang my parts on something steel and black, listen to Slayer, and drink beer. If Johnny Cash (before he was, um, dead) and Glen Danzig (before he had to suck in his belly) were to have a duel aboard Single Speeds, they both would have chosen this bike. I'm sure of it.

Faces of WORS

I raced a turd of a race today (and managed to convince myself during the race that it was my best), as indicated here by my mugshot. I clearly need to work harder and download some of those 90 dollar mental toughness mp3s online to play over and over while I sleep. Here are some happier (and faster) faces of WORS.
Nice work Amelia in the Elite finish. We also had a good showing from nearly every Chainsmoker save for myself. Thanks to Bruce for handing up like a champ and get well. Here's to digging out of slackerdom for Mt. Morris. More pics from Sheri.

Beaten with Sticks

You know those cheap remote control cars from big box stores that distant relatives give to your kids at Christmas time? The ones that only have a range of like 5 feet and as soon as you squeeze the throttle it wildly skitters across the tiles, tires spinning out and bouncing off of the baseboards. Then the controller is out of radio range in 2 seconds.

"Sorry dude, this is clearly not an inside toy, or an anywhere toy for that matter."

I have felt lately like one of those cars when riding singletrack, all throttle but no range or control.

Blue Mound last weekend was a great way to cap off a weeks worth of crashing my bike. I've been pretty frustrated off road and it resulted in taking 3 days off all bikes and sulking. I felt better last night like I am ready to crash into stuff again. Anyone have a medium-ish SS 29er frame that they need to trade for something smaller? I fear I have been cramming myself into my Kona. On the range issue I may have been a bit conservative in planning my training volume, I could stand for way more mileage/hours(making time for it is something else).

The best laid plans......

----------------

If the weather is nice when I pick up Rowan in the afternoon he is usually in the playground. I like to walk up slowly so that I can watch him interact with his friends for a few moments without knowing yet that his Dad is there. The other day him and two of his friends were riding the tricycles. They have this huge figure 8 race track out there that they can attack each other on....., I mean ride leisurely on while smelling the flowers. When I walked up I saw his two friends tangled up, trying to wrestle their bikes apart. Rowan was barreling down on them at a high rate of speed with his feet in the air having spun out his fixie tricycle. What made this scene most choice was Rowan hollering "Rider down! Rider down!" as he dumped into the grass just before t-boning his tangled buddies. I laughed for five minutes, then corrected him. "You need them to clear out Rowan, try 'Rider Back!' next time."

Escape!

I plan on kicking down the walls of my cubicle at 3:00 and hauling oates to Blue Mound State Park. We have 3 days worth of trail riding, beer drinking, and family lounging planned. Before the beer drinking starts though, I think I'm going to try the time trail tomorrow morning. I have gotten to know that climb well over this past winter/spring, so I should be able to hammer this one pretty good. 28 minutes sounds extreme, but everyone gots to have goals right?

Need something to do the weekend? Come on out and ride. We are at site #59 and rides will be leaving at random intervals all weekend. Bring beer, chairs, and maybe a first aid kit if your bike skills are off. Blue Mound will bite you if you aren't paying attention.

Baffling

I had an interesting lunch today with some of our X-ray Diffraction customers that are visiting us in Madison for some training. These guys will be using our instruments aboard an international geological research vessel. Their work includes endeavors such as drilling and running analysis on the underwater crater left from the asteroid believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs. Very cool stuff if you are into science, the pursuit of truth, and such things.

Our discussion was all over the place, and our guests displayed unique insight into a variety of fascinating topics that were woven through the fabrics of science, society and humanity in general. Before long the conversation turned to the economics of oil and gas prices. If anyone does, these gentlemen have their fingers right on the pulse of the stark geological facts concerning peak oil production. One of them was actually the diffraction scientist aboard an oil platform at a previous job. However, when I used the phrase "peak oil" in conversation, I may as well have said: "Great Googly-Moogly!" The consensus among them was that the blood being spilled over high gas prices was strictly on the hands of both the EPA for shutting down refineries that were out of compliance, and the oil companies for failing to invest in a dated and crumbling infrastructure. I suggested that it wouldn't be good business for oil companies to pay for modern and expensive equipment that won't be in operation for long enough for them to see any return. It is our relationship with oil that is becoming dated and crumbling. One of our guests replies: "No, they are just greedy bastards."

Perhaps, but greedy bastards know where they have to spend money in order to continue making it. Just like the president of the United States in a bad Jerry Bruckheimer film doesn't want the people to know that they will all die soon at the hands of aliens or whatever, big oil won't scare their employees with startling tales of irretrievable remnants of oil. Our refusal to accept the coming end of an energy era will ultimately make the transition all the more painful. Nobody gives a fuck.

I was baffled by their obtuseness on the subject when juxtaposed against their knowledge of most everything else. Even with unfettered access to applicable facts, people will look the other way when facing the reality of the coming situation. Baffling.