Drugs.

I was flipping through some USAC stuff and some other stuff and came across this old press release by USAC. Cannell 2 year suspension and revised nationals results.

The results are the NEW results after he won a bunch of championships and was on the podium a bunch. So what? It is masters racing... It doesnt really change anything or have any real bearing on "real" racing..

So lets look at the results. I did no research, this is just what I know off the top of my head from cycling..

2009 USA Cycling Masters Road National Championships
Men’s Time Trial - 35-39
1. Ian Stanford Winona, MN 00:30:02.00 Grandstay Cycling
2. Gregory Strock Martinsville, IN 00:30:25.80 Texas Roadhouse Cycling Team
3. Ryan Jenkins Salisbury, NC 00:30:26.20 Carolina Masters Team


Ok, I did not even know that this guy raced again. If you dont know who he is, you should google him. If you dont know... let me google that for you. It seems that his bike racing life was ruined by doping and he turned out for the better as a medical doctor. I cant imagine the experiences that were taken away from him due to doping.

2007 USA Cycling Masters Road National Championships
Men’s Road Race - 30-34
1. Matthew Johnson New Haven, CT/5 Star Fish
2. Daniel Vinson Lake Elsinore, CA/5 Star Fish
3. Mike Stubna Philadelphia, PA/Meredith Group - GPOA - Cannondale


This one was earlier. Stubs moved up to 3rd. We were teammates and he lived a few blocks from me at the time. It would have been cool if he actually got on the podium.
But this is the REAL KICK IN THE BALLS. Mathew Johnson. I dont know this dude at all. I know he was a crazy fast junior. Im like 99% sure that it is the same Matt Johnson that Levi had to turn his amateur national crit jersey over to after testing positive. The dude won two national championships as a result of doping. Neither were professional.
That makes me think that it is a problem.

the freaking kinzua classic

There is a non USAC race in Pennsylvania that is one of the best courses ever. It is along the Kinzua reservoir in North Western PA. It is basically in the Allegheny National Forest. 2x30 mile loops on quiet roads passing primitive forest camp sites and waterways. 4416 feet of climbing. The second lap finishes with a bonus climb up to a dirt road, adding a few extra hundred feet of climbing. It is seriously one of the best courses that I have ever raced. For sure one of the best in PA.

We make a pilgrimage to Brett's cabin for the race it's in the middle of the forest it's awesome.

I am doing this post on my iPhone entirely by Siri. The photos are all taken from Instagram.

The best triathletes in the world...

Link Here

Not trying to be a hater. Yes I know that he just swam further than I ever have combined. Yes this dude could probably ride me off of his wheel, but this is an embarrassment to sport. The dude could not ride over a speed bump with his shoes out of his pedals. He is one of the BEST IN THE WORLD.

Here is a former world mountain bike champion... at the end of a 100+ mile day.

When you dont race bikes a ton...

So this year has been slow as far as bike racing. That is fine. I have a friend who used to race on the Kraynicks team. He got injured and put his energy into other things, namely family and house. There was a point where I was at his house and thought "is bike racing worth not having this?"... As his house was renovated and nice. I would like to think that I have the brains to do that if I had more time.
Anyway, we finally got around to doing our second floor. Half of it anyway.
Learned: Showering in the basement for 3 weeks sucks. Dont send your kids to college, make them an electrician or plumber. House parts are expensive.

This is a captive room on our second floor. It was crappy asbestos floor tiles and ceiling tiles. Took it down to the lathe. There was a weird room that you had to walk through to get to the second bedroom. It also led to the bathroom. We opened that up to make the bath bigger. In order to make it so people dont get trapped in the bedroom when somebody is in the bathroom we opened the original door up in the captive middle room.

This is a before and after. Wood paneling and sketchy wiring gone. Door on the right is now a pocket door into guest room. Also now a pocket door at top of stairs. There is a blanket hung to block dust from other room.

Finally the bathroom. Our bathroom was so jacked. I had an 9mm allen key with a thimble on it shoved inside of the spigot for like 6 years. We could not take baths. The floor was peeling up, as it was cheap vinyl. There was no exhaust fan. The wallpaper started falling down like 3 weeks after we moved in. Long time coming.
Friends - come visit.

An agreeable sound. Amy

Awhile I did a video like this. this is my wife's. pittsburgh people may recognize the cameo.

An Agreeable Sound : Amy from Matt Dayak on Vimeo.

So I deleted my Strava account...

I meant to post this the other day, and this news story reminded me to.Strava being sued over dude's death.

There used to be a bike shop at the bottom of a big climb around here. In the bike shop there was a chalk board with first names and times to the sign at the top of the climb. This was basically strava before Garmin existed. People would come test themselves against local fast times.

I won an account at a cross race for having the holeshot or something. I then emptied my entire Garmin 500 onto it. I immediately won a bunch of QOM's. I quickly realized that I signed up as a woman. I would be an awesome woman bike racer.

I switched it into dude mode and maintained a few KOMs. Neat. Whatever. Then it started happening, people were taking my KOMs. Hm. Id get an email from Strava saying "joe just beat your time up xyz." Most of the time I would have to click it to see what the heck they were talking about. Like I have Garmin stuff from all over the state and region from riding. A few of the emails were about local things that I did not know could have a KOM, like a road around a park with a stop sign.

So then it makes me wonder, did some dude put on his aero wheels and have a friend carry a spare tubular while he set out one day to break a record, or did he happen to feel good riding one day and hit a climb pretty hard? Maybe hill repeats? My worst fear was eventually confirmed by a third party. A climb that I went up with 28mm tires, a seat bag, frame pump, etc and got a KOM on apparently was beaten. A third party told me that somebody went out to "snipe" it.

So this puts me in a weird position. Do I play their game and go back and race up it and try to take back the KOM? Do I not care? In my mind I do not care. However I do not want some dude thinking that the terms were equal. In my mind I am like "pin a number on and lets race..." However I think by signing up for strava, you ARE kind of pinning a number on.

So basically dudes who use strava for fun, keep having fun. Dudes who use strava to "win," ... just go race. If you do race, race a harder category if you are winning. There is always going to be somebody faster than you. Race until you are racing a bunch of those people and learn to eat humble pie.

im not even going to talk about tail winds and drafting.

12 Hours of Granogue.

This was my first duo endurance race. Me and Bad Andy whimsically decided to go for it. Babik and Stubna were supposed to sign up to rival us, however Babik quickly remembered that nobody would be there to lead him out and bailed. It is fun to do something new. Drove to Lancaster to stay with Bad Andy and Bad Kat. We watched Tulsa Tough live streaming, which was pretty neat. Then we went to sleep.
Numbers: 35 minute laps. It was not enough time to really eat or do anything other than sit there.
9 laps for me. 10 for BA.
Distance: 59.79 mi
Time: 5:39:47
Avg Speed: 10.6 mph
Elevation Gain: 8,294 ft
Calories: 3,532 (garmin estimate..)
1 song in my head all freaking day. (under pressure... nothing to do with the race but had listened to it earlier in the week)
34:09 - I did two laps with this time!
40 seconds is how much faster BA's fast lap was than mine. dang.
2 weeks in a row that I went to freaking Delaware. That is far.

Food for a 12 hour race:
1 bagel with Peanutbutter
3 gu's
2 donuts
7 cans of coke
1 clif bar
Salt and vinegar chips
Handful of small cookies
5 bottles of secret drink mix
1 THREE TO GO 3musketeers bar.
1 soft pretzel
1 cinabon

My teeth were so slimy after the race that I stopped and bought a toothbrush after the race and brushed my teeth for 6 minutes while driving back. I cant believe people drink coke everyday and some drink that much. wow.
Garmin Link
I rocked a skinsuit all day, until I needed a pocket for my battery for my light. BA hooked me up with a speed sleeve. 20/20 cycling carries them apparently. It fits a tube, inflator, tire levers. It just chills there and is held on by velcro. Pretty clever. There is an under the seat version as well.

Mountain bike races...

So Brody and I headed out to Philly Saturday for the mass race at fairhill on Sunday. 10 hours of driving over two days for 90 mins of racing.

This was our first mass race. Brody's first USAC race. This is the problem with the USAC system. He had never done one so he was going to have to race beginner. He put a full day of phone calls in to get his cat 1 upgrade. He got 6th in the 1 race with one of the top 50 times all day. It would have been embarrassing to the sport if had to race beginner or sport or whatever numbers they are now.

Anyway, the weekend was rad. Stayed with gman and megs. They are old old friends who now race bikes. It is awesome.

The pro/1 race was stupid fast. This is two for two mountain bike races this year that have been pack riding. They are like road races. Yesterday the scott
kid and bad Andy attacked and there were like 3 Scott dudes around clogging it up after. It was like a crit. Andy rode well for second. I mistimed an effort for third and landed fourth.

The debate of the week was about skinsuits vs jerseys for a cool 90 min race. The solution will be posted shortly. I'm at work and this is from an iPhone.

Cool article..

Im always posting about my Somali buddies (not Somalian)... Somalian man evolves from civil war to crafting films This is Pittsburgh's big newspaper. Pretty cool.

First mountain bike race in 6 months or so.

Yesterday, I did my first mountain bike race since the 101 last August. ABRA had the first of their MTB series at WISP resort at Deep Creek MD. Mountain biking is tough. There was at least 3 points in the race that I kind of "quit." Like if it were a road race I would have just finished in the pack and called it a day, but on the mountain bike, you are either racing or quitting. Its also tough cause it destroys the bike. The course was rocky and had a lot of descending. I heard so many rocks banging off my bike, and at the two hour mark I would have paid money for chain lube. And it was like 85 degrees all day, with a sun exposed climb. I basically just followed wheels for the first lap. If somebody let gaps open or dabbed, I would go around them and aggressively prevent them from passing me later. I dont know what the mountain bike etiquette is. In my mind, in a cross or mtb race, if somebody is riding worse than you, they should be behind you. By the last lap it was just me and Dylan from the Scott Pro team. He is like 12 years old or something and literally weighs 120. It was possibly the first time I had to ride my brakes behind somebody on descents. I think I was out riding him a bit in the technical stuff, but I knew that I was in for it on the 2-3 mile climb up to the finish. With 3 miles to go the kid missed a turn. It was the THIRD TIME we went through that section. I called out and slowed down so he could catch back up. It would have been more embarrassing if he had missed a turn, turned around and still beat me, which was likely given that I couldnt climb out of the saddle on the hill. So he dug a bit and dropped me, built a good gap and held it. I rolled in for 2. I cant believe dudes race that hard every weekend, and do that much damage to their bikes every weekend. Mind blowing. Garmin Link to the race. It is neat to see the time splits on it. The first lap felt SOOOOO fast, but in retrospect it wasnt that much faster. I would really like to see the power file for a MTB race, I really think that I can suffer so much more.

Check out the temp. High at beginning is from being in the sun. The other spikes in the middle were the sun exposed climb, so the hottest points were also the slowest. Brutal.