Robbed in Baltimore

I don't like cities. No, I hate cities. They are the site of the human infection where the wound is gaping and the tissue is long dead and decaying. The long red streaks of the suburbs reach out into the living tissue of the planet. My experience with Baltimore went as usual. General disgust and overwhelming stress as I made my way to Druid Hill Park. Once inside I was able to block it out a bit, but only for a bit as we were surrounded. The city made it way to my car and my teamates car and decided to remove the contents of my wallet. This poor woodsman isn't used to having to worry about this sort of thing and of course had the thing stuffed with a significant portion of my worth....and when I say poor I also mean monetarily poor. My teamate Dan Chabanov is also poor and made a donation to the city by way of an expensive camera. Thing is though, he lives in these concrete jungles....he would argue that not all infections are the same....maybe not worded that way. Despite making sure I got a peek at my car every lap, the race went OK. Apparently the computer doesn't have much better luck than I. I've been pulling last row with the number out of the hat thing. The computer random kept me back there this weekend. 36th and 37th @ call up. Not dead last but close enough. I made my way through the pack on day one to make contact with the front of the race just as it was surging. A separation happened and I was behind it. I kept the pace and it split again. The end result was 2 leaders, 2 chasers, me and Ryan Dewald, and a large group behind. We worked together but couldn't make contact ahaead. I personally didn't have much to push with. Once we were certain to not make a catch or be caught I saved a little and took the sprint in for 5th. The next day I went about my business at the back of the pack and as usual when I reached the race at the front they were throwing down. This time I kept pace and made the split. It was me and the Euros from then on out. Bazin, Field, and the Frenchman's teamate Dassonville who started right in front of me. Nice to see someone else having to make it from the back. We cruzed around with a few surges happening, but when Bazin accelerated we all separated out to singles. The last 2 laps I was trying to close in on Dassonville in 3rd to make the podium, but just couldn't close the 5 second gap. We filed in with that order. Again another improvement. Things are alot farther behind than I thought they would be but at least they are headed in the right direction.

The mountains are green, with a little red and yellow starting to show through

Ah, Green Mountain cross weekend. This was my first cross race on a cross bike. I had like 50psi in my tires cause I didn't know any better. It was muddy. I fell....and almost fell alot. I cant remember exactly how I did, but I remember it was UCI one day and not the other. I think the UCI day I was duking it out with Myerson and ended up getting away from him last lap. The other day I think I let some air out and made the podium. I've generally had good races here. '08 I led the whole race only to get passed by Driscoll in the last bit of the last lap. '09 I won both days. Well things are a bit different now. I'm not on top of my game and it seems like the UCI fields have filled in. The top is still where it was, but the gaps between the top and the rest seem to have filled and the field size has grown. That gap is where I lived in '09. At the full on races I would just dangle off the back of the top. If the tippy top wasn't there I usually had an easy win. I'm not fit enough to live in that gap now even if it still existed. I'm not sure where I'm going to live this year. So far I know where I'm going to live before the gun goes off.....the back row. Since I am pointless, according to the UCI at least, I have to draw a number out of a hat for start position. My best so far is 5th from last called to the line. So day one I was again able to get in the game off the back row, but I struggled and faded throughout the rest of the hour. Day two I made a long slow push from the back row to 10th. I was OK with that mostly because it was an improvement. Up until now when the pedals needed to be pushed, it was just quicksand. Well I have never seen quicksand, so maybe it was like mud, cause I know exactly what that is like. Day two of GMCX was the first time I felt like I could push a little into the red. Good sign toward improvement.

Rochester season opener

Well, that happened. The fears I mentioned seemed to be at least somewhat a reality. My legs didn't do a great job with the pedaling and I did start last row both days behind a sizable field. It wasn't the full top ten field I worried about and my wrist wasn't too bad...so I had that going for me. Day one I was able to get around most everybody and wedge myself up into 4th on first lap, but that soon took its toll and I was on damage control, fading to 9th by the end of the hour. Day 2 I got boxed in and couldn't get around in the start and had to work my way through the line. I did make it to the back of the large lead group of like 10, but again faded fast. During a moment of weakness I decided that riding below my potential was not worth riding at all and put a DNF next to my name. Not proud of that, but anyway, moving forward....

letter

Dear legs,

I regret having to send this letter, but enough is enough. Maybe you never got the memo. Or maybe you just forgot because it doesn't feel like autumn yet and in your defense, it has been quite a while. So let me take this opportunity to remind you that we are supposed to be a bike racer now. Actually, it was supposed to be a week ago and due to your absense, beard and hands were hung out to dry. I have to wonder how you failed to notice how hands were out practicing for bike driving and beard was filling out in preparation for the coming season. What have you been doing? I have supplied you with all the tools you should need to succeed. Hard training, long rest, but you don't seem to take the hint. Well, moving forward, we have a long job ahead of us and it's going to be much longer if you continue to fail at your part of the bargain. Unfortunately I have to put you on the spot. If you don't get it together I am going to have to reconsider your involvement at this facility.

Sincerely your's
Bike Racer Dan

mayday, mayday!

Well, here I am, on the eve of the big cross season and all seems to be falling apart. The plan was to take the moderate fitness i had and bump it up a notch with training and racing over the last month. Instead I raced awful @ the tour of the catskills, suffering in an epic way, requiring some time off. Then family vacation brought more unexpected time off. I had hoped that time off would help but not the case. I then figured that it must have been too much time off and i was behind on training. After a good block on the bike, this seemed to be a false assumption too. To make matters worse a wrist injury from earlier in the year really started to flare up after catskills. I have changed my bar position a bit and started wearing a brace, which started to allow the wrist to begin to heal. I went to a pt who specializes in hand stuff to get some advice on keeping it on the mend during cross, which tends to be hard on that part of the body. Regarding everything else i have sortof narrowed it down to life.....I'm tired from life. Not over trained. No way. I dont feel under trained, but I have been really, really stressed out and spread really thin trying to be a pro, working man, and homesteader all at once. Last time I raced cross I was working but things have changed since then. I have alot more work @ home and alot more interests @ home. Before it was really just work and bike racing. Now there is so much more. As agreed I have finished up @ work and focus on cross full time. I have this week to try to rest and salvage what I can to start the season with. If I can do that then maybe I'll be able to ride into shape through the racing. The last component that has me a little worried is my situationcoming back with no UCI points, which determine my start position. Having none means I start in back. Now normally I would have few "tune up" races in New England where the elite feild might be spread around at a few different races. Therefor a smaller, shallower field to get the season underway with. Now the calendar is thinned out. One UCI event to be had by all. It seems I will have to contend with the big boys and a big field, right away and from the back. Unless things miraculously come together on my end and/or these situations dont turn out to be so bad, well I might be in for some suffering.

Sorry for the long silence. Summer can just be too damn busy. Maybe I shouldn't blame summer. It's more people's reaction to summer, getting out and being social. That's not the case for me this year. I seem to be spending my summer doing some form of work. What's worse when I have to make room for one thing by sacrificing some time at another, sometimes there is someone there to tell me I should be working harder. It's like "look at how busy and unhappy I am. You should lighten my load by making youself miserable just like me." Nah, I think in the future I will stick to my guns and make sure I have time for my real interests....and sanity. I have managed to squeeze in a few very important projects. You may have seen the early stages of my "kit" in a previous post. That is one of the resources obtained from a foray last fall into the great balance of mother nature. I went out and studied the motions of the real world so that I could take a meager portion with great thanks and put every bit I could toward my family's sustenance. The process will be improved upon in the future, but here is the finished product of the deer's hide......soft, egg-tanned, buckskin. I'm very proud of it, as this is one skill that I figured out on my own. A mentor would have made the process ALOT easier, but I did not have one. So as mentioned previously, I made all the mistakes in order to figure out the process.

 Here is one way I hope to improve upon the process. A pignut hickory self-bow. Need to find a bit of time to tiller it and make a string....or more likely screw it up and start a new one!

Here we have the new 2012 Richard Sachs team issue Northwave shoes being caressed by the soft texture of the buckskin. Seriously, I'm in love with these shoes. No modification to the fit needed. Much more true to size than in the past. The sole is carbon where it needs to be stiff, but enough flex in the toe and mid-soul to not feel like a 2x4 when you run in them. Quick and easy retention system. I'm very happy with these.

 and I'm very glad to get this project out of the way as it was a very intimidating one for me. I'm not great with electrical systems and I've been trying to bring myself up to speed so I could install our new batteries on the cabin. I had to build a whole battery box and ventilation system with voltage controlled fan. Just finished it up the other day. Really nice to have the storage capacity again.





On the training/racing front, things have been about the same. Kinda just been floating along waiting for the signal to ramp it up. My pal Justin Lindine beat up on me again at a MTB race. I thought I was going to fare better this time as I was really comfortable riding a few seconds behind him for the first 2/3 of the race. Then my upper body and core turned to jello and I rode like a pinball, losing 5min to him in the last third of the race. I think I'm in for one more MTB race before the switch. The time came to put forth the full effort for the final push to cross. I ramped up the training and hooked up with my old amateur team Bikereg.com/Cannondale for the rest of the pre-season on the road. About a week into this change I joined them for the tour of the Hilltowns. They rode very organized and put in a great effort with me as the finale. In the end I came up a bit short for fifth. I felt a little bad that I couldn't pull off better after all that work but I don't think I really have enough riding time in for 100mi road races just yet. It was just a week into training so I'm hoping to be better in the upcoming races. Last weekend I did a last minute team time trial with some Ithaca area locals. Turned out to be a good pay day and good training for the upcoming TTs.

borrowed text

"I think homo sapiens lost something......some vital part of ourselves, when we gave up the hunting and gathering life for the fettered, programmed existence of agriculture, and later, industry. Consider just the moves: the lookout, the spoor, the stalk, the cross country chase, the dead-on throw were replaced by the cramped, repetitive action of stoop labor, the planting stick and shovel, and worse, the quill, keyboard, and computer idiot stick. Time, which once rolled out in loose, measureless rounds of sun and moon, was chopped up into lengths and tied in knots; space, the free earth of the paleolithic, was quartered and fenced: off limits; trespassers will be prostituted" by Rob Schultheis from Bone Games