civil unrest

No, I didn't yell at the kitchen lady or any of the other dog people yet. Not yet.
Yesterday we got some bad news that the dog-people will be taking over part of RRCC and fencing it in as a dog run. Obviously, this means that cyclocross and cross country running and soccer and all of the other activities at this multi-use facility will be moved so that dogs can crap there.
The google map shows the area they are taking. Its not all of the course we use, but it takes a lot of it.
Public outcry was more subtle than expected. A few folks tried to posit alternatives. This was received w mixed reviews. I can explain why. So many of us, many far more than me, have put a lot of time, effort and thought into making RRCC a great place for cross. Is it the ultimate? Of course not. But it was damn good. I know that the guys leading the kidscross efforts are upset not just because they lost something, but because this is where they spent time with their kids. That's time well spent, outside, no video games.

I've been told that it is official and I've been told that its not. Noone seems to have a solid answer yet.
The dog-people begin selling permits to use the place Nov 30th, so they feel pretty confident.

So what do we do? Fight or flight?

Bobrow intimated on the message boards this morning(can you intimate on a msg board? Really) that an alternative is in the works.
That's good news unless it means driving to go ride your bike. We need something and we've been spoiled to have what we have,something where we are welcomed and are comfortable.

Zack's idea was to go more covert and find new places and see what options we are overlooking currently. I like that idea as well. Sometimes new is better, but losing what we have is still going to suck. Maybe we'll find someplace that's equally accessable that has technical features we haven't even thought of. Could be.
I'd like to put effort into that. Hell, it'll be fun trying even if we get chased out of a few places(poss moreso if we do, god knows its been a long time since I've been hassled by the man)

We could also find new areas on the current property. A community effort and possibly that could work.

I'm not trying to go "chicken little", but we can't just wait until the fenceposts go in to come up with an alternative.

I don't have closure for you on this. If you have ideas, nows a good time. And try not to piss on the folks who are down about this.
Key word is "try"

Race Across The Sky... Again

For those of you, like me that missed the first showing of Race Across the Sky, the film about the Leadville 100. It will be shown again November 12th. Hopefully our bootleg town will have a showing. Last time we had parent/teacher conferences, so this time it's on. Everyone raved about the movie from the drama of the competition to the scenery. Can't freakiing wait.

Gun Club/ Run Club

This is definitely the wettest cross season of my short racing career. I've been replacing corroded parts and cleaning the bike constantly. Im really tired of stuffing my shoes with newspaper. But it is what it is. We had a ton of rain Friday and it changed the Gun Club course into a wild festival of falling, sliding and general hilarity.

This is one of my favorite race courses. Out in the middle of nowhere, at a shooting club with a really nice lodge(with a roaring fire +10 pts)
Normally this is a hard course with a BIG climb on the backside leading to some singletrack then barriers etc. The rain changed everything. I lined up with the right rev blackwell(welcome back on the grid my man), molnar, the dean, udf jerry etc. I was sans posse w Dug, Fatty and the papist being pressed into other svcs for the day.

After a start that could only be called lazy(or lackadaisical for those of you not into the whole brevity thing) I was way in the back chasing. Obviously we know what I'll be working on this week.

For a course with 2 sets of barriers, I was off the bike 6-7 times per lap, and that was just the times I planned on coming off. the big hill was a sort of run up. I shouldered the bike and hustled as quick as I could. Others tried to remount at the top but this was foolishness. I was able to pick some folks off there by running the whole hill. Oli suggested we ditch the bikes and just make it the Gun Club 5 k. It would've been way faster.

Luckily, sherri the super-fan was with us. It really does help when somebody's screaming your name(in a good way, okay not that good. sheesh) So the support from teammates was great. I ended up with a shocker, mid-pack finish. 17th out of 30 something. The bad starts are killing me. The sand was fine and tho I'd like to have done better in several sections, the opening sprint is where Im losing ground.

So we had Paul(mr oli) racing to 14th in the 4's in his first cross race. Sham-Wow(webbber) got 5th and keeps killing it. The story of the day was Oli with the win in her category. Strong work woman.

Post race, I hung in the lodge with Depot Joe and Molnar-who lectured me on the rules of the tribe. How the hell is it he knows more than me AND Brad Goldberg? Scary.
But there was actual food there. I hope this is a trend that continues. I like being fed.

So here I sit, muddy kit soaking in whatever the domestic goddess/laundry mgr dug out after the washer failed to get my whites a sparkling. the shoes are stuffed with newspaper, too wet to even put on the dryer rack yet.

We have sunshine for the week leading into the ProMotion Cross in Lexington. Im looking forward to (hopefully) a dry, power course

The Dirtiest Thing I heard @ USGP

Let me misquote Janis Joplin by saying I'd like to write a post of great social and political import. Oh lord won't you buy me a mercedes benz, my friends all drive porsches, I must make amends

Damn, that got off track fast. The point is that if youre looking for insight and clarity, you have as much chance of finding it here as you do at Fox News.

Hopefully you come here for abject stupidity,
Here it is.

I've mentioned before that our local race annouceress Rachel Faegerberg(sp? really?) cracks me up. She will out of nowhere throw in the unexpected zinger. Like when you're on the Green Monster. Eyeballs out. Spitting Cotton. SUFFERIN. And she makes you laugh. Granted it sounds like scrooges death rattle when you do it but hey. Nice work.

USGP was no exception, though there is a grerat deal of debate as to what was intentionally funny, and what was funny like this


or my personal favorite....



bvecause american vertebrate paleontology is funny shit.

Anyway after the big buildup, here's the big let down

The Dirtiest Things I heard @ USGP

There's a lot of action going on the backside.

He made good time on the re-mount.

He's really going hard on the backside(different enoough to be it's own)

He went down hard on the wood(after someone stacked it on the barriers)

She's got quite a gap on her(dude that's nasty)

The weather today? It's supposed to hit 69.
response from un-named local cycling legend and coach. I prefer the 68, where you do me and I owe you one.


Thank you ladies and gentlemen, I am a freaking 9 yr old aren't i?

Okay, enough of that, bring on the Gun Club

Anatomy of a Heckle

I'm mainly writing this one for Anna Seiler so that she'll remember that although her mom and dad's friends like to have fun, that they're semi-decent people. Well, the papist more so than I, but anyhoo.

After Sundays race and some cheeriing for team mates, I hooked up with the papist, tallgirl and littletallgirl to watch the pro men's race and see how it's really done. we prepared ourselves with some liquid carbohydrates, we went to watch the uphill sandtrap and see the lines and the speed that these folks carry. We cheered and called out our favorite racers names and watched all of them come thru. Then we waited. And we waited a bit more as the last racer made his way thru. The crowd quietly watched him fly thru the trap and as he passed he yelled back at us "WEAK".

That's right. He heckled us. Now I'm not known for holding back anyway but this was a direct challenge. We dove in. Numerous laps went by with different lines tossed out, tho we give tallgirl creative credit for "dude you're giving us too much time to come up with new material" We actually saw his shoulders shake as he laughed. This was our type of guy. But our youngest attendee was worried that we were bullying the rider. I can deal with that, it was important to make sure she saw the difference between good natured heckling and bullying. Mean-spirited we're not....mostly.

So we decided he needed a hand up.
We waited and as he came thru, the papist and I yelled for him, and in he swung








This proved it, this was our kind of racer. I wish I had the picture of the perfect hand-back to Sham-wow. Flawless.

We wanted to make sure that there were no hard feelings. Especially for yelling things like "lap dance coming" as he was getting passed by the leaders. So we brought him a BBC APA, which is known to solve all problems.
turns out his name is Bill and aside from being a really big dude(which would have curtailed the heckling if we'd have seen the size of him first), he's a good-hearted guy racing with the top pros and having a tough weekend. We'll be pulling for Bill in the next stops of the USGP, and doing some serious distance-heckling.





After that, it was Monday morning before I knew it and my car looked like this. I did get some sweet t-shirts and swag. I'll post that later but next up "the dirtiest thing I heard @ USGP"



hi fives to all involved

USGP- More Day 1 w/photographic evidence

Lucky for us, Tallgirl took an absolute pantload of pictures and was kind enough to let us share them thusly. How about that RRP fan above? Not bad taste for the younger set, eh?

So you see, Day 1 was a good day. I came out of the start breathing fire and feeling confident. It's nice to know I have it in me somewhere, I just wish I knew how to make it consistent.




One look at Dug says it all, it was tough out there.



Here you see the papist gunning it on one of the straightaways, kicking ass and making fb friends along the way.




the mud was really tough stuff. You can see it here



And here's what happens to you when the sketchy rider in front of you takes a digger in the mud. 21 stitches and Zack was pretty non-chalant about the whole thing. "yeah, I think I could see the muscle, maybe I'll get it checked out" I'd have cried for certain.



Here's the dean, handing it to all of us. Better houseguest than a bike racer and he beat me at both.




Yeah, that'd be Jimmy. Did I have to tell you that? Probably not. Hey, he's wearing the "jimmy sleeves" unlike Dug's, his don't come off without a laser.




Seiler moving like a freight train. Dude, didn't you just cat up? Go do it again.


Fatticus Attacks!!


Du-Wayne, doin it up.



Best picture of the day? yeah this wins it.



Oli and some random female racer. Is that someone famous? What? she's from Georgia? So What? OOOOOOHHHHH, I get it. Is she a member of the tribe? A name like Gould and all. We'll take her.




Aaron putting on the clinic in his Rapha cap.



We'll have a less facebooky post tomorrow on the joys of heckling the pros and some day 2 action!!

hi five's one and all

USGP Wrap Up- part 1 of many!

What a great weekend. After working hard at it all week, an amazing racecourse jumped out of Bruce Fina's mind and onto RRCC.

What do we hit first? Friday after pre-riding the course, I hung out w my 10yr old as he did a kids clinic from the ClifBar developement team. Really nice guys, so patient. So skinny. So damn young. I wish I could hate them, but they were amazingly nice to all the kids(even the bratty one, no not mine)

Friday night @ the BBC Taproom we watched the RedZone Kids(mine included) present numbers to the pros. Really cool to rub elbows w Trebon and JPow and co. I'll post my pix of son#1 w Stu Thorne later but he now knows how cool that was,

We also hooked up w our houseguest for the wknd, Shannon "the dean" Smith from Darkhorse. We repaired ourselves to Brownings w the Seiler clan, oli& paul, the haliori(stop it), Zack the hupster,et all. Things were rolling.

After a dark-thirty wakeup, Shannon and I met Dug and his man-friend John Coleman(50-John) to set up the tent and pre-ride.

We also got to try out the new chip system. We made extra sure that everyone was nice to Barb and Mike and got our act onto the course.

I got a special surprise, I didn't expect to see the domestic goddess/race widow at the start w the kids. Maybe that was it but I had the best race I've had. I felt strong and aggressive and fought thru the pain to keep rolling. I caught Dug on the finishing straight mid-way and slapped his ass to get him to stay with me. Traffic got in his way and I ended up 33 out of 106, getting skunked by my houseguest at 21st(how rude!)
As you'll see tomorrow when I'm not totally wiped and worn from the pictures, I got to race and hang w Dug, 50-m John, Molnar, Pope, Shannon Seiler, Jimmy(in a mexican wrestling mask) Sham-wow, Ben too many to mention. I'm sure somebody is pissed.

Did I mention getting totally heckled by Rachel our announcer? First time I've laughed DURING a cross race. Day one I felt great.

We got to see Oli and Brooke and Zanne crush it in the ladies race.

Fatty and Seiler and Duane raced in the 2/3 race and brought it! For the guys that just cat'd up they looked right at home.
Dulin and Kennedy were handing it out w singlespeed power and right in the mix. WOW! As for our Rogue
It was nice that our team hung together and cheered for each other. Sherri volunteered both days and screamed her lungs out.

More to come, but I'm beaten and battered and ready to crash. Marcia took many many pix and was kind enough to let us use some so, tomorrow.

T-minus....oh, whatever. It's here! (doug)

So it's pretty much Christmas for me. The weekend is here. B and I spent our time staking and taping the course. I got to participate in part of the Simon Burney clinic, and then it POURED down rain Friday night. I went back out and rode the course a bit tonight, and may have permenently damaged my shoulder, but learned a lesson.

So, for those of you who can't make it...



The big cluster of readings on the bottom is where I wrecked and sat around for a minute deciding if I'd actually broken my collarbone or just brused it.

I also got to spend a little pre-ride time with the awesome TSB guys from Michigan, and then walk the course with my buddy Jon, who's down for his third and fourth cyclocross races, respectively.

I am not sure what's going to happen tommorow with this crazy crowd (Jon registered late tonight and got race #98, so it's going to be a crazy field), but I'm looking forward to a great day of racing, cheering, cowbelling, airhorning, and drinking.

I LOVE this sport!

Closer, Closer, Almost There

The Monster awaits, and Doug was ready to recieve as you can tell from his position as "bottom" there with the Green Monster. We rolled to RRCC to help get things moving some more towards completion. It was the usual suspects again-bobow, Dulin, dr john, mama cross-mcshane, nikky, little ring etc. a few others that always show.
Really nobody else? Guess not. Things were good








You can see the elders of cross were really impressed by Doug's contribution. That's a look that says, hey man, good job.

We worked until things became a complete cluster. then I high-tailed it to cherokee to ride trails on the cross bike and fill the training schedules requiement of getting heckled by real mtn bikers(mr goldberg) while on the wrong mount. Gee, that reminds me of something from the beginning of this post.....what was the moounting reference again?????

Still Life

Some people travel in style. Shannon Stevens-Smith from Darkhorse and our guest for the weekend looks like he's got everything but the bike ready to go.

The GP Cometh

And so it begins, our yearly quest to follow Bruce Fina's genius into Cyclocross wonder. Okay maybe that's a stretch but under the direction of Dulin, Bruce, Bobrow - you know, the usual suspects things got started as we worked to turn the mother course, RRCC into this years USGP course. You can see the picture of Morgan Webb working arborist magic, the better picture would have been when he was in the tree sawing limbs but that is only alleged to have happened in case there could be repurcussions.

There were the usual 700 bikeclicks/team louisville guys following Mark Luking's orders as they constructed the Green Monster. I so wanted to tell them they had to move it like 7 degrees. Maybe just Duane, hmmmm. I need to make a call.

After driving a couple of hundred stakes into the ground, I was too tired to even make a dirty joke about pounding wood. Allright obviously not too tired, but almost. Doug drove around in Dulins truck after riding Dulins bike. Please cheer for Doug by yelling "go Mike. Go" it just kinda flows.

Lots of volunteers, Flower and TimO , Dr John and his son future Dr Will (who gave great instruction as to where to pound in the stake with the 20lb stake pounder)helped stake things out with all kinds of folks, all of whom gave the stink eye to the d-bag rider who was riding the course while we were building it. Keep it classy San Diego(you know, San Diego comes from the German......nevermind)

We even got fed lunch!! Im willing to work for food, I could even make a sign to that effect.

We should have this thing built up soon and its going to be awesome. Different and technical and fast.
And of course, the Monster will be waiting.

I'm always shocked at how it looks like an open field like I've seen so many times when I ride it. All the places you train your eye to look, and then suddenly it starts to take shape.

And then its a race course. A really good one.

Go help out. don't be a d-bag and ride while we're working. Let's show off this weekend after all the work is done and the racing and drinking can begin.

Cash for Klunkers?

Hardly. Its the bling'd out ride that our old friend Chris Jones of Champion-Sys will be riding at the USGP this weekend. After a 2nd place at CrossVegas and some seriously nice finishes in New England, look for Chris to rock the mother-course this weekend.
Nice when they ride the sweet German bike we can't even get.
I like it and it remeinds me of a former company president from years ago who told us all in his heavy French accent "it's all about the fuckus" maybe this was what he was trying to say?


Don't forget to look for the Love the Pain/Rogue Racing/ Dark Horse/ Beer Anonymous tent for tunes, beverages and general Hi-larity.

The count down is getting to the little numbers isn't it. Bring me the USGP or the head of a statistician. Either way I'm good.

Roll Tide Bitches

The Essence of Cross (doug)

So, you remember my buddy Jon, who kicks my ass in a triathlons on his first try, right? We got a great race review from him after his 50 mile trail run, too. But can he race 'Cross? I begged him to try. And guess what I got?

The best damn video description of the sport you could ever ask for! This guy is a good cyclist...a great athlete...a tremenous father...a marginal cyclocrosser...and a hell of a fun guy. Don't quit this 'til the end.

http://www.vimeo.com/7131463

Friday Fun

Why is this man smiling? Indeed, why is Shannon Stevens-Smith from Darkhorse Cycling and one of the leaders of the Masters Cat wearing a Love the Pain/Rogue hat? Why wouldn't he? All the fast folks seem to have them on this year. Click on the icon below Seilers head to the right and get your own. As noted, MichaelSeiler can be removed from the bottom of your cap if so desired.

So its off to Birmingham for me. This seasons damage so far is one bottom bracket, some cranky hubs and rusty cables. While the bike is getting some tlc and a respite from me flailing away atop it for the weekend, I'll be at Oak Mtn State park riding the mountain bike(slowly) and hanging with old friends at the Alabama game.
Roll Tide bitches.

Good luck to everyone racing in Bloomington this weekend, and be nice to Mike and Barb...cause I said so thats why.

USGP next week!!! nofa-king way!!!

a message from the chairman of the board

I wanted to make sure that everyone heard this from Mitch Graham, the man who makes OVCX possible.




Folks,

As many of you know, the past two years have seen tremendous growth in the Category 4 and Category 3 fields in our OVCX events.  This is amazing, and what many of the promoters have been working for in our region for over 10 years now....

But.....we haven't been doing the things on our end at a systems level to be able to properly score these big fields quickly for you (shocking news).  Most importantly, we haven't been setting our event schedules up early this season so that our great officials can do the job that they are capable of doing.

So without pulling lapped riders, and without sacrificing the big fields, here are some of the things we will be adjusting in future OVCX events to help facilitate accurate scoring:



* a minimum of 20 minutes of dead time (Open Course) after the Cat 4 and Cat 3 races for the officials to sort the finishes and deal with disputes in scoring

* dedicated volunteers to specifically track lapped riders so that they are properly placed in the scoring
* long enough courses to minimize lapped traffic

Chip timing is useful for backup, but our officials need the conditions in place so they can do the job they are capable of doing.  Having one race scheduled to start (as has been happening up to this point) right after the finish of another makes it impossible to properly sort results for them.

Quickly and accurately scoring our huge Cat 4 and Cat 3 fields is our number one priority right now.

I want to thank all of our officials (Andrew Frey, Ron and Karen Garrett, Mike Hewitt among them) and Barbara Saive with 2WheelSports, and Chris Halioris our awesome statistician - this series wouldn't be what it is without you!

This is an exciting time; let's support each other this season, accomplish some goals, and most importantly have some fun!

See you at the races!
Mitch Graham
OVCX Director


Thanks Mitch, hopefully everyone respects how quickly these changes have come about. Now lets have some fun!