Yes - I made cookies on friday night. Chocolate Peanut butter. I was satisfied with them but, even despite the fact that folks like em (or were just hungry) they could have been even better. That said, i liked em. If i get around to it/have time i might get the recipe together. Basically though, take your favorite peanut butter cookie recipe and replace a portion of the flour with cocoa powder and double the called for (or add) vanilla to the batter. Cooking them is different. Can't visually check done-ness as easily... and they need about 5 minutes to cool before you can tell if they are actually cooked. Anyway. I was chatting on the phone with a friend on the way home from Putney and he said about the only thing i could speak with absolute authority here was food and cooking. Keep that in mind. I'd personally add bike mechanics and that stuff. But the racing? Training? I don't know what the fahk i'm doing. But i'll tell ya this. I'm having a freaking blast racing. I'm slowly figuring this shtuff out. Maybe when i'm racing in the 45+ i'll have figured some stuff out. I hope. Maybe before then. I ain't giving up. It is too much damn fun.
I've got a race report written for PLymouth. Nothing for Putney yet. But man Putney was fun. That corn field was brutal. Really brutal. The long run up was fun. The short steps were murderously treacherous. And the down hill wasn't a big deal. The weather was perfect. It was an amazing race. So glad i made the long ass trek up to attend the event. It was also the second race 35+ (or technically at putnet a 35-44 race) A race. Brutally fast. The A guys, as you would expect, start even faster than the 3/4 (shocked? no, suprised? no, so why bring it up, i dunno). I also deliberately didn't gun for it. No sense in getting nuked in a field of ~20 riders on a longish course and getting left in the dust. But that said, i was in pretty good contact with the strung out field for the first two laps... then... well i dunno. I had two bad laps, and switched ignition boxes and found a bit more power for the last two laps. Really was like a switch. And it really was kinda like dropping a cylinder for those middle two laps. And yes. Solobreak started a minute behind me and yes, he caught and passed me and finished ahead of me. It is okay though. Even tho he did a couple races last year and just a few this year (in cross) he is really quite a bit faster than me. There are lots of people faster than me. It was great to have Cronoman come streaking by me on the heals of the big man leading the 45-54 group. It was also great that it took more than a lap for that to happen.
Anyway - I survived the weekend. It was also Iceman weekend. The biggest race in Michigan. At least from a MTB perspective (which i mostly had before cross showed up). I never managed to race it but i always had designs on trying to get in there sometime and race it. Epic and unique. Cool as hell. Check out who was second in the Expert 40-44 category:
CLASS: EXPERT MEN 40-44
Place Name Town Sta Sponsor Ice
1 John Meyers Kalamazoo MI 1:41:56
2 Frankie Andreu Dearborn MI Rock Racing 1:41:58
Kinda funny see'n his name there. Mixed emotions but the scale tips over to the positive side.
If i don't hit publish soon this will keep getting added to between support calls and busted scope 'issues'
Oh and Michelle said she got some great shots up at putney. That's the one thing i didn't manage to do, take pictures. No photo documentation of the races. I had brought the old digi cam but no shots collected.
Ah well.
be good, eat well, and smile...
G
11 comments:
Here is a link to the pictures.
hurleybike
I was a little short on patience and time last night, so I did not upload the full size pics (3872 x 2592) so if you see anything you really like, I can e-mail the original to you.
dang it, I missed the cookies!!!
those cookies rocked my world.
i was too cold to scream obscenities at you while you raced, sorry about that!
too cold? It was freaking BALMY on sunday
Why would you have mixed feelings about Frankie racing in the Iceman? I'm truly amazed that people continue to look at these athletes through rose-colored glasses. Doping was endemic; he caved. He stopped and was no longer wanted for not being a "team player" i.e. getting on a doping program. Hmm, maybe I should've stood by my man, had him lie hurling accusations of abuse towards cyclists. Then the rose colored glasses wouldn't be fogging up. Then again, his integrity would have.
negative emotions should have been clarified...
negative in that he's taken a heap load of crap...
negative in that see'n Frankie's name pop up brings to mind the slew of crap that seemed to get him blacklisted.
it is sad to see the name of the one guy who i gotta say is one of the hardest mother fuckers who ever road for the Motorola/Postal/Disco squad and think that people won't remember him for starting and finishing all those damn TdFs. All that work. To have been at the level he was for so long. and to be turned into a leper by the "media"
but like i said - despite the negative crap swirling around his name now, i can't help but say - wtg Frankie. Nice job at Iceman. Glad to see ya still racing.
Thanks for forcing me to clarify what i meant "betsy"
Oops... re-reading comment i was off by a team...
shouldn't have mentioned disco and was a bone head not to include 7-11
We only started 30 seconds behind you Ge. The juniors and 55+ started 30 seconds behind us. The split was a surprise, but it was nice to hit the first bottleneck with such a small group. It took me 5.5 laps to catch you... so about 5.5 seconds faster on a (for us) 360 second lap. So you only have to improve by 1.52% and you can kick my ass lightly! Sounds do-ablem especially since I found another gear when I saw the 7 foot tall Refunds Now kit up ahead. Groppo Cronoman was tearing it up at 5:35/lap or better. That's a big jump for either of us... Thanks for the cookies too! Putney is FUN.
Yall were only 30 seconds behind us? Wow. I thought they'd give us at least 1 minute.
so Pippi, ya gonna make it back to Lowell again this year?
Next weekend is still under review. There are a lot of competing interests, but I'm partial to Lowell. Kingman too maybe.
Thanks for the clarification gewilli - I know by this point people have made up their mind. If one only knew how pervasive the problem was, Frankie'd be getting padded on the back for refusing to get on a comprehensive program ala Ferrari.
Iceman was great. We stuck around for the snow cup for our son. But after hanging out at the lighthouse on Mission Point and requesting the kids take their shoes off since they were full of sand, our 8 year old must have knocked one out of the car before we left. With one shoe he couldn't race. Bummer!
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