August is almost here

Summer is slogging by here in the Northeast. The weather has sucked, but that's just the way it is so no point in complaining. What it has meant is that I haven't ridden my mountain bike much at all, I've been racing on Tuesday nights, but other than that it's been road riding.

The Tuesday night races have been fun up at Great Glen Trails. It is more of a TT format, where you can start when you show up and race one of three courses- Mini, Short, or Long. Mini is for the real little kids, short of the kids and beginners, and Long for everyone else. Our routine is we roll up to Great Glen and I ride with Elizabeth for her race (short course) with Emma on the trail-a-bike in tow. It's fun as there is a bit of singletrack on the short course, but it's mild enough that I can ride it with Emma on the back. She's been a trooper as it's been wet so she's getting covered in mud after each lap- but she thinks it's fun so we keep it going!


Liz is doing well, but she's starting to get competitive when she sees the results but when she's actually riding I have a hard time getting her to go fast. I keep telling her that she can just enjoy the ride and check out the flowers and animals, but understand that she won't have a fast time, or she can try to go fast but that it will require some effort. I think he wish is that the other girls would just slow down!

My races have been fine, back of the expert pack. But for a SS I feel like I'm putting in ok times, as there is a fair amount of big ring fireroad on the 5 mile course (that is the long course) and I'm running a 32x18 on the 29er. There is a fair amount of spin/coast/spin/coast. The battle has been between JJ, Charles and I. JJ has been cleaning up but his two week vacation may have tipped the scales- we won't really know until August 11th or 18th as I'll miss next Tuesday's race.

The race on the 11th may be off as well as both JJ and I will have just come off the 24HOGG as solo single speeders. We had planned to do double single but I chickened out as I didn't want to have JJ dictate when I was riding or sleeping. I'm looking at this as either a two or three part race- a five or six hour section, a couple hour section, followed by a morning 5 to 6 hour section. So the high end will be 13-14 hours of actual racing- which means I fully intend on spending some time off the bike. I'd like to get 13 laps as the goal (that would put me over 100 miles), with 10 being the minimum that I'll be happy with. We'll see!

The other wrinkle is that I'm heading down to DC for a few days with my wife and our friends Cecile and Jonathan who are here from France for a couple weeks. That means I'm not sure what I might get in for riding over the next few days. Then we get back and I'm hoping for a big box from Team Bikeman.com World HQ that will enable me to build up the Mamasita as a light, rigid, kick ass SS. Then I'll want to get that shaken down for the weekend, but doing so with no real effort- hmmmm. We'll make it work!

That's it for now, oh here is a pick from Newton's Revenge from a couple weeks ago. This is near the top, that is Chris Proulx from RSN tv16 chasing me with the camera. I tried to give him a good promo, but I was out of breath. He keeps telling me he's going to post the video, but I have yet to see it.

Either way ride safe.

DEA