Give Thanks For Delicious Trails

It's the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and we all have much to be thankful for. Thanks for good health, good bikes, great trails and most of all good friends. Tonight we gather to honor our forefathers by taking an adventure only slightly different than the hunt and gather adventures of the days of the pilgrimage.

Alas we will ride like birds of a feather all flocked together. We will turn tail and drop trails. Under the lights, we will take on the night. Xteric will go so fast he will give us all a fright. Thusly we shall gather in the name of thanks to fill our cup with PBR, delicious trails, delicious tacos and better friends. Onward. TacoStrong.

Rodeo Cross Race Report
Lars and I escaped to Folsom to participate in Rodeo Cross last Wednesday night. Due to excessive honey do's on the part of Larz there was no carpool. When I arrived he was putting in an excellent effort drilling the hills and making FT3 proud. From what I could tell however, he was not bunny hopping the barriers. He finished with a smile and I headed for the line. In this particular series, there is not a 35+ Master's category, so the field was stacked with youthful strong specimens with more time than  most to train.


Rodeo Cross is suuuuuper fun, thew lighted Sherwood forest features a heckling/cheering section, and, yes I am serious, a tuba player who was playing the Star Wars theme song. I was holding my own pretty well and when I started slowing down I accepted a PBR hand up and began drilling for the end. I made lapped a few riders and nearly caught the next up A racer, I finished 6th. I am proud to saw my last lap time was within one second of the leaders' time. And thus, I am learning the art of 'coming from behind.'

While Lars and I were wrapping up the night's events, a couple dudes had some words and it quickly escalated to 'cyclist grappling' I didn't see any real punches thrown, partly due to Larz' amazing and well trained ability to break up fights and embarrass grown men for doing something so stupid. "Are you guys serious??!!" he said in a voice that would make you cringe if you were among the grappler's.

Lange Twins Race Report
Alas Lars teased me once again that he was going to go to this race, then didn't, and NoCar didn't respond to my text or previous week's callout so I was flying solo to this one. This race always seems to attract fast riders from the Bay Area, and this year was no different. With 'those guys' present among my field of opponents, I decided to make focus my mission on beating my primary rivals for third overall in the Sac series. The first lap fast as hell, and after that I crumbled a bit. I took two laps off, then around four or five into it I was being caught by 45+ racers (the leader who I had a rift with in the previous race had already passed me on lap 2 - and by the way.... we had a talk before the race, I approached him, he said thanks and we mutually decided that we were there to have fun, and he even said "I felt like an ass.") So, I felt as thought I could not "go down like this" and decided to make a huge effort to put some time on them with a big sprint over the 'flyover.' My plan worked and I kept pushing it to catch my rival for third overall. He held me off for a couple laps, but at the end of the 'three to go' lap, I caught him and we rode the 'two to go' lap together. On the last lap, I put in another huge effort over the flyover and put a nice gap on him. I was able to maintain that gap, and even saw the next contender just before the finish. This race has demonstrated to me that I have the ability to push through for a strong finish, I may need to calm down a bit at the start, and I think that is something NoHandle has been telling me for some time. The sticky mush dirt was present in its finest for sapping energy with every pedal stroke. Those of you who have done this race before know of what I speak.

That's a wrap. Happy Tuesday.

Cap'n

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