First race

We’re a scant 36 or so hours away from our first bike race of the season, Crank the Kanc. It should be a good race and it should either confirm our fitness coming into place or that we are in deep do-do. Being the only one of the crew who has raced this before I have some idea of what I would like to do for a time. I’d love to post a 1:17 or better. If I go sub 1:15 then I’ll feel like I’m coming into form.

We have some sort of bet going on between A1, JJ, and myself. If I beat JJ by two minutes or more- he owes me $.01 for every second that I beat him by, and if he gets me or coming in closer then two minutes I owe him $.01 for every second. You get the gist. A1 is in on this as well and I’ve got to get him by 7 minutes and JJ has to get him by 5.

A1 is talking big story about how he’s going to blast out of the start house and just “sprint” the 21 miles. I kinda would like to have a camera and telemetry of his effort as I think by Albany bridge he may be rethinking his strategy. JJ is the one who may post the surprise. He crushed me on the Evans climb a few weeks ago, and has been secretly training on Hurricane- only time will tell.

Speaking of TT’s I’ve got to give props to my wife’s leading “list” man- Jan Ullrich. He finally put down the Krispy Kremes long enough to post a win in today’s Giro TT, posting a sub 59 minute 50km TT- damn that’s fast! D’Kaiser still can TT, now we’ll see if he can climb next week.

While JJ, A1 and myself dial up the pain meter on our bikes NK will be out grabbing at other men’s shorts while the play with a funny shaped balls. PJ- who knows what he’ll be doing, hucking steel or something like that.

Am I the only one that has been looking hard at their gear, and wondering what tweaking I can make to get comfortable on the bike for 9+ hours? I found some new grips/bar ends that look pretty trick- the Ergon r2m. I’m also looking at the gearing and wondering if a slightly larger granny gear might help to eliminate chain suck- any thoughts? (going from a 22 to a 26)

That’s my story. It’s raining, it’s been raining, and it’s going to keep raining. But beyond that life is good.

The good Dr. Evil Ass