Mercifully, It's Over

The Psychlocross Training Series, that is. It just got funner and funner. Four stellar weeks of inflicting and then living with the pain. And it's so comforting to know that this is just a warmup for the real thing.

I crashed again tonight. And of course, I had to land dead square on last week's road rash. Nothing less will do in this sport. As Brian Gavin put it tonight, "except for the barriers and ruts and the getting on and off the bike and the running and crashes and the fact that you're riding on grass and dirt and sand and mud in really awful weather, this is really fun".

On the way home, I made a quick pit stop. I used up all our triple antibiotic and gauze and tape and all that krap last week. So I re-loaded on first aid supplies and liquid pain killer. A drugstore that carries beer . . . they should change their name from Rite-Aid to Rite-ous. I coughed my way through the checkout stand because my throat was all burned from doing "warmup laps". Finally I was headed home. And then . . . "Oh shit". I just realized. I was gonna have to face Patty. I'll spare you the details, but suffice to say the grovelling was intense and unprecedented. Even a saint can only tolerate a dense, developmentally-stunted husband for so long.

All kidding aside, this training series has been so much fun and so cool because it was just this idea hatched by a cycling freak named Shawn Letson. And then Mike Sirott, President of SRV, jumped all over it and permitted it and made it happen through our club. And these four great local racing stars jumped on board to donate their time and expertise as instructors, and then it went all organic and all these people started showing up - more every week, until it crescendoed at 30 tonight. I'd like to use this forum to personally thank everyone who threw a bunch of effort into this thing to make it not only happen, but totally rock.

Tonight, we worked on holeshots (starts) and overall race strategy. Mike G broke us into the A, B and C groups that we will see in competition. Here are some pics and clips (still working on my photog skills, obviously. What's up with all the grass close-ups???):

In closing, I would like to say that I am totally stoked for the start of the season, so that I can get out there and shred what little remains of my aged, tattered body, in a muddy field, while it is hailing. Until finally, lightning strikes me and it will all, mercifully, be over. Cyclocross is so rad.