I have actually been racing

This whole having lots of teammates thing is a big adjustment for me let me tell ya.  I have gone from receiving maybe two emails a week related to my team racing to perhaps an average of 5 per day.  I've gone from having no teammates racing with me at most races to racing with 9 or more other teammates at some races.

It's a little different.  People are a little different and I don't think I'm really known to have lots of charisma and bonding, yet I do have a lot of passion for racing and sometimes, perhaps often times find myself not having the same approach to training and racing as other people do.  However, I really hope to continue and experience a year on a big team to really have a good feel for what that is like.  And also to develop my social skills so that perhaps I become slightly more charismatic and able to get along with more people than not.  

For whatever reason, competition brings out a whole different side of me which is quite different from my otherwise quiet demeanor in most situations.  And I think that dichotomy throws off - perhaps puts off - some or perhaps a lot of people.  I've been writing on this blog for 4 years now, but I've been holding my tongue or rather not publishing a few critiquing blog posts and flustered emails.  I know I've been inspired by one of my favorite bike racing bloggers, PruDog who I would say is not one to hold back on his blog posts.  There's something about communicating on the internet that just leads to writing things you may never say in person to someone (or maybe I don't know him well enough).

So without further ado, race reports:

The Dirty #1

Oddly enough, I was feeling really good for this race.  Last year I was getting dropped in my first few races.  When all was said and done, I was not the most happiest joyful person in the world to learn that with 33% of the field being our team, our team's best result was 8th.  The next day I sent a very detailed email explaining what went wrong and what could be improved.  Some didn't like it, some did, most didn't, I really don't know, but I now am encouraged to not send emails like that.

Sequim/Mason Lake #1

Sequim's rain shadow just couldn't hold it for those last 2 laps.  HSP kicked everyone's butt.  They had also had at least 10 teammates, but got 1st, 2nd, 5th and 8th.  Slightly better results, but with all due respect former pro's and very motivated racers.  I didn't do well in the field sprint because I still don't have the field sprinting technique down.

Mason Lake was all right and I found myself sitting in more often than usual.  I'm still deciding whether that is a good or bad thing.  I'm leaning towards bad, I think PruDog would agree.  It came to a field sprint again and again I didn't do well.

Oh, an important thing to note - while Brant and I were up in Washington getting our asses handed to us by HSP, the rest of our Oregon contingent pulled out the W in the 123 race at the Dirty #2.  Guess they showed me who knew something about bike racing, or were they proving something after receiving that very detailed email?  One thing is for sure, Dean attacked a lot.

Sequim/Mason Lake #2

My girlfriend Laurel came up with me which was awfully nice of her.  I felt like I had a little bit of a governor on my upper end fitness, but I hung in there.  My crash avoidance skills were pretty good as 2 crashes happened right in front of me.  The first crash was on the 3rd lap and I was able to avoid that and catch on easily.  The 2nd crash was at 400 to go and somehow I ended up standing upright without a scratch on the new bike in the middle of maybe a dozen other riders on the ground.  I had to step over at least 3 people to get out of that.

Over at Mason Lake, I was prepared for the worst as the radar looked like about 3/4 of an inch of rain was about to dump on us as we started (it didn't).  I wore my rain jacket as my jersey which Bedford astutely noted for it's excellent parachute-like quality with my race numbers.  The amount of pros at the race had me sort of starstruck (I get giddy inside when Morgan Schmitt remembers my name).

My move of the race was at the end of lap 1 when I figured I might as well get this party started by doing a break and waiting for the inevitable pro bridging up to me.  Sure enough Steve Fisher came along with a HSP rider in tow, but then we were caught just before the first hill after corner 1.  I got dropped, but I caught back on.  I got dropped numerous other times that following lap and then I got dropped for good on lap 3.  I made it my goal to complete 5 laps without getting lapped by the Cat 3 breakaway group.

I'm still running through all the factors that caused this embarrassing situation.  I think it had less to do with the parachute-like outfit and my top candidates are not getting my new bike fit after it being built, not having my carbon wheels, having a spoke about to fall out of the front wheel I did have, too many blueberries for dinner the previous evening, and a sleep debt of approximately 1,000 hours over these past 4 years of racing.  But I'm just writing it off as a bad day like I had last year at Heiser Farms where I got lapped.  At Mason Lake I didn't get lapped by about 7 minutes when Rathe came by and did a victory salute consisting of making his race number as visible as possible from under his rain jacket.

done, publish, try to sleep, bye.

My Bikes: STOLEN: Giant Seek 3

Equipment

Frame & Fork:	2009 Giant Seek 3
Crankset:	Stock
Chainring:	Stock Triple. Chain Guard is broken off.
Handlebar:	Stock
Pedals:	Stock
Shifters:	Stock
Chain:	Relatively new chain
Deraileurs:	Stock
Brakes:	Stock disc brakes
Saddle:	Stock, part of the fabric is coming off
Water bottle cage:	Bell Cage
Fenders:	Permanent fenders with no flaps

Wheel Set:

Wheels:	Stock
Tires:	Schwalbe Marathon tires

Personal Stories about this bike

I used this bike to ride around town to get groceries, etc. It was a very handy bike.

It was stolen last night. I locked it up to a small parking sign outside my building at SW 5th & Clay in downtown Portland. When I got out to go to work this morning, the bike along with the sheet metal sign had been stripped off of the pole.

HAHA!

The previous week, it seemed like there was a common theme going on where there were situations happening to me that would've elicited this response from onlookers:


As noted in my Walla Walla post, I discovered that one of my cleat screws was missing and thus tried to fix it in the morning, but had to go to Athlete's Lounge to get the correct screws and then ended up finally getting to work at 11:30.  At PIR it was a rather dull race for me since I still couldn't figure ou that close to the front is the better place to be for a sprint.


On Thursday, I did some 3 minute hillclimbs up upper hall drive.  On the 2nd climb, my left cleat was extremely loose between the shoe and the first apparatus of the cleat.  And this lady in regular clothes with commuter bike with a pannier bag on her bike climbed up the hill just 20ish seconds slower than me, which made me feel not very fast.

Then, when I went to pick up my bag that I had left behind a power box.  But it was gone.  I then biked around the area and found the wallet that was in my bag on the ground by a street kid and got that back.  Then I saw my bag on the bench and got that back.  Then I saw my U-Lock in the hands of another street kid and also my keys in his hands which I convinced him to give back.  But, I was still missing my employee badge, drivers license, phone and $40.  I called the cops which arrived about a minute too late.




At least I had a few encounters with other strangers the rest of the weekend that made up for that bad experience.  On Friday night, my frat bro, Gianpaolo came down for two nights.  On Saturday night I borrowed another longboard from Peter and we skateboarded through Ladds, across the river on Hawthorne and then down the garage until security kicked us out.  Then Sunday night to Tuesday night I hosted my first couchsurfer Charles who had a bunch of fun in town.

Right, so back to race day Saturday at Eugene.  Continuing with the random strangers, I carpooled with an OBRA listserv dude down there who then stayed for the weekend.  And on the way back I picked up a craigslist rideshare gal and drove her as far as Salem and made back most of my stolen wallet money.  But the race definitely had a tone of HAHA to it.  HAHA first off to all the riders who flatted.  I rode 25c tires and had no problems and was doing great the first 2 laps.  On lap 3 there were some breakaway attempts and such, but no dice so I stayed at the back.  Then going into the gravel I started slowly riding off the front and then kept going and before I knew it I was about a mile ahead of the field.

I tried to maintain a maintainable pace, but there was plenty of looking back over my shoulder.  I stayed out there the rest of that lap and hoped I could pull off something at the end.  The next time up the hill I was trying to conserve some energy and sort of went through some traffic of the women's field.  Once I got on the backstretch the gap was not enough for my comfort but I knew I should save something for the rollers.  I thought that if I made it through the final curve with a gap I'd have a chance.

Except Rob English seeked his revenge and caught me at 1k, then another Eugene guy gave a kamakazie sprint and then the rest of the field passed me and I ended up 21st, just one place out of Oregon Cup points.  After the finish I had to do a cool down partly cause I was at threshold for the past 45 minutes and partly cause I was pissed off at the peleton.  I rode until I didn't want to yell at anyone and then I turned back.

At least this week has been a rest week, so I've got a little break.

Catching Up With Life

...or is life catching up with me? It has been an interesting past few weeks. This post will catch y'all up on the latest and greatest:

Romance

Since it was just recently Valentines day and all, let's get the romantic news out of the way. And what I have to report to the world is that I guess that I am single again. Without going into details, I'll just say that there were some communication issues that caused complications in the relationship and I don't quite know who is to blame if not both. However, I think the following video summarizes my thoughts on the situation:



My Career

And onwards to my passion in life: being a slave to my job. Yes I can easily say that I like my day job to a greater extent than my bicycle racing career. There are a number of reasons and I think they are as follows:

- unlike racing, I don't have to spend money to make money and the money I do make at my job is considerably more than what I make racing.
 - unlike racing, the work that I do benefits people as opposed to crushing their dreams whenever I place better than other racers.

But perhaps I'm not fully realizing my potential as it may be if I were to start a start-up company in that I would have to sacrifice near-term earnings while I built up my business into something profitable. Hmmm. Nah. Another note to make is that I see other racers such as Eric Lagestrom and Max 'Missle' O'Neil who are young and get invited to go to these cool training camps in Southern California while the only invite I've ever gotten is to some Washington team merely because I was usually the only Guinness rider and that I may feel too lonely.

However, as it stands today, my day job is my primary funding mechanism for launching my aspiring pro-cyclist career if that is in God's will. And there was recently some uncertainty as to whether that inflow of racing money was going to continue. There was recently some uncertainty of my company being financially solvent which caused some fallout from my current company where three people I had been working with left the company. This was fairly concerning and gave me doubts about my future at that company. So I investigated whether there may be other options and I finally ended up applying, interviewing and accepting a job at TriMet - the transit agency serving the Portland area.

This is a rather huge move for me in my career. Ever since I graduated from college I have been working with the same people on mostly auto-related projects. However, my passion is transportation and within transportation my passion is basically anything but cars. Trains, bikes, planes, ships, aerial trams and buses all fascinate me. In my long-term career plans I have always promised myself that eventually I would leave the auto industry and switch to working primarily for public transit or perhaps biking. However, I thought that that would more likely occur when I was 30 after my pro-bike racing career was winding down perhaps. So, I guess that came sooner than later and now since I have pretty much landed my dream job, I think I may be officially giving up on any hopes of going pro and racing my bike everywhere. And I think that is a decision I can be confident in making.



And Bikes

So does that mean that I'm giving up on crushing all you poser-panzie-pussie-non Guinness Cycling Team-loser-racers? Absolutely not! I'm still going to bring it to you all! But in going through my rather life-changing events with women and working, I had a feeling in the back of my mind that something else bad was still going to happen. And I was correct!

Bang! Out of nowhere, or as explained through my success equation - out of bad luck and a lack of situational awareness, I hit something - I still don't know what - on Highway 26 between the Zoo and Goose Hollow at roughly 37 mph. I think that I ended up endoing over my handlebars and definitely slid for a while on my right side and worst of all bruised my knee so much that it was roughly the size of a baseball immediately afterwards. In these rare cases, I approve of the use of cars - such as the good samaritan high school kid - Cooper - who pulled over at the Goose Hollow exit and drove me back to my appartment. And later that evening, my housemate Senthil who drove me to the ER over at Legacy Good Samaratin.

The X-Rays showed no bone fracture, but I could basically not walk with my right leg. I stayed home, popped pills and iced it up for the next 3 days, but still managed to make time for 2 interviews at TriMet. I eventually did some easy easy rides, but the knee was so stiff and it didn't feel all that pleasant to ride. Then on my first attempt to do a decent ride, I was riding along and shifted down into gear 0 - the gear between the spokes and the cassette - and nearly crashed as I skidded to a stop. After yanking out the chain, two spokes were completely broken. So I just gave up and took a bus home and took it even more easy.

Unfortunately this all came during two weeks where I was supposed to be maxing out on my weightlifting and doing lots of intervals on the bike. I finally got back into the gym this week and was surprised to find that I still had some strength and even matched my previous highest squat weight so far this year. More than anything, the knee just feels tight and gets better after stretching - which I regretfully neglected for more than a week after crashing.

Waaaa :'( :'( :'''(  , life is so hard

Drama, drama, drama.  Man, I have felt like there have been more broken things in my life than there were good experiences.  It was like, first this girl I like is falling off the face of the earth, my job is ending and I got in an off-season crash to top it all off.  But on top of all that, the weather in Portland just sucks, it rains, it's cold and dark before you know it.  I really guess the moral of the story is that it is easier for things to fall apart than it is to construct a beautiful situation.

But, but, it's so hard, it's not fair, things just aren't presented to me on a golden platter, God doesn't open up the heavens and rain down mana Dave's Killer Bread.  Ok, maybe I shouldn't joke about what God can and can't do, but the point I'm trying to relate to is that accomplishing stuff is not easy - it takes work.  And at the end of the day, each person is responsible for their choice to work or not work.  Finding the motivation to ride in the nasty, cold, dreary, dark weather has been hard for me.  I am not sure how I do it sometimes, I guess I just do the working out as if it were a chore to do and just get it done.  But even then, I sometimes need a little nudge in the right direction.  For inspiration, I think the following video has really gotten me going the most this season:

My Bikes: Cervelo S1

Purpose of this bicycle

This bike was an incredible spur of the moment purchase to ensure I had a bike to race at the 2012 Mt Hood Cycling Classic. At the time I reasoned that it was ok to get the bike because eventually I'd use it for the upcoming winter since my Felt was getting a little too beat up. I ended up racing this bike in numerous races through the 2012 season and got some great results including 3rd at the Queen stage of Mt Hood, 3rd on the first stage of Baker City and I even rode it to a win over at St. Honoré!

Equipment

Frame & Fork:	Aluminum 61cm 2010 Cervélo S1
Crankset:	Compact FSA Gossamer
Chainring:	Compact FSA 50/34
Stem & Handlebar:	FSA something or other
Seatpost:	Aero Cervelo seatpost
Pedals:	Speedplay Zeros (I'll swap these pedals between this bike and my R5)
Shifters:	Shimano Ultegra
Chain:	Shimano Ultegra
Deraileurs:	Shimano Ultegra
Brakes:	Cervelo Brakes
Saddle:	San Marco saddle
Fenders:	Strap-on fenders with Tacoma Bike flaps

Wheel Set:

Rim:	American Classic Hurricane
Hub:	American Classic
Tires:	Maxxis Detonator 23c
Cassette:	Shimano Ultegra 10 speed 25/13

Gadgets:

Power Meter:	iBike Newton+ Power Meter
GPS:	Garmin Edge 500
Sensor:	iBike Speed/Cadence Sensor.
Lights:	Cygolite Bike Lights (Mom, you will be glad to know that these are very bright). However, I need to figure out how to mount the light to the non-cylindircal seatpost, maybe my friend Eric can use his 3d printer to make something.

Personal Stories about this bike

I have decided that this blog series is bad luck!! This morning I got up and one of the first emails I got before even leaving to work was a nagging email about cleaning up the office kitchen of which one of the points was to not put in peanut butter jars caked with sesame seed and coconut oil remnants. Uggh, how am I going to clean all my jars now? Getting my bike to go to work I realized that I must have at one point forgot my floor pump outside my locker because it is nowhere to be seen inside my locker. I took forever to get prepared and finally got into the office at around 11am.

Then on the bike ride that night I really got started at around 9:30pm and got a flat on totally new tires. And it was raining. Then after I got back and had done the bike's photoshoot I opened up a brand new peanut butter jar full of applesauce I was about to devour, but I lost grip of it and it fell to the floor shattering into an inedible pile of glass and apples immediately outside the door to my bike locker. Come to think of it there are really a bunch of other crappy first world problems in my life, but I also blame all of them on this unfounded superstition of this bad luck blog post series!

Those last few weeks

I think I may be getting close to that point where I was last year. The point where a long long season of racing, frustration upon frustration and poor result after poor result ate away at my psyche to the point where I didn't want to race anymore. Last year the summer was a real downward spiral where I got pushed over the edge at Cascade and was left with broken dreams.

And now the past few races have been sort of leading toward that direction. I performed just ok at Cascade was feeling a little maxed out at the Franz Bakery Crit last week. This week I had a strong lineup of races, Portland Twilight, OBRA Crit and OBRA TT.

But first, PIR

As the season goes on, the races here have seemed to get faster and harder to make a break happen. The highlight of my race was when I tried to follow Tuckerman's wheel when he attacked hard. I knew he was going to explode with that break attempt, but I was sad I couldn't at least follow it. In the field sprint I should have just followed Eddie, but let that wheel get away.

Portland Twilight Criterium

Now I dunno, but when Klipper called me up on Thursday night and told me that my goal was to not crash, I thought that was a lame goal. I knew the race was going to be fast, but I thought I was fast and after blaring some techno before the race I was feeling pumped. I made the mistake of riding a warmup lap once the course opened and found myself much further back than I wanted to be. After the call-ups, I sprinted to get a spot in the 3rd row for the start, but really wish I had done better about lining up.

Once the race started it was strung out for the entire race. I was barely holding wheels the entire race, but I wasn't moving back too much staying pretty much 20th-30th the whole race. The whole race I was in the drops sprinting to hold wheels. With 10 laps to go I was the back of the field. The photo below sums it up:

Photo credit to SmugMug user stoneandsteel

I finished 21st after making a lousy sprint against the giver-upers at the very back. I didn't once get to the front of the race and that was that. I was disappointed that I couldn't do better.

OBRA Crit Champs

Off to Bend which I swear I'm now calling Bad Luck Bend! I thought maybe I'd warmup a little harder to feel fresh for races by doing a quick Archie Briggs climb. That got up my heart rate and I was feeling pretty good at the start of the race doing a few attacks off the front. However, it became apparent that a monster was among us. This kid broke away about halfway through and was holding an insane pace all by himself. But then he started coming back to the field and it was game on again. But then I saw him getting ready to get back in from the pit and knew he had a flat and was about to crush us again. And he did and when he and two other guys broke away I hammered on the front trying to do something to bring it back, but it seemed that none of us had the legs in us to chase him down. He broke away from the other two guys and he was gone. And then I was just struggling to get a good field position again. And then out of nowhere I got a flat on my front wheel in the middle of corner 2 and went down on my right side. And that was the race. I didn't feel like doing the TT the next day so that was my week.



I'm pretty sure I'm pretty tired after this whole season. Combine that with losing a bunch of blood and I was feeling quite tired Sunday. There is the potential for negative thoughts to enter my mind and I've got to fight that and remain positive not only for the last few races of the season, but more importantly for the upcoming dating season. However, this year the extra support from more bicycling friends I have made and above all else my teammates has made it much easier to bear. Hearing the random voices yelling "EVAN MOVE UP!!" 30 minutes into Portland Twilight and then "ALL RIGHT EVAN HANG IN THERE GOOD JOB!!" once they realized I was so tired helps me finish the race. Every race has been salvaged by Eddie or Rocky getting Top Ten or better, by hanging out after the races and all of us taking care of each other.

It looks like the Giro di Portland and Eugene are going to be the last races on my calendar. Almost there!

The Success Equation

The problem with bike racing and every other competition for a scarce resource in this world is that not everybody can get that scarce resource. However, sometimes it seems like some people have a seemingly natural and unexplainable ability to excel in the area where they can easily obtain something where others struggle desperately to no avail. However, it is no coincidence that some people are just better at some things than others are.

This entire world is discrete. There are a certain number of people in this world, there is even a certain number of matter in this world, the point is that nothing is infinite in this natural world. And furthermore, rules hold together this world: gravity keeps matter close together, thermodynamics cause weather. And even furthermore there are patterns to everything: certain ways to race a bicycle race that gives you a good chance of winning and certain things to say to women to make them attracted to you.

On a spiritual note, however, my Lord Jesus Christ is infinite and has the power to accomplish anything despite the laws and general patterns of the world since He created all that. But on the other hand, His way of doing things can dramatically differ from what any one person can judge to be good, bad, preferred or even desired. So even though it can be possible for a paralyzed man to desire to win the Tour de France, this man is subject to the conditions placed on him by God.

No matter how strong of a bike rider you are, since you probably don't have such a superior amount of fitness that you can ride away from everyone since you are constrained to the general abilities of the human body, there has to be some management of the exertion of the potential energy you have. Similarly, with women (the other obnoxious area of my life where it seems like it's impossible to achieve success) since I am constrained by the amount of base attractiveness I have relative to every other douchebag competing for the same woman, there has to be some difference in my methodology for achieving my goal. So, I have come up with an equation to describe this problem:

Success

This is the end result that you want. In a bike race, usually the result you want is to be the first across the line. With women, I want to have consistent companionship with a woman that loves me how I like to be loved and enjoys receiving my love as well. So, how to get these things?

Situational Awareness

Do you really understand what is going on around you? In a bike race, do you know how many miles are left in the race? How to tell who is feeling strong? Or how good you are feeling? The world around us feeds us data about the current state of everything. But how good are you at determining exactly what the world is telling you? When this bonehead Evan from Guinness makes an attack 5 miles into a 70 mile race, how likely is it that he will ride faster than the other 50 riders for the next 65 miles? In the sprint, who is the sprinter that knows what wheel to take and where should you position yourself prior to those last 3 turns?

With women it is just as complex, but my awareness is so bad that I can barely guess what is happening. And at times I have let my feelings rage out of control to the point where I'm so excited about a woman that I can't see that she's actually not as good as I think she is. The point is that each situation has particles of information located all over the place and the more of this information that the brain can process and catalog, the more informed one will be when the time comes to make a decision about what action to take.

Strategy Formulation

So, how to achieve your goal? To win a bike race you have to ride hard and fast, right? To get a girl you have to "be yourself", right? Unfortunately for things that are hard to get, it is usually not simple. In fact it is annoying and painful and at times compelling to make one try harder.

If you ever fail in succeeding, you probably did something wrong. Perhaps that breakaway attempt at mile 5 of a 70 mile race was not a good idea. Maybe I shouldn't have been so nice to that woman that wasn't all that interesting. To achieve your goal there are patterns that can be more effective for certain kinds of situations. To win from a bike race, your timing must be just right to be first across the line. To get into a loving relationship, both parties must be interested in and working towards the benefit of each other.

The challenge is in the details of how to achieve your goal. And typically and even statistically if you really want to study it, there are patterns that generally can be followed to obtain a certain result. There are patterns that rarely work such as breaking away 5 miles into a 70 mile race or being the most boring person on earth to a woman, but then others patterns that are usually more successful like being behind a good wheel up until the last point of a field sprint or with women... actually I don't have much advice to offer with that. But the more ways one can identify to achieve their goal the more arsenal one will have in trying to achieve their goal.

Execution

With whatever strategy you use, there is the slight matter of actually carrying it out. You can be in exactly the right spot at the right time and still execute poorly and thus not achieve the level of success you wanted. For example, at last year's Franz Bakery Crit I had planned on sprinting for the win, but pedaled through the final corner crashing myself and then the field passed me, however at the Salem Crit I sprinted for the win on a 500m straightaway.

Luck

Luck can be anywhere in the spectrum between good and bad. If you had no idea what was going on around you and you didn't really have a plan, but the result of whatever you executed was success, than you had good luck. If you did not achieve your desired result despite thinking you were aware of your situation and came up with and executed what you thought was the best possible strategy, then you had bad luck. Luck is an interesting factor because it basically represents a situation you were not aware of or some strategy you weren't realizing that you were doing. If everything about the world is known and all possible strategies and their outcomes are already known then luck is a passive variable in the equation.

Bad luck for example can range from being struck by lightning to getting a flat tire. Yet since the world is discrete these items are not random. There are patterns to lightning and you're much more likely to be struck by it if you bike around holding a 40 foot metal pole sticking into the air in a thunderstorm in Florida. But even with the flat tire, the chances are far less likely that you'll get a flat tire if you slap on a brand new tire in substitute for the tire you've been riding since last season. Luck is an opportunity to learn more about the world and various situations and what strategies you can design to combat such a problem in the future or if whatever caused the good luck is replicable, perhaps this can be used again to achieve success again.

Resources

No matter how well you sense things, pick good plans and execute them well, you are bound by the physical resources at your disposal that you will need to accomplish the goal. If you want to win a bike race, you will need to have a bike. If you want to win a time trial against Fabian Cancellara you better have an immense amount of fitness available to use. In the case of the paralyzed man who wants to win the Tour de France, while he himself may not be physically capable of doing it himself, there would be nothing stopping him from giving other resources of his own to another person who has a body functioning well enough that he could accomplish that success.

Putting it all together

Success is tough because it requires a keen situational awareness combined with an effective strategy and then decent enough execution of that strategy or strategies all assuming you have enough resources available to achieve your goal. I've personally got a lot to work on in both the situational awareness and strategy formulation departments. With biking I need to be aware of the course and competitors and how much effort I am able to exert over the remaining distance. With women, I've got to be able to sense what they are feeling like and if I'm being treated well enough by them. And then I've got to have a whole range of tactics to employ in my bike racing from attacking at certain times or even having teammates do work for me. With women, it's really weird how they react to certain strategies and it can often times be surprising what strategies are effective.

Anyways, Racing...

I didn't do Hagg Lake because I got really sick the night before due to what I believe to have been a rotten tomato. So, this weekend it's up to Washington for Sequim and Mason Lake.