This Week

This week did me in. It started as a couple long days at work and easy days on the bike - but led to even more tiring days at work, a crazy holiday party and now being sick...

I looked forward to this weekend for a while now knowing that a couple big projects at work would be behind us and I could do some long easy rides in the beautiful weather. Somewhere early in the week I wore myself out a little too much or touched the wrong thing and slowly throughout Friday I started feeling more and more questionable. Full on chills, aches, and a slight fever for the last 24hrs now.

I've watched more tv today than the rest of the month leading up to today combined. If it just wasn't so nice out... Hawaii ironman was on but their coverage drives me crazy, they don't show much in the way of racing.

Yesterdays news on the 2010 mtn bike Triple Crown is interesting - http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/us-cup-announces-new-triple-crown-all-mountain-series With both that and the Pro XCT series being promoted as the top races to hit it's hard to say if all the tops guys will pick one over the other - or just do both. Interesting article (and even better comments at the bottom) from JHK - http://singletrack.competitor.com/2009/12/features/another-day-with-jhk-incredibly-frustrated_5050

If UCI issues caused the split thats a shame because no more than 15 racers (at the biggest events) were getting any benefit from the UCI status anyway. The focus should have been on spending the money to imrpove the series otherwise and once established, the UCI status could follow. The THREE-FOUR riders who have a chance at the olympics will be in Europe to make that happen regardless. The people there love cycling and mainstream Americans never will. That being said the sport of cycling is very popular in the US by those that do it, and the majorty of them don't follow Pro racing. Changing that is what can grow the sport here. Having a great National series with better coverage would make more of a difference with these potential fans than an American doing well at the Olympics once every four years. Good news is the sport is still alive out there even if not promoted to it's potential and people like Tedro are trying their best to improve that.

Now back to my green tea...