New Year, New Season, New Bike

January 7, 2009 in Miscellaneous, Race Reports, Ride Reports

The two weeks I got off from school over the holidays are thoroughly missed, and now I am back at school battling homework, the upcoming finals, grades, etc. I have given up on providing complete race reports for whatever readers I have but instead will try to provide updates every few weeks at best.

The Mount San Bruno Hillclimb happened to fall on the day the rest of the world knows as New Year’s Day, as it does every year. To make a short story shorter, I won the juniors race and Cody came in third. I think everyone is at least a little surprised with Cody’s four-minute improvement over last year. Way to go! It’s nice to have some momentum going at the beginning of the year and to know that my training is on track. But I’m still not planning on doing crits this year, so don’t hold your breath!

The prizes, I’m sorry to say, were lame again. For winning I got some packets of promotional sunscreen, a promotional mini backpack thing, a medal, Gu2O, and an honorary envelope (and by “honorary” I mean that they gave me an envelope with nothing inside). To top it off, I got an NCAA basketball video game for Xbox 360. Firstly, I don’t have an Xbox 360 (or, for that matter, a PlayStation 2, which prevents me from playing the Tony Hawk game I got last year), and secondly, I am a little bit insulted that the promoters would think I waste my time playing video games rather than waste my time training. But I shouldn’t be complaining because juniors are technically not supposed to get any prizes other than medals and ribbons (do honorary envelopes fall in this category?), so this was pretty good, and they did put on a great race. I just wish they wouldn’t assume that a junior who would spend his New Year’s Day doing a bike race likes video games so much.

Here is proof that Cody and I were on the podium:

My dad moved all of the components to the Pegoretti Love #3 that I got for my birthday half a year back. It is awesome to say the least. I find that it has a little bit of a smoother ride that the 8:30 AM that will be passed on to my mom and is also a little lighter.

One picture for now (Yes, it has a headbadge. If I wanted the lightest bike I would’ve gotten something uglier):

On Sunday we hauled it over to the Napa region for some climbing, which was a lot of fun. We were even graced by the presence of local pro Paul Mach who rode with us slow pokes.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the year (cycling-wise)!