This, that and a bike race

Not too much been gong on lately. Thanks to Hurricane Ike the first DORBA (local) race for last weekend was postponed (wet trails) and now the first TMBRA (state) race is at least postponed, if not cancelled, due to Houston and Huntsville getting hit hard by the storm... no power and downed trees.

Since the Saturday morning Team In Training ride was also cancelled due to unknown weather conditions we were able to "splurge" and sleep in late both Saturday and Sunday mornings and got to put some hours in the sleep account... ahhhhh.

Muttley is 99% healed



so this morning saw the return of the morning walk. Running will have to wait until the end of the race season.

Last Thursday downtown Dallas was invaded by Pro/Elite bike racers for a crit (criterium = short course (usually less than 1 mile) road race that is run for a set time limit) around the American Airlines Center. Our local fast boys were racing against paid domestic Pros. It's fun watching guys you know racing hard & fast.


To add to the adventure we met up with Mike & Jan and took the DART train downtown.


While waiting for the train, there was a brief rain and afterwards a rainbow that held promise of a great evening (it's a vision test... look between the power lines)


Can you tell it was Mike's first time on the train?


Jan spotted this sign

Is "Jumbo Super" as big as you can go, or would that be "Super Jumbo"?

Pictures of the race (if you can't tell, I like how the pictures turned out of the riders when the camera could not capture them fast enough)


















While standing along the straight-a-ways you could feel a strong breeze as the pack came by. The average speed for the race (75 minutes + 5 laps = almost 2 hours of hard racing) was 30mph. The backside of the course ran downhill and the top speed of the lead racer was clocked at 56.25mph with a radar gun. It's a good thing the Police were not giving out speeding tickets to the racers!

Finally... new mountain bike shoes!!!


That's it for now... 5:45 is going to come early.