New Snowboard Day !!! yessss

James pretending his Cross bike is a mountain bike.

The massive news is that my Gran was taken into hospital and they found an aneurysm in her abdomen - at her age it's too risky to operate, so from now it's a day by day thing with medication. I've been speaking with my mum a lot and my gran has been doing ok, my mum doesn't sound worried, so that's a good thing. I guess a bit of time will tell.

In the bike world gold is the new white and bike stuff is now boring, welcome the new snowboard, yaeh it's new snowboard day and I just picked up the snowboard for my dreams. Burton Custom X.

I'm excited about the upcoming winter season, I also bought a gore-tex jacket to kit myself out. Even though snow is far away and there is this whole season called Cyclocross in between then, I'm still amped to be spending my weekends on the snow.

On with cyclocross, as you know, Portland is big big time into cyclocross and I raced my first season in Chicago, which was fun, very cold but fun and Portland is warmer but super muddy. So this year I have been to a few skills clinics to see if I can improve. Last night took a training ride in Forrest Park (dirt and fast gravel), headlamps and all, was very nice, some fast riding.

Gold is the new white

Rapha Continetal Gentlmen ride 09/06

Rapha Gentlemen ride.
unsanctioned, unsupported -Hood river to Portland.
137miles
13,300ft (4,053m) of climbing
2 stops for water.
7hr 15 in the saddle.
6 team riders
3rd place out of 12 teams.

james = 1 bad shoulder on 4 miles of gravel climbing = no fun.
little better route planning next time and we could have 2nd.

me (center) with killer bad shoulder.

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.