'Crossy weather this AM! Driving in from DIA last night, I could see all the stars in the sky. Getting home and finally falling to sleep, I awoke for like my 6th pee somewhere at like 4 AM (whenever I come back to altitude I start to pee like a mad man) and I could hear the distinctive sound of water running down the gutters. When there was enough light out to see this AM, I could see snow and rain and 35 degree temps.

Yum. Cross. Belgie style.

This AM was a cluster trying to wake up from my trip, get some coffee in my gullet, see my wife and kids out the door for school then finally suit up and giddy up on down to Amante. I was late jammed down expecting to see like maybe 5 people given the less than ideal weather (for non crossers) but low and behold, the whole friggin 'peleton' was in effect. My God we are a bunch of sick monkeys.

We got a surprise visitor today! Jon C (pictured winning the CO states last year) from Moots was in town on biz from Mootsland, CO. GREAT TO SEE YOU MAN! Thanks for the 411 on Mol. The call to order came, people finished up their coffees and we all trained on up to Elks. The usual place.

We dialed in a course basically the same as we normally run with the exception of adding some sections to get people to train for the sand conditions this weekend. So we sent people up through this section of stone driveway for like 25 feet which totally simulates the power needed for sand.

We lined up and Paco called out GO! and we were off. Tyler, Colby, Paco (on his Primus Mootry 1 x 1! You are ridiculously fast on that that one gear) Troy and I got a selection right away and rolled nice for like 2 or 3 of the 5 laps. Even after my stress ball trip to NYC, the break from the bike certainly paid dividends. I rolled better than I anticipated today so the engine must be up to something good (I hope). T had me under strict orders not to go to deep and I never did, yet was there the whole time. I guess that's the point, right?

Even after telling EVERYONE to watch the cement corner, yours truly went down on lap 4. Totally harmless crash and funny actually. Back up in a flash and finished up after 5 laps nicely with Steve, Jon C and a Red Rocks Velo fellow (Clay's team mate) somewhere in the top 6 to 8 or so on our training race.

A group of us then went on a mellow dirt road spin down for an hour or so around the Boulder Rez. Lots of fun! Great to see you out there this AM Clay H! Sorry about your flat!

So big races this weekend! Nice! Looking forward to it. Chris G has something special lined up me thinks.

'Cross on my peeps. Thanks for reading.

GK

In a New York minute, things can change. I'm back home after a trip away to NYC to see family and take care of some work. Things can change in the blink of an eye.

These last 4 days have my head spinning....

~Seeing family and old friends shows me how they...and I...have changed and life is not infinite but 50 years of marriage shows me that love can be.
~NYC is not the same City I once lived in. It's soft. There is no edge any longer.
~My work world showed me how quickly things can degrade for some people I've known and trusted for ages....and showed me what can occur if you do not make the right decisions.
~I'm home now and peering into my sons bedrooms tonight, they seem older. They're changing. Please stay the way you are my sweet boys. Show me again and again and again how you just learned how to ride a bike. Stay there for a little while longer.

I will lay my head on my pillow tonight and I will sleep soundly while I shouldn't. The past 4 days are in the front lobe of my brain firing synapses at such a furious pace I can almost physically feel them firing. Last night was restless. Hotel restlessness from being away from my loves and dealing with all this unrequested life education I just witnessed the last four days. The kind of restlessness where your eyes are open at 2 in the morning and you whip the covers off, drop your feet to the floor and put your head in your hands, the brain all tangled in knots in what if scenarios, contingency plans, the future, what's next, am I ready, will I do the right thing for my family, why isn't there a real crystal ball.

After learning most of the 'education' on Monday, I needed to suffer. Turn my mind on to channel zero and make the brain see nothing but channel zero's snow for a while. The suffering tends to make all life's noise stop....or turns it into 'white noise' as in snow on the television. I strapped on the shoes and got myself to Central Park on an epically beautiful evening. Clear blue skies, trees exploded in mad color. Commencing the run, channel zero could not be tuned in. 1/3 my brain was in overdrive thinking through things I've just learned while another 1/3 is causing me to half-smile as my eyes are seeing old treasures in the Park I haven't seen in years. Trails we used to poach and certain rocks we used to huck ourselves off of on big hit slalom bikes with Night Sun's blaring through those same trails during many nights, many years ago. the last 1/3 of my brain knows that this weekend 'cross is coming and for once I smiled about it while on the road....when typically it' s a stress. No more. Racing is racing and it's my salvation and cleansing from reality. My run through the park's single track made me feel like I was riding and that balanced the thrashing going on in my brain. I hopped trees like barriers until the legs were cached and I could go back to the anonymous hotel into my anonymous room and think some more.

I'm home. I'm lucky.

So the Coloradans will have their fill of sand this weekend given the races locale: The Boulder Reservoir. Brian H and the BoulderRacing.com crew will be out there in force to get course dialed. Bring your Stans however given the unbelievable amount of goat heads on the course. Last year, Chris G literally swept and raked every square inch of the course by hand to free it if the spiky race ruiners.

Life is good at the '06 Rez race pre-goat heads...

...then forced to play catch up after changing bikes

Needless to say, I will be found at the Rez days in December getting the whole sand thing dialed for January 19th 2008.

'Cross on, peeps.

Yes sports fans, the Wednesday World championships were in effect this AM! Gotta love Boulder. We went from epic 30 degree snowering on Sunday to 65 and sunny today. Gorgeous.

Today was the typical ENORMOUS field of cross enthusiasts. Literally, we have doctors, lawyers, technologists, general worker bees out there. Each punching holes in their schedules as the Wednesday throw down is not to be missed. WAY too many ego-based bets and shit talking going on that people live for week after week after week. Today, lots of the strong men and women out. No Sager (where were you man!??) but lots of the top shelf was there including B-money, Danny "I'm going to own Juri Adams in 08" Summerhill, Colby and more.

Special guest today: My boy Timmy "The Truth" Faia. Don't ask me why I called you The Truth Timmy....it just came to me. Thanks for making the trek from Breck! Hey, that rhymes...

Session 1: Elks. The bag-o-barriers made its debut again and we had a great course set up. Plan was to slow burn into this session instead of shooting all the bullets in one fully automatic spray and I felt very fast. Not quite fast enough to stay with Brandon, Troy and Danny, but fast enough for like 5th I think in the 25 minute heat. The WB and I rolled very nicely together trading some work which felt great to do with him as we've had plans for a while to try our tag team! Ha!

Session 2: Valmont. The Parks and Recs folks came to 'greet' us and we complied nicely. They were not psyched but the work folks like Cat Johnson has been doing was all front loaded today and they knew we could be there. We stayed on the perimeter of the grass and monitored the large gate so as to not let the disgusting disease infested death varmints in or out (Boulders sacred and protected prairie dogs). Thanks all who looked after the gate for the rest of us! Session 2 for me was about 'completeness'. I wanted a good workout and rolled evenly through the thick grass. I stayed in the front 1/2 of the large field and just put in some attacks to work on some sharp end intervals. The body is still feeling the cold I have but definitely dissipating. All in all, two good deep sessions today.

No racing this weekend at the Boulder Rez and all its lovely goat heads. Good luck with that boys and girls! Traveling to see my family and looking forward to some rest and home cookin'.

Sorry not a lot of pics today as I was busy getting in a work out or two. Some digital celluloid:

The Indy twins, Rocco and Timmy The Truth.

The new Litespeeds run by Kabush and Team Maxxis. This one owned by Gary Wolff, Maxxis Mechanic

I'm getting back after it today. The WB and I did a nice recovery spinny spin yesterday but today I needed to get the engine ramped back up. The head cold is dissipating and the neck lymphs are going down. Good times. I will not be racing this weekend so I am getting in a bunch of heavier training which I am psyched for. All that climbing this summer seems like a distant memory but it comes back right quick when you hurl yourself up a mountain. Feels good.

I jammed some Lee Hill repeats today. Lee Hill is literally next to my house and is a well known training 'institution' here in town used to bench mark fitness. Big Mig himself came here in the 90's with Banesto and used Lee Hill as a training simulation for (I think) the 1994 TdF's uphill time trial. If you stop by U-Bikes here in town, they will give you the low down on his visit.

So, climbing this AM got me to thinking. What is this hill? What do I feel like when I am trialing it for bench marks? Let me sum it up this way:
Wednesday World's tomorrow. See you there!

So, investigating the 35 Open results from Saturday, there are some obvious scoring errors going on. Yvonne from the ACA is looking into it but due to the huge fields, dudes who got lapped (including one of my team mates!) got lumped into the top 20. So three places will likely get relegated. Am I being an anal retentive beeatch? Ha! I guess so. You can call me a chump the next time you see me.

Nice pic from Ward's 'A' bike yesterday after the Open race in Evergreen. Epic say he and Boups:

First, let me just state this for the record: I categorically sucked ass today. I pulled in a top 20 in a huge field in the 35 Opens (I heard there were a 100 in an earlier cat's race) which saw us lapping guys by 3 to go, but seriously, I had nothing today. More suck ass drama in a minute.

Todays race was at Interlocken, just East of Za Reepoobleek of Boulder. Brian H, Todd Carver and the Boulder Racing crew put together a Euro-style course that saw us race on mostly grass course with plenty of twists and turns.....and included a 'feature' of a muddy river run through/up as well as a volleyball course's sand you had to run through. It was by all definitions a very hard course. The grass was super thick and moist and draining of energy every lap you ticked off (excuse no. 1...the course did me in. More excuses coming up!)

OK, the race: I got the call up today as I was sitting in 8th in the series overall. Standing there, the badness was already in my head. The voices saying, "...shit man, you feel like ass." Fair enough, evil voices. I still toed the line but I new it was not going to be a good one from the get go (excuse no. 2: No fair! I had demons in my head!) and my plan was to just cherry pick and sit in for the day. Ha! Right....

I won the hole shot with the intention of getting through this nasty corner at the start and then wanted to to group with some dudes who'd eventually bridge so I could sit in and just pace myself for the day. I kept looking back and had this huge gap after the first 1/2 lap. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Whatever. It was what it was. Then, the fire lungs set in early. I'd been hacking and sort of feverish since I came back from May-hee-co (yup, excuse no. 3....Gweggie has a cold virus) and never could feel like I could cycle a full chest full of air the last couple of days. So by lap two, the burning was utterly intense from the depths of those pink air bags.

With each lap, it was like being in quick sand. The captain's bridge was commanding the engine room to throw on more coal but the engine room was on strike. Legs like lead which I got the sensations of while warming up (of course, excuse no. 4...Boo hoo, my legs hurt, mommy).

OK, silver linings:
a) Beautiful day! The weather was epic. 70 degrees, sunny and a HUGE crowd!
b) OK, another thing for the record: THANK YOU FAITHFUL MUD AN COWBELLS READERS! Holy crap, you rule. EVERY lap there were faces I've never seen before yelling my name and I S-W-E-A-R to you that with each yell, a few more watts came out of the legs when nothing was technically there. Thank you thank you thank you!
c) The WB pulled in a top 10! Not sure where in the top 10 but he was rolling while suffering like everyone was and that is RAD! Sweet work, Ward.
d) The bikes were dialed! Given my comical track record of tire implosions, I can not use the bike as excuse no. 5 today. The Rock Lobsters ruled and the Griffos at 45 p.s.i were spot on. It was the body's turn to shit the bed....and it was messy!

So, I am now drinking a beer as I type this. I am turning into the 'people's racer'. The hack who has that phlegm and snot cascading into about a 16" string below the chin while he races. I do it all for you my peeps.

OK, I do it for me too and a wee bit of pride.

Training week coming up with no racing this coming weekend. Yee-haw! It's my beautiful parents 50th (yes, 50th!!) wedding anniversary and the kids are all flying to the East coast to celebrate that unbelievable milestone.

'Cross on (just not like me these days).

Thanks for reading (and cheering!!!!)

Digital celluloid of the suffering from my main man George! Thanks man!!

Some race action from the UCI races in Ohio this past weekend. Nice to see Brandon mixing it up with Wicks and Parbo at the front. Wicks has so much time at the end, he's show boating through the barriers by bunny hopping.