When it rains...

Snapping a rear derailleur last week wasn't enough, so I had to smack a tree and tweak an XTR brake lever at Elk River on Sunday as well. Luckily, Curly was able to bend it back into functionality again, so I didn't have to shell out for a new one. If you're looking for good mechanics, go to Now Bikes in Arden Hills and ask for Mike or Curly.

Mini Man Utd kit

My wife rules! Baby's gonna be rockin' the full-on Manchester United kit. Real deal, direct from the UK. Awesome.

24 Hours of Afton

No race for me, gotta focus on the MNSCS. Got a few pics tonight of the first 2 laps. Curly, busting out the wheelie. Brian from Peace Coffee is drilling it on lap one. Clayton and Matt are rockin' it solo (and giving me crap for not doing the same). Jeremy near the end of lap one. Gnome base camp. I wish I was racing, but I'm happy to be sleeping in my own bed tonight. More photos and updates tomorrow.

MNSCS

Despite a complete meltdown at Afton, a disappointing race at Red Wing and an exploding derailleur at the Powder Monkey, I'm sitting in third. Ryan will definitely bump me to 4th and Kevin will probably bump me to 5th. I'm skipping 24 Hours of Afton and doing the last two MNSCS races instead. I've still got an outside shot at Top 4, plus we've still got team points on the line.

DNF

Derailleur Not Function. Duluth Not Favorite. Did Not Finish.

Second year in a row I've crashed out of this race. Guy in front of me goes over a log pile in front of a bridge. He knocks a log loose (which comes flying towards me) and goes down. I avoid the log, get around him and onto the bridge, but my momentum carries me too far left. Back wheel slips over the edge, derailleur snaps and I go down down hard onto a shingle covered bridge. Bike is toast and my arm is shredded. I was 5th place in the middle of Lap 2 and feeling good. I had about a 2 minute gap on the guys behind me, and I was reeling in a couple guys in front of me. I'm still pissed off today. I know there's nothing you can do about that kind of stuff, but it's frustrating as hell to finally be feeling good and riding well on perhaps the toughest course in the series only to have your bike explode.

So, weekend summary:
Saturday pre-ride: gash/dent shin on rock (the kind of pain that makes you feel like puking)
Driving-5 hours, $50 in gas
Hotel - $175
Meals- $50
Race - $32
Derailleur replacement/hangar repair (if hangar can be bent back) - $250-300
You do the math, I don't want to know.

Then driving home, driver's side windshield wiper literally explodes. There's metal scraping the glass and I can't see. So we had about a 20 minute detour to deal with that. Then at North Branch there's an accident so we are stop and go for about 15 minutes. I haul ass and make it to the bike shop in Shoreview at 4:58 and they are all leaving and have locked up for the day. Best day ever. Oh, I won a Trek baseball hat and a Giro water bottle at the race, so I guess that makes it worthwhile. Best $600 water bottle ever.

Welch photos

Some more pics from Sunday. Thanks Dana!

MNSCS # 7, Welch

Always fun to race the former NORBA national course. We prerode on Saturday in a monsoonal downpour, and most of the course was unridable. It rained more Saturday night, so I feared the worst for Sunday. The course was actually in pretty good shape, with some muddy spots where you had to run up.

It was a mass start of 98 riders that starts up a climb. I didn't want to go too hard on the prologue lap, but I didn't want to get stuck in any traffic jams either. So I found a good tempo and hit the singletrack about 10 back. I passed a few people who went too hard and by the first big climb on lap 1 I was doing okay. Some of the singletrack was still greasy, so the first lap was all about trying to find the best lines through, and knowing when to get off and run. I misjudged a couple of sections which cost me a bit. Then came "the Wall". This is a super steep climb straight up the ski run. I couldn't find a dry line through it so I had to run the middle section. I was able to recover a bit in the singletrack and was settling into a good pace, feeling good on a technical climb when my front wheel suddenly went sideways and I went down. No injuries or mechanicals, but it cost valuable time.

As I rolled through for Lap 2 I was in 14th overall, with no idea where I was in my age group. I was really suffering on the first big climb, but managed to pass a couple of guys. Had to walk part of the Wall again, but was able to ramp it up after that. I got passed coming out of the singletrack and played leapfrog with another guy for the last half of the lap. First guy held me off, but I was able to pull away from the other guy on the last climb and passed a singlespeeder on the downhill switchbacks. 5th place in my age group, 13th out of 98 overall. Next week, Spirit Mountain.

Photo from Skinnyski.com (thanks!)

Disco is Dead

If the most dominant team in cycling for the past 9 years can't find a sponsor, who will be next? I'm hoping this trend doesn't trickle down to the local club level. But right now, who can blame anyone for not wanting to be associated with the embarrassment that was the Tour this summer?

24 Hours of Afton

I think I'm in. I have to decide by tomorrow to hit registration cutoff or else the price goes way up day of race.

Doors

I've got 5 out of 6 doors installed, and one side of the trim. It looks so much better already. I have to notch out the last door jamb to fit the attic stairs. I'm not looking forward to that.

Todays Doper Update

TDF winner Alberto Contador has announced he will be giving a press conference on Friday. Will it be Floyd Landis all over again? Story on VeloNews. Andrey Kashechkin tested positive for homologous blood doping and was suspended from Astana. Astana is making T-Mobile look like choir boys. I'm still waiting for Kloden to get busted.

Am I crazy?

I've been having serious thoughts of doing the 24 Hours of Afton solo. The sleep deprivation would be good training for when the baby gets here in October. Am I crazy? We'll see how my next two races go. I will probably not decide until a few days before the race.

2 Months to Go

Zoe keeps sniffing Jen's stomach. I think she knows somethings going on.

35W Bridge Collapse

http://flickr.com/photos/s4xton/sets/72157601157770382/

These photos are unreal. Having driven over this bridge literally thousands of times, it definitely hits home. Especially considering the what ifs. What if my wife would have left work just a bit later than usual that day and her bus drove over the bridge at 6:00 instead of 5:00? Or what if I hadn't exited before the bridge since I was running late on my way downtown Wednesday? The last 3-4 times I've driven down for the Hill Ride on Wednesday evenings, I've pretty much flipped a coin as to whether or not I should take 35W to downtown or take 280. The last time I took the bridge, traffic crept from University to the Hiawatha exit, so this time since it was already 5:45, I decided to exit on 280. I made it across the river on Franklin Ave right about 6:00. God only knows what would have happened if I had just kept going south on 35W, just as I had so many times before.

On our ride, I kept hearing people's cell phones ringing, but thought nothing of it. Heard lots of sirens, thought nothing of it. When we rolled back to Minneapolis on River Road and saw masses of people out walking, I thought there must be some kind of event going on. Once back at the Birchwood at about 8:00 I heard the bridge had collapsed and there were dozens of cars in the river. As I made my way out of Seward and across Lake Street I saw entire neighborhoods gathered in front yards listening to their radios. State Patrol was out in force on 35W north of 36, shutting down the freeway and setting up detours. My cell phone was useless with the volume of calls, and Jen was at home wondering for 3 hours which way I had taken downtown.

I got home around 9:00 and Jen gave me a big hug when I walked in the door. I saw the footage on TV and then heard what time it happened. That's when it all began to sink in. Absolutely insane.

Holy Sh!t

My wife's bus was on this bridge an hour before this happened. I was driving down 35W on my way to the Birchwood for the Hill Ride at 6:00. I decided to take Hwy 280 to avoid the traffic by the Metrodome. I'd like to give a shout out to my guardian angel.
Photo from NY Times

Muddy River Rock and Roll

Another hot day, though not quite as bad as last year where it was bad enough to consider calling it off. Still, temps were in upper 80's/low 90's.

Got squeezed in at the start, falling back to about 10th or so before the singletrack. My podium chances were dead already, as I got stuck behind a string of riders. Finally, we popped out of the singletrack and I passed as many as I could before the next section, moving up into about 5th. The only thing hotter than the temperature was the pace being set by the lead guys. I was able to keep pushing along at this tempo most of Lap 1. I nailed the descent into the quarry, but was thrown off at the bottom when the course was re-routed directly to the drop, skipping the last rocky switchback. I hit the brakes and started left and made it through the rocks to the climb. Super technical, steep twisty, rooty/rocky climb. I rode this section about 6 times last week to get it down and I still screwed it up. Had to run the bike all the way up, which sent my heart rate through the roof.

Lap 2 I started my usual fade, only today it was worse. I decided to ditch my CamelBack before the race and just go with a bottle. Big mistake. I was getting super dehydrated and starting to bonk. Adding to the good times was my chain, which kept getting stuck when I tried to get into the big ring. This caused me to get passed by about 4 guys, who I never saw again. Trying to make up for lost time, I never really recovered and felt the bonk getting worse. Somehow, I managed to clear the entire climb out of the quarry, but it took a huge toll. Rolling through the start/finish for Lap 3, I felt like crap. I saw Tom coming up and we spent most of the lap leapfrogging each other. I kept yelling at him to get up to the faster group, he did the same for me. I thought for sure he had the better chance, but in the end we finished 9th and 10th, with me about 8 seconds in front. I'm sure he could have come around, but maybe it was just good karma being repaid from the Dirt Spanker, where he got me by about the same margin. It's all about the team points anyway.

Next race I'm rocking the CamelBack and that's that. It's the only thing I can think of as to why I'm not doing as well as I should be. Oh well. We had a sweet spread of burgers, brats, salads and cookies waiting for us afterwards. Gary's Heiniken mini-keg was quite popular as well, although I don't know how the hell you can drink beer in the hot sun after a race. It took me until 10:00pm to get fully rehydrated, and I haven't had a beer since February.

(Thanks for taking photos, Dana).

Doping

"Doctor" Ferrari must have it all figured out. He's got the magic potion that guarantees victory and evades WADA's doping control like a stealth bomber. I'm sure it makes it easier for "athletes" to stare straight into the camera and declare to the world that they are clean. After all, they have never tested positive, have they? Easy to say when you're using a banned substance that hasn't been banned yet because there is no test for it and nobody knows it exists. It's a bit like being a money launderer for the Cali cartel in the 1970's and 80's before money laundering was written onto the books as a crime. They weren't doing anything wrong either, were they? It wasn't illegal.

Pretty good racket "il dottore" has going on. He can handpick the rider to win the Tour, commanding a pricetag of Bill Gates proportions from the highly-gifted but ethically-challenged cyclist who can't win on his own, in exchange for exclusive access to his bloodstream. I wonder how much money Ferrari has bet on cycling over the years?

A 2-year suspensions means nothing to these guys, especially those in the last years of their careers. If you can make a few million dollars, get busted and the worst that happens is that you can't race again for 2 years, or even ever again, the money will win every time. How about prison time for fraud, for starters. A fine of at least double the riders earnings from winnings and endorsements. What about the teams that were passed over for inclusion in the Tour in favor of these doper teams? They should be compensated for being fraudulently denied entry, missing out on lucrative exposure. What a mess.

Vino

http://www.velonews.com/tour2007/details/articles/12910.0.html

So the entire Astana team is gone, what a shock that former T-Mobile riders would get busted. I hope every team loses their sponsors and all the advertisers pull their commercials off the air. It'll never happen, so instead I'll just stop watching. There, I'm done. I now have an extra 3 hours of time for 3 weeks in July.

Lance, I still want to believe you. In 1999 as my mom was in the hospital, slowly and painfully dying of cancer, I turned on the Tour and explained your story to her. She had no idea who you were, but she was as proud of you as if you were her own son. She was dying and she started writing you a letter to give YOU encouragement. While she only lived long enough to see that first victory, I know it gave her hope. Maybe not as much for her as for others, as she would tell other cancer survivors and patients your story, despite her own condition, showing what was possible.

So, Lance, I want to believe you. I want that memory of my mom to remain positive, untainted. I want that hope to be real for all people affected by cancer. I still want to hold back tears whenever I think of that first tour victory, just as I did all 7 times you crossed the finish line on the Champs Elysees. Please don't take away one of the last really good memories I have of my mom. People always ask me if I think you doped or not, and when I say you didn't, it's not because I want to believe it, I have to believe it.

Do Goldens Shed?

A few months ago at Petco some guy asked us if Golden Retrievers shed alot. Uh, yeah. This is what the wind didn't blow away, and that's after being brushed 3 out of the last 4 days.

Thanks!