Thanks to everyone who helped put on the best yet Fall Series!
This year's events were: - Individual Time Trials on Thursday,
- Cyclocross on Friday,
- Duathlon on Saturday and
- Street Sprints on Sunday
Our team had a good showing, with Nick and Paul claiming 2nd and 4th places in the 1 mile ITT with some particularly scary corners on Thursday to win the event for the team.
Cyclocross was a crazy event, where a lot of us were just trying to not crash each lap on the wet, muddy, sandy and leaf-covered obstacle course. Phi Psi's Miles Johnson showed how much of a role experience plays in this race, opening up an impressive early gap. Nick and Thomas stayed upright long enough to score a team 7th place for us.
The Duathlon was a 1 mile run, followed by an 8 lap sprint on the track and closed out with a 1.5 mile run around the stadium. Drew and Nick claimed 5th and 6th in this event for a 2nd place team score.
The final event, Street Sprints, was a tournament-style measure of who had the strongest legs over 200 meters from a standing start. Kris Zee of Cru Cycling was a monster off the line and walked away with the event. When asked by JB if he, as returning champion, wanted a best-of-three final round, he opted out, presumably responding, "No thanks, Jordan, I'll just win this one". Paul and Drew both made it through to earn quarter-final round time bonuses to hang on to 4th place in the event and 3rd place overall.
Overall, we had a great showing in this year's Fall Series. Thanks again to all the event organizers, officials, volunteers and riders for making last weekend lots of fun.
Tuesday, October 30
Monday, October 22
Can we please get some "bad" weather?
I don't like the term, "bad weather". What is bad for one person could well be quite nice for another. If 35 degrees and raining means that I'm training and you're not, I'd call that good weather (you may not).
Last year, we had an unusually mild winter. I hated it. There was no occasion to our rides. Putting on a jacket and some legwarmers for a moderately chilly mid-January jaunt just seems wrong. I love the single digit suffer-fests of frozen fingers and toes. I love rides when I have the road to myself, free of the fair-weather heroes and Hilly Hundred types. I love it when all you can hear is the swishing of the tires over whichever physical state of water that day might have brought and the sound that it makes when it just runs off your saturated body and kit helplessly with nowhere to go.
There is a certain, inexplicable quality of riding in conditions in which others choose not to that makes you want to go faster. It's not just that the cold, rain, snow or hail takes your mind off of the pain you are submitting your legs to; it has something to do with the reason you're out there. It is a reminder that you're not one of the summer peloton, but of something a little more distinguished. You may not be the fastest, but you're doing everything you can to get there, and that's something you can't say about all the people who used to be on the road when the weather was "good".
In closing, let me once again refer you to the Old Velomiskrit:
Last year, we had an unusually mild winter. I hated it. There was no occasion to our rides. Putting on a jacket and some legwarmers for a moderately chilly mid-January jaunt just seems wrong. I love the single digit suffer-fests of frozen fingers and toes. I love rides when I have the road to myself, free of the fair-weather heroes and Hilly Hundred types. I love it when all you can hear is the swishing of the tires over whichever physical state of water that day might have brought and the sound that it makes when it just runs off your saturated body and kit helplessly with nowhere to go.
There is a certain, inexplicable quality of riding in conditions in which others choose not to that makes you want to go faster. It's not just that the cold, rain, snow or hail takes your mind off of the pain you are submitting your legs to; it has something to do with the reason you're out there. It is a reminder that you're not one of the summer peloton, but of something a little more distinguished. You may not be the fastest, but you're doing everything you can to get there, and that's something you can't say about all the people who used to be on the road when the weather was "good".
In closing, let me once again refer you to the Old Velomiskrit:
Fair-weather riding is a luxury reserved for Sunday afternoons and wide boulevards. Those who ride in foul weather – be it cold, wet, or inordinately hot – are members of a special club of riders who, on the morning of a big ride, pull back the curtain to check the weather and, upon seeing rain falling from the skies, allow a wry smile to spread across their face. This is a rider who loves the work.
Wednesday, October 10
Simple Economics
Some more inspiration from the velominati (this time it's marko's):
...the beauty of pain is that it is free to any of us who are willing to take it. By placing value on pain we recognize that there is plenty of it laying around for the taking because so many other people do what they can to avoid it.I'm predicting a further increase in the local pain surplus to be brought in with the coming long weekend. It's a buyer's market, gentlemen. Buy, buy, buy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)