Oh look, I have fitness now!

Eugene

So, after Walla Walla I guess that helped my fitness a bit.  Because I made the break didn't sit in and stayed with the contending field at Eugene Roubaix.  Seriously, wtf?  On lap 1 once we turned on to Crow Rd there was a bunch of action as one could expect and I closed a gap to a group that included Liberles, Hoefer and a few others including my favorite new addition to the OBRA peleton, Marek Litinsky.  All of a sudden I look back and we have a massive gap.  Then Bedford and two other contenders bridged up.  And I was like, well, I guess this is the new peleton.  It was so weird.  Basically everyone else dnf'ed and it was an Oregon Cup race.  Most people just quit and didn't get flats.

Post by Portland State Cycling.

Anywho, I had a lot of fun.  Marek was being all aggressive which is great to see because so many OBRAnians just sit in all the time and don't do anything.  Bedford and Liberles both did some attacks, but about 5 of us all from different teams organized into a paceline that chased down Bedford.  It was beautiful.  In the end I got on Marek's wheel for the sprint but couldn't hold on, so I got 4th while he was 3rd.

Post by Portland State Cycling.

Tour de Bloom

I think skipping the mass start hill-climb was an excellent idea in hindsight.  Cause I got to watch the Grand Floral Parade instead:



And I therefore was fresh for the crit.  The course seemed to be a dramatic improvement over the super sketch backside of the previous course and the final corner was super fun.  We went down Orondo on the bricks and passed within a foot of a beer garden crowd at McGlinn's and then raced into the corner going downhill praying each time that my wheel wouldn't slip out and that I wouldn't run out of pavement on Wenatchee ave.  A breakaway got away early and ultimately lapped the field.  I hung out at the front and managed to maintain a good enough position in the final lap to get 10th in the race.



I think I might be starting to get a hang of the crits.  Great Success!

The road race was definitely the most epic race I've done so far this year and may turn out to hold that place.

The race started innocently enough with no rain and it looked like it might stay that way.  We rolled out onto the 102 mile three lap course and there was plenty of jockeying for position.

Once we began heading east we got slammed with a massive crosswind.  Echelons began to form and one started rolling away quite convincingly.  I fought hard to work my way into the next echelon and after a few rotations, the peleton was long gone.  Sucking a wheel was impossible that day.

Our chase echelon was working great with neither the peleton or the first echelon in sight. It was clear that there were some stronger riders than others since we were dropping people from our own echelon as the lap went on. As we rounded the corner to go west we saw two things: the first echelon ahead of us and a nasty wall of rain headed straight towards us. The rain hit us before we caught the first echelon. When we caught the echelon, everyone was suffering from both working so damn hard and from the rain which at times felt like hail. So what was the logical thing to do?

Attack! Yes sirree I shot straight by everyone like a maniac and managed to drag Brian Hitchcock with me. I thought there would be a reaction and a new echelon would form, but instead we found ourselves with a 2 minute gap between both the echelon we caught and 2 additional wackos further up the road!! And this was with 40 miles to go just after I missed my feed since I could barely see anything let alone my mom handing me a water bottle.

Brian and I were holding our gap both ways, but were eventually joined by two strong riders as we echeloned east. We didn't make any dent into the two ahead of us, so it became clear that we were racing for 3rd. As we turned west, the vulture in me spotted weakness in Brian and one other guy, but that the 4th guy was very strong. So what did I do?

Attack! I just started riding hard off the front and after a bit of bucking around, the strong guy dropped the other two and bridged up to me. I wanted third so I did my best to seem like I could keep up on the remaining hills. With 1k to go we got into cat and mouse mode. He made me go first and teased me with a small gap that I bought into too early just before 200m. We were among the few finishers that day that came in as a group. Love it!

I ended up at 8th in omnium points and was the first non-Canadian.

Banana Belt 2

Well, after the 100 mile crosswind race, this whole 77 mile Banana Belt seemed like a walk in the park for me.  Leading up to the race though, there was some tension within the team.  In Banana Belt 1 my team didn't do the best despite having a 7 person team in a 24 person race.  We all met for beers and general team discussion the Thursday beforehand and there was a lot of finger pointing and grandiloquence of what should be done.  I kinda just sat there and ate chicken wings.  Sherm asked me what I thought and I said that "bike racing leadership shouldn't be appointed, but is demonstrated in the race."

Anyways, I got a ride out there with one of our "I'm just getting back into racing after 4 years of living another life" teammates.  The race was fairly typical Banana Belt stuff I guess with all the rollers providing lots of opportunity to attack and stuff.  Dwayne Farr looked quite strong that day, but it was Kyle Medlin that went for a solo effort on lap 3 or 4 that lasted a good 1.5 laps.  After this, Mike Kath and Erik Hofland always seemed to be getting themselves in these teaser breaks that were just a little bit up ahead.  I started getting a little aggressive on lap 5 or 6 where one of my attacks involved going right before the dam hill.  Our team was doing great at making sure they followed the strong wheels with Jeremy especially being an absolute nuisance to Bedford.

Just before the final lap, Bedford and Bourcier were trying attacks and I covered some of those.  Then, I sensed the field was a little tired, so I put in a good attack.  Nobody followed.  The peleton didn't react immediately.  And just like that I had a 40 second gap.  It was a ways to go, but I was feeling great.  I tempoed well up the dam hill and still had a good gap after that, so this was serious.  My moto-official was encouraging me and leading up to the finish it seemed like the peleton was closing in, so I put in some good digs up the final hills.  I looked back before the sprint hill and the gap was still big.  I powered up the last hill in a big gear and poster finished.  Our team led out Sherm who ended up in 4th.  That was a pretty great day for the team.  Oh and guess this race made Jeremy my favorite newest addition to the OBRA 1/2 peleton.

Anniversary Weekend

After BB2, I met my girlfriend and headed out to the coast for a romantic 1-year anniversary where I proposed to her on Sunday.  And she was quite surprised but said yes and we're both quite excited.

CCC 2013

And that CCC this year stood for Cretinous Crazy Crashes!

This year I decided that I'd prefer racing with teammates and was able to guest ride for Team Oregon.  I got up all bright and early on Friday and Eric Gushurst was nice enough to pick up me, my two bikes, 2.5 wheelsets and red monster suitcase.  Going over to the race with Eric and Chris Dubois put me in a good mood with the near-constant bike race talking and wisecracking from those two.  Oh and watching the tdf on Jorge's phone was an added bonus.

Cascade Lakes

The plan for the race was for someone to get in the early break and then Chris and Eric and I would help Dillon get in a good spot for the final climb.  Oh and Scott Gray and Adam Artner would just be out playing bikes with us too.  So to start things off we all flew down the Sunriver cutoff and then turned right onto FS Road 40/Upper Deschutes.  Then of course the breakaways started and eventually Andrew Boone was off the front.

Then it was time to wait.  The next somewhat exciting thing to happen was perhaps the first stupid crash of the weekend which happened at the feed zone.  A little later I then dropped my chain and pulled over to fix it.  I didn't really notice, but apparently as I was standing on the side and as I leaned down to fix my chain I swung one of my legs directly into the peleton and nearly caused a few crashes.

Anywho I caught on after the chain drop and then made sure I was towards the front to cover any breakaway attempts that may happen before we got to the hill.  We could still see a few guys from the break up there but nobody really wanted to give it a go.  So as we approached the final climb I was trying to get Dillon to get to the front and was looking back to make sure he was on my wheel, but he didn't quite make it on my wheel for some reason.  So I did make it to the front and figured I'd just sit on the lead group and wait for Dillon to get up there too.

As we went up the hill suddenly it was just 6 of us as I glanced back.  I knew this was the move, but I also knew that it's nearly impossible for anyone to bridge to that move so I just sat in expecting to get dropped shortly.  I was pegged at my top end the whole way up the hill, but once we made it past the final steep section I knew I had made the selection.  I didn't do any work until we got to the parking lot road where I sat on Max O'Neal's wheel.  Max covered two gnarly attacks from this kid (hot tubes I think) and then made his own move at 200m.  I waited a little more, but once I heard a guy yelling out "right! right!" I knew he was going for the sprint so I took the long way around the left but it ended up that I had enough speed to get the win.

After the race we drove over to Dillon's soon to be new neighborhood and had dinner at the clubhouse.  Spaghetti and fruit and good scenery.

High Desert TT

I really don't have much to say about the TT except that I was pleased that despite my lack of practice, etc that I managed to get a good enough time to keep me in 3rd GC.  Actually I was thinking about sprinting for the line on the final straight but didn't and in the end the winner of the TT got a time good enough to get 1 second ahead of me in GC, so note to self: always sprint for the line in a TT.

Crit

Since I was 3rd GC and there were no intermediate time bonuses this was a 40 minute trial of avoiding crashes for me.  I sat in and numerous times had to brake fairly hard because of either a real crash but quite often an almost-crash which was causing almost-crashes behind me.  Sorry!  Our team plan was for Adam Artner to win, but he went too early and was a little hard on himself after the race.  He later consoled himself with some avocados and yams (inside joke).

Awbrey Butte

Going into Awbrey Butte our team had a plan to not let a break get away too far and then attack on the way up and through Awbrey Butte on the 3rd lap and then maybe Dillon could get away and place better.  The parts of making it a hard race sounded good to me.

When the race started there was yet another crash at mile 2 that I actually got tangled up in.  I narrowly avoid I think Max O'Neal who was on the pavement and then my front wheel got stuck in someone in front of me and I skidded to a stop somehow remaining upright the whole time.  I checked my wheels and noticed that the front wheel was just a little out of true so I released my brake pads a bit and decided to go chase without a wheel change.

I caught up fairly quickly and I think I noticed Andrew Boone get in the break yet again so it was time to wait.  We went through the feed zone grabbing these neutral water bottles that were only useful for pouring on your back as the caps made you choke when you tried to drink it.  Then we got neutralized twice as the Masters 1/2 passed us twice.  Then the break's 4 minute advantage suddenly went to 0 minutes as we approached the climb on lap 3 - weird, but game on!

Scott Gray starting hammering up the hill and we dropped a fair amount of people, but Kaler Marshal and Ben Thompson were still up there.  The 4th time around our team was planning on keeping the pace tough.  Eric told me he wasn't sure how much more oomph he had and so I asked him, "so how about you string it out right now!"  And he did!  And then he took a wrong turn.  And then I spoke with Adam and told him I wanted him to come one a breakaway attempt with me on the backstretch.  However, Dillon was already in a favorable position so he found himself in a break which looked pretty good.  Adam then countered a few moves and I hung out with the GC leaders.

The final time up Archie Briggs we caught that breakaway that Dillon was in and then it was gruppo clusterfracko.  I was sandwiched at one point between Dwayne Farr and Brian Hitchcock and was making contact with both of them until I decided to relinquish my not-a-spot.  We headed through the roundabout and then I was on Dillon's wheel but then I somehow ended up on the right and was on Adam's wheel.

With 50 meters before the final roundabout Adam punched it into the inside of the corner which was a dangerous move even with us riding thru the roundabout beforehand to know that the inside was clean of any obstacles.  I hesitated and couldn't follow Adam's wheel but also took the inside hard.  Adam then opened up his sprint and completely crushed it while I sprinted for a top 10 after hearing the final gnarly crash of the weekend happening to the rear left of me.

It was then a tense few minutes afterwards as I surveyed the carnage that HSP went through over the weekend but also as I awaited results to see if I kept my 3rd overall GC.  One of the GC contenders got 3rd, but it was barely not enough time bonus that I kept the podium spot.  Adam really saved it for me by winning the 10 second time bonus.

After all that we headed home and made wisecracks the whole way back about bike racing, over-protective cops in the town of Mill City and whatever else passed the time.  Aside from all the crashes this was the funnest weekend of bike racing I had had the whole year, not to mention the best result too.  Having teammates along the likes of those I had over the weekend put me in a great mood which had to have contributed towards my success.

Two more important things worth noting:

1.  After 3 years of Randy's domination, I have finally won the Tacoma mini-league in Tour de France fantasy!
2.  I have yet to receive my prize money in the mail, but when I do I will be sure to split it up.

Negative Racing

I didn't have a very good weekend of racing results wise.  I should have been able to do better than high teens and 23rd in both races.  I could blame it on the 3 crashes that happened right in front of me, but on the other hand Zak crashed and still won it.  I could blame it on the big team presence from HPC and Team O, but on the other hand Tim Reinhart and Steven Davis made that break without having a 10-person squad.

And on top of that it sucks that there isn't even a fall back of at least having a teammate who did get the prize, all I'm left with is a disappointment in myself.

Enough ranting from me, not all weekends can be awesome.  Next up for me is Redmond Derby Days, Montinore and then I'm probably guest riding for Team O at Cascade.

Tour of Walla Walla 2012

I had a really fun weekend. Things really came together in all areas. I got a lot of thoughts, so let me try to go through them chronologically.

The weekend before.

I went out to King's Valley and got a flat on the first lap and had wheel change issues and dnf'ed. It sucked and it was hard to even force myself to do a second lap. The next day I went for a long ride out as far up Larch Mountain road I could with some new biking friends. That was a lot of fun and a nice day.

Things start clicking... literally

On Monday I went to a shop to have them glue on a new tire. While there I also was planning on putting on some new speedplay cleats - a task that was long overdue since I had not done any maintenance whatsoever to the cleats since I first bought the system in July of 2010. They were so bad that the screws attaching the cleat apparatus to the cleat mount were totally stuck if not fused together in a huge pile of rust. Luckily, a shop mechanic was able to drill out the cleat screws and then hacksaw off the apparatus.

Once the new cleats were on (and I had inserted the cleat anglers the right direction) my bike felt like a totally new bike. It was responding with seemingly no loss of power transfer to my every stroke. That night on some hillclimb intervals I easily got the farthest up the hill than ever before. Then at PIR, it felt easy to hang with the pack and even get onto Beardsley's or Ginsberg's wheel in a sprint. However, the wet track and my still slippery tires made things seem a little to sketchy to want to risk sprinting. At least a teammate got in a break so the team got 4th.

And now for the main event

The first stage race of the year for me! There really has not been a stage race that I've been to where it wasn't awesome and this one has been the most awesome yet. I feel like the Tour of Walla Walla is a really challenging regional stage race where doing well means far more than doing well in a local race or even a smaller stakes stage race.

Logistics

Getting there was definitely a battle and I was set on not camping this year. It was also tough to even find a ride out there again, but things worked out. Ted from Audi hooked me up with some other Spokanites (Spokanistanis?) that were renting out a house for the weekend. I slept on the couch the first night and managed to negotiate half of a bed the following evening just like last year. On a sad note, my housemate has been in India for a family emergency, but was gracious enough to loan me his car for the weekend. And off I went!

Friday

This year I have been trying to be a little smarter in choosing where I make my efforts. That means that I did not bury myself trying to breakaway on the first lap. I saved most of my efforts for the hill. The first time up was moderate and I was a wheel-length out of contention for a mountain prime, that was pretty cool though. After that, nobody wanted or could breakaway so I just waited up at the front for the hill again. It came and the pace got harder. Attacks came at 5k to go, but then the winner went at 3k and stayed away by 10 seconds. I came in 9th which I was quite satisfied with. And my mom had some homemade applesauce for me at the finish! Nice.

Saturday

It would seem as if I need to take on some better strategies for criterium riding. Namely not hammering on the front for 75% of the race. After the final prime I actually got away from the field, but then Team Bonehead Cycling sent a guy up to me who then proceeded to attack me and didn't get that far away. Ultimately the peleton caught us after a valiant imbecile pull from another Team Bonehead Cycling guy. I was amazed and then nervously pedaled on the back of the pack in anticipation of a crash that never materialized. Nice.

I took things to another level in the Time Trial. Compared to last year, there now wasn't any wind, I had carbon wheelz and I had a skinsuit. But moreover I again set speed targets for each section of the road. On the first section I didn't anticipate the very slight wind so was a little slower than I wanted to go, but then I crushed it over my target up the hill. On the long downhill I wasn't going as fast as I wanted, but I was still flying. Then I didn't really have a good sense of how far that last stretch was and probably could've pushed it harder. I passed one guy and only got passed by the TT winner which is fine by me, especially since it was Tim. He's all right. My time was 21:16 compared to 24:37 last year. I am pretty stoked about that improvement.

Sunday

Sunday was my day. This time all things came together in the Success Equation, but more importantly I added a dynamic element to the equation in that I adapted my strategy as the race played out. I was sitting 9th in GC, so I was going to breakaway, no question. Last year I attempted to breakaway on the long downhill backstretch on the first lap and then barely had enough energy to stay with the pack after getting caught. This year I was going to go either on the hill after the sharp left or the feedzone hill.

The race day weather was predicted to be 80 degrees with very little wind. So I took 3 water bottles with me. Just before the race I had to swap rear wheels after I had had enough with this valve extender that could not accept air. Right before the start I took a leak (in a port-o-potty) which was a good sign that I was staying hydrated.

As the race began nothing much was happening, except Audi was absolutely intent on getting a break going. They had a guy get away with some other people by the time we got to the backstretch. I was waiting for the GC guys and their teams to do the work to bring it back. Tim (2nd in GC), his teammate and #1 GC put in their time at the front. Eventually we caught them just before the long hill on the front stretch after the break just died completely perhaps due to someone getting a flat, not quite sure.

Now it was time for some counter-attacks. Another Audi guy went up the road along with 2 others. Then a pro-city rider (they had 2 guys in top 10 GC) started mashing his pedals like no other to bridge up. I decided I may as well jump on this free ride and see what happens. It was a little early and not according to my plan, but the effort to stay on that wheel didn't require a lot of exertion for me, so I gave it a shot. We got up to the break quite easily and then were joined by an HSP rider (also 2 of them in top 10 GC). The Audi guy and the Pro City guy fell off, but we still had a yellow jerseyed (not GC-leader yellow) Canadian who claimed he was about to explode due to lack of water.

And so it was 3 of us and we began working. Each of us seemed to be putting in our fair share of effort even despite me taking a break here and there at the back to eat some food. We motored down the long downhill backstretch and then tempo'ed up the feed zone hill. All of us grabbed a watter bottle, but then hammered it down that hill so hard that we almost ran into the lead car if it weren't for us yelling at it. Then up the final hill and we still had our gap. It was then an intense mental and physical battle for us all the way down the hill to the finish. We could see the peleton just dangling about 20-15 seconds behind us most of our descent. After each pull we would nervously look over our shoulder but still kept working. All in all we were quite lucky that the field didn't organize themselves.

We got to the 1k mark and this little 3-man break that could had the podium sealed. After having downed my remaining half a energy bar at 1.5k I was ready for the sprint. We knew yellow jersey wouldn't contest so HSP sat on his wheel and I on his. With 180 to go HSP made a slight move to the right and then I blasted off to the left and pounded it out. At first I was like, is this happening? Am I about to win? Did HSP somehow cross before me? Whoa, I crossed the line! I think I won! I WON!!! YEAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!! YEAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!! I actually screamed "YEEEAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" twice. First time as I pumped my left hand in the air. And the second time while pumping the right hand. YYYEEEAAHHHHHH!!! I just screamed that again in my apartment as I'm righting this, but not too loud, don't want to wake the neighbors. That was an amazing win for me and ranks up there as one of the hardest won and deserved wins given the challenge of the reputable Tour of Walla Walla. I have been so psyched and pumped since this win.

Me and Team Guinness really want to obtain a picture of me winning this stage. Please let me know if you or anyone you know has a picture. I am going to put it here in this blog.

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.