Liquidation Sale

I am selling a bunch of stuff: powertap laced to a mavic open pro, Ksyrium tubulars (raced only one season, never crashed), brand new Vittoria Tubular Cross Tyres, 17" Jamis Dragon mountain bike with full XTR, etc.

If interested email me wilson_nav@yahoo.com for details.

Live Free or Die

Why are my tax dollars paying for Litka (a New Hampshire PUBLIC school teacher!) to spend the week in Vegas?

Oh yah, we don’t pay taxes in New Hampshire! Oh yah, the state doesn’t properly fund education anyway. Forget it. Live Free or Die.

Do you race Cross?
Do you like prize money?
You should go here next weekend.

Myles is the man. He puts on a sick event.

You think the race is in the ass of no-where? We live 60 miles of Canada and will travel 7 hours to get there. Trust me, it is worth it.

Are you a woman crosser? Look at the freaking prize list! This is a UCI C1 race and Myles is not only paying out equal prize money to the women, you have $100 MORE than the men. Get there.

I am sure you have seen the results, but Page got 5th yesterday, only 16 seconds back from Vervecken. Yah, he’s the World Champ. Yah 16 seconds is close.

Tonight is our first cyclocross group workout of the season at Remick Park: 5:15. Be there. All the Kool Kids are doing it.

The weather is finally getting Cross like. It looks like we will have a cold and wet weekend for the first New England UCI race of the season. In years past, Catamount has held a non-sanctioned race weekend that I have always enjoyed. This year they have stepped it up complete with big prize money, beer tent, ice cream etc. Should be sweet.

I have added a bunch of links. Here is a summary of who’s who:

Hurley: Michelle is a NE Stalwart and one of Martha’s original teammates when they were wee pups.

GeWilli: Famous NE blogger/biker who reads more blogs on a daily basis than I do!

Frank: No idea who he is! MAC dude that has the greatest blogger photo around. Freaking funny. I found him thru Fat Marc’s page. And no Frank, I didn’t ask permission. I am from NE, we don’t have any manners

Race CX: new page dedicated to cross. It has potential.

Quick-N-Dirty: Josh and Barb, crossers from the left coast who like NE mud.

Euro: JP. Need I say more?

Molly: You have to love a guy from the Northwest that has a photo from the NE Worlds as his banner.

Martha and I were talking about heading to Utah in early December before she gets too crazy at the resort. We wondered how good the snow would be.

They got their first snow on Saturday. Here is East Greeley Bowl. I have never skied it, but is looks nice eh?

What a great summer (!?!?!?) weekend.
Friday afternoon saw the start of my first “man-chore” in quite some time. Our front stairs were in desperate need of replacement. It seemed stupid to pay someone to do it. It seemed even more ridiculous on Friday evening that I had ripped the stairs out and I actually had to re-build them on Saturday. Fuck. Maybe I made a mistake. We could always enter the house from the back right?

I woke early on Saturday (6:00 am), Martha made me some coffee (Martha doesn’t drink coffee and she doesn’t make coffee. I think she realized the potential catastrophic possibilities of the project), and I headed to Home Depot. The Depot opens at 6:00 am. I was there by 6:45. Any idea who is at The Depot before 7:00 am on a Saturday? Old guys. Old guys with there little home improvement projects, buying wood, carbide blades, hot dipped 8D nails, pressure treated lattice . . . .oh fuck, that is me.

Okay, so I got all my stuff, headed home, blasted some British Proletariat Folk and got to work. 8 hours later, we had new stairs. I believe I only threw my hammer once. Good stuff. And no Martha, this won’t be a trend. That was my man-chore for the year.

Raced at Sucker Brook yesterday in summer heat. I sucked. No legs, no snap, no fight. It happens. Martha raced well but struggled in the last two laps with the heat. JB had the race of his life and ended up 8th in the Elite race. MC Kraus looked good but was a bit out gunned on the fast course battling Al, Whitey and Jazzy. Form looks good though. I am sure he is doing his rain dance for the fall to get some more of his conditions.

And Yes, MegA, much better.

okay, I guess we have had enough of the ass disucussions eh?

Did my first cross workout last night . . .and broke my front derailleur. I guess that “sweet campy record front derailleur” I scored out of the shop “junk” drawer wasn’t so sweet. I run shimano, but needed a derailleur and found a campy one that seemed perfect. I was stoked: free derailleur and it was campy . . .so Euro. Oh well. I will be ordering a new shimano one today from QBP.

I had a pretty amusing exchange with Martha last night. We have been together for some 15 years now so she knows me pretty (!) well. Quite often I get restless with life (some call it ADHD) and I get harebrain schemes. So last night as we got dressed to workout I said: “I think next summer I might need to move to Alaska”. Without missing a beat she said “Are you taking me with you or are you going on your own?” Um, Er, yes dear, probably, as long as you can still ski bigger lines than me.

okay, here is your ass shot . . . .as requested:

Martha put The Stick to me last night. (Get you minds out of the gutter folks!) You know you are sore when you need someone else to massage you because it hurts too much to do it by yourself! Every damn ligament, tendon, muscle etc hurts. The stick does help though and I will be back at it tonight. I forgot how much cross can hurt!

Here are some shot from the weekend:

I have fallen and I can’t get up.
Raced Cross yesterday. It hurt. It hurt warming up. It hurt while racing. It hurt after. It really hurt this morning when I tried to function as Joe “go to work on Monday” guy. It was great to see everyone this weekend. I haven’t raced since July 29th so I haven’t seen too many people from the scene. Plus cyclocross seems to weed out the weenies and adds some cool other folks that either mtb race or just race cross.

I truly hope no one was able to document my barrier technique on film (still or otherwise). It was truly ridiculous. There were guys and gals in the ‘C’ race that had better technique. I even had a rear exit off my saddle at a barrier set. It was shameful. I have an excuse . . . . . but it is a lame one. I didn’t get my bike built until Wednesday night. I thought (in my infinite wisdom) that if I did any barrier/technique work on Thursday or Friday that I might still be stiff and sore for Sunday’s race. My rationale in skipping it was “hey, I have raced cross for years and I typically rely on good technique to get me thru”. Wrong. I almost went thru the tape at the first down hill barrier set I had practiced at least10 times during inspection!

Racing Masters was VERY fun. It was a bit weird not knowing who was who, what people’s strengths were etc. When you race against the same 50 guys week in and week out you can typically predict when people will attack, who likes to go solo, who likes to follow, who can’t corner, etc. It was like racing with a blindfold yesterday, because I didn’t know anyone. I am sure many of them were wondering who I was too! I won’t bore you with the details of the race. Racing Masters has re-invigorated me. Can’t wait for the work week to be over!