Yesterday’s Source Endurance cross clinic was a sucess. I think there were around 100 people there. Five of us coached. Zach McDonald, U23 National Champion, Ralpha, making a guest appearance from Seattle, Shad Smith, KCCX, KC Cross Stud, Tom Price, Trek National Team, , mechanic extraordinaire, Joseph Schmalz, new Bissell Pro Team member, Adam Mills, Source Endurance Czar and Owner, and me. So, the coach to rider proportion was good.

Adam had the day planned out pretty well, but I deviated a little sometimes to work extra one and one. Like I said yesterday, coaching people in cross is so easy and rewarding because you can see the improvement in minutes and hours, not months and years like regular cycling. I don’t think there was a guy there that didn’t improve some, including myself. Every season, recently, I usually just get on my bike for the first race and think, wow, that was a hard day and this is a hard sport. It is nice clipping in for a learning session, even though it was only 6 hours or so.

Everyone did a mock race at the end of the day. The instructors did a mock race of their own at the end. It was a hard, fought battle, but the locals decided to let the guest rider from Seattle make off with the spoils. Shad gave him a run for his money, but he was tired from instructing in cross, then rushing over to coach his son’s football game and then back for some more cross. Man, being a parent is tiring.

I was supposed to do some more coaching tomorrow morning, but I got out of it somehow. It isn’t like I don’t want to do it, it is that I’m sort of running out of time, continuously nowadays. I need to pick Trudi up in Duluth on Monday, so I need to drive the 680 miles up to Cable today.

The ragweed and other allergies are crazy bad in Kansas right now, so I’m hoping I feel more perky up in the North woods. I’m going to try to ride the complete Chequamegon course on Monday morning, but that might not be realistic. I might have to wait until Tuesday, we’ll see.

I had to put my rigid fork back on my MTB bike and try to get it more up to race speed last night. I’m going to ride an Eriksen 29’r once again, fully rigid. I’m not sure exactly what wheels and tires I’m going to use. I’d like to use some light tubulars like I did last year. I have a set of Challenge Tubulars glued on, but the wheels are pretty much tanks. I think I’ll pre-ride them on Monday and see how they roll. I haven’t had a ton of time on them, so am not ready to give them the thumbs up yet. Okay, I have to get packing.

Adam Mills running the show.

Zach walking JP through dismounting over a barrier.

Looks like someone didn’t make it.

Best move I saw all day, missing the buried kid in the sand. It was very graceful.

Guys were improving like crazy, especially in the off camber section. I never told anyone to take their inside foot out though.

Two of the most talented up and coming riders on the US Cycling scene. Zach McDonald, left and Joseph Schmalz, right.

Catherine and Ian helping to break down the course. I guess it was working.

It was Adam’s birthday yesterday. This was the last contact I received from him around midnight. I’m betting it is very ugly this morning.

The juice is worth the squeeze. That is a line I heard on NPR last week in a story about bike thieves in San Francisco. The story was about how common it was to have a bike stolen, even though you can buy a bike on the street for between 10 and 20 dollars. The guy talking, who I think was a cop, said they set up a sting operation and busted a complete ring of bicycle thieves, but not one served a day of jail time.

By juice, he meant the reward. And by squeeze he meant the penalty, or potential penalty.

That is exactly the situation with using drugs in the sport of cycling or maybe using drugs in most sports, I don’t know.

What is the worse penalty presently that can be levied upon a rider. Life suspension. So the worst penalty if you get caught, if you happen to get caught, is that you don’t get the privilege to race bicycles anymore. Actually, you have to be usually caught twice for that to occur. Usually, the worst case scenario when you get caught the first time is a maximum of a two year time out.

And the rewards are pretty great, compared to working a 9 to 5 normal everyday job. Even for the lowly rider. But if you excel, like you should, if you’re abusing drugs while racing, then the rewards are life changing. Cycling is baseball or basketball, but a good rider who has raced professionally from his early 20’s to mid 30’s should be able to accumulate enough money to retire on. Some times much more. Look at Lance for example. He’s made 10’s of millions, if not more. And other than the 2.95 million Euros prize money he’s supposed to pay back, I’m pretty sure he gets to keep the rest. Not bad considering.

This obviously is known to just about everyone in the game. It is just one of the reasons that the doping escalated so rapidly to begin with. When the sanctions are virtually non existent, it encourages young riders to take the step. Currently, the juice is much, much better than the squeeze, The sport needs to invert that if they ever think they are going to get a handle on the situation. If not, we’re going to keep getting our bikes stolen on the streets and keep seeing $20 bike racing on TV.