Deep Breath...

...before heavy, heavy racing begins. Typically, June and July are associated with 'speed' here in California. What's that mean: Criteriums [where we ride around in a circle VERY VERY quickly]. It's essentially bare knuckle racing at its finest...a game of speed chess where position is key. This translates to a 45 minute leg searing if you're a skinny vegan kid with a liking towards vertical roads and Time Trials. However, it's super important for me to build speed and push my anaerobic threshold because damnit, 186 bpm for 26 mins isn't good enough! :-)

This weekend and for the next following weekends, I'll be racing my heart out on Tuesday nights and then almost everyday of the weekend. Yes, Evelyn and I will become much closer, especially now that she's riding zipp wheels and dura ace. But before all that goes down, I got to have this weekend to catch up with friends and family. The photo above is of my cousins and I posing over a vietnamese lunch [I had the tofu, of course]. From right to left: Angela, Albert, Caren and some doofus who probably ate too much and is now sleepy. It was a perfect weekend to put some much needed miles on the bike at my hellacious standards but also great for being social - something I'm not too good at. Ask most cyclists and because it's a solitary sport, we generally do well by ourselves, suffering in our own little pain closets [although mine comes with bananas and mangoes]. Speaking of which, mangoes here are $1.99/lb. Are you kidding me! Go to Hawaii and get that sh*t for $0.50/lb. No way jose.

Good day for futbol too [not a typo]. Cri-cri-cri-cri-stiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaano scored a goal and Portugal put an epic beat down on the South Koreans. That oughta shut Kim Jong Il up for a day or two. That, or he stuffs himself with twinkies to where he can't talk anymore. In other bike related news, my SRM battery died. Wow. I've had that thing for less than 9 months and already kaput. Thank goodness for a) Peaches, b) Black Mission Figs and c) me being covered under warranty. Now all I gotta figure out is how to ride a bike in the meantime. Hmmmm......