Mud, snot, and beers.

As I said in my last posting, discipline has not been one of my stronger suits, which is largely the reason why I haven't updated my blog any sooner. The past few days have been somewhat consequential; I finished my gluing my tubular race wheelset with the help of my teammate, Dave. He has both more muscle and more experience than I do in terms of getting a glued tire rolled onto a glued rim which was greatly appreciated.

Today (9/21) I had the opportunity to race that tubular wheelset in some pretty extreme cyclocross conditions. It began to rain ever since the morning and never ceased throughout the day. By 6:30, when my race was scheduled to begin, the race course was a figurative battlefield of those who hadn't the heart to continue. This mud was watery but thick like oily peanut butter. The mud continually built up upon everyone's bikes until I'm sure each of us had gained 2-4 lbs of extra weight from pieces of the course. One long straight section of the course was particularly devastating, offering a literal lake of water that was probably up to 4 inches tall in some parts; this made pedaling in even the easiest of gears a challenge in the most positive of terms and made you want to give up on life in the most negative. After sloshing through the water-fun-park, our chains were near sparkling, which was great after getting so much sand from the sand-pit lodged into our drive-train which made noises not dissimilar to scratching ones fingers on a chalkboard. It makes me cringe just to think about how much damage a sandpit can inflict upon a bicycle and it's sensitive parts. The entirety of this one mile-ish course, which we rode upon for upwards of fifty minutes, was either very heavy grass or slow mud so finding a fast line through the thick was difficult and quite rewarding when discovered. I almost ate it multiple times which made things interesting. Luckily I recovered well enough to retain my position in the field of the other twenty (?) riders. I was disappointed to find that I couldn't sustain the necessary heart rate to stay with the leaders. This was my first time racing with the A's which is like an uncategorized (is this not a word?) version of a semi pro and pro race, meaning anyone can race it no matter what official category you are licensed to race in sanctioned races. It was a good experience. I got a great start and even after the first few turns and the u-shaped sand-pit I was within striking distance of the top 5 leaders. It was only for the first quarter lap that I was able to keep them within close proximity and after that they proved why they are pros or semi-pro. I fell back until my heart beat became more normalized, my peak HR tends to be around 195 beats per second whereas an average racing HR might be 170 or 175. I don't know exactly where I finished but I can only hope it might have been mid-field. Once the race was over and the mud was begin to cake onto my body I broke out a New Belgium Pump-kick beer which is quite delicious and maybe one of my new favorite Fall seasonal beers though to be fair that category is not very large. This beer is made with pumpkin, cranberry and lemon juice which makes it just slightly sour in a beer sort of way and not so much like lemonade. I would most liken the taste to that of a snazzy wheat beer. It has good flavor but is still easy to drink which I really like after a bicycle race. A good beer really hits the spot unless it is heavy like an IPA or a more delicious malty beverage such as a porter or stout when consumed after crushing the souls of your opponents. Now I'm really tired from this racing stuff and staying up too late last night. Tomorrow I'll be riding a metric century which in American means 62 miles give or take a little accuracy. There are actually some big cycling plans in the works which involve myself and my oldest friend embarking on an adventure of seemingly preposterous epicness.