Come With It Now.

Handicap races I can handle, and hilly races I can handle, but the two together is a bridge too far for me at this point. Three laps into a four lap race and I was done. After being swooped by a magpie - the bastards always seem to know when you're at your most vulnerable - I had ample time to think about what would happen when I finally rolled in. People would ask, "What happened to you?" and I'd say, "Well, I blew up." But this wasn't good enough for me. If you're going to lose, you have to be funny about it. So I started thinking about similies to echo my predicament. Sean the Man is fond of using "I blew like a hooker," but I like to think I only use highbrow material, so I ruled that out. The obvious comparison with things that blow up led me down some other unsavoury laneways (like an English pub in Belfast...), but eventually I settled on, "I blew up like the Hindenburg," and repeated it ad nauseum.

Here's a pic of me attacking the Pastoria hill:


Oh the humanity.

The Man and I hit up the store on the way home. DC, obviously sick of hearing every similie we had amassed on the hour-long journey home, decided that I should have a better chance of not blowing up in the hills, and prepared for me my new bike. You can read about it (and see pictures of me camping up the place) here.

I Got My Body And My Mind On The Same Page.

I've been driving quite a bit lately. The combination of the weather, a particularly hard training regime and a number of road races out in the countryside means that I'm in the car quite a bit. I don't mind driving, but I don't think I'm the best in the world at it. I've run red lights here and there, been caught speeding, don't pay enough attention sometimes. I'm pretty paranoid about hitting a cyclist one day, but I can see how it might happen.

Which is why I've always believed that as a cyclist, being hit by a car is a matter of 'when' rather than 'if'. It's the same as being in an accident involving two drivers - errors of judgement inevitably occur when fallible idiots like me - and like everybody - are in control. It's just that when you're in a car and you hit another car as you pull out of your driveway, the only damage done happens to your wallet. When you're in a car and you hit a cyclist, that cyclist gets fucked up bad. We - me included - need to take extra care, be more patient, more vigilant. It's easier said than done, but the way I figure it, we have an obligation.

Mind The Generation Gap.

Today held a lot of firsts for me. First road open. First race longer than 100ks. First time I've dropped in on my sister and my niece on my way back from racing in Bendigo. First time I've started a handicap in a bunch containing riders for whom cycling is a profession. And the first time I've been able to keep up with the scratch bunch for any discernible amount of time. Yep, I've had my cherry popped in so many ways today you could stick me in a cocktail. It was not, however, the first time I've been dropped. And nor, unfortunately, will it be the last.

It's Hard To Heal A Broken Heart.

So, it may be apparent that I'm pretty obsessed with cycling at the moment - way more than I've ever been before. But sometimes my obsession scares even me. Like, for example, when I was reading today's Cycling Tips Blog. It's about Chris Jongewaard and the time he spent in jail. Reading away, thinking 'Wow, that's pretty messed up,' which eventually led me to think, 'Man, if I had seven months away from all work and life pressures, maybe I'd come out of it all ready to smash the national road series'. That's probably not healthy, is it?