You Can't Crunch Your Way To Core Strength

In my opinion, the best thing about functional strength and conditioning is that it builds phenomenal core strength and the gains you make translate to real world activities. Doing isolation exercises on weight machines and benches make you better at doing isolation exercises on weight machines and benches. They build strength, sure. But it's a non-functional strength that comes with bulk and limited mobility. Not only that, but you don't build any core strength because when you perform exercises that isolate one or two muscles at a time, the rest of your body is being supported by the equipment you're working on, whether it's a machine, a bench, a leg press, a lat pulldown, a preacher curl bench, whatever... Core strength comes from forcing your body to stabilize itself. This comes from training full body movements with and without resistance. Swinging kettlebells, doing true-form pushups and pullups, rope climbs, medicine ball work, or any of the other 100 or so exercises we do at Dynamic Strength and Conditioning.

There's a misconception that "core strength" comes from doing abdominal crunches or doing off-balance training on Swiss balls or Bosu balls. The abdominal crunch is one of the single most useless exercises ever created and I'm still trying to figure out why anybody would consider off-balance training "functional". Regarding the abdominal crunch, think of it this way. The Rectus Abdominus (six-pack muscles) primary function is to support the spine, it is not to "crunch". So if you want to strengthen the R.A., why would you do it in such a way that the spine is completely supported by laying on the ground? Regarding off-balance training, is training the ability to be off-balance specific to anything other than cirque du soleil? If you want functional training to translate to the real world, then stick with natural movements, loaded or unloaded, and don't try to get too cute with goofy off-balance exercises. 

I haven't done abdominal crunches since I was a misguided kid that didn't know how to train. My only use for a swiss ball is to sit on it as an office chair since it forces good posture. For bulletproof core strength I do pushups, pullups, kettlebell work (swings, turkish getups, windmills, getup situps), hand balancing (which is incredible for core stability), and power wheel work. I've developed incredible core strength as a result which directly translates to performance increases in my cyclocross, road and MTB riding, trail running, nordic skiing, rock climbing (which I need to do again in 2010) and playing.. I can pretty much out-play anybody, trust me :)

Crunch-free for 15 years...

Not only that, the core strength I've developed has made me virtually indestructible. I've had some wicked crashes on the bike, including a 20MPH ass-over-teakettle crash straight into a ditch which left me surprised to be standing and riding my bike home, a direct shot to the shoulder as I crashed into a tree in a race leaving me with just a mild AC separation, and most recently a fall off the rope ladder at the gym where my elbow took the full force of a 9' drop as I came down sideways. Things should have been breaking in each case, but they weren't. I'm definitely going to credit the upper body strength I've developed through functional conditioning for two reasons. First, if I was a beefed up mass of non-functional muscle from doing bench presses and biceps curls I wouldn't be able ride my bike as hard as I do and I certainly wouldn't be traversing the rope ladder at the gym two rungs at a time. Second, because I train my muscles to work together, when my brain sends the message to my muscles, "2 milliseconds to impact!", my muscles know how to work together to protect my body. If I did my strength work with isolation exercises I can guarantee you that I would not have that neuromuscular capability.

Functional strength and conditioning like we do at Dynamic builds superior full body functional strength and a bulletproof core. If you're into training for vanity and a non-functional muscle mass then it's not for you, you wouldn't be able to handle the workouts anyway.. But if you're into building a seriously strong body and mind that allows you to push the limits in your real world activities then I have just the place for you...

Relax? Do I Have To?

Why is it so hard to rest? In a society where 90% of the people are overweight and underactive I find it hard to bring myself to actually relax. (90% is not actual data, it's my way of saying "most" with emphasis)... In the last 3 months I've had 17 cyclocross races, in the last 6 weeks I've had a total of 3 days off the bike, I've been trail running and doing strength and conditioning work 2 or 3 times a week never mind the unintentional workouts I get on a daily basis from just running 4-6 sessions a day at my gym. I have literally beat the living shit out of my body, waking up on the Monday mornings after double race weekends feeling like I got hit by a truck, sick to my stomach from the race efforts, nursing injuries that haven't had time to heal. Contusions on both hips, forearms and elbows, a separated shoulder, a sprained thumb, a hypothermic episode in the NBX race that has left me unable to make a fist without pain. So after my last race of the season this past weekend it was officially time to rest. It was even built into my training schedule that my coach gave me. For 8 days in a row my training plan says "Complete Day Off From Training". I was really excited to actually spend some time off the bike. The cross season was intense and brutal and incredibly enjoyable. But I was sooo ready for a break from the bike. Sunday I did nothing. I picked out a Christmas tree with my daughter. No training, no watching what I eat, no guilt about it. Monday came and I felt lost. Kind of depressed. The race season is over. Now what? I'm not even supposed to train this week. I felt like shit. I ran my sessions at the gym from 6a-10 and after the last people left for the day I figured I needed to workout. Nothing major, it was my rest week after all. Figured maybe I'd do some easy jump rope for a little bit just to get the blood going and clear the head. It just kind of escalated from there and 25 minutes later I had done 1500 turns on the jump rope finishing off with 100 double unders, 200 Hindu Squats, a bunch of sets of pullups on ropes and some core work on the power wheel. So much for resting. Tuesday I relaxed, it was rest week after all. Wednesday I was a bit stressed out and needed a release so I joined in a killer workout at the gym with kettlebell front squats and long sets of kettlebell swings. I haven't done squats in many months since I limit my leg work to the bike during race season and I haven't done any kind of kettlebell swings since before I separated my shoulder. So this workout torched me pretty good. Not too smart for rest week. Thursday, I was pretty stiff and sore from Wednesdays session so I went out in the sub-freezing windchill for a 45 minute trail run in the snow to "loosen up". I got home and emailed my coach to let him know that I have failed on resting this week, but I stayed off the bike, and I kept my intensity really low (which was 90% true, well maybe 70% :).... Kurt was on the phone within about 10 minutes tearing me a new butthole for not taking it easy... And I knew it was coming, because I know how important rest is. So I ask again, why is it so hard to rest?

This is me on my trail run in the snow the other day. While it may look effortless, it was the opposite of what I should have been doing which was resting.

Here's why. For those of us who take care of ourselves and get ourselves in truly good shape, we know how hard it is to get there and we know how hard it is to stay there. I spent years abusing my body with poor nutrition marinated in bourbon and beer. I was a fucking mess. I know how hard it was to get where I am today. There's something inside my head that tells me to drive, drive, DRIVE! Relax? Are you kidding me? My head tells me that if I take a week off I'll lose all kinds of fitness. I'll also lose the stress-relieving benefits of a kick ass workout which has become my coping mechanism. So all the work I've done that has gotten me to the point where I'm at today can be undone with a week of inactivity? I know how stupid that sounds. But it's the mentality. If it's good for you to do it, then stopping must be bad, right? Wrong...

Without getting scientific, because I'm not qualified or smart enough to get scientific, I'm going to put this in terms that even I can understand. First, the perception is that the workout makes you stronger. The fact is that the workout destroys your body. Why do you think a tough workout makes you so sore? It's because you've damaged your muscles. Think about it, are you ever stronger at the end of a workout than you were at the beginning? Of course not, you're beat up and tired (but in a good way if you did it right)... The recovery period after the workout is what makes you stronger. When you work your muscles hard, your body perceives this as an attempt to kill it. Due to the magic of self-preservation, the body adapts to the demands you're putting on it by making itself stronger so that next time you do it it doesn't hurt so much. This is also known as the SAID principle, Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. Look at it this way. Let's say you work in an office 40 hours a week, eat doughnuts and wash them down with chocolate milk, go out for pizza and subs every day for lunch. You're a load. Then one day you get abducted by a group of flannel clad lumberjacks from Maine and they bring you to their logging camp for hard labor. The first day you're swinging an ax until your arms are ready to fall off and your back feels like you just piggybacked a gorilla up Mt Washington. You get up the next morning and you're in so much pain your fat hurts. But the lumberjacks will have none of your incessant whining, man-tears, or begging and they put you right back to work. The first 4 or 5 days are the most miserable days of your existence. But as the days go by, the pain subsides. You start feeling pretty good actually. You're producing 3x as much work in 1/3 the time compared to when you first got there. Damn, you're getting lean, you're getting strong. You're a beast! The lumberjacks present you with your own flannel. How did this happen? Your body adapted to the demands you put on it. It made itself stronger so that every time you go out to chop down trees all day it's not a near death experience.

Belonging

Works the same with exercise. You crush your body with hard, intense workout sessions, whether they are at Dynamic Strength and Conditioning, on your bike, skis, on foot running hill sprints, it doesn't matter. You damage your body. Then you rest and your body rebuilds. It gets stronger. Then you do it again. If you take the rest out of the equation, then your body can't rebuild. It can take the abuse for a certain amount of time and you can continue to make gains for a while, but eventually if you don't give your body the proper amount of rest it requires to adapt to the demands you're putting on it then you will stop making gains. You plateau. Then if you keep doing it you start taking steps backwards. Your workouts start to suck. You feel like shit. You get sick. Your tired all the time. This is your body saying "Hey asshole! Enough already. If you're not going to shut it down I'm going to do it for you.". This is overtraining. Most of us never get to this point because most people don't actually work hard enough, long enough to get to that point. But there are many that definitely get into the "over-reaching" stage which is where you hit plateaus and feel an overall sense of fatigue and inability get effective workouts. You have to listen to your body. If it's telling you it needs a rest then give it a rest.

This guy has it right, with the glaring exception of the 80's porn-star moustache.

Ok, let's recap, it's not the workout that makes you stronger, it's the post-workout recovery period. I'm just getting off an intense racing season and my body needs some time to recover, so that I can get stronger. That means I need to do nothing. No running, no biking, no kettlebell workouts. In fact, if somebody drops a heavy kettlebell on their face doing turkish getups at the gym I'm not even going to help them get it off because, well, I'm selfish and my recovery is more important than their looks. Sorry. If you don't like it, don't drop a kettlebell on your face. 

Coach

You're all grown up (physically anyways), you have a wife or husband, you have kids, you have a day job. Or maybe you have none of those things. Maybe you're 38 years old and used to be a hell of an athlete in high school but have found that the soft parts are starting to outnumber the not-so-soft parts. You go to "the gym" and do retarded bodybuilding routines that didn't even make sense when you were in your early 20's. But it's not your fault, society has been brainwashed into believing that everybody needs bulging biceps and six pack abs and the way to do it is through isolation exercises. But you don't know anything else and it's easy to figure out a workout schedule that goes something like this:

Warmup: 20 mins on treadmill or exercise bike

Mon/Thu: back and arms

Tue/Fri: chest and legs

Wed: cardio

Sat/Sun: eat and drink whatever I want because I "worked out" all week...

Shocking that this program doesn't get 99% of the population the results they're looking for, I know. But, like I said, everybody's doing it so it must be right. Right? Ummm, wrong.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most people are not getting what they want out of their workouts. For some people, this is because their workouts suck. For other people, it's because their lifestyle doesn't complement their goals. For many it's a combination of the two. For those who are serious about achieving overall health and wellness goals but are unable to get the results they are looking for on their own, the best solution is to hire a coach.

I don't care how fit you are, whether you are 150 lbs overweight or a world class athlete, everybody can benefit from the right coach. A good coach takes the uncertainty out of how you're going to go about achieving your goals. They put a plan in place for you. They answer your questions. They motivate you. They provide guidance and feedback. They adjust your plan as necessary to make sure that you're getting the results you want. They listen to you. They care about you. A good coach's success is measured in the results of his students.

A certified kettlebell coach is a necessity to ensure proper form and effective kettlebell training programs.

Most people don't think they need a coach. "A coach is only for athletes" is a common argument. That is patently false, a coach is beneficial to every person who wants to be in the best possible shape they can be. Most people think hiring a coach costs too much. If hiring a coach costs 5x as much but yields infinitely better results than your gym membership that you either: (a) don't use, or (b) use, but get lousy results; then does it really cost too much? If your lifestyle leads you to several doctor visits per year and a cabinet full of expensive medications, then is it really too much to hire a coach who will help eliminate those medical costs? It's a matter of perspective and value. 

I've been playing competitive sports and working out my whole life. I've been coaching athletes for 18 years and have been running a personal training business for two years. I recently hired a coach to help me with my cyclocross racing. I'm 42, and I'm in the best shape I've ever been in. I know how to train myself and I know how to train others but I still hired a coach. Why? Because hiring a coach makes me even better. Without question, being coached has made me a better athlete and cyclocross racer. My workouts are more focused, my diet is more balanced and complements my training better. It's had a positive impact on my focus, conditioning, competitiveness, nutrition, and my lifestyle. The most important thing in life to me is my health and wellness because without it, nothing else exists. Hiring a coach has increased my health and wellness. For me, this is not a luxury, it's a priority. 

My coach helped me become a legit elite masters cyclocross racer.

When you come to Dynamic Strength and Conditioning you are hiring Michele and I as your coaches. We put different programs together depending on the level of assistance and attention you need. For those looking for a great workout program for overall increases in general strength and conditioning to complement their already healthy and active lifestyle we've put together the Dynamic Performance and 90 Day Challenge programs. For those looking for a more customized program or more individualized attention we have semi-private and private training. We offer sports-specific coaching. We offer nutritional and lifestyle coaching to help you better complement your activities, workouts and overall goals. The people that come to our gym have realized better results than at any gym or in any other program they've ever been involved in. 

There is nobody around that is going to go to the lengths that we will to make sure you're getting the results you want. It's what we do, it's what we're passionate about. If there's something that we can't help you with, we'll be the first to refer you to somebody who can. This is a very important distinction and not something that every coach will do for you. In the past 20 years I've been coached and trained by some of the best coaches on the planet. I've also been subjected to some of the most pretentious self-proclaimed "fitness experts" who couldn't train a rock to stay still. I know the difference and I've learned from every interaction. I learn something new every day and always strive to make my programs better. The next offering of the Dynamic Performance and 90 Day Challenge programs will be better than the last because Michele and I have learned from the last sessions. Each subsequent program will be better than the last. The people in our semi-private and private training sessions have gone through life altering transformations both physically and mentally. Our programs change lives. Our guarantee to you is that we are dedicated to getting you the results that you expect.

Do you have goals and don't have a plan in place on how you're going to get there? Or maybe your plan didn't get you the results you wanted. Is your health and wellness a luxury or is it a priority? If it's a priority then you owe it to yourself to do what it takes to make sure you're getting the results you deserve. Get yourself a coach :)

new blog

I've decided this "Redefining Fitness..." blog has strayed from it's original intent, which is to focus on the benefits of functional conditioning and the lifestyle that we encourage at Dynamic Strength and Conditioning... But I'm having some fun with my race reports and other stuff so I started a new blog here.. Check it out if you've been enjoying the race reports, (or even if you haven't)

I will be back here to post with more stuff related to functional conditioning on a fairly regular basis :)

Best,
kevin

Because It Sucks the Most...

A few weeks ago as I was coming off the course at the end of the Downeast Cyclocross race, covered in mud, cold, wet, and wheezing, I was riding past my friend, and fellow ECV'er, John Adamik. John was smiling at me and asked me "Did ya have fun?". I looked at him and thought the question over for a second before answering.. "No. No I didn't have any fun at all.". I wasn't lying. It sucked so bad from start to finish that I started wondering why would I possibly do something like this to myself on a weekly basis for 3 months from September to December. There's nothing fun about cranking your heart rate up to it's absolute max, forcing your muscles to work as hard as they possibly can until the lactic acid is practically seeping from your pores, and maintaining that level of pain for 45-60 minutes. It's about suffering as much as you possibly can for about 45 minutes. If that's your idea of "fun" then you have issues. But if you think it sucks, that's OK. It's supposed to. I've competed in different sports my whole life, football, hockey, soccer, baseball. I've raced road races, criteriums, circuits, hillclimbs, and cross.. I like cyclocross the most, quite simply because it sucks the most. It's fun to watch the races. It's agony to compete in them. But that's why we do it. If it was easy we wouldn't do it. The more it sucks, the more deeply gratifying it is when you're done. The more pain you were in during the race, the greater the sense of accomplishment when, at the end, you're collapsed over your bars with your chest heaving like you're being hit with a defibrillator. Fun is hiking the Whites on a Summer day when there's not a cloud in the sky, or playing touch football in the mud on Thanksgiving morning with your friends and family. Cyclocross is, as the title of Brian Vernor and Willie Bullion's cyclocross documentary implies, "Pure Sweet Hell".

See how happy I am now that it's over?

For what it's worth, this is exactly the same reason the people come to Dynamic Strength and Conditioning. Because the workouts are hard. They force people to challenge themselves. There's suffering involved to be sure. There's nothing fun about doing 100 burpees or doing a kettlebell bear crawl across the gym 3 or 4 times. In fact, it sucks a lot. But that's why we do it. If we wanted useless, easy workouts that out of shape, mentally weak people do we'd head down to the local chrome and fern palace, pop in the iPod, and bust out 30 minutes on the treadmill or elliptical. Maybe throw in a few sets of biceps curls and lat pulldowns while we're at it. 

So last Thursday when I was looking at the weather forecast for Saturday that called for a ton of rain in the Plymouth MA area where the weekend's races were, I said to myself, "Wow is that going to suck... I have to be there.". So when my daughter's soccer game got cancelled due to the monsoon I loaded up the truck and headed South. As I was driving down I was excited about what a great power wash my bike was going to get on the roof of the truck on the way home. I was figuring the race conditions would be miserable. They were difficult conditions, but a little short of miserable. There were long spongy momentum killing grass sections and some thick mud in the woods, but it could have been a whole lot worse than it was. And the best thing about this day was that I finally had a set of tires that were going to help me in the mud. I put a set of Michelin Mud tires on my spare set of wheels which are supposed to be real good in the mud. How can they not be with a name like "Mud"? I've been riding on Tufo Flexus which suck in the mud. Actually, they suck in anything that's not dry. But if I had done my homework I would have known this because the Latin to English translation of "Flexus" is.... "sucks in anything that's not dry".... Oh well, lesson learned. Next year I need a good set of tubular mud tires, like the Dugast Rhino.. Ever seen a Rhino in the mud on the Discovery channel? Awesome! Those tires have to be great mudders. But for now I'm on the Michelins. Problem is they're clinchers which are susceptible to pinch flats at low pressure.. As evidenced during my ride over to the pit area to deposit the Tufos which were going to be relegated to pit duty for the day. I rode my bike up and over a curb and then as I was going up a slight incline the rear of the bike started careening around like it was on grease. I looked down and the rear tire was flat.. Are you shitting me? OK, at least it happened now and not during the race. I put the Tufo Slippo (as my buddy Geoff calls them) back on the rear and headed out for a quick warmup lap. I realized pretty quick how nice it would have been to have two mud tires on as my front tire had really good traction and my rear tire had none. I guess I never believed how huge a difference a tire would make in these conditions.

Because I had taken a warmup lap right before my race I ended up at staging last.. Not a huge deal since there was only 15 guys that showed up to brave the elements today. But you know that they were going to be 15 strong guys because who else is going to come out in these conditions. Curtis Boivin, Mike Rowell, Sammy Morse were there.. All top guys.. Matt Theodore was there, the same guy who ended up mistakenly getting my Verge points from the Downeast race a couple weeks ago because my number was covered in mud. Matt's been finishing a minute or so ahead of me in the Verge races, I was thinking I would do my best to stay with him as Boivin, Morse, and Rowell are still much stronger than I am. I got in behind Curtis at staging because I knew he'd be right at the front from the beginning. The whistle blew and I had a great start. Up the incline, past the finish line, and onto the field. By the time we hit the woods I was probably in 6th position, maybe 7th. I passed a couple and ended up in a group led by Boivin. Not for long though. Curtis pulled away with Sammy and Mike glued to his wheel. They put a small gap into Theodore who also started putting a small gap into me as we hit the woods. Theodore went down on a muddy corner and I caught and passed him putting me in 4th. From there it was me and Matt as we stayed together for the next 5 laps. Curtis, Sam, and Mike were gone. Matt and I were going to fight it out for 4th place. We increased the gap on the guy behind us to about 30 or 40 seconds by the end of the 2nd lap and it pretty much stayed that way to the end. Theodore was killing me on the barriers. Gaining ground on me every time through. We were equal on the power sections but I was making up time through the woods in the technical sections. There was a hill before the finish line that I should have been able to ride if I had any traction in my rear tire, but with the Flexus on there the rear wheel would slide out as soon as I started going up so I was relegated to running the hill every time through. Theodore had some mud tires on and was able to ride the hill every time. I was running it just as fast as he was riding it, but he had all the momentum going over the top while I was remounting. He would open up a 30 yd gap on me every time over the hill. I would pull him back in and then he would gap me again on the barriers and I would work my ass off to pull him back in again. I was dangerously close to blowing up from the efforts of repeatedly pulling him back. On the second to last lap he opened up about a 50 yd gap on me and must have thought it was over. I buried myself to reel him back in and as we came out of the woods onto a long paved stretch I pulled myself right back up onto his wheel. He looked over his shoulder, saw me and yelled "Fuck!" knowing there was one more lap of pure hell in his future trying to hold me off. We went up the hill one more time, he opened up a lead on me one more time, and we went through the finish line for the bell lap... I pulled him back in and as we came out of a wooded section I passed him.. Not for long though. We hit the barriers and he effortlessly cleared them passing me on the remount and leading me back into the final wooded section. At this point we knew we were coming into the final hill together and we both knew he was going to try to ride it and I was going to run it. If he could ride it without screwing up then he would take 4th. But if not then I'd take him. I thought about trying to ride it, and in retrospect, with a 30-40 second gap on the guy behind us I really would have had nothing to lose because even if I slipped up again on the hill I still would have had plenty of time to recover and get 5th. But I was too cooked to think at that point and just went with what was working for me. We hit the hill together and he cleaned it and went on to take 4th. I got a 5th place, just a couple seconds behind a guy who has been beating me by close to a minute for the past few weeks. I was also about a minute closer to guys like Boivin and Rowell who only finished 2mins and 1min ahead of me, respectively. It was a day of pure sweet hell, but deeply gratifying.

This week I'm off to Lowell for a nice local race. I'm very excited because one of our very own from Dynamic Strength and Conditioning, Roni, will be competing in her first ever Cyclocross Race. She's going to suffer, she's going to kick ass, and she's going to love it!

Best,

kevin

In the 50's With a Strong Chance of Pain...

This weekend was rounds 9 and 10 of the Verge series at Look Park in Northampton, MA. Coming off a 4th place finish in a small local race the week before, I was now back in a field of 85 racers with every top guy within 400 miles ready to go at it. Absolutely perfect weather for cross. 

Day 1: Having learned a lesson from last week, I embrocated without torching my nuts. Got to Look Park early and had a really good warmup. I was feeling like I might be able to hang with a couple of guys that have been finishing a minute or two ahead of me today. In particular, I was targeting Brant Hornberger from the Bikereg team and John Meerse from the OA team. Two really strong guys who have been racing for years. Biggest problem with marking guys like that is they get a callup at the beginning of the race and get to stage in the first few rows based on points they've won in previous races. I take that back, the biggest problem with marking guys like that is that they're stronger and better than me.. The second biggest problem is that they also get a head start via the callup. Verge series points are awarded each race to the top 25. In a bit of bad luck a couple weeks ago in the pigpen at Downeast cross in Maine, I came across the finish line with part of my number obscured by mud. So my 23rd place finish that should have netted me 3 points (my first of the season) got credited to Matt Theodore's number who, as it turns out, didn't even race that day. My efforts to get the points credited to me have been futile since I didn't hang around after the mudfest waiting to see the results and therefore missed the protest period. The  reason this is such a bummer is because those 3 points would have been enough to get me a call-up in staging which means I would have been able to start in the 4th row, rather than the 7th row that I ended up in. Start position is huge at Northampton because of the layout of the course, actually start position is always huge.. Oh well. Enough whining. On to the race......

Jonny, Kevin, Kurt and Roger battling it out at the front.

As the 4 or 5 of you that have been reading my blog know, my starts have been awful this year. It seems that I become a spastic at the start and never seem to be able to get my foot clipped in cleanly on the sprint start. By the time I get clipped in I'm always bringing up the rear of the field and then have to work even harder chasing for 45 minutes trying to gain position.. But today was going to be different. I've been working really hard on my starting technique.. Well, not actually on the bike because I really didn't have time this week. But I've been thinking really hard about it and I'm pretty sure I had dreams on three consecutive nights this week where I was doing pretty good on my starts. So the whistle blows and guess what... I bollixed my start. So much for hoping I'd get better without actually spending time on it. Who knew? So with about 75 out of the 81 starters in front of me I set about trying to gain position. Marking Brant and John was out the window as they undoubtedly had more than a minute on me less than 5 minutes into the race with the gap increasing as I fought to get by everybody in front of me. I was cranking along passing people wherever I could and if I had to guess, I'd say I got ahead of about 25 or 30 of them. Time for the shit to hit the fan. The course had two really steep uphill sections in it.. One was a pure run-up that couldn't be ridden. The other one could be ridden if you had the right line, enough momentum, and enough power.. The runup was pretty nasty. Super steep and all chopped up with rocks and roots. On one lap I was going up the run-up (I say "going up" because "running up" would be giving myself too much credit) with my bike shouldered and Richard Fries, one of the top race announcers you'll ever have at a race, was stationed on the run-up doing his commentary. I went by him so slow that we could have had a chat about where we'd be spending the holidays. Huge momentum killer for me. The other steep section I was able to ride except for a couple times when one of the other racers got in my way (coincidentally it was the same guy both times). The first time, I had enough power to get to the top of the hill but apparently the guy in front of me didn't. At the very top he came to a standstill. He got a little frustrated as I tried to maneuver my way around him and he threw a shoulder/elbow into me that sent me into a stake. Didn't see that coming.. I t-boned the stake and endo'd straight over the handlebars with my bike doing a dramatic wheel over wheel flip. There were a few drunk guys partying there that really enjoyed the crash and my creative cursing. I picked the bike up, and headed off to catch the prick who just crashed me out as the brew crew who just witnessed it screamed "Go pass him!".. Uhh, no shit. 

Random overdressed guy leaning against a tree. It's possible

they may have been filming the next Tarantino movie.

I had lost a bunch of time and some turf was caught in my gears from the crash so my chain was skipping all over the place. It took the better part of a lap for the stuff to work it's way out and for me to get my shifting back again.. I spent a couple laps alone trying to work my way back up in the field. Twice I came past a point in the course where some guy would say "C'mon Alan! Go!" This made me go faster because I figured some guy named Alan was on my wheel. The second time around when he said it again I tried to speed up again to drop Alan and then I looked over my shoulder to see who this Alan jerk is that's been sucking my wheel for two laps and noticed I was alone. Apparently I was Alan.. Once again I came to that same hill that I crashed on earlier and as it turned out I was in a position to pass the same guy. I came up the hill right behind him and again he stalled out at the top. This time I had picked a different line to get around him, but he heard me coming (undoubtedly due to my asthmatic grunting) and swerved into me bringing me to a stop. I hopped off the bike, called him something that rhymes with pucking gashole and ran up over the top of the hill trying to catch him again. Shortly thereafter, I was coming into a fast section of the course where you go up and over a set of train tracks. I was hammering as hard as I could to catch racers ahead of me and I hit the tracks with a ton of speed which gave me some serious air. I came down hard with my hands on the brake hoods and the force dropped my handlebars by at least 2 inches. This sucked big time. Now I was way stretched out and leaning in a very awkward way over my bike which put my lower back in a ton of pain as I was chasing as hard as possible. 

Sand, much like mud, continues to kick my ass and cost me valuable time.

On the last lap I absolutely crushed myself catching and passing the guy who sent me into the stake. I also caught and passed a couple others and had two more right in front of me, but nothing left in the tank to sprint past them as I came across the finish line 46th for the day.. Considering the bad start, endo over the handlebars, bobbles on rideups and sandpits, plus the mechanical issues I guess it could have been worse, but I was very dissapointed nonetheless. 

On my way to my buddy Meiza's for the night in Springfield I popped in Exile on Main St by the Stones and the race became a distant memory. It occurred to me how much the music today pales in comparison to anything the Stones did in the early 70's. You might say, "wait a minute, that's just your musical taste.", but you'd be wrong. Liking blue better than green is a matter of taste. Don't confuse your inability to recognize genius with a perceived lack of taste on my part. Genius is genius, and what the Stones put out from 69-72, culminating with Exile on Main St., was absolute genius that nobody before or since has been able to touch. But I digress....

Best album ever! I refuse to argue this.

Day 2: What a gorgeous day. Another mishap free embrocation application and I was starting to feel like my luck was changing. Today would be the day I would nail my start. I had a good warmup on the course, which had changed quite a bit from Saturday and was going to be fast and, as always, fun. The steep ride-up from the day before was now a ride-down followed immediately by a jump over train tracks at about 25mph. There would be some serious air today. After my warmup I practiced about 50 starts. Just easy starts getting clipped in. I also tried a new position on the bike for the start. I was hitting it cleanly about 80% of the time. Today was going to be a killer start for me. I also had a very aggressive attitude after getting knocked around yesterday. If there was going to be any bumping, I was going to be ready for it. 

See me in the blue? Of course not, I'm 7 rows back!

The whistle sounded and I nailed my start. I passed at least 2 rows of racers and came into the first turn in the middle of the pack. Perfect! Couldn't have asked for a better start from the 7th row staging position I had. My marks of the day were going to be either of the Bikereg guys, Steve and Brant, or Dan Coady. All guys that always finish ahead of me by anywhere from about 45 seconds to 2:00 minutes.. And they were all in my sights. This was good. No, this was great! I was going to crush it today. I was riding beyond myself, my heart was exploding, my back and legs were screaming. I couldn't get nearly enough air into my lungs to support the effort. At one point I came down the steep hill, without slowing I hit the tracks and went soaring into the air, landed and flew into a wide sweeping 180.. Too fast. Both wheels went into a full slide as I tried to hold the bike upright completely expecting the tires to come rolling off the rim. But they held (thanks to my expert glue job) and I came out of the turn intact at full speed to the wild cheers of the massive crowd. I was at full gas bridging gaps from one group to the next, again and again until i was in a group with Coady. It seemed each of us took our turns attacking, repeatedly trying to shake one another. On the last lap I left it all on the course. Everybody was at their limit and I attacked, dropping the group I was in except for one rider. 

My final attack, dropping all but 1...

I was inside out and it was excruciating. I bridged up to a lone rider who had about 50 yards on us when I first attacked. The guy that I had brought with me was still on my wheel and he stayed on to the sprint finish where he slingshotted out of my draft in the last 50m to take 35th.. I ended the day in 36th place, a mere 39 seconds out of the points. A very solid and satisfying effort. My best result in a large and very strong Verge field. In similar races earlier in the year I've been in the 60's, 50's, more recently in the 40's, and now I've worked my way into the 30's. I finally feel like I'm competitive and I'm only going to get stronger. Just a few more weeks of this season, but the future is looking very bright for upcoming seasons now that I have my focus, am getting some much needed experience, and I'm gaining confidence every week.

Off to Plymouth....

Turning Up the Heat...

Last week at Orchard Park in Hampton Falls I ended up with a 4th place finish in a small field at a great local venue through an apple orchard.. The 4th place finish got me a call up onto a "deep" podium that included the top 5 finishers. I think they did this because the 5th place finisher was from Nor'east Cycling Club and they were the sponsor of the event. So they added two spots to the podium to recognize the Nor'east rider. Whatever, I took my spot on the hay wagon, raised my hands with the strong guys in the top 3, and walked away with the $30 in cash and two Hammer Energy gels for prizes. Two energy gels!! As Rick Flair would say, "Wooo!". 

I'm the short one...

The race was a very strong effort for me. After a very sucky start where I ended up behind the entire 35+ field as well as most of the 45+ and 55+ fields which started with us, I proceeded to pick people off one at a time and some in groups until I was all alone.. There were only three guys left ahead of me with too big a gap for me to even contemplate reeling any of them in..

Like a gazelle over the barriers

 Kurt Perham (my coach) who won by a very wide margin, followed by Mike Rowell and Aaron Millet.. All three of these guys are among the strongest Masters racers in New England. A couple quick notes from the day... One of the other racers in my field came up to me after the race to let me know that he was trying like hell to stay with me. In other words, he was marking me. 

I was also being marked by freaks, look closely in the background

This was interesting to me for two reasons. First, there's lots of better guys to be marking. Second, I thought I was the one that spends his time marking other people, now I was among the people being marked.. So I guess that's kind of cool.. The other interesting thing that happened to me was a mishap with the embrocation prior to the race. Embrocation is a muscle warming balm you rub on your legs prior to cross races.. A lot of guys do it, a lot don't. If you ask me, when you're out racing in short pants when the temps are in the 40's and below, anything you can do to keep the legs warm is a good idea. So I applied the embrocation earlier in the day prior to putting my kit on.. Then I thought to myself, "Shit, I should have put my kit on first because if any of this stuff ends up on my soft parts I'm screwed".. I carefully put my bike kit on, but apparently not carefully enough.. "Chestnuts roasting by an open fire" played in my head as I spent the next two hours writhing around with a case of fire ants having a field day in my crotch. It was awful. After 5 minutes I knew it was going to be trouble. As the heat grew and grew I kept saying to myself "well it can't get any worse than this...", as it continued to get worse and worse for about 30-45 minutes.. Luckily, by the time the race started the heat had been turned down to a simmer and was surprisingly cozy. All I can say is thankfully I was using Mad Alchemy's Medium Heat Embrocation and not the "Madness" that I will use when the temps are in the 20's.. Pretty sure if I make the same mistake with the "Madness" I may die (or wish I had)..

Off to Northampton for Week 5 of the Verge Series on Nov 7 and 8 where my only chance of getting on the podium is to jump up on it when nobody else is looking :) Gotta love the small local races, but to be fair, I am definitely improving and getting stronger pretty much every time out. It was nice to finally have a top 5 finish...

Best,

kevin

Now We Know

Believe it or not, it's been 1 year since Dynamic Strength and Conditioning has opened it's doors. Hundreds of people have made the climb to the top of 100 Factory.. Those who have stayed have gotten in better shape than they've ever been in. They've experienced increases in strength, endurance, energy, mobility and best of all, quality of life. Trust me, I'm not overstating the affect that Dynamic Strength and Conditioning has had on people's lives. We've become increasingly more active, have gotten healthier, and are enjoying our lives more than before we started coming. That's what sets us apart from every other gym around. We change lives. We've created a family of diverse people from all walks of life, put them in a room together for an hour at a time where they absolutely work their asses off, feed off each other's energy and support. We've created a bond. We know something that other's don't. We've found the secret.. I remember when I had a job that used to suck the life out of me on a daily basis. I didn't eat right. I drank too much. I didn't sleep right. My workouts at Planet Shitness sucked... I would be driving to work in a haze at 6:00 or 6:30 in the morning. It would be November and it would be dark and cold. I'd see a guy almost every day riding his bike. Flying down the road. Covered from head to toe braving the elements. I would ask myself "what does he know that i don't?".. Now I know. Everybody that comes to our gym knows. They come in at 6:00am. The gym is 52 degrees and people are shivering waiting for the warmup. We warm up and the layers start coming off. We loosen up our joints with some mobility exercises and get into the workout. We're swinging kettlebells, jumping rope, jumping on boxes, crawling around on the floor, throwing medicine balls around. We push ourselves to our limit, wanting to stop before the timer beeps at 40 seconds, but out of the corner of our eye we see the woman next to us still going strong and there's no fucking way we're stopping until the timer tells us to. We join the 90 Day Challenge because we're sick of our workouts that don't work and our diets that are just plain stupid. We want to be able to move like we did when we were kids. We don't want to be a bulked up mess of blown up pecs, biceps, and deltoids. We want real strength. We get in a room full of people who all want the same thing. We work ourselves harder than we ever have in a gym. We lose so much fat that our clothes start to fall off. We laugh at ourselves when we see how uncoordinated we've become after years of sitting behind a desk, lifting weights and walking on treadmills. We surprise ourselves as we move from doing jumps on a 6" box to a 12" box. We throw a tire on the top of the 24" box and make it a 36" and do reps for 40 seconds. People cheer. It's so cool it gives me chills to witness it sometimes.

Wednesday afternoon it was 40 degrees and raining like hell. I had a 2 hour ride with 30 minutes worth of intervals that needed to get done so I covered myself head to toe to brave the elements and headed out the door. At one point I was coming down a hill at a little under 40 MPH and it was absolutely pouring out. A dump truck passed me at about the same speed I was going so it took him a while to actually get by me. Know how much spray a dump truck throws off in torrential rain? You've seen it on the highway.. So he's passing me about 2 ft off my handlebars. And he was there f..o..r..e..v..e..r... It was like going through a car wash on a bike at 40 MPH for about 200 yards. I could see absolutely nothing, my bike is shaking all over the place, and the thought ran through my mind that this might be my last bike ride. Well, I made it to the bottom of the hill, the truck pulled away from me, and I was able to compose myself. Then another dump truck blasted by me for good measure, but at that point I was slowed down to about 20 and I just kind of laughed at it... As frightening as it was, it was also incredibly exhilirating.. I'm out on my bike on a day when virtually nobody else would even consider going for a bike ride. I'm in nasty conditions absolutely drilling myself with intervals and having near death experiences with dump trucks. But this is also why I'm now in better shape than about 99.99% of the people on the planet. I started thinking about years ago when I would see that bike rider on my way into work. When I would ask myself "what does he know that i don't?". I don't have to ask that anymore.....

Best,

kevin

Strength, Speed, and Experience

This past weekend the Verge series moved to New Gloucester, ME for a good old-fashioned downeast bogtrot. I wasn't able to make Saturday's festivities, but by all accounts it was top 10 on everybody's list of most miserable events they've ever taken part in.. Temperatures barely tipping 40, torrential downpours, and a field full of mud. So cold and wet, that even with the incredible effort that a person puts in for the 45+ minutes of a race, the competitors were still suffering from hypothermia and pulling out of the race midway through.. So as I headed out the door Sunday morning looking at a 2+ hr ride to New Gloucester I was happy that the sun was shining and figuring that the course would be dried up some and at least it would be warmer. On the contrary, temps in the low 30's and another 2 inches of overnight rain made sure the course was not only not dried up at all, but many racers who had done both days said it was even in worse condition on day 2 than it was on day 1.. Well like I said, at least it was warm. It was actually a gorgeous day, sun shining, 60 degrees. Incredibly picturesque race venue at Pineland Farm complete with Holstein Cows at the staging area. 

I got the bike out for a warmup lap on the course. Holy shit, was this going to be tough. As I found out in Gloucester, I'm not very good in mud. I was all over the place, without actually going anywhere. It was crazy. The mud at it's shallowest was over the rims of the wheels and at it's deepest (in seemingly bottomless puddles) was over the cranks. There were uphills with no traction and downhills with no control over the steering. Brakes were merely for decorational purposes made even more ornate by the softball size clumps of mud and grass

that they collected. By the time I finished my warmup lap, which was a painfully slow slog around the course, my bike was covered in mud, my drive train was trashed, and I was thinking about what a great fucking day it would be to be a photographer... I caught up with my buddies Jack and Aaron. Jack was racing in the same field with me this time which was really going to screw up the spectators who can never figure out which of us is which even when we're racing in different fields. Jack took a look at my bike and asked me if I raced already. When I told him that was from the warmup lap he got a look on his face like he smelled something bad (maybe it was the Holsteins... we were standing downwind after all).. So we decided two things, we didn't have our cameras so we couldn't be photographers and we drove too far to turn back now. And honestly, the only way to get better racing in the mud is to race in the mud.. Nobody practices in this shit unless they regularly ride their cross bikes around pigpens with barriers in it, plus it destroys your bike. So the only way to get better in mud is to race in it. So we warmed up on the roads a bit and headed over to staging. Difficult to hear the instructions from our staging position at the back of the bus over the mooing of the cows in the barn next to us. Cows apparently dig muddy guys in spandex.

 

Off we go. I have a decent start and I'm right in the thick of it. Right behind John Meerse of OA who I decided I was going to try to mark today since I know he's typically about a minute faster than me. As we come around a corner, a mud patty (or maybe a cow patty) the size of a silver dollar pancake gets flung off Meerse's tire right into my left eye. The mud covered my entire eye socket like a pirate's eye patch. We're still in the first minute of the race so it's balls to the wall all-out battling for position. We haven't even hit the woods yet. I'm frantically trying to blink the mud out of my eye since I can't take my hands off the bars because I'm going as hard as I can trying to hang on to Meerse's wheel. Did I mention it's the first minute of the race? This is bad.. Left eye rendered useless, my other eye starts to water and I'm temporarily blind. I sit up and start wiping the mud from my eyes so I can see again but now the field has a little gap on me. I sprint as hard as I can to catch and I get back on by the time we hit the downhill in the woods. I have absolutely zero control of my bike as it takes me in whichever line it wants to the bottom of the hill.. Man, is this going to be a long day. The guys who are really strong and really know how to ride mud leave the rest of us behind. I'm slogging through the mud with the back of the field. We must look like a group of 97 year old guys with walkers trying to maneuver our way across a sandy beach. Fucking comical. As I mentioned earlier, it was a great day to be a photographer and this race had, hands down, the most photographers stationed around the course that I've ever seen. I wonder if any of them caught my first crash, coming around a 90 degree corner where my wheels slipped out from under me like I was on grease.. Or maybe they caught my second crash coming down a hill where the bike led me into a gulley off the side of the track where I hit a stump and wiped out.. Or maybe they caught me in the 2ft deep puddle where I was moving along and hit some underwater farm creature that just halted me to a dead stop as I fell over sideways in the mud.. Or maybe they caught the crash where I was coming out of the barn (yes, the course actually went through a barn). I was coming out the other side of the barn where the course turns 90 degrees immediately upon coming out of the barn. The floor was concrete and covered with wet mud, I started my turn a little early and went down like I had been shot.. If you had been standing outside the barn you would have seen a couple bikers ahead of me come flying out of the barn and then you would have seen me sliding out of the barn head first on the ground with my bike still attached to my shoes.. Graceful! I was a streaming outburst of expletives as I struggled through the laps and my frustration mounted. For the first 3 laps I was going at it with Gary Aspnes of Horst and Paul Cox of CCB.. I would alternately pass them, crash or get bogged down by a momentum-killing line selection, get passed by them, bust my ass to catch up and then pass them again.. It was like Groundhog Day. I finally passed them for the final time on the last lap and then outsprinted one more racer who wasn't really expecting to have to sprint for a position having already been lapped by the #1 and #2 riders of the day. I did get lapped by Roger Aspholm and Kevin Hines with about a minute to go before I crossed the finish line, but really there's no shame in getting lapped by the likes of those two on a day like that. Roger is a cycling cyborg, I'm positive his bionic circuitry was starting to short out in the mud, I know I saw sparks shooting out of his knee as he passed me.. Hines is one of those freaks of nature like Ned Overend. Older than anybody else in the field and kicking everybody's ass. And for all my misery and the comedy of errors that have become the standard for me racing in the mud, I ended up finishing 23rd out of 40 starters.. Which, get this, put me in the points! hahahaha.. My first Verge points ever...

After the race I met up again with Aaron who didn't have his best day but still finished top 20, all things considered a really good finish. I told him how Roger and Kevin went by me on the last lap like they were riding a different race course than the one I was on. I asked Aaron a rhetorical question "how the hell do they do it?".. His answer "Two things... they're strong, fast and experienced".. I didn't point out that that was three things. Aaron was fatigued from the double race weekend and his bout with hypothermia on Saturday.... Strength, speed, and experience, eh?.... I have a lot of work ahead of me in all three categories. On the bright side I have a whole lot of time, determination, focus, and drive. There is no doubt in my mind I'll get where I want to be.

Up next Hampton Falls on Sunday.. 

Until then........

Is it Mental Toughness, or Just Plain Mental?

This past weekend's kick in the balls came courtesy of the Providence Cyclocross Festival, rounds 5 and 6 of the Verge Series. Saturday was an incredible Fall day and we were racing on another course laid out by Tom Stevens, who is a genius at course design. I wasn't completely sure that I would be able to race in Providence so I waited until pretty late in the game to register. Unfortunately for me, in the Verge series the staging order goes by top 25 in points then registration order. I know several people that are top 25 in points, some of them on a first name basis, but apparently that doesn't count. So they're staging everybody until finally there's me and one other guy standing there looking at each other when they call up "the rest".. It's going to be a long day.... As I've said before, the start of a cross race is one of the most  important parts of the race. Have a bad start, or end up staging near the end and you are spending a whole lot of time trying to chase a whole lot of people down. For me I guess it's not as significant as it is to others since I spend all my time chasing people down anyways.. And on the bright side, if you're in the back at the start there's nobody left to pass you, right? Last weekend on Day 2 in Gloucester I got an excellent start and was able to ride with a bunch of guys who are typically way stronger than me in the field and gave me a middle of the pack finish which was my best Verge series finish of the year. I celebrated my 42nd place finish out of 80 starters with a 4.4 lb lobster freshly caught off the Fort Stage Park shores.

The race begins and I have a lousy start, again not getting clipped in cleanly. Wtf! I really need to work on that. Once I'm clipped in I bury myself on the sprint, pass about 10 racers and enter the fields. Picking off people, one here, two there, I work my way up until I'm probably ahead of about 20-25 guys by the time we come around on the third lap with three to go. I'm dehydrating badly in the heat and my heart is redlined as usual.. Now a typical cyclocross course is mostly fields, dirt roads, and trails. Then there's some paved sections or gravel sections. 99% of all crashes occur on fairly forgiving grass or dirt sections since it's mostly on some off-camber grassy hill or a slippery chicane that's going to get you. But that's not for me, I prefer laying it down on the tough stuff.. I'm coming hot into a 90 degree corner off of a paved sidewalk onto a dirt section and both wheels just slide right out from under me. I went down hard on my hip and arm and slid to a stop into some fencing. People (maybe 2 of them) are yelling at me, "Get Up! Get Up! Get Up!" but there's a voice in my head saying "Why? I'm about 50 riders back, my hip is on fire, and the next group of riders ahead of me have about 30 seconds on me?" (which is now increasing by the second).. I drag myself off the ground, straighten out my shifter which got bent in the crash, throw my leg over the bike and carry on, much to the delight of the two people who now feel as if they personally willed me on to continue. I don't know, maybe they did. You know how in the movies when something like this happens they might show it in slow motion to add dramatic effect? Well, this was just like that except for two things. First, I was literally moving in slow motion, and second, it was really lacking in dramatic effect. Then something strange happened. My bike started shifting itself.. I thought, "Cool, maybe it will start pedaling itself too". I tried to shift, but I got nothing. The chain kept automatically working it's way down to the hardest gear. So I get to the bottom of a hill, get off the bike to see what's going on and realize my day is over. I lost my rear shifter cable and am stuck in the hardest gear, this is unrideable for the race course I'm on. All the people I worked my ass off to pass are now passing by me. This is very demoralizing. I noticed there was a team tent right off the course where I stopped and there were a couple racers there so I asked them if they had a 5mm wrench. One of them came over with one and we got the shifter cable back on, adjusted the shifting so it was rideable, and off I went.. This is grounds for disqualification but something tells me the officials aren't really paying attention to me at this point. OK, so what exactly am I riding for now? My 3 laps of effort wasted by a nasty crash and mechanical issue and I've just lost at least 4 minutes. What's left today for me? Maybe I can hit a tree or a skunk or something. This is where my unshakeable mental toughness comes in. At this point I figured that I would attempt to finish on the lead lap, only half-heartedly expecting to be able to do so. I've lost too much time, I'm riding alone, and I have half the race to go.. Whatever, I buried myself. I put everything into it and started re-catching riders that I had passed earlier, sprinting past them like they were standing still. 

Chasing so fast here that even the advancements in today's

digital photography can't keep up with me.

I was so dehydrated that I was spitting cotton balls that would just stick to my lips and cheeks. I came around the finish line with 2 laps to go and knew I just had to make one more lap to finish on the lead lap. I can hear the announcers screaming about the fight going on with the leaders.. I end up making it around again with a minute to spare before Bold and Aspholm come across the line 1, 2. I don't let up for the last lap though as I can see a group of riders with about 1 minute on me up ahead.. I catch them just before we get to the finish line and roll across with that group. For the day I ended up over 8:00 minutes off the winning time, 47th out of 71, which to me was astonishing considering the crash and bike issues I had. I still finished ahead of about a third of the field..

After the race I was riding over to the pits to pick up my spare wheels and I was badly in need of some water. There was a 30x20 big top tent setup so I rode into it looking for something to drink. There was a woman who seemed to be in charge of the tent so I rode over to her and asked her if they had any water to spare. I figured that since I had enough cotton on my cheeks to spin a t-shirt she could probably ascertain that I was pretty parched and had just raced so I also probably didn't have my wallet with me. She gave me one of those big phony smiles like you get from a bank manager and informed me that "Sorry, this is the VIP tent.".. I slowly looked around.... The tent was empty except for coolers full of water, beer, soda and two "VIP's" over in the corner of the tent wearing jeans and t-shirts drinking a couple beers. I then turned back to the woman and blazed a hole directly in the center of her forehead with my lazer vision before riding away on my bike.. This would never have happened in Gloucester at the race being run by my club, ECV :)

Day 2: Got up in the morning and my hip, which had a 4x4 patch of road pizza on it, was in quite a bit of pain. So was my shoulder and chest which felt like I must have stretched out some muscles and tendons in the crash. At least I didn't have to deal with fixing my bike in the morning, I spent an hour on that the night before. Thanks to SRAM for designing shifters that require bar tape removal to replace a fk'n shifter cable effectively turning a 5 minute job into a 30 minute job... Anyway, a good breakfast in me, a handful of ibuprofen, and it was back to Providence for day 2 of the festivities. Can't be worse than yesterday, right? I get to the grounds and I'm riding over to the course to get a practice ride in on the course and I notice a woman on her bike with a big hole in her bibs exposing her ass. This was a big hole, probably 3 inches in diameter right over the crack of her butt. Now typically, a hole in a national champion woman's bibs exposing her ass, might be cause for a little excitement by the predominantly male contingent at these races, right? But when it's the Over-65 Women's national champion, not so much. I took a couple warmup laps on the course and then spent some time working on my starts. I knew today I would be at the back of the bus again in staging and I wanted to make sure I at least nailed my start this time. 

When the race started I nailed my start.. I worked my way right up into the middle of the pack. Excellent! Things were going to go much better for me today, I could just feel it. About 1 minute into the first lap, the congested field came into a tight corner with a PVC crossing gate on it which I remembered from my warmup could cause some problems. Don't I get squeezed into the outside of the corner and T-bone the gate? My bike coming to an abrupt halt, I calmly removed the PVC from my handlebars and huck it 15 feet in the opposite direction while the rest of the field rudely race on without me. This effectively negated my great start. I composed myself and sprinted myself back into the mix. My heart was racing like a blender on ice crush for 45 minutes as I turned myself inside out to hang with a group of riders that are usually a minute or two ahead of me in the standings.. At the end of the day I finished 4:57 off the winning time, 41st out of 75 starters, and about 2:00 minutes ahead of guys that I was about even with at the beginning of the season. It was one of my best rides and I'm now able to hang with the middle third of these really strong fields when I'm having a good day. Things are looking up.

It's always imperative to finish in front of the guy in pink

After the race we headed over to Bristol to pick up Michele's son at college and took him to lunch at an oceanside restaurant that was right next to a big top tent where they were holding a wedding reception for an extended family of beached whales who were undoubtedly going to return to sea at the end of the festivities. It was all I could do not to put a stack of my business cards on the tray of bacon wrapped twinkies they had for hors d'hoerves. As they stood around outside sipping champagne, smoking their cigarettes I could hear their arteries slamming shut over the crashing of the ocean waves in the distance. I then listened to my own body, which was buzzing from two days of maximum efforts. It's amazing the peaceful feeling I get after putting absolutely everything I have into these races, regardless of where I place out overall. Crashes, bike problems, mud bogs, inexperience, whatever else may get in the way never really matters. I always leave knowing I did my best and I didn't give up, even when there are times when it doesn't appear to make any sense to continue. Every time I come out I get tested at the highest level. I put myself in incredible pain, I have things happen to me that would make it easy for me to quit, I fight like it's a matter of life and death for 42nd place. Some might call it mental, I call it mental toughness.