Big Bikes

Weird, Barbaric Polish Duke
(Who no one in their right mind would marry their Princess-daughter off to)
of Burlingame

It's alright, I'm partly Polish. I can make jokes like that, but because I'm only partly Polish I have to leave out part of the joke...in this case, the funny part.

Where was I? Something about terrifying driving and not warming up. Sound about right? So we actually got there pretty quick (flashback to two sentences ago when I was talking about terrifying driving). Not enough time to pre-ride, but time enough to put our clothes on at a full sprint, number up, and check out the first part of the course. Looked good, very fun and techy. Boded well for an out of shape (I'm just going to weave my excuses for why I sucked like a big sucking suck into this post in a sort of subliminal way, therefore you will come away from this story saying "Well, that douche bag Thom P. did pretty well...considering he had more chips stacked against him than that guy on the news who got killed by that overturned Pringles truck". What's that? That's the wrong kind of chip? Well then a joke about an overturned Pringles truck wouldn't make much sense now would it. Way to parade on my piss.) dude with some rusty Bike-Ninja skills.

I seriously almost forgot to finish that sentence after the parentheses.

As I was saying, before I so rudely interrupted myself, Dan B., Linnea, and I rode the first section of the course. By the time we got back it was nearly go time. I decided to roll to the car which was a mile from the start to ditch my wind-vest and extra tube and to put some warm up balm on my butt-ass-white legs. Mike said I didn't have enough time. He was right. I slept maybe seven hours in the two days leading up to the race combined. I sprinted back from the car, missing my start time by two minutes. And I didn't get to race. The End.

Lies and craziness. They were running late and I had time to spare. No problem. Except for the fact that my legs were torn to shreds from the four hour ride I did Thursday, where I bonked and had to eat cream filled chocolate easter eggs and drink Coke until I regained stasis. The guy doing the starts, where he actually held your saddle while you clipped in, was hilarious. Hamming it up and taking the piss out of everyone in his pronounced Gaelic lilt. "Aye, Thommy Parsons, everyone's favorite bike rider...Thommy, I love them wee pink tassels you have on yer bike there lad". And I was off.


The big (to my legs) gear of 34 X 17 felt good to me through the tech stuff. But soon I ran out of tech stuff and entered the drag strip straightaways which would typify the remainder of the course with a few exceptions. I knew Johnny Bold and Kevin Hines were out there behind me somewhere, lighting those sections ablaze as they searched for more gears on their bikes. Super gears.

Quickly I began picking off the riders ahead of me. Which surprised me because the way I was feeling saturday afternoon, after the NEMBA trail day at The Fells, I was pretty sure I had The Black Plague. False Alarm! I had this insane idea that I would see Rooter. I wouldn't even end up putting a minute into him in the end. Remember how much faster the kid got between the 07 and 08 'Cross seasons? Watch out Root 66 Series, IBC has him on a doping regime you wouldn't believe. We first created an actual Centaur by combining the preserved DNA of the deceased race horse, Secretariat and the DNA of Eddy Merckx. Over the past few months we have been blood doping Reuter with the super-blood of this creature. I told you you wouldn't believe it.

I'm lost. I forgot that race reports are actually really, really boring. Triple arrow fast-forward, no, f-that, quintuple arrow fast forward...and I'm standing at the finish line with Colin and IBC's Dan B., who'd ridden the whole dam race, just about, with his seatpost snapped off, on a single speed. He stood for twenty five minutes. And he beat lots and lots of people. It was cold, so we rolled back to the parking lot where we tried to lay plans for a post race ride with the the likes of Chris Gagnon, Kurt Johnson, and Rob Stine. People I had different time lines so Colin, Linnea, and I ended up rolling to Arcadia where Mr. Stine showed us his personal playground. Those trails are sweet! It is no wonder the guy is a Technical-Gorilla-Jedi-Wizard. Most XC courses don't let a guy show off the fact he can cleanly J-hop a two foot high log in his sleep.

In summary: Great race, I'll do it again next year, especially with the added bonus of Rob's trails being nearby, Tim Horton's is better than Dunkin Donuts, getting a doughnut as part of your sandwich combo is awesome, I ate bacon with every meal Sunday, I drank, perhaps a record amount of coffee that day, in possibly related news I also peed more times throughout the course of the day than the word "Fuck" is used in the film Scarface and Goodfellas - combined, The Superfly was wicked! When you haven't breathed really f-in hard for months and months and months and then you go out and breath really f-in hard for half an hour you don't feel too too good, you can do anything for ten minutes but you can't do some things for more than twenty minutes, I got second in my age class and won a sweet full face Bell helmet which I will wear to Highland when I go up there with my Remedy, and...what else? Oh, I saw Gewilli stopped on the side of the trail during the race updating his blog. Now that's commitment.

1.)Rob shows us the way 2.) Collum searches for the precious 3.) "There can be no question, my dear Watson, of the value of exercise before breakfast."

I'm pretty sure Sherlock Holmes was talking about racing your bike before going to Tim Horton's.

Oh ya, oops! Cutler Park doesn't open officially until NEXT WEEK. So yes, big , I say BIG Cutler Park ride, on the actual opening day, Wednesday April 15th 6 PM, 71 Needham St. Newton. No ride this Wednesday though.