Until the Snow Ends

The Tour of the Hilltowns was my first road race ever. I rode Cat 5. Figured that I would do well, since I was an expert mountain biker. I WAS WRONG. I came back 2 years later, as a stronger rider, in Cat 4. I figured that I would do well. Was I wrong? Let's find out! We talked a bit about this being a Back Bay team race, but eventually attendance whittled down to me and newly-upgraded-Cat-5 Harrison. We had some discussions about tactics, but mainly I used my "vast" experience to tell him that planning in advance was pointless, it all comes down to who isn't cramping on the hills at the end. The field was full, 100 guys, and the first 20 miles of rolling downhill saw absolutely no action. This led to a lot of tight riding and no less than three Cat-4-tastic crashes, at least one of which resulted in a free ambulance ride. First we accordioned into an uphill so hard that some guy got taken down and half the field went through the grass to get around. ...

Lots of stuff went on this weekend (guess what? It involved bikes!) but none of it is screaming BLOG ME. So here we are, on Wednesday, with nothing reported. I figured leaving my bike sale post up for a few days would be a good idea, anyway. Excuses! Alright, so Saturday was the big bad Gran Fundo out in Easthampton with J-Pows . It was hot as hell, but not a race. However the front group (gruppo Tim Johnson, as the say in Europe) didn't get the memo and periodically rode crazy fast anyway. After 33 miles, there was ice cream. This ended my time in the front group, because I retired to the shade to be majestic for a while with my ice cream. Rolled the rest of way with Jake, Linnea, Dave, and other unknown stragglers. The pace was reasonable except when cameras were in sight , or when Linnea insisted on climbing at over 300 watts, because she didn't have a powertap telling her that was too fast. I sucked it up and rode fast, too. Then we drank beer and ate por...

Update: These have both sold. Hey!  Do you like cross bikes??  Do you like buying cross bikes?  Are you 5'7" to 5'11"?  You are??  Well then I've got a deal for you! Bike #1 is a 2008 Ridley X-Fire .  This was raced by me during the 2008 cross season and placed 4th in the Verge 2/3 Men's series (damn you, Jeremy Dunn!).   Last year it was my pit bike and saw limited use.  The specs: 54" carbon frame & fork (geometry available at Ridley ) SRAM Rival gruppo, except for -- SRAM Red rear shifter (bling!!) FSA Gossamer compact cranks (38x46) Cane Creek SCX-5 Brakes Bontrager Select Aluminum Bars Ritchey Comp Aluminum Seatpost FSA 100mm Stem Ksyrium SL SSC Clincher Wheelset (2005, new rims 2009) No pedals Price: $1250 Up next is a legendary New England cyclocross machine -- a 2003 Giant TCX previously owned by the one and only PVB .  He raced it for an unknown number of years before selling it to Linnea in 2007. ...

I'm pulling a Parsons on this one and sending you over to the Back Bay Cycling Club site to read about how my Attleboro critsperience went . Check back later in the week for a special "preorder" price on the crossresults.com kit, aka "wow kits are expensive and I don't want to put 30 of these things on my credit card."

You might've noticed that it was 99 degrees and humid earlier this week in Boston. What's that you say, every other blogger on the facetwitter already mentioned this? Good, because that's not what I'm thinking about, anyway. So the other night I stayed at work until 11, because hey, air conditioned internet is only at one place in my life, and it's not at home! And then I rolled out into the sticky haze of the night to ride home, and some weird stuff happened -- I had a flashback to when I used to ride home from work in Florida at night. Same hot air, same darkness, same absurd sense of freedom despite the fact that all I was doing in the morning was coming right back to work. And I was hit with one of the strongest waves of nostalgia I've ever felt. Which is messed up. You know why I never blog about when I lived in Florida? IT SUCKED. Everything about it. My life is better in every single measurable way now than it was back then, and yet, given th...

Up until about 8 days before this race, I had no plans of going to Wisconsin for the Subaru Cup, because air travel is expensive and I'm a Cat 1, so I can get pretty much the same race experience out there that I do here. I figured I would let Linnea go out by herself to do the pro thing and I would sit at home and count my money. Sometime around the Pinnacle , though, I started to notice that I had put together some pretty decent races against New England Pros in the last month, so maybe I should try to do something interesting with this alleged fitness, before it disappeared? I bought some tickets to Wisconsin and prepared to (obviously) win the Cat 1 Open race there and get me a pro upgrade. ... and next thing I know, I'm on the 10th row of the starting grid with 100 Cat 1s, and there is no way I am gonna do anything except stare at butts in singletrack for the first lap. So that PRO upgrade is out the window, good thing there's still a bike race to do here. (So...