Ubikequitous 10, Fat Bike Yoga Pants Shootout!!!

Everyone favorite battling purveyors of yoga and sporty gear for women both featured Pugsleys in their latest catalogs.

From Top, cover of Title 9 catalog, back page of Athleta catalog

From Top, innards of Athleta catalog, innards of Title 9 catalog

Clearly Title 9 is the victor as they have a cooler schwinn and the cover model actually riding the bike (the catalog also has a lemond city bike and a generic stepthrough in other photos). But well done to both catalogs in capturing the fat bike zeitgeist.

I do have to admit being very nostalgic for the Title 9 catalogs of 10 years ago or so which used to feature what I called the "Title 9 Barbies" (ironically, see below) who usually were shown surfing or skateboarding or gardening their organic farms or building a school for impoverished children with descriptions such as "working on her third PhD, raising her 4 adopted children on her organic turkey farm, still finds time to shred the morning break" or "built her own wooden yacht and sailed around the world in between her career as pro kiteboarder and her current job as CTO of a biotech startup". There was one page of the catalog I used to carry around in my lab book for inspiration when I was working on my dissertation, I can't find that page anymore, but I figured if she could look great in yoga pants and get her PhD while she was skateboarding/surfing/alpacafarming, well then, I could finish my dissertation while living by myself and riding my bikes a whole bunch, with little pressure to look great in yoga pants (even though I could totally rock those if I wanted to). I used to call them the barbies as those were the type of barbies I would like my future daughter to play with, alas, now that I actually have a daughter, the current Title 9 catalogs have dispensed with the awe inspiring overachievers for less impressive and breezy descriptions of the models.

Holy F&$%, Doping!

It is like christmas for doping nerds like me, I keep wanting to write about it, but I can't get my head around the magnitude. Well done to Floyd Landis for really kicking this off and the USADA for seeing it through. Twice a day I check velonews and twice a day I am rewarded with even more information. Anyhow, go read for yourself, I really have nothing to add, the Reasoned Decision and even better the spectacularly entertaining/grim/depressing affidavits. If you search around a bit are some entertaining bike racing forum investigation to the names of the redacted people in the Reasoned Decision, pretty much implicates the few obvious american cyclists who did not give direct evidence in the USADA case.

I will say it again. The UCI needs to declare some sort of amnesty program so that we can get more of the scoop from more people without any fear of serious repercussions... It may have been the UCI's fault that doping was so widespread in the first place, but if I am writing about doping scandals in cycling in 10 years featuring riders who are now in their 20's, it is absolutely on the UCI. USPS had a great doping system, but it was built on the bones of the ONCE team's system and it is clear from the affadavits that many other teams were all in as well, there is much to learn from more honesty and openness.

Lots of things from last week

Scored yet another arrow (number 4 or 5?) and whole pile of marking flags.

Arrow found right at the intestine and diamond on the lab side. I imagine someone realized they were heading to work with some weapons and jettisoned them out the window. Alas it had been run over, it now is carbon trash. Flags found in bike lane on canyon. Picked em up mostly so they did not become pokey wires in the bike lane.

Aida and Wink256 took a chariot ride around the block. Wink did not freak. Aida might be a bit happy

Got even more wood. Mostly Cherry and Apple. Will need to season the living crap out of it before it goes in the fire, but it will burn for a long time. Spent about half an hour cutting it down out of a massive brush pile on the other side of the neighborhood. Pretty easy 1/2 mile ride back to the house afterwards.

Went to the opera in bandelier last saturday night. It was fun. Aida was entranced for 10 minutes and then happily played in the dirt for the rest of the hour and a half. We got to take the bus 4 times on Saturday, Aida was thrilled about this too. Click the panaroma to see on flickr.

Found this feller on my road bike. I thought is was a big wasp, but I think it is a black and yellow party beetle:

After studiously avoiding a smartphone for a while, I have to say, I am digging the iphone and all the photo options. I also like having the pocket GPS, I have been using Run Keeper to log walks with Aida and neighborhood cruises and I jumped on the Strava moronwagon to help log the local punishing climbs for both running and riding, helps me be a bit more rigorous in my self monitoring. I don't really care to share em, nor will I facebook spam out all my rides, but I will be making up dumb new segments for myself, as I am pretty sure there are a couple road bike rides and runs that that no one else does. The greater quality pocket cam will help on the blogging documentation probably, see gratuitous coffee picture:

2012 pajarito trail fest 10k race report 9/22/12

Oooooof, it hurt. Race was run counter clockwise instead of the traditional clockwise. Typical start and end at the ski lodge (~9000 feet), with a 10,400 foot summit betwixt. I will give you the super abbreviated race report.
1. Go out too fast on the downhill with fast people
2. Go lactic on the first climb straight up a ski slope.
3. hold off the rampaging hordes on the single track climb
4. suffer on the going straight up the ski hill parts again and again
5. Crack badly just before the summit
6. Hit the summit of the ski hill
7. Take a picture and get passed by a bunch of people

8. Suffer on the initial technical descent
9. Pass a few people back on a bit of rollyness
10. Suffer the second part of the initial technical decent
11. Hammer hard on the less technical descent
12. Hold off more rampaging hordes of descenders
13. Wait, whats this? A mile of climbing to the finish? Crap.
14. Let 4 people pass you as you have lost the will to live
15. They are kinda passing me slow
16. Crap, they are not pulling away.
17. Double crap, they are right there in front of me.
18. I resign myself to sprinting past all of them
19. Accomplish number 18.
20. Spend the next 20 minutes trying not to vomit.
21. Eat breakfast burrito.
22. Help daughter run kids race.
23. Go home, take nap.
24. Deal with intense quad soreness for 5 days.
Other thoughts. It was hot. It was challenging. I hated it when I was doing it, but in retrospect it was pretty fun. Even with all the super steep fire road sections. Good job on the trail fixing post fire. I might be in shape for this one day. I finished 10th overall in the 10k race, 9th among mens, and 3.875th in the 30-39 age group. Time was just under 1 hour and 11 minutes. I can do better. I need to remember not to take 3 weeks off running right before a race. results here

last year it was not hot and covered in snow:

I did this race in 2009 too:

So thanks to the organizers for putting on the excellent race and all the volunteers that got the trails ready for the suffering. And great job to all the 15 mile racers and all the people that came out and did the duathlon the next day. Due to ridiculous quad soreness, some knee swolage and intense desire to do nothing I skipped it. Maybe next year.