The seventh deadly sin

Sarah wins three golds just as she is on the cover of ROAD. Coincidence? I don’t think so…

It was quite the busy week. There were the three days of track racing at the ADT velodrome and I had to continue training for my upcoming camp visits. You ask, “Why do you need to train when you visit these camps?” The reason is simple, number seven on the list of seven sins – pride. Usually journalists and guests are allowed to ride along with the pros during the camp. These are usually long enough for the pros to get in a bit of actual training, but not ‘on the rivet’ causing certain death and destruction for VIPs. In the magazine realm, I can hold my own among most journalists, but to be honest, that’s not saying much. Sure there are a few ‘ringers’ like the guys who just graduated and had been racing every weekend. Wait till they get older and settle into the grind. Then we’ll see who is still training! Anyways, I just don’t want to be that guy who gets dropped an hour into the ride. I want to be the guy that the director is thinking, “Hey, we should sign that Neil guy.” As a result of my growing hubris, I’ve been logging some solid rides on the weekends. The weekend before I rode with my BFF, Cush. He works for Bicycling and apparently has all the time in the world to train between ‘How to make your abs flat in three weeks’ and ‘Climb like Armstrong’ articles. He dragged me around Orange County for four and a half hours. Then during the week I’ve been doing short, hard intervals to bring my AT up to a decent level. Yesterday, Saturday, I rode with my favorite metrosexual hairdresser, Slover and the rest of his crew in the hills of Malibu. About ten miles into the ride one of the group gets a puncture. As we are standing on the side of PCH, who do I see approaching us but David Zabriskie. He stops and we chat for a few minutes as we wait for ‘Un-Loyal’ who punctured. Dave is down in SoCal to avoid the cold Utah weather and log some solid training miles. Also, Dave and his wife, along with Floyd Landis, attended the velodrome the night before in support of Sarah Hammer. I also suspect he is looking for some of my riding mojo. Our plan was to climb into the surrounding hills of Malibu, but that wasn’t on Dave’s list of things to do, so we waved adieu when our group turned onto Latigo Canyon. He was headed to Starbucks to see how many shot of espresso he could down.

Slover – keeping it real

Sunday at the velodrome was fabulous! Sarah took her third gold medal and she’s on the cover of ROAD. Yeah, I’m a Hammer groupie…We’re working on the next issue of ROAD and you can see a complete run down on the three days at the track.

Sarah taking her third gold in the scratch