How to Live (almost) Forever

How to live (almost) forever…
“I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it.”
“Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.”
Robert Cohn and Jake Barnes in chapter 2 of “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway
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We have been trained since children to [...]

2009 Race Reports #22 & 23: Tour di Via Italia (Erie Street)

2009 Race Report #22 & 23: Tour di Via Italia
My sense is that I have now lived the equivalent of 120 years or so – or about 3 lives of someone my age. By the time I die, my goal is to live at least 1000 years or about 12 lifetimes. I’m getting better at [...]

2009 Race Reports #20 & 21: Tour De Gaslight Criterium

2009 Race Report #20 – Tour de Gaslight Criterium – Masters.
Attending the gaslight crit required waking early on a Sunday morning, loading the car, and waking my daughter who definitely did not view 4 hours in the car as something she wanted to do. But memory is a tricky thing and despite knowing that I, [...]

2009 Race Reports #18 & 19: Downer’s Grove Famine and Feast

Day 1: Downer’s Grove Pro-Am Challenge
Yes, you can have the post-race vibe, even if you don’t finish the race…
So I discovered Saturday night after the Downer’s Grove Pro-Am. I won the race to the race and warmed up up well and got the front row of the huge field of 160 [...]

2009 Race Report #17: Wind, Rain, Cobblestones and the Grand Cycling Classic

2009 Race Reports 17: Wind, Rain and Cobblestones
 Friday, August 7: A long drive, like the 5 hour trip to Grand Rapids the night before the Grand Cycling Classic, unearthed for me a host of echoes of the travels of my youth, and the associated conflicting thoughts and feelings. I dreaded the drive and the packing [...]

2009 Race Reports 14 – 16: The Race to the Race

2009 Race Reports 14 – 16: The Race to the Race
It was a carnival freak show caricature of the real thing. Everything that took place during those swollen seconds was a bloated, leviathan equivalent of the norm. Reminiscent of the movie Wall-E, every healthy element was eliminated and replaced by a supersized, unhealthy counterpart.
In the [...]

2009 Race Reports 12 – 13: Superweek Racine and Kenosha

Race Report 12: July 23, 2009 – Superweek Racine Master’s Criterium: a study in tedium – bumpy, lots of corners, single file, breakaways, and a slightly uphill finish stretch. After an hour and fifteen minutes of hanging on following the wheel, I ended up 9th – five or six guys were up the road. Yawn.
Race [...]

2009 Race Reports #10 –11: Superweek Evanston Masters 30+ & 40+

Sunday, July 19th – Evanston, IL: I decided to register for both of the Masters events early in the day, and if the legs felt good, to return for the evening Pro race. As it turned out, the legs felt good, but circumstances interfered and I was unable to return for the pro race and [...]

2009 Race Reports #6 – 9: Superweek, suffering & sprinting

In a  couple of days Superweek will be over yet again and I’ll have to wait a whole year yet again to try and achieve my ever fading hope of standing on the podium for a pro race… but right now my legs are very good. Tomorrow I head out in the RV for the [...]

2009 Race Report #5: ABR Cat 1/2 Illinois State Criterium Championships

July 5, 2009: I was too lazy to show up for the master’s event at Wooddale – the day was just too nice and I was enjoying sitting outside by the pool reading and writing.
Finally I dragged myself into the car for the 20 minute drive to Wooddale for the Cat 1/2 race. A few [...]