My friend just built a Nomad. Rode with him Sunday. Granted I'm on a 7 y/o 100mm 26errrrrrr, but he was just floating over stuff that had my fillings loose. Very sweet.

If Mammoth goes 100% PM me and think about hanging a few extra days. I can show you some great riding.

Yeah, just an amazing bike. What bikes do you have on order?

WILCO on the Mammoth trip. I'm willing to move Heaven and Earth to make it. Just need a little help from the stars.

Trance Advanced and a Glory. I have a hook up with Giant.

I did xc nats at Mammoth in 05 or 06. I won't miss the long climb up the mountain.

I have a hook up with New York Richie's just down the street.............they make Giant pizza's. This may be why I'm leaning towards more down, than up, next year. They did send me home with a 3 lb. bag of Mandarin oranges last night............delicious. Could be they feel a little guilty about my expanding waistline.

Happy New Year


This is the video from my last "race" of the year. As you will see, it's as much a party, as it is a race. I took my Mtb thinking that the course would be fun with some fat tires......big mistake. It was easily the best course they have had at this venue in years; fast, technical, and made for ripping a cross bike.........oh wells.

My "race" started off raunchy, and went downhill from there. You can see me in the blue shirt (#171) giving Santa a ride as we get tangled up in the first lap scrum. After that was sorted out, I tried like hell to make up some ground, but it wasn't gonna happen on the Mtb, the cross bikes were just too fast on this course. On the 2nd lap, some tumbleweed got wrapped in my rear derailleur and was sucked through both pulleys (same place where Chris dropped his chain) and I had to take my wheel off, unthread the Russian Thistle and watch the whole field pass by. No worries, I wasn't going to win anyway. :p

Fast forward to the last lap.....coming to the finish line, I decided to bring it home in style, by ambush sprinting a fellow masters racer for the "win". Out of the saddle, rocking the bike like I knew what I was doing and BAM. the chain breaks. Santa (or God) was with me that day, cause there is no way I shouldn't have chewed the stem off with my teeth. As luck (or Santa) would have it, I'm still eating steak for breakfast..........and that is a fine way to end my 2014 season.


As always, thanks to Chris Haskell for his excellent videos.

Happy New Year. USAC Mount San Bruno Hill Climb Race 3rd of 7 65+ This is a 3.1 mass start hill climb with an average 6% grade with the last 1/3 of the race at 8 to 10%. This is my first road podium and it was in a hill climb. Who would have thought a 500 meter / 2k pursuit trackie could podium in a NorCal hill climb?

http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u...ps9ba5ab37.jpg

Way to bring in the New Year, Hermes.

I may have to schedule me some track time, so that I can get on a road podium as well. :D

Congratulations on the podium Hermes!

Glad you still have your teeth nacler22 - I hear US healthcare is expensive, so saved the funds for more bike bits... ;)

Congrats, Hermes!!!

Looked like a hoot. If only the video was an hour or so. Make a trainer session go by much easier..

Congrats!

Thanks for the props!

Nice @Hermes!

Why didn't you win?
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Well someone was going to say it :)

Nice job!

Normally, we use some type of wang as an excuse for everything...Age wang, power wang, gender wang, hours trained wang, health wang, who's who wang or stripe wang. This one is stripe wang. The winner was the current national road race champion. So there.:p

Well, we might let you slide. :D Good job!

@Hermes, I could tell you were riding well. Nice job especially after a long drive the day before. (You forgot the driving excuse above.)

Way to go, Hermes!! What was you VAM?

Power meter and Garmin were effed up on the ride. No data.

Damn. I find your VAM numbers very inspiring...

PV put the race on - my new team. On the podium! Hermes, major props!!!

Early Bird Crit Training Race #2, Fremont, CA, Women's Cat 3/4

First off, this was a training race, and I had some specific goals in place I wanted to achieve and or check. It was the first time I had raced the Venge, and even though I've done some hard rides on it, you never really know about setup until you go to war.

It was a huge field, 5 Cat 3's, and more than 20 Cat 4's, all "experienced". The "inexperienced" cat 4's were broken out and started 30 seconds or so behind us. This was a mentored race. Two of my team mates were in the field, also 3's, but we did not discuss a plan nor did we expect to execute one. I wanted to stay near the near the front, stay sheltered, help my team mates if I could, and keep the rubber side down.

The course was flat, a bit over a mile in length, in an industrial park. There were lots of Botts Dots to demarcate the lanes in the wide boulevard streets. There were also many of those little man hole overs, and they'd give you a whack if you ran over them.

I lined up on the front row, and rolled away easy at the whistle, letting the young rabbits duke it out for who wanted to be on the front. I sure didn't! The pace went high right away, but no issues there. Bike skills seemed good, at least on that first lap. By the end of the second lap, we'd dropped the mentors - that's how high the pace was. No worries on my part, I wasn't feeling much wind, and I felt good.

On the third lap, a young gal decided to go up the road, and several people went after her. Those of us who didn't decided amongst ourselves that this early in the race was not a good time to chase down a break, and they probably wouldn't stay away anyway. I was using momentum to move me up in the corners and to try to not scrub off speed in those 90 degree turns so I wouldn't have to sprint to stay attached. I don't last too long if there's a lot of that nonsense in the corners, so I try hard to cover it. I did make a strong move up the inside at one point to about third wheel, just to do it and just to see how I'd feel.

On the fifth lap, I got hung out on the left side of the peloton on the other side of the Botts Dots. The lane was tightening up ahead, so I needed to get back in to the right and get sheltered. I didn't see anyone in my peripheral vision, so I made a hard move to the right, and that move p/o-ed several gals who were behind me. "At least tell us, Sara...!" They were right. The reason I was so far to the left was because a rider had made a very aggressive move between me and a rider to my right, actually elbowing me over to the left. If this had been for the money, I would have behaved differently, but I moved left to keep myself safe.

On the sixth lap, I was sitting on one of my team mate's wheel (Heidi), and she got gapped. I came around her and ramped it up, telling her to get on, but she couldn't. So I slowed until she recovered, and then we tried to bridge up. By now, the Romin men's saddle on my Venge had done some pretty serious damage to, well...and every ripple in the road was going straight to a spot right between my eyes. I just couldn't sustain any sort of hard effort any longer, so I welcomed any respite!

Heidi and I rode the rest of the race with one of the mentors, taking turns with pulls, and discussing cornering and strategy. We came by the start finish and saw "two to go", and settled in. When we came around again, the officials said "Thank you!!!", and OMG...so all three of us - Heidi, the mentor, and I uncorked some half hearted sprints! Totally caught off guard.

It was a fun race, and I just might do the EB #3 next week rather than the cross race I was planning to do. It is road season, after all. My fitness was definitely there, but I could certainly tell that I hadn't raced since November. I am putting one my Oura saddles on the Venge RIGHT AWAY, and other than that, the bike setup and it's behavior was spot on. No complaints!

Sounds like you had a great time, Sara! Way to go! :thumb:

First race as a Cat3?, you got yelled at and mixed it up. Good job.

Nice race Sara. Next time, maybe don't abandon your own race for Heidi. If you get dropped yourself later you could sit up and then work with her, but it sounds like you hung back for her sake even though she was already done for, but you could have kept racing for yourself.

Great report Sara. And waiting for someone in a race is what most of us would call "overly magnanimous". :)