Another fine display from Soiled Chamois favorite and UCI XCO Series leader Jolanda Neff (Liv Pro XC) displaying her “Neffness” (my term for Neff’s rad factor), new Giant Liv Lust bike and more skill than I ever had or will have. But then again, I have no idea what she is actually attempting here and if it worked out in the end.
Photo by Susanne Litscher via Jolanda Neff’s Facebook Page.
One of the cool things about having done XXC Magazine is that I was on the media mailing lists for a lot of cool races. Hell, I even used to get invites to races all over the country and the world. Of course it was a bitter pill to swallow knowing that my days of racing or at least successfully completing serious endurance races were behind me, and that with a staff of one at the helm of the magazine and little money in the company safe, there was no world traveling in my future.
The gun people have the NRA in their corner defending their right to blow big holes in things. Cigarettes have the tobacco industry and all those old smokers trying to look hip on ventilators in their corner. Sugar, which has come to be blamed for everything from childhood obesity, to Obamacare, to erectile dysfunction, has nearly the entire American food industry in its corner. And pasta? Well, pasta has me to champion how freaking good it is when eaten in moderation (although I prefer not to) and prepared with love (Note: please make a rainbow arc with your hands as you read the word love).
Pasta can warm the cockles of even the most staunch carb hater. Yeah, I’m looking at the Atkins people with their three meals a day of cheese & bacon but can’t walk up a flight of stairs and the ninety-nine dollars a pound, grass-fed, Cross-Fit doing, high horse riding Paleo people! Go ahead, hate on pasta! I’ll still be here eating it and loving it along with millions of Italians, the state of New Jersey and that hot Italian cook with the giant head on the Food Network. We be tight.
Pauline Ferrand Prevot (Liv Pro XC Team) has started two races in the 2014 UCI XCO series and has won them both. She not only won them, she crushed them, winning in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic by 2:50 over Catharine Pendrel (Luna Pro Team) and in Albstadt, Germany by 2:59 over Gunn-Rita Dahle Flesjå (Multivan Merida Biking Team). To say she has dominated the two races would be an understatement, taking early leads in both and never looking back, leaving all the other women to fight it out for 2nd place or pray for a mechanical.
As any reader of this blog knows, I am not a smart man. Intelligence is a rare commodity betweenst my ears and I did nothing this weekend to prove any different.
Yesterday was all about getting some longish Weekday Ride road miles in. Today was all about doing an easy ride out on the dirt roads for an hour and a half in the wind and seeing how the Clement X’Plor USH 700 x 35 tires I bought WAY back in January, and finally installed this week, rolled.
Ride Part I, the part where I reckon I was faster than last week for no reason whatsoever.
Last week I took my road bike out for the first time in 2014. I had written that I felt swell during the 41 mile ride but was sort of pissed to come home and check my files (which serve no real purposed to a schlep like me) and see that I was over ten minutes slower than my best effort last year. Thankfully things got a tad better today, even with a slightly gimpy-ish neck and back.
You may or may not (probably not) remember my post a while back on the isolati. If you don’t remember (and you probably don’t) I will quote the post…
…earlier this week as I continued to delve further into the book Maglia Rosa, I stumbled upon a word that was used in the early days of the Giro to describe the amateur racers, who didn’t ride for a team, just for themselves, room and board… they were called the isolati.
I was drawn to this concept for some unknown reason. Whooooo, wait a good-God-damn-minute. Fuck that, that’s a lie. I was drawn to it because the isolati were badasses. They were considered unpaid pariahs of the peloton. The only racers below them was the aspiranti (which I just MIGHT be drawn to even more and will be featured on a future jersey! Ha!)
We are just two rounds into the 2014 UCI XCO series and the Men’s overall title is looking like it MIGHT be all but wrapped up. The reasons? Julien Absalon and Nino Schurter…
Everyday I field hundreds of emails (not really, not even one) about why I am such a fan of pro mountain bike racing over pro road racing. Well, aside from that fact that I race mountain bikes (or a cross bike on gravel), I don’t really don’t dig the modern-day road racing vibe. On top of that, I’ve only competed in ONE (paved) road race in my entire life (A local race in which I got dropped within the first few miles and rode the next 27 miles solo). I just dig the mountain bike race vibe more than that of our skinny-tired brothers and sisters.
And as if I needed anymore evidence to justify my position, I give you the video clip below (taken via RedBull.TV at round 2 of the UCI XCO World Cup) of Alexandra Engen (Ghost Factory Racing)…
