Author: kennettron

I did not win.

I thought I would.  I knew I would.  I would have even bet money on myself.  Dag nabbit I would have lost a lot of money!

The race: 700 meters up a very, very steep hill.  Nice and simple.  Just go as hard as you possibly can for a little under two minutes.

Winger and I were the only two HB’ers present.  Neither of us went fast enough to make the top five.  I was pretty depressed.  I know I shouldn’t have come into this race with huge expectations, seeing as I broke my collarbone five weeks ago.  But that excuse did NOT even register in my mind over the last few weeks while I dreamed about this race over and over again while absolutely killing myself doing daily double interval sessions.  And I refuse to use that as an excuse right now, even though mentioning it is basically using it as an excuse…so forget I even mentioned it.

I’ve been thinking of this race, this prologue more specifically, ever since my teammate Spencer told me about it last fall.  If you’re a regular follower of my blog, you know how much I like 1 minute efforts and steep, short climbs.  You’ve heard me brag about my 1 minute power numbers and how I consider myself to be practically unbeatable in this discipline, save for a head to head battle with Sir Chris Hoy (kilo world record holder).  And if you didn’t know this about me, now you do.  And you also know how wrong I am.  All my bragging about my strength over one minute has been futile.  Because today I SUCKED!!! What the hell?!! No, this situation calls for some foul language, god damn it.  What the FUCK!!!! is more like it.

You may be thinking, “Now hold on Kennettron, 1 minute is not quite the same as two.  And don’t you weigh like 230 kilograms?  You really expect to win against Will Routley?”  And to that I’d say, “Pint off.  1 minute is basically the same as two and yes I did expect to win against Will Routley!”

After the massacre on my body was over I felt like I was in a bad dream.  No way could I not make the finals in an event like this!!  You know that feeling you get when you KNOW you’re going to win a race or have a super good day?  I had that feeling about today.  I didn’t necessarily have that feeling today, but I had it about today for the last six months.  Maybe that was the problem.  Note to self: preconceived concepts don’t necessarily hold true.  Amazing.

I blew the F up about 1 minute into the prologue and completely died with roughly 50 seconds to go, meaning I was hurting for quite a long time.  There is no possible way I could have tried any harder.  Not even .0001% harder.  A lack of effort was not the reason I did so poorly.  I’d like to blame it on lack of fitness, which is usually my excuse for not winning and I feel like it’s a pretty dang good excuse too.

Let’s back up a bit.  First of all, you should know some facts about the race.  So here’s the way the race went down:

You line up next to one other guy at the base of the hill.  The two of you go for time, trying to get under 1:50.  The top 5 guys get to go again when everyone is done and the podium is decided on placing.  So technically you could set the fastest time of the day and only place fifth if you did poorly in the final.  Being extremely cocky today, this was my main concern. ha.

I think my time was 1:52.  The slowest qualifying time for finals was 1:48 I believe.  I could be wrong though, I don’t know the real results yet.  In fact I don’t even know who won, but I think Will did.

Anywho, I went against a fast guy from Red Truck (Cody) and he beat me.  He started out quicker than me for the first hundred or two hundred meters, I caught and passed him, I blew up, he passed me, he blew up, I started gaining on him, we crossed the finish line and the race was over.  I don’t know results yet but I think he got me by about 4 seconds, which is pretty substantial for this short of a race.  Hats off to him.  Or “rats” off to him if you’re a fan of Tom Goes to the Mayor, which you should be because that show is stupid funny.

For the next ten minutes or so I was in a stuper.  Massive headache, weak arms, weaker legs, blurred vision, holding back vomit, completely dazed and confused.  I seriously felt like I’d eaten a pot brownie, not that I’d know what that would be like.  Seriously.

I spent the next 45 minutes anxiously awaiting the results so I could know whether or not I’d get to go again.  I was in fifth place for a long time, just on the edge of making it into the finals.  Then at last they finally updated the results and I think I got bumped down to 50th or something.  Haha maybe not that bad.  I don’t know yet.  It was raining by then, I got really depressed, I was in awe at the lack of legs I had today.  This morning I went on a ride and felt like absolute pint.  Just awful.  Same as yesterday’s ride.  But after consuming roughly 625 mg of caffeine before warming up this evening, I was feeling pretty alright (that’s an exaggeration.  I feel like I need to start pointing out when I’m being sarcastic on my blog after I read a study about how most conservatives don’t realize Stephen Colbert is not actually a hard core republican).  Sarcasm is the least understood form of comedy.  Seriously.  Anyways, my victory was not to be.  I usually don’t get this worked up about doing crappy, but this race was different for some reason.  It was a race that I knew I could do well in–if the sensations were good.  I swear I’m not just talking myself up!! Honest!  Don’t beleive me, eh?  Well screw you, you pinting son of a pint.  I’ll show you all next year!!

All in all, I’m happy I’m able to race my bike so soon, happy that it’s summer, happy that I get to spend time with my good friend and teammate Chris Wingfield (haha JK), and even happier that I didn’t re-break my collarbone as I strained every muscle in my body to the absolute max to get up that damn hill today.

Hammer Nutrition’s Pre Race formula. Lots of caffeine and the phytonutrient quercetin–to take you up a level like drinking the goldenly delicious liquid of Lance Armstrong’s urine (FRS).

Cody and I at the start line. Each getting a nice pre-race ass massage from the two friendly people behind us.  My heart rate was already at 150 I think. And my entire body was shaking. I was jacked and ready to go…mentally. Obviously not physically. Duh.

*updated: I got 11th.  Will Routley won.

I made some amazing oats this morning.  Probably the best I’ve ever had.  Granted, I went to bed starving and was dreaming of food all night, but these oats were the bees ankles.  Very good. Here’s how to make them.

Directions for the best oats you’ll ever eat:

-1/4 cup of steel cut oats. Cook them for about half an hour, adding water as needed when is starts to get low. The longer you cook them the better they’ll be. Soaking them overnight will shorten the amount of time they need to be cooked.
-add about 1/2 cup of ripe bing cherries.
-half a banana
-1/2 cup of blueberries
-mix in all that fruit after the oats are already fully cooked. Only cook the fruit in the oats for about 2 minutes. You don’t want to zap out all the vitamins.
-next add a fair amount of salt
-throw in some pumpkin pie seasoning, or cinnamon if you don’t have any pumpkin pie seasoning
-a little vanilla extract
-next get out some vanilla ice cream out of the freezer
-throw the pot of oats away
-eat the ice cream

No but seriously, make these oats the way I said and then add a large spoon-full of vanilla ice cream. Best oats I’ve made in a long time. To make an even better tasting bowl of oats, double the ingredient quantities. No brainer.

I didn’t have a picture of the oats. So this will have to do. This is some toast with peanut butter, strawberry jam, and kippered herring. It was also very good.

The past two weeks of training have been a desperate attempt to get fit as fast as possible for Cascade. I have no idea whether or not it worked. My collarbone has healed miraculously in the past month and I’m able to stand up out of the saddle with no pain. I wasn’t sure if training hard while it was still broken would slow down the healing time, but whatever. It had to be done. So I did daily doubles just about every other day. A mix of 12, 4, and 1 minute intervals. Mostly 4 and 1 minutes. A two hour ride in the morning with 6×4″ and a two hour ride in the evening with 10×1″. Mine and my coach’s (Sam’s) theories were that high intensity would create the most gains in the least amount of times. I added in the idea of the daily doubles. With a few longer rides thrown in, the last two weeks I’ll have done a little over 40 hours with more intensity than I’ve ever done in my life. Surprisingly my legs still feel fine. Yesterday, a rest day after a hard day before, I began to question if I was training hard enough since I could pedal above 200 watts without too much difficulty. Usually after a really hard day my legs are so eff’d, sorry “pinted,” that I spend a recovery day just creeping along the road at 150 watts. So maybe I haven’t been training as hard as I thought. I’m not sure anymore. Everyone’s definition of hard is different. Anyways, the pain is there. And the only thing that really matters in this sport is your ability to suffer. And that, I’m positive I’ve trained well the last two weeks. So I present to you the second workout of the day, a short video clip of some intervals I did with my favorite interval playlist to go along. Catfishing here at it’s finest. Note: laughing will not be permitted while watching this video. This is a serious blog about serious, fact-oriented training and racing only.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_1-Tuv-Fus

WordPress is dumb. I can’t embed videos directly into the post without paying money. Screw you wordpress, get with the times.

NOT!!!

Lately I’ve been wondering if different sized, aged, and speeds of animals have different perceptions of time.  Not just different perceptions, as the broad meaning of the term goes, but if they actually visually perceive things at different speeds.  Take an ant for instance.  They don’t live very long and they move extremely fast, so fast I can’t even see what they’re really doing.  It’s all super twitchy to me like they’re in a strobe light.  They move so fast I can only see half of what they’re doing.  They must be able to see really fast too.  Next, take a Galapagos tortoise for comparison: super big, super slow, they live for 200 years.  My brother and I were not that impressed when we saw them in the wild, which wasn’t really the wild at all, but a 2-acre fenced in area in the woods with a 2 foot tall wall.  Any animal that can’t climb a 2 foot wall probably deserves to be turned into soup.  At first glance they were definitely cool, just being that big and old was something to consider.  But after a while I realized they were just too slow to be awe-inspiring–just like ants don’t really care about us because we’re too big and slow for their high speed, high anxiety, go-go-go High Rev. Mocha lifestyles where deadlines for that June expense report need to be met or else Johnson will be over your ass like a rabid orangoutang and you’ll have to work Saturday to get it finished and miss the one weekend a month that you have with the kids and your Ex, Margaret, will be really riled because she was using this weekend to visit some college friends on the east coast that she hadn’t seen in 12 years and now that she’ll have to cancel her trip because you have to work this weekend or get fired, she’ll talk even more trash about you to the kids behind your back–all while her boyfriend, Darner (what the hell kind of name is that you wonder?), that lives with your kids  moves in on your family and your youngest girl, Cynthia, has even started calling him Daddy–all this could be avoided though if the damn High Rev. Mocha machine at the Circle K had been working–then you wouldn’t have bonked on your last big ride on Sunday and would have come into work the next day on Monday with enough energy to get the week going right and finish up that June expense report on time before the weekend but now it’s too late since it’s 7:58pm on Friday and you’re not even half way done yet and your computer just froze.

So the tortoises…they move slow and live a long time.  Their perception of time must be slow too.  Opposite of ants.  So if they were to watch a fungus grow, to them it would appear to us like a time-lapse shot, moving and changing, bending around and getting larger right before their very eyes.  Think of how strange it would be to have to continually divert your direction while walking because trees kept magically sprouting up right in your path.  Another point is this: do an ant and a tortoise accomplish the same amount in their lifetimes?  An ant living 6 months and a tortoise 180 years?  The same distance covered even?

I’ve been covering some ground lately.  Not necessarily huge miles or hours, but some hard workouts.  The day before yesterday I did my first daily double workout in a long time.  V02 intervals in the morning and 1 minute intervals in the evening.  It was a super hard day.  You can’t really describe how much pain a day like that is with words, so tomorrow, when I plan to do a similar day of intervals, I’m going to tape my camera on backwards to my handlebars and document some good old fashioned cat-fishing.  Cat fishing (the term attributed to the facial expression made when a rider is in a great amount of pain due to oxygen depravation) is a long standing Peterson tradition.  The exercise doesn’t have to even be that painful to carry out a good catfish or grimace, my dad has been witnessed to produce amazing facial torque even when lifting non-heavy objects that he thinks will be heavy but really aren’t.

But of course the best cat fishing is done while on a bike during a race or intervals.  It can serve three purposes: the most common and important being 1) to maximize oxygen flow as imminent blowing up is about to happen or, 2) to intimidate opponent with loud, ragid breathing or, 3) to trick opponent into thinking you’re about to blow up when in fact you still have an extra gear–fooling them into going harder and trying to drop you, only for you to come around them and attack once they sit up a bit.

I’ve written about the catfish face before, but in case you forgot or didn’t hear about it: imagine a catfish out of water, desperately trying to gulp in air–but failing of course since catfish don’t have lungs.  The trick to it is that a catfish can survive out of water for hours, and while it appears they might be just about to die, once you throw em back in the water their fine.  Same goes for the concealed catfishing face–that number (3) on the list of purposes a catfish face serves.  If you know how to suffer properly you can catfish for hours on end and still take the sprint by surprise by at the end.

Speaking of fish, if I had to chose three foods to live off of for the rest of my life I would choose bananas, peanut butter, and kippered herring.  I think the combination would actually make a great pre-race meal.  If I had to choose only one food to live on for the rest of my life it would definitely be kippered herring (Kippered Snacks to be more specific).  If you haven’t tried them, you’re an idiot.  And if you tried them and don’t like them you’re an idiot that deserves to be shot.  They’re everything you could want in a canned fish.  Pungent fishy oder, salty after-taste, slight crunch of bone, oily, and simply mouth watering.  I’m salivating just thinking about them!!  They come in three flavors that I know of: regular, lemon-pepper, and tomato.  I’ve never had tomato before because I like the regular and lemon-pepper flavors so much.  I’m always on the look out for a good Kippered Snacks deal whenever I’m at the store.  It’s quite often the first aisle I go down.  The problem is, they’re usually not on sale.  And when they aren’t on sale they’re like a $1.45 a can, which is a god damn rip off because it’s just a tiny piece of fish in a can! It should be cheaper than fresh fish but it isn’t, because it has “added value” from processing, just like potatoes that have been fried in cheap oil and turned into potato chips.  The mark up on added value consumables is ridiculous and we’re all a herd of stupid sheep for going along with it and paying $4 for a box of cereal that’s only made up of corn, corn oil, and corn sugar.  So that’s why I’m going on a Kippered Herring strike.  I refuse to pay more than a dollar per can and I won’t be purchasing any Kippered Herring until I see a drastic drop in price all across the board–not just at Win-Co.  Please join me in picketing outside the Fred Meyers tomorrow morning and we can display how inefficient efficient Democracy in a Capitalist-run world really is!

No photographer has ever been able to capture an image of an unopened can of Kippered Snacks.  Their deliciousness is too overwhelming and immediate consumption must be pursued.

Also of importance in my life events (and I say this not to be crude, immature, or silly, but out of pure seriousness, integrity, and mind-baffling awe of the human body): last night I farted for 45 seconds straight.  I shit you not.  And I wasn’t estimating either, I was watching a ticking clock.  Sadly this is nowhere near the world recored, which I looked up after completing the great feat.  The world record is 2 minutes and 42 seconds.

If my intervals today had a stereotypical personality and accent, say–like the Character in South Park, Lu Kim, who owns City Wok and can’t pronounce the letter L–they’d likely have taunted me me with “Ohhh, your regs no feer so good today huh Kennett??  They don’t rike me very much do they? You want more rest you big baby??  Maybe you break your other corrarbone on purpose so you don’t have to ride a hard anymooore??  Maybe you cry rike rittow baby and mommy come craddre you and a change your messy diaper??”  But my intervals did not have a personality.  And there’s nothing funny about racist stereotypes either.  If you even cracked a smile at all you’re a racist.  I’m not though.  I wrote it with a straight face.

No, my intervals were emotionless, coldly quiet and calm–letting me soak in the fact that I currently suck.  No insults were needed to get the point across, for the brutal honesty of my performance alone left a bad enough taste in my mouth–kind of like phlegm and bile, which would make sense.

I’m in Bend for the next two weeks trying to get in shape quick for the fast approaching Cascade Classic.  If only there were some teammates around to do some through-and-off with.  Tour of White Rock, which unfortunately is no where near or is at all related to White Castle Burgers like I assumed, starts even sooner–in approximately 17 days.  How fit can you ‘git in 17 days you ask?  Pretty fit I say!  That’s under the surmise that you can get equally fit in 17 days as you can get UN-fit in 17 days.  I’d like to think I was pretty fit 17 days ago.  And look how slow I am now!  I’m happy there’s so much room to improve.  I managed to keep my weight where it should be during the last couple weeks, so that’s not an issue.  In fact I think I might have lost some weight (from my ego) and gained some modesty.  My plan is to find a machine that converts modesty into watts, either that or do a pint-load of intervals.

This one’s for you Spencer.  You said you had no appetite.  If this doesn’t get things going I don’t know if we can be friends anymore.

If anyone has any secrets about getting fit quick you should tell me.  An internet thread tells me there’s some sort of “special training” that can be implemented for a quick fix that’s all the rage in Europe.  What kind of training is this?  I’m guessing they’re talking about 2 minute intervals.  No one ever does 2 minute intervals or ever talks about them, and I’m a little suspicious as to why.  I’m guessing they could be the best kept secret in the pro ranks.

Joke’s aside, I’d still rather be hit by a truck than dope.  At least if I got hit by a truck there’d be some chance I could live with myself, if I lived.  I don’t know what makes some people capable of rationalizing certain things.  Heads of corporations, politicians, Alberto Contador–all born without a conscience and not a care in the world for the “little people” whose lives are destroyed by their greed and self-absorption.  You can only hope that you’re actually the only living human being in existence, encased in a fake terrarium world being observed by alien robots who are attempting to see just how much this strange being’s morale can put up with by exposing it to ridiculous scenarios where the most evil and vile people are the wealthiest and most beloved.

Take that picture of the White Castle burgers for instance.  Just burgers you say?  “No harm done if eaten in moderation, which is the responsibility of the consumer.”  No.  That’s wrong.  First of all, people are inherently stupid.  We don’t make good choices when faced with difficult decisions like, “do I make myself obese by eating burgers every day, or do I eat an apple instead?”  The people who prey on our stupidity and ignorance know just how stupid and ignorant we are.  The manufacturers of the burgers want the cheapest ingredients possible, health issues are of no importance, money is.  The cattle-raising corporations want the cheapest food for their cattle, health and humanity issues are of no importance, only money is.  The corn producing corporations (note: farmers don’t exist anymore) want the cheapest GMO seed and fertilizer, the fact that they’re responsible for the obesity epidemic in the US doesn’t matter, only money does.  The fertilizer corporations (responsible for the overpopulation of the earth) want the cheapest oil to make their product.  There you go.  White Castle supports the genocide we’re creating in the Middle East over oil.  It seems so simple a solution: to stop eating at White Castle or McDonalds or to not drive a car anymore or to not buy things made overseas, but if the easy option exists people will always take it.  If I were in a bike race and got off the front with one other guy and he said, “You have the option to sit on and I’ll take us all the way to the finish line where you can sprint me and easily take the win, or you can help pull,”–I’d say “yes please!” to the first option before he even gave me the second one.  It wouldn’t be right or the honorable way to win, but I’d do it anyways.  Unfortunately people in the States now think that socialism means communism and that capitalism is the only civilized way to run a country–all a constructed media ploy by CEOs to take control of the world, which they’ve successfully done.  We’re fools to believe Obama has any real influence on a damn thing.  Yes of course he’s better than Bush and he’s been able to make improvements in a lot of areas.  But we’re still driving gas 4x4s, burning coal, killing Iraqi civilians, fear mongering our citizens with fantasies of terrorist attacks, fast food restaurants and junk food corporations are seeing all time high profits, education is more costly than ever, and most importantly, bike races are still disappearing from the NRC!! (Utah)  I should go back in time to the dark ages and I’d have even more to complain about.

“What are you doing to improve the world,” asks Larry.  Well, Larry, I’ve got an answer finally: I’m biding my time.

While driving up I-5 from Sherwood to Portland, yesterday to meet Eli for a bike ride, I found myself stuttering over the same two swear words in anger over the slow traffic.  I was at “Terwiliger Curves,” which sounds ominous, dangerous, and evil like a night-time mountain descent on a twisting road in a rainstorm while fleeing the haunted mansion up at the top.  But it’s actaully just two 45 degree turns on the freeway where a bunch of idiots always jam their brakes on and crash into each other.  “Oh no there’s a turn in the road, what do I do!!!  I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know so I’ll swerve underneath this semi truck here and slam my brakes on, that should be a safe place for me!”  I try to drive like I’m in a bike race, using as little energy as possible.  This means that when I’m driving I don’t like to slam my brakes on and sprint out of every corner and waste gas.  I like to coast down hills and jump in the slipstream of other cars right as I pass them to sling shot around.  And of course my director Joe Holmes can explain the intricacies of forming a proper car echelon when there’s a strong cross wind.

Back on topic, I was tripping over the same couple swear words, repeatedly using them in the same sentence like some idiot with a tiny vocabulary.  They were my two favorite swear words, yes, but still it sounds dumb and trashy to use them that much.  I thought that maybe I swear too much in public.  It would be nice to have a swear word that no one would know about  so you could use it whenever you wanted, even in front of little kids and old people.  Plus if you only had one swear word you wouldn’t feel like an idiot while trying to scramble a bunch of different foul words together to form a sentence.  It’s hard to think of an adjective AND a noun.  One word should be enough.  So I started thinking of single syllable words that don’t mean anything  but could sound menacing if shouted.  I came up with “pint.”  I haven’t yet decided whether or not to pronounce it like the measuring unit or they way that it rhymes with lint.   Regardless, it works as both an adjective and a noun.  Say someone is driving super slow down a hill where if they were going uphill, they’d actually be going faster because they’d be less afraid for some reason:  “You stupid pinting pint!! Stop braking on the pinting downhill, you’re in a god pint car for pint’s sake!”  Believe it or not I’d normally only use one swear word in this sentence anyways.  Actually two but only one of them once.  Now that I’m swearing off all other swear words I won’t have an excuse for not being original with my curses.  You can’t be original if you’ve only got one option.

Other news:  I’ve been able to get in two 3-hour rides on Thursday and Friday, and yesterday I rode the Bridge of the Gods route with Eli in the glorious afternoon summer sun.  We covered 109 miles in a little under 5.5 hours.  My legs are feeling mediocre, which is probably really good considering the circumstances.  It feels great to be outside on my bike again, feeling tired after rides, and eating.

Pint didn’t work very well in the real world and I ended up yelling good old fashioned swear words at a bus that pulled out in front of me and at some potholes that hurt my collarbone.  Speaking of my collarbone, it’s pretty much fully healed.  I can even get out of the saddle a bit now.  I’m not going to try sprinting for a few more days but it’s doing really well and is healing much faster than I could have hoped for.

Riding five hours yesterday didn’t bother my collar bone too much, but I felt it after picking strawberries today.  I went to a you-pick place and collected about 15 pounds, five of which bypassed the boxes and were collected directly into my mouth.  I’m excited to see the color of my bowl movement tomorrow morning.

Thomas don’t give a pint.

I went on my first outdoor ride today.  I suffered for six days of no riding at all and then another four days of indoor trainer riding, which is the longest I’ve been off the bike (outside) in two years.  The trainer was so boring yesterday that I convinced myself that my collarbone was capable of riding outside today.  It ended up being partially true.  The first five minutes of the ride I had a huge grin on my face.  No pain at all.  I can’t put any pressure on my shoulder and can’t stand up out of the saddle of course, but I could ride just fine.  And my legs didn’t feel half bad either.  After about a half hour of riding my grin turned to a grimace and I wasn’t singing along with my Cheryl Crow playlist anymore either.  Instead I was cursing the potholes and bumps of Brookman rd.  A few minutes later, as I dodged traffic crossing highway 99, I miss-clipped getting into my right pedal which sent a jolt of pain up to my shoulder.  From then on I was extra careful, though the damage was done and I felt it throbbing for the rest of the ride.  But all in all, I was happy with how it felt.  Tomorrow I’ll go longer and see how two or maybe even three hours feels.

Since I don’t have enough riding or racing material for a full blog post I’ll pose some serious hypothetical questions:

Question the first: If you had to chose between every piece of food you ate for the rest of your life being either slightly too spicy or NOTHING every being spicy again, which would you chose?

#2: Choose between losing one eye–or–three fingers on one hand and a thumb on the other.

#3: You have the choice between having the capability to fly (like superman), but only once a month for a day and you can’t tell anyone about it or use it to make money–or–not being able to fly but you get 100 million dollars.

#4: Would you willingly lose the ability to read and write if it meant you could earn yourself a spot on Omega Pharma-Lotto? (Pro tour team).

#5: Choose between only eating vegetables and nothing else for the rest of your life–or–being slapped in the face (hard) every morning to get woken up.

#6: Choose between riding outside in the sun and taking the chance to re-break the flimsy, jell0-ee bone in your shoulder going over a pothole–or– ride the trainer in the garage.

#7: Chinese buffet or Indian buffet.

Now onto the real story of the week.  Imagine this dog:

Wow, never mind.  I just wasted 45 minutes trying to photoshop Thomas’ head onto a man’s body wearing a business suit.  Aparently I don’t remember anything from my Photoshop classes in high school or college.  And another thing: Why doesn’t auto spelling recognize “aparantly” or “aparently” as apparently?  I always have to look that word up on google to find out how it’s spelled.  Now I’m almost too distracted and unmotivated to even write what I was going to write before.  Actually I am.  So never mind.  I had a good story to tell (not really that good) but photoshop ruined it for me.

A few weeks ago I wrote about dealing with set backs. I said that when you’re faced with adversity you should push through it and persevere (pshh), which everyone already knew from the lessons learned from any sit-com or movie. When I wrote that ish I had just had a bad couple rides at Mount Hood and after reconciling my overreaction about those bad rides, I shrugged them off, took my own advice and had myself a good last day of racing. Then, on the bike, I felt even better a few days later. And even better a few days later after that! Amazing. Things really were turning around, just like in the movies! But since then I’ve come to realize the errors of my teachings. I was wrong.

I crashed, got hurt, and now can’t ride for weeks, if not decades. When you fall off the horse you shouldn’t get back on because you’ll most likely get knocked off again and get paralyzed. When Life gives you lemons it’s probably time to just curl up in a dark place and let yourself slowly die from dehydration and malnourishment. In other words, you should admit defeat sooner rather than later, because we’re all going to die at some point and our short, stupid lives are pointless to begin with so we might as well just get it over with.

As you may know, I’ve been off the bike for four days now. It’s been…rough. My injury is not a great one. I’m in no pain and I’ll recover relatively shortly. But that’s not the point. This is the horse bucking me off. Do I get back on and open myself up to another bucking? Possibly the LAST bucking? Or do I humbly and shamefully admit defeat and spend the rest of my days as a normal simpleton, avoiding risk while also avoiding life’s thrills. The answer is neither, duh. I already said the answer in the first paragraph! I said to go find a dark closet and let oneself die of malnourishment. Come on, pay attention. I wasn’t speaking figuratively. That’s how all of our problems need to be solved. Then there’d be no more problems.

In other news my legs are extremely sore today. Yesterday I went on a walk and later did 200 squats in the kitchen while I was eating a couple bananas. Any wincing I catch myself doing is in response to my aching legs, not my broken collarbone, which doesn’t hurt at all and is a pretty lame excuse for an injury if I do say so myself. I mean, if I’m going to be sidelined it might as well HURT a bit, come on!

I went to the doctor’s today and was looking forward to some good news about my collarbone. First of all, since I was seeing a specialist, this could be information that I’d be able to trust, unlike what I was told at the Tulsa hospital, in which I had lost all confidence.

Turns out the doctor I saw today used to teach pre-med at Tulsa University–the university hospital that I went to.

Uhhh, whoa. Small world. Turns out I was basically given all correct information at that first hospital, so the ER guy there knew his stuff. My new doctor also said that ER rooms are always like that–they ignore you if you aren’t about to die. In my defense, they never asked me if I was about to die so how would they know, especially without even looking at any of my injuries upon the fist hour and a half of my arrival? I suspect that when they ask you what kind of pain you’re in on a scale of 1 to 10, you shouldn’t reply with, “Zero. Or one I guess. I don’t know, it doesn’t really hurt. I mean, if you punched me in the shoulder it would hurt like hell. Like a five or so.” I think they might rate the importance of seeing you based on the number you say. Next time, even if I go in for a large splinter in my toe like my brother once did, I’m screaming a blood curdling “TEEEENNN!!!” at the top of my lungs.

Anyways, the diagnosis: fracture near the end of the bone, no surgery needed, little or no AC ligament separation, 8 weeks to full healing time–meaning I could be back on the bike in two weeks (that’s what I heard anyways), though he did not recommend it in case I crash again. But what are the chances of that? Zero. Or 100%. Those are the only two options, so therefore the only two percentages. Just like the weather. What’s the chance of rain? Zero or 100%. It’s going to rain or it isn’t. Or if it’s Oregon, it’s just 100%. I didn’t pay attention during statistics in high school. I was too preoccupied staring out the window at the rain.

there will be no capitols spelling fixes or question marks in my posts for a while because im writing only with my lefy hand.  shit.  gonna stick to my word and not go back and change that.  Ah, never mind.  I just figured out I can type perfectly well with my right hand.  Though now that the challenge of it is gone, I don’t feel like writing anymore.

The first half of the day, as you remember if you read my blog post from yesterday, was pretty chill and somewhat boring.  After our morning ride we laid around eating and writing blog posts.  By the way, that video took me roughly four hours to make.  But eventually the day finally turned to bike racing.  We headed out the door into the heat again at 8pm and rode over to the downtown Blue Dome crit course.  I was feeling pretty good on the ride over and the adrenaline was building as we entered the gated off streets surrounding the course.  There were thousands of spectators lining the figure 8 shaped crit, but after a half hour of warming up they all left when all of a sudden it got dark and a huge thunder and lighting storm rolled into town, dumping billions if not trillions of tons of rain on everyone.  The cat 1/2 race ended right before the storm reached its worst point and I went out on the poorly lit course to take a few laps and get the feel of it.  I ended up taking 30 psi out of my tires.  It poured extremely hard for 15 minutes.  Lighting strikes were going off every minute and thunder boomed and echoed among the nearby skyscrapers.

sorry for not giving props to the photographer, I don’t know who took this.

It was still warm out, which was good, and the rain eventually stopped and our race got underway at 9:30pm.  I had a great spot and lined up right at the front.

The gun went off, but we had already started when the announcer said, “ready..”

I fell back pretty quickly, not from the pace but from taking corners like a puss.  It was extremely slick and crashes were occurring on every lap, sometimes two crashes per lap.  I got “stuck” behind a crash and took a free lap, which helped move me back up a bit.  Everyone else was doing this too though and I eventually realized I was too far back again.  My legs were feeling phenomenal though.  I’m not sure if the entire race was just super slow or if I was feeling really good, but I pretty much nosed breathed all of it, slowly moving up until I got into the top 30, which I felt was pretty safe (relatively) and waited there for a good opportunity to get to the front and attack.  The time never came for me because with about 30 minutes left to race I went down hard into a pile of crashing riders in front of me (not on a corner even, just on the straightaway downhill).  I went over the bars and landed hard on my right shoulder.  I let out a loud “UGHHHH” or two and a few guys crashed on top of me.  The wind was knocked out of me and I laid on the ground as riders got off of me and bikes were pealed apart from everyone’s limbs.  I saw Quinn on the ground, but he got up pretty quickly and headed over to the medical tent to stop his bleeding nose. Apparently my mom and a bunch of other people had seen the crash on Velonews’ live online coverage, with me at the bottom of the pile of carnage. I wish I could find the footage.

Yours truly before crashing. Photo from Lyne at Podium Insight. She was kind enough to give me a shout out about the crash and broken collar bone. Thanks Lyne. Check out her website for some awesome night time crit photos and great coverage of the rest of the races.

I thought I could continue to race, maybe, as I regained my breath.  I knew my shoulder was pretty screwed up but I lifted it to see if I could move it and I could, so my first thought was that it wasn’t broken.  As the massive amounts of adrenaline started to wear off though, I realized I couldn’t take a full breath of air (still can’t) and my shoulder and back began seizing up.  I began limping my bike over to the wheel pit area to get back into the race anyways, but half way into the walk over there I knew I wouldn’t be starting again.  I’d never broken a bone before, but I knew pretty quickly that my collar bone was broken. Damn it. It was a super exciting, fun race too…up until I broke something. The course was pitch black, wet, big crowds, hot out even at 10PM, and I was feeling great and finally taking the corners pretty confidently. Apparently I’m not indestructible like I had thought.

I got really angry for the next hour.  The race medics were dumb as shit and they didn’t think the collar bone was broken because they “couldn’t see anything poking through.”  No shit.  OK, for that matter these geniouses must be able to diagnose all types of internal injuries from just glancing at someone.  “Well, I can’t see any brain tumors from where I’m standing, so I think you’re in the clear, sir. Congratulations you don’t need chemo!”

After a lot of time standing around trying to organize a ride to the hospital, my teammate Ian and I were lead to a car by a woman who was going to the hospital anyways because her husband had just gotten out of shoulder surgery (from crashing earlier that week).  Ian was a super good teammate and friend and offered to go with me even though I said no at first.  He was basically my right hand man when we got to the hospital (I made that joke last night too–it was my right shoulder that was broken).

He did my paperwork, helped me hassle the idiot woman at the ER front desk about me not being able to sign my name properly because I was using my left hand to sign an “X”, cracked jokes about Sam’s mom, and made sure I sat down when I started seeing stars.  I had a pretty decent headache last night and right now, although my helmet doesn’t show too much signs of trauma.

My demeanor had been pretty poor up until we saw a chick with huge tits walk past us as we were lead to my second ER waiting room.  I mean, they were simply massive and not from being fat either, she was all natural and hot.  In a split second I decided I had the right to just blatantly stare, since I was injured.  Ian got the brunt of her apparent displeasure in my staring and got glared at since he wasn’t injured.

I began joking around a bit more after that as I realized I’d said enough swear words in the last hour to last me a month, and that being angry wouldn’t solve a fucking–I mean dang–thing.  I spent the next hour waiting for the idiot staff at that shitty hospital to get to work.  In the meantime I roamed around looking for bandages and things to steal as Ian shook his head disapprovingly.

Ironically I’d told Alan Adams, my teammate who broke his neck, that the injuries on our team were going to get slightly less dramatic over the next couple weeks. Turned out to be true. Also ironic, I just visited my other injured teammate, Chris, at the hospital a few days before we left for Tulsa and had felt extremely happy to not be stuck in a hospital, injured and off the bike like he was. So it goes.

We got to the run down shit-hole hospital, which was pretty empty, at 11:00PM and left well after 1:00PM.  This is what happened in the mean time, other than four different people coming in and asking for my address.

Turns out it was a teaching hospital. And a shitty one at that too. I imagine the University of Tulsa isn’t very high on the list of top medical schools in the states.

With all the time we had in our room to sit around doing nothing, I felt compelled to shoot a few wads of artificial semen–I mean foaming hand sanitizer–out onto the floor for someone to slip on.

Wheelchair ride to the X-ray room. Very excite!

The stickers are going on my laptop. Looking at the X-rays with the technician, I could tell something didn’t look right, but he wasn’t sure if anything was broken or not. I still held on hope that it was just tweaked weird or something.

No one came to clean up my wounds, ask if I had hit my head, look into my eyes with a flashlight to see if I had a concussion, nothing. So I was left to scavenge through all the drawers and find the necessary implements to scrub out the small bits of road rash I had and bandage them up. Ian helped me cut some bandages with the knife on my multi tool. Then I wandered around in the hall looking for food and found us a few free cans of soda. We hadn’t eaten anything after the crit and it was well past midnight by now. Ian was getting a crazed look in his eye and I feared that he might start scavenging around in the biohazard trash can looking for spare body parts to chow on.

The bottom of my shoes took a beating in the crash.

Finally the prognosis: broken collar bone. I got mad again. A nurse came in to give me an arm sling and she felt compelled to inform us that she “wasn’t from this hick state” when we told her we were from Oregon and Washington. “Oh, Oregon! I’m from Montana.” Soooo, you’re from a different hick state, that isn’t anywhere near Oregon? OK cool. Make yourself useful and go get us some damn sandwiches!. Ian was very rude to her because his blood sugar was getting low.

After another half hour of waiting for a ride, we finally got home around 2:00am and ate cereal. Spencer had held back on the five bags that had been there that morning and saved a quarter bag for us.

I wrote most of this the day after it happened (yesterday–Saturday), but now I’m home in Sherwood Oregon, missing the rest of Tulsa, all of Tour of America’s Dairyland, and Nationals. I’m guessing three weeks away from racing at least. I hope to be well enough to do White Rock and Cascade in July. Sucks to be off the bike now because I was finally coming into form like I usually do in the summer. But it’s bound to happen at some point. Broken clavicles are bread and butter injuries for cyclists. I’m not sure that metaphor makes sense. Anyways, not enough people clicked on my youtube video of Spencer, Ian’s and my ride the other day. So watch it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QltVg5uwxuU

Last night I dreamed that I was living in a post apocalyptic world where only a handful of people had survived whatever holocaust event there had been.  I was living in a forest as a mother wolf/Native American (I’m not sure which one).  Previously in my dream I had been dreaming about a world where a bunch of different eras of people unknowingly co-existed in a land separated by large lakes.  Two modern era people got trapped here when a door closed on them and I think I was one of these people.  We spent a long time trying to break down the door to get back into the real world before we gave up and ventured off into the strange world we were now a part of.  Anyways, that dream eventually turned into the dream where I was the wolf/Native American, so I’m assuming this is where the wolf dream took place.

All of a sudden my pups and I were being chased by an invading army of white men, all in medieval armor.  The rest of the dream was of me teaching my pups how to avoid being detected as we ran from them throughout the forest.  Occasionally I’d hunt down and kill someone for us to eat.  It was a stressful time for the wolf family, but we survived.  Then we finally got cornered in a tree-house; we managed an escape by jumping down 50 feet but then we got trapped in a cabin where each knight came in to attempt to kill me in one-on-one battle.  By now I was in a human form and I had an entire arsenal of dark-age weapons at my disposal on the cabin wall.  The rest of the dream was very gory.  Then I woke up and ate breakfast and went on this ride:

(Don’t worry I’m not RickRolling you)

Enjoy,

Tulsa Tough Morning Ride @youtube

By the way, the guys you see at the end are fishing.  With compound bows and arrows.  Yep.

Spencer and Ian.

PS don’t put your cycling shoes in the washing machine on warm wash/medium heat drying.

Boy hidy it be dang gum hot down a heaaah in da south!

Last night I got to Tulsa, Oklahoma, at around 9:30pm.  Spencer and Ian arrived an hour and a half later and we were picked up by Tim, the race promoter and our host for the weekend.  So by 11:30 or so I stepped out into the dark outside the airport terminal and was blasted in the face with a gust of hot wind.  It was over 80 and almost midnight!  It’s summer here and has been summer for the last month and a half.  Oregon and Washington, not so much.

I woke up at the crack of noon and Ian, Spencer and I built our bikes and ate some bananas before heading out into the sun.  Immediately upon opening the back door I was blasted in the face again, this time with some 97 degree wind.  We rode around Tulsa for an hour and a half, checking out the Cry Baby Hill crit course and then some roads and bike paths out of town.  We were treated to some genuine southern hospitality as several cars honked and flipped us off.  They probably didn’t appreciate Spencer’s crude Canadian behavior in public, after this is the bible belt and there are standards to uphold.

We were riding along a bike path at one point and Spencer thought he saw a snake in a pond so we went back to check but it was just a stick….umm what else happened.  That was pretty much the highlight.

We got back home and ate some cereal out of the pantry.  Then we laid around for an hour recovering from the heat until we mustered up some energy to go ride to the grocery store.  I got a watermelon, some apples, some peaches which were on sale for $1/pound, keifer, bananas, apples, mushrooms, eggs, pineapple juice, and clams.  Upon checkout, the bagging guy asked about the bikes and what we were here for.  We told him we were in town for some bike races.  He himmed and hawed about how far we’d come just to race a one mile bike race.  I was confused by how confused he was.  Then we went to Whole Foods to go to the sample aisle.  Then we rode home.

Now we’re getting ready to go ride again downtown to El Guapo’s Mexican restaurant, which serves endless chips and salsa in huge bowls.  It’s the best Mexican restaurant in Oklahoma.  Quite possibly the entire world.

We just got back.  It was fantastic.  Soooo much chips and salsa.  We all got the rice bowl, which was really good because it meant we got to eat more chips with it.  As we left the restaurant there were three hot girls standing outside on the corner deciding where to go or something.  We pretended to talk about amongst ourselves while we gawked for five minutes behind them.  Neither Spencer nor Ian had showered for two days, so we left without saying anything.  I myself was looking pretty good in my super short running shorts and home-made V neck Mt. Hood Cycling Classic T shirt.  Then we rode home and Spencer ate seven bowls of cereal.