Sweet Christ

Hi, my name is Ryan, and I am totally fucked.


This sunday is the Shenandoah 100 ultra-endurance mountainbike race. Sometime in the depths of my drunkeness this summer I agreed to put myself through this meat grinder of a race. My roomate/former stupid freshman Aubrey was going to go with me, but he has some stupid group project to do...his priorities are all fucked up.

The Roadie Fag, on the other hand, has no excuse. As a recent graduate, he has no homework to speak of, as if he ever did any when he was in school. Not only that, but Big Papa Les lent him a Salsa Dos Niner to use for the event, and he still bails...in favor of a 45 minute crit in the fucking TIDEWATER REGION!!!!! That's right folks, roadie fag has elected to drive 3 hours down to Hampton Roads (notably the shittiest place to ride in Virginia) to ride when he is already located less than 20 minutes from the GW forest and the start line of the gnarliest race to grace the state.
I can only conclude that Andy's balls haven't dropped yet and that he's worried about finally losing to me in a real race.

This however, is very unlikely, despite the fact that the Roadie Fag rides single track with the grace of a Greyhound bus, because my legs are absolute trash. I'm thinking its a combo of the heat and the lingering effects of my surgery. I cracked hard in the first half of an 18 mile XC race last weekend. Even worse, on a short ride with Pretentious Owen (former W&M stupid freshman and Cat 3 roadie fag, currently recovering mono patient) I fell significantly behind the little bastard. This doesn't bode well for the 12 hour ordeal waiting for me in Harrisonburg. Fortunately I was able to hold on to some of my pride when a log I kicked up jammed into Owen's spokes and threw him off the bike...score!

I'm off to mentally prepare some more (read: drink heavily), look for updates sometime next week when I recover. In the meantime, check out this sweet Youtube video, its been entertaining Andy and I for days now...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc9y5ayeeb4

A praise long overdue (Andy)

Due to a busy schedule this praise is way past due, but is appropaite nonetheless.

-My all time favorite rider/motivation, Jens Voigt, won Tour of Germany, or as the Germans call it Das Tour.
-Jens Voigt is officially one of the greatest riders in history and I would like to have his love child.

-Peons bow down, ALL HAIL KING OF MOTHERFUCKIN BREAKAWAYS!

In celebration I attacked and dropped Mountie Scum "Jens-style" during our Townline sprint ride. To add, thoughts of Jens danced in my head as I was the only rider able to bridge up to the winning breakaway at the Williamsport Crit this weekend. A solo bridge at that ;-)

Mountie Scum Update

Well its been a while since I've posted anything, so here's a quick rundown of what I've been up to:

August 5th-12th- I was on vacation in Nags Head with my family. We had 19 people staying in one house, and things rapidly got out of control. Kyle's family was down there as well and we engaged in forced-march 6:30am rides nearly every day, while my family and I engaged in marathon happy hours stretching from 1pm till 1am, with blatant disregard for the drinking age.Not the most relaxing week, but it was a ton of fun. Plus I didn't even get sunburned this year!

August 13th- The Cranky Monkey XC at Fountainhead! Two years ago, the Cranky Monkey was my first ever bike race series, and the Fountainhead race was the hardest one. I was racing beginner and pushing really hard, so hard that I apparently didn't notice when I lacerated my calf open to the tendon on my big ring, finishing the race as a bleeding cripple. Last year I was out of contention with a broken collar bone, so this year would mark my emotional return to the Monkey. Normally, I screw up my pre-race ritual and don't warm-up long enough, so I decided to err on the side of caution and put in a thorough warm-up. This caused me to roll up to the line in approximately 70th place, as they had staged while I was cruising. Someday, I'll get it right. From the gun, we had about a mile and a half of road to string out the field, and I managed to move up to about 40th position and hold it into the single track. My strategy for this race was pretty simple, sit in for the first lap, and then gradually accelerate into the 2nd, and hopefully pick off as many as I could before the finish. I ended up 25th out of 63 finishers, not too shabby, but I bet if I had lined up closer to the front I could've pulled off a top ten. Ah well, there's always the series closer next weekend at Quantico.

August 13th- 16th I spent my final days in the burg, essentially just riding, drinking and almost getting us evicted (through ill-advised use of fireworks, beer, and shouted profanity in a downtown area). Roadie Fag and I did a huge ride with 7 contested sign sprints. I took 3 and Andy took 4. All the ones that came down to a mano a mano sprint I took, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt what the power-off indicated; I am a tight sprinter. The 4 Andy took were on massive attack Jens-style break-aways, proving definatively that he is just plain faster than me.

August 16th-Today I am currently back home in Fairfax recovering from wisdom tooth removal. I look pretty ridiculous, and I can spit blood...its pretty tight.

p.s. Pictures to come when I figure out why this stupid blog page won't let me upload them.

no pain, no gain (Andy)

So I finally got my balls to drop and decided to race Cat 1,2,3 rather than Cat 3,4 in order to improve my chances of improving and get a good hard race in. This race happened to be the 3Sports Circuit Race which was 10 laps of a 5 mile loop, nice roads, 3 small hills with half the course exhibiting a disgusting headwind. Anyway upon arrival to the race I ran into 5 members of the Evolution Cycling Elite squad which is comprised of Cat 1 and Cat 2 riders only. They decided to work me into their plans which flowed like this: Of the 20 racers in the 123 race there were 3 main teams; 3Sports, Cobblestone, and Evolution. There were also a mix of other teams represented by only 1-2 riders. The Evolution stratedgy was to sit in, cover any breaks by the other teams, and hope to get our 2 sprinters to the line. If the breaks were no made my 3Sports or Cobblestone we were to let them go.
The race begins and im immediately up front covering the incessant breaks launched by the 2 opposing teams. During this period I let a 2 man break go as instructed seeing as they were individually represented. After 4-5 laps of covering these breaks I decided to slip to the back and let some of my teammates have a go at it. Unfortunately during this brief respite my teammates let a 4 man break go which both 3sports and Cobblestone were part of. My team leader drifted back to me and asked if I could bridge up to the break which was a good quarter mile ahead of the pack by this point. I told him Id try and launched a huge breakaway as my teammates blocked the front. Bridging up to a break looks and feels sort of like this...plus or minus the perceived physical torment.
I chased the bastardized breakaway for 2 laps with no luck...4 against 1 and they saw me coming. After some time I burned out and was reeled in by the pack...mind you by this time I had only 2 teammates left, the rest had dropped. Evolution decided that we may be able to reel in the break if we pace-lined the front, so I was back in action, taking pulls and burying myself for the team to catch the winning break away. By this point I was exhausted and with 2 laps to go I noticed the pack had shrunk to 4 3sports riders and myself. ALL my Cat 1,2 Evolution teammates had dropped. I finished the race in 9th position behind the 6 riders who were in the break. Afterwards my Elite squad teammates had nothing to say......seeing as how the only rider on the team to finish the race was a Cat 3.

This is why we can't have nice things

In contrast to andy's rather good weekend at tuna, my week has gone shittily. I drove up to State College, PA to volunteer at the Wilderness 101 and secure a discount for the Shenandoah 100 race, and intended to race the Cranky Monkey at Wakefield on Sunday. So we woke up early and rolled out down the terribly maintained PA highways at 5:30am to make it back to DC for the Monkey, only to recieve a message from my mom that the race was full up. Fuck. We went home to H-burg and I promptly fell into a funk. On top of this, the temp agency I work for still hasn't paid me for last week, gave me bum info on today's assignment (I was supposed to work from 7am to 2am, and it turned out it was from 7PM to 9am, fuckers), ebay/paypal was making it difficult to retrieve my ca$h money, the post office closed too early for me to ship out the wheels i sold on ebay, and my computer crashed. So, instead of doing anythign constructive, I created this weeks Official Shit List:

1. The Pennsyvlania Highway System-Come on guys, your economy is bigger than fucking Holland's, and I bet the Dutch don't have to drive on such shitty roads.
2. The Cranky Monkey Race Series-you took a chunk out of my leg, and I can't even get a spot in the Sport class?
3. Ebay-way to not let me print out a fucking shipping label
4. PayPal-where's my money?!
5. My Shitty Temp Agency-how hard can it really be to pay your workers and tell them the right time to show up for a job?
6. The Fucking US Postal Service-How am I supposed to ship shit if you close at 4:30?!
7. My computer- thanks for crashing and making the week that much better.

If you are in any way, shape, or form affiliated with the above, please kindly eat a dick.

On the plus side, I went on a sweet mountain ride and conquered the technical Narrowback Secret South Ridge, which gave me tons of trouble last time, dropped Kyle on the fireroad up (his previous morning ride and 100 mile race nonwithstanding), and ripped down a fun downhill. Also, I have a ridiculous fu manchu moustache that I feel is pretty neat, and I boozed tonight.
Things are looking up.

<3,

Ryan