Forget core workouts and yoga. Just work on your car for 8 hours and you’ll locate those hard to find muscles. On your back with your arms over you head holding heavy tools. I did just that yesterday. And I did it replacing the batteries in my diesel van. Just replacing two batteries. 4 hours each. Shit. I had to call my friend Vincent and ask him the process. It isn’t intuitive. I’d already started by the time I called him. And he tells me if you buy the batteries at Sam’s Club, they will put them in for free. I doubt that very much in this instance. There are a lot of things going on underneath my van that makes the job monstrous.

The batteries are located underneath the van, raised up to the floor. To remove them, you need to drop them down and they hang on two wires in metal boxes. I have a running board, mounted after market, and the supports of the running board make the process nearly impossible. And removing the bolts that were in the undercarriage of the van wasn’t going good. Two snapped off into the frame. Whatever. It’s done. I could barely raise my arms when I was finished.

I’ve decided I was going to race on aluminum wheels at all the local cyclocross races and save my carbon wheels for bigger races. Tubular, of course. I got a couple pair of wheels two years ago and went to the garage to glue the tires on. The two front wheels had catastrophically blown apart. Actually, the hubs just broke, but I’ve never seen that happen on new wheels. Now I’m not going to ride the rear wheels either. Now that I feel the spokes, they are super, super tight. Whoever built those wheels must of been having his own little party when he was adjusting the spoke tension.

I’m not sure what I’m doing this weekend. I haven’t put a cross bike together yet. I might drive up to Madison, but don’t have any UCI points, so that would just be for the fun of it. We’ll see.

CrossVegas UCI race starts in less than an hour. If you want to see live video click here. Live updates are available here. I am never doing CrossVegas again. I’ve ridden the race 3 times and have not finished once. And, I don’t quit races. There is something screwy about the venue. I don’t know. I think it’s maybe fertilizer or pesticides that they put on the soccer field. I don’t know, but my lungs are destroyed after one lap of riding at race pace. All the riders agree, but they think it’s just the dry desert air. Not so. I’ve raced the criterium at Mandalay Bay twice, a couple days earlier, and nothing. Felt fine. But, the thick grass his some toxin on it that jacks me up.

Last year, Barry Wicks wrote a great article about the life of Interbike, including CrossVegas, from his noses’ point of view. His best line is “Are you so surprised to find that I am causing you pain after the finish? Surprised when you wake up at 4 am after three hours of sleep and can hardly breathe due to the horde of thick yellow mucus I have built to protect myself from your abuses?” I agree completely. 3 hours max. During CrossVegas too. Complete burning. It’s kind of interesting that most of the guys there have the same experience. Brown and yellow gunk. No sleep. And the gunk can last up to a couple weeks. Like bronchitis.

It’s too bad. I love racing in front of all my friends and peers. The venue is awesome for spectating. You can see nearly the whole course from one point. Under the lights, nighttime cyclocross is great. The racing was the main reason for me to go to Interbike. I have no regrets about not going. My lungs and nose are thanking me already.