August 2009
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boulder short track

leonard published 14 years ago in Uncategorized.

i felt the need to race so badly after i missed the race in aspen. the only thing going on was the boulder short track on wednesday. no early registration so i just drove down early and signed up. if you’ve never done the boulder short track make sure you do it sometime before you get too old and die. i started doing them about 7 years ago and they haven’t changed one bit. always some young people at the registration table, 10 dollar entry fee, super casual. the race itself is something special as well. the categories are fast faster, and fastest. i used to race the faster category a few years ago, but this day i chose the “fast”.

i was a little caution and under-confident when i started, so i sat in the back at the start. since this is basically the beginners/sport category most of the guys are not particularly strong with the technical skills. because i was on a single speed i had two concerns; one, i needed momentum for the little hills, and two i would really have to spin to pass anyone on the flats. i was getting kind of frustrated at first because these guys in front of me were braking all the time and putting me further and further in back of the race. this course was like a roller coaster single track, short steep descents followed by short climbs. if you went all out on the descents you could make it to the top of the other side with hardly even pedaling. unfortunately the guys in front of me were always breaking on the descent and killing everyone’s momentum.

i eventually learned how to race and soon found myself passing at will. not exactly at will, but good enough that i could slowly move up in the race. i learned to back off just a bit on the descent so i didn’t have to break on the way down, and once or twice i timed it so well i passed right at the top of the climb. i passed a couple of guys on the flats, while spinning about 150 rpms (that was tough to recover from). i ended up about 10th out of 22, which is not horrible. i felt great and not one person passed me.

why is the ex-cyclist racing?

lance armstrong

leonard published 14 years ago in ex-cycling, mountain biking.

i started following lance armstrong’s tweets this year mostly because he was going to race the tour and i wanted the have the heads up on everything that was going on before and after the stages. i was not disappointed. lance is one of the most prolific tweeters around. he tweets first thing in the morning… right before bed, he retweets articles, pictures, videos. i’m never bored. anyway right after the tour he went on vacation in the bahamas, then returned to aspen colorado to train for the leadville 100.

he had been doing the usual posts telling what ride he did, who he’s having beers with, then on a thursday [not remember the date] he posted that he was going to do a mountain states cup race at snowmass in aspen! i thought about it for a little bit, then decided that i would take the family and drive up to aspen race in the same race as lance armstrong, and have my family take a bunch of pictures of lance while i was at the back of the race making sure there was no one behind me. the family was on board and agreed to the 3and a half hour drive to aspen on saturday morning.

to make a long story short it took almost 4 and a half hours to get there. i was 30 minutes late for the start of the race, and wasn’t about to try to jump in. it’s kind of funny, because that morning i was really nervous about racing. i hadn’t raced for years and i wasn’t in shape…yadda yadda, yadda. as we got closer and closer to aspen i started to realize that i was not going to make it. when it became official that i was not going to make it, i started to really want to race. i started to think in my mind that i was ready and i was going to do well…danm it! when i got the race, 30 minutes late, and got to take a look at the area between laps. it was really long steep uphill fire road that went right through the base of the skii area. there was no place to hide no where to back out, and no where for me to look good. i was so happy i didn’t race. my whole attitude changed, i went from grumpy asshole, to mr. sunshine in a blink of an eye.

so i got some pictures of lance: