the challenge

so i'm going to try to write something everyday for the rest of the month, it doesn't have to pulitzer material but something substantive everyday. it'll be a good substitute for a social life.
last night i went to my first ever pro bike race and it was pretty fucking rad if i do say so myself. yes i know that to the 4 people who know me who read this it's probably a shock that i had never been to a non-alleycat bike race but it's true. first one, for real, cherry popped and all that.
i digress, back to radness...
after making 2 abortive attempts at mountain biking(my parter in crime bailed on me in the a.m. and i did not have my head on right and was overgeared in the evening so i bailed out halfway through the trail to avoid grievious bodily injury) i headed to uptown with my coworker benjamin to go watch the criterium. we got there in time to see the womens field take the line including kristen armstrong who kind of kicks ass the same way that water is kind of wet. she has raced the entire nature valley grand prix without a team to back her up and is defending her title from last year just fine. (this is not an easy thing to do for any of you that aren't familiar with bicycle racing, your team runs interference for you tactically and allows you to shelter in the draft of the domestiques to save energy for the sprints or breakaways.)
all in all the women's race was awesome, the women were riding much more aggressively than the men did later on and it was way more fun to watch. the men's race was super fast and was impressive in both the tempo and the team tactics that were going on but there were fewer breakaways than in the women's race.
i was watching from about 25 yards before the finish line so i got to see all of the sprints go off but apparently i missed out on the crashes, benjamin saw a guy pop loose from his cleats in turn 1 and skip through the turn with sparks shooting out from under his shoes!
to get an idea of the speed these folks are going go grab a bike with a speedometer and get going about 28mph or so. got that? now hold that pace for 25 (for the ladies ) or 40 kilometers (for all the dudes) and maybe pop it up into the low 30s every 10 minutes or so. it's much harder than it sounds and if you can do it i recommend you start racing now, for real, that's some pro-grade fitness.
anyway,i had a blast and i think i came out of it more stoked than ever to try actual (rather than alleycat) racing. good times.