Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Livin Large in Clovis

Hello,
We are in week 2 of our 3 week stint with our host family in Clovis, CA. It's pretty nice living with our giant screen t.v. and endless supply of cereal among other amenities. Everyone is still recuperating from one ailment or another. Teddy suffered his 2nd and 3rd crash of the season this past weekend but seems to be recovering well. Omer took a nasty fall in training last week but gutted out the racing and is improving everyday. And most everyone still has some kind of congestion that they are trying to clear up. Sat.'s crit was a bit disappointing with 2 of us flatting (Teddy and I) with less than 15 laps to go in the race so we didn't have as much horsepower up front as we would have liked. As a result, we ran out of leadouts and Emile was in great position with 2 laps to go but lost some places in the final 2 laps. In the road race, we had Garrett in the break with one other dude for 60 miles! They were caught with less than 10k to go and so we tried to set up Ben and Emile as best we could for the finish. Emile ended getting caught behind a crash but Ben showed his excellent form with a 4th place finish with some help from Scotty down the stretch. I was a little disappointed that I wasn't able to help in the last 5k but was happy with my contributions in the last 20k or so. My fitness seems to be fairly good at the moment as I've felt rather spry at the end of these long road races. My top end is lacking but I'll be fine tuning that in the upcoming weeks. This week is the Central Valley Classic with a hilly rr on fri., a long, flat(!) tt on sat., and a crit on sun. It should suit us so hopefully we can produce some results. Oh, and my latest trend-setting, king of style endeavor is the stash. I remember a family portrait when I was maybe 4? where my dad was sporting a killer mustachio and he says he hit a homerun in his softball game that day so I figure it must be performance enhancing in some way (much like the mullet). I've been growing it since the end of the ToC and I don't know if it will ever fill in past the "14 yr old stage" but I'll give it a shot and try to give picture updates periodically.
Progress report: Week 1.
Equipped with "the beater". Hey, it may not be impressive yet, but you have to start somewhere.









A butt shot from the car during the ToC TT. This was during the wicked fast descent. courtesy of Bob Hughes!




Getting a little extra training in on Noah's bike. You should see my sprint! photo courtesy of teddy.

This is a pic of me acing a serve vs. Benno in tennis on the Nintendo Wii. As Teddy will attest, these things are exhausting! Maybe it's the method of the future to curbing overweight youths.

6 comments:

iamTedKing said...

Just for clarification: all three of my crashes this year have been a result of people falling in front of me.
First crash, Tour of California = spectator in middle of road.
Second crash, Merced Crit = HealthNet and some other fool going down. Third crash, Merced RR = BMC and Rock Racing going down in front of me.

Ian Stanford said...

Oh man, no stash please. They get Powergel and all sorts of crap in them. First it is some jell, then some bugs stick to it, next thing you know there a rocks, dirt, old bike parts, and all sorts of other crap stuck in the stash. Clean face man, that is the way to go. You can keep the Nascar haircut. As one of my teammate put it, with the current weather situation here we should be flying around November. I need to move again. I will give you a ring next week. Now go bust out the Bic.

TomZ said...

wait now...if gel and bugs, dirt, etc. stick to my stash - it will certainly look fuller and more impressive, yes? Anyway, I figured you 30 below wind chill riders all have full facial hair up there. It's not just attractive, it's functional too.

Kem Sports Management said...

What everyone has to understand is that if we grow some white trash mustaches we are less likely to get killed riding around the Clovis country side....

Anonymous said...

Great TT in the ToC. Nail the TT this week. If you don't, nix the stash wind resistance.

Ian Stanford said...

30 below. Crap man, we grow hair everywhere....and I mean everywhere. Total sasquatch country up here. I am head south soon again, and then shaving.