Tuesday, January 31, 2012

4 Days to Street Cred!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


You're cool, so you probably already knew this... but just in case you didn't...

(i think i'll do a post every night leading up to this, you know, get they hype going)


This is the first of 4 stages, so come on out, ride with your friends and have a great time.

Like this...

(more info here.)

(i heard they got a keg of Tall Grass)



Tuesday, January 24, 2012

1 gear w/ bull horns

The Volker man (cousin to the Omega Man) recently put the original handlebars back on my single speed bike.

I love it.

For a while i had flat bars but now i'm back to the bull horns. I like them much better. Tonight was the first ride with the new bars and i'd forgotten how great this bike is. I bought it from Volker Bicycles back in (i think) the winter of 2009. That was probably the first time id ever set foot in the shop.

Little did i know that purchasing this bike would be the first step towards joining the Colavita / Parisi Coffee cycling team and becoming totally obsessed with Bicycles.

Thanks single speed.

($10 if you can tell what movie i'm watching as i drank white wine out of a bicycle glass)


Sunday, January 22, 2012

Apocalypto!!!

I got my Apocalypto on today.

have you guys seen Apocalypto?

The road bike is getting back into the swing. Did maybe 30 miles today. Breathing hard for a lot of it. I did a good job of falling out of shape over the last 3 weeks. I trained hard at it. Now it's time to put in the miles and see if i can actually get some descent results on the road bike.

Mountain biking (weather permitting) will be in full swing too. I took the new rig to swope yesterday and it was pretty sweet. So sweet that i didn't stop and take pictures.

Next time out i'll rock the Apocalypto jersey and snap a few pic's.


Sunday, January 15, 2012

New Mountain Bike (it's totally kick a**)

53 degrees at 930pm on Sunday, January 15... and i have a brand new mountain bike to play with.

Pow!


Sunday, January 8, 2012

Traveling back in time... yesterday

Today is Sunday but yesterday was Saturday.

The Colavita crew has a new meeting spot for the 9am Saturday ride. It's the Parisi Cafe inside Union Station. Pretty awesome. Honestly, how cool is it to roll your bike inside Union Station and then chill at the coffee shop while you wait for your pals roll in. Plus everyone gets a free shot of espresso and then 25% of anything else. Parisi Coffee rules! Tip them well, please.

The ride was much longer than i had planned on so a YJ's breakfast was required before i could ride back home.

Later that evening it was time for Roller Skaging... X is turning 30 so we had to get our birthday party on!

Editors note - the sc blog will be slient for a bit (a week?) as i'm planning a big 2011 recap post and it'll take a while. Or ill get lazy and not do it at all.

Stay Tuned.


Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Wednesday Night Urban Mountain Bike Ride

Tonight was the inaugural Wednesday Night Urban Mountain Bike Ride.

You should come with!

If your reading this you should come out and join us next Wednesday. We depart from the Latte Land on the Plaza (the latte land on the west end of the plaza, near anthropology) at 6:30 pm and ride for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. It's a slow to medium pace no drop ride. Yes it's called urban mountain biking but really we mostly ride on city streets while trying our hardest to find anything 'off road.' Alleys, hills, stairs, sidewalks, bike paths.

The short single track section thru Gillham park is nice.

So next Wednesday jump on that sturdy mountain bike and come ride with your friends. Hopefully we'll get some snow here in the near future. Then it's really on.

The ride happens every Wednesday thru February.

Hope to see you there.

Monday, January 2, 2012

Cross off the Old Year... The Last Race of the Season.

Whew!

Man, what a long season. Maybe i'll do another post reminiscing about the past year (it was awesome) but for now i'll just stick with the final cross race of the year.

Cross off the old year race re-cap:

Going into this race i was winning the 360 series and was a very close second in the KBARCX overall. My teamate David was winning the KBAR but i had been gaining on him over the last few races and still had a chance to win it on the last day.

The weather was beautiful and i wore shorts a short sleeve jersey and no gloves! Unbelievable.

I remember this race being snow covered in years past, not today.

We had 24 starters in the 3/4 race. A good size. It seemed like most of the 3/4 races we did this year were a good size. I got to the start first and hung out while everyone else drifted in. People seemed to be in good spirits. Less pressure since it was the last local race of the year, i guess. Plus the A+ weather was making everyone a little giddy.

All the usual suspects were on the front row, Boulevard Jason, Teamate David, Boulevard Carl, Coppage Copperfield. Only James was missing, but It was going to be another good race none the less. The whistle blew and i almost took out Jason when i swerved while clipping in, whoops. It was basically the same course as Wednesday's race. My memory is fuzzy but after a lap or two it was the same old faces at the front. I was feeling a little tired and was riding at the back of the group. There were attacks and seperations but the brutal winds helped keep it together. I believe there were 5 of us together at the front. Dave, Jason, Carl, Coppage, me.

With 3 to go i was starting to think about riding for my teamate Dave instead of for myself. There were a few reasons for this but chief among them was that i was feeling tired. Also I won on Wednesday and then theres the fact that Dave is the bomb. So without knowing exactly what it entailed i decided to ride for him. Really this decision came when i noticed nobody wanted to pull on the pavement section. Jason had been leading but started looking around for help. People hesitated and i could see that Dave was about to pull thru and start working. So instead i rode up past him and said "ill take a pull".

Everyone slotted in behind me and i pulled as hard as i could for a lap and half. During this time i would glance back to see that we were all still together and Dave sitting 2nd wheel. I liked this. I was starting to get tired when i heard a small commotion behind me. I think someone went into the tape and held a few people up for a split second. I used this opportunity and pulled off the front and told David to go. At this point i think there was 1.5 laps to go. As soon as David pulled thru i swung back in line and went slow thus opening up a gap to Dave. I think Jason snuck thru before i got back in line to block.

He was on Davids wheel pretty quickly but then David quickly pulled clear again and was riding solo. Coppage came around me (yes i was blocking but i was trying to do it in a cool way, no swerving or anything like that) and made contact with Jason but by that time David had already pulled clear so they became a two man chase group. The course was constantly rubbing up against itself so when david and i crossed paths and i saw he had a gap of 2 or 3 seconds i said "go, you got a gap". My play was working! I'm a genius!

Now, Britton was making fun of me afterwards, saying my claim of 'team tactics' was a bunch of bs, but this is exactly what i was hoping would happen. When i glanced back during my pull and saw that David was on my wheel i was hoping i could sling shot him off the front... and that's what happened. I knew he was really strong and that if he could just get a little daylight he might be able to take it home.

As David's gap increased i gave one more big yell of encouragement, this was fun. We were riding as a team.

Anyway...

So lets re-cap, David is off the front with 1.5 laps to go. Jason and Brett are together maybe 5 seconds back, then there's me and Carl. Both of us soft pedaled for maybe 30 seconds. I didn't want to help him get up to David and maybe he didn't want to help me get back up to Jason, his teammate. So essentially it went from a 5 man race to a 3 man race. The question is would Brett and Jason catch up to David? At this point I was much more interested in this than my own race. I kept glancing around to check it out. Then I saw Brett wipe out pretty hard on the gravel and right then i knew Davids chances just went up big time. Instead of 2 chasers it was down to 1.

Long story short.... it worked, Dave won!

Pow!

I was totally psyched for him.

I finished 4th behind Carl.

So did our 'team tactics' make the difference? Whose to say. It was waaay fun though. Obviously Dave still have won without my help but he also could have lost. This cross season has been a blast and a big reason why is the fact that for the last half of the season there have been 5 or 6 guys who were all evenly matched. When thats the case then any advantage you get can be a game changer. Sometimes all you need is a tiny gap and if someone can help you get that gap then you're already a step up on the competition.

Of course none of this would have worked if Dave didn't have the legs, but he did and therefore i'm a genius.

I cant think of a better end to the season.