New 8+2 -- new location

It dawned on my that some people still have the old blogger address for 8+2 bookmarked and are missing out on the brand spankin' new 8+2 site.

Please update your bookmark and check out:

http://www.eightplustwo.com/

I've moved over to WordPress, its a lot better format. Now you've got some catching up to do. See you at the new 8+2.

Va is for...rain?

So my trip to VA for a long weekend of good training wasn't quite what it was planned thanks to some crap weather, but I did get in one solid day of training while down there. Fri's ride was one of the hardest I've done in a long time. For anyone who knows the area, we climbed Vesuvius, descended Crab Tree Falls, and finished with a climb up Wintergreen to the ski lodge. Ride stats were 4:15 duration, about 68 miles, and just shy of 6,200' of elevation gain. Here's a pic of the elevation profile:


Polar download courtesy of Munas...that's one hell of a route profile.

Wintergreen was by far the hardest climb I've ever done. You just don't get climbs like that in PA. We did get rained on for nearly the whole second half of the ride, including the climb up Wintergreen. Spohn took the KOM for Wintergreen...he's riding strong man.

Unfortunately the forecast through Tue was for more rain down there, so Sat morning most of us decided to head home. I got a ride back with Nick in Jay's car. Here's a pic of Jay, their team support / driver / mechanic for the weekend. Can you believe Nick found him a hat to match his bumper sticker?


All Southern Style, all the time for Jay. Other bumper stickers include "Ass, gas, or grass - nobody rides for free" and an 8+2 sticker. I'm so proud.

The weather back home wasn't much better yesterday. Word on the street is that 7 dudes showed up for a soggy derby and the training crits were cancelled. The rain / wet did not stop the Monkey Knife Fight however, and from what I was told that was a killer ride. I took it nice and easy, I was due for a rest. March for me saw:

-3 derby's
-6 training crits
-1 Branchbrook Park race

Not a bad March as far as training and intensity. This weekend kicks off the official season with the Philly 2 Day race weekend. I'll be there Sat fo sho.

Nice stache...

I'm really happy that Colin Sandberg commented on my post the other day, because I had almost completely forgotten another important event from this past Sun: Sandberg showed up rockin' a wicked porn stache. Clearly he's discovered what those in the know already found out, and that is that porn star facial hair makes you faster on the bike. Its true, ask any good coach worth their salt and they will agree. In fact if you have a coach and he doesn't agree with that statement 100%, you should punch him in the junk and tell him the bromance is over...because he clearly doesn't know dick about bike racing.

Anyway, back to my point. In celebration of the newest addition to the porn stache family, we're going to play a little game of Name That Stache. Its not quite as fun as my all time favorite game, a little something I like to call Just The Tip, but its still fun none-the-less. Here's how it works, the first person to comment and correctly identify each of the seven porn staches below is going to win one solid prize -- your very own copy of a Captain Bail-Out drawing signed by the Shovel himself. (note, I didn't exactly clear this with the Shovel yet, so don't be surprised if you ask him about it and he has no clue what you're talking about)

Here we go:

1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

6)

7)

I'll be leaving for the Shenandoah Valley (VA) Thu after the grind. I'm meeting up with Andy, and we're going to drive down and rendezvous with Mr. 420, Spohn, and a couple other characters for a "mini training camp". I'll try to post from there but not sure what the access is going to be like. Hopefully someone will win the Name That Stache game by the time I get home Sun night.

Since I won't be here to post for TGIFDB, I'll just go ahead and tell you that the Westwood Velo dude clearly dropped me in this week's DB race. Well played, Sir Douche-A-Lot.

Captain Bail-Out

By day, he is the not-so-midly mannered Shovel. But when it really counts, he is Captain Bail-Out.

1,000 words

They say a picture is worth 1,000 words but I think Anthony's are worth at least 1,500. He takes some freaking great shots, here's some more highlights from Sun's training race.


I assure you that some serious pre-race smack talkin' was going down between the Flask and Danny Boy. That's largely in part due to the fact that Dan is from Dirty Jerzey. Actually, that's pretty much the main reason.


The hurt came early in the race, not wasting any time. I'm pretty sure this was lap 1 or 2.


How could this break not work? I was pretty coninced we'd stay away, especially as late in the race as it was. As Flask pointed out before, I don't think Pearson's position could get any lower unless he customer bends new bars with a 100cm drop.


Oh right, Francois was chasing. Even Anythony's lense has trouble keeping up with that fast Candian. Rumor is he'll be in the area for a while until the weather in Canada gets better.


Listen, its not like me to call people out (editor's note: sarcasm) but I'm not going to name names here. All I'm going to say is that when you get shelled 3 laps into a training race, you might want to reconsider your training plan. I'm all for training races and people using them to get better...but jumping back in early and often can prove to be dangerous at times.

Lots of stuff...

"Wait, we're sprinting through the corner?"

First of, its clear that Butterworthless is the DB of the Week from last week's poll.

And while we're on the subject, I really owe Joey Solar an apology. I'm calling dick move on myself for nominating him last week. Sure he had a funny moment or too at roller races, but certainly not worth of nomination. Especially considering he hooked me up in a major way by lending me a Ptap wheel to use in my hour of need. To make it even worse, even after I nominated him he still literally gave me the shirt off his back today at the crit -- lending me his short sleeve jersey (b/c I forgot mine in a db move) so I didn't have to race in a long sleeve. Joey - you're a good friend and teammate. For this, I'm putting myself on the block this week.

Moving on, Danny Boy talked me into racing in Branchbrook Park (Newark, baby) on Sat and I'm pretty happy I went. They ran it on the "classic" oval loop which in my mind is the real course. Good turnout, about 75+ in the 1/2/3 field. It was pretty much as expected - a good amount of sketchy with some fast hard racing. A 3 man break got away, Danny boy took 7th, and I came in a mediocre 22nd. Not bad for the first "real" race of the season. There was a DB move off the chart though - some kid from Westwood Velo was rocking a Ridley Noah, with a Zipp 1080 front wheel, 404 rear, and a Camelbak. He finished somewhere near the back. WTF. I was speechless. He's on the block with me.

Have you seen this Canadian? If so, he was probably killing it.

Derby and crit today. The group gets bigger each week, even though it was pretty cold this morning. Thought it might be low key but some heavy hitters were out - Bill, Geronimo, Minturn, and a crazy French Canadian named Francois Perisien. He was anonymous to most until we hit the turn around -- and started slaying it. I mean, killing it. I was in front of him in rotation at one point, and dude would come through and just drill it til the whole group was single file behind him. Eff me man...that dude is strong. Turns out he was the national road champ a couple years ago. That explains a lot. There was a tailwind on the turnaround and it was stupid super fast...like spinning out in the 53x11. By far one of the fastest derby's I can remember.

Crit was more of the same. For some reason my car became the holding place of crap for everyone who didn't have a car, including Francois. I tried to make a deal with him that he could keep his stuff in my car if he didn't put me in the pain box in the crit. He said "sure, no problem. Just stay on my wheel." I think there was a language barrier there or something. The crit was 30 laps of pain, and believe it or not it stayed together til 5 to go. At one point it was me, Bill, and Pearson up the road and thought that would stick...until Francois chased us down. Solid day...I bailed after the first race, was pretty spent from the weekend.

Vote on the new poll...

Yes, the Ridley is back in action and better than ever.

TGIFDB!!

The Ridley has gone from "so fresh red & white" to "back in black."

Operation: Ridley Revival is nearly complete. Last night I began bringing it back to life by swapping out the new fork, lower headset bearing (which just happened to be shot), and derailleur hanger. Everything went smoothly and is running nicely. I also switched back to my stock Campy hoods as my Hudz were ripped up in the incident. I know some people are sad to see them go. Also gone from the red & white theme this year is my brand new, less than a month old, Fizik Arione CX saddle. At first I thought it was just crooked, but after a closer inspection I realized the whole thing was tweaked on the rails...so now its a paperweight. That one really hurt. Kill Bill was nice enough to lend me a black Arione saddle in the mean time to get me up and running. All I can say is I get by with a little help from my friends. I'm planning on giving it a test ride after the grind today. And my car window is getting fixed today.

Ok, now on to the part of the week everyone is waiting for. Not only are we going to do DB of the week, we're going to put it to a vote! Its been quite some time, so without further waiting here are this week's nominees:

1)Joey Solar - it pains me to nominate him considering he hooked me up in a MAJOR way this week by lending me a Ptap wheel. However, there were apparently events that went down (no pun intended) last Fri at Roller Races. Now I was not there so my accounts are second hand, from a source who was probably too drunk to taste his chicken. But from what I understand Joey fell off the rollers in his first event. He then did another event, challenging a girl. This was a lose-lose situations: if you won, you beat a girl; if you lost, you not only lost but to a girl.

2)David Butterworthless - still my hands-down, no question DB of all time in local cycling. His shenanigans continue in '09 and seem to have no end in sight. He is a world-class DB.

3)Anyone who has or is planning to do a Pro-Scam event in '09 - come on people, you'd have to be living in a douche cave to not know what a scumbag Butterworthless is (see #2). By doing his events you are just prolonging his demise as a promoter. Please stop it.