2011 Blogs
It seems rare to really enjoy your co-workers, or maybe not rare, but maybe you’re simply lucky if you do enjoy them. What if you love what you’re working on, who you’re working with and where you are working? Then I believe you’d be looking at the crankbrothers and the Highway 2 crew. Amanda invited me to DealerCamp in Park City, to spend some time in the booth and also to race the dirt crit that Chris Zigmont had worked so hard to promote. As always hanging with that Highway 2 crew was full of good laughs. The dirt crit was wicked, a great venue as the entire course could be seen from the multiple free-alcohol stands…and don’t forget the classy cheese spread and slider-bar…good stuff. Ibis helped me get my Hakkalugi ready and I ended up racing that. Brook Watts said he was racing his cross bike, so I did too. It was certainly do-able; the Hakkalugi climbed like a mountain goat and descended on rails. Too bad I wasn’t a bit more gingerly on my clinchers. Unfortunately I flatted only 3 or 4 laps into the race, but Amanda took up the slack. In the Women’s Industry race there were only 2 women registered so they were shooed in with the pro race. Amanda ripped it up, representing in the new crankbrothers race club gear.
I returned home for a night’s sleep in my bed and enough time to get my road bike ready for the Salida 3-day classic. Time trials…oh how I despise you. And oh how I forgot how IN to TTs people get! I felt like I was wearing sweatpants in Italy. My mtb shoes still had mud splattered on them and grass sticking out of them as I weaved between darth vader looking arrows prepping for their TT mission. I was late arriving to the TT so it was frantic picking my number up, pinning (incorrectly to have to pin again) and landing on the start line. I was called out on incorrect number pinning about 5 min before my start but had no more pins; fortunately I had my mtb shoes on so running around was a whole lot less awkward than in road shoes in my search for more pins. 30 seconds to go and one number was still in my hand…Nicole Duke and Cat Johnson saved me and I was able to get to the start line with a few seconds to spare. That out the way and the crit was the next day and the road race on Sunday. I know I am lacking some form at this point in the season, but I also think the Colorado road racing talent has improved immensely, which is exciting. I was chewing my stem during the road race to hold on and at the end of the 3 days I could not fathom the stage racing I was doing with Webcor. As Waldek would always say to me, form is a pig, you can’t force it.
But forcing some legs is exactly what I’m doing as I take a hiatus from the mountain bike and spin my legs through some road racing. Maybe I’m not forcing it but the good news is every weekend I feel a bit more strength, a bit more pig. Another thing I’d like to force is this sweltering heat to leave us. Tour is over, that means it’s cyclocross season. Already? Oh yes, yesterday Greg Keller and I led a kids ‘cross clinic which Paul McCarthy of CrossPropz promoted. 31 kids showed up and although the temperatures were telling us we should be on our mtn or road bikes in the mountains, we were on our cross bikes jumping over CrossPropz and it was so nectar. There were kids on striders ranging to kids taller than me and each one had energy and excitement to match the passion in Mud and Cowbells’ voice. You can’t force passion either but pull a folded CrossPropz out its bag and as it springs itself out, so too does my passion for cyclocross. It’s a month til we take the line at CrossVegas and that’s about the time some rain starts to spit and clouds hover and temperatures chill.