Antisocial Riding

Maybe it's just me, but I like riding by myself sometimes. I find it to be very relaxing, not having to worry about pace or where you're headed or how long you're out. So yesterday I was out on a really nice ride, a nose-breather only - meaning I was planning on not going hard enough to have to mouth breathe. I was just thinking I hadn't seen any other people out riding when I checked for cars behind me only to see someone bearing down on me like a freight train. I double checked to make sure it wasn't Dano, and then decided I'd better do something. So I started ramping it up a bit until I was going 32. Still, whoever it was caught me. They didn't pass me or say anything and they must have turned shortly thereafter, but it was pretty impressive. I think it's the bike path racer mentality - if someone is ahead of you it is your duty to catch them. Dan was telling me a funny story about a guy on a Tri bike who caught up to him and pulled along next to him the other day. Dan said he didn't even look over but could hear the guy breathing really hard. I guess Micah had a similar story where a guy caught him and asked him what team he rode for. Micah was apparantly wearing a full Grandstay kit. Man, everyone is getting out for the first training races of the year I guess. Who will win tonight?

NVGP Qualification

Here we go again...

Qualification Blog

First, the good. The NVGP has become a more competitive race in recent years. It went from a race of mostly cat 1's and 2's with a few PROs to mostly PROs with a few cat 1's. The racing is hard and if you aren't really fast you're fodder. The fact that they still let cat 1 riders in at all is pretty cool. Letting in local cat 1's makes even more sense since you're having the race on our turf. It would be insulting to not give locals a chance to participate in their backyard race. So thank you people who let the cat 1's in. That is right on. Also, the qualification process is admittedly pretty fun. It steps up the competition of a few local races much more than a ROY ever does. 

Now, the bad. My biggest problem with the qualification process is that it it limits us to only 12 riders and of those 12 riders there are 3 teams of 4 (one being a composite team). Why is this a problem? Because they invite a few full squads of amateur teams from out of state. Last year teams like wheel and sprocket and iscorp got invites, but no local teams did? So they are saying that those teams are better or more qualified than our local cat 1 teams which is just not true. Not that they are bad teams, they just aren't any more automatically qualified than Grandstay, Flanders, or GP . 

The problem I have with the qualification series this year is that for some reason they decided to take a perfectly good, difficult road race and replace it with a really long, flat road race. They also tacked on an additional criterium which makes sense considering how criterium heavy NVGP is, so no problem there. But why change the road race? The NVGP road races are really hard and really selective. You have to be tough just to hang with the main group. And it's not about endurance. The longest road stage is only 3 and a half hours. Hanging with the group is about speed and power, you can't just hide out and ride along. If it isn't windy the day of the sprinters classic, the race may not weed out riders who will have a difficult time at NVGP. But if that's what they want us to do, I'll be there and I'm sure it will be fun.

I have done NVGP 4 times. It's always been tough ride. My favorite memory was leading John Lieswyn over the gravel roads and bridging up to the break. I was going 40 mph over the grav. He wrote about me in his Cyclingnews diary...

"Over the dirt roads now, and Greg has hit the wall. He's bonking (out of fuel) and I'm close to it as well. The groups are constantly reshuffling…not much is said as we all focus on figuratively holding the wheel of the guy ahead. A Penn Cycles local team mountain biker ringer, whose name I have forgotten but deserves mention, absolutely drills it over a 1500m dirt section and singlehandedly brings the group I'm struggling to hold on to in contact with a split I'd missed."

Daylight Savings Time.

So dumb. This is the time it should stay. Come October we'll change the clocks for no reason and then have to deal with crappy Monday mornings in March. Every year. Why do we do it? Tradition? I've heard it's for farmers. Why do the farmers care what time it is? They can work whenever they want. Just leave the clocks be. If daylight savings time is 8 months of the year shouldn't that just be regular time? And those four month's when they change the clocks could be called, I don't know why but we changed our clocks again. Okay rant over.

Stuff White People Like

Saw THIS the other day and couldn't help myself. Of course, I didn't have the level of commitment to the fingerstache cause to get me to the tattoo parlor. Note the safety glasses, these are important for me when I'm eating chips and salsa, you never know when an errant chip particle will go flying into your eye. The flannel shirt is for chopping down trees with an axe, which I was thinking of doing, but didn't.

Things That Ruin Pro Bike Racing # 4

Radios. This is Phil Ligget's favorite complaint about modern bike racing. And he's right. Combine rider radios with in car radios and dash mounted televisions and a lot of the guesswork come out of the race. When you know a rider is 5 minutes up with 30k to go and they are riding at 45k/h it just a simple formula away from determining how fast the chasers need to ride to catch them in sight of the line. Now, instead of a rider reading the race, the directors are telling everyone what to do, like a puppeteer pulling on strings. 

What's next? With the GPS units we already have, it won't be long before the race information is right in front of the riders via wi-fi from the cars. Imagine looking down at your screen and it tells you exactly how fast you need to be riding, where the next KOM is and when you need to take a drink from your bottle and eat a GU. Soon after, the cycling computer will be moved to a Heads Up Display on your glasses, like a fighter pilot has. 

In order to combat the inevitable predictability of the race, courses are going to have to become more difficult. While it's one thing to know how fast you need to ride to win, it's another thing entirely to actually do it. Especially if you face climb after climb. 

Things That Ruin Pro Bike Racing # 3

I didn't want to start with this one, since it's the most obvious - Doping. I don't think it needs any more explanation than that. Dopers suck!

Random Banana Rack

I just couldn't figure out why there were bananas here, it's the cereal aisle. I got High School Musical themed cereal. But I got my bananas from the produce section. The coffee was decaf. You get it for free. You also get free cookies if you are a kid. I always get free cookies.