Cateye RR- Good Idea??

Was doing the road race yesterday a good idea? Let's see...

Was it good for my bike? Probably not the best. I even used heavy duty motorcycle chain lube before I left.



The Garden Gnome Seems to think it was good, he got a rare ride on my dirty steed. I'm pretty sure he was the voice who kept telling me to ride out and race everytime I looked out the window that Saturday morning.



My sweet wife prewashed my clothes in her bath water as soon as I got home. I had already done a quick rinse of everything in the drainage ditch next to the car before tossing into a dirty wet pile in my bag at the race.



Peek a Boo, I don't really see you! This was taken 3 hrs after we finished when I finally was able to get in the shower after cleaning everything else up. It's the next monring and things are still a bit blurry. My glasses served an ornamental, not functional purpose today.

Baker was on another level today. He smoked what was left of the field by 5 minutes, solo from the second of 6 laps.


All in all it was an epic race and good training when I would normally have just sat inside and taken a rest day.

Off and Running

The local scene is underway for the year. As usual, the first Stazio races were probably some of the hardest of the year with a stacked field duking it out to get ready for their spring NRC campaign. Those race have revealed some new faces to watch this season. The first is obviously Taylor Phinney. That guy had me on the ropes several times during the first Stazio race, and he's 16! His family seems to be pretty supportive in all the right ways as well. I see him going a long way this season. Next, I'd be willing to bet that Corey Carlson will begin to be someone to watch this season. The raced cross HARD and is right back out there again for the road season. It shows some love for the sport and that goes a long way to suffering through the school of hard knocks. Finally, you won't see much of him but Peter Horn could finally have the breakthrough year he's been working towards. Peter attends Vassar and spends his summer at the Cycling Center in Belgium. He'll be coming home from Europe for nationals this year and I think a lot of us will have our fingers crossed for him.

Also coming into form right now are the squirrels in our back yard. We've watched these guys do some long slow work all winter long. Over the past few weeks they have really stepped it up. You should see some of the tree to tree moves these guys are pulling off, it's EXTREME!! Besides the big air they have picked up some incredible speed. I'm seriously thinking something is up, their spaz level has gone from 3 to 10+ in the past few days alone. Right now the squirrels are really smashing the combined efforts of the neighborhood cats and deer for back yard dominance. I would love to see the panicked looks on their rabid faces if I brought in USADA to ensure that our back yard is a clean playing field.