It takes a village to raise a child… or every village needs an idiot?

After a two hectic weeks of finishing law school applications, training, then planning and packing for my move, I’m finally here and slowly adjusting. We’re currently in Alkmaar, Netherlands for a few days training at a nice indoor 250 and staying a cheap hostel before heading to Dortmund for our first big race. Last night we raced the monthly omnium night with some “locals” including 6-day pro Peter Schep, the Amsterdam 6 winners from Australia and their coach Matthew Gilmore, and various members of the Dutch national team. It was not really “fun” considering we were pushing 36hrs without sleep, but it was good to get acclimated.

Taking a few steps back, I had three big successes last week, the first being securing Cane Creek as a sponsor for the season. I’m really excited to work with them as they are now focusing 100% on track wheels and have assembled quite the quiver. This winter I’m using their 30mm aluminum clinchers for training and the Sprint 85s for racing. They both use the same proprietary hubs with straight-pull Sapim spokes that place the nipples at the hub for reduced rotating weight. I’ll post some ongoing reviews once I start racing, but so far I’m really impressed with how they feel. I was shocked how good the bearings are, just because they aren’t really expensive wheels at retail and typically the bearings tend to be overlooked when costs are low. But when the wheels were on the truing stand for gluing they spun longer than my Zipp disc, and that’s on wheels all across the range.

Moving along, the second pleasant surprise is that I’ll be living with my cousin and his wife, Csaba and Emese Harasztosi, in Tübingen, Germany. They are somewhat removed family on my dad’s side—I think third cousins at this point—but they are still fairly close just because the Hungarian side of my family isn’t very big. Csaba is in a research position at the University of Tübingen, and Emese is finishing medical school. Tübingen is supposed to be quite nice, it has the youngest population of any city in Germany and more than a quarter of the ~80,000 residents are students.

We’ll be in Alkmaar training until Thursday, when we drive to Dortmund and start racing that night. After Dortmund we’re going to Bütgen where there’s another indoor track with a sports hotel next door. We’ll train there for a few days leading into Munich, then go to Tübingen for a few days before our last race of this block in Geneva. Once I’m used to the time and my head is less floaty I’ll get to taking pictures and including some less pragmatic information. So far the only bizarre thing I can think of is coming out of the track last night to see a giant white goat casually walking around the foyer. The sixes never disappoint in the novelty department though, so I’m thinking this is just the calm before the storm. In the meantime I’ll leave you with my final success of last week—getting out to an early Halloween party. Coffee to the first person to name my costume, and no cheating by looking back to my previous post.

A little teaser

Nothing too new to report, but I thought I'd give a brief update. All my travel plans are set and I take off October 29th and tentatively return in February. Dortmund is first up and racing starts Nov. 2nd. One mixed blessing for this trip is that it solves one of the greatest personal conflicts I've had in a long time, namely whether to be a mormon or a sperm for Halloween. Because of the national ban on candy corn little German children all around... Germany... are deprived of the joy of Hallowen, which of course is a celebration of the many glorious uses of corn syrup.

I'll also still be looking for sponsors throughout the season. Since firming up the trip I've been able to nail down a few more arrangements, but here some things I could still use:

-Dollars
-Euros
-Swiss Francs
-Danish Crowns

I think that about sums it up. Some other notes of interest, there will be a gear restriction this year that comes out to about a 49x15 or 52x16. Not too big a deal since that's what ended up feeling right last year and not many people ride anything bigger, but still curious. Last year the Danes experimented with big gears at a few races (52x15) and could get about half a lap almost immediately but then blew pretty catastrophically. That was lesson enough for me.

A great website to check out if you speak Dutch and/or like 6-days is http://www.bf-one.com/. Replicated from that site for your titillation are some things to expect in the coming weeks/months from the always shocking world of European track racing:



Oh yes. And also some of this:



BUT, hopefully, there will be plenty of this as well:

BANG... I pulled the trigger

Things are coming together finally. I have been unable to find a title sponsor and for that reason I somewhat abandonded my large-scale vision of a European track season. Over the last few days I've figured out the missing pieces to the puzzle, and at the end of October I'll be moving to Europe to race track through February. For the record, here's a little three-step plan in how to become the dirtbag bike racer you've always wanted to be:

Step 1: get a new credit card with 20,000 bonus miles so you can get a free plane ticket

Step 2: become a male model and make a grand in a few weeks

Step 3: Ebay everything you own not related to the most pressing racing demands

I still need to finalize some things, and by "some things" I actually mean "everything," but in this case I think making a decision is the biggest step and after that things will fall into place. Right? Like a place to live? And a way to support yourself? Sure...

Unrelated, below is a picture of Dan Harm from our recent trip to LA.

Not the usual homestay

And....... done

All done. The madison was yesterday and wasn't stellar for us but was still probably my best race yet. We were really aggressive in the first half of the race, attacking for the first points sprint and getting to about 2/3 of a lap up. At that point the field turned the screws to bring us back and that was about it for our race. We attacked a lot more and won more points, but that was our chance at the win. If we had a few exchanges that were crisper and worked the leg speed more I think we would have made the lap. That doesn't really do us much good now, but it does offer some insight into what to work on in the future.

In the end we were 6th, which is less than I was hoping for but we still had a good race. Afterwards we both talked to the new endurance coach who said we're on their long list of riders for a national madison team. So we might be back in LA in about two months for a madison camp and the last chance at qualifying for the talent pool this season.

We're now in Santa Monica with some buddies of mine, cruising around Venice Beach by day and going to dubstep concerts at night. All our gear went back with team Rubicon yesterday and we're flying home tomorrow. For a play-by-play of all the events go to www.fixedgearfever.com and click on the nationals coverage.

"Reinactment of Nativity," by Dan Harm

I think Garfield (the cat, not the president) once said that if you set your expectations low enough you'll never be disappointed. With that in mind, maybe at this point it's time to rethink my strategies for these races. Today's points race was a step in the right direction over the last two days, but still not what I had been hoping for coming into nats. It's a bit of a mystery why I haven't been feeling it since I was setting all kinds of power PRs in the month before nationals. But somehow the legs have just been completely absent this whole week.

The points race qualifiers were early in the morning, and both Dan and I qualified while Alan narrowly missed out. The qualifiers were surprisingly fast this year, and even guys like Huff and McCook didn't make it in. In the final heat some didn't make it even after lapping the field twice. I actually felt pretty good in the final, and rode a fairly aggressive race but couldn't quite line up my attacks with the flow of the race. Twice the counters to my moves got away and lapped, and somehow I was never attacking during the points. In hindsight I should have layed low for a while to get in sync with the sprint laps, but I was really gunning to take a lap since that seemed like my best shot at a top-5 compared to duking it out in the sprints. In the end that strategy didn't pay off.

Tomorrow is the madison and Dan and I are looking for some redemption. It's not clear yet whether there will be qualifying heats or simply a final, but either way we'd like to ride an aggressive race and shoot for a podium spot. I guess that runs counter to my opening aphorism, but at this point there's not much to lose.

Oh, in perhaps the most immediate realization of karma in the history of the world, someone stole both of our pee bottles. It's more than a bit surprising since they were both clearly marked with Mr. Yuk faces. And whether the scoundrel uses them for drinking or for peeing, a pee bottle seems like something you wouldn't want to double dip. Like recycling chamois cream, dentures, or thongs.

This about sums it up

Pursuit finals

Nicht so gut

Things weren't stellar today. Dan experimented with a big gear in the pursuit, went out flying then hit a big wall the final km. He was third in qualifying which of course isn't bad, but he missed the time standard time by 7 hundredths of a second and almost certainly would have made it with a different gear. The feds talked to him afterwards but weren't very sympathetic... all they commented on was how close he came and what a shame it was.

The scratch race heats were the usual negative style of miss n' out racing. Alan was in the first heat and was racing well but missed a split halfway through the race and had to spend some time working in a chase group. The split came together and he was up there in the sprint, but was just a little boxed in and finished just outside the qualifying positions. There was no keeping him down though, as a surprise visit from his wife and his first mass start event on the boards made him a pretty happy man.

I was in the final heat, and things didn't go much better. My legs felt like I hadn't ridden in weeks, so I was really conservative and tried to just follow wheels and hope they were the right ones. I was surprised that the field didn't seem to pay any attention to who was rolling away... they would chase random guys like their lives depended on it then let Roman Kilun and Jaques-Maynes just ride off the front. I tried getting in a few moves but no one was working and everyone was chasing. The final sprint wasn't very fast but it was three-up and I was stuck in the poll lane, so there wasn't anywhere to go. These qualifying heats seem to play out like elimination races, and it's easy to ride the whole race, not qualify, and still not feel like you ever did anything. The points race is tomorrow and I'm more enthused about that, so we'll see what happens. Hopefully the jello will be shaken out of my legs by then...

Team Pursuit Podium

Rubicon Team Pursuit

TP Warm Up

Mass Start Test

MST Warm Up

Things could be worse

Day one is in the books and things went okay. The feds are experimenting with a new schedule "system" (like their registration "system") which is to simply run all of the events in one giant session rather than the typical AM/PM split. So today we got to the track at 9:30am and got home at 6pm. Tomorrow should be even longer, with a full schedule of pursuits, scratch heats, keirin heats, and a sprints.

The Mass Start Tests were first, and went pretty poorly. In typical fashion, the format was changed prior to the start of the race without letting anyone know, so instead of three laps of windup before starting it was two, and the timing strip was moved down to just below the blue line. That's pretty abstract I know, but the overall effect is that you now have to essentially begin sprinting right from the rollout to get up to speed in time, where before you could float a bit before the opening jump... and you have to come down track a lot sooner to make the timing strip. The end result is that almost no one made the 500m times this year, where in previous runnings that was the easiest aspect of the event. 3k times also increased by a few seconds per rider as a result. I felt like crap and went slower than last year, which of course is never fun. I think the thing to take from it though is that USAC doesn't want anyone qualifying by the time standards anymore, since they both made the event harder to ride and made the times harder by a huge margin. So now they will parade their objective qualification system then simply default to a subjective coaches' selection when no one makes the times. Classy, as always.

The NW team pursuit team of Dan, Kenny, Jamie, and Tom Zirbel hung on for third against some solid competition. They looked content with their ride but clearly could have gone faster with some practice. Alan didn't do any racing today but thoroughly enjoyed his first outing on the boards and is gearing up for the pursuit tomorrow morning. I also made an important discovery that will greatly improve my quality of life over the next few days--that being a flawless pee bottle system so I don't have to leave the building and walk to the parking lot to use the portapoties. No pics of that system but photos from everything else above.

Oops, I did it again

T Minus One

As has become nationals tradition, Dan and I broke down and shaved our arms. It was an important part of the mental preparedness process and I think a good team building excercise as well. Though, I will point out, we shaved only our own arms, and as a rule there was no back and forth shaving. There was especially no )) <> (( back and forth forever. Lunch to the first person to name the movie reference.

In any case, the travel down was really straight forward and the only hitch was we didn't get any track time. For some reason they strictly closed the track at 4pm to some people but then other people continued to ride? It's not the strangest thing USA Cycling has done. No, that dubious honor went their registration "system" that required about five minutes per person to pick up numbers. So instead of riding at the track we just stood in line at the track watching other people ride for about 45 minutes. I think had we been in bike shorts we could have counted it as a ride, but no such luck.

So, our day ended with an exciting team roller workout in the parking lot of our hotel, followed by an even more exciting trip to the grocery store on track bikes. The room is a little tight but at least we have a kitchen. And we also still have eachother. I'm secretly hoping that after having all of our Tiemeyers together in the corner for a week maybe by the time we leave there will be a little baby 650c Tiemeyer. We'll see what happens.

Tomorrow = Mass Start Test and Team Pursuit, then they're going to resurface the track for the Thursday session. Why? Because tomorrow we're going to tear it up. Okay done.