7 reasons I love Kayle LeoGrande

When USADA issued the official death certificate for the profamateur racing career of Kayle LeoGrande, it listed the seven banned substances found in his pee-pee. They were: Raloxifene, ostarine, ibutamoren, GW1516 sulfone, RAD140, LGD4033, and andarine.

The news came down about the same time I was lying in bed wondering how I would ever win my first Telo World Fake Profamateur Training Crit Championship. I had a host of fourths, a couple of thirds, but victory proved elusive, even with Frexit out of the picture.

It was 3:00 AM. The phone rang. “Hello?”

“Hello,” said a heavily accented voice, which I instantly recognized as Stanley O’Grande, the infamous doping Chihuahua. “You wanna win the Telo?” he said.

“Yeah,” I admitted quietly. “I do.”

“It’s gonna cost you.”

“I’ll pay anything.”

“You test positive I don’t know you, okay?”

“Anything.”

“All right,” he growled. “Get ready for the dark side.”

An hour later I was in a dark alley behind the PVE faux estate of palm frond manager Robert Lewis McButtchaps, Jr. It was silent except for the babysitting service which had come over to McButtchaps’s home to burp him and change his didy. I spied Stanley O’Grande next to a bush.

“You got the stuff?” I asked.

“Here,” he said gruffly, thrusting out his paw. I took the large plastic sack, tucked it under my arm and dashed away.

The next day was Telo. Before rolling up to the start I opened the plastic bag. Inside was the miracle tunic! One of Kayle LeoGrande’s old jerseys! I quickly shucked off my Team Lizard Collectors kit and squirmed into Kayle’s jersey, which was strangely damp.

At the bottom of the sack was a note, written by Stan: “This is the only miracle tunic left from the batch we custom fitted Kayle with. Straight from Shanghai. Zip that baby up and let the ointments in the fabric do their thing. Chapeau. Or sombrero, as we Chihuahuans say.”

As the form fitting garment clung to my skin I could feel the magical elixirs begin to soak in. In seconds I went from meek, compliant, fearful Wanky McWankster to Kayle Jr., a/k/a Cabbage. As the chemicals from the soaked jersey coursed through my veins, I knew it was indeed my day to win Telo.

Destroyer sidled up to me. “We’re on the same team now,” he said. “Me and Smasher will get you the win today. With that tunic, everything is possible.”

“Even for me? I thought you can’t turn a donkey into a racehorse, even with drugs.”

“A donkey, no. But a Wanky? Maybe!”

The race was off. Destroyer, Buckwheat, and G3 rolled and opened a massive gap. I sat easily on Smasher’s wheel, knowing that my new teammate would do anything to help me win. Eventually the break disappeared, but I never worried. Why?

Because the 1st reason to love Kayle was taking effect, i.e. Mr. Raloxifene. It immediately began selectively blocking estrogen uptake receptors, resulting in immediate flows of extra testosterone that would have otherwise been converted to estrogen. My legs were pistons of steel.

Once the break was reeled in, a series of counter-attacks took place. In kicked Reason to Love Kayle #2, Mr. Ostarine. I easily went with the counter as my ostarine, which research has shown to have fewer androgenic properties, exerted less influence on the development and balance of my male hormones, including testosterone. While  not yet approved for human use, ostarine did away with the negative side effects of steroids and effectively helped me avoid muscle wasting diseases such as osteoporosis, cancer, and hypogonadism. The peloton had greatly thinned. Thanks, Mr. Ostarine!

Now we were halfway through the race and there were a flurry of unsuccessful attacks. It was my time to launch, and thankfully I had Mr. Ibutamorin at my disposal. Reason #3!!! This non-peptidic, potent, long-acting, orally-active, and selective agonist of the ghrelin receptor and a growth hormone secretagogue, mimicked the growth hormone (GH)-stimulating action of the endogenous hormone ghrelin. By sustaining activation of GH-IGF-1 Axis and increase in lean body mass but no change in total fat mass or visceral fat, it allowed me to attack so hard that none could follow.

Soon I was brought back and would have been decimated were it not for Reason to Love Kayle #4, GW1516 sulfone, or Endurabol. This PPARδ receptor agonist, although abandoned in 2007 because animal testing showed that the drug caused cancer in several organs, brought my dead legs back to life much as the 2007 research showing that high doses of GW501516 given to mice dramatically improved their physical performance. Endurabol might cause cancer in lab rats, but Kayle and I were no lab rats, we were sewer rats, and I hung tough.

Catching my breath I attacked and bridged up to Hector Morales thanks to Reasons to Love Kayle Nos. 4-6, i.e., RAD140, LGD4033, and andarine. These three SARMs kept my testosterone hugely massive, better than Obama’s, and the break stuck for twenty minutes. Unfortunately, the race had twenty-one minutes left.

Buckwheat, Smasher, Destroyer, Rudy, and others hunted us down despite my best doped efforts, but proving that drugs are stronger than pan y agua, I miraculously outsprinted everyone but Buckwheat for second place with the help of a massive leadout by Destroyer.

Was it worth it? How did I feel about cheating my friends? What about my incipient ovarian cancer? Would I feel like an idiot when USADA put me on its Most Wanted list?And most importantly, could I keep the miracle tunic?

I don’t know the answers to those things. But I know I’ve learned to love Kayle.

END

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PS: Don’t forget the Wanky’s. As if you could.

Heartbreak Hotel

With one lap to go I was a few minutes from achieving the only thing I have ever desired in life, that is a victory at our local training crit a/k/a Telo.

The field was a mishmash of gizzards, car parts, tree roots, defective Morton-Thiokol O-rings, broken razor blades, bald tires, and sunken galleons on the Spanish Main, as the pack had disintegrated shortly after re-entry, leaving only Frexit, Head Down James, Hair, and me in three-man-one-robot breakaway.

With seven laps to go, Frexit had urged me “Easy, easy!” as we came through Turn 4, which in bikeracespeak means “Ouchy!” So I waited a lap and attacked, shedding my unwelcome partners in an honest effort to toss them onto the garbage pile of discarded racers.

My hands were tied. If I sat in the break until the finish I would certainly get fourth. If I attacked I would [certainly – .0000001%] get fourth. So I had to go with the percentage shot.

Five laps to go and the gap held steady.

Four laps to go and I started pulling away.

Three laps to go and they clawed some of it back.

Two laps to go and it held at ten seconds.

One lap to go they were eight seconds back. Dreams of victory danced through my windshield. A lifetime of groveling was about to be rewarded with a few seconds swallowing a deep draught of the elixir of victory. Repeated beatings at the hands of unpleasant people was about to result in the bootheel landing on their neck instead of mine. Revenge would be sweeter than a diabetic dessert.

I rehearsed my victory speech, remembering to thank the little people who had made me who I am, thanking my parents, my deceased dog Fletcher, Phil who sold me my first bike, Fields, and then moving on to my wife, children, and a brief explanation of the dedication and hard work it had taken to reach what to the casual observer looked like an overnight success.

My speech, however, failed to account for the bitter hatred that Head Down James felt deep within his soul. Even though I had mentored him as a beginning cyclist by shouting epithets at him, screaming at him to lift up his fucking head, and trying to intimidate him at every turn, he apparently had forgotten all those little kindnesses and was now hell bent on revenge.

With Head Down James preferring to drag Frexit and Hair up to me so they could smear him in the sprunt rather than seeing me walk off with a glorious, life-altering victory that I would mockingly hold over his head for all time, he buried himself and closed the gap with only a few hundred yards left to go. Head Down James knew that the ignominy of being dropped out of his own breakaway and then beaten by a solo move at the hands of the leakiest, braggiest, un-cagiest racer in America would put paid to his professional athletic career. Frexit also knew that a Wanky defeat before his assault on the 24 Hours of Le Mans Velo would cause an emotional collapse from which he might never recover. Hair didn’t care; he wasn’t getting higher than second no matter what and he knew it.

Head Down James’s effort was enough. Aaron and Frexit buried him, and worse, they buried me. I praised them insincerely afterwards, congratulated them while secretly wishing that each were slowly beheaded by a rusty table saw, and pedaled home, crushed.

And although you may not give a damn, my dear, tomorrow is another day.

END

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French beast connection

A great way to become a better rider is to ride with people who are better than you. It won’t make you faster or stronger or smarter or more successful in racing. However, with the clever use of an iPhone or GoPro you will be able to snap pics and show them to your friends on Facegag, upload them to The Stravver and etcetera, proving that you are heroic and tough enough to ride with Titanic Crusher ergo you are almost as good as Titanic and if you only had more hours to train and dope to ingest and motors to install you would be as good as he.

It’s important that the footage not show how Titanic Crusher is barely breathing whereas you sound like a medicinal advertisement for sleep apnea.

The first time I saw Frexit was on the New Pier Ride. He was humbly pedaling along in an ugly bicycle outfit trying to fit in among all of the perfectly attired, matchy-match profamateurs on the Tuesday morning preenfest. He was doing a terrible job of it because despite his ugly outfit he had a smooth pedal stroke, a relaxed demeanor despite being squeezed in the middle of an idiot sandwich, and worst of all, he was smiling as if a morning ride with friends was for enjoyment rather than for huge expressions of serious seriousness topped off with seriousity.

Before we hit Pershing, the life and death battle had begun as the idiots jostled for position, which in the South Bay does not only means “place where you can be nearest the front with the smallest risk of having to be on it,” but also “place from which you can solicit new riders to join your fake race clubteam.”

Velo Club LaGrange, a historically fake clubteam, had won the last several recruitment contests, and even as they jockeyed for position I came up hard on the inside, threw an elbow, and began the finishing sign-up sprint.

“What’s your name?”

“Evens.”

“That’s weird. Did someone add an ‘s’ by mistake when you were born?”

“No, I am French.”

“What’s your last name?”

“Stievenart,” he said.

“Oh,” I nodded. “So you’re actually Belgian.”

He laughed as we hit the bottom of Pershing. “You should join Big Orange,” I said. “We are a bunch of dorks also know as Team Lizard Collectors or The Asphalt Magnet Gang, but we will reimburse your entry … ” I couldn’t finish because he rode away. And away. And away.

At the end of the ride I offered to wash his bike if he would join Team Lizard Collectors, and he agreed. Thus began Frexit’s association with a club that would be shameful for him but glorious for us.

It turned out that Frexit had won a bunch of French national time trial championships, and had won a big stage race several times called Tour Encaisseur des Lézards and was training for the 24 Hours of Le Mans bike race. Frexit won that race last year, by the way, destroying his competition by a huge margin as he came in first among over 3,800 insane people.

In the process, Frexit became known as a terror on two wheels, riding crazy distances at crazy speeds, and more importantly, showing up at our local training crit to give us all a chance to take selfies with him and sit on his wheel for half a lap or so. In 2017 he returns to Le Mans as defending insane person and with the twin goals of winning again and cracking the mythical 900km mark over a twenty-four hour period. Naturally, we’ve been helping him at Telo by offering up copious quantities of fresh seal pelts for repeated clubbing.

Best of all, you can be part of Evens’s 2017 Le Mans quest on Wednesday, August 16, when he will be out at Westchester Parkway doing a tune-up ride from 6:00 AM until about 5:00 PM. In order to simulate the attacks and surges of the race, Frexit has kindly invited other cyclists to come out for any period of time to ride with him and spice things up. It should be about as fun as having rusty nails pounded up into your gums, maybe more.

But as long as you get a few selfies to show to your friends, it will all be worth it. See you there. Briefly.

END

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The seven stages of Telo

It was a nasty little evening. Hot. Windy. And a full roster of seal clubbers … Frexit … EA Sports … Tothenstein … Destroyer … the Hun … Heavy D. … Bader the Bad … Alx Bns … various members of Team Lizard Collectors … various members of Le Bleu Blow …

And then we started. Lap One, chatty, easy, leg-stretchy.

Lap Two, Frexit attack, four-man break for three laps.

Lap Six, absorbed by the gassed wankoton.

Lap Seven, a handful of weak accelerations.

Lap Eight, Frexit attack, shattered the already broken field, and the six-wanker break was firmly established, quickly putting 1:30 on the crushed and hope-deprived chasers. The break consisted of Frexit, Tothenstein, Destroyer, EA Sports Inc., Bader the Bad, and Wanky.

After we settled in, Bader the Bad began shirking pulls. I rode up to him. “Dude,” I said.

“Yeah?” he answered.

“This six-man break only has room for one worthless, weak, lazy, scheming, shirking, no-good piece-of-dung rider. And that rider is me. Everyone else, especially the 19-year-old unemployed dude who isn’t in school and who rides full time, has to take their fuggin’ turn at the front.”

Bader the Bad shrugged and took a half-hearted pull before going to the back of the bus. EA Sports, Inc. was none too pleased, and he showed his displeasure with a 1500-watt explosion that detonated the breakaway. We struggled up to his wheel, and he swung over. Everyone made it across except for The Bad, who was kicked out the back like a reporter at a White House press conference and sent to the chase group to reflect on his errant ways.

However, what looked like a race that would end up pitting EA Sports, Inc. against Frexit and Tothenstein in a sprunt finish, was not to be.

Various lapped members of Le Bleu Blow fell in with the chasers and it was all legs on deck as Heavy D., the Hun, and Alx Bns undertook Mission Highly Unlikely: Bring back the break! With Foxy whispering the gap times so that it sometimes sounded like we were 50 seconds up and other times 5 seconds down, disarray reigned as everyone waited in vain for Frexit to tow us around at 30 mph.

The Hun and Heavy D. bridged across with three laps to go, and then the entire remnants of the chase caught back on. Everyone sighed as we waited for the “new” formulation of the race finish, which would, instead of pitting EA Sports, Inc. against Frexit and Tothenstein in a sprunt finish, would now pit EA Sports, Inc. against Frexit and Tothenstein in a sprunt finish.

With half a lap to go, Heavy D. and the Hun tiredly put a few bike lengths on the twelve-man wankoton, but no one cared. The real finish would unquestionably involve Frexit, EA Sports, Inc., and Tothenstein.

As we rounded the last corner and Frexit opened up the sprunt, a wave of terror spread through the field! Heavy D. and the Hun were still out front, if only by a few yards! Even the rockets of the fast finishers weren’t enough to close the gap, with the Hun pipping Heavy D. for the glorious win and the adulation of three people, especially me.

As we sat around and moped, complaining about how unfair it was that a group of chasers rode smart, worked together, never gave up, utilized the efforts of the Hop-in-Wankers, reeled in the break, then countered and won in a bold move, it occurred to Foxy that we were in fact going through the seven stages of Telo grief, set forth below.

1. SHOCK & DENIAL. You will react with numbed disbelief as you witness the field shatter on Lap Two, and you, of all people, get kicked to the curb despite your awesomeness. You will deny that they are faster than you and that the group is gone for good. You will be shocked that you drove all the way down from Santa Monica only to participate for five minutes. You will deny that your poor training, absence of stamina, weak resolve, and general worthlessness had anything to do with it. You will tell yourself that “It’s all coming back together in a lap or two and I’ll have a second chance!”
2. PAIN & GUILT. You will feel excruciating pain everywhere and feel profound guilt at having abandoned your work and family obligations simply to get your head staved in and your precious seal pelt stripped shamelessly from your back. If you are in the break you will feel pain at sitting on Frexit’s wheel and feel waves of guilt at being a leech who sits on the back doing nothing (unless you are The Bad). The pain will crescendo if you’re in the chase and people begin berating you or worse, attacking you and causing you to utterly fail and get lapped.
3. ANGER & BARGAINING. You will shout back at your oppressors and strike crude bargains in the break to allow them to allow you to hang on. “I promise I won’t sprint,” “I’ll give you ten bucks,” “Do you like my wife?” and other nonsensical trades will be offered, all of which will be ignored. If you are in the third chase group or have been lapped you will feel rage at everyone who races by. If you are in the first chase you will feel fury at those whose inattentiveness allowed that fuggin’ break to roll away.
4. DEPRESSION, REFLECTION, LONELINESS. After doing five laps solo you will feel sad, very sad, and people standing on the sidelines will note your sad facial expressions. You will reflect on the stupidity of the endeavor, the slowness of your legs, the dullness of your talents, and the incredible stupidity of spending $2,000 on full carbon wheels, made 100% of pure carbon, only to get dropped five minutes into a training race, which is itself an oxymoron. If you are one of the chasers you will feel great loneliness as you do all the work and your wheelsucking chasemates wait for the opportunity to dump you and bridge solo to the break.
5. THE UPWARD TURN. Now the chasers will catch sight of the break! Suddenly it will all make sense. You were doing this for a reason! The carbon wheels and 3-Day Notice to Pay Rent or Quit were worth it! Your wheelsucker douchebag chasemates are pals after all! Just a few more laps and you’ll have reeled them in!
6. RECONSTRUCTION & WORKING THROUGH. Now the breakaway, caught, gassed, and thoroughly chastened, works through the steps that led to its demise. What could we have done better? Why did we start soft pedaling? Now that we’re all back together, it’s time for a new strategy. Perhaps it’s time to do some more TT intervals or buy a different (but more costly) set of carbon wheels that are 100% carbon. Hey, it’s only a training race.
7. ACCEPTANCE. Everything happens for a reason. The Hun is a sorry sonofabitch but he rode tough and outsmarted everyone. That bastard Heavy D. acts friendly but is actually a badass. It’s okay to lose sometimes. I am who I am. Telo is Telo. Plus, just wait til I get that shipment from China. Then I will flay some sealskins for realz.

END

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Leadout

I’m a simple person.

I like cream in my coffee.

I like toast for breakfast with butter and jam.

And I want to win Telo.

I’ve come to terms that #3 is never going to happen, but every week rebel mightily against reality. I have it in my head and there are 24 or 25 chances a year to win and this is the week.

When I say win I don’t mean set a new PR or make the breakaway. I mean cross the finish line first.

It’s a very simple concept, except that after innumerable starts, it’s never happened, and as I get older and slower and apparently a bunch dumber, the chance of winning, which was always infinitesimal, keeps getting smaller.

As Derek the Destroyer says, “Your race results are largely decided by who shows up,” and at Telo there are always at least four people who can sprint faster than I can, if not forty.

Yesterday, there were seven.

Before the fake race started, Derek, explained the race strategy, which went like this:

• Frexit wasn’t there.
• Smasher wasn’t there.
• EA Sports, Inc. wasn’t there.
• Hair wasn’t there.
• [Complicated race analysis] + “follow my wheel.”

The analysis part actually meant something, but for me, once the race started I knew I would forget everything. But I remembered “follow my wheel.”

At the last moment Alx Bns showed up, along with the Hun, and then at the very last minute Surfer Dan, and of course Heavy D., none of whom I was ever going to beat in anything, much less a sprunt. However, with [complicated race analysis] + “follow my wheel,” there was a chance that something good might happen.

Until Ronnie showed up. Ronnie is the current Pro/Cat 1 leader in the CBR Sprint Cup standings. He’s about 25 years younger than I am, and about 30 times faster. We started the one-hour beatdown at 6:00 PM pointy-sharp and everything was fine until it wasn’t.

Somewhere between 6:NOAir and 6:VOMIT I looked up and there were only eight riders left. Ronnie and Derek had methodically attacked until there was nothing left, and each time they got pulled back someone else would counter.

With three laps to go Derek said something to me that I couldn’t hear so I nodded as if I did. The entire race I had followed Rule 1 of Steve Tilford’s Bike Racing Ten Commandments, which was “stay off the front.”

With one lap to go everyone slowed down and got ready for the sprunt. Patrick Barrett slotted in behind Derek but I somehow got back on the wheel after Turn 2, into the headwind. Derek motioned for me to stay there, as if anything other than a punch to the face could have dislodged me. We entered and exited the chicane and everyone bunched up on the right.

At just the right moment, Derek jumped to the left, into the wind. Miraculously, I was in a small enough gear to accelerate with him. Miraculously, I was able to follow. Not so miraculously, he then began pulling away. Miraculously, I realized that if I didn’t get on his wheel at that very second I would be finishing eighth out of eight. Not so miraculously, waves of doubt and pain overwhelmed me. Miraculously, my legs kept pushing. Not so miraculously, I wanted to cry. Miraculously, I didn’t crash into his back wheel as he whipped through Turn 3. Not so miraculously, I couldn’t see or breathe or think and then boom Derek went wide, leadout finished with one turn and 400 yards to go and the last words I heard were “At least you got second, Seth!” and I had no idea what that meant because there were eight of us and I could see Ronnie’s shadow on my wheel and I whipped through the last turn and it was weird because Derek’s leadout had been so vicious and fast that even though I was gassed just by turning the pedals the momentum kept me going and as I waited for the swarm to pass me it didn’t and only Ronnie was left who easily kicked by for the win without much effort and in that split fraction of a second I was about as happy as I know how to be and parenthetically as I write this several hours later I still am.

END

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Impeach!

President Trump promised to Make America Great Again. Well, so far at our Telo Tuesday fake crit he sure failed. He not only failed to make America great again, he couldn’t even get the stars ‘n stripes on the fuggin’ podium.

Those honors went to Potatoes Julienne (FRA), Frexit (FRA), followed by Smasher (UK), who is possibly a UK/USA double agent as he rides under dual passports. The First American wasn’t great, and he certainly wasn’t great again. Instead he was leaky, creaky, aged, infirm,  wobbling, plodding, doddering, muttering, and badly in need of a diaper change.

In other words, I was fourth again. Was that our president’s election campaign slogan? Make America Fourth Again?

I think not. Not even close.

Anyway, the build-up to the fake race was intense, starting with the morning NPR line-em-up-and-knock-em-down brawl that claimed the nutsack and ribs of Junkyard, and left thirty yards of skin on the asphalt, most of which belonged to P. Jones, a/k/a Crusher. Uncle Junkyard was unable to attend and hold up lap cards due to prescription-strength painkillers, however, the tension was extreme thanks to a high quality video production created afterwards by Heavy D.:

Last week I had been given two key pieces of advice from riders I’ve never beaten:

1. Don’t attack at the same place every time on the course from the front, dummy. (Courtesy of Eric A.)
2. Don’t tell people your legs are good when they ask, dummy. And at least put your money in a savings account where you get one percent instead of zero in checking, dummy (Courtesy of Derek B.)

The race started rather briskly, with a series of early accelerations softening up the already soft field for the decisive beatings administered sometime around Lap 5 that permanently shed large chunks of the aspiring hopefuls and sent them to bed without any BonkBreaker.

Then there were more accelerations. A dangerous move evolved with Eric and Derek (rhymes), Smasher and Frexit. However, the super dangerous move was made on Lap 2, when Potatoes Julienne attacked early and rode away.

Unwilling to tow everyone around all day, Frexit allowed the break to come back. I’d been crushed and fermented back in the second chase group and was only dragged back up to the action by the head-banging of Daniel Park. Daniel is a junior rider who is getting better every week, unfortunately. He rides aggressively and isn’t afraid to stick his nose in the wind.

Eventually Frexit and Smasher got tired of waiting for the group to chase down Potatoes Julienne, so they launched and I rolled with them. “Rolled” is a cool way of saying “I thought I was going to give birth to various internal organs.”

We had a most excellent trio and after my heart rate settled down to 210 it wasn’t that bad. Then I noticed that Smasher was skipping pulls. Then I noticed that Frexit was slowing down. “I wonder what that’s all about?”

You see, I had been really happy there with my two good friends, pedaling along, happily enjoying the sensation of being in the chase that was going to bring pack Potatoes, and generally enjoying the good friendship and camaraderie of a breakaway. So what if I was pulling a little bit longer and harder into the gnarly 1,000 mph headwind? Isn’t that what good friends do?

Yes, it is.

Until you remember that in bike racing there are no friends, only vicious slit-throats who despise your very existence and seek to castrate you quickly before moving on to the jugular. I swung off just as Smasher smashed, with Frexit in tow. “Hey, fellahs!” I shouted. “Wh-wh-wh-what about m-m-m-me?”

The answer was the howling wind.

The pack caught me after a bunch of lonely laps and a short-lived bridge ‘n batter with Jon D. Absorbed by the group I looked around at all the riders who were going to beat me in the sprunt.

“How are the legs?” Derek asked.

“Terrible,” I said.

“Good answer,” he said. “You’re learning.”

Then instead of rolling to the front and attacking from the front in the same place I always did, I rolled to the back and attacked just before Turn 3, where no one ever attacks. Daniel went with me, and then brought us up to SB Baby Seal, who was in No Seal’s Land. The gap was large and Baby Seal’s flippers were going full paddle. I mean pedal.

As we hit the straightaway, Stathis the Wily Greek gave us the one-to-go signal. I think that’s what it was.

Now it was time to help Daniel hone his race skills. “Daniel,” I cursed. “You gotta pull here or they’ll catch us.”

He charged by, giving it his all, without checking to see if “they” were anywhere in sight.

“Good job!” I said. “Harder!”

He strained like a horse in the traces and tore it up along the backside, dragging me and Baby Seal through Turn 1 and into the ferocious windward side of Turn 2. “Way to go!” I said as I attacked and dropped him, and soloed in for fourth.

Fourth place, by the way, isn’t all that great. So Donald needn’t bother with any more of his Making America Fourth. I’ll settle for third.

END

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Fake race report

Telo is pretty much a fake race, but it’s so gnarly, and such a good lab for learning how badly you suck that it deserves its own fake race report.

A really good race report needs to be simple. This one sure is: “Josh Alverson countered on Lap Two and soloed for the last 40 minutes.”

In between the start and the finish there were some teachable moments. One of them was that people don’t like wind very much. It was howling. It was so awful that only about fifteen people showed up.

So, top twenty!!!!

I think racing in the wind makes you better. You either get stronger by fighting the wind, or you get smarter by hiding from it and metering your efforts, or you improve your echelon/paceline skills. Sometimes all of these happen.

Josh had two breakmates at different times, but he rode them both off his wheel. I ended up in the first chase group with Aaron, Eric, and Dan Cobley. Dan was the strongest guy by far and he got us within twelve seconds before Josh nailed the coffin lid shut and pulled away.

Aaron rode the smartest, because he is the smartest. With a teammate up the road he rotated through and immediately swung over. If the three of us could bring back his teammate Josh, fine with him; he’d wax us in the finish. Which he did.

With five laps to go it became clear that we weren’t catching Josh. Dan and I are teammates but we didn’t ride that way. Eric and Aaron are both very fast so our only hope would have been to start attacking them and hope to get away. Instead we kept hammering at a pretty steady pace.

Funny how guys can be too tired to pull hard but when you round that final corner they catch a second wind. Good bike racing is always strategic. I love racing with guys who can think and race simultaneously. It’s very hard to do and I wish I could.

I got fourth for the second time in two weeks. Forever Fourth, or something like that.

David Wells and Emily did the best recap of all, which describes every Telo I’ve ever done, and none more so than this past Tuesday. I now share with you below:

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