Destroy yourself

That was my plan for tonights ride, destroy myself.

I was sitting at work earlier today, feeling good, knowing i had done a true recovery ride on Monday, a short but intense workout yesterday after i dropped out of the Tuesday night universe practice early due to a still soar groin, so all that meant today would be prime for a long hard ride. p.s... long for this time of the year, on a weeknight, is 1.5 hrs.

So that's what i did, kind of. It started hard but then i kind of got tired of destroying myself, plus X wasn't that into destroying myself, or herself, so we slowed to a more reasonable pace. We still kept it brisk but we were done destroying. Future destroy yourself evenings may have to be solo if the ride is truly going to live up to it's name.

On another note the tour de BBQ must be coming up because we saw spray painted signs everywhere.

Besides that i'm totally pumped about boss cross on Saturday and Sunday. the cat 3's do 1 hour! That's a great workout. A message to the boss cross promoters, if your reading this, is this the course with all the sand? Are you going to make us run all that sand? Please have mercy. I have a ginger groin and running in sand sounds painful.

Did everyone see the Manions recap on CXMagazine.com?

Ciao

Manions weekend

Road season is over, dude.

This weekend our cycling team hosted a Saturday / Sunday cross race, Manions Cross. It was totally and completely bad ass. The team pitched in big time and I think we designed a killer course and put on great event. Big thanks to Dan-O the team prez for doing the bulk of the work. Well done sir.

Manions is hilly and this year it was also curvey. The bone dry ground made it even more difficult as the course turned into an extremely dusty and slippery surface after just a few laps. Saturday went one direction and Sunday went the other. I did the 3/4 race both days.

Saturday i started towards the back and had a really hard time passing on the curvey course. I bided my time and watched as the leaders rode away from me. Eventually i rode up to 5th and 4th was close but i bobbled twice after mr. stitches (a huge ditch that was hard to even jump over) and finished 5th. I'm not sure if i would of caught him but it would have been fun to try. Dam those bobbles, they make a world of difference. Ether way I'll take it.

Are my race recap's getting a little stale? They're starting to feel like bland regurgitations.

The rest of the team did great with Mark the Brit making a fine return to racing by finishing 4th in the cat 4 race as well as several folks participating in their first ever cyclo-cross race. I think they liked it.

Got there Sunday (today) and was a little nervous because i pulled a groin muscle during saturdays race. After some warming up and stretching i realized it wasn't as bad as i thought so we were all systems go. My starting spot was much better and i was probably sitting 8th with half a lap gone by. I made my way up to 5th and then very briefly 4th, but he passed me almost immediately and was faster than me thru all the turney stuff so once again i settled for 5th on the day, out of about 30. I'm stoked about these results!

I'm pretty sure i'm way stronger now than at this time last year, i just hope i can keep going up and then peak at Jinglecross. I'm going to peak all over Iowa City. I'm going to peek so hard.

The 'man among men' award for the weekend has to go to Andrew Lyles who did two races Saturday and three races Sunday... and the Sunday races were basically back to back to back. Nice work dude but be sure to rest up after that. You deserve it.

Final thoughts on the weekend...

Bikes are fun and people are cool!

1 day to Manions Cross!!!

Cross has arrived in KC!

We were out at Manions today getting her ready for tomorrows big show. The course is awesome and the weather is going to be beautiful. If you like hills your going to love it. If you hate hills your going to love it. If you love it your going to love it. If you hate it your going to love it. It's a win win! It's cross. It's totally radical. So bring your bikes and your friends and then combine them with a little Tall Grass and have your selves a nice little Saturday. Then repeat on Sunday because this is a double header weekend!

See y'all tomorrow.

Address of the venue...

4411 North 67th St Kansas City, KS 66104

MS150

Sure we only rode a total of 74 miles all weekend and it rained a lot of the time, but the MS150, or MS ride as I think they now call it, was pretty awesome.

This was my maiden voyage and the prep took a little getting used to. We had to pre-pack our bags since they truck them up to Lawrence and have them waiting for you and we were camping so we had a lot to pack. Plus the start was a little nutz, but I guess that's to be expected when there are 2,500 people getting ready to ride.

Once the ride started it was a blast. X works for Quintles so I rode with her and the rest of the Team Quintiles crew, they were good people and really cool. Luckily we managed to miss the two rain showers that came thru, the first while we waited for X's spoke to get fixed and again while we had lunch. Unfortunately we missed the time cut and couldn't do the long route of 109 so settled for 74 miles. Pretty much all of it was new roads to me so it was quite enjoyable.

Camping in Lawrence was an experience. I thought i had the perfect spot for our tent, but it turned out to be right under a lamp as well as right next to the park's swing set... so when the bars closed at 2am on saturday night all the drunk students wandered thru the camping area acting like, well, drunk college students and then several of them proceeded to swing. Totally annoying... but i could see the humor in it. X wasn't quite as amused.

We woke up the next day to rain, then shortly there after the ride was cancelled. Boo! So we got a ride back to KC and that was that. What should of been 180 miles in two days turned into 74 miles in one day. Cest la vie.

Things i learned:

Old guys in tennis shoes can be fast.

Putting time trial bars on a mtn bike is awesome.

Pickle juice is awesome.

The live band they had in Lawrence, Sellout, is awesome.

Investing in a jacked that's water "proof" is necessary.

I will totally do this ride next year. It was fun but it also feels good to help others. I'm usually a lame curmudgeon when it comes to that type of thing, too cynical to have an open mind, but maybe i'm changing. If you can help then you should.

Big thanks to everyone who donated. I personally raised about $400 and the Quintiles team raised over $7,000!

See y'all on down the trail.

Swope... and 10 years later

I tried to make the Colavita group ride but missed it by a few minutes, so we returned to base camp, re-grouped, and I headed for swope. With a coffee stop on the way. Spoke pony was the last time i rode my mtn bike so the going was a bit rusty, but it felt great.

Plus i'm getting the cross bike ready, which is nice.

It doesn't feel like 10 years since the attacks against America. I was at KU, in class, and didn't hear about any of it until both the towers were already down. The phone rang at my apartment and it was my roommates mom, i answered with a cheery "hello?" i think she could immediately tell i didn't know what had happened. I called my mom at work, the tv footage i had just turned on showed the towers still standing (must of been some sort of re-cap) so she had to tell me that they had both collapsed. Surreal. I remember it like it was yesterday.

I don't know what to say about the whole thing but thinking about it makes me want to be a better person.

It really doesn't feel like it's been 10 years.