Tubeless!

There is a lot of controversy, speculation, and misinformation around this topic, so I thought I'd share my experiences with it here. This is not a sponsor driven advertisement post, but instead is my genuine opinion that I have actually had to silence for many years due to sponsors association. I have used it in years past when racing as a privateer and during off season/training in other years when not allowed to race it due to sponsor compliance and of course, now with the Stan's Notubes Elite CX Team. Why so much controversy? Haters need something to hate and traditionalist are going to reject change no matter what it is, but also, it was born in a "cobbled together, use what is available" environment that went wrong for a lot of people.

I think this was one of it biggest early selling points. Someone can take whatever tire and whatever rim, throw a Stan's kit in there and blast air in it with a compressor and there you go. Tubeless! However, the problem with that is lack of standards. So you get an inconsistent rim diameter and an inconsistent tire bead diameter that sometimes resulted in catastrophic failure when run at low pressures in a small volume tire. This caused many folks to write it off as a complete failure and they still hold this belief today. The situation is greatly improved today with Stan's dialing in rims designed to be set up tubeless and tire manufacturers tightening up standards. Before I dive into the real talking points of tubeless tech, I'd like to address a couple points that I believe to be misinformation.

Tubeless tire/rim combos are heavier - I see no reason that this would be the case. We are adding a tire bead, but losing three layers of material that would normally be on the bottom side of a tubular tire (base tape, casing, tube). In my experience, it is quite the opposite. Seems like most people are racing on a 1400g tubular wheel like a Zipp 303. A light tubular tire like a Challenge Chicane is 400-450g. Mud tubular tires even more. I am currently racing on a Stan's Valor wheelset that is 1300g and our Kenda tire selection ranges from 310-340g. Our "heavy" mud tire is 340g. Sure, you add 1-2oz of sealant, but don't we run that in our tubulars anyway? I did.

Tubeless tires won't be as supple - My logic would assume otherwise. We have a volume of air enclosed by a fabric that is attached in 2 different ways, but none-the-less, attached. If the volume of air is the same then, in theory, you can make that fabric to be whatever you want it to be, supple or not, and all things should be equal. The fabric enclosing the air volume in a tubeless tire is 1 layer of stuff. A tubular is 2 layers. 1 layer of stuff generally has the potential to be more flexible than 2. Of course there are some clincher tires that have a really thick 1 layer and therefor aren't as supple as 2 thin layers. However, the set up on my bike now uses 1 layer of thin material that, to me, seems to exceed the casing flexibility of any tubular I have ridden.

Ok, moving on to the claims that are real issues, or at least potential issues.....in my opinion. 

Burps - This is an area that I think Stan's has made huge gains in the last couple years. Personally, I have never burped a tire. I don't even know what it sounds like. Does it really sound like a burp? The first thing brought up right here is, "yeah, but you are 135lbs". True. Good argument. However, to compensate, I've put my set up at 10lbs and tried cornering it, with leg out, off camber, hard as I can, to try and put it into an extreme situation that would cause a burp. Nothing. The tire folds over, rim on the ground, but the bead of the tire doesn't budge. However, I do see this as something that could happen and believe there is more to be done in the design department that could eliminate any possibility of this. Some of it has to do with, again, lack of standards. This is something Stan is always wrestling with. Tire bead diameters are getting better, but still all over the place. So Stan has to design a rim that will accommodate all of these, therefor sacrificing a bit of burp resistance in the process. If tires were all held to a high standard and exactly the same bead diameter, then the rim could be made to match it exactly for a perfect, tight fit.

Pinch flats - Without a Stan's rim, a tubeless set up is far more susceptible to these than tubular because the sidewall of the rim is basically putting the tire between a knife edge and immovable object. With a Stan's rim, the rim's sidewall has been designed to be so low, that the material of the tire bead actually hits an object before the rim sidewall has a chance to puncture the tire. In my experience this has proven to be the case. I have been on off road MTB trail rides on my CX bike where I have spend a good portion of it hitting the rim on stuff and been fine. These rides far exceed anything one would experience on an actual cyclocross course. Another design feature that Stan's build into their carbon rims that address this is radial compliance. A Valor wheel, built up, will move vertically, 7mm while maintaining exceptional lateral stiffness. This is huge, for a few reasons. First, CX bikes these days are really rigid. This is adding suspension, but that's a whole other topic. It's relevant here because a rim that moves is likely to hit objects with less force, lessening the force available to compress the tire and it's bead and cut the sidewall. I do, however, still see pinch flats as a place where tubeless tech has more room for innovation. There is still the possibility that an object can bypass the tire bead and hit the sidewall, which is still quite sharp. We will see what the future holds, but for now, the technology is more than capable of running low pressures on a typical cyclocross course without any added risk of pinch flatting.



There is still a world of innovation left in this sector and it is this that I have always like the most about it. The potential for what it could become. It is really just a baby in the cyclocross scene and if it gains some backing and support, it really holds the potential to make things much easier and convenient.....especially for the amateur racer.

First Nittany

My first go at the Nittany Lion UCI CX race is history. It was a sub-par performance plagued with mechanicals......and I'm super psyched about it.

Why? Because.....a post surgery mediocre performance additionally limited by bike issues is still as good as, or better than, my absolute best day under perfect conditions from the pre-surgery era.

Yeah, on Saturday my bars slipped down in the first lap. Oh that trick. I feel like no matter how tight you tighten your stem, this WILL happen once every year. It's inevitable. However this year, after the bar slip I also had my left hood continue to migrate down the bar until my hand was falling off the front of it and removing the skin in the process. At some point I submitted and fell to the drops, which was relief for the hand and hell for the lower back. I was the tail end of the sprinting group at the end for 4th. I felt like I was not able to produce the power that I have become used to producing after surgery, but attributed this to the handlebar situation.

For Sunday I moved everything back to it proper spot and tightened it all down. Since I had the slip out of the way, this was a productive measure and things stayed put like they should. The race was faster today with Steven Hyde stretching things from the beginning. Feeling a little better than Saturday, but definitely not on par with mid-week. Must be still working out the kinks or adjusting to the spikey effort of CX. Regardless I was more "in the mix"...."mixing it up" and stuff. By the last part of the last lap I was securely in 3rd and closing pretty fast on 2nd, when I rolled a tire. I ran the last 5 corners and walked across for 5th.

Oh well. Gotta get this stuff out of the way. Looking at names in the results at CrossVegas and doing some comparison and estimations.......you know, that stuff racers always do....."well if I beat him here and he did that there" or "my numbers are this, so if I raced there I would be in this place"......well, anyway, I liked what I saw when I did that......maybe I can just send them a power file and they can stick me in the results where I should have finished.

Plumbing "fix"tures

I was holding off to be fairly certain of my status and not going off some fluke or hunch about how things are doing. However, at this point it is really quite safe to say that my surgery this spring was a success! I wasn't sure for quite a while as I dug myself out of a pit of inactivity, but now that I am out, I have surpassed anything I have been able to do at any point in the last 2 years with regards to pushing pedals.....by a safe margin. It may be a bit before I can say that I am back to normal, but the fact that in fairly short order, I am beyond my one-legged self leads me to believe that I have an adequately repaired artery that should allow me to progress to par again and hopefully beyond.

Things are looking good for 2014 and beyond....

Drawing a line in the sand

Can someone please tell me why blood doping or EPO is somehow different than using an altitude chamber. To blood dope you extract your blood and this triggers your body to produce more red blood cells. EPO is a pill filled with a substance that triggers your body to produce red blood cells. An altitude chamber artificially alters the air you breath which triggers your body to make more red blood cells.

Yeah, one is legal. The others are not. However, in practice, what is the difference? All three are bought fitness. It's not hard work or physical talent. It's a technology you paid for to make you faster than your competition. This is otherwise known as "cheating".

I see this all over the place in cycling. "Take this supplement and it will make you faster!". "Pop this pill and you will crush your competition!" C'mon people. OK, these supplements may be full of legal substances (maybe not) but just stand back and take a look at what you are doing. It's really no wonder that there is so much cheating in cycling. It's a clear path to crossing that line and the line, legally speaking, is far beyond the real cheating line. To me, if someone is popping supplements and using chambers and the like, they are already cheating. If you want to argue that it's legal so it isn't cheating then we have to bring up the point that these legal options ARE the gateway to illegal doping. If somebody is doing these things to try to get an edge, it ain't gonna take a whole lot to see that taking some EPO is a whole lot easier. The mentality is EXACTLY the same and the incentive is right there.

 I honestly have more of a problem with these practices than I do with the high profile world-tour doping cases. I mean I have a problem with it all. I can't imagine doing any of it under any circumstances and somehow feeling good about myself. However, these guys are trying to hold on to big contracts against a bunch of other people who are being all "doctored up" to go fast. The local, regional, domestic cheating is a matter of trying to get an fake edge over others for pride, and/or very little income. It is appalling to me that we all fail to recognize and we often even embrace cheating methods just because a governing body calls it legal. While at the same time we disgrace others who did/do the same thing, only on a higher level.

Clean slate

I always thought I was pretty good at riding slow......that is until the last 3wks of my surgery recovery in which I was told to limit my efforts on the bike to below 100bpm. Maybe when I am fit that might be a somewhat reasonable number to stay below, but completely unfit, this is an output that will hardly get me up the hill I live on.

I spent the first week following this restriction pretty close by using a triple chain ring with a MTB cassette and doing some walking. Believe it or not those first few rides where I would ride for an hour and only go 10mi (I'm no mathematician but that's like 10mi per hour), actually made me quite tired after doing literally nothing for 2 months. I soon began to employ a new strategy for keeping under that number. Staying home and not riding my bike. On week 2 through semantics in my Garmin HR zones settings I ended up putting the number at 111bpm and riding a bit more. Then by wk 3 I switched onto my normal road bike and sorta stopped responding when my heart rate would venture up to 120-130bpm. I think this was all fine.

Monday was the end of my restriction. The smart thing to do would be to ease into it and start building a base up before hitting it hard. I smashed it as hard as I could on the first 3 days of training. By smash it I mean like a whole 250 watts. But lemme explain....I feel I have circumstances that warrant such ignorance toward such proven methods. I wanted to get a sense of whether my blood flow had been repaired or not. As of this point I feel like I have had some really good signs. For most of my life a lot of my venous blood flow has been clearly visibly coursing through my vessels just under thin skin. Since '08, I had not seen much of that definition in my left leg. Now I am seeing them once again. Also there used to be pinching sensations in my hip at rest that are gone. However, to get a definitive idea of the repair job I needed to get blood demand up and see if the supply was there.

In my rational thought I new the first efforts were going to be slow and feel like poo, but I couldn't help but have an irrational part of my brain take off on this tangent thought process that pointed out that my blood flow would be opened up and despite complete lack of activity I was going to feel like superman, crushing my previous one-legged abilities. That is definitely not what happened.

Trying to hone in on the sensations in my left leg was difficult because my right leg, lungs, heart, head, back, etc were screaming as loudly. I take this as a good sign. Everything is equally as slow. After the good part of a week, this is still my feeling. I have turned down the speed and began some base building, but when the burn comes to my legs, it feels like both feel it equally, which is fantastic. Time will tell whether things are truly back to normal, but for now I am thrilled to be able to get out for some epic summer rides with the good signs that have already become obvious.

Pretty flowers 2

What a lovely bouquet I have received......

Pretty flowers

It's late but around here the first round of flowers are popping out, which inspires me to write a little bit. After dispersing their seeds last fall the flowering plants of the region went into a long dormant period to wait out the bitter winter, which was especially bitter this year. Finally the temperatures climbed and day night cycle progressed to a point that triggers the complex mechanisms in plants to start a reproduction frenzy. This frenzy relies on a symbiotic relationship between many species, all dependent on each other in a balance achieved over thousands, millions of years, depending on the species. The birds arrive from their long journey, to eat the insects that just hatched out to feed on the nectar of the spring flowers, who in turn use the insects to achieve their own reproduction in the form of transported pollen from one flower to another, or in some cases from one part of the flower to another......that is, the ones that are not cut and placed in a pot of water on the table in someone's house. Let's take a look at this practice for a moment. Our view of other life forms is not consistent and tends to be hypocritical. Put this practice into another scenario, with a different species......

We are taking a lovely hike along a marsh and we come across, let's say, a family of beavers. The young are just getting old enough to strike out on their own and reproduce. We get excited and comment on their beauty. We are very interested in their testicles. Particuarly the largest, most fragrant balls. After we have selected the biggest ones, we chop them off. We also take some other notably large, smelly balls off a few other beavers. We bundle a bunch together in a hand and tuck a few in behind our ears so we look pretty and then we take them home with us. When we get home we put them in a vase on the table and smell them occasionally for maybe a week, at which point they shrivel up and we just throw them out. Meanwhile that beaver never reproduces.

Well that isn't so harmless anymore is it? Is it wrong? I don't know. I'm just a human, but I'm going to tend to say it is. I mean, what is the point? So back to my point.....our view of life. A person will not think twice about ripping off a plants reproductive organs for no real gain but that same person might practice a vegan diet because they don't want to harm cute, furry animals. They would harm one for nothing more than aesthetics but refuse to cause harm to the other, even to feed themselves. Why is it that the life of an animal is worth so much more than a plant to us? Again, I'm just a human, but my thought is that life is dependent on death and harm to others. Without it, life does not happen. However, like with most things, I think the real answer exists in the happy medium. A reckless ignorance toward life and uninhibited exploitation of it is an obviously bad path but sheltering oneself from a basic function of life on earth is also not healthy. The happy medium, or mediocrity that exists in the natural world is one where death is apart of life, but only for the purpose of sustaining another life. Not for a pretty dinner arrangement.

Butchered

Fueled by frustration, I was persistent enough to finally find a reasonable path forward with regards to a health care solution to my Left Iliac Artery Endofibrosis. The in-network was the only one the insurance company was going to ever allow me. Fortunately, I had the help of the west coast IAE specialist Dr. Jason Lee. Without him I don't know what I would have done. Chance would have it that the recommended local surgeon in Rochester is close with Dr. Lee, who gave praise and offered to advise him through the process. If I can't go to the specialist, this was the next best option, so I said yes. That was a while ago and there have been some delays and seemingly catastrophic question marks since then but, long story short, the imaging found significant irregularity in the artery and surgery was scheduled.

I came home from the hospital yesterday after Monday's operation. They found a good bit of fibrosis built up on the artery and removed it. Then the patch was sutured on. Because of excessive tightness in the area, a second incision was made to do a partial release on my inguinal ligament. This will loosen up the ligament, reducing the chances of this happening again. This was an area where Dr. Lee's consulting proved highly valuable. I was sewed back up and heavily drugged. Everything went perfectly, but that's where the smooth sailing ended. I did not have a good time with the drugs. I was nauseous and constipated for most of the week. I quit one drug and they would put me on another which bound me up the same. After stopping all the drugs yesterday, I finally feel like I am sorta normalizing today. I can tell because I am starting to feel the pain in the incisions. Prior to this I hardly noticed it cause the room was spinning and I had multiple days worth of food piled in my gut.

At this point I can hardly think about riding, but in 2-3wks from Monday I can get back on the bike and start building back up. It's likely to be a long process as I have been inactive for 3wks now due to the relatively invasive imaging and like I said, I have 2-3 more to go. I'm sure that will put more than a dent in my ability to do any activity, let alone racing a bicycle. Also it can be several months before I can actually ride hard. So I will be noodling along for a while. But even if I am severely set back, at least I know that, if I work hard, I should have the potential to do what I used to be able to do, and that alone will make riding slowly a whole different thing than before.

.....I want a left leg in my stocking this year

Here I am with the last race of 2013 in the books. This proves that you don't necessarily have to be having fun for time to fly. On the bike, this really was a difficult season for me. I have a real unfulfilled feeling after two seasons of racing well below my expectations and abilities. Now, even though that is a pretty long down spell, that feeling is something that all of us experience at some point. High high's and low low's. The biggest difference here for me is this.....I know that unless I have a surgical operation, that I will never return to form and in fact will probably continue to decline. This is the new reality. There is no forging ahead hoping that if you train smart and work hard, things will turn around. I can expect small gains here and there, but what does that really matter when you've had like 20% permanently chopped right off the top?

It is interesting to note how this has changed me as a rider over the years that I have dealt with this condition. It has created a complete 360 in the characteristics of my racing. When I was racing mountain bikes as a junior my strong talent was on the technical side of racing. I wasn't super fit but could make up a lot when the trail got rough and twisty. These characteristics continued right into my transition to road racing. My lower category racing was fairly pathetic. I could sprint fast but my sustained effort was way off the back.

At some point things changed. In the matter of a few years I had flipped around 180. I was racing road full time and signing my first pro contract. I was a legitimate domestic pro level all-rounder, but I was strong in the TT and uphill. Two things I couldn't do well enough to hang with cat 3's a few years back. When I dabbled in CX those days I found that most of my skills had been forgotten and I made do by just smashing the pedals.

By the end of my two short years with a road contract, unknown to me, things were trending back the other way again. Signs of this circulation problem were beginning to show up but I was still able to ride decent. Then 2009 is when an alarm bells really went off for me. I was set to race my first full season of CX with Richie and was doing some road events to prepare. I did my training as usual but I just couldn't do what I used to be able to do. It happened that way all summer long and was completely unexplained. This was before my days with health insurance (a lot of good it's doing me now!) so I wouldn't have done anything about it, but I may have thought about looking into it if it weren't for a successful CX season that fall. I found myself dredging those old skills back to the surface to add to what was left of my ability to push the pedals and I ended up with a good racing season.

There is that break from racing in there but since then I've lost more and more on the pedals and have been pulling out all the old skills I can find to make up for it. It is to the point now where I go backward on any given straight and have to get back with skill alone.

There is some positive light here. I have had to get those skills back. Because of them I have been able to notch a UCI win and a bunch of UCi top 5's in the last two seasons. If I ever am able to have this operation and can recover even a modest amount of my previous abilities I am going to bring those skills with me and end up better than I would have without this whole ordeal. Also, if a racing season isn't going well on the bike I still get to hang out with my friends who are also teammates and fellow racers. These are really great people and the weekends through the fall isn't ever enough time spent with them.

Looking forward from here, the fight on the bike may almost be over but the fight with beaurocrats for access to health care is far from it. As I pointed out above, the "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger" saying looks accurate for the bike, but unfortunately with regards to this fight I don't see how that could be so. I just need to put my head down and keep fighting this one.

Doomsday

I recently was overhearing a sort of doomsday conversation that I decided not to engage in even though I could certainly have added a few things to. It's actually a stance that I have encountered before and unfortunately I don't think it's a rare sentiment. It went a little like this.....

A guy was talking to a co-worker who is building up a store of food for the apocalypse. He has a year's worth of food stored and he asked if the other had any stored. The other replied no but that he had a year's worth of ammo cached though. The other said "Ha, you can't eat bullets!" at which point the other replies "No, but you just told me where there is a year's worth of food."

It's funny, but not. Funny in jest, but not so much when you think of the possibility of that reality.

It's a typical short sighted, individualistic approach.

When faced with the possibility of a grand collapse of the systems we currently rely on, you can either choose to educate yourself on ways to live without those things.....or you can focus on ways to prolong the supply of these things well beyond the death of the systems that produce them. I wonder what these folks think. An apocalypse is going to just be a temporary thing. Like everything is going to just fall apart for a year and then all of a sudden go back to normal. Who knows? Maybe. More than likely any major collapse will be extensive and re-inventive for humanity, in which case these people will shoot all their neighbors, eat all the food, and then die one year later.

No one can really predict how a collapse like that would occur. It could come from so many places, but one thing we can be certain of......banding together with a community is going to get a people much further than shooting and looting. However, I'm starting to wonder if I should be thinking about protecting myself from people like that. I feel like I would have a lot to offer a post-apocalyptic world.

Troy NYCROSS to HPCX

To get back into the swing I attended a NYCROSS event in Troy, NY. Fun race. It wasn't as low key on my body as I had hoped though. I spent the whole weekend chasing back after breaking stuff. Broken chain and saddle on Saurday and then two flats on Sunday.

Since getting sick prior to Gloucester I kinda set the bike aside to recover a bit. I feel like I had to to rid myself of the virus and to get my head/face healed up, but I was starting to feel slow. Combining my lack of power coming from the left leg and some unimpressive form is not pretty. The first day at Vermont I came really close to being lapped, which has never happened before. I was crossing the line as Tim was entering the final straight. Fitness had gone downhill since then and I would hang on for a dismal performance on Saturday of Rochester and then scratch this whole getting lapped thing off the list on Sunday. Well, I got 80 percented. I was about to be lapped when Alan Atwood saved me from the misery of being crushed by my peers.

I was mentally injured but physically healed from my cold and injuries so i had to get going again. I had a weekend off and a couple weeks to squeeze in some training, which is exactly what I did. By the time Cyclesmart rolled around I had recovered a bit of fitness. I made the lead group of the race and looked pretty good as we road away from the chase group by a wide margin. I couldn't hold on with one leg when accelerations came but we had such a big gap over the chase that I safely came in 6th. Pretty happy with that.

I paid for the effort on Sunday and checked off another DNF. My feeling on that is if I am a little off and don't make the lead group and I throw up my arms and quit.....that's kinda lame. However, these days where my left leg is just not moving and I'm getting lapped, I'm really OK with calling it a day. In fact, in my case I may not be physically doing myself any favors by "toughing it out". When that leg doesn't have it and I keep pushing, other things have to make up for it. Usually my back. One side of it that is overworked and hurting as it is. I have no shame in pulling out of these situations.

Things looked decent going into HPCX. I had gotten back to some good training and recovering and this was looking like a manageable field. The course was not ideal for sub-par pedaling as it went up and down a hill three times a lap, but maybe they would be short enough that I could get up them anaerobic and recover on the way down. That did seem to be the case for two of the three but the first one was just too long and I started coming off the back there in the second half of the race. I was able to get back on via the downhill every time though. On the last lap I again was barely able to make contact again right before the final downhill. Basically too late to do much, except that a couple guys rode into each other and I went around smoothly such that it was then too late for them to get back by me. I picked up 4th for it. Happy with it, but races like that are a bit frustrating because I know how much I would have been able to crush it in the years past. I used to like climbing quite a lot. Especially punchy climbs in CX races. Used to love courses like that.

This brings us up to another weekend off. Well not "off", but off for those who stick to New England. This year seems to have spread the racing out a bit and we are ending up with some holes in the eastern UCI schedule. If I was going well I'd be likely to venture out but not under the current circumstances. These days I'll thoroughly enjoy another weekend off.

Baltimore through Providence

Gosh, I really haven't written anything for a while. My bike racing season has been lackluster, but all things considered not as bad as it could be. I have generally struggled on Sundays due to the floppy leg. My good leg can take a heavy load when the bad one lags.....but only for a while, and I pay the price on day two.

I had a decent result on Saturday of Baltimore with 4th place. In addition none of our team was robbed. Pretty good day. Day two I paid for the effort and lagged behind a bit.

Then things got interesting. I got a cold that week and didn't feel so good going into Gloucester. I gave it a good try Saturday, but I wasn't helping the sinus situation. I pulled off into the pits and called it a day. I watched the finish and went about my post race day as usual. That night, after dinner with my old teammate and buddy I was leaning on Chabanov's car just chatting when I started to feel dizzy......kinds barfy.

Then after what was an undetermined amount of time I found myself pushing myself up off a granite curb, bleeding out of my head while Brittlee ran over shouting "Oh my god, are you alright?". WTF? Apparently I just lost consciousness and fell straight down to the curb. Well, I had a pretty good gash in my brow and a big smack in the cheek. Nothin like a good ol trip to the hospital. Not that this means much, but at least I now have health insurance. They put in some stitches in my brow and did all the test they are supposed to do.

Everything came back fine, but a question lingered amongst everyone around. Did this have anything to do with the bloodflow problems in my leg? That teammate I was chatting with happens to also have the Iliac artery endofibrosis. His case is actually the first I had ever heard of this back in '07. Well, the best option was for me then was to DNS Sunday's race and head home. Everyone was very worried about me driving and I'm not gonna lie that I wasn't a little wary. I stuck around half the day to make sure I was OK and went home to see my doc. After reviewing all of the data from the tests it was concluded that this had nothing to do with any problem in my leg and this was just a case of dehydration, hunger, fatigue, etc. I was skeptical. I have been WAY more depleted in all those departments over the course of my career. The reason it was believed to be unrelated to the artery problem is due to the fact that this restriction is only at high blood flow situations. I'm still a bit skeptical here as my low flow leg showed up in a zoomed out view of my thighs while I was half asleep, laying down on a table. It seems to me that if it is noticeable there then it MUST have SOME effect in everyday life. I don't know, I'm no expert.

Well, after that debacle, I was given the OK to skip Providence altogether.

Zombies!!

The Southern Tier and Finger Lakes region of New York State took a bit of a hit last week. Another election decided by financial gains. Across the region not only were pro-hydraulic fracturing folks folks elected to town boards, but a proposition passed to bring in a bunch of massive Vegas style casinos to the area.

This makes me wonder if the zombie apocalypse isn't some imaginary catastrophic event in the minds of certain weirdos, but it is actually a process that is happening in front of us right now. The folks that are looking at our future and concerned with our well being, are continuously steam rolled by a mass of brain dead zombies who mindlessly lurch after any and all capital gain. What is scary about the whole thing is that these people are just doing what our system says they should do. Money good, no money bad. They never questioned it. I don't know what it is that causes some people to just fall into line right over a cliff and some to step back and question what's going on, but as someone who has stepped back......way back, I can see, plain as day, that capitalism is creating a false incentives to do the wrong things.

First off the system is based on rapid and continuous growth. I am in awe of the fact that this aspect of capitalism is ignored. It really doesn't take a smart person to point out that continuous growth can't happen. Collapse at some point is inevitable.

That's the obvious problem. However, I think the most alarming trait of capitalism is the fact that the real value of everything has been replaced with profits or losses and that drives most of our decision making. The fracking debate is a good example of this. This is something that none of us would consider if it weren't for financial gains. Rape our own land for the benefit of others? Let's put it to a test in a hypothetical situation. A capitalist finds an apple tree. What do they do? Pick every last piece of fruit on the tree because each apple is a certain value in dollars to be earned to them and then starve with a fistful of dollars. To the human animal and all other life on earth who comes upon this apple tree they see nutrition. They eat and with every bite they would be thinking of how to sustain this sustenance. They would not eat too much because they would not have any for the next day. Our lives are full of decisions like this that capitalism makes for us. We all march forward chasing dollar bills while the ground crumbles beneath our feet. Unfortunately it seems things won't change until the whole thing collapses and we find out that no, we cannot eat money. If we were strong, we could break free of the addiction.....bring it local.....let things hold the value that they really have. Unfortunately, this is very engrained in our everyday thinking and there are many people who are really benefiting from this system who are very unlikely to change.

health care update

Things are certainly looking very challenging for me this season on the bike, but maybe even more challenging in looking for a remedy for my leg problems. I have spent a good portion of my summer keeping the process moving along, only to be denied coverage by my insurance coverage recently. To be more accurate, I was denied coverage for this operation out-of-state. I have been informed many times by any expert I can find that I should see a specialist for this operation, indicating that this is not a simple run-of-the-mill operation. The specialists seem to all be out-of-state. Out-of-state specialists are expensive so the insurance company would rather I go on down to the butcher and see what they can do.

Well isn't that just dandy.

Green Mountain CX

I really can't say for sure at this point, but after the first races and the training for them out of the way, it's my perception that things are a little worse in the left leg blood flow department. It's hard to say as bike/shoe/cleat set up is always a big factor for me in the beginning of the season as well. Either way, things certainly could be worse.

I just finished up the first weekend of racing up in lovely Williston, VT. Day one was a good training day. Bout all I can say to that. I was in the mix on Sunday, particularly lap one. I know, I know. Who CAN'T be in the mix on lap one? True, but I felt really comfortable. Like my old self.

On lap two things in that leg went downhill and lap times plummeted. I just pinned that stupid leg and drove the bike as fast as I could and hung on for tenth. Actually I upped it on the last lap and made a ridiculous last corner pass to make up two spots and sneak a UCI point from, of all people, my old teammate who is perpetually 11th. I owe him one.

Anyway....day two was fun and it's really nice to see everyone again.

moving forward

Despite the dead leg diagnosis, I have been able to gather myself pretty well and get back on my program with coach (Pointway Performance). I just finished up a 3 week block of training that went well, all things considered, and I'm into another build toward the first racing this fall. Just this week after some rest and a week to get back on the pedals, I have seen some improvement.

While it is pretty much confirmed that without operation, I will never be what I once was, I am fairly confident that I will be able to have a decent CX season this year. It is hard to say, but since this condition is usually a slow progression, it would seem that I am no worse off than I was for last falls CX racing.....and I feel like last year was pretty OK. I was hoping for better but was happy to finish my first year back with a UCI win and some podiums. My outlook for these next years after getting back up to speed was to put together the fitness I had road racing in years past with the skills on the CX bike that I picked up since then. This plan will be put off a bit longer. That fitness of years past looks to be dependent on surgery and post-op PT to straighten back out.

Back to the original point, things are still looking decent for this year. Last summer I was not aware of what was going on with my leg and I put myself into a big hole training. I knew what I used to be able to do and would use that as a gauge. However, things work real weird when I train now though. The training stress is really concentrated in one leg....even when it doesn't seem like I am pushing it. If I don't really watch it it goes right over the edge. Now I am aware of all this and hopefully I can avoid that stuff.

Additionally, I have a good amount of UCI points going into the year so I wont have to go into the random draw for start call-ups that often put me back on the back row. In those situations at a national level race, I would never even get to the front. In second tier races I could get there right about when things were going down and I'd have just put myself into serious red zone to catch on.

Another addition, being acquainted with my equipment makes quite a difference for me. Last year I had     my shoes ahead of time but the saddle and bike were new to me (since 2009). This year I am coming in with plenty of time on shoes, saddle, and I can transition onto the CX bike hopefully pretty easily.

Oh, another point.....I have been on the mountain bike more this year than I have since the 90s. Enough that I am starting to go fast downhill and break stuff. I haven't been comfortable enough to push the bike in a long time. I'm thinking that these skills will transfer over and maybe make up some for what I don't have in the straights.

All in all, things are looking good for this year.....and if I can jump through a bunch of hoops for the insurance people so that they will pay what I anticipate to be an unfathomable amount of money that I imagine I could probably survive on for the remainder of my life, to a surgeon for a couple hours of slicing me open, and a hospital to shuffle paperwork around while I wait out my mandatory time in a bed eating jello, then maybe even better seasons lay ahead.

Endofibrosis stenosis diagnosis

That's a lot of sis's

Just one month ago I wouldn't have had any clue of their meaning. However, now I do because it's been a few weeks since medical professionals have put those names to the issues I have been having on the bike, especially in the last year. Bare with me as this is all stuff I learned just in the last few weeks but what this means is I have narrowing (stenosis) in my left iliac artery, likely caused by endofibrosis. Endofibrosis is basically a build up on the outside of the artery. It builds up this....stuff....to protect itself from the constant un-natural kinking that the iliac goes through when cycling. Particularly cycling in aggressive aero positions. This build up is good for protecting my artery, but bad for the blood headed to my poor left leg. The more build up, the more the artery is restricted from expanding to meet the blood flow needs of hungry muscles. This thing is actually fairly common in bike racers, yet somehow it flies under the radar. Someone threw out a figure that 20% of pro tour level cycling have or had this condition. I don't know that it's true, but now that I have had to do the research and pay attention, there is a decent sized list of domestic racers I race with or used to race with that have had the condition. Some of you may have heard of it as the "dead leg syndrome".

Now it seems there is some grey area. Determining how long this has been going on is one of those areas. I suspect it has been going on for a while. I recall back in 2008 people starting to see a noticable difference in the size of my legs. I didn't think much of it cause I was still doing ok on the bike. Also, it was a little hard for me to pinpoint the symptoms I think because the condition in my left leg has been degrading gradually over time and my body just came to recognize this as my limit. It took a while for the condition to get bad enough for me to notice what wasn't hurting. Last fall I felt like I just couldn't push the pedals. Something felt missing and when I really tuned in it felt is if there was something off balance. That's as far as I could nail things down at that time. Then this spring getting out for the first bit of hard riding with only fitness from indoor riding, things were very noticeable. It was as close as I have been to real "dead leg". I can only describe the feeling as suffocation. My left hip/groin area felt numb and tight and my left thigh would just burn. My left leg would be absolutely pinned and my right would be maybe at tempo. I'd have no choice but to slow down. But thing is, it felt normal. The body adapts to the conditions I guess, only I was just going slower and slower and slower as the condition worsened over the years. Now I can connect the dots and see back through the years and many un explained symptoms seem to be lining up with this. The size difference between legs is likely in part due to the lower leg just not getting blood. My lower back problems are focused on the right side (the side that works with the left leg) and that muscle is over sized and over worked from trying to make up for what the leg isn't doing. My left foot that goes numb is likely not because my shoe is strapped too tight as I usually determine. And there's the funny numb feeling in my left hip area that I have had for years and years.

Quantifying deficit is another grey area. I did an ABI test, which is where they measure blood pressure in all limbs at rest and exertion. This was significantly off. I wish I could remember the numbers. I then had an MRA that showed a pretty dim and narrow flow of blood down to my left leg as compared to a nice bright and thick flow down my right.

Naming the causes is a real big grey area it seems. In my case the concern is how much worse will it get if I were to never touch a bicycle again and remain naturally on foot for the rest of my days? How much worse if I take up RAAM? It is the acute kinking of the artery that causes this, but it seems some people are more prone to the problems than others. Some people can spend their whole lives riding in absurd time trial postions and be totally fine, while other people do a couple years of triathlon and the condition progresses to the point the walking up the stairs is a problem and then go back in for the other leg too.

For me the biggest grey area is with the solutions. This is not a health risk for me and surgery is the fix. I can be average joe just fine. I can even go on racing with the limitation that I currently have just fine. I managed ok last fall and during a period last summer even with the condition. Of course nobody can tell me if it will get worse and when. I could have surgery and return to my abilities from 6-7 years ago that are, at the worst, well beyond the best I have managed at any point in the last couple years. That would be nice. Or, I could have the surgery and, like many folks I talk to, return at about 75-80%. I attribute that to the body needing time to balance back out. Things adapt around this condition and they have to adapt back out of it. Or, I could have the surgery and also, like a few folks I've read about, have a re-occurrence of the condition and have surgery again. Of course, the worst case scenario, with any surgery, for anything, is major health risks from being cut open. These seem minimal in these days of modern medicine, but none-the-less a concern. People have died from all kinds of surgery, but many, many people die from crashing cars and I don't seem to mind hopping in the car to get to a bike race.

My thinking on the whole thing now is mostly concerned with post-cycling. I would really, really like to get back to previous levels on the bike and race the rest of my career, achieve my goals and all that. However, when I'm done with all that I would like to be a recreational athlete. Probably a runner. I can go out and enjoy running through the woods no matter how fast or slow I'm going, but I would like to be able to do so without a major hindrance. Especially a hindrance on one side only. I'm sure I will want to compete on some level also.

I have not been able to make a clear decision yet, but as you can probably see from the above text, subconsciously I have definitely been leaning toward having the treatment done. In the mean time I need to find the motivation to stay on the bike because I will be racing this fall either way and I am capable of doing ok even with the condition as long as I can keep it out of my head. I have been riding and racing the MTB a bit and I think that is the route I will go for the next few months. At least on the MTB I can have fun and make up in the techy stuff a little of what my legs won't do.

I wish I had better news, but hey at least it got me to write again.

I'm cold

I grabbed a win on day 1 of Supercross, and felt decent. Better than most of 2012, so I'll take it, but things cooled down pretty quick. Day 2 I felt pretty off and wasn't happy about it. NCGP was a complete disaster. Particularly Sunday. Embarrassing is the best word to describe my feelings from the day. I didn't even give my fitness the opportunity to fail because I was falling all over the place. Set the bike up all wrong with WAY too much psi. Just a complete mess.

On the bright side, there have definitely been times in my cycling career in which, under these circumstances, I woulld have just quit. Now-a-days I seem to be reasonably content with under-performing. Maybe "content" is the wrong word, but I feel like I can shrug it off and keep plugging away much better than I used to. That being said, I AM a realist. I've said before "you don't learn much when things come easy. You learn a ton when you make every mistake in the book". Well I'm going to add to that. You also don't learn a whole lot when you put the blinders on and deny the mistakes you made. I have to recognize how poorly I performed in order to see the mistakes I made and try to correct them. Things only get ugly when this creeps into you self esteem and you start to believe that you performed poorly because you ARE poor. I still go out to train and race with certain expectations. I have lofty dreams, but set reasonable expectations. The drawback that inevitably comes along with having expectations is the failure that you set yourself up for. I'll take the self-imposed failure every now and then, hell, I'll take a whole season worth, because I know I can work through them so I can have the expectations that provide me with the motivation and drive to become the bike racer that I used to be and the even better bike racer that I want to be in the future.

getting warmer

There is snow falling outside right now. Yesterday I was comfortable in short sleeves while inactive. What the heck? My neck of the woods is known for unpredictable weather. Great place to be a meteorologist. It might be actually, everyone knows nobody knows so if they are expected to be wrong, well that must really take alot of pressure off.....but this could also be looked at as an unatural swing due to climate change. A lot of people would be quick to jump to that conclusion, and they are right, but it just makes me think about how we really have no scope for the changes we are causing. Climatic changes over, say 100 years is a blink of an eye in human terms. A flash of lightning. Abrupt. Nothing can adapt. To us, well it's a lifetime. We have no personal gauge for what is happening. Not too long ago we had cultural knowledge. The collective mind of the people was one, so to speak and closely tied to the world around it. The feelings, memories, and skills from one generation were given to the next, so that any one generation had the memories of their ancestors. That is a wisdom unknown to the people of today.

The bike racing weekend was finally a pretty good one at the NBX shimano series finals. On day one sitting on the back of the lead group finally worked out in my favor, as I was able to avoid the puppy-monkey crash and follow Lindine up the road with Nick Keough. We got some space but Garrigan and Milne bridged up. I was not feeling great as usual and when it whittled down to Garrigan, Lindine and I chasing Milne, I got gapped off a little. The good from this day was that I was able to chase back on and squeeze into third at the expense of Justin. He bobbled the last corner, or else it may not have been so. On the second day things felt like they were finally coming together. I could push the pace, make the splits, and even cause the splits. I think it has taken me this whole season to just figure out my position on the bike. Sunday I finally felt like it was dialed. I was comfy all around. Pace and Position. Unfortunately my head might need to catch up. It is so used to not having the go that I found myself sitting on the back when Milne went away. Yesterday when he got the gap I saw it and was held up a little but in reality, probably didnt have the go to get across. Sunday I saw the gap and definitely had enough to go with but was poorlly positioned and had no way to follow. I came across second, feeling quite comfortable.

I am pretty happy to feel like things are coming together even though there are a limited number of races left. I need to get the confidence in the mind now that the legs are workin OK. Long Island, North Carolina, Arizona in-laws visit, and then on to Chicago and Nationals.

Part 2 of the bike racing post just without the bike racing

All this bike racing has really been getting in the way of life. I have been spending a very limited time in the woods. That is not only bad for the psyche, but didnt help my pursuit of the white tail during bow hunting season. This summer I acheived a goal of producing a bow from the landscape, but I just didnt have the time to practice enough to reliably make the clean shot. Actually making a shot on target is rare. So I stuck with my hand me down compound bow with sights. Not the end of the world. But lacking time in the woods, that was limited in productivity as well. Which is OK. Sitting in the woods is nice. It's not all about bringing home a deer. It's about connections to the real (natural) world. A connection to an activity that is fundamental to being human. Also eating good food and filling a predator void created by our imbalances. The unfortunate thing is I failed because I am lacking the connection to the real world and I miss out on the other three things because of it.

Yesterday I was surprised to hear a little bit on de-evolution in somewhat mainstream media. Well, on Wait wait don't tell me, which pulls it's humor from the media. They even used the term, which I don't totally embrace, but the theory was there. It's not surprising to me that it is so rare to hear it even mentioned. It has no easy solution. It might not even have a difficult one. Climate change? Cake. Stop burning fossil fuels, which are unnecessary for human life. Easy. So called de-evolution deals with a fundamental human trait. Our nasty little habit of controlling everything in our environment. What we control we remove from the great balance. What is removed is, well, off balance. The point of the skit on the radio was that human are getting dumber. That's a pretty broad generalization, but the point is without natural selection, there is no reason a smart person would be more successful at breeding than a dumb person. Just like a person predisposed for cancer, heart disease, poor eyesight, etc has no problem passing those genetics on to the next generation.

Now to tie these two topics together I'll talk about a recent event in the woods around my home. Opening day of gun season for white tail deer. De-evolution at work. These are not wise and capable hunters. Seriously, "hunting" with a gun is about as hard as going to the grocery store. It takes about the same effort and that is evident by the sight of some of these characters out there. It also takes about as much wisdom. The gun does all the work. Deer didn't evolve to avoid bullets sailing from a hundred yards away. All you do is sit and line up the sights. You dont even have to sit in the right spot really. Just a general vicinity, which is almost hard not to be if you are in the woods or field. They don't really need to aim that well either. Again general vicinity is good enough. Bullet goes through bone. With bow hunting at least you have to be sitting within like 20 yards of an unsuspecting deer that has to be facing a certain direction. Today this is considered "really hard". While yeah, I am unsuccessful so far, it really isn't so hard in the big picture. It's only hard because we are so far removed. Modern bows are really just quiet, short range guns. All the bells and whistles. If we think about how much time and experience we have with something like driving, and imagine if we spent that time learning to hunt from childhood......yeah, modern bow hunting is anything but difficult. All this being said, I guess I dont have any problem with gun hunting, other than the noise and the obnoxious people. If it's like going to the grocery store, well, at least it's fulfilling those two things mentioned above. They are eating good meat and filling that predator void. Now trophy hunting? No excuses. Trophy hunters are unskilled, misguided, meat heads. Humans used to be a component in natural selection. We culled the weak from the gene pool of our prey. Now these idiots go out and shoot the biggest and strongest with a rifle from a quarter mile away. I wonder what that's doing for the genetics of our prey?