Thank you to Lou at the Pony Shop, I was able to jump on registration for CrossVegas pretty quickly.  I know it was not available this morning when I checked, so I should be pretty close to the front of the madness.  The legs are twitchy with excitement!

(photo: Julie) When I was offered the opportunity to go out to DeKalb and help design the course for the second race of the Chicago Cross Cup this fall being put on by North Central Cyclery and Half Acre, I could not wait. On the drive out I had jokingly said that if I had my way this course would be more mountain bike than cross bike. I was just a little excited.

Adrian and I got out to the shop where Julie, Dan, Bob, Toby and the other guys at the shop were getting ready for a cross ride. I did not have a bike, but the shop had a Surly Pugsley. The day just kept getting better. We rolled on over to the park where the guys took us out on the practice laps they regularly do. All I kept thinking to myself was that this park has potential!

I don't want to give too much away, but between Brian Conant and I, we influenced some pretty rad decisions to help this course have more to it than a few turns in a grassy field. The park is full of some beautiful old trees, and the course will weave and wind through them, over all of their falling leaves. The run up is going to be painful, but in the good cyclocross kind of way. When you are done with the run up, your legs are not finished yet. There will be some pretty sweet off camber riding. Then there is a stretch of false flat pavement before you'll dive into a nice wooded walking path that boarders on double track. The finishing section will be nice and wide for the sprint, but will also have a nice long straight right before it with a super wide turn leading into the finishing straight. So, it will not be just muscle through the finish, you'll have to be smooth through the wide corner as well.

Almost better than the course are the little perks we will work on to make the race memorable. And if they get some of the prizes they are hoping for, the fast racers won't go home empty handed. Bring out the little ones, we will have a little kids race. Podium, for the little ones too, Announcer, Food, A sweet course all bringing on the big race fun!  As other stuff comes up I will be sure to let everyone know.

the season is fast approaching.  Sometimes it feels like one war being fought on two fronts.  The 2008 cyclocross season is Europe and the wedding is Japan.  Now, a bomb will be dropped onto Japan and the wedding itself will suddenly be over.  Where as the cyclocross season is fast approaching, yet there is a whole lot of slogging through early morning training rides just to get to the battleground prepared.  So, as I really do not like an "easy" week of training, I will take it. 

I started the rides last week disappointed.  It just seemed like I could not make it happen.  Then I had an idea.  When I am doing these threshold workouts, I need to try for 100% throughout both of them.  None of this 95% business, because that just has me hovering on the fine line of two little.  So Thursday, I set out as hard as I could, and then tried to keep it up for the second twenty minutes.  While I still didn't get the numbers I was looking for, they were better and I did not drop off as far as I thought I might during the second one.  I am feeling good, although it is obvious the sun is coming up later than it was a month ago.  This is going to be tough in November.

I got two of my three wishes.  The Easton stuff is hot.  So light, they don't seem real.  More of my bikes should be arriving next week and stuff can start to get assembled.  The Cyclocross Magazine article.  Please skim it and not read it.  There is a reason I am a racer and not a reporter.  It just doesn't seem to have it together and reads horribly.  I really felt initially that it was better than that, yowza.  I guess reguardless it is still neat to have a blurb in there about Chicago.  And while you are paging through check out Paul's add for some sweet bikes with Stella in the picture.  She races pretty fast in the Elite Womens field.  Also note the Chicago Cross Cup Ad.

I went up to Milwaukee with a stellar group of guys this weekend to celebrate my bachlorhoodness.  It was a pretty fun time playing with fireworks, drinking beer and walking around looking for trouble.  I randomly met the team manager for Velo Bella, thanks to Mike's hot bike and his quick thinking to get me off the inflatable water slide.  Alex was a pretty nice guy and had some advice for the upcoming season.  Paul built frames for him and the girls years ago apparently.  He kept referencing how good looking and fast his girls are, so you might want to take a look into that. Since it seems like I surround myself with other people who live just as much like old men as I do, we were all up at 6 AM Sunday and headed towards Whitewater for a couple nice hours of road riding.  Put in a nice effort with Zach.  It was nice to drill it up a hill or two and roll around in the sun for a couple hours.  A quick swim and we were back in Chicago exhausted.  Tonight I help design the cross course for the DeKalb installment of the Chicago series this fall.  Hup Hup Hup!

I am  am not so patiently waiting for three things, well actually four.  I have needed to replace the rear tire on my mountain bike for about a month.  I love the Maxxis Crossmarks, but I decided that I wanted to try something different.  So I ordered up me one of the new fangled Tufo Tubular Clincher tires.  It is a little skinnier and quite a bit lighter.  They say it prevents almost all pinch flats and since I have never flatted the mountain bike any other way (knock on wood), I gave it a go.  About the same time a big box from Easton should be arriving.  It will actually beat the bikes here.  I think I am going to pile it all in the corner of the living room as motivation.  And also, for all you Cyclocross Magazine readers, an article I wrote on the Chicago Cross Cup is in the newest issue, accompanied by some photographs Naz took.  I will provide links to the article once I get it in the mail.  So be on the lookout for that, or just subscribe.  They will be the only people who get a pre-season interview with Nys before the Olympics, plus it looks like I might be a regular contributor this fall.  L'Alpe d'Huez tonight at Dan's and Julie is home Thursday, finally.