SFU hill repeats

Well, that could not have gone any worse that is for sure. I got slapped around pretty good. The race basically started at the bottom of SFU and then climbed 2 k to the top and then repeat 15 times. There was almost no flat, just climbing or descending. Not really my thing, but felt that I should be there until close to the end. Well, I could not have been more wrong. We hit the climb the first time up and I was fine, but I dropped my chain. By the time I got it back on I had to make a big effort to get to the back of the pack. I got there, rolled over the top and just felt bad. My lungs were fine, but my legs were awful. It was only about 9 degrees and my legs felt cold and tight. I did not really warm up well and the staging to start took a long time not helping matters. By about 4 laps of 15 I was going to get bounced, I could tell by the other lads coming off the back. Then 5th time up someone let a gap go and I could do nothing, but ride my own pace. That is racing. Raced a whole 1:35. Terrible. 55.00 for that? I should have been a lot better, but if I have an excuse it is that I have not done a real race for a bit. When you are trying to get by on minimum training, you need to be racing a bit more. I have had a 3 or 4 week break. That is too long. Also, it may be time to pick my spots a bit better and not enter courses of this style. Straight up and straight down with no flats probably is going to be tough for me to do well at with the hours I ride. Ah, that is an excuse and nothing else. I just stunk it up bad and I am a bit embarrassed by it. i have a race this weekend and hope to do a bit better. From there it is the Test of Metal MTB race and then a holiday of sorts and after that start ramping it up for some cross racing. That is what it is all about for me. I see a lot of the guys I cross race against riding really well right now. I have to hope that they tail off a bit by year end. Having said that most of them can't bunny hop a curb, so that is a big help. If they figure out how to ride their bikes, I am screwed....
What else is going on? not too much. I had a coke for the first time since Palm Springs. It is nectar of the gods. Other than that I have been keeping it real by logging lots of park time with the Fashionista.

Hey! Anyone remember Kramer getting Jerry to pick up the Cubans for him, but it turns out that they are Dominicans? Then Kraemer dresses them up as Cubans and tries to sell them to Earl Hathaway. do you remember Earl Hathaway? He was the guy that Kraemer was betting arrivals with at the airport waiting for Jerry to come in from Ithaca. That is the genius of Seinfeld, how they subtly work people into the line up again and again!!!

Peace,

Spacious

Test your Metal!!!!

I got into the TEST! So, I will be racing the Test of Metal in about 3 weeks time. I was thinking about just bagging it because i have some road races teed up before that, but now i think that I will just do the road races that will take me to the Test, which only leaves me with one weekend to ride my MTB prior to the race. Oh well, the first year that I did it, I rode it in 3:22 with a flat ( fast change though ) and had never seen the course, Ronsonic just emailed me what to expect. There are really only 2 technical downhill's, actually 3 if you count the ring creek rip. The plunge and one other one. Can't recall it's name, but it is short. The plunge is technical, but if you ran half of the plunge it might make a 2 minute difference in a 3.5 hour race. So, preriding will not be a luxury that I will have this year. Doing the road race out at SFU this Sunday, it should be interesting. It is a super short loop that you do 15 times with a 1.6km climb. I am hoping that it does not detonate in the first few laps as if it gets shattered to pieces early I may just pull the pin, especially if the forecast that is calling for rain is correct.
So, it appears that everyone on the old Team Telecom was doping. Big surprise there. Riis, Mr 64%! Ulrich! Now I am not sad about Zabel, but he rides with class so I would have liked to have believed that he was clean, but you would really have to be an idiot to think that in a nearly 20 year career that he did not dope. That may be pessimistic of me, but just look at the times. It was dirty and still is! One funny thing is, the doctors on the team admit to systematically doping the riders. They lose their jobs at the hospitals that they work at as a result. Riis says that he did it all on his own? I guess now that he is a team owner and DS he does not want people thinking that the DS are involved in the doping, namely his biggest rider Basso. Like he did not know Basso was doping? Come on. Annnnyways, they should strip Riis of his title, then who would it go to? Ulrich ( 2nd ) Virenque (3rd ) or Dufaulx (4th ) all of these guys have been busted in doping cases. Best to leave it with 64%. Should be interesting to see who comes out next week. Oh one other thing about Riis confession was that his wife and kids knew. How would they not I guess, but it still seems weird to me that your spouse would know you are shooting up for a bike race....let alone your kids.
What else....I am skinny now. i had been carrying a few extra lbs with me in spring. I am back to about 160 or below. Just being lazy and not watching portions. I was eating like I was riding 4 hours a day. Well, I ride 2 hours a day ( except weekends ) 4 days a week and that is mostly broken into 2 1 hour rides. So, I go in the habit of only eating small portions through out the day. nothing like a quarter of a bowl of cereal in the morning before leaving, half a muffin when I get to work, half of my lunch at 12:00,. then the other half at 2:00, half a Clif bar before I ride home, eat dinner then grapes while I watch TV.
Been doing the Tuesday night crits. They have been good. I have felt strong doing them, tried to make an escape this last Tuesday, but when you are going 40km plus it is pretty tough to sneak away. My ability to roll it near 50km is pretty limited. I guess I am not that strong after all.
The Fashionista has been waking up at like 5:50, that is not bad for me as I am an early riser. For her mother it is a bit more of a struggle. She is also an early riser since meeting me, but not that early 7 days a week.

I got a sad note from Millertime telling me that his mom has breast cancer. He put it best "it is like a kick in the head when you get the news". It is hard to know what to type, except to say that everyone over here on the left of the country is sending huge prayers her way. I will never forget the time we dropped Millertime off (loaded ) after a party in high school and he went to the wrong house and his mom having to corral him before going to the wrong house. God love our mothers!!!

Brillo

Okay, check this out http://robertogonzalesdebici.blogspot.com/ this is Enns Jr blog. It is pretty funny. I was re-reading over some of his old entries and he has one about me being in PS and having changed my work phone number to having given my number as the number to call if they did not want to leave a message. Classic, you call me and I tell you to call my number if you want to get in touch with someone.
Well, all the rats are coming out of the woodwork! Basso and Scarponi have admitted their roles in the doping affair. I can't believe they are being praised for these admissions. They had a year to come clean on their own and only when they were nailed to the wall did they do anything admirable. Then Basso comes out and says that he never doped in competition, but he had intended on doping in the 2007 Tour, therefore his previous results are legit? WHATEVER! why do they have records of you paying Fuentes in 05/06/07? Also, I love how all the teams claim they know nothing about this. Just hang the riders out there to die. Yeah, John and Bjarne know nothing about what is going on. Uhh yeah right. I saw another article that Basso's sister ( hot!) may be implicated in a drug ring involving some gyms in Italy. What next? Actually, I hope what next, is that Hamilton get his. there is no way that he can admit his involvement now, especially after his 2 yr fight trying to show that he was a twin in the womb. Double asshat. Valvadre is also being brought into the scandal. He should cop his plea as he is young, and 2 years with his kind of money he could just chill with hot Spanish women!!!
Okay, may have some more Willoy Jen stories. I emailed her to get her view on another dating fiasco. Will keep you posted. Haven't heard from Millertime in a bit. He must be out dropping his handicap. those Winnipeg ballers

Livin' large!

So, went to Whistler on Friday night and Saturday. Mrs Space had a conference so we stayed at the Chateau Whistler. Actually, we got upgraded to the gold suites, so we kicked it like real ballers. That was the life. Your own check in, your own lounge, continental breakfast was unbelievable with a chef their to whip you up some waffles or omelette's. Good times! Talked to Enns Senior or Ronsonic as I like to think of him. He set me up with a couple of ride options for Saturday morning. I did the ride from Whistler to Pemberton and then out to Mt Currie to do some climbing. Those are some climbs. 20% at some point. I was slated for about 3.5 hours so I basically just rode out for 1:30 and then turned around. The whole time I rode to Pembi I was thinking this is the nicest ride I have done in a long time. Scenic, nice roads, everything about it was nice. I realized that on the way back it was like that because it was tailwind and downhill. Coming back was a grind. Mostly uphill and straight headwind. It was good, but it was blowing pretty damn hard. I rode about 100km. Can't complain. Did not go really hard, but on Sunday my legs seemed flat, so I figure that I must have went harder than I thought. After my ride on Sunday, me and the Fashionista went to Watermania! It is a wave pool with water slides. Good fun! The first time down the big slide I am not sure that she was loving it. Having lying on my back and rolling it on my heals and shoulder blades and my 2 year old on my chest may not have been the best thing for our first run. I thought I was going to lose her after a couple of corners. We both had no idea what to expect hitting water at the end. I just basically hold her up best I can. She has a life jacket on so she basically goes under then pops back up. She had a blast!! Got home, cracked a few beer and watched the Nucks be horrible on the power play. Have to give them credit, no one gave them a hope. I think the reason is that they get compared to the flames a lot. The Flames are better on paper, but don't play a team defence game. Kipper was amazing, but that D was a joke. They let through 300 shots in 5 games? I doubt Phaneuf liked it when Rhudy called him on being a pussy when he got in a scrum. Put a glove in his face and he runs away. Having said that, after those comments, he did not really change much. The Canucks are going to be in tough against the Ducks for the series win and if they go down 2 games tonight they will almost be out of it. They need to be better on the PP, but their PK looks terrible. Anaheim dumps the puck out at will on the PK, Vancouver? They get hemmed in every time. If their PK is better they win the last game even without scoring on the PP. After the game i had the bad gut. Pissing from my ass so to speak. i think I drank from a grungy bottle on the weekend. It was rough.
OK, that reminds me of a story that Willowy Jen once told me. She, goes on a date with this guy, this was about 10-12 years ago. Well they are at his place ( second date I think ), well he excuses himself after dinner to go to the washroom. So, the guy lives in a small apartment, and he goes and starts dropping a bomb in the crapper. I mean a full load, with explosions and the whole thing! Lets just say that he was not getting anything that night. Her telling me about it later was just soooo classic. Kind of hedging on the description.
That is about it for me. Basso quit Discovery, what a shame. Asshat! Hamilton too. Tells a reporter from Velonews that you can take my hair anytime you want. Yeah, lets see if that is his answer now that they have bags of his blood and are looking fro DNA. Floyd too, go away. Just say you got caught up in something that was wide spread and you regret it. People will forgive you. There is NO grand conspiracy everyone. Just like when they tested the 1999 tour B samples. There were 3 riders that had been found to have EPO in their samples. LA, Beltran and Hamburger. Someone needs to explain to me if they are trying to rail road LA then why add Triki and Hamburger into the mix. To make it look good? LA never address that. It is " the French are out to get me"?