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It was fun while it lasted.
I don’t really know how to go about describing this…. but I drew blood today… in a not so good area…
The MRC ‘cross ride at Delaney tonight was going well until we hit a steep, loose, sandy, gravel section. I got within 6 inches from the top… lost all momentum… fell straight backwards… both feet unclipped… and the top tube crunched down on Mr. Right.
Pain.
Horrible Pain.
umm ow? Yes ow. NOT GOOD. With tears in my eyes I reached in to survey the situation… there was blood. My scrotum was bleeding. Not good. Not good at all.
You’re all lucky I didn’t have my camera on hand…
I hope I am alive in the morning.
So after work I took off with hopes and dreams of getting in a great training ride. Training ride? Yea. Like some intervals and shizz. Before I left i snagged my camera because I knew it was gonna be a great time.
So I warm up for 15 min just tooling around Shirley… and then I rode hard… like super dooper hard. I wanted to cry but I stayed strong. Before I even knew it I was done. Yes. I was done. Screw doing that anymore. That wasn’t fun at all…. so I decided to play.
I made my way over to where I went to Elementary and Middle school in Shirley for some sand pit practice. There is a nice big playground filled with sand. So I rode through it. Tons.
Then after that I went over to another great place to train… Fort Devens.
Look like heaven right? Look at all of those beautiful run-ups and some sections are completely ride-able. Oh yea. Good stuff.
And then I started jumping stairs. Over and over and over again. Lets look at this a bit more closely:
Oh yea… and there is even a sweet video.
Oh yea.
So I woke up at 5 am. Hit snooze… Woke up at 5:10 am… Hit snooze again. I repeated this a 3rd time which placed me at 5:30 am. I was meeting Rich at 6:30 thirty minutes away. Crap. I had to get up despite my race time at noon. Wow that was hard.
My car had no gas in it. Well it had a little… but not enough to get me to our rendezvous spot. It’s 5:45. The gas station in Shirley is closed. No biggie… I drive over to Devens. Once there, I pull into the gas station and find all of these crappy hand written signs on the machines saying “no gas.”
WTF. This sucks.
So now I go completely out of the way and into Ayer. They have gas, I feed Clifford, and I was on my way to be 10 min late.
What a lovely morning.
Finally, we arrive. YAY I SEE COURSE TAPE! CYCLOCROSS! YAYYY!! I was better. My crappy morning was revived. Soon Rich and I stumbled into Wild Bill and even Mike from Team Sam. Oh wow! And there is Dan, Steve, Lowry, Cookie, Steen, Rob, Bungy, Todd, Coley… the list goes on. It’s great to see old friends after a summer not racing too much.
I had 4 hours to kill before I was scheduled to get laughed at… so I cheered, sat, rode my bike, reminisced, and had a pre-race beer. Oh yea… a pre race beer. Good stuff too thanks to Cookie.
OK… finally race time. I get front row… but by chance… I was originally three rows back due to everyone being all antsy-in-their-pantsies because this WAS the 1st cross race of the year. For me… there was no need to get the whole shot. I was just going to try and survive. It has been a while since I have redlined my heart rate for 45min. I will gladly take you on a three hour tempo ride through the woods though!
The gun goes off! (Actually, the guy just said go) and we all charge down the strip and suicidally dive bomb into the 180 degree corner. I’m sitting somewhere in the top 10 and am holding on quite comfortably. No one passes me for a while and I manage to move up a bit… not much… but enough so that it made me feel special. Feeling special is good…. And good is what we want. Success.
OK. The people trying to bunny hop/ride/slow down to 3 mph and creep over the logs started annoying me. Sure… some guys probably rode them great… but some just sucked. I’m a dismounter. I will dismount at max speed, take two steps to get over whatever is in front of me, and then be back on with basically all of my momentum. I was faster than the bunny hoppers… so I win.
Ok, about 25 min into the race I begin to feel like death. I was going as hard as I could but it seemed as if I was back pedaling. Not good. People start passing on the flat straight sections… and I couldn’t hold on. I start drifting backwards… Drifting backwards does not equal Good. Drifting backwards equals Fail.
The rest of the race continued with the trend. When it was over though… I was super happy… but 10 min later… I was craving more! It’s weird how that works.
Blunt Park: Done. Wrentham: Next.
One of the highlights of the day included doing a track stand… and having eaves feed me beer. We received an applause from our spectators. It was awesome. Oh the saxophone player was awesome.
Corner 1
Big boy up front
Cookie in the Big Ring
Miken (Team Sam) just seconds after a log
‘Cross with a water bottle? Wow.
Smiles by all – two seconds later Dan tried to smack the cammera out of my hands…
All done. Big and Little Bikes.
I shoulda worn gloves…
A whole lot more pictures here. Some are good… some are just bad.
But then my computer burped and decided to delete it. This is the simple version of it:
I rode my single-speed with my brother the other day. It was fun. I like the simplicity of it and 26 inch wheels now scare the crap out of me.
This song is stuck in my head.
Awesome
Team
Bored
blunt in the am. holy crap. it’s way to warm out.
I just registered for the Blunt.
I fixed my cross bike which was having major issues.
I’ve been singing “Cross is here” out loud.
I made the cover of the MRC cross training series flyer.
I go back to school in two weeks (holy crap I’m a senior)
Blah blah blah. YEA!
So after Great Glen, I realized that my blue Kona sucks balls. Art took it out for a lap after wrecking his two bikes and then came back bitching and moaning about how much it sucks. He was right though… that bike does suck.
My brother offered to buy it… that would just be cruel to sell it to him though. The bike is only worth $10. So I thought about it for a mew moments… What shall I do with this crappy bike? Well the answer was quite simple.
I bought one of these and then I took off all the shifty things (shifters, cables, derailers, and the big ring) all while listening to Feist (call me a girl if you want for listening to her… but that shizz is good). So now I have a sweet single speed demon. I should have time some time over the weekend to take her out.
OK now go and listen to Nation of Ulysses, Mission of Burma, Bad Brains, or even the freakin Aquabats. And while you’re doing that… eat a cookie. Punk.
After a quick stop to pick up a few boxes of Swiss Rolls and Oatmeal Cream Pies I was off to meet Rich for a lil’ car poolin’ sesh up to Great Glen. What was planned for this weekend? Well the 24 Hours of Great Glen of course. Judging by their website one would assume that somehow we were supposed to be dealing with cats. But nope… never saw a single one…go figure.
Luck was on our side with weather despite Rich’s past luck with it all. It was raining at the base of Mt Washington when we arrived but that rain soon became just a drizzle and that drizzle soon became a mist. By morning it looked like the weather men were wrong with the predicted all day rain-fest as blue skies were soon pushing out the dark clouds.
Friday night was chill. Three of us thugs (me, rich, and art) hit up the local hot spot where all the cool kids hang out and drink beer. Yup that’s right… we went to Mr. Pizza. We didn’t eat pizza though… we had thug food. Duh. With our stomachs pleased we retreated back to the ghetto were we made small talk about pimpin’ some b*tches and smackin’ some ho’s. Because all thugs get sleepy… us three soon went to bed.
At 1:00 AM I was awakened by someone whisper-yelling my name. This is the following conversation:
“Bad Brad (!) Bad Brad (!)”… pause … “Bad Brad (!) Bad Brad (!)”…
“Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat???” I said.
“Hey man, we tapped the keg! Come have a drink!”
“Dude, It’s like 1… I’m not getting my thug ass out of bed to drink now.”
“I am very disappointed with you…”
Team Ding Dong Ditch was officially here. I rolled over onto my other shoulder and proceeded to sleep.
The next day was filled with all sorts of hussle and bussle in the morning as bikes were lubed … or umm… butter? Yes butter was used.
Yadda yadda yadda the race starts… Rich runs. He finishes his lap, Scott goes, then me, then Art, then Rich, then Scott, then Art, then Rich, then Scott, then rich, then Scott, then me, then Art, then me, then Art, then Rich, then Scott, then Rich, then Scott, then me, then Art, then me, then Art, then Rich, then Scott. Then the race was over.
I feel like I’m going to fall asleep. I’ll leave you with some pictures.
Butter Lube
Takin’ bout pimpin’ some b*tches
High belly button boy elected to run … he had no choice. Colin managed to sneek into the pic too.
Art, straight up thuggin’
yours truely… right click > Set As Background
Bling Bling light for the night laps…
Thug washing his bike… is that Jim English?
More shots to come later…
I hope you’re thirsty for a great tasting review….
Head on down to you’re local packy and pick up a 6 of Smuttynose Summer Weizen. You will not be dissapointed… well, you may if you happen to dislike wheat beers? I’m not going to name any names on who that might be though…
This is a classic summer brew which doesn’t pack too much of a punch in terms of flavor… but it will flow nicely over your fungiform papillae. . . and who doesn’t want that?
Quite possiblly the best feature of this beer is the label. If you enjoy looking at cute old women floating on a raft… this beer is for you. I enjoy it. So this beer is for me. Check it out here.
Their site is rather interesting and has lots of stuff to check out while your drinking the beer. You can look at the pin up brown dogs or even buy a cycling jersey.
OK, bedtime. Lots of packing to do in the AM for mud fest 2008 . It’s gonna be a fun weekend… Cash Money Thugging of course.
