T-minus Four Days

The fine fine weather (for February) this past weekend made for a couple of chances to get out and dance with fellow Horses. On Saturday, Dan-O rolled eastside and we looped up and over Indian Hill a few times, including a repetition of Camargo's dead-end segment in honor of the Chipper. By the way, in the winter, when the leaves are gone, that house at the bottom of the hill is even more striking. Or weird, depending on your take on contemporary architecture.

Sunday Chip got things together, and we rolled over a lot of the same roads with Mike More (sweatin' out a week in Vegas and rollin' Belgian-hardman style with no kneewarmers), Chip's friend Ron (who hung tough and then popped spectacularly on Roundbottom Rd. after a tough pull), and young Turner Logistics stud Corey, who schooled us in all the sprints he contested, usually without even getting out of the saddle.

Bike's dirty, legs are tired, and it's almost time for ... 

...camp, baby!

Weil Rd. Attempt #1

You gotta love technology. Today, 5 brave Horsemen (Chris, Steve B., Shannon, Chip, and myself) set out for an "epic ride" to Weil Road, which is supposed to be a nasty hill way out past California and Point Pleasant. Unfortunately, the uploaded route on my GPS had too many waypoints so we were riding blind, trying to guess the route. We took a very wrong turn in Nicholsville (I'm sure you've all heard of that budding metropolis) and ended up on 222 so we just stuck with familiar roads at that point. We rode past East Fork, Covered Bridge, up Mt. Zion, and down Sugar Camp. Somewhere around 45+ miles the cramps started biting. We limped back for a while, with a feeble sprint attempt at the end of Roundbottom.

After thrashing me on Camargo, Chip and I ended up back at his house with 68.9 miles. That was a little too close to 70, so we rode a big circle to arrive at the magic number.

Great ride, hopefully more can make it next time we try this again.

Happy New Years!

Happy new years folks... w/ the new year, we'd like to welcome BioWheel's on board as Darkhorse official shop sponsor. If you are in need of any cycling related products or services, check them out on the corner of Miami and Camargo in Madeira. Mitch, John and company will treat you right!

Cap City Cross

Don't my legs look all ripped while I pick up the remains of my bike after wiping out yesterday? That must have been the only time that I going slow enough for the camera to catch me... right!

Great setup, and good use of the venue... I think i was in the low twenties of about 30-35 racers. Good time, but I can feel the body saying its time to "shut 'er down." We'll see if we can't fire it up one more time and Brookside.


:::tinny out

Gun Club 'Cross

Nice work to John Gatch and the Hunington Bank team for putting on a great race today. It was home grown cyclocross at its best. I think there were about 25 men in the elite 1,2,3 race, and it was really an odd feeling to be racing a "local" race. Don't get me wrong, everything was very well done, but in the last month I've raced 5 UCI level events, so it took a little while to soak it all in. I had a poor-to-OK start, and it was pretty chaotic as things started to stretch out into the singletrack, and then got mixed up again as we entered the sandpits. After a few laps, I found myself w/ Matt Fox of BioWheels and an Alderfer Bergan rider. I was leading it into the sandpits and heard some chaos behind me.


I gunned it for 10 seconds and looked back to find a small gap. I kept the gap for a while and got to see Matt and the AB rider duking it out behind me as the course doubled back on itself. The laps were short, btw 6 & 7 minutes short. I remember looking down at my HRM to see only 18 minutes had passed and about fell off my bike. There was also a hill that we climbed (on our bikes) every lap. It was steep and really rough. This is me at the top of that hill.


This is what that hill felt like toward the end of the hour long race.


Chip got me all hot and bothered about my Darkhorse bretheren coming out to the race at the end of thier ride, but they never showed up :(

So, I was left to answer all the questions about "Where are all the other Darkhorse's?" Where's Dan? Where's Brett? Has Chip taken really up professional knitting after his accident this summer? Is Alex really training for the 2009 World's Strongest Man competition? Did Tank really import 16 year old kids from Perto Rico to play on his Pop Warner football team? Some questions are just unable to ever be answered...


:::tinny out

US Grand Prix of Cyclocross

I know that I am way overdue for a blog about my cyclocross escapades, so here is my chance to play a little catch up. Last weekend was the USGP in Louisville. I ventured down both days to do the sandbagger race (CAT 2-3). I really felt sorry for all the poor CAT 3's as they had thier race bolstered w/ 20+ displaced CAT 2's. We'd all get our jocks handed to us in the elite race, so we pay-it-forward to the 3's. Now that is trickle-down economics! There were a ton of photographers there, but this was the only pic I could find of me. It may because I'm not very good looking, or because my races were at 9:30 in the morning. As usual, I am trying to ingest my bottom lip, this is affectionally know as my "crossface" in my inner circles of friends and enemies. I finished 26/71 on Saturday and 24/80 on Sunday. Champions Park in Louisville is just a great place to race your bike!


Nice work to all the folks in Louisville for a great weekend.

Pecha Kucha

Pecha Kucha is a presentation format developed in 2003 by a couple of architects in Tokyo. It was invented to be an informal way for young designers to present their work in a public setting. Each presenter is allowed 20 images and exactly 20 seconds per image. This keeps the presentation concise and moving and 6 minutes and 40 seconds later the next presenter takes over with no pause in the procession.

At Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects we have adopted this format with a slight twist. Since we are immersed in design every day we use this format as an opportunity to talk about our lives outside the profession. For our most recent presentation, I was selected along with 5 others. I decided to talk about bike racing and my passion for the sport. Among the images shown was this one captured after Hueston Woods in 2007.

October 30, 2008 was the day that Darkhorse Racing to introduced to Seattle.