Budding Cyclist

Despite the admitted volleyball nature of my nascent blog, I will spend some time on a recently emerged passion of mine: bike riding. Okay, let's get right into it. On 6/11 I did my first Criterium, which is a french word for "about to crash", at the Driveway Austin raceway. Seriously, I liken the sport to a bunch of dogs who are stalking prey, at any moment they will turn on each other but meanwhile they are the best of pals.

Although it is a bit stale, here is the "race report" I sent out to my cycling clan. They know all the lingo and can relate to the scene (and in fact they are the ones who led me into this scene of desperation and triumph), but in retrospect I guess it thinly passes the test for entertainment so I post it here:

It was a blast, except it was only 22 minutes instead of 30 because of fear of storms (turns out they were well founded - rain just after the last races of the night).

I easily stayed in the cat 4/5 pack effort-wise. I was kind of feeling my way, I probably could have been smarter about reserving energy (staying closer in, cornering faster to maintain momentum), but I didn't want to crash or pop. I saw J go off the front early, I resisted the urge to go join him (I would have flamed out I'm sure).

I was next to the only crash I saw: on lap 2 I think in the final (sharper) 90 turn at the end of the long out and back, one guy lost it and took two guys out into the grass with him, one stayed up and rode out though. Later I almost ran over J.s bottle on lap 4 or 5, he sent it through the middle of the pack on the downhill like a torpedo, LOL. Later the same lap I was next to one guy who touched wheels and almost down in the middle of the pack, I lost a big chunk of momentum there where I think I could have squirted by him but I reacted with a brake (like plenty around me).

I was a bit cautious in the turns only because there was a lot of wiggling and I didn't trust others (or myself I guess). I can see where accelerating and being more aggressive could help a bit. I think the bell lap caught everyone by surprise, so the finish lap was a bit more frantic (of course that.s just an impression, it was my first race, what do I know?). It wasn't too hard of a workout, recovering on the long parts helped, but I was sand-bagging. Parts of the last 2K were at maximal effort (except the reverse corkscrew and final turns) so to finish higher I should have spent some matches much earlier, like the entire last lap? Definitely had more matches to burn.

So my finish started I guess around 2K but in the corkscrew a squirrelly turning guy caused me to back off and we gapped the front 15-20 people, so I spent that last 3 turns trying to close at all out. I came in at the back of the front pack in 17th by Alex's count, or if you prefer at the head of the 2nd half of the pack. At least nobody nipped me at the end.

And the reward for finishing is making it into the official photo gallery "full bore into the final turn". Nice pain face there.

Well there you have it. Perhaps it entertains you. More likely it bores the non-cyclist stumbling upon it. Let me know what you think.
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Q

Set me High and Tight: Attitude

Okay I waited for a few years to try this blogging thing, I was hoping they'd change the name to something less mushy-sounding, but it looks like this one is going to stay. And by now I guess I'm feeling full of it, enough to give it a try anyway. That and I'm tired of sitting on the publishing fence...

So why the name Set High and Tight? While perusing all the jack-of-all-trade types of activities in my life, I went back to a repeated theme in sports, work, home, and in life. It's a stance, approach, context, attitude that gets its name from my years of being a volleyball gypsy in South Carolina.

Permit me the time to explain.

When you asked for your sets, you could have them low and fast, high and slow. You could also have them isolated off the net or tight on top of the tape. I always seemed to prefer my sets high and tight, which did a couple of things. It gave me time to approach and meet the ball at the top of my jump, and gave me access to wicked angles. But it also gave the blocker time to cover, and the chance to cover more completely. It was a challenge. Besides, it gave me that spark of competitive adrenaline to get the hops going and get up there and crush that swat-melon in ways that made the guys in the back row feel like gymnasts. Or (most likely) I was just too lazy to "jump high like mountain" for sets off the net.

So back to this blog.

I hope that the following rants and ramblings will span the decades in both directions. I suspect they will cover a plethora of points, most likely covering (in no particular order (but in parenthetical retrospect in order of relevance to the 2009 here and now)) being a husband, father, time-gymnast, riding a bike, triathlons, (triathloning? triathlonage? triathlonation?), hoops, volleyball, handy-man stuff, web programming, family IT man,Unix, Python, Ruby, Perl let's cut the list short right there, it could go on forever.

Needless to say it will reflect the richness and variety with which I am blessed today in the year 2009 in a way that I couldn't ask for. Actually, I guess I could ask for it, and if I did I imagine it would go something like "Set me high and tight".

Q