Huhm

Matt is b.a. The worst is that he got me wussing out right before Matt rides it. Awesome.

Bikes aren't so bad

Yesterday I decided I really did want to do more racing. I made it 3 days of no riding at all. Did some road-age yesterday and North Park today with Brad, Brian, Heath, Matt, and Logan. Matt took me to school riding both a bench and a hop up before I did. Go Matt.

Sweet

What I've eaten in the last 3 days:

• Free ice cream sunday
• Free ice cream bucket in lunch.
• Free massive amounts of Reese cups
• Free massive amounts of Reese m&m things
• Two cinnaminaminamin crunch bagels

Opposed to the practically zero junk food I've had since last winter. It's been awesome.

Rode once this week. Slow mtn ride with the Sprengs, and on a small hill as loudly and obnoxiously as I could declared my racing season over. Then my crank fell off, that sealed it. Immediately went to Bruster's and got #1 on the list above. Done-ski. Kaputt. For now. We'll see.

Cross my heart

Raced 'cross in Ohio on saturday. It was my biggest cross race to date, so I was excited to see how I was going to do. Got stuck in the middle of the pack and learned really fast that you need to be aggressive in cross races to be near the front. And elbows suck. Once things settled down I was in 20+ place and I started to pick people off and in two laps managed to be in 8th place with a nice gap on 9th. There I pretty much sat not making up any time on the leaders for the next couple of laps. On the last few laps it felt like I was starting to gain a tiny on the guy in front of me, then I felt my rear tubular go squishy then flat. Gimped it/mostly ran for a lap and a half, lost a bunch of places, but still finished in the money at 15th. I like this 'cross thing though, I'm going to try to get some more races in and try to improve.

Moraine pictures

My Mom guarding the spare bike

I'm surrounded

Frosty the mountain man 

HD, sweet plaque, and me

Moraine MOM

Today was the final race of the Month of Mud. Two big hills at the start were really fun. Little Henry and I (with some extremely wise tactical planning by Sam) got away on the third climb and we rode together for a while. He can ride down hills really fast and I drafted a dog for a while and he got away and built a nice gap. Big Henry then came up to me and I rode with him for a while untill the course turned downhill for the last time. I needed better than tenth to win the series and there was no sense in breaking a bike or me in the process. I rode pretty conservative the last 3 or 4 miles and got 4th, which was enough to claim the 2008 Month of Mud Series win. I got a really big plaque. And a cool Cannondale carbon jacket. Thanks to Chris and all the people that make this awesome series possible. Henry Dimmick, Doug Frost, and Ray Sielski were the other "Ag3r/BHS"ers in attendendance.

Grove City Cross

Earlier in the week, in an attempt to make my cross bike lighter than my mountain bike, I shot an e-mail out to my teamies about "borrowing" a pair of wheels for the 'cross season. I got lots of responses. Sweeet. Ended up taking Henry D's Spinergy Rev-x wheels (which no, are not older than me...But not by much). Henry said they would be fine and that he'd raced them hard during cross a few years ago, he didn't think they were gonna explode. I wasn't completely convinced. I went home and read up on all the wheel disintegration on these things, and thoroughly psyched myself out. Like riding around my neighborhood dodging pea sized rocks psyched out. You know that dream where you forget you pants, locker combination, and schedule all in one day? I had that same type of thing with seeing the front wheel blow into a katrillion pieces and watching my head get kapowed into the ground. I was telling my (good?) friend Nathan about my worries, and he saw how much fun this could be for him and decided it would be a good race to come watch. But in the end they look sick and made cool wirring noises.

And they rode really nice, I loved them. Race started and I was 3rd going into the first barriers, but forgot how to clip-in and a small gap opened up between me and the flying Joe and Steevo. They rode away from everyone it was impressive. Only tumbled once, and completely forgot about my paper thin wheels. Managed 4th expert on the day behind Steevo, Gorski, and a guy from the same team as Steevo.

Superbig thanks to Rich Allen for my frame and HD for the hoops. Check out the Ag3r/ButlerHealthSystem.org blog for Mike and Henry's experience. I learned cross is a little different than mountain biking and a whole lot more painful. Real fun.