Stolen bike

Zack's bike was stolen over Memorial Day weekend. It's a gray ZR Cycles fixie with a celeste Bianchi cross fork, Shimano canti brake, Phil Wood/Open Pro wheelset, Dura Ace cranks, Time ATAC pedals, full fenders. Stolen from Madison but likely to turn up somewhere else, so keep your eyes peeled on the internet and in real life.

It's the only gray ZR Cycles fixie on the planet, so if you see it throw a lock on it and/or administer a ferocious headbutt and give Zack a call (47-212-83fourseven).




Bike thieves: know that I am summoning the spirit of Charles Bronson to administer some rough justice, so change your ways.

Wheels On WIlly; Cleaning up Myspace

Wheels on Willy is my favorite crit of the Wisconsin Cup calendar. It went as planned until the last two corners, at which point I failed to get up front to answer the moves and was left sprinting for 13th. Disappointing, but I'll have something up my sleeve next year.

I doubled up and did the Pro/1/2/3 race since I had nothing to lose, and it was ridiculously fast. Total suffering in the accordian on the back, sprinting like mad out of every corner and digging deep just to stay on a wheel. I attribute finishing the race to the awesome crew who showed up and yelled their heads off for me on every lap. Totally made the pain worth it. There wasn't as much boozing as last year, so that will have to be remedied next time. It would have probably been a great workout except that my right knee is angry and sore, and will probably keep me off the bike for a few days now. If I'm lucky.



.....

I was on the fence as to whether it's actually worth the time, but now that I've personally shut down a half dozen bogus profiles this week, I think it's well worth the ten seconds to click "Report Abuse" whenever I get spammed on Myspace. Clean up the internet, vigilante style.

Spam gets better all the time

Lately I've been getting some spam that's more interesting than my legitimate email. A lot of it is the same old porn site myspace profiles, but a lot of it is just some computer-generated text that doesn't link to anything and doesn't seem to be advertising anything. Maybe somebody is generating spam as an artform?

Hey I've been reading about you for a while and kinda have a crush lol. I wrote you a long message but it was too big for my space so i put it in my profile... (emphasis mine)

At first that reads like a normal message from a bogus profile, until you notice that it's the spam equivalent of Fermat's Last Theorem.

Here's an email I haven't been able to bring myself to delete, or even mark as spam:

From: Raven KUVAEV
Subject: The catapults' stones fell among them--and exploded in fire and shards, ripping open holes in the mass.
Body: Thou'lt not believe With how deprav'd a quality- O Regan.

Beautiful.

Windup for WOW

Wheels on Willy this Sunday. Lots of cash, lots of spectators, lots of people in town for this. Coming off a too-late taper and a distinct lack of results on the road this season, I'm still pumped. I've been working on the sharpness that comes from the head and not the legs. I need to become Charles Bronson in Death Wish. I need to take back my neighborhood.



Last weekend's crit in Muskego Park provided a harsh lesson on removing valuable items from your bike when transporting on the car. Nine's bike and mine did a little jostling and bumping, and my PowerTap computer must have bailed out somewhere along the way (thanks to DP for getting me back in business). That put me in a distinctly foul mood for the race, which was largely uneventful. The usually persistent attacks from the Schwinn Homegrown boys didn't stick and it came down to a bunch sprint that spanned the entire road. I felt explosive but couldn't wind it up due to the should-to-shoulder traffic jam. My bad for not getting ahead of it soon enough, I guess.

You know what sums up all that's great about bicycles in the real world? Riding slow with your friends, eating good food, drinking beer. If you can't be bothered to actually slow down and enjoy riding a bike, you're not getting it.

Where did the spring classics go? We're into Grand Tour season now, the Giro is underway. The Landis hearings are also ramping up. Check out the powerpoint presentation of the Landis camp's opening statements. Whether or not pro cycling is riddled with doping, as it certainly is, the current anti-doping organizations are fucking incompetent. I don't know for sure if he doped but I really don't care right now. Stage 17 was brilliant, and betting on Landis funded this.

Practice crit tonight. If I publicly commit to being more aggressive tonight, will I feel compelled to execute? We'll see.

Some new caps droppin' on the Cognition front, and a myspace profile that's actually proving to be a valid use of that otherwise barren wasteheap of internet resources. I've got more swag to pump out, several big things on the horizon.

One man's "creepy head" is another man's sexy lady.

Tough Weekend

After a pretty big increase in riding time last week, I wasn't sure how the racing would go this past weekend. I knew it would be rough, but it was even worse than I though. Circuit of Sauk #1 on Saturday, an actual hilly road race in a season dominated by relatively flat crits. Warming up, I could tell my legs didn't have much in them. The start rolled out at a casual pace until the first major climb approached, which we tore up at a decent clip. The pace didn't relent as we reached the top and continued upward on shallower but ever-rising slopes, and I soon found myself in difficulty. A couple chase groups splintered off the back, myself included. We made contact again with the pack but by the next climb a dark veil of tunnel vision descended upon me and knew it wouldn't be my day. I found myself among many discarded riders who banded together for survival. I did the first lap with a varying group of five or six. There seemed to be interest in catching the pack, or at least going hard, so I took my turns at the front. I probably should have just sat in. Observation: chase groups often aren't very effective because those riders who are most enthusiastic to catch the pack end up attacking the group, whether intentionally or not, and end up gapping and yo-yoing the pack every time it's their turn. Steady as she goes, pal. Either bridge up solo if you're so strong, take steady turns, or don't bother. Shortly after the second lap I did a harder turn than I should have into the wind and was dropped. Finished the last two laps in survival mode with one other rider. It was a day of shame, but I do think every racer needs to be chewed up and tossed out the back every once in a while. It's good for you.

Doing a crit in Neenah the next day didn't sound very appealing, although it would be flat and would have less big guns in attendance, so I thought a day of leisurely mountain biking would do me good. In reality, my first ride at Blue Mounds (dubbed "Pain Cave of the Mounds" that day) was several hours of torturous grinding at 35rpm on my overgeared singlespeed. There were more flats than there were spare tubes, and our group dwindled faster than the Donner Party. Remains were recovered from the trail to later be given to unsuspecting children.

It's a jungle out there.

The end of another week is here. The weather has been amazing and I've taken advantage of it by clocking a truckload of saddle time. It's no longer a matter of having no daylight or time to train, it's now a question of how much is too much. My training paradigm such as it is has been shifting a lot over the last week or so; I don't pretend to have it figured out yet but simultaneous injections of new-school tech and old-school grit promise to harden me in the long run. With a doubleheader this weekend including the hills of Baraboo and the accumulated fatigue I'm carrying I'm not counting on having much snap, but then again I'm keeping my eyes on the big picture. Joe Friel lays down a good lesson on patience, one that might have served me well at Whitnall Park last week.

The ani-pals are out in force, enjoying the sun as much as I am. Eye-watering descents were made even more nervous by close encounters with deer, raccoons, groundhogs, squirrels, and unseen rustling in the ditches. A last-minute swerve prevented me from prematurely ruining this little guy's day:

Having seen more birds of prey in the last two days than I can even remember, I ushered him to the side of the road.

I've been wanting a camera to carry on rides for a long time, and the maiden voyage has already proven its worth. You can't afford not to have one of these.