Joel's [Annual] Post

FYI:

I raced my mountain bike today in Johor Bahru, Malaysia; Something I do frequently with my fellow expat and Singaporean friends.
The race was hosted at the Sales Gallery, a glass box in the middle of a field where happy young first-time property owners will congregate to be wowed into purchasing a condo between a freeway, high powered electrical lines, and a pretty nice looking hill adorned with classic radio towers ( why are there always two? ) poking out of its top.

Bikes and stuff

I finally got my new road bike in April, The Precious is a Cervelo R3SL equipped with Sram Red. I've got my Quarq power meter in my carbon fibre crank set (on my second one since I wore the one I got last year out) and I've still got my Mavic wheels I bought last summer. So that's my gear geekery out of the way.

I've been riding all winter under the supervision of my coach and started this racing season in February as a Category 3 rider - another jump up from last year. I decided to do mostly stage races this year which are 3-5 days of racing several different stages (like they do in the tour de France). In May I raced in the Sram Tour of the Gila, which was literally in the Wild West of New Mexica. And I did two races in Oregon later on, Mt Hood Classic Stage Race and the Cascade Classic Stage Race.  I placed high enough in those races to earn "upgrade points" and made the jump up to category 2 a few weeks ago!

Now I have to try to not die in the last few races of this season.  Category 1 and 2 riders are often lumped in with the pro riders so this is a whole new and much faster group of riders. Pretty excited to get out there and give it my best though.

-Joel

Devils Punch Bowl

I've been continuing my 4 days in LA/3days in SF schedule flying back and forth. This weekend Joel came home to ride in the Devils Punch bowl race. I'm pretty used to these weekend race days. We're up at 4:50 or 5am, off driving for hours to some tiny town or truck stop in the dust bowl sector of California. This race was in Pear Blossom. I did not make that name up. There were a lot of tumble weeds Joshua Trees and stuff that's just hard to explain.

Lets not forget the bike race! Joel came in 8/75! Go honey.