Memories

I took a couple weeks off there, eh???

Anyway, here's the highlights...

I was big time into golf when I was a youngster - I can remember watching Curtis Strange rip it up at the US Open back to back (just like the Lakers did in the 80's, and as mentioned in the R-rated, Red Hot Chili Peppers Song clip below):




My passion for the unseen intricacies of competitive golf is why I jumped at the chance to go and watch the first round of the US Open a couple weeks ago here at Torrey Pines in La Jolla, Ca. Man, what an experience! Here's my ticket:



spent a lot of the morning at the par 4 6th hole watching the worlds best golfers struggle on their long approach shots. It was pretty crazy when the Tiger/Phil/Adam Scott group passed through. The throng was unbelievable!!

We spent the afternoon sitting in the grandstands of the 8th hole watching the world's best golfer's look like weekend duffers (like myself) - we only saw one birdie over a three hour span (Stewart Cink,I believe..)

Pretty extraordinary experience to see guys with that much talent battlin', and grindin' it out. I was inspired, and certainly won't forget it!!!

Yeah, so, I raced again last weekend at La Mirada - not very exciting, and I raced like a scared chipmunk, I reckon, seein' as how the field let three of the Amgen/Giant guys go up the road and take the first three spots. This time around, though, I did go au-bloc trying to go across the gap to those guys. Came up a wee-bit short, though, just like last year...

We'll see how it goes this weekend up at Manhattan Beach - should be an interesting deal up there!

See you at the races,

-kraig

Horses (and Baseball Players) More Important Than Cyclists?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/sports/othersports/12brown.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

where were the congressional hearings about cycling in the 80's and 90's, or even today?

The Clemens and Bonds thing was interesting... Now, horses have the limelight in the USA?

Wow. I'm under-impressed -> further confirmation that cycling is a fringe deal here in the states. I won't complain about the fringe thing, cuz, in general, I like that, but man, I thought cycling was at least a quarter notch above horse racing. y'know, cuz the athletes are homo sapiens and all!!! ;-)

Then again, homo-sapiens have a choice about what they do to themselves, whereas, horses don't, I reckon. Now that I think about it, crap, yeah, congress, give those horse trainer doodz hell!

Then, when you are done with that, go after the crappy bike guys.

Old Skool

Big sports day for me today! Brought back lots of old skool memories of my youth sports experiences...

Started out with some Euro 2008 action where Croatia took on Austria, and Croatia scored early on a penalty shot in the opening minutes of the match. Great coverage I was watching - pretty funny to hear the announcers chattin' about "dumping" an opponent - the description the color guy gave was "it's a move that sometimes happens that defies description" - or words to that effect...

I played a lot of youth soccer in my day back in the 80's. In the early years, I was a striker on the left side - it seems as if there weren't many left footer's amongst the available 8 year olds!
;-)

in my later years in the "select-teams" (you had to try-out to make the team) days of my competitive soccer years I played a lot of midfielder and often times as a defenseman. I was a little guy back in those days - but I was slow to make up for the lack of height! LOL!

Anyway, good stuff watching that euro match. I look forward to how things unfold over the next few weeks!

Next, I made my way to a bike race, and did the old-skool thing. I pedalled around without a heart-rate monitor nor a power meter (forgot it! doh!). Anyway, the chula vista course was the site of the CBR state crit championships. It was an interesting start to the race, as the promoter, started everyone off by saying "if you get dropped, you need to be training more..." or words to that effect. He was kidding around, and it lightened the mood a bit.

I hadn't done that course, and was a bit bummed to see that it included a U-turn at one end fo the course. But, it turned out to be alright, though the legs (or maybe it's the supercomputer??) just weren't there. I didn't really ever get put into any difficulty, but I just didn't seem to have the desire to do anything. Pretty disappointed in myself, now, actually. Not sure what is up with that.

Caro, and Galvan took off early, then Thurlow, Bordine, and another guy set off in pursuit. I was on Bordine's wheel, near the back, when he decided to throw down. Like I said, I saw it happening, but just didn't make it happen. Not sure why that is...

Caro and Galvan eventually lapped the field, then the other three did as well. The green machine - otherwise known as five star, lined it out for bordine and he took the win...

Pretty lame effort on my part - I tailgunned it, then moved up with five to go. Lost my nerve a bit when I saw Joel Stangeland bury a pedal on the u-turn with two to go. Never went au-bloc, which was disappointing for me...



Anyway, the real deal today is game 2 of the NBA finals. I'm a huge Celtics fan - in fact, I can remember back in the 80's when I was a gym rat and basketball freak, writing a report (and presenting it orally) about the history of the celtics in the 8th grade class of Mr. Day. Man, that would be neat if I could read that report today!

I can remember spending all day in the WSU gyms (bohler, smith, can't remember the one where the lights made things look green!) as a middle schooler. Good times. Shootin' around, wearin' knee high tube socks, and short shorts... ahh the good ol' days!

I always wanted a pair of those Converse Weapons, but was never successful in negotiating a pair like Magic and Bird had back in the day (image from The Converse Blog):



I reckon I was a total slacker back in the day, cuz I can only name four out of the six guys shown! Can you name all six?

I'm totally psyched to watch the new skool rivals of Garnett, Pierce, Kobe, and Gausol duke it out. Though, I reckon it will pale in comparison to the Old Skool rivalry of Bird/McHale/Parish and Magic/Kareem/Worthy. The supercomputer, though, I reckon will always favor the nostalgic moments, though, huh!

I think it is that nostalgia, that emotion that wells up inside you when thinking of the good ol' dayz - it's that feeling that makes old skool frames of reference so appealing and vivid.

And, it's those feelings that stay with you for a lifetime.

Go Celtics!

Positive Energy

I've made a pretty conscious effort this year to make a move towards a more positive mental energy state... Yeah, all the numbers/smart guys out there will scoff at this - but hey, that's cool, I can respect that perspective.

Often times, though (I'm human, right?), it becomes difficult to ignore all the "forum" threads that get forwarded to me by friends of the BTR cause.

Recently, I was pointed over to a bunch of questionable threads on a popular triathlon forum. I glanced at them a bit, and quickly recognized the MO of some familiar internet forum-ites. My recommendation to the owner of that popular triathlon site would be to whip out the "BAN" feature of his forum software package - it might be painful at first, but in the long term, it will save him and his readers a lot of mental fun tickets.

I administer a forum on BTR:

http://forum.biketechreview.com

and in the three years or so of running that section of the BTR site, I've only had to ban one individual:

http://forum.biketechreview.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=278&p=2953&hilit=height%2Fforearm#p2953

Lots of talk of "ethics" of science/scientists and whatnot over there on that triathlon site...

So, what's y'alls opinions on the ethics of when a person signs an non-disclosure agreement regarding wind tunnel testing and then goes and blabs about what was covered in that non-disclosure agreement all over the internets???

OK, I cracked on the whole negative thing... Please forgive me, I'm human, after all...

Anyway, on to more positive things...

I did the double at Dana Point this past weekend! That race is really cool - pretty funny to hear Floyd co-announcing the race. I about crapped when I was on the start line for the M35+ race and Floyd's co-announcer made some comment about running afoul of the rules (nothing associated with the currrent state of Floyd's legal affairs...) Floyd didn't skip a beat and kept ringin' the bell about In n out burgers and adult beverages.

35+ race was a mixed bag for me. I was a bit sketched out, this being my first mass start race since being taken out at Barrio Logan in the 3's race. Really nervous prior to the race and the night before. The whole crashing thing sucks, but, there's something about bike racing that brings me back - I think it's the hope that the strongest guy in the field won't win on the day!

;-)

LOL!

Felt good and was never in difficulty in the 35+ race - course was less technical than last year, and didn't seem quite as fast. There was a huge crash in the back half of the field in the last third of the race (I didn't hear it, and didn't even realize what was going on until one lap later when there was chaos with folks standing in the road telling us to stop...). I had to swerve to miss the big pool of blood in the road surrounding the person sprawled out - I hope things looked worse than they actually were, but I'm afraid that that wasn't the case. My thoughts go out to all involved in that incident. Really makes me think hard about the whole deal - lots of folks around me talked about sitting things out after having seen what went down, and I imagine some did. Really bad scene from my perspective.

They actually stopped the race twice - once to get the folks off the course to the inside, and then again to let the ambulance/stretcher exit to the outside of the course.

There was a break up the road at the time of the crash - I was eyeballin the gap with the SRM and had it at 15 -ish seconds for the first stoppage, then had it at <10 seconds at the second stoppage. Problem was, that after the second restart, the officials gave the break a good 20 seconds head start and then only gave the field 4 or 5 laps to finish the race. Needless to say, the break stayed clear.

I overcame some fears and gave it a go in the finale, though, my lack of mixin' it up on the crit scene in the past month left me a bit short in the end. Wound up top 25.

Took an hour break soakin' up the sun, then gave it another go in the 30+ race. I tailgunned that sucker for a good 40 minutes. Damn, that race felt faster than the 35+ deal! Lots of action in this race and it was strung out for the majority. Pretty amazing to see Karl Bordine ride away from that field in the last couple laps - unbelievable. Everyone knew what he was going to do, and then, when he did it, no one could do anything about it.

Again, I nicked a top 25 in this race - just didn't have the top end for the last few laps. These races seemed really fast for me! Never "comfortable" in the 30+ race, that's for sure...

Got a nice shout out from who I think was "Marco" on my "regain feeling in my legs after going as hard as I could in the last 500m" lap. Marco, was that you???

This coming weekend I'll try to get back on the positive track and improve the crit finish skillz at the CBR state crit champs here in Chula Vista.

See you out there - peace,

-kraig