I failed to mention that Jeff Bramhall now referrers to me as Ryan Sparkles.
This pleases me.
I failed to mention that Jeff Bramhall now referrers to me as Ryan Sparkles.
This pleases me.
The Cycle-Smart Fantastical Tournament of Cyclocross Racing is HANDS DOWN my favorite race of the year. I love the course, I love the town and I love making weird allusions to Jeremy Durrin’s penis.
As an added bonus, it was DRY. Which I also love.
Continue reading Bicycle Racing – Cycle-Smart International Cyclocross Tournament
wtfkits.com is making the rounds on the Internets right now. Along with BIGRINGRIDING and slamthatstem, I think we finally have a trinity of awesome cycling Tumblrs.
Yeah, eat it, I think my own Tumblr is great. Can’t argue with greatness.
There is no submit form, but hopefully someone can share with them the Williams kit seen here.
YEAH SORRY KATE THERE’S NO ESCAPE.
Anthony might be one of my favorite people in bike racing.
[iframe_loader title=”Anthony “Sick! What?” Clark 8th! DownEast Day 2″ width=”480″ height=”270″ src=”http://www.cyclingdirt.org/embed/NzcxNTExNDg1?related=1″ frameborder=”0″]
Watch more video of Downeast Cyclocross Weekend 2011 on cyclingdirt.org
Sometimes you do a cyclocross race, and you aren’t as fast as the leader. This happens to lots of people, no matter what field you’re in.
Everyone, at some point in their life, gets lapped.
It’s fine. Don’t worry. It’s not a judgement on you. It’s just how life goes. Some days, you are the lappee, and at some point you may be the lapper.
This is why it’s important to know how to get lapped like a pro.
When I was trying to figure out something last night, I dug back a few years in my iPhoto library and realized I had a treasure trove of photos from my cross heckling career.
I also remembered that I pay for a friggin Flickr account which I rarely use. But in my Flickr account are a ton of photos of bike racing!
This includes Dan Cassidy running, and looking not-pleased about it.
And Powers racing with an iPod.
There are also great shots of Jamey’s Mullet, among other things.
In 2006, I put on a cross race at UNH. We thought it would be a good idea to do it on a field near campus. We thought it would be awesome and everyone would have fun.
HOWEVER, we did not take into account that most of the course was practically five feet below the water table. That there was no available water for bike washing. That the starting/staging area was about 100 feet long.
As a result, people were running almost the entire race, derailleurs were ripped off, Merlin from SRAM (yes, we somehow got him to show up) just said “Fuck it” and took my bike down to the nearby stream after I handed it to him after my “race”. He dunked it a few times, and handed it back to me. As he passed it off, his eyes met mine, and his gaze communicated to my soul a message along the lines of “Holy shit, kid, this is the shittiest race I’ve ever been too.”
I would like to thank everyone on the Internet who helped support me in the King Of The Road Challenge. I appreciate this very much, and I will be sending out personalized ball photos shortly.
In addition to meeting my fundraising goal, my preparation for this ride has also included spending hours on Google Maps, figuring out the locations of all town lines on the route. I will try to keep the Internet updated (via Twitter) during the ride tomorrow, though I managed to soak my iPhone on my ride in this morning, so my Internet prowess might be somewhat limited.
I’m also excited that the one and only Drew Szeliga is the MC for the post-ride festivities. I am 100% assured a call up!
I think I may win one townline sprint. That is if I’m able to catch Tim and Ted off-guard, though the army of sexy bikini-clad ladies that I’ve hired to stand on the side of the road throughout Seacoast NH should take care of that.
OH HELL YES SOCKS.
I got a box o’ socks from my friends at People For Bikes. Well, specifically, probably one friend. Also included in the box was a collection of COFFEE.
This is great because I am a person who likes bikes, and I like pushing the agenda of a bicycle as a fantastic mode of transportation. I also like socks and coffee.
I grabbed two pairs of socks, a few packages of coffee, my camping stove and bike racing shit and hopped in Curtis’ car and OFF WE ZIPPED to Providence (we could not take bikes to Providence, as this was an instance in which a car was a better mode of transportation).
Yeah, I know, I’m linking to VeloNews after complaining about their ads.
ANYWAY:
One of the western United States’ leading event registration companies, SportsBase Online, closed up shop over the weekend — leaving numerous promoters empty handed long after their events concluded.
SportsBase Online (SBO) issued a short statement apologizing to event promoters, but informing them that payment for the thousands of registrations the company has processed over the past few months would not happen.
My bolding.
So, apparently, Sports Base Online fell apart and is taking all of the money it owes promoters with it. The article makes it sound like SBO pays out to promoters only after the event has closed – when I’ve worked with BikeReg, I’ve received payment for my event registration throughout the registration process.
This totally sucks for promoters.
I used Sports Base Online once, and it was horrible. Anyone who is promoting a race and is not doing it through BikeReg is either uninformed, an idiot, hates their racers, or a combination of all three.