pigs and bikes on ice

In the past few weeks I was complimented on my mustache, got swine flu and raced my cyclocross bike, not in that order.

Usually about 1 or 2 weeks before a big race I'll start to decrease my training load to allow my body recover, get faster, and come into the event fresh and fast. This year I got the swine flu instead. It didn't work nearly as well as my usual tapering protocol. Too bad. I still decided to travel all the way across the country to race anyway. About halfway through the race I realized I hadn't crashed yet, and decided to make it a personal goal of mine to finish the race without crashing. I succeeded at this goal.

I finished 25th of the collegiate Div 1 boys. Considering that I lost my call up and had the swine flu, and flatted during the race I'm reasonably ok with this. Apparently the ACCC allowed me to race a whole season and win the conference on an expired license, I had no idea until I went to check in. The USAC director told me I had been crossed off the start list. Bummer. I was allowed to race, but without the benefit of a front row start.

Oregon has a cyclocross (and probably cycling in general) scene that is on par with New England. One thing they have that New England does not, is a group of professional photographers who race cyclocross and take kick ass pictures of the races. Visit here: http://www.pdxcross.com/ and note the sexy black and white.

The pdxcross group was able to show a few crashes during my race:





I'm the one still upright behind the other dudes. It seemed like all day I was dodging crashing riders. Below is teammate John Crow who fell down more times AND made more money than I did.



It's time for a little break from riding. Maybe a week or two. Then it will be back to the mtb, I can't wait.

Patterns

I'm afraid I'm getting repetitious with these posts of images trying to show patterns. Maybe I should figure it out, or stop posting. I threw some bike racing in there too, jus cuz.





















And a few more:

More racing

Last weekend I raced at Virginia Tech. Saturday the race started at 9:30 pm. This was a bit different from the 7:00 am starts I was used to during the endurance mtb season.

I raced like a sissy Saturday night sucking wheel and finishing second in the college race. Luckily the college kid I was following went pretty fast so we caught and passed most of the pro field who had started 45 seconds ahead of us.

Sunday to make up for Saturday night's lackluster race I rode harder and alone. I was able to catch and pass all of the pro field. So despite a 45 second handicap I managed to win the race outright. Sweet. Hopefully this means my form is starting to come around in time for nationals.

Here are some pictures from Sunday, the glasses made me faster.

More pix

I took some pictures at the NC state fair early in the morning. I also took a few pictures while I was home last weekend. Here are some of them:




I went to the fair with Joel and Herc Nasty, Joel walked through my shot so I got to blur him:

cross

Today was the first race of the NCCX series. I think I finished 6th in the pro 1/2 winning the collegiate category. The end of October is usually when the legit 'cross racers are starting to get their racing legs under them, and this was my third race weekend in a row. This year I am not a legit cross racer. Earlier today:





The first weekend of racing the collegiate cats ran with the pro 1/2 race, I finished 5th or 6th winning the college race. Day two was slightly worse, 8th in the pro 1/2 and 2nd in college. Then I flew back to New England, where the cross scene is significantly better. Saturday I raced poorly and finished 9th or so in the pro 1/2 and Sunday it rained all day and I lost feeling in most of my body. I finished 5th. There were no collegiate categories.







Photo credits on the first two go to Kai, and the last three are Giana's. Thanks for sharing.

a few more

A few more for the 'Raleigh' collection. I may have adjusted the brightness on one of these, otherwise they've only been reduced to web-friendly dimensions.

This weekend is the first cyclocross race of the season. It's a little later than I would like. I'm hoping for a chance to take some pictures at the races. Suffering on the bike looks better in black and white.

Good morning

While riding this morning I experienced one of those moments that made me remember why I liked riding. The air was cool and dry, finally. It was about 30 minutes after sunrise and the sunlight came in low through the trees. While riding my cyclocross bike on dirt, I felt like a wild animal running through the forest. Alternating rays of warm light and cool shadows from the trees made me feel like I was going faster. As a result I actually went faster. Korpiklaani must have been playing in my head, I'm thinking spirit of the forest. Anyway it was sweet. That's all.

Rally

This one is mine. There will be more. I will never make the best photograph of 'Raleigh'. Instead, I'll do my best to record the images that will remind me of the Raleigh I know. This project will last at least another roll and hopefully not more than another year.











Y'all don't know me, Herc-nasty

Textures, patterns and other

Mostly these are other. You'll notice a border around each image. This is the edge of the negative. Each strip of black and white film was scanned and converted to a jpeg file. I may have adjusted the brightness and contrast on as many as three of the images. Otherwise they haven't been altered. My lack of cropping is why you see the edge of the negative in each picture. I read somewhere that some photographers will actually make prints that show the edge of the negative like this as a way of showing that they had the forethought to compose the photograph the way they wanted it before actually taking the picture. I try to do this as much as possible for a variety of reasons. The one in here that was cropped, I cropped because I held the camera a little crooked so my lines that should have been parallel with the edge of the frame were not.