Root 66 Fat Tire Classic

This was a race I’d done once before, and honestly, I wasn’t really looking forward to doing it again. The Chainbiter ‘Cross race at the same venue last fall was more technical than the mountain bike course from what I remembered . The delivery of my single speed was delayed yet again and for this race, I wasn’t sweating it. A 95% semi-flat fire road hammer-fest is not a single speedin’ good time. However the course was totally redesigned with way more fun added to the formula this year. There was actually singletrack and some punchy climbs to break up the big ring gnashing, overall very nice. I liked the course so much I rode it a total of nearly seven times with warm up and cool down.
On with it already…So I swing over to Colin and Linnea’s to pick them up, Alex rolls up having ridden over from Newton with a twenty pound rucksack full of gear, a wonky as all get out rear wheel, and the most freaking amazing cupcakes I have ever experienced. I’m not kidding, they were of two varieties: Mojito, complete with a mint leaf on top, and “Car Bomb” with Guiness and Bailey’s amongst the ingredients (mmm Bailey’s…creamy…beige). I couldn’t wait to finish my race so I could stuff my face with them things. We now have the wrangling of four bikes onto the roof of the wee Subaru down to a science, so we were on the road in no time flat, with me nearly missing the first of the three turns I had to make to get us there. I like to get some of my requisite acts of awesomeness over with early in the day.
Alex was doing the sport race so we were there with ample time to spare for once, so much time that we didn’t really know what to do with ourselves. Linnea, Colin, and I got out on course pre-ride and heckle/cheer the sport riders, and give Alex and George some support. I don’t usually get to spectate so it was cool watching guys in running shoes and jeans riding HardRocks whupping up on guys with shaved legs riding S-Works FSRs and Carbon Orbeas.

Sport rider trying to pedal his chain back on. He had a good attitude, he was talking to his bike like a Cowboy talking to an errant calf.

Got a good semi-hot lap in just before the start and hit the line feeling relaxed. George was there with his boys to see me off, his son Lazlo rocking his freshly won silver medal, ya dude! The sun came out just before the whistle and I began shucking layers, wishing I had time to ditch my undershirt, I didn’t so I laid my Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup down and tried to follow the leaders off the line to the uphill hole-shot through a deceptively loose corner into the singeltrack. It was mayhem, I had no idea where I was when I fell in line behind John Foley and Sean Cavanaugh. I guess I made some passes in there, but I was clueless as to how many dudes were ahead of us. After a lap at “Jesus Christ I am gonna to frickin’ die” pace, a selection was made and it was me, Foley, and Cavanaugh for the rest of the race. Sean was on his Single Speed 29er with a 36 X 18 gear, a true “two to one” on the 29, not that translated from 26” B.S., i.e. a big god damn gear, big enough not just to hang on this high speed course, but big enough to instigate and punish the geared riders. I’d open a gap on him just to have him blaze by me on the slightest incline like he was unaffected by the Earth’s gravitational pull and I was in a deep sea diving suit at the bottom of an undersea canyon.

I don't remember this part of the race at all, but it looks like fun

We could see Andrew Freye hovering out of reach maybe fifteen seconds ahead and I knew Verge 2/3 ‘Cross phenom John Peterson was up ahead somewhere so second lap I drilled it, trying to ride away from John and Sean and close the gap to Freye. I basically cooked myself doing so and third lap it was Foley’s turn to man the whip. The guy is aggro, just a vicious rider, he gets the pace high then jumps on every hill…brutal. At one point Sean said “Does he know we’re doing another lap after this?”. Fourth lap Sean was the punisher, his Single speed pace off-putting for the geared guys. He was leading so we’d sit in, but he wasn’t pushing on the flats, he was recovering, just spinning away, then we’d hit an uphill and wham! He would fly up that thing like a cat clawing it’s way up your face as you try to throw it in a lake (personal experience, I was four, four year olds do that type of thing) . Man, I ride a single speed (dur), and I have no idea how Sean was going so damn fast on that thing. I’m afraid to go one gear on one gear with him, he’s looking pretty monstrous this season. He’s also really good at making noises behind you that make it sound like he’s going into a death roll when he’s really just getting ready to smack you with a 2 X 4 to the forehead type attack.
After sitting in fourth lap, I was ready to make my last ditch attack on my companions. This I implemented just past the start finish and managed not to wash out on the wood-chippy corner at the top. I got a gap and tacked a little bit onto it through the first part of the course. I could still see both those guys back there, the elastic was firmly in place, it was stretched, but showed no sign of snapping. My pace was ‘Cross pace, the laps were taking twenty minutes. I figured I can do anything for fifteen minutes so it was just really, really going to suck for the last five minutes.
I was pushing the biggest gear I possibly could, big ring, third cog from the bottom, not sure what that is…44 X 15? Never had any reason to check, not cogs I use a lot. Somehow, Sean was not disappearing into the distance, he was still breathing down my neck. There was just enough air between us to relax going into the finish, glad there was because Sean could easily have snapped that 19.5 Lb. Bike up the final incline at the finish before I could say “Why the hell did I have a bowl of ice cream, brownies and half a Boston Cream donut for desert last night?” then barf all over my top tube.
After I crossed the line I put it in a wee little gear and spun out on the course for a cool down lap. When I got back and checked the results I was shocked to see I had again landed in third place. Huh? Ahead of me were Peterson and Freye who had overtaken him to finish on top of the podium. Technically that puts me in the series leader’s jersey but I didn’t know that and I guess neither did the officials, we’ll see how long I can hold onto to that virtual thing anyway.

Not used to being on the podium, here I experiment with really cool facial expressions

It was a good day for the IBC MTB posse with Linnea finishing second in Expert 12-34 and maintaining a healthy series lead. Colin finishing fifth in Expert 19-29 after riding a 120 mile Brevet the day prior. Alex finishing 3rd in Sport 19-29 despite the fact that the longest ride she’s done this season happened to be riding over to meet us that morning (and she showed up to the race with a tacoed rear wheel and a missing brake pad).
And George Shaw finishing 23rd in a big ol’ Sport 30-39 field.
No racing next week, heading up to Waitsfield, VT to ride some gaps with Jeff Whittingham and Greg The Leg, can’t hardly wait.

I decided last minute not to run this saddle. Alex's idea of saving weight. Isn't there a law against peeing on National Icons? Cupcakes!

Danish Pastry House Rides

Thursday AM, 8:15 O' clock at The Above-mentioned Danish Pastry House at 330 Boston Ave. at the corner of Winthrop St. in Medford with an 8:30 stop at the Governor's Ave./South Border Rd. entrance to The Fells. Duration is about two hours at a gentlemanly brisk pace, not so much a hammer ride as a speed skills ride. This'll be going on every week, rain or shine unless otherwise stated. It is officially a NEMBA ride but anyone who wants to get a good workout, work on their MTB skills, or wants to get into Mountain Bike racing is more than welcome to show up.

It's very similar to Lichen, in fact, I'd liken it to Lichen.

Actual singletrack.

2 Dumb 4 Gears

It's true, I can't ride a geared bike like a normal person anymore. I used to think Skip Brown was a crazy man for riding a geared bike like he does, i.e. riding in the big chainring at an extremely low cadence, standing on the hills, and never spinning over 60 RPMs. You'd see him riding up a hill at The Wilderness 101 and think he was a single speeder, because why on earth would someone with the option of switching into a smaller gear be grinding away like that, wrestling their bike up the climb? I guess because it works...if you primarily ride a single speed that is.

Yesterday was The Root 66 Winsted Woods race in Connecticut. I rolled down there with IBC teammates George, Linnea, and Colin. It was another gorgeous day, a little cooler, but I'd take it, last week's 75° felt more like 95° comparative to the temperatures we've been having. The night prior I'd pulled a typical bonehead move by having people over to watch some stupid thing which cannot be named, had a few beers, and stayed up until 1:30 in the AM. As a result my mental alertness was somewhat lacking on sunday morning. This was demonstrated in terrifying fashion when we went to pick up George in Brookline and I began to pull away from the curb before he'd gotten in the car. That woke me up and with Colin's Blackberry aided navigational skills we arrived in Winsted otherwise incident free.
Got out on course for a little bit, decided to up the pressure in the rear tire since I'm running tubes at the moment. The singletrack was rooty, and twisty and there were a few steep, loose climbs, which low pressure would have been ideal for, but there were also high speed, baby-head-strewn descents, and big pointy slabs of rock jutting out of the ground. I like running tubes about as much as I like riding a geared bike. It's PZF: Partial Zero Fun. The pressure you have to run not to pinch flat causes the ride to be brutally abusive to your back. However the tires specced on the Paragon are nice, the Jones ACX's hook up real well in the loose stuff.
So last week I got over-excited and went out way too hard because for once I could. Normally I'd be sitting in the back, waiting for the first hill or singletrack section to bite so I could move up a few spots. My tactic was to go with someone that would ride more my speed throughout the race, that would be Andrew Freye. He wasn't too far ahead of me at Hopbrook, so my logic was that without performing an act of awesomeness similar to last week where I used the one match I had to light the rest of the book on fire (which I then threw in the back of the pick up truck, next to the propane tank, and then...and then...you get the point) in the first ten minutes of the race I should, I say should be able to stay with him. A different Andrew Freye showed up to Winsted, this version took off from the gun, looking pretty scary, and was out of my sight before I knew it. So much for the best laid plans of mice and morons.
Plan B...I guess plan B was to get shot to the back, then ride around in no man's land, breathing too hard in a little gear, bouncing off every root and rock in sight, and cursing quietly too myself. I came up with that one on the spot, I'm quick on my feet y'know. Seamus Powell, a sick Junior Expert was behind me though, not a good sign for me, just a bad sign for him, he came by me, I picked up the pace a little and passed an also atypically geared Paul Simoes. Ahead the group was getting strung out and I was loosing ground.
There were two single-speeders ahead of me, Mike Montalbano and Sean Cavanaugh. They were kicking my ass and I wasn't sure what the psychological implications of getting beat by SSers while on a geared bike would be. I didn't want to find out, but I didn't seem to be gaining ground on them either. I was falling back into my old mindset of "oh, I must be going faster than the single speed guy through this section, he must be going so much slower with that puny gear". Wrong, wrong, wrong! On the SS you accelerate in and out of sections faster, then just carry your speed while recovering on the downs, not to mention the fact that they were probably killing the climbs on their 20Lb. rigid bikes. Stupid bunny.
Eventually I passed a sidelined with a broken chain Freye, I was certain I would see him again. I started getting glimpses of Alec Donahue, who absolutely destroyed the Expert field (he would have beaten all but a couple of the Pro field as well and I think he flatted) in his first foray into mountain bike racing last week because they wouldn't let the pro roadie, Elite 'Cross race winning bloke race the pro class. I calculated that he was about a minute ahead, not on pace with last week's ride. "He probably raced Battenkill yesterday" I thought to myself. This was true, that and he may have been having mechanical issues, he did end up ultimately DNFing.
After three laps of trying to work out this geared thing, I decided to bag it and ride like an idiot, more like myself. This meant putting it in the big ring and using no gear smaller than my 26t in the rear (third cog down from the top). I was amazed how much better this worked up the first climb, on the lap prior I had bobbled right next to a pre-riding Rich Blair while trying to spin up it in some silly little gear. This method caused me to move a little faster, I saw Foley ahead but I had a resurgent Freye closing from the rear. When Freye came by I dug in and held on for dear life as we came by John. We were railing down the baby-head-strewn descent, I could see Sean and Mike, the two single-speeders ahead. They were likely hating life on this section with their rigid forks, I know I would have been. Just as we passed those guys, Freye's drivetrain completely exploded, his one remaining chainring bolt letting go. That was it for him unfortunately.
The course had a nice rhythm to it, all the climbs were followed by downhills which provided ample recovery time. With this in my mind I absolutely flagellated myself up the two climbs in the middle of the course, trying to ditch a stubborn Sean Cavanaugh, again falling into that silly "I can drop the single-speeder" mindset. If it's a real mountain bike race and the SSer is geared correctly he is going to be incredibly hard to drop. Toward the end of the lap, I could see a Bikeman rider ahead, Arthur Degraw. He was on a full suspension bike, gliding through the roughness while I clanked up behind him. I sat in recovering for a bit when I finally did get on his wheel, then attacked up a small rise just before the second to last major climb, standing in the 44 X 20. These were not the legs I had before an entire winter of relentless fixed gear training.
I drilled it up the last climb up to the field, knowing that this was it, and if I was clear at the top that I was home free on the descent to finish. As I crested the hill there was no one in sight so I just had some fun on the way down, hopping logs and rocks, ripping through the last couple berms, and rolling across the line with a lapped Expert rider beating me in the sprint.
Through attrition, mechanicals, and some luck on my part, I ended up in the third podium spot
and second place in the series on points. I forgot to fit this in elsewhere but I gotta thank George for the bottle hand up, without it I would have been tapped three laps in. I was standing on the line with my two bottles when they announced that we were doing five laps, I figured it was going to be a hot, 2.5 hour race, I was going to shrivel up and die. So I called out to George "hey if you happen to be near the feed zone can you maybe hand me one of the bottles from the car?". The woman giving us pre-race instructions said "Oh no, you have to take everything with you, no outside help". A bit incredulous I said "Is that a new rule? No bottle hand-ups and you are now required to ride with a ferret down your shorts?". Someone quickly corrected her, although this exchange confused George and instead of handing me a bottle, he handed me a live Ferret from the car which had nearly no electrolytes in it, Ferrets are pretty much crap as race fuel.

Sorry, no photos, I had photographer's block, never even thought to bust out the camera.

Dover Wednesday Evening TT, or "You Want The Race of Truth? You Can't Handle The Race of Truth!"

The first wednesday of every one of the moderately tolerable months is the Dover Wednesday Evening Bicycle Time Trial. I've been doing this thing for a few years now, it's a sort of fitness check for me and a great mid-week workout. I prefer this course to the uber-popular Charlie Baker Concord TT. Think Nascar Vs. Formula One only with Charlie Baker you just have to turn right not left. Screaming through the rollers on Farm Rd. at 40mph is always a blast. It's free and the guys that put it on keep accurate results dating back to 1996, complete with temperature, wind activity, and your average speed, that's a pretty good deal.

I posted my second best time, hopefully as the season progresses I'll be able to knock myself off the podium a couple times. I don't do Aero-anything, it's not about setting the absolute best time, it's about learning to ride the bike I ride the most faster and getting faster on the mountain bike. I encourage anyone to come check this thing out , it's all about the fun and the suffering.

Lord I'm Blistered Oh, Yeah

First race of the season yesterday. Root 66 tried to trip me up by having an XC event on saturday, they never have the XC event on saturday! It's the middle of what we call "Super Sale" at the shop and I was pretty sure my request for Super Sale Saturday off with four days notice would be seen as an attempt at comedy. It wasn't, I got it off, so thanks to my Sponsor/Employer (IBC) for that. This is why I work at a bike shop and it's why I work at the shop I do.

The forecast was for 48° and rain, I packed for a miserable race and post race hypothermia.
We (Greg, Colin,Linnea, and myself) got to Middlebury, CT to find blue skies, 75°, and this weird yellow thing above us which burned our skin and made water come out of our pores. I'll have to look into what that thing is, I think it has something to do with science. The funny thing was we were all whining about how warm and nice it was. Folks had packed knickers, heavy gloves, undershirts, wool socks and hats, and embrocation, but not water bottles and sunscreen. It's like Jay-Z said, quoting Little Orphan Annie "It's a hard knock life for us". That song was almost as good as the one where Tupac sampled Bruce Hornsby...that guy is one big, dead, genius.

Didn't preride, just hit the road and spun a bit, got down to the start line with time to spare for a change. Lined up next to John Foley and Andrew Freye, chatted for a minute, and we were off. I don't know what I was thinking , maybe it was the gears, but I got up on second wheel going into the hole shot, following John into the woods. I decided my best bet was to just keep it in the big ring. I'm smart. I didn't start suffering a maximum until we hit the first substantial climb. I went deeply anaerobic, I haven't been training that hard yet and going anearobic and then staying there for as long as I did the first lap was not brilliant on my part. I think John and I lead for a few minutes, then guys started blowing by like I was riding a bicycle Rickshaw with two fat, red-faced German Tourists in it.


Damage control. So I stopped trying to spin up the climbs like all these crazy geared guys do and put the chain on the big ring and rode like a Skip Brown, or a weaker shadow of a Skip Brown, but I was in the big ring, mashing away and I seemed to be recovering and moving a little faster. At one point I passed by a cheering Kerry Combs and shouted "Gears suck!", and I meant it, I wasn't really into the whole gear thing. can't wait to get my new Fisher Rig SS. It's basically the same bike as the Paragon, which was what I was riding but without all the klanky, squeaky, jamming, clicking, annoying bits.

Long story shorter than usual...I finished, caught Foley, didn't catch anyone else, felt not too crappy in the end, got 6th out of 10 finishers. Definitely have some work to do if I'm going to try to hang with the big boys all season, but I think I'll be alright.
New IBC kids Colin (4th Expert 19-29), Linnea (1st Expert 12-34), and George (16th Sport 30-39), all did great, and it was cool having an IBC MTB posse out there. Watch out now!
Gotta go, the live updates from Paris Roubaix are much more interesting than anything I'm writing here.

Oh, the title of the post...Johnny Cash, refers to my hands. You can do all sorts of stuff to prepare yourself for mountain biking but you can't fake gripping the bars. My un-calloused hands are meat right now. Like I said, I've got work to do.

I'm Pretty!

Woo Hoo!

Got out on the trails yesterday, finally. Took the demo Paragon out, it's not my bike, but it'll do. A few factors came together to make it one special ride. First off it was nicest day we've had yet this year, by far. Secondly the bike was rocking, the new geometry is a huge improvement over last year's Fishers (and I liked last year's Fishers...what's better than pizza? More pizza!).
Thirdly and lastly, I found new (to me) trails which are sweet, real nice singletrack which begin just five minutes from my house. It used to take me a whole seven minutes to get to the trailhead, now I have two more minutes of dirt time. Finding these trails was like that dream
(I think everyone has this dream, this one and the one about missing the last step and getting that "I'm falling through space feeling") where you notice a door in your house you never knew was there and it opens into a huge room or another world or something entirely crazy. I couldn't believe I'd never realized these trails were there. Now if I could just bottle that amazing feeling of discovery, that giddiness...I could become a millionaire and go ride my bike full time.



The bike feels like a whip, you forget you're on a 29er. The front end snaps up over logs, it handles tight, twisty, turny stuff way better then it's ancestors. As is the bike weighs 26 Lbs, but with a couple upgrades it could be a sick race machine. It don't look too bad neither.

The detractors of the 29 thing talk about slow acceleration due to the increased rotational weight of the larger wheel. That argument only holds water if you're going slow. Throw the chain onto the big ring, get on top of that gear and nothing is going to slow you down enough to make you take notice of the weight of larger wheel. Rail into a corner at speed, let it all hang out and you'll realize the benefits of the larger contact patch damn quick. Woo-Hoo!

You ready for this? I'm going to be racing this bike (starting tomorrow) at the next couple Root 66 races. A geared bicycle, what? Not quite sure how I'm going to deal with it. Suppose I'll just have to go out there and have some fun and see what happens, oh darn.

Oooh, SuperflyYou're gonna make your fortune by and by But if you lose, don't ask no questions why The only game you know is "Do or Die"Ah-ha-ha

Totally breaking character here with the multiple posts per day but I had to share this:

http://twentynineinches.com/2008/04/02/superfly-single-speed/

My world has just been turned on it's head. Ever since we got a Fisher Superfly in at the shop I've been doing this dance around it, trying to figure out how I could possibly justify owning it. I would think "yes, I can use a Singleator, run it as a single speed" or "maybe I'll just race gears this year". Neither of those are serious options, using a tensioner is kind of anathema to me and I think switching back to gears at this point would just make me slow again. I had to thank Glenn Cook for buying the only Superfly we had in stock in my size, he removed a great deal of temptation by doing so. In turn I thank Fisher for only producing three of these SS Superflies

and removing this option from my grasp as well. For this season I will happily ride my Rig,

but next year...next year. Is a year up yet? How about now?

The Devil Makes work For Idle Legs

Hi two people reading this blog today. I'm not feeling well, I'm not riding my bike, so I'm thinking about riding my bike, and geeking out about riding my bike. I got on the Google Map Pedometer and mapped my hill route to work.

Hill Route:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1767684

It could easily be made into a loop without much customization. It looks a wee bit confusing with all the back tracking business, I'll try to clarify for you...two people.

- So you start out at my house (not literally for the one of you two who may be slightly on the Autistic spectrum)
- Then you head out west on Boston Ave
- Left on 60/High St.
- Go straight through the first rotary
- Right at second rotary up Mystic
- Right at light onto 3/Mystic
- Veer left onto Hutchinson (Climb #1 about 5min.)
- Left at top down Forest
- Veer Right down Park Ave Extension
- Cross Mass Ave go up Park Ave. (Climb #2 About 3min.)
- Cross Rt. 2, immediate left after overpass down the "Access Road"
at the bottom I hop on the sidewalk on the left side to avoid having to deal with traffic and double back up the access road on the other side of Rt. 2 (Climb #3 about 5-6 Min back to top of water tower)
- Head back over Rt.2, this time heading down to the funky little rotary,
- second right out of rotary onto Prospect,
- then veer right onto Clifton
- Right onto 60 at light at bottom
- Right at light onto Concord (Climb #4 about 4 min.)
- Continue up Concord (Climb #5 1 min. power climb in here)
- Left on Spring/Smith St.
- Right on Trapelo (Climb #6 wee little power climb, maybe 45sec)
- Pass Cambridge Reservoir (Climb #7 2 min. grinder)
- Left on Winter, good spot for recovery here
- Follow Winter back to Reservoir, head down One way street the wrong way,
stay right on shoulder at first then switch to left side so traffic can see you...
not super sketchy really, this is a very quiet road.
- Go right into first office park, all the way to top and back down (Climb #8 about 2 min.)
- Right on Winter, Pass second office park driveway
- Right up third Office Park Driveway, stay right at stop sign, go to top and back down
(Climb #9 About 2min.)
(Here you can also just take a right on Second Ave. and go up Bear Hill Rd.)
- Right on Winter, cross 95 onto Totten Pond
- Right into Prospect Hill Park, up access road (Climb #10 this is the big boy 5-7 min. with 17% grades thrown in)

you can either go to the top or continue on over to the neighborhood on the other side.
If you're not commuting to IBC Newton I would just turn around and maybe hit the Bentley College Hill on the way home and call it a day.

While I was at it I mapped this gem.
(Almost) Non-Total-Shite Commute:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1767706
It's a relatively not-crappy way to get from Somerville to Newton.
The only slightly tricky part is finding the dead end neighborhood to cut through off of 20,
it's probably easier to figure out in reverse. Oh, and that left off 60/Pleasant in Belmont...that's onto a footbridge over the train tracks, totally avoids the gnarliness of Belmont center.

Hope you find that helpful...two people.

-t

Doper

"Coming down with a stomach virus" isn't just a euphemism for being doped to gills and needing an out before testing...sometimes. I'm pretty sure that The WADA wasn't testing down at The EFTA King of Burlingame Time Trial in Rhode Island yesterday but I decided to play it safe anyway. The kid at the register down at the Starbucks near my work has decided that I don't get charged for extra shots in my coffee, then the guy manning (guying?) the Espresso machine invariably offers an additional shot "on the house". Because of this I am nearly positive that my caffeine levels are way off the charts, I would definitely fail doping controls. That's why I feigned a tummy ache saturday night to get out of racing sunday. It had nothing to do with riding myself into the ground last week, commuting in the rain, and not sleeping, amazing that a virus could infiltrate the veritable fortress of my body, amazing.
Hopbrook is next sunday, going to try to pull myself together for that. In the meantime read this report by new IBC Expert Mt. Biker Colin Reuter on this past weekend's race, sounds like he had a good ride.

Ready to Get Crazy? Let's Have Some Fun Today

- Bob Ross

Met up with a bunch of the IBC Master's team sunday for a little beatdown out toward Wachusett. Richard Barnwell knows some great roads with nasty little climbs which are at the moment covered in sand, ice, and snow. Haven't been doing much high cadence, small gear climbing so I was hurting pretty good. It was a beautiful day, so beautiful that when I got home and found that I had been relieved of my afternoon obligations that I got back on the bike and hit it for a couple more hours. I spent the last forty minutes bonked out, draped over my bars like a jellyfish on a pier, churning into a cold headwind, dreaming of the leftover Chinese food in the fridge. That was some mighty good Moo-Shi.


Wedneday was the IF Elite ride out of IBC. So far it's been a civil, friendly ride with the exception of Sam Silver and Adam Branfman's sprints. Those kids are in a different league. Someday my claim to fame will be (maybe it already is) that I beat Adam Branfman in a sprint. Sure it was a slightly uphill sprint...and it was in our 39 X 23's (Jon Bruno's idea, brutal task master) but I won. All I won was the privilege of being the first guy to spin 210 RPM's to the top where I gasped "That was frickin' horrible!".

We'll be doing that ride every wednesday night out of IBC Newton at 6PM, so come on by if you're looking to ride with some of the fastest most experienced road racers around...and me.