#Rapha500 Day 6. 52.8 miles left.

Road 6 miles today. Spent more time in lines running errands than riding. Riding lots and racing to finish tomorrow.

#Rapha500 Day 5. 19.5 miles.

Gonna try for more tomorrow.

#Rapha500 Day 6. 13.7 miles.

Got out for a short spin once Benon was asleep. This place is pancake flat in all directions. If it wasn't for this big bridge on Rouse, I would have had 3ft of climbing.

92 miles left.

It sounds like a lot. If I get out in the next 3 days, it will be after 6, cold, dark, just not fun. More fun than riding an indoor trainer though.

#Rapha500 Day 4. 32.3 miles.

Got out late today, around 3. Had birthday soup and cake, put Benon down to nap, and sat around for 1/2 hour trying to figure out a fun route. My legs felt good, but there were many clouds, no sun, and I knew it'd get dark quick. I decided to make the dirt my bitch. I was mentally discouraged from it yesterday, so I needed redemption.

#Rapha500 Day 3. 44.4 miles.

Didn't plan on riding much today. Stomach is bad. I ate 3 muffins before my day 2 ride. Found out today that those were fiber1 muffins, the whole ride on day 2 felt like I had a bomb go off in my stomach, its even worse now.

I started west, found a new road, some dirt, went for a while. Then hit the highway, went north on some dirt. I planned on making a right turn eventually, but there never was a turn. Ended up riding some nasty gravel for 15 miles to finally find some smooth dirt to ride back east. Then the highway back home for the last 5 miles or so.

This gravel was really bad for 23mm tires and 36 spokes. Had I had 56 spokes and 27s I'd been much more comfortable.

This was some pretty smooth gravel.


2 roads now I have ridden miles, 10-15 without any turns to find a dead end with 2 barbed wire fences right next to a major highway. I got my shoes pretty muddy on day 2 once I hopped the 2nd fence.


Here's the fences. Pretty tall.

#Rapha500 Day 2. 58.2 miles.

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Cracked with 10 to go. Lots of dirt.

#Rapha500 Day 1. 86 miles.

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Started the ride on pavement with 10mph nw wind and 29d temps. I felt pretty good getting started. I started east. Towards Big Hill Lake. Found some dirt and road it for a while. Riding 2 y/o vittoria pave tires didn't increase my confidence on dirt, with rocks everywhere, without a pump. Eventually hitting pavement, after a few detours(I don't really have a route today, just going, and turning where I feel like turning.)

Started taking sips of Accelerade at mile 20, then a banana at 35. Legs started feeling the pain eat 50. Racing cyclocross all year, with 1 ride over 2 hours in the past 4 months made this one a real eye opener.

Riding solo is different than I anticipated. I expected to shout out screams of pain at mile 70, I did, but not like I had anticipated.

Roads down here are pretty flat. 55mph speed limits with small shoulders. I was passed by 7 cars today before I got to the highway 8 miles from my destination. Not much to complain about except the 80million giant dogs that ran at me.

Starting out heading west tomorrow.

#Rapha500 Challenge

I'm in southeast Kansas, staying with my wife's parents for Christmas. I've got 4 days, fri-mon where I have a couple hours each day to ride. My good days are the 23rd, today, and the 26th, my birthday. Then I might get an hour or two each night till friday.

I think the motivation to complete this challenge is finding new roads. Dirt roads, turny roads, paved, and bumpy. Just ride places I've never been to. That is the purpose. Knowing that I will probably not ride these roads again makes it even more special.

I have a hard time riding for hours, let alone days in a row. My attention span lasts about 2 hours before I just want to be done. Plus these rides will be solo. I haven't been on a solo ride that lasted longer than an hour in about 4 years.

I have twitter now, brkusiak.

Namur

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bp

The Epley maneuver pretty much cured my dizziness. Took 3 tries. Twice doing the right side first, then after doing the left side, fixed. I still have high blood pressure. Resting heart rate is under 60 but bp is over 140. I've had high bp for as long as I can remember.

I eat enough carrots to sustain a small rabbit farm, but eat lots of other things too.

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At least now I can use cycling as an excuse for my health, instead of just for fun.

500k

I'm gonna try and do this.I've got 4 free days. Fri-mon. The rest would be on the trainer, or maybe friday morning, the last day. I don't have a reason to. It's a big challenge. My attention span usually lasts 3 hours max so 310 miles in 4 days is not realistic at my speed and 30d temperatures.

Dizziness, rides, sales.

I've been getting really dizzy ever since Thanksgiving. Usually if I'm looking down and look to the right or left really quick and sets in, gets really dizzy and I have to sit down. Or if I lay down with my head turned to the right or left its super dizzy. Thankfully, I don't get dizzy when I am on my bike. Its only when I go from laying to standing or sitting to standing. The first time it happened, I was getting up at 3am to get my kid back to bed who was yellin. As I was walking down the hallway I was literally bouncing off the walls side to side, just couldn't walk in a straight line. I didn't think anything of it, just went back to sleep, only for it to happen again.

I asked a friend, who told me about how he was super dizzy all the time for a while, and how there was a magical easy treatment.




Procedure to fix it.


I've tried it once. It almost made me throw up. When I lay down with my head to the right, it was insanely dizzy. Normally I straighten out my head and the dizzyness goes away. Since you have to keep your head on each side for 2-3 minutes, it just got deeper and deeper. I think I'll have to do this procedure 1 or 2 more times to be cured, I hope. If not, I might have a really bad ear infection or possibly a bad brain. I am looking into health insurance for me and the two boys this week.

Big Ride This Sunday!

Big Sale Tomorrow, Friday! Carbon bikes in practically every size, super cheap. Free lifetime tune ups and 50% off everything you want with the bike.

Big Gravel ride in Lawrence Saturday. I can't be there, but you should be there! Its free.

2012 KCA race calendar.

Wheel Deal.

I've got 2 sets of these left.


Same as pictured with silver spokes/nipples.

Hubs are made in america c-4. spokes are bladed dtaerolite/sapimcx-ray. 20f/24/rear.
Rims are stan's alpha340 tubeless.

Will come with tape and valves for tubeless installed. I banged mine all over tulsa and pittsburg, still straight as an aero. If you want a 1200 gram tubeless wheelset for $550, and weigh less than 185lbs, let me know.

KS State Champs

Course on sunday had a few modifications to it from Saturday. Still lots of pedaling with fast turns and a tough run up.

Field was smaller today, but everyone was fast. I was in 4th after a few turn. Chasing Joe S., Andrew, and Ben S. Then Jp passed me and eventually Bill S., Adam M, David Hejduk and a few others caught me. The course had some long fast straights with lots of wind.

Everything else after this was kind of blury. I got dropped by the group, then Hejduk attacked them and they let him ride away while Ben S. sat up, too tired.

JP was also otf chasing Coe for a while, then I heard his back started hurting so he quit.

The course had lots of forgiveness. Plenty of places to catch your breath and still go fast. Lots fast turns that you could really drive.

I caught back with the chase group of 4 with 3 guys up the road, Joe, Andrew, David.

Eventually Adam and I road away and we had 5 to go I think. It was hard racing. I knew Adam was fast, so I never put in any really hard attacks, I didn't want to hurt myself because I knew he could get around me and leave pretty quick. Before 1 to go he road away. I probably could have stayed with him but by then I was mentally beat. I ended up 5th.


The usac points thing seems pretty jacked up after last weekend. Getting 5th place in a local race with 12 starters gave me way better points than getting 3rd behind Tilford/Mills at Cross out cancer. I'm not complaining about better points, its just interesting to watch.

5th at capital cup.

Awesome course. Come out tomorrow. State champs. 50d and sunny.

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Diet

I ran for 20 minutes last night and then did about 10 minutes of jumping stairs. I'm pretty sore this morning. Shows how out of shape I'm in.


I read a lot about dieting last night. The interesting one was on the Paleo Diet. The arugement about what we ate 10,000 years ago vs. millions of years ago interests me, vs. what americans have been eating in the last 100 years.


After reading all that, it makes me not want processed grains. I'm usually a big cereal eater, and I make probably 2 nutella/jelly sandwhiches a day. Plus pizza, I probably eat it 3 times a week.

It seems today, everything processed and packaged in a box, taistes like plastic. It probably has plastic in it. Even milk shakes from mcdonalds might even have plastic in it.

I find it so hard to make an investment into a diet. It basically comes down to costs and cereal, bread, nutella, jelly are way cheaper than fresh fruit/vegatables/meats.

Cyclists have no problem spending $$ on gas to races, races, bikes, parts, clothing, but how many spend the $$ on food? It does get expensive.

You start eating 4oz of salmon every night and it will add up to the costs of 303s pretty quick.

I'm not subscribing to the paleo diet, but I will be buying more bananas, fruits, vegatables at the grocery store.



Here is Friel's guide to the Paleo diet. It lets you eat more carbs to recover which makes sense. Then the rest of the day you eat the paleo stuff.

Upcomming weekend.

I want to race both days, we'll see. I'd also like to race ss and open on sunday, but that sounds tough for me at this point. I need to choose 1 or the other. I have a pretty good chance of winning ss state champs, but I think I'd rather have fresh legs for the open race. I think I've lost all my lungs. Haven't spent anytime training at high intensity to engage my breathing hard enough to get my hr up, except for racing, which isn't often enough. When I race, my heart and lungs give out way before my legs do. Its frustrating to finish a race and feel like your muscles didn't do anything.

Jeff Unruh always puts on an excellent race, with a great course. You don't want to miss it, CLICK.

I've got some masi cxr bikes coming to volker bicycles. You should buy 1, let your friends ride it, use it as a pit bike, or even make it your a bike. I'd sell it to you pretty cheap. masi cx bike for cheap.

Muddy Jingle Cross Iowa 2011 Saturday Cat 2 Race Camera

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Friday Night Jingle Cross Helmet Cam Video.

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State Champs, (Boss Cross)

We had good mud saturday. The kind that is super wet and not super sticky.

Today, we had super dry, super sticky mud. Pretty Miserable. I was winning the race half a lap in. Then I let Travis get by me right before the huge mud hole.


There was some awesome firepower at this race coming from the eastern side of MO. I'd say there were probably more east side riders at this event as a whole than KC had, kind of sad since there's been so much complaining about all these dry dustbowl crit courses. I don't care really, the people who were there were having a good time, smiling and riding their bikes in 40d weather, thanks to the awesome promotion once again by Joe and Jeremy.


After 3 laps I was in 5th. I was behind Josh Johnson, Travis Donn, Daniel Miller, and John Schottler. All guys who are way faster than me so I wasn't battling to get back up there, they were way gone, but there were quite a few guys on my tail. Those guys in front, they all had pit bikes and guys helping them in the pits getting them fresh bikes. I didn't even bring a pit bike. After my poor leg performance on saturday I didn't think I'd last 3 laps anyway. It was the opposite today, good legs, good riding, but eventually my bike didn't want to move. It had to have more than 30 lbs of mud on it and the cranks barely turned and the wheels wouldn't go either. I rolled into the pit and Mark and Theresa of http://localcycling.com helped me out with a few brushes and bucket of water. 5 minutes later my bike is rolling again and after two laps it was getting bad again, the mud was definitely getting worse as the race went on.

Travis bought some Super Mud tires from me last week and road them on his A bike. Hands down he says they were better than any other tubular he's had, twice as good as the limus(on his b bike). If you don't want to listen to me, thats fine, but don't listen to the 40+ dudes talking up their free tires while the guy beating shottler and miller is doing it on handmade in france tires.



I ended up 8th out of 12 riders. I know this because the results are up online. Its alot different now than it was a few years ago. The people working the events, Sherri in particular gets all the races off on time, all the racers scored right, and 9/10 times the results are posted that night! Used to be a week before results were up on time. We have it pretty good.

Congratulations to SC. He got 2nd on saturday to a very fast racer, winning the entire Boss Cross Series. Maybe he'll blog about it. Maybe not.

bc#4

6th place. Very fun but no legs.

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New Red.

I'm a fan of sram, I'm a fan of shimano and campy too, but it seems I'm always racing sram. I believe sram red is the best, but if you said I couldn't race the best, I wouldn't ride force or rival, I think I'd rather ride 105 5700 than force.


From the video, it looks like the shifters are the same, and the f. der. and cassette got the major changes. It wasn't a close enough look, but the cassette look like it won't be so loud with the etchin in the back plate.