Since I haven’t been racing for the past 3 weekends it seems I’m reading the race results way more than I normally do. I’m not sure why that is, but it is. This past weekend it was pretty cool seeing Matt Busche‘s name for a overall podium slot in the Tour of Denmark. Hayden Rouslton, my good friend from Tour of Southland, won the final stage. Matt has a long and successful career as a professional cyclist ahead.

Dave Henderson, local Missouri buddy, won his age group in the US Nationals Master’s Criterium. As did Adam Bergman. Not so surprising for Adam, but a pretty great result for Dave – Congratulations.

Trudi is flying back from Europe for the last time tomorrow. I think she was about ready to go crazy, so it was probably the right time. She has a couple more races to do in North America – The two World Cups in Canada and US Pro National’s in South Carolina.

Okay. I’m thinking about cross already. Ran for the 3rd time. Swam a mile. That has nothing to do with cross though, just life. Life enjoyment. It is still a million degrees in Kansas. I was watching the weather channel and they said there was a extreme heat advisory in effect in Kansas City until Thursday. I rode at 90 yesterday and almost melted. It’s easy to get used to these 78 degree days.

Dave Henderson winning US Master's National Criterium Championships by a tire width.

It is kind of unsettling when one of your peers dies. And obviously sad. Such is the case when I read that Radomír Šimůnek, Sr. died recently.

I knew Radomír Šimůnek. I spent a few weeks of a winter in Czechoslovakia training for the Cyclo-X World Championships with the Czech National Team. He was the reining World Amateur Champion, but was out for the season with a knee injury. He spoke just okay English, but more than the other guys.

Trudi’s grandmother knitted stocking caps and made an awesome white hand knitted hat with the World Championship stripes on it. I gave it to Radomír and he wore it everyday at the World Championships that year. I thought that was pretty great.

When I saw him a few other times going back and forth to Europe I’d say hi, but it wasn’t like we were good friend or anything.

He was the only bicycle racer to win the Junior Worlds, Amateur World and Professional Worlds in Cyclocross.

In the back of my mind I’d thought it would be fun sometime to go back to Czechoslovakia and track down some of the riders I met back then. It won’t be near as fun without having Radomír around.