Nother week, more sore muscles

Boo Yak a sha - biggie up ya self on a century

So here it is again end of another week. Time flys, and speaking of flying I'll be flying out to the good old U.K. on the 23rd Oct for some well earned jollies.
And speaking of NOT flying.... well that was me not flying speed at the track on Friday night. So I ride to work on my track bike fixed and up 1000ft climb, then I ride out to the track after work where Fast Twitch Fridays were more like Slow Twitch for me and doing v.poorly in the omnium races. Not sure what the deal was, somehow did not get into the grove, for my three races, I had my strategy planned in my little head prior to racing the events, but nothing came together. By far a v.poor performance. It's always a bad sign when your done racing a 12lap race to have energy left over :). I was planning on taking some time off the bike, just to re cooperate a bit and my IT Band has been sore of recent, strange for an old bugger like me you say, right.

Anyway despite all that crap, Joel from Yakima had mentioned the Sunday Portland century ride to me at the end of Friday so and instead of racing the dirt crit that was planned for Sunday, I decided to get in some miles , yeah so what the heck, I did it, was a nice casual pace. Joel, Julio, Uma (ms.vanilla) and Myself rode the century. I think this was Joel's first century, and he did it with ease.

Julio and Joel representing.

Speaking of Uma, this bird is crazy, yeah, check this out right, she races at the velodrome on Friday night - wins her races, then she went mountain biking for 6 hours on Sat maxing out her heart rate, then she rides the century on Sunday, bloody hardcore if you ask me.

Uma, hardcore but not representing

Anyway thats about all the fun in my life for now.

Heat wave, time trials and sunsets

So, has been a little strange here the last 3 days - it's been close to or above 100 degrees (38 c), a touch abnormal for Portland. Finally this evening it has cooled down. Most houses in Portland don't have A/C (mine included) but it is heat which is more on the dry side. Been killer, but glad it's down now, little rain tonight would not go amiss.

Crazy Sky Sunday.

Cool Sunset (Sun Eve) looks like LA dunn it?

Even with the high temps, still managed to get some riding in, did a little loop on Sat, prolly more than I should have right, but yeah 38miles or so. Then Sunday AM went out to a long stretch of road a did a time trial with some other Yakima riders. 10 miles, ride it as fast as you can. You might well be saying, why the bugger would you do such a thing at 8am on Sunday morning. - well the 8am is easy because it much much cooler out.
So why else would you want to do this.... well coming up is a wicked race, it's a 155mile unsupported team race hosted by the Rapha Continental blokes (Rapha is out of London ain't it), each team has 6 riders and since a whopping 11 people from my team wanted to do it, we had to sort out a way to decide who gets to go and what not. Needless to say, being one of the weaker riders on our team, I don't think i'll be doing it, but still wanted to try out anyway.

James laying full weight into the bike off the start line

There were 6 of us at this decider TT on Sunday and each one left with 1min interval, Final times were pretty close with less than 30 seconds betwen each one of us, still I ended up bottom of the pile :(. but i think I had a good ride, I did not burn out and shortly after passing the finish line I nearly puked, which is a good sign that you spent all your energy at the right moments.

What else? well it's the start of the Cyclocross season real soon and in fact we had our first team practice Friday lunch in a park near work, yeah were nuts, it was 89 degrees out, so we went and sweated it up like mad. Not sure how excited I am and all about the start of this season, but my bike is in working order, new tires, new bottom bracket and a smashing pair of wheels which you saw a few posts ago and i'm working on some new techniques for dismounting my bike before barriers, let's just say fixie meets cross,

Oh and another wicked sunset from my Saturday ride with Uma blog.
That's all for now, have a good one.

Kayaking? What no bikes, but wait...

Well busy week last week,
This maybe a 50% non cycling related post...so i'll try mix it up here :)
I headed out for Fast Twitch Friday event at the velodrome - won a race, lost two races, positioned 3rd at the end of the night. not too shabby., not too good either, but you know new to this game. This weekend, mixed it up and went Kayaking with a few friends alongside a nature preserve just outside of PDX, was a good time. Kayaking in the UK is called canoing. Then this Tuesday I did Pursuits at the velodrome, never done that before, but it was pretty boring compared to racing, Pursuits are solely about speed and efficiency - I don't think I will be doing them again, I would rather enter races, and rub shoulders with people and run the risk of crashing etc, all that adrenaline stuff.

Here's some Kayaking pictures, was an overcast day, which was good for not getting sunburnt!



Yeah I know , I have cycling gloves on - in the picture above. Gorra protect your soft handie pandies you know.
Also , just to make sure you know I am still talking about bikes, I'm just about to buy a mountain bike. It only has 1 gear though, it's the new thing that the kids are doing nowadays, and it makes the bike a lot cheaper and in some ways more reliable like.



Here's some Marmite my mum sent for me. The funny thing is , at the place where I work, they have all these whimsical names for their products.... big daddy, flipside etc, so to see this Marmite container show up called The Big Squeeze was fitting!


Here's a picture of me with a new shirt that my Mum sent, thanks Mum your the best! and it's quite smart - ain't it. This one is designed by Guide London UK - new shirt every month for skinny euro boys. Guide