Pacific Raceways - 8.12.08

Finally a nice warm summer evening of racing! It was the first time back on the Specialized since destroying the shifters at Derby Days. It was a fast and feisty group of cat 4/5's. Lot's of sketchy riding for this late in the season. One guy managed to almost crash going down the front straight-a-way. No idea how he manged to do that, or keep upright. I thought for sure I was going over him.

Chased down a few breaks, got Dave, Steve and Scott to the front for the last uphill to the finish (which I suck at). Dave took 2nd (and probably locked up the series). The end.

Gear Push Time Trial - 8.10.2008

Today Vu, John S., Barbara and I ventured down for the Gear Push TT. This was my second race on the Abici since Tenino. I made the swap to the "straight" aero bars and found that to be a much more comfortable position.

Barb was starting things off with the first start time of the day. Maybe Rory knew something we didn't, because she won the woman's cat 4! (Barb getting in the zone)
I went off 40 minutes later. 2 minutes in I realized my speed sensor didn't start my clock and I wasn't registering. I hit the start button quickly to have some idea of where I was at. At least I had heart rate right? Wrong. A few minutes later the Polar decides to go weird on me, registering a HR of 34 beats per minute, then 203, then 84, then back to 177. I'm guessing I was between 175 and 183 for most of the time. I ended up 13th with a 24:31. My goal was to break 25 minutes so I'm pretty happy with that.

Mr. John Sindel took the opportunity to swap helmets with me since I finished well before him. I know that's why he came in with a 22:50(1), 2nd place in the cat 4 mens! Vu put in an excellent time of 25:27.

If photos are good, than video must be way better...right? Here is John in the last 200K. You can hear the disk making a funny sound (which we later found was it rubbing on the frame)





So we ended the day with a 1st and 2nd for Team Starbucks. Full results can be found here.

Now here is one way to make racing more interesting...

A British ad campaign for Powerade has Olympic athletes doing their sport in the nude because "we wanted to give people the chance to see the real make-up of an athlete and their muscle and power." Ad agency translator = Sex sells, we wanted to "break through" the clutter.

It's not like spandex leaves much to the imagination anyway.