a ride with Enmark

i was fortunate enough to be able to to ride with the Enmark today - he has been in town for training classes for his new job, and it was hard to pass up the opportunity to spend a few hours on two wheels. The boys at SRAM managed to find a spare Scott Addict with a SRAM group named after a prominate color on it. Thanx Ron Ritzler! A quick change of pedals and a spare kit from myself and we were rollin. We saw a deer in the neighborhoods of La Grange, i was too slow to get my phone out to get a good pic, but you can see he hind end behind the bushes in the picture. We rolled out the chicken ride route and had a good chat. On frontage we saw a unfortunate porta potty that was the victim of juvenile fun. Being a juvenile myself, i could not resist a picture of the shitter down. all in all it was a good day for the ride, and Enmark is now a huge fan of the SRAM gear, and we had a great 2.5 hour day.

Fat Kid - OUT

bikes!!!

So i Snapped this handy little pic the other day riding home after work. There was a mix of spandex, shorts, denim, dockers and dresses - some with and some without helmets - all pedaling to their destinations. Pretty cool assembly at the intersection. Just thought I'd share

my chickenride for Lenny....

Lenny was smiling on us today...
short version - i ended up off the front with Bos, i managed to never say die in the rollers on bluff, and Lenny was watching over the ride and gave us all green lights, all of them on the roll in. Bos did the lions share of the work, i kept wanting to rev the pace up to stay away once we determined we had a good shot at it. This was by far one of the longest escapes in recent chicken history, and Bos took me to the line, i put in a monster sprint because i wanted it that way, and i crossed the line with tears in my eyes for Lenny.

sweet shades

king showed up with a fantastic pair of maui jim glasses from the 80's.
scott looked pretty good in them, but we agreed that the ritzler looked best with his scruffy face and pseudo 'molestach' he was sporting. I could not get a pic of it - but it added humor to the day.

We will all truly miss Lenny....

I still can not begin to accept the truth that Lenny is gone.
I cant figure out exactly how long its been, but my guess is we have been friends for at least 20 years. He sold me my first 10 speed back at Hillside Cyclery, and after being that kid shop rat that was always there and rarely buying, but always talking about riding, he invited me out to ride with him and the guys. They dragged me around all of the training rides, and sometimes they literally had to drag me home, as a 12 year old, i had a hard time keeping up on 4 hour rides. He got me into racing and was always willing to pick me up at 11:30 at night when he got off work at UPS, and drove me to the races the guys did in the big Buick Rivera. Later he helped me get a job at the bike shop, and there were plenty of days of laughter and pranks to be had. I vividly remember the saturday i got my drivers license i went into work a little late after getting my license, and he asked to see it. After some bad photo comments he grabbed a stapler and put about a dozen staples in it. Back then when you got a ticket, the cops stapled your license to the ticket. So with it still warm from the laminator, i had swiss cheese for a license.
Another favorite was the time we went to do laps of Timberline, and we stopped at the white hen, Lenny bought two cans of silly string and completely coated Scott and i as we were going over the I&M canal. Very funny stuff.
Lenny was like a big brother to me, and i truly enjoyed all the hours and talk we shared both on and off the bike.
I can say for certain that i do not know what life will be like without Lenny, and i know i am privileged to have been one of his friends as he was always the guy with a uplifting joke and a smile to get us all through life.

I will miss you dearly my brother
Rest in Peace

Not so superweek.....

know we all know im fat, and certainly not in superweek conditioning, but i have had some pretty decent rides recently and though i would be able to hang out in the field at superweek. Bensenville is not an easy crit, but its no waukesha anyway. It has a long stretch up start finish, a pretty easy right hander, a block to freewheel, another right hander and another long drag race down about 4 blocks into a tighter right hander into a narrow neighborhood right, left, right progression that opens into the final right hander onto start finish.
Maybe 30 minutes in im finally settled into my place, and im starting to wonder how many of the 50 laps have we done... the answer was 12. not very encouraging. I start checking off all the ' old guys ride smart' methods of staying in contact:
- making sure im in the right gear to not have to stand up to accelerate
- not breaking early and wasting momentum
- anticipating gaps to move thru
- drinking every lap
- moving up when it slows...

you know - all the trick of the fat guy trade
i especially though i bought some time when i made a sweet back to the front move, but the group only lulled enough to look around and then drill it up the S/F stretch. Now i have a pretty handy jump, and was trying not to use it much, but some of the laps we were blasting S/F at over 55kph - thats 33mph for the English folks.
Big daddy doesnt have that kind of gas 2 x per lap, so i started the final trick of the trade - let the gap open up on S/F and the backside long stretch and roll back on at full speed thru the corners.

finally enough was enough, and even though Rich Delgado inspired me to do one more lap with him ( he promised he would talk to me) i was cooked.
ahh well - guess i need more speed and more jumps this season

i will ponder trying my hand at the superweek event known as the Kenosha speed fest. Its basically an oval, so i will see if i can trade in my belly for some legs before then.

Fat Kid - Out

Misc updates

well its been more than a few days and i really need to update the blog. these pics are from a ride about a week ago down to check our fuel reserves at the refinery. we all did the 4th of july ride which was quite nice and pretty mellow for pace. once we got into the last stretch, Tawse lit the wick on the dynamite. we had a group of about 10 at this point including tawse, tom, lenny, matt, myself, feltz, and a few others. after about 4km, we were down to 4 guys going 30. from there, feltz continued to tear our legs off, but i managed to keep coming thru, and in the end, i gave feltz a little leadout for him to finish it off, but it was just him and I. good rides, good bbq's, and a good birthday for carter has capped off the holiday week.
fat kid OUT

carter's new dew

among themany fun things and a great ride (seperate post to follow) we got carter's hair buzzed. any of you that have seen him recently know that he has needed it for weeks. herehe is.. buzzed like his daddy. its gonna take me a few days to get used to his new look.

Track!

Its been a while since ive been to the 1/4 mile oval, but it was good to be back. i got to chat with Haas and check out his sweet troy lee design gloves that were quite spiteful. i managed to place 5th in a win and out, and i think like 6th or 7th in the unknown distance race. it was fun making left turns and i had a decent spin.

RDO

i rolled over to meet Tawse and Mike - it was my regular day off since i had to work saturday and i figured if i didn't get on the bike early i would not get it in. There is a chance of rain today and me making it to the track was the plan - but it might be a rainout. They thought i was crazy to roll in with them for my morning ride, but I'd rather have the company. Its tough this time of year to muster up 3 hours on your own, and since i had to do a SOLO dads day ride since no one showed up, i figured I'd opt for the company. Thanks to Bos for hooking me up with a clean new set of red hoods that do NOT feature the tear off option. There was no sign of Dikos on the path but I'm sure he was out there secret training somewhere....
It was a windy roll home on Ogden, but a decent ride all said and done. A bit under 3.5 hrs and just over 100k.

P.I.M.P

well the rest week from being sick must have done me well -
for those of you that follow the numbers game from the little liars box -
im quite pleased with the rap sheet from tonights chickenride

1 sec - 1740w
5 sec - 1425w
10 sec - 1366w

by the way - thats 67kph (41.6mph) sprint win on the frontage road,

Carter says...

Racin on the bricks at Wheaton rules!
Thanx Grandma for this sweet rig!!

A bike racer again

A wise man once told me that you actually have to race your bike in order to be a bike racer. I finally made the jump from bike rider or bike commuter back to bike racer yesterday. I lined up at the Winfield crit. Not the most ideal course or me, but who cares. Its basically a rectangle with the uphill backside and downhill thru start/ finish. The backside is a two step effort, and inside the pack, it didn't take a toll until the second bump. Long story short - i did get popped, but i made it much farther than expected given the course. The race was 40 + 3 laps, i got popped a lap after i saw 33 minutes in. I actually thought at one point that if i made it through a tough section i could finish. Oh well. The good news is that the fitness is progressing. Next week is Wheaton - FLAT and fast, and the finish is on COBBLES!

Fat Kid - OUT

May is the books

Alrighty -
Roll call to all you bloggers out there...
May for the fat kid...
50hrs
1247km
22902kj
lots 4.5 more lbs

I will be throwing my hat back into the racing scene this sunday.. it has a climb, but im going to flog myself. Sunday the 10th is back to the good ole downtown wheaton crit - flat and it has cobbles - ROCK OUT

Tony Montana was here

I could not just ride past this on my way home. Its a mid 90's Cutlass Supreme all done up in Scarface motif. If you cant read it clearly.. the tail reads - Money Power Respect. The interior is all don up in Scarface motif. Its fantastic. I didn't know Cancellara was in town and i would have never guessed he rolls an Oldsmobile.

updates....

i have been a slacker when it comes to snapping recent pics or really having anything good to say here. got a few commute rides in, milder temps have been god and makes for a lighter bag to carry. last weeks chickenride went well and i need to make a post to the chicken page. it was spunky and had some good hard sections i was happy to be involved in.

memorial day weekend was spent around the house, instead of the usual cobbled climb, ride through the park and monday cage match i usually fill that weekend with. the crew did get out and i hooked up with them for a monday doosey out to fermi lab and back. we had a tailwind out, but we went much faster on the way home. there was some serious tempo section and a small break to wait for a few - that pause filled with a small gear drive thru criterium with ritzler, tawse, and i. ritzler gets credit for willing to push his team bike farther than the rest of us on slippery pavement. the roll in has several tough sections and some particular spice when we had a section of attacks and counter attacks to crack some legs. i finally got caught out, but rolled back in in time to punch early and launch RR for the western springs sprint. a great ride guys, thanx.



finally a get well soon to Barker who broke his collarbone and his rig down at the ed soto stage race.



big props to my prodigy chase for learning all about stage racing these last few weeks, and for taking it to the race by attacking 5 miles into the last race to go solo for 20 miles. he is really starting to learn about being a bike racer and learning how to feel out a race. he is definitely on his way to better form and hopefully some podiums at stupid week.



fat kid out

Pull up Pull up Pull up

It has appeared i have stalled - you know - the point in the week, month, year, etc, where you can't seem to get on your bike no matter what you do?
The point in the year where you Juuuuust start to feel some fitness coming then WHAM - no riding. Well, to be honest, mine is not all that bad. At the end of the day last week i had just completed an eight and a half hour ride covering 160miles, and i felt pretty good all things considered. Since then i have managed zilch, zippo, nunca nadda. I guess i can chalk it up to a recovery week. Now i know Enmark is trying every Sally sport from softball to shuffleboard since he can't ride since he dropped and broke his liars box. I think my real problem stems from the fact that I'm starting to think like a racer again, planning training rides and planning on what races i want to go to. I have to keep in perspective that this year is about weight loss and fitness - next year my eye is on the prize.
But but but..
i wanna race, i think i can hang, i think i have the blah blah blah...
stay on course - keep pedaling, keep loosing pounds.

fat kid out

The Bone Ride

Richie says - GO TO THE CHICKENRIDE PAGE!!



For the long winded version of the day, follow the link to the Chickenride page, as this was the substitute to the usual wednesday Chicken activities.

Short version -
all finished, never a doubt, and i still got my hug from Ed

lunch stop

all arrived in madison pretty cheerfully and enjoyed a foot long, and a sandwich from subway too. from there, we raided the van, the car, and our pants.. oh wait we relubed with chamois cream in tha pic! full report to follow.

bone ride

the gear ready to go....

where is king?

the missing man from saturday's ride

saturday special

so it was a small group for the saturday ride.. like just Alex, Ron, and me. the king was supposed to be there, but the attached pics show ron... but an empty space where the king would be. we met him post ride at starbucks where he announced he was tapering for wednesday. good ride, we forged a new route through wheaton. kinda windy, but Alex took up the heavy lifting.



out

Cooler near the Lake??

So i rolled into work friday looking to enjoy what could have been a really nice day to ride. It was about 62 degrees when i left and by the time i was half way there - the knee warmers and arm warmers were almost too much as the temps were rising. No when i got into the loop, the usual lake effect cooling came into play, but it was still beautiful downtown. Lunch time was partly cloudy, but still had all the optimism of a beautiful ride home. I checked the temp at 5:30pm, and it said 52.. now that cant be right i thought, so i went outside to confirm. The weather channel was wrong, the clock / thermometer thing outside our building showed 48 degrees!!!
I stretched my knee warmers down to leg warmers and pulled out the rain cape luckily, but i had to run down to niketown to pay for overpriced running gloves. I froze my arse off on the ride home, that's for sure. I guess the spring time cooler by the lake was in full effect friday.

General Rif Raff

Other than general boring updates - i don;t have much to say today
i have been able to commute tuesday, thursday and hopefully friday as well.
I am psyched up for the Bone ride and i have my goals set in my head.
I am finally starting to feel some small scraps of fitness coming on, and i feel confident about the 16 hours i have in for the month already. The weight is now solidly in the 180's, boy am i glad to be out of the 190's. I now realize that 15 more pounds lost will get me down to the weight i was at when i was competitive at Superweek. not too shabby. Other than more general ranting about blah blah blah - i will post again after the saturday ride - which will probably be my last good ride before the Epic Bone next week. Last chance invite for anyone that wants to join us on a 9 hour ride next week.

Out

heavy lifting with no payoff

so the crew got together down in joliet for the sudden centuary. i could have been a really good ride to prep for the bone ride. it was crazy windy even at 730 in the morning. we were 10 strong and rolled out. we did get to take a lap on the chicagoland speedway, and i took a few pics. other than that i was too scared to take my hands off the bars to grab a cliff bar, let alone snap pics. lots of heavy lifting was necessary with tough head and crosswinds. long story short.. we opten not to do the extra lap for the full 100, we opted for 75 miles instead. we finally got the tailwind, which was sweet, but the last 10 miles was on a bike path, so the payoff was pretty weak. we all agreed that that was not the most fun we could have had. i think everyone will feel the effects today as all were taking their turns at the front.

Rich goes red....

the wonderful folks at SRAM hooked me up with a swanky set of red hoods for the 'Dale. very la-ti-da. and yes.. if you look closely at the weekend pics.. that is Ritzler with pink hoods.. coming soon to a Giro near you!

April Summary

well i was quite surprised when i was able to look at what all i did in April - i managed to log 38 hours on the bike, and actually get several weekends of REALLY good miles in. Maybe, just maybe, i can have a return to general fitness this year. T minus 15 days until the Bone - i have a century on the horizon this weekend, but that will be my last chance for big miles due to family commitments next weekend. All i can say is that i hope for a nice day and a thick sack to get me as far as i can go this year.

Cheers

King's Kourse

so the group assembled today at the bucks ready for another beautiful day of riding. tawse, king, ritzler, tom, the distals, lenny, chase and I enjoyed a unique route from rick. we wandered south and ended up doing the refinery after winding through some great neighborhoods. a quick refuel at the Polska pantry and a lap of bluff finaly dropped us off with a nice tailwind section to finish off the chicken course. ritzler did a fantastic job of whipping the sprint up to speed, and i was very pleased to still be there. tawse finshed firmly and a treat at the bucks capped off another great day. back to back 4 hour days for me was great money in the bank for the bone that is looming just over 2 weeks away now.

chasing chase..

so the boy wonder chase made the drive from indiana to come up and spend some time with da coach. well he actually spent the day waiting for lenny and da coach, cause he has way more fitness than i do. lenny chase andi headed out for a loop of the refinery, on what turned out to be a beautiful day. chase scortched an interval up timberline.. going from bottom to top in 1:51 at 578W on the climb. mine was much slower. attached are some good pics of him adjusting his seat one of the twelve times, and another of him trying to de fizz a coke, but he was doing a better job of spraying it all over. finally a nice snap of lenny carrying a tasty treat.

the money maker..

I need to give a huge shout out to the T - Rent for truly showing his sack at Ceraland sunday. Notice all the different pics of T - Rent either AT the front or OFF the front. Now my boy Enmark gets to replace the Pic of Stuey with his own early season V, silly pack for dragging a sprinter to the finish again. But Enmark himself said that without the efforts of the T - Rent. the race would have been for second place as T - Rent single handedly brought back a huge gap of a solo effort for the finish. Kudos player - keep Pimpin!

Two for Tuesday

The sunshine gods were smiling on me this AM with another beautiful morning for the commute in to work. A slight east wind kept me breathing heavy, but the return trip saw an even stronger NE wind, so once i got out of the stoplights, i put the screws to it. I saw several sustained sections near 300W, rolling at about 45kph. another good day with the double ride to help drop the Frank Rizzo POUNDS BABY!

Flying Tomato - Out

epic - the finish

it was a long day but a good day. i was pretty cooked when i turned off from Feltz, so i hit the zoo path easy to get in 4:30 for the day. 2245kj and 121km

epic - this was refuel stop

we gotta make this a regular stop more often

epic - hour 2

hour 2 saw a ritzler appearence, timberline climb, and the refinery

epic - hour 1

epic - the start

another week in pocket

So this week was another decent week to pile in some more time and keep my focus to get skinny.
Tuesday was rather mild in the morning, so that was a good commute day. Wednesday the wife was feeling pretty crappy and requested i bag it for the Chicken - so no go there. Thursday was actually raining at ride time, and despite the weather channel showing no rain, i did not want to chance it getting soaked for the ride in. Of course it turned out beautiful, but no worries, friday was a Perfect day to pedal into work. It was almost 45 when i left to head in, i whacked a seam in the road crossing a bridge and pinch flatted, so after a quick change it was double time the rest of the way into the city. It was dead solid perfect on the roll home. right about 70 degrees, it was sweet. I actually lolly gagged and enjoyed the ride home. Another good week, and next week looks to possibly a 4 ride week for commuting, I may just have a chance of surviving the Bone ride yet.
20 hrs for the month and its the 20th today! Lenny and i are looking at 4- hrs sunday, and i may get some time puling the trailer saturday.

Out

love the shadows...

cause that means its sunny!

sunny and spinning

after the dreary long ride of saturday, the sunny and warmer recovery spin on the zoo path was very welcomed. just a hair over an hour to loosen the legs.

No Easy Day - making deposits for the Bone

Cloudy
chilly
42 degrees felt more like 32 degrees

Perfect.
King called for 3.5 to 4 hours.
Oh yeah - East wind and we headed west. WAY west
The route was fantastic, the king dragged us over every incline he could find and this guy pulled all but maybe 10 minutes of the day. Lenny, Tawse, King, The Bammer and I rolled all the way southwest to basically Weber and Boughton road in Bolingbrook, via an undulating course through woodridge and naperville. The return course we looped around and roiled a lap of Bluff Road for good measure. I got real quiet and tried to tough it out. I even threw my nose in the wind to help finish myself off and get completely torched. Oh yeah, we weren't doen yet. Finally we caught some shelter through Hinsdale and ended up with a much needed treat from da 'Bucks. Thanks to King for buying - i think i would have fallen over without it and thanx to Lenny for (I'm ashamed to say) drove me home.

4 hours
2023kj

The bank was open on Saturday

Morning Special

So both tuesday and friday were warm enough to pull on the gear and pedal myself to work this week. Its just about dead on an hour each way, so that was 4 hours of pedal time just to get to work and home. Not Shabby. I am dialing in the bag to know exactly what i need to pack and getting my routine down at the McDonalds commuter facility (does anyone else thinks its ironic that Mc Donalds sponsors something that's good for you??) either way the facility is awesome, and it will only get easier as the weather gets warmer. 4 hrs of commuting - 2400 kj that i would not have had sitting on the El.

Make up your mind and get it done

Now we all know that i have known the Enmark for a while now, he helped kick my ass through many days on the bike in college, and we have been more than happy to return ass kickin favors over the years. He has always had his funny wisdom, but a lot of times it just makes sense.
I would loath the spring days of back to back to back to back 4 hour days trouncing everyone in the group day after day after day. Boss of the Burghs was a common sufferfest that i endured, mostly because i was smart enough to stay behind him and not challenge him over the top. If all i did was follow, one chump after another would try to roll the top with Davey and chump after chump would get popped off. I recall one day quite fondly that i was not feeling too spunky and simply declared "just follow him and it will get easier.. there are a thousand of these rollers out here and he will beat you on EVERY one of them". Now that you see the groundwork of life at Ball State, you will understand that at this time i was rocking out a very sweet mullet and did not have a very strong work ethic. I would constantly cry for "Dave can we go easy today???" The response was a stern east German sounding answer of "no easy day - go hard every day.. Next interval 2 hours on 2 minutes off" Now, funny as it may have been, the truth was we didn't have too many recovery days at BSU, but the workload we put in there certainly prepared me to make some major jumps in my cycling post college. I found a solid balance of good recovery days going SLOW, and some great intensity days going VERY FAST. This gets back to the wisdom that few cyclists grasp of going easy enough on their easy days, and hard enough on their hard days - most fall into the dumb dumb sped mentality of going too hard on easy days and not giving it 100% on hard days. They could never make up their mind to get it done.
Now given the hundreds for hours i have spent either next to or behind the Enmark - we have often tried to figure out what it takes to be the guys that can get to the finish in good position to unleash what god has given us - fast twitch baby!! Amongst some of the wisdom we have shared, the one thing that has always resounded in my head is that "you just have to make up your mind and put yourself there... just turn your brain off and ride". Now as straightforward as this sounds - its brilliant. How many of us have "saved something" because it was a training ride we had to look good on and refused to lay it all out their to better ourselves. How many of you can willingly turn yourselves inside-out on a regular basis for the sake of getting better???
A few that know me say i do it often - i say i do it occasionally and not often enough because i never made my mind up to do it.
A new page has turned with a family, new job, less time, blah blah blah. The bottom line is i have made a conscious decision to start riding my bike to work - to start eating less - to start getting up even earlier when necessary to get myself some fitness that i might be proud enough to be able to race some this year - and maybe, just maybe have a return to form for 2008. Its a long term plan, and we all know its easy to loose sight of those things out there. But i have made up my mind, and i have a group that every Wednesday is more than happy to facilitate me turning myself inside out to get to the finish. They are all smart enough not to drag my fat ass to the finish - because fast twitch beats out fat gut over 200m any day of the week.
So my goal is to loose some gut, turn myself inside out enough times to get to the finish, and to once again make up my mind to be the guy in the last kilometer of a race that knows all it takes is a bit of luck from here and i can post a V and prove to myself that the last 2 years has all been worth it for the sake of family, and that my crazy hobby can be back on track.

What the %$@*

Ok - perhaps i'm goofy - but what the hell is my lawn doing covered with snow after Easter????
I knew it was supposed to raid, making bike practice iffy, but snow??

Then walkin into work from the train - notice i didnt say riding!
it started HAILING!
then more rain, hail, snow, etc
The best part is that thursday is supposed to be more of the same

Im just hoping that friday clears up and does what it says it may do and be a possible day to try out the commute by bike again

out

general et al-

so i got a nice thursday Am spin in to recover from the chicken. the legs were a bit worn after the chilly outing, so it was nice to spin easy on the trainer.

the weekend was full with work and Easter binge eating with the in-laws, which was a great trip and nice to see them, but it led to no riding. alas - warm weather is on the horizon and i have devised a master plan over a month in the planning and perfecting to start commuting in to work.

Monday work day - commute?? nope.. The wife's first day back to work and i can understand her stress and anxiety, so i do the husbandly thing and help her out get out the door in the AM

Tuesday - commute?? YEP!
I packed a bag big enough to outfit 3 guys in anticipation of anything and everything that could hit me with a curve ball. The ride in was smooth, the facilities at Millennium park are FANTASTIC, and super clean. If you were unaware, there is a sweet facility dedicated to bikers with secure parking and shower facilities at the north end of the park. For less than the cost of a new carbon cage, you get a monthly membership that i know will come in handy all year. I am able to park my rig in an electrical closet at the bank, so i figure my ride is pretty safe locked up in a bank. another added benefit is this electrical closet is pretty warm with all the juice running in it, so it did a great job of drying out my jacket and making by HRM strap toasty to put on. This will certainly eliminate the need for new base layers and such on the cold days. The ride home was breezy, but good. Pretty un eventful and again i am feeling more at home on the 'Dale. I ended up being right around 70 minutes there, and just over 60 on the way home, so as soon as mother nature cooperates, i will be perfecting the nuances of commuting again and getting some quality hours in on the rig.

catching up - chicken edition

wow - its been a whole week since i have posted anything
Well - we ended up with a strong man group for the chicken -
dedicated chickenride followers have clicked on the link many times to read the tales there.
needles to say, it was a good turnout on a bad day and the new bike was setteling undrneath me well.

New Bike Power - the review

So i headed down to the Island of Evansville this past weekend to visit the Enmark. They have never seen my kids and i have not seen their youngest, so the wife and i rented the family funster, loaded up the minivan and headed south, WAY south. The kids tolerated the trip and i was looking forward to a pimp stomping from the man. Fortunately it was 80 degrees! unfortunately there were 30mph winds that blew that warm weather in. I needed a shakedown ride for the new 'Dale, to fine tune the seat height and such, and my tread was wearing thin, so we pimped my ride with some swanky new red rubber. The bike rode well, but i knew it would take some getting used to.
Saturday we headed out for the local group ride, that was pretty tame to start, but as always when the winds came and the Echelons began, the smack came down. Now i can hide like a madman, so i made the selection an enjoyed watching the Enmark put a hurting on guys one at a time. I just sat there and waited for them to pop. Then he decided to go all boss of the bergs on them and thats when i had enough and popped myself. He tortured them for a while more, and then came back to get me and we stopped for a coke, which is a mandate that those guys have not heard about i guess. The 2 hour coke break is a staple that has been working for me for years, so i'm not about to change that now. Besides, i made the selection!.
We rolled in with a smaller group and that was nice cause it was FREAKIN windy. Enmark drag me the rest of the way home. The bike was good, i figured out the saddle was nose up a hair, so we fixed that issue. the SRAM Force group rocked and i dialed in some cable stretch.
So far i can't say its the best bike i have ever owned, but i am on my way.