Jim: Welcome... me!

Hi everybody. (Wow, big echo. Sure is empty in here). I'm Jim McNeely, John's teammate. John asked me to guest blog here, because we are complimentary in a lot of ways. He's fast, generally polite, kind to children and the elderly, a converted runner, truthful, and skinny. I possess... different qualities. Cat 5, adult onset racer with a racing age of 39, down to 250-something from a weight embarassingly close to three and a quarter bills, a converted contact sports guy (mainly rugby), took up racing because... well, just because. It's what you do. I stink, in general, but am working pretty hard and seeing some improvement along with continued incremental losses in weight, and cracking wise about it along the way. Funny how those things seem related, somehow. In spite of all my infirmities, I go pretty hard for a fat slow old guy, and like being on Squadra Coppi with John, who in spite of his modesty is a very nice guy and good racer who makes the team look good on a regular basis.

I will try to stick to the truth when it suits me, but won't let the facts get in the way of a ripping good story. So while I promise to try to report accurately what I'm involved in, the severe state of oxygen debt that I'm in during rides combined with a tendency to make stories um... read well, means you should take what I say with a grain of salt. The main thing is that you enjoy them, and if you don't, well, I dunno. Go ride your trainer and watch spinervals videos until you feel better, ya grim bastid.

For my first substantive entry... a Greenbelt C Training Race from last night. Most people wouldn't find a training race worth talking about. I'm easily amused, however, and can usually find something worth noticing in just about anything. So too in last night's C race, which followed hard on the heels of a brutal 90 minute hill ride early yesterday morning.

I hit up the Coppi listserve for advice on how to recover my legs prior to the evening's training race. I was crampy, having trouble sitting still or walking. Peter's recovery advice - "drink fluids like it was your job" - was brilliant. The gallon of Deer Park that I sucked down between noon and 4 PM flushed the daggers and rocks out of my legs, and the nine trips to the bathroom - I'm sure that was part of his plan too - loosened the legs up nicely. Art tied for first with "don't do both rides in one day." Now that was some good advice. In retrospect, Art's advice was probably smarter.

Bill was in the advice sweepstakes too, but I didn't know what to make of his sage advice. Sage in the sense that I grow sage in a pot in the front yard, it seems like it should be useful, yet I never know what recipes to use it in. It's kind of an orphan herb, sage. Bill said something profound about how some fertility specialist once told somebody he knows that if you want to get pregnant you need to find a 17 year-old and get into the back of a car. It seemed to me an odd way to revive my legs. Coming from Bill, who has Buddha-like wisdom without a Buddha-like curry gut, it must have been profound. Since I don't know very much about biking yet, and Bill has the wisdom of Solomon, at least the wisdom of Willie Solomon, I resolved to try to follow Bill's advice. My neighbor was at first somewhat unenthusiastic about asking his daughter to take one for the team, but he's a mountain bike racer. After he went back into his house to take his hourly dose of glaucoma medicine, he came back out and told me that he totally understood Bill's logic.

Oh yeah, the training race. I hung on with the pack for about 6 laps, stayed in sight of the dozen or so riders remaining on the lead lap until the 9th lap, and finished around 30th place in the official placings. Yeah, "WTF?" is exactly what I said too. How do you go from slipping off the back of a 12 rider pack, pick off a few more back markers, lap a bunch of people (in some cases twice) and slip into the high twenties... two weeks in a row? I have to conclude that the ref that runs the series has it in for me. He screamed at Carlos at Poolesville, probably because Carlos was riding with me. This has happened two weeks in a row now at Greenbelt. If I improve a little and manage to win a prime at Greenbelt, I fully expect the prize to be a two year ban from MABRA competition, combined with relegation to "Citizen" class. If I see the same ref at a non-training race, I think I'm just going to take a rock, smash the spokes out of my front wheel, and beg off the race pleading mechnical failure. Yeah, it takes a real jerk to get upset about training race results...

One observation about Cat 5s at Greenbelt. They like to come to a complete stop at the stopsign at the bottom of the big hill, look both ways, and then turn right, gently accellerating up the long hill. Lacking a legal education, they do not understand that "Stop" in some circumstances actually means "go like hell or I will scream at you." My colleagues in the peleton were amused by the colorful impromptu lecture I delivered on precisely this point of law as we trudged up the hill. BTW, if you ride to Murky coffee with Art, he follows a similar interpretation of the law.

One other observation. In keeping with the Training Blog theme, I felt extremely nauseous last night, and I don't think it's because of stage fright. I think it's because I spent the 5 or so reps of 6-7 minute morning hill climbs in Zone 5b, with my Hr at 10 - 13 beats over LT, around 170. I spent the entire crit with my Hr at 4-20 beats over, between 162 and 178, usually around 168. Without extensive training, the human body is probably not meant to spend an hour and ten minutes a day well past the lactate threshold. That's why some of you experienced riders can do two hard rides in a day without trouble, and why Art told me I should probably skip Greenbelt. Art was right.

Well there. I hope you enjoyed this. I certainly did. Not as much as I enjoyed the Hill Ride, but until blogging, and reading blogs causes hallucinations, I'll have to settle for this. I'll be here for a while, at least until John starts finding leg shavings in the digital sink, until I fill his tires with water prior to the Muffin Ride, or until I eat his entire box of Gu packets in an uncontrollable carbo binge after a long aerobic ride. So it should last roughly a week before he kicks me out. We'll let you know when the first stuff is posted.

Legal disclaimer: Bill actually is wise and has a good mind, and I almost understood the analogy he was trying to make. No libel was intended. The neighbor doesn't have a nubile 17 year old daughter, being in fact a 75 year old woman. She does not have glaucoma, does not take glaucoma medicine, and does not have a pipe. Art stops at all stop signs, is kind to orphans and crippled children, and drinks coffee responsibly. Joe gave basically the same advice in the leg recovery sweepstakes as Peter did ("fluid") but it wasn't colorful at all, so he got dropped. If you are the Cat 5 I screamed at in the cornerat Greenbelt... well, to heck with you. I meant it and stand by what I said. You can't stop in that corner buddy.