Today is exactly one week since I got this food poisoning, stomach flu, whatever thing. It really just seems like yesterday. More like 2 days ago. I decided to weigh myself twice yesterday. I’m nearly 10 pounds lighter than I was just one week ago. That is with eating 3 full meals the day before. I am approaching the 140’s. I was hoping to race around 158 or so. If I ate all day, everyday until next Thursday, I doubt that I could get back up to that.

That all being said, yesterday I didn’t have that bad a day riding. It was in the mid 40’s and we rode a little over 2 hours at exactly at a 20 mile per hour average. (Strava info to the right.) The wind was pretty light, which made it nice. I graded myself as a C- the first 2/3rd’s the ride, then upgraded to a C+ by the end. I can’t really complain much about those grades, considering what’s been going on. I’m pretty concerned about my ability to recover. I seem to really run out of steam, just a little over 2 hours and then the rest of the day, I’m beat. It can only get better, I hope.

We’re leaving early tomorrow morning to head to Louisville. It’s about 9 hours, maybe a little longer. I have a PT session set up for my shoulder in the afternoon. I don’t plan on riding at all. I am probably just going to rest mostly until the race. I’ve having enough trouble stirring up enough energy to pack today, so I know I’m not 100%. But, there is still 5 more days.

I saw a rule in the 2013 World’s Technical guide I liked yesterday. “Outgoing World Champions must race qualifying heats. If the outgoing World Champion qualifies for the championship race, that World Champion will be awarded start number 1 and will be
called up first.”

It only applies to a few people and makes sense. And it makes the qualifying race on Tuesday for me meaningless, which is great.

Another rule in the Technical guide has thrown me for a loop. It says, “Until the day before the World Championship of the following year, the World Champion must wear their jersey in all events in the discipline, speciality and category in which they won their title, and in no other event. National Champion jerseys are to be worn in the age category for which they were won.”

If I’m reading this one correctly, it means that in the qualifying races, the current World Champion must wear their Worlds jersey, because they are two days before the actual World Championship. And if you’re a National Champion, you have to wear the Nationals jersey in the World Championships. I wouldn’t have thought of wearing a World’s jersey in the qualifying race. It seems like it is the Worlds, so no one should be wearing one at all competing. And why can’t they stick to the same lingo, what’s up with the must one time and are to be worn the 2nd time? I’m not even sure why they put that in there, it just mixes people up. I think they should have just put a little note into each current World Champion’s number bag explaining how it works.

I spent a little while yesterday, after the ride, programing my Di2 shifters. Kris sent up a PC, since there are only Macs around here. It took a little bit to understand, but I finally got it working. I put the shifting on the fastest mode and made the gears unlimited, which means I can hold the up or down lever and can slam the gears, doing the whole cassette in one shift. In theory it should work great for cyclocross.

Okay, hopefully I’ll feel at least as good today as yesterday. I’ll take it if that is the case. Then, it’s off to Kentucky.

This is the elusive cable that somehow I now have. Thanks Wayne.

I had to do a firmware update, but then it was a piece of cake. It is kind of strange shifting your bike from a laptop.

Kris came up with this little mini computer that would run the software to program the shifting.

I put this gas heater in my garage a couple winters ago. It was one of the best things I’ve done recently. It makes working on bikes and packing so much more enjoyable in the winter.

What’s up with this love affair with sand on a cyclocross course? I just checked out some photos of the Masters World’s course that my friend, Bill Elliston, so kindly posted.

I guess there are 3 sand pits on the course, with one having a u-turn incorporated in it. I don’t get the whole premise of including sand in a cross race. Is it because they have sand in Belgium, so we think it is cool to be like Belgians? That has to be the case. This sand riding has only become common the last decade or so. I don’t remember ever racing in a cross race that had sand before 2000.

If the Belgium connection is the reason, let me tell you, our sand is nothing at all like the sand in Belgium. Our sand is much more granular, courser, thus doesn’t compact like the fine, silt-like sand in Belgium. Our sand never will retain lines unless it is wet. Our sand is completely not rideable in many situations. Theirs is usually rideable, at least by the best riders.

Let me tell you how fine the sand is in Belgium. I have the pair of socks I raced in Mol, Belgium, two years ago. Every single time I put on those socks, I feel sand in them. I’ve washed those socks dozens of times and there is still a itty-bitty, tiny amount of very fine sand on the material. It’s nuts.

Anyway, I don’t want to bag on it too much, but I think it is stupid to go out of our way to add these sand obstacles in our cross courses, just because they do it in Belgium. It screws up the drive train of the bikes and seems unnecessary. Many of our cross races end up being extremely muddy. Then we go add an artificial sandpit into it. That is a recipe for disaster. In Belgium, normally where the sand is, the courses drain extremely well, because the sand is the natural composition of the soil, thus it isn’t super muddy, with sand.

I think that if the forecast for Louisville holds true, this will be the case there. Mud, plus 3 sand pits. For me, it shouldn’t be the factor to decide the outcome of a race, which it just might be this next week. Anyway, I’m driving towards the sand and mud in Louisville at this very moment. I have a physical therapy thing for my shoulder set up and then an awesome dinner after. Can’t get much better than that.

Check out the different in the composition of the sand in these two photos. The first is Klaas Vantornout at the 2013 Belgian cyclocross championships in Mol. The 2nd is Ryan Trebon and company in Boulder. See how the sand in the first photo holds the lines, while there are virtually no lines in the Boulder sand.