What I'm up to

I'm up to working on getting fast. Faster than Johnnie Huston. He is weak and I will sacrifice his legs upon the alter of the 7 dwarves on March 18th. He is so weak he gives money to the homeless and makes himself feel tough by making the females cry. I hope I see him at cherokee park tonight so I can knock him over while he tries to pedal his fixed gear bike with the silly handlebars.


I expect an anonymous comment to come from this.

-RJT 4-life

i can do it too

post deuce

are you ready? well put on your bib, grab your knife and fork cuz i'm serving up a big ol hot n spicy platter of blog. mmmmm. was it good for you? i spent all day on it.

chaffing my bell-end

I went to Henderson over the weekend to take care of some wedding arrangement stuff, blah, blah. Took my road bike but forgot my riding shorts. I only had my wind-proof riding pants which have no chamois in them. So on saturday I went out for a little over an hour and a half. IN a commando type fashion cause it was only tights for me, nothing beneath. After about an hour of riding I stopped for a nature break and realized that I was doing crucial damage to my little soldier. He was terribly red and it hurt to pee, like I had an std or something. I think all that flopping around and rubbing against my pants was bad for him so I took off my arm warmer and wrapped the little guy up and then started home. Thank goodness there was no permanent damage. That night I went to Goody's and bought some boxer-briefs because I had only brought boxers with me and they don't do a very good job keeping things in place. So Sunday I went out for close to three hours with boxerbriefs and the windproof tights on. It was definitely an improvement but man my butt sure did start to hurt towards the end of the ride. And out of the 4 or 5 dogs that chased me, only one scared me a little. I was doing 25 and that thing was still gaining. That was about all the excitement I had for the weekend. Hope yours was good too. Always remember kids, cycling shorts with a chamois in them make your kibbles and bits happy.

-R

what a vacation

The days that Cory and I spent in Hawaii were so marvelous. He's so silly sometimes but in a good way. This is a picture Big Country took of Cory and I on the beach, our last night of vacation.

Not the way to start the year

This isn't how I wanted things to start this season. I'm sitting here with a sore shoulder, the result of an uncontrolled dismount this past weekend. Had it x-rayed, looks like a mild separation of my Left Shoulder. I'll know more on Friday when I visit the Ortho doc.

I had (still have) big plans for this season. I'm on a new bike, an '07 Cannondale Scalpel 1 and on a new (kinda) team. New in the sense that I'm "on the team" this year instead of just posing like I did last year and racing in an Clarksville A-Team Jersey.

I get a lot of questions as to which class I'm going to race this year. I'm now racing as a 40-year-old, so I get to go against the geezers instead of the young punks. Good deal. This is an opportune time to make the jump to Expert, but I'm not sure I'm ready, now with the shoulder if I have to take any time off the bike it'll create even more doubt. Besides, if I stay in the Sport class I can beat up on Joe Collins of Team Louisville and Bo King from Humana/CC. Both good guys and good competitors.

That's all for my first post, we'll see if I can get this thing to work. And yeah, my bike is cooler than Rowbear's, thanks for asking. Black bikes rock.

Duane

big purchase

I got my scalpel yesterday. It wasn't too bad when I picked it up. Felt alright. I did a couple hot laps around the parking lot. The new x0 shifters and derailer feel so good. Now, how long will it take before the trails are dry enough for me to ride it. Oh well, I'm sure my roadbike is feeling neglected anyway since it hasn't been outside in a few weeks.

Big group rides and cold weather

got an awesome group ride in on Saturday out at Younger's creek. There was snow on the ground and 30 minutes after riding a section our tracks would be covered when we came back to it. Snow wasn't deep, just enough to cover the gound. You could see the white single-track snaking it's way through the woods. Kind of magical and epic. I got in nearly 3 1/2 hours, that's a pretty big mtb ride for me. I had a couple wrecks 3 of them were because I kept trying to make it up the drop in and kept falling over at the top. The other wreck hurt the worst because it was an actual wreck on high speed off camber stuff, I just slid out and ricocheted off the ground, it was pretty hard and jaggedy because it was frozen. John and Anthony rode past and made fun of me. Now I've got a pretty good scab going on in my right ass cheek/hip region. I was pretty beat by the end of the ride and had to take it easy yesterday on the rollers for 45 minutes. I'm getting to where I can watch t.v. a bit while I'm on the rollers. I tried to take a drink too but that nearly ended catastrophically.

stuff

this is my first blog. enjoy.

~Anthony

A new mountain bike

I ordered one of these last week. It will be my first full suspension bike. It will also be my first time with hydro disc brakes. I had avid mechanical before but wasn't too impressed mainly because they always seemed making a little noise. I haven't even really ridden a full sus. so this should be interesting.

It came with an xt group aside from the xtr rear der. I changed the shifters out to x0 grip shift, cause I love grip shift and so I had to change the rear der. to an x0. I also upgraded the pedals to stainless steal eggbeaters. I love my time pedals but I couldn't ignore how much lighter the eggbeaters are. Since the mavic 819 wheelset isn't as light as the crossmax sl's I've been thinking of every possible way I can to shed some weight without springing for the crossmax wheels (they're spensive). I think I'm going to try to change the shimano brake rotors out for something lighter like hope mono mini's if the two will work together, xt calipers with hope rotors. I hope all this money I'm dropping on bikes makes me faster. It's not like I'm training or anything. :)

I'm sure the money I've been spending on coaching is going to do way more for me than new bikes, and the cost of coaching is so much less than the cost of new scalpels and schwinn pelotons.

It has been a little harder than I expected to get rid of my hard-tail. I've resorted to piecing it out but so many people have stuff for sale right now. I think if I can hold off till March or April I will fair much better.

supposed to do a roadrace this weekend, if it doesn't get called because of weather I'll let you know how it goes down.

A little exposure

Here I am running second on the cover of a local magazine. This is from the cross race I did back in December. My first cross race ever, I got 3rd but the two guys who beat me were from Ohio so I am the Kentucky State Cyclocross champion for the C's. haha, lucked into that.

As far as training goes. It has been really freaking cold, good thing about that is that most trails are frozen so I got out on the mtb for 2 1/2 hours on Saturday and then again on Sunday, I rode around on the cx course. It was on 22 degrees and felt like 16 but I stayed pretty warm, that is until I started heading home, my already cold toes became really cold and started hurt a little. I need to get some of those hothand type things for my feet. Today it's like 16 degrees but is supposed to feel like 0 and I believe it. My eye sockets felt like they were going to freeze as I rode my bike to work this morning. I'm supposed to do my first road race ever this weekend, weather prediction is for 28 degrees. Man, that sounds brutal.

yay

A picture from December's cyclo-cross race with me in it made the cover of the Kentuckiana Health Fitness magazine. it's a free monthly publication. In the picture I'm running second, it was right after the start of the race. Regardless, I was pretty stoked. First time I've made a paper since high school football.