06/2009-Reno: But They Do Though Don’t They Though!

At around 4500 feet above my sea level comfort zone sits the Biggest Little City in the World and the home of a Balkan ex-pat devoted to the pursuit of pain. Nenad. A wiry fellow standing about six feet tall with the sharp features one often finds on euro pros. Enter Jaffa and myself for a weekend at altitude. With a late arrival on Friday night after a relatively calm day of peddling parcels in the cold summer air of San Francisco, we hit the sack in anticipation of tomorrow’s drop ride.

Jaffa and Nenad have known each other for years and have ridden and traveled extensively together. I first met Nenad about three weeks ago while on a trip to the eastern extreme of the state of Oregon for the Elkhorn Classic Stage Race. Nenad is a triathalete of about Lance Armstrong’s age (this is probably the only similarity he would allow me to draw between himself and Le Boss) He had been very welcoming then, establishing an open door policy for those of us seeking some high desert punishment. Nenad had a giant Parrot- his name escapes me, but he had mastered the sound of, among other things, the telephone ringing, causing no small amount of confusion whenever he wished. Also calling the Reno retreat home was Bosco, the little blind doggy whom I accidentally renamed “Little Basso” [Ivan Basso is a pro cyclist who once showed great promise in the Tour as heir apparent to Lance, but had since returned from a doping suspension to underwhelming results] This really tickled Nenad for some reason.

I must take this opportunity to admit that I did, in fact have an ulterior motive in coming to Reno to train that weekend. With the Cascade Stage Race being mere weeks away and still not having a TT rig to call my own I arrived at the only reasonable conclusion: Roulette! The plan was quite simple: Drop Ride on Saturday morning, get really tired, sleep, The Eldorado Saturday evening, make $2000.00, sleep. Sunday morning get up and climb 9,000 ft. to the top of Mt. Rose and head home exhausted and wealthy. Let’s just say I accomplished two out of three…

04/2009- Belated but...

Forgive me reader for I have sinned. It has been nearly a year since my last entry. Excuses, being so much like assholes, do, however perform an important role in self-preservation. Which brings to light an interesting relationship; without our assholes we’d all be full of shit, and without our excuses, we’d all be completely free of shit. Anyhow, I have more excuses than I have assholes, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

Since my last entry I have had some ups and downs. I competed in my first stage race (Madera 3/13-3/15). Which also included my first time trial. This was all very new and exciting to me and I hurried to set up my TT rig on the cheap. I purchased a very nice Lazer Bullett TT helmet along with a set of Deda Parabolica clip on TT extensions, to cap it off I bought a Thomson set back seatpost which I cleverly turned backwards helping me achieve an extra forward position. The one thing I totally overlooked was a suitable saddle, that is, one with a nice big cushy nose. In my TT practice laps around the local polo fields (ex polo fields in Golden Gate Park) I hadn’t been able to simulate the effort and thereby sustained forward position on the saddle. Shortly after the countdown I began to seriously regret this oversight and by the end of the TT I had sworn to buy no other new components until I had purchased a proper TT saddle. All that discomfort aside though I managed to break into the GC standings- just barely by clocking the 14^th best time that day.

After the TT there was enough time for a meal, a shower and a bit of bicycle work. I had to restore my “TT bike” to its normal race setup, which simply meant adding some headset spacers, removing the clip-on aero bars, and replacing the set-forward seatpost with the zero set-back. That afternoon’s criterium was a bumpy affair in downtown Madera with a railroad track crossing and a good stretch of debris-covered roadway. I was happy to finish just ahead of a crash with no punctures and safely in tenth place in the race, holding on to 14^th overall. My cagey teammate and captain, Brandon, managed to pull of a perfectly executed sprint for the win putting Team Godspeed on the board and giving him the remaining points necessary for an upgrade to the big leagues. All that remained was tomorrow’s road race.

The road race was nearly flat and at 68 miles over 4 laps with fair weather, the GC leader was never put in any real danger. The only bumps in the road were just that- the bumps in the road. Flats abound, shifting the GC around just a bit. Even the leader caught a flat and the field showed a lot of class by slowing down and waiting for him to return. I managed successfully navigate the worst parts of the road and avoid any such incidents coming across the finish line at 2:43:29