Two Wheeled Locust

World Single Speed Appreciation Day

By the power vested in me by absolutely no one, I officially declare today to be World Single Speed Appreciation Day. This pronunciation was made earlier today with no one there to witness, but as the chairperson and sole member of the World Single Speed Appreciation Day Steering Committee, I hold this declaration to be valid, true and absolute.  If you're celebrating today for other reasons, now you have even more reason to celebrate. 

Go give your one speed bike a hug.  Send an e-mail to your favorite purveyor of single speed accouterments thanking them for all they do to enlighten the masses.  Put aside your usual contempt and give a friendly wave to that ironic mustache messenger kid riding down your block on a Gucci track bike.  It's a feel good type of day, so why not spread the love? 

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If you've been stopping by my site looking for race reports from the past two weekends, you've probably figured out I'm in slacker mode.  It's unlikely I'll have anything substantive posted in the next week, so here's the Reader's Digest version of the last two weekend of racing action: 

5th place, Expert 40-49, Hop Brook Dam XC:  A surprisingly large turnout for the first race in the Root 66 Series.  All the Pro/Expert categories had huge fields (there were 28 in my group alone) and the weather can best be described as "shitty" (40 degrees and pouring rain).  But if you want to race mountain bikes in New England in mid-April, you gotta expect that Mother Nature might not cooperate.  My only complaint for the day is that the promoters decided to shorten our race by one lap.  Regardless, I was pretty stoked about a good showing in what turned out to be an hour an a half race.

3rd Place, 2 Person Open, Leesburg Bakers Dozen 13 Hour Race: I'm still digesting the events of the weekend...and recovering from a what turned out to be a pretty hard effort.  Les and I teamed up to do battle against some really fast guys who had also entered the 2 person category.  Props to Wes and Jeff Bahnson for taking the category and overall race wins with a total of 25 laps.  Second place in the 2 person category went to Kris Auer and Bad Andy with 24 laps.  We chased and chased but those guys were just too strong.  Good on ya, C3 just isn't for cyclocross anymore.  Les and I also finished with 24 laps, a total of 168 miles in just over 13 hours.  Great race, good times. One to put on your calendar for next year.

Torn Boxer

Lining it up

Rollin' MJ style!

The fun keeps a coming and coming like a box of Mike and Ikes!

Thanks to Tomi for the photos.  And a special thanks to Oskar Blues for Ten Fidy!

Spring has sprung!

When it comes to celebrating the first day of Spring, nobody beats the Biz! And the Spring equinox means that race season, the Phillies home opener, and the end of freezing temperatures are just a few weeks away...more than enough reason to celebrate. I look forward to the first day of Spring the same way a five year old looks forward to Christmas morning. But I promise not to throw a tantrum if Mother Earth doesn't deliver a picture perfect day. So get out there and get some! Before you know it, it'll be hazy hot and humid season.

Practice Redux

I can't get enough of Allen Iverson talkin' about practice.  If you'd like to revisit this subject with me, check out DJ Jazzy Jeff's masterful use of one of the most infamous quotes in Philadelphia sports history.  "We talkin' about prcatice...not a game, not a game, not a game...practice."  I wonder what Jazzy Jeff could do with "For who, for what?"  The possibilities seem endless. 

This song appears on Jazzy Jeff's album, "The Return of the Magnificent", with J-Live providing the vocals over Jazzy Jeff's beats.  The success the Fresh Prince has had in televsion and film often overshadows DJ Jazzy Jeff's legacy, which is a shame, since he's arguably one of the greatest hip hop DJ's of all-time.  Seek out a copy of Hip Hop Forever III if you need further evidence.  Thanks to Charlie for the link. 

Vote Early and Often

In case you missed it elsewhere, the promoters of the inaugural Breck Epic are sponsoring a blogger's contest, with the top four contestants winning an free race entry.  Tomi McMillar has thrown his hat into the ring, as has Internet contest veteran Dicky.  Early returns show Dicky with a substantial lead over the rest of the field, with Tomi McMillar holding down the fourth position.  Go here to view the contestant profiles and go here to vote.

I'm throwing my support behind Tomi and I'm suggesting that all of you do the same.  Since you're able to vote for three contestants, I'm also recommending you vote for Dicky and Sarah Uhl.  Dicky is a no-brainer since he's without question the King of the Cycling Blogosphere. But Sarah Uhl?  I'm not sure she even has a blog, but Mika once snapped at her and she was cool about it.   That's good enough for me.  So honor Mika's memory and give her your vote.  Vote early and often...and use multiple IP addresses.

When the Breck Epic blogger's contest was first announced, I gave it some consideration and went as far as writing up an application.  But after deciding that a one day race in Breckenridge (the Breckenridge 100) was a better fit for my 2009 goals, I abandoned my contest ambitions, the trade off being a single day of suffering in the high altitude of the Colorado Rockies rather than of a week of altitude sickness. 

I've gone back and forth about posting my Breck Epic blogger's application on this site.  Some of what I wrote is arguably clever and funny (and worth posting), while the rest is more unabashed self-promotion more than anything else.  But since it's Oscar night, the timing seems right to post my response to one of the better questions posed to the Breck Epic blogger contestants:  "Who will play you in the Breck Epic movie and why?"  My answer appears in the below post.  If you think I have the right stuff, feel free to cast your vote for me in the Comments section.

Celluloid Heroes

Who will play you in the Breck Epic movie and why? Sasha Baron Cohen. He’ll develop a new character based on me and I’ll become an international superstar along the lines of Clay Aiken or maybe even Bob Crane. In the movie, I’ll do battle against the Dicky doppleganger and Floyd Landis, who will play himself as a disgraced Tour de France winner who has resorted to racing single speeds against work-a-day guys like Rich and myself. After the race, we’ll all go partying with Tom Boonen and some underage girls at a faux Euro disco in Breckenridge. If anyone can make this work, it’s Sasha Baron Cohen.

Punk'd

Last Sunday, the 2009 Single Speed Punk Bike Enduro brought single speeders from throughout the region to the Frederick Watershed for a day of semi-conspicuous consumption.  The enduro course provided a heaping helping of the best singletrack the Watershed has to offer, with ten distinct stages offering plenty of opportunity for bar-to-bar racing action for those wished to indulge.  Also on the menu was a keg of Heavy Seas Peg Leg Imperial Stout strategically placed at the mid-point of the course, a nice touch that's apparently an event tradition.

A lingering bout of bronchitis kept me from firing on all cylinders, but I still managed a decent showing out on the course.  The day got off to a good start when I pipped Tomi at the line for the Stage 1 victory.  With one win in the pocket, it was a no-brainer to stay in the mix for the overall.  Subsequent stages were spent chasing the Trek-VW juggernaut, who did an excellent job of providing carrot opportunities for the rest of the field.  I posted some solid results in the later stages, but in the end, a pocket full of top five finishes and one punk (pictured above) wasn't enough to keep Jeff Schalk from taking the overall win.  Oh well.  Thanks to Rider X and the rest of the Single Speed Outlaw Factory team for their hospitality.  Good people, good trail, good times.  And good beer.  No doubt I'll be back next year.       

We Talkin' About Practice

When Allen Iverson was a 76er, many Philadelphia sports fans wondered if he knew the word practice. But even if Iverson didn't grasp the concept of practice, this video clearly illustrates the word is in his vocabulary.  This clip is taken from a press conference held after the Sixers made an early exit from the 2002 playoffs, the season after they made it to the NBA finals.  The Sixers had fallen short of everyone's expectations for another championship run, and in the aftermath, the media looked to The Answer for answers.

Iverson was the key to the team's championship run in 2001, and the following year, he played a similar role in their failures.  As the 2001-2002 season wore on, the fans and media openly questioned Iverson's off-season conditioning and practice habits.  During this press conference, Iverson correctly identifies himself as the team's franchise player, but he seems to disconnect how ditching practice may have impacted the team's lack of success.  The irony is the entire team was built around Iverson, with most of the offensive plays designed to put the ball in hands.  That system doesn't work that well if your star player only shows up on game day. 

There's a lot to think about here.  One thing that comes to mind is the entitlement some professional athletes feel when it comes to their profession.  Should the rules governing practice, preparation, and off court conduct be any different if you're the best out there?  If you think about bike racing, and endurance racing in particular, shortcuts in training and preparation will be glaringly apparent out on the race course, particularly for the best athletes.  How often have you heard a top mountain bike racer blame his coach, teammates or the media for their lack of success?  I would guess never.

I've been racing all my life.  I swam competitively from early childhood to my early teenage years, ran cross country and track in high school and college, segued into marathon running in my twenties, and started mountain bike racing about fifteen years ago.  Part of what's kept me going all these years is practice.  I enjoy the preparation as much as the competition, particularly when it comes to the bicycle. Endurance racing requires an enormous amount of planning, commitment and hard work to achieve success.  The journey is as equally important as the destination, and over the years, I've reaped as much reward from the journey as anything else. 

Cycling has evolved into a lifestyle for me, which makes the whole practice concept a lot easier to manage in terms of juggling life's priorities.  With race season about six weeks away, I'm doing more that just talkin' about practice.  I try to ride every day, and every time I throw my leg over the top tube, I consider the ride as preparation for the races I have on the calendar.  And with that, I also remind myself there are no short cuts, that I'll ultimately succeed or fail on my own.  Practice?  Yeah, we talking about practice.                         

Top Ten British Band Names of All Time

1. Insipid Carpets
2. Hatful of Horseshit
3. Stone Posers
4. Public Flipper Limited
5. Commretards
6. Buggery Boyz
7. God Save Steve McQueen
8. Twee Twats
9. Brit Pop will Devour Itself
10. Phish Bloody Ripped Us Off

Who Wants to be a Mojo Millionaire?

Which of the following is not a Mojo Nixon song lyric?

a. "Republicans one and all, their tallywhackers are mighty small"
b. "Music television should be covered in jism"
c. "And when I'm sad I go to a club, drink enough beer to fill a bathtub"
d. "Mara-marijuana, mara-marijuana, I like marijuana, you like marijuana, we like marijuana, too."

Contest rules: 

1. No Googling, lifelines, 50/50's, or audience assistance.
2. Dicky is prohibited from playing because he gets up in the middle of the night to answers these silly quizzes and ends up ruining it for everyone. If Dicky posts a comment here, I'll dispatch the Mumbai secret police to his home and they'll force him to perform the lead in a Bollywood-style dance production. I'll make sure the video is posted to YouTube and will feature it here with Simon Cowell type commentary. You've been warned.