Left out

No cool Fat Tire 40 stories here. I wasn't one of the chosen ones. Sounds like it was fast and fun. Congrats to Senor Matter on the second jewel in the Triple Crown crown. My weekend was spent building a garage for the fast one in our family to park in this winter and it was Kylie's birthday party yesterday. We tried to give away a bunch of tomatoes so Lisa doesn't have to spend all her time canning the tomatoes and freezing the raspberries and juicing the grapes. It's been a good year for the garden which equates to more time in the kitchen, I guess.
The USGP is already here. That's crazy. Let the suffering begin!

That was....

interesting? What a fun race. I actually felt like I was racing yesterday. The singletrack was awesome and I moved up instead of backwards most of the race. I got to see Chris P. throw up more times than I've seen my kids do it. On lap 3 at the bottom of a steep, short descent towards the end of the lap, someone totally squashed a chipmunk. That brightened the rest of my race since I figured I was doing better than that little fellow. He progressively got flatter and wider each lap. A big thank you to Landon for taking care of my first ever thumb-forearm cramp. I'm pretty sure I was the only one with cramping issues yesterday. (does the implied humor work in a blog?) Nice work by Lisa, too. She ended up 4th on the day.

Practicing to Hurt

We made the trip to Madison to do the Cyclocross practice at Yahara last night. It was quite enjoyable. We showed up late, of course, so I wasn't too sure how it was supposed to work. I sat in and tried to figure out, quickly gave up on that and then just rode. Lots of nice people out jumping off perfectly good bikes to run over obstacles that don't need to be there. I'm ok with that. Actually, more than ok, I really dig this. So we'll hopefully hit a few more of these and get some skills.
I'm officially a year older today. Sucks.

The weekend

was dominated by house projects. I was pretty burned out on working on the house by Sunday and thankfully Sam came and rescued me in the afternoon. I hadn't really planned on riding for as long as we did but we conquered a bunch of new roads. The Kwik Trip in Richland Center had 4 for a dollar cookies and some delicious Dr. Pepper. Not quite Loganville quality but close. The ride back was capped off with a vicious turn at the front by Sam at the 4 hour mark. I guess he wanted to get back home. My legs were pretty useless the rest of the day, they barely got me around Menards. The Rolo's we bought for a treat were just what I needed for full mental recovery. Monday mornings trip down the stairs was interesting. Got the house ready for siding, put the screen door back on just in time for my Gramma's dog to run through it. Cleaned up the mess in the yard and called it good for now. Capped of the weekend with a trip to Devil's Lake with the girls. Very nice.

Pounding the Head

Well, not so much pounding but the trails were sweet last night at Devil's Head. Kurt and Terry and maybe a few more folks have been doing a FANTASTIC job of keeping the weeds at bay this year. It's really nice to keep most of my blood inside of me. Usually the berry bushes are so wicked it looks like I was in a fight with 3 large tomcats after a September ride there. We usually ride at 6 pm on Thursday night but we may move it up to 5:30 with the dwindling daylight and my lack of lighting. Feel free to join us.

I really

don't have much to say. My week has been mostly trying to get some house projects done. Winter is coming and there's a lot to do. After much prodding and peer pressure I finally signed up for the USGP races in Sun Prairie. I watched this cool cyclocross training video Jerry made for me. Maybe I'll put the link up so every can learn his wicked skills. I'm finally realizing that my biggest issue racing is my lack of the ability to not always be nice to people I'm racing with. I have trouble sprinting around someone who just pulled me around the course for and hour or two and beating them. It doesn't seem right. Obviously most other people don't have that issue. It is a race and I should race to the finish line. I hate that guy that sits in and outsprints his pullers at the end and I really don't want to be that guy but maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. Anyway, looking forward to riding Devil's Head tonight. It's been a few weeks since we rode there. Should be sweet.