There is a warm sultry breeze at the start of the W4 race. Mex did her pushy mother act and got Ruth in the W4 instead of racing with the fast junior boys.

No racing for Mex since she crashed on Tuesday and hurt her left hand. What a pair of cripples we are.

I persuaded Mex to set my bike up on the trainer yesterday. It took several promises of me being good, not overdoing it and committing to taking it easy. She reluctantly agreed and I waited for her to leave on her ride before I got on.

No surprises, but I hate the trainer, I’m the one riding in the rain and dark instead of getting on the trainer, in fact if it was a choice of trainer or going for a run then I’d rather run. I chose to watch the unbiased BBC coverage of track Worlds.

Anyway, I managed 15 minutes warm up before all hell broke loose and I decided that a short ME interval would be good - 5 minutes - no problem, the time flew by and my legs were feeling great. It must’ve been the TV because after a few minutes I decided to do another interval.

This one wasn’t so much fun and after about 4 minutes I was starting to feel light headed - just 1 more minute and I promised myself a rest. As usual it was the longest minute ever, much longer than any other minute. I finished and started having that dizzy feeling reserved for the end of a TT. Oops, I grabbed the towel, urgh, that doesn’t feel good, just hold it down, come on. That was a close one, maybe I wouldn’t be able to beat Chris Hoy after all.

It must be the medication, either that or the week of trying to recover, whatever, I’ll be back later for some more. I’ve got Hoy in my sights.

Dave Moulton has passed on an instructional video for cyclists and motorists…

One of the recurring thoughts from Saturday is how my head banged the road during the crash.  I remember all too vividly the thump of my helmet as it hit hard.  Thank god I was wearing a good, protective helmet.  My old 5 bar leather toe strap helmet wouldn’t have helped me much.

My helmet is cracked in 5 places, its probably worse than it looks.  But there are obvious dents and scrapes on the outside as well as the inside.

Ironically, we bought Ruth a new lid last Friday and being a good kid she challenged why we needed to spend so much money on it…  They say a picture is worth a thousand words:

OK, so before I posted this I asked Mex for her opinion - so what comes is a more balanced POV.

Thanks Martinez for taking cycling to heart, you show the way for cities in the east bay, and you put Walnut Creek and Danville to shame with their anti-bike approaches.

Thanks also for refunding Mex and Ruth’s entry fees, we know that you don’t have to, so thanks - it softens the impact of crashing for sure.

I also know that the circuit is tight and maybe on the dangerous side, but its technical and would be fun in the right race.

Thanks to EVERYONE that helped me - Kevin Torbett & Matt Yeadon from Wells Fargo, Steve Meilich from SJBC, the guy from Mona Vie, the marshals and paramedics and of course Chris Carscadden for bringing my stuff home.

I hate moaning n bitching, but com’on…

This was a race I’d looked forwards to all season.  Its less than 10miles from my home - how many times can you ride to a race?

The extra-long registration line - why pay for SBO and then have to fill out the release forms again - when everyone else prints the forms off for you.

The green goddess of money being put first, by putting the 4’s with the usually very safe M35+ 123’s.

The lack of consideration by the local police that gave me the “move on… punk” when standing looking down the start/finish straight during an ‘incident’.

And then to crash out as a result of some corner-cutting-lousy-handling-happy-to-finish-with-the-big-boys-freak just pi**es me OFF.

Two sides of the coin… thanks Mex for the perspective.

Reports from Martinez claim that Masters racer, Winder, caught bad luck in the race on Saturday and he would like to know which rider brought him down. We’re on a search to find out who has some extra skin on him…  

Its time to pay the piper, com’on out! 

I bought a nice set of rollers over the weekend and managed to stay upright on them long enough… “”

GBR 9 - 1 USA

See you in Beijing.

Screenshot, originally uploaded by Robert Winder.

New racer, Thomas, seen warming up at Cherry Pie before the Masters 123 race.

 Over on the view from the quiver, Hernandez says:

In the end, his viewpoint is ~ “are you going to save the world by doing that?”

and mine is, “well, i’m not going to **** it up more, am i?”

and isn’t that the starting place?

Don’t we have to STOP ****ING IT UP MORE before we can even begin to start “saving it”?

i’m just asking.

Great question… and it was a similar one that I asked this morning when reflecting on Ruth’s performance this Saturday.

First off, she flatted on the 2nd lap of the Junior Girls race.  There were only 3 of them out which is such a disappointment, but sadly, it wasn’t the biggest disappointment.  Not even flatting for the 2nd time in 2 road races was the biggest disappointment.  That honour was saved for the girl that won by jumping into the mens groups coming by the girls, even though they’d been told not to by the race referee at the start line.

Without having “sour grapes” both other riders questioned the race officials after the race result should still be the stand if the winner ignored the rules.  Apparently, unless the winner owned up herself then the race officials weren’t prepared to do anything about it.

Hmm…

So in general, cheats are supposed to “own up” after the race, eh?

Hmm…

Not sure I follow the logic that someone that ignores the rules would be honest enough to come clean after the event.

My question to Mex this morning was that if you could only win by cheating then maybe we shouldn’t be so harsh to criticise, maybe we should give advice to do the same.  This offended Mex, of course, and it was one of those times when I realised how stupid I just sounded.  I took it back, there is no way I condone cheating.  Not only that, but as Mex pointed out, the great thing about Ruths attitude is that she isn’t phased by this… her attitude is that she is happy with the race she rode, and hopes that her other competitors are too.

I agree that maybe we’re not going to save the world… but at least by not cheating the start point won’t be any further away.