4th of July Race

Damn the July 4th race. Damn the race and the horse it rode in on.

There is a special level of hell dedicated to short races. I'm not sure what punishment would suffice, but it stands to reason that Satan would design something involving dozens of 40lb, full suspension, front disc- and rear V-brake WalMart bikes. Beelzebub has a devil put aside for short races.

Mind you, I'm not bitching about the length of the race because of the difficulty, or perhaps the lack of difficulty, imposed by the distance. Long races don't hurt any more than short races, nor vice versa; it's just a different sort of hurt.

No. The good people at the Bicycling Hall of Fame decided to set their race distances at 5 miles below the cutoffs set by USACycling. Like jeans shorts, these cutoffs are arbitrary and unpleasant, but they're unavoidable.

To earn points to upgrade to Cat 3, I need to race at least 20 miles. This Friday's race is 15 miles.

Thanks, Bicycling Hall of Fame, for nothing.

Mind you, I'd still race it, if I wasn't so dead-set on having a social life. Waking up at the ass-crack of dawn on Friday morning after enjoying my Thursday evening is dumb, but certainly doable... it's paying $30 to race a bunch of overzealous Cat 4s (says the overzealous 4) with no possibility of getting a return on my investment that makes my blood boil.

I'll find some other races later in the summer... life's too short to take this upgrade thing seriously.

Don's Final Thought: Coffee shops can be fruitful venues for getting work done, but they are public places, so people should probably not scratch their nether-regions in coffee shops... or at least not appear to be enjoying it so much. I am officially grossed out.