Back to Basics...

AWfoSho, El Gigante, Caren, and I had a chance to join Jesse Moore on one of his rides yesterday... Well, I joined them until Jesse turned the world vertical. Once he did that, I opted out of his four hours at 300 watt excursion and persuaded El Gigante and Caren to come with me. AWfoSho stayed glued to Jesse.

While AWfoSho spent four hours in his ME heart rate zone, those that I persuaded to go with me did our own three hour excursion, finding as many hills as we could manage. When the pavement petered out into gravel we continued on the gravel, passing mountain bikers while repeating the mantra, "Mountain bikes? we don't need no stinking mountain bikes!" And somewhere on that dirt road, while concentrating on weighting the front wheel properly in the corners, I realized that I was having fun.

That got me thinking... It's Fall, the off season, and this is what cycling is supposed to be about... boys, and girls, on their bikes having fun! We churned up gravel steep enough that you had to stay seated to keep the back tire from spinning, spun downhill and around corners that threatened to wash the skinny front tires out, and when the gravel roads ran out, we traded graded road for a little cyclocross on the dry lake bed around Folsom Lake.

All good fun... it brought out the kidlet in me...

Sometimes, in the midst of all this training to be better, stronger, faster, we forget why we race bikes... In its distilled essence, bike racing is all about boys and girls having fun...

AWfoSho, Davitamon, and El Gigante release their inner child following four hard

days racing the Elkhorn Classic in Central Oregon