The big show. The Grand Prix's. The circus comes though once a year to Colorado and it's fantastic to see great friends as they follow the caravan from city to city. But alas, I've had a love/hate relationship with the USGPs. It's a crap shoot so for me, I can really set no audacious goals. Just train within the tempo of the folks who have been racing or are peaking for these two days. And that's exactly what I did. With no meaningful call up procedure (my sorry ass was in the smoking section both days), I had to just look at personal objectives: ride smooth, attack all the hills, stay in the wheels. I still can not figure out why the GP's can not use USAC's ranking system to determine call ups. Order of registration feels like a cop-out as we've now compiled and can access much more sophisticated data to lay out a start grid. But I digress. 

Day 1

It seems like the weather gods know exactly where to be on the first Saturday of the Colorado leg of the GP's: Directly over Fort Collins. The morning races were gorgeous....but by mid day (the Junior races and elite master races), the skies opened up, temps dropped and the rain began to piss down. 

My oldest, Aiden (10), is now in full swing racing in his 3rd season of cross. He gets it all...the mud, the suffering, the self control...but on the start line he and all the other brave kids were standing there in a collective vibrating mass. All shivering. Nerves, fear and cold all building up waiting for the whistle. Aiden, on the front row was looking at me terrified. Then the chief referee signals "30 SECONDS!!!". Aiden looks forward, breathes and stops shivering. Today he's racing with the BIG kids. The teenagers. His calmness inspired me and when that whistle blew, he ripped to an incredible 14th amongst a huge field in horrible conditions. So proud of him. I can only envision what he is learning about himself at this age. Let's face it, when I was 10 years old, I was not doing this. Not even close. Shivering on the bench in a hockey arena or soccer field can not compare to this level of bravery. 

Photo by Amy Keller

The 35 Masters then lined up. I'm in the back of the bus in the 6th row and I can see my teammate and current world champion Pete Webber not too far ahead. I'm thinking: "How can a world champion not get a courtesy call up? When he goes to Belgium

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So my spy, otherwise known as Dubba, has been feeding me these incredible pics all morning to share with you from their visit to the Ridely folks in the great white north of Minnesota. More reports soon but have a look at this INCREDIBLE collection of Ridley X-Fire, X-Ride and X-Night all in their new color schemes. We are honored that the new X-Fire Disc will be in Boulder Cycle Sport Colors for 2013!

And please note the Clement Tire spec goodness. Mmmm.

Enjoy...

The 2012 / 2013 X-Fire Disc:

A look at the disc brake boss assembly...

The front fork goodness...

In her glory pose...

The 2012 / 2013 X-Fire with traditional cantilever brakes...

Yes...Electric should you want to be like Sven...

The BEAUTIFUL 2012 / 2013 X-Ride Disc! Incredible price popint race bike with DISCS!

The flagship X-Night, more racy than ever...

Can...not...wait to glue these babies up. The Clement PDX tubular is based on a "tubeless tubular" system. Great for durabiility (read: great for Colorado!) and with an improved casing for suppleness while, again, maintaining stregnth. The LAS (file tread) and a new all-around tread coming soon! The Boulder Cycle Sport Ambassador's Team will be rocking these full on. 

Here are some pictures of the first look. Stay tuned for ride reports. 

The PDX Will ship with these sidewall sickers to pimp your carbon rims. Complete with dragon and a dry-erase PSI sticker to place near your valve stem. 

The rubber on the PDX is phenomenal. The knobbies measure roughly 2.9mm. 

The base tape is unbelievably layered on to the casing with nearly no variance or huge disparity between casing and base tape. Best application I have ever seen. 

Here is a Dugast base tape for comparison (granted this has been glued put I want to draw attention to the edge of the tape as it meets the cotton casing)

The Rhino 32 (l) and the PDX 33 (r)

 Clement's new artwork is incredible (and we especially love it as it was desigend by our good friend Zach Lee here in Boulder!)