Yup, been taking some time off the blog-o-sphere for a while to enjoy some of the off season sports...mainly drinking. Boy a lot has happened, not that most people care. We had a cross race here at Purdue, which was pretty cool. Then Iceman...
I hate to say this because the reason I got into cycling was mountain biking, but I hate mountain bike racing. You go crazy for the first twenty minutes, then ride at your limit for another hour or two, and finish the race usually in a stupor. Now I still think Mountain Bicycling is awesome, but racing sucks.
The best part of that weekend, aside from all the beer and drunken people involved, was a trip to the Sleeping Bear Dunes on Sunday. We hiked around a bit and jumped off some dunes.
So yeah that was pretty fun. The other large development is that our cycling teamz have finally been sorted out and things are looking pretty positive for next year. Pretty much the entire Panther squad is sticking together, with the addition of some Arkansas guys and Kirk Albers, bringing some serious firepower and experience to learn from.
While it is sad that our team split with the RGF organization which gave the best support of any team that I've been on, it's great that there is another elite team in the Midwest to help bring up the young guns. The RGF roster is pretty stacked with young talent and will have to be looked out for.
Yeah, and I AM looking for a job.
Nothing yet though, I'm blaming the economy. So if anyone needs an engineer who's fast on a bike, I'm your man.
Check out this sweet video from the Mad Anthony CX up in the D at Fort Wayne. Not the Fort Wayne in Indiana mind you, but the 18th century FORT Wayne protecting the Detroit river.
So it has been some time since my last blog post. Two weekends ago was the Cinncinnati stampede cyclocross race. It was a blast. Racing against 80 guys on a muddy grass field is a lot more fun than it sounds. So now with three whole cyclocross races under my belt I felt ready to conquer the world, or at least an upgrade to category 2. However the next day I went on a leisurely 60 mile ride...except that I was dying. I was having a bad enough day that a guy that came on the ride on a hybrid bike was beating me up hills, and drafting for me too. In my defense he is really strong, but still...Anyway while I didn't have enough of a fever for the doctors at the Purdue Student Health Center to warrent a test for the flu, I'll just call it the flu for blogging sake. So most of last week was spent having the flu, sleeping 12 hours a day, and feeling sorry for myself. I felt better by Friday, I even felt confidant enough to drive down to Bloomington to race a CX race put on by Panther teammate Ryan Knapp. Apparently I was not completely over my flu and felt like my legs were in a coma, that coupled with a pretty terrible start lead to a DNF after four laps. It was not a total waste, as I helped officiate, so got to race for free.
Next goal? Not to finish in the bottom 10 at Iceman like last year, then celebrating by drinking very many beers afterwards. I'm training for both goals
It's been a while since my last race report, and forever since I've done a CX race so this is a first. As you could notice from my last blog post, I only just finished building up my CX bike a few days before this second OVCX race. The race, which took place down in Louisville, only had about 25 riders so was pretty small. It was good having a small turnout, because then less people would pass me as I gingerly crossed the barriers. I really do mean gingerly, in the first lap two guys passed me before I was even able to re-mount my bicycle. But other than the whole running around while carrying your bike, cyclocross is really just like a mountain bike short track race that is twice as long (and you're not allowed to drink water). I'm exagerating, you are allowed to drink water, but all the cool cyclocross guys will laugh at you and say mean things behind your back.
The race was really hard, you're pretty much red lined the entire hour of racing. I ended up eight, which I'm not terribly disappointed about. There is a UCI cyclocross race in Cinncinati this weekend that I plan on going to, though I'm not doing the UCI race, just watching.
All my creative energy is being sapped by being a staff writer for the Purdue Exponent. And by all my creative energy I mean lack there of, I've only written two articles in two weeks.
Anyway if you're not familiar with cyclocross there are two distinct brands.
Oh well, it's not like Contador gave a shit what Bruyneel yelled into his ear during the Tour anyways. Let the riders race the race, not the Directors...
The days are getting shorter and the leaves are beginning to fall, that means I just finished the worlds shortest mountain bike race season. For the third year running we held our Purdue collegiate MTB race at the McCormick woodlot. McCormick is a unique trail. Lets just say that in the five laps that the A's race completed, we did nearly 2000 turns and 30 feet of climbing in about twenty miles. That is what happens when you cram three miles of trail into a wooded area not even a square mile. However with the trail only a five minute ride from campus the location cannot be beat. As promoters, this year we had the additional challenge of competing for space with a Purdue football weekend and all the tailgating traffic that came along with it. This did not pose too much of a challenge on Saturday because the course is far from all the football related activities.
My race went particularly well considering I'm fully transitioned away from my MTB roots and am now a 100% leg shaving roadie. I put my roadie skillz to work, and I got the "hole shot", meaning I actually got into the woods first and was leading a MTB race for the first time in my life. My moment of glory was ended when I hooked a bar end around a sapling. From then on out it was a slow decline to 6th place. I managed to stayed on Brendan Benson's wheel for a full two laps, sprinting out of every single corner that I navigated ever so gingerly just to keep up. After he dropped me I sort of kind of gave up...
But I did have a sweet sprint and bike throw for the finish:
We had the usual pizza party on Saturday night, then hurried off to Slayter hill to set up the Short Track XC course and Dual Slalom course. The course turned out pretty well considering we set it up in the pitch black. We had about twenty people help out setting up the course, which I'm sure is a record in this club.
When we arrived on the course Sunday morning we had two surprises. First: half the course was torn down. Given the proximity to the dorms I'm blaming in my head drunk freshman from the Owen dorm. Second: Volunteers were cleaning up trash on Slayter Hill, which was used the day before for tailgate parking, and began removing sections of the course thinking they were garbage. They were volunteers from the greek system so we couldn't be too mad. Other than that the day went smoothly and another successful race weekend was completed.
There is real life outside of bike racing unfortunately, and I had to participate in it a little this week in the form of a career fair here at Purdue called Industrial Roundtable. This year was a little different in that I actually put in some effort looking into companies and, believe it or not, got dressed up. I didn't get any interviews, but I didn't get turned away within 30 seconds from most companies either, I'm getting into this whole career thing with baby steeps. My company research was not completely fruitless: I found this sweet video from SpaceX (who really liked my resume by the way):
This is their first successful launch (1/4 is only good in baseball) of the Falcon 1 rocket. Check out two minutes in when the second stage is running. The engine bell is radially cooled so it gets red hot to let cold vacuum of space cool the bell.
I'm Chris Uberti a student at Purdue University studying Aerospace Engineering. I am also a Cat. 1 Bicycle Racer currently Racing for the Panther/RGF Elite Cycling Team.
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