RESPECT

You know how the nba used to have players who had class, they respected each other? mj, magic, bird, stockton, drexler, to name a FEW... I've been out of touch with the nba, but the last time I paid much attention Stockton was just about to leave and I was having trouble finding other players that were class acts.

Class seems to be diminishing in sport these days. I've seen it trend that way in professional sports and at the amateur level as well. Have some respect for your competitors, without them you're fucking nothing! Do you want to be nothing! Whats the point in competing in something you're passionate about if you're just going to disrespect the fuck out of your opponents, then they loose respect for you. Treat your opponents as you'd have them treat you. Old rule, needs to be brought back.

one example from the weekend....
I watched a complete stranger after the crit come up to a friend of mine and give him shit (he was polite) for what he felt was sketchy riding. He did it in front of 4 people and 5 minutes went by before he introduced himself. zero class.

respect.

Enumclaw

Today my head wasn't in race mode. There was no fire at all. In fact, plenty of times during the crit today I was thinking about my soils paper that I should have been writing. To make a long story short I'm not racing the RR tomorrow and I'm staying in Seattle to write this paper. It's actually a relief that I've come to this conclusion, I would much rather race bikes then write a paper of this magnitude in one day, but this will make me feel good under the circumstances.

School is ridiculous right now. It's 130am and I've still got a couple pages left of a gis lab to finish up and a 3 page paper due at 10am. Thats 8.5 hours away. awesome. It really wouldn't be this bad if I had only started all this crap a couple weeks ago when I was suppose to! Oh Geez!
Just needed a breath of fresh air..... Back I go.

ah, Enumclaw this weekend. 3s should be a jolly good time!

Today I learned that spinning out like crazy in a 53-12 gearing is slower then 25 people all working together spinning out it their gears going down hill really shitnass fast... who would have guessed? Today i felt like a newb on the bike, not because i couldn't pedal hard, in fact i felt pretty damn good, but when a gap was created between me and the guy in front of me on the top of a hill, i didn't close it right away. And then the accelerations came, and the wind? well it never left. Today it would have been nice to have a freaking 9tooth cog on my cassette. they make that shit for bmx right? So for about 40miles today I was about a minute and a half off of the main field with 3 other good men. It was a sufferfest. the wind was so hard going north that we were pace lining at around 10-13mph and on the back stretch it was pretty steadily at about 38mph. 40th freaking place is disappointing, I know I could have done better. The team omnium is on the line, we're only 9points ahead of 3rd place and 20-28 points off of 1st. Tomorrow will be a good day, REDEMPTION WILL BE MINE!!!

Phil also had an unfortunate race, after the first hill his brake loosened up and started rubbing on his wheel, by the time he had if fixed, the race was long gone.

super props to David, 6th place, and Chris 17th place in the road race. And Meagan 8th place and Tela and Kristen 12th place and Daisy 2oth!!! WWU Cycling kicks ass.

team time trial

As usual, a bunch more photos are on my flickr site.

WWU Cycling
Girls 2nd place DII
Guys 6th place DII

Despite losing a teammate during the race our western girls rocked the team time trial. There were only off the pace of first by 8 seconds! Awesome job!

Until today, I haven't finished a TTT with the team yet. I've been dropped every time so far. We've only raced 3 times together, whether I've been sick, popped of the back by a hard acceleration or just didn't have the legs, we have never finished all together. One of my problems is poor positioning in the pack, basically, I don't stay close enough to my teammates wheel. It's only the fact that I'm scared to be so close. That's it, so for the last week and a half or so I've been training my mind to be "ok" with being so close to a wheel.

So the TTT has been on my mind a lot lately, and I was definitely nervous for it. I've been reading a book written by the Dalai Lama and last night I was chilling in the room and grabbed the book. I opened the book somewhere in the middle, and it happened to be at the start of a chapter, I didn't really feel like reading at the moment but thought I'd read the intro to the chapter.

"Once there was a disciple of a Greek philosopher who was commanded by his Master for three years to give money to everyone who insulted him. When this period of trial was over the Master said to him, "Now you can go to Athens and learn Wisdom." When the disciple was entering Athens, he met a certain wise man who sat at the gate insulting everybody who came and went. He also insulted the disciple, who burst out laughing. "Why do you laugh when I insult you?" said the wise man. "Because," said the disciple, "for three years I have been paying for this kind of thing and now you give it to me for nothing." "Enter the city," said the wise man, "it is all yours..."

Perspective is an amazing thing. When I read this, I did not worry about the TTT anymore. It just told me that I was ready for a good TTT, I had paid my dues, and it was time to reap the rewards. Today was the best TTT of my life. Its nice when good form lands on a nationals weekend, and even better when your head is in the right place. We rode really fast today, it was awesome. It was a bit of a shock to see that we finished in 6th place. But we rode amazingly well, it was our best TTT of the year.

Road Nationals: Fort Collins

Some of us trying to figure out food after our afternoon ride.


David about to get high from some glue fumes.

A skip of lightning in a nice storm rolling through Fort Collins.


Another shot from the storm.

Here we are in Fort Collins. After waking up too early and sleeping too little on the plane we arrived in Denver. The driver of our van shuttle to Fort Collins had a heavy foot to put it lightly. I don't think there was any modulation. Either he was all brake or all gas, all the time!! The best part of the drive was this perma-stank smell. It didn't go away, I'd compare it to wet pavement drying fast in the hot sun, with some good old fashion cheese cuttin smeared all over the top.

We checked out the start of the road race course, it's pretty steep and it's going to be fast. Awesome.

More to come later.....

Some photos, Crit in Moscow, ID and mudslinger in OR.

I have a blog? what?!

In the attempt to procrastinate more from my studies and create somewhat of an online social life for myself (myface and spacebook just aren't for me), I'm starting up this blog.

We'll keep it short and sweet today, I gotta ease myself into this....