Of Broken Nipples, Thirsty Ghost Realms, and Ever Heightening RRR Team CHI!

"DAD GUM IT ALL ANYWAY!!"

above photo; Saturday...apres suffering:
your Chairperson stares down the nipple-less feeder tube of my camelback that reduced me to a quivering quad-mire of dazed, dehydrated confusion. while attempting to drink during Lap One of Saturday's ABSOLUTE BIKE's MTB race, i tore the nipple off the feeder tube. More waterless than watercress, yet not willing to listen to Common Sense, i kept the throttle down and my heart rate up. surely, i thought, i could produce some yogic tricks to outwit the impending massive bonk which accompanies severe dehydration under duress. Hell, i figured, i used to climb the Big Walls of Yosemite with no more water than could fit on my swollen tongue!

Well, my Noble Friends, there is a reason why most Yoga Teachers limit their Practice to the inside of nicely incensed yoga studios and far, far away from the brutal Bardo of endurance racing! For alas, like the total nerd which is ilg, no magical yogic powers could be summoned and ilg thus suffered one hellacious bonk. not just one, but several of my inner realities combusted and collided straight into Lap Three (aka; Trail of Tears). it was on that technical traverse section, last lap, whereupon i shape shifted unwillingly into a ghostly apparition (perhaps you saw me?)...cross-eyed, blubbering, and infirm. Fed up with my invalid status and worried for my safety and coherency for my very pregnant Joy at home; i graced myself my first DNF in quite a number of years, and in the process felt very, well...grown up! oh good Lord Awlmighty, don't tell me i'm becoming more...gr..gr...GROWN UP!??!! aaaaaargh!

Oh well, there is comfort in knowing some things never change like the outdoor racing maxim: Expect the Unexpected!

coach ilg reminds the reader at this point:
do NOT - EVER - let me catch YOU trying to race 33 miles without water! i will personally kick your arse if you try such stupidity!

***
Namaste Most Noble RRR Teammates!
First of all, THANKS to Kristen for that wonderful Team Email today and great photos/results from all of you Two Wheeling Warriors that stepped up to the Start Line on Saturday! Start and Finish Lines come in ALL SORTS of forms for each of us; the important thing is not the outer podium (although, getting onto those ARE rather nice!), but rather our unique, inner podiums. Just toeing the Start Line - be it a Saturday morning club ride or a brutal MTB race - is where the real inner value begins! it was "Absolutely" GREAT to see all those RRR kits out there on Saturday! EACH WEEKEND CLUB RIDE can be the same way! the power of a club lies in its consistency to represent! all momentum for our future depends upon YOU getting out there in your RRR Kit and REPRESENTING!

Secondly, a deeeeeep wave of gratitude to Mark and Deb Wille for throwing open the doors of their beautiful home for our Team Party! How fun was that!?

Although i wanted more of you to be there as i announced the general 2008 Team Structure that your Board has been pouring over for the past several months, you will each have a chance to learn more in the near future.

Special thanks to Board Members; Chris "Check-My-New-Sweetass-S'Works-Frame-That-I-Got-For-$30-Damn-Bucks-Because-I-Toed-The-Start-Line" Bosselman, Rob "Getting-It-Done" Hastings, and the ever-crankin' couple of Gary and K (above) for all their work in producing the Party.

It is with deep honor that feeble ilg Serves this Board
and this great, fast, friendly Team
that remains
FLAG's ONLY NATIVE CYCLING RACE TEAM!

As the Board heads into our most time and effort intensive part of the year for doing Team stuff,
know that your sweat, spirit, and most of all your SUPPORT is what will fuel our work for RRR.

Promise Coach that you will watch for and OPEN your RRR Emails coming up, okay?
We need your active support to keep RRR growing into the Structure that i outlined at the Party...


Keep crankin' and i'll see you at the Start Line...


head bowed,

coach ilg

12hrs of the Peaks

Hey Team: Chris Wilkens here. Those of you who are frequent checkers (and readers) of the email realm may already be familiar with who I am. That’s me there at the very bottom of the last two R3 Team Updates (very cool to have team updates I might add) – the one duly noted as the team’s Single Speed expert. Please don’t let the title fool ya - I am by no means an expert (at anything really)! But enough about me! I wanted to pass along my report on this past weekends S.S.S.S.S.S. – O! (loosely translated to Super Sweet solo single speed shred-off) aka 12hrs of the Peaks. For you’s all scratching your head and wondering what is he talking about, here were the details:

The 12hr race course:
lap one: schultz creek trail, sunset trail, red onion, elden lookout road, sunset trail, little bear, little elden, schultz.
lap two: fort valley connector, 164B, western most fort valley, pipeline, lower motto, fort valley connector.
lap three: schultz creek trail, little gnarly, lower brookbank, rocky ridge.
Finish one set, do it again and so on…

What a great event all around: from the free beer/music at registration, to a 6am race start (which by the way was the first time in my six years living in Flg I have ever seen Schultz trailhead at that time of day – it’s cold, even in the summer), to cranking the pedals around and around and around for 12hrs – well 8hrs in my case, great people (cyclists as a species are good eggs, but something about reducing life down to one gear just elevates the good nature of said cyclists), and all this just out our back door – sweet flag livin’ for sure!

For me I have come to realize that I really enjoy the idea of riding my bike for long periods of time - just my body and mind seem to deviate from their original plans some where along 6.5+hrs into a ride; thus reducing me to spend the next hours debating the pros and cons of my life's current state of affairs. So, the race results: http://www.meandrosco.blogspot.com/ that's me in slot 15. I set out to do lap 4 (the climb-a-thon lap) and played leap frog with a guy biking up Elden in what looked to be parachute pants stolen from David Lee Roths gym locker back in the Jump days of Van Halen's mega success and realized the pain was just not worth the humiliation of watching my current lack of riding ability. So called it a day on lap 4 (3/4 up Elden) and enjoyed the smooth flow of some icy cold PBRs back at the p. lot. End result - sign me up for the next one - I'm in!

There are two more events in the SSSSSSS-O:
Race two: absolute bikes old fashion mountain bike race.

Race three: elden lookout road single speed hill climb Sunday, September 2 high noon. from where the dirt turns to pavement all the way to the towers near the sunset trailhead. mass start.

thanks for reading and hope to see you all at Fort Valley on Saturday (with a much more reasonable start time!), chris