It's go time

I’m not one of those guys that hates Las Vegas and I was a little bummed that Interbike after a 12 year hiatus is returning to Anaheim, California. I attended most of the shows here in Sin City and have many fond memories for the place: the parties, people I met and the rides/races I attempted. Las Vegas, you will be missed…

Yesterday was the start of Interbike and the date was circled on my calendar. No, not because this was where all the latest and greatest bike gadgets were going to be displayed – let’s be honest, a lot of that happened at Euro Bike weeks ago and the major manufacturers have already had their press junkets. For me it was the opportunity to race Cross Vegas.

For many people Cross Vegas has become the kick off cyclocross event for 2010/2011 season. Many of the big name domestic pros are in attendance as well as a few Europeans. Also, there are beer gardens and the spectators embrace the Euro cyclocross excitement with clanging bells, horns and drunk behavior – God I love it.

My build up to the event had, let’s just say, not been ideal. Personal issues as well as a nagging back injury all prevented me from being in any type of fitness. So three weeks out from the race I decided to go the complete opposite method of training: not prepare and just make a huge spectacle of myself. What this means was grabbing as much free beer from the spectators lining the orange fencing as possible. Now I had a plan.

Working on my third beer

Cannondale’s new full carbon SuperX was my weapon of choice. Weighing in at just over 15 pounds and with a sharp looking paint scheme the SuperX was just damn sexy. My buddies at Contour HD hooked me up with a HD video camera to capture the shit show that was going to be my cyclocross race. In my haste to attach it to the top of my Giro it was aimed toward the ground for most of my race, only catching the occasional flash of a rider passing me or my out reached hand grabbing beer on the uphill barriers section. Regardless I had a great time and pretty sure I made a bit of a spectacle of myself. The Cross Vegas race was streaming over the web and there were sightings of me walking up the barrier section with my plastic beer cup in hand – perfect.

I’ll figure out how to edit the the video and pick some highlights from my race such as stealing a guys beer and the pro ladies yelling at me to not spill it and my snappy reply of, “I’m a pro. I know what I’m doing.”

So even though I did not defend my 2008 Cross Vegas media category win, it was a victory for me. I ended up slightly buzzed, not bleeding and able to eat free soft tacos in the VIP area. That’s a score in my book.

I had initially planned on doing a Live Chat, up the internet connection is flaky plus there are so many things goin on here at the show it’s hard to pin down a time. However, I will be a guest on the Spokeman program that will be streaming live at 3:00 PM Pacific Time where I will be entertaining and germane. Check it out on the Interbike site – I’m sure there’s a link for it somewhere. Also, follow my Twitter (Neilroad) as I will be updating when I get more information.

UPDATE

Here’s the link for Interbike TV where the Spokesmen show will be broadcast.

I want to start off by saying thank you to everyone that sent me a message or told me that they were thinking about my dad. It was truly remarkable the outpouring of kind words – it meant a lot.

My twice a week blog for Versus Cycling has been one reason why writing for my own personal blog here has become increasingly rare, usually just for some random Floyd Landis interview that might be a bit too much for the Versus lawyers to handle. The other reason shows a bit more of my serious side – yes, there’s more to me than armadillos and beer drinking.

As a resident of the southeast I was surprised there wasn’t one organized cycling web site that contained race announcements as well as local cycling news like we had back in Southern California. So with that in April CarolinaCyclingNews.com was founded. The site lists all the cycling activities as well as cycling news in the southeast region. With the professional cycling championships taking place this weekend in Greenville it was a perfect opportunity to partner with Hincapie Sportswear and do a live chat. The weekend of US Pro coverage presented by Hincapie Sportswear will get kicked off at 9:00pm Friday with a live chat from Carolina Cycling News HQ here in Greenville, SC. We’ll continue providing live coverage all weekend through Sunday. In the live chat there will be video and photos from our many Carolina Cycling News corespondents from various points on the course. This will be the best way to stay on top of all the action over the race weekend.

Our company Browne Eye Media will be attending Interbike next week and will bring you live shenanigans through our live chat here at my Browne Eye blog. I’ll also be covering Interbike for Versus.com, so watch for my daily posts. I’ll be returning to CrossVegas although due to lack of training my racing may end in a spectacular crash followed by beer drinking.

Once you see this sign abandon all hope

The Interbike bike show for the working media is a complete shit show. There’s really no other way to explain or sugar-coat it. Each year I went as an editor I could have written a post about all the shenanigans that occur: from the photo shoots in our hotel room, to hanging out to all hours of the night with various pros, but I thought I’d pick this story out of the hat.

The first year I attended as working media I was actually excited about attending. I was going to hang out in Las Vegas and see the latest and greatest bike stuff. What more could I want? By day three I was destroyed from all the walking from meeting to meeting. At one point my BFF who works at another magazine saw me collapsed on the floor behind a booth and severely reprimanded me. I tried to explain to him that I was exhausted. This wasn’t exhaustion due to late night partying, but from the whole day of zig-zagging the expo floor, bouncing from one appointment to another and subsisting on free sugary energy drinks and heat-lamp cooked hot dogs. I’ll always remember what he said, “Suck it up! Everyone here is playing hurt!” The following year I promised myself that wasn’t going to be “that guy” who pulled the ripcord on day three.

The years following “playing hurt” became my motto and I lived it. Back before Cross Vegas dominated the Wednesday night scene there was the epic Sinclair party. And as I look back at it I wonder why it was such a big deal. We were all crammed into an overflowing nightclub at the top of some casino, with music so loud you couldn’t talk to the same people I had to have meetings with throughout the day. However I had a plan. We would arrive at the party early as I knew that later in the evening trying to get to the bar would be an almost impossible task. From there phase 2 of my plan was that I would immediately start pounding drinks to take advantage of the open bar. By the time it was 11:00 I would have drank myself mostly sober and be able to continue with that night’s activities, whatever they may have been. However, it all went horribly wrong.

The show floor - where the magic happens

As planned Tim and I got to the Sinclair party with passes in hand and I headed to the bar. A few British journalists were already there with probably the same idea I had: take advantage of the open bar, pound free booze and then take off. I started drinking and chatting. I know a few of them – in particular Ellis Bacon of Pro Cycling. Ellis is a great guy, but whenever I see him I can’t help myself by saying, “What’s shaking Bacon?!” With a few drinks in me I’m now over the top with my enthusiastic greeting. I’m sure to this day he probably considers me that ugly American. But seriously, I can’t be the only one who has said that to him? When the open bar ended I thought I was done too. However by this time the marketing people have started to arrive and began handing me free drinks. Before I knew it I was plowed. There have only been a few times when I was black-out drunk. This was one of them.

I vaguely remember getting into a taxi to get back to the Venetian hotel where we were staying. I awoke to the room spinning and the uncontrollable urge to get everything out of my stomach immediately. For the next couple of hours I hovered by the toilet praying to God that he would end my life. Tim graciously stepped up to cover my morning appointments. Finally around 11:00 AM I could stand up and make my way to the show floor. I dragged myself down and started to make my appointments. At one point I felt something trying to come up and I hurried to the men’s bathroom. I quickly walked over to the nearest one, trying not to make it seem that obvious I was going to hurl. I rounded the corner, entered the bathroom and was hit with the stench of vomit mixed with urine and other human waste. The floors were slick with god knows what and every counter top was wet. And you can forget about paper towels. In the far stall I heard the unmistakable sound of someone bent over a toilet yacking their guts out. I’ve smelt all kinds of foul odors from dead bodies, baby shit to burning flesh, but few things smell as bad as that bathroom did. It was as if I entered Dante’s fifth layer of hell. I choked back any urge to vomit and quickly spun around on my heels. I would rather at this point go to the PowerBar booth and stick my head into their garbage can to puke then stay in that hell hole of a bathroom.

At one point I caught up to my friend and I told him what had happened. He had done something similar but he was not looking that worse for wear. It was then that I realized I was still a rookie at playing hurt at Interbike.

The following years I calmed down a bit when attending Interbike. I met some great people at the show and did some more normal mature activities like going for a drink instead of emptying every bottle behind the bar. It also helped that I talked a lot of shit about how I was going to win Cross Vegas and was trying to impress at the industry criterium race, so I needed to at least keep myself in check.

I didn’t attend the 2009 Interbike because I had just left ROAD and to be honest I didn’t miss it. I thought I would, but the thought of walking up and down the aisles listening to advertisers drone on about whatever product they have, no longer holds the same magic for me. That said, it looks like I’ll be attending the 2010 Interbike in some sort of media capacity and I expect to have plenty of stories to tell.

Two minutes later I was bleeding and wondering what the hell I was doing

Photo courtesy: Jonathan Devich

So with the thoughts of going two for two as a media winner I rolled out of the Venetian Hotel to the Mandalay Bay, the location for the USA Criterium championships. I knew that tonight’s race was going to produce stiffer competition. VeloNews had brought several riders with them and their editor Ben Delaney and I had actually been on the same racing team many, many years ago. I knew that he was strong. I just hoped that fatherhood had slowed him down. Specialized also had a few ringers in their company. So the goal of the crit was the same as the cross race: talk a lot of shit then blow up spectacularly. Also not vomit.

I rolled around the infield of the crit as the women battled it out. At one point Johny Sundt came over to me with some prophet advice. “The asphalt is slick, so don’t get out of the saddle when you in the turn.” Good to know. Earlier that day we had a photo shoot with Freddy Rodriguez and I asked him if he was doing the race. “Hell no!” I pressed him for some advice. “Stay at the front and then camp out.” Brilliant!

I knew that I was going to get called up to the line. As a fame whore I loved it. The crowd, the recognition, my fragile ego was being stroked to perfection. The downside to this was that I was at the front and had to at least make a good show of it for a few laps. This was the plan: work the front and then hide in the middle of the pack till I spewed. It was do-able plan.

The whistle blew and I was sprinting off the line like a wolf chased by an airborne Sarah Palin. I leaned my bike into the first turn no more than 75 feet into the race and suddenly my front wheel washed out and I hit the deck, sliding to the fence. In that one second of sliding all I could think about was that the next day was going to suck! I get up and who is standing at the fence is a bunch of my buddies from home. “Way to go Neil!”
“Thanks.”
“You putting this on the blog?”
“Yeah, whatever.”
My shorts are torn and I’m bleeding from my hip and elbow. My shoulder feels like I was hit by a pole and I have already formed a friction blister on my thumb as it slid on the ground. Other than that I’m good to go.

For a second I thought, “Fuck this, I’m calling it a night and crawling into a bottle of wine.” As I remounted and rolled around the course people called my name or yelled “Go ROAD!” What the hell, I’ll grab my free lap and reenter the fray.

I roll into the pit and I don’t need to explain my situation to the referee. My ass is hanging out and I’m bleeding, you do the math as to what happened. As the peloton comes screaming around the corner I’m pushed into the field. We scream through the finish line and I start to set up for turn number one once again. However the three guys in front of me have other plans. Two of them go down in the exact same spot and the third sympathy crashes into them as well. With no where to go I head into the fence. With tires sliding I come to a halt, jammed up into the orange fencing. And like the gambler Kenny Rogers once said, “You gotta know when to fold them and when to hold them.” I was done with this bloodbath. Untangling myself from the fence, I found the nearest pedestrian exit and got off the course.

“Heard you crashed. So who’s the douche bag now?” It was my BFF gloating as I limped around the Interbike floor the next day. So I have to take back the douche bag of the month award as it is painfully obvious that I’m the douche. Also Vegas is good for two things only: drinking and gambling. I’m sticking to those next year.

The Vegas ‘cross in full effect. I’m trying to get Schamber to race

I’ve finally feel like I’ve gotten ahead of the game so I thought I’d write a couple of jumbled thoughts. I’ve been doing a crap load of traveling lately and was starting to feel the burn. Even as I write this I’m in the airport on my way to Utah for their Tour of whatever. My form, while showing flashes of brilliance, has gone from mediocre to getting winded climbing my stairs. I’m resigned to the fact that my season is over and it’s time to shift gears and think about ‘cross. I’ve signed up for the media race at Interbike. I’ll train, but my goal is to see how much of a nuisance I can be during the race and then at any post-race activities. I’m going big at Interbike and I’ve warned my kidneys about it. And what blog post wouldn’t be complete without checking in with my parents across the pond? Naturally I told my parents about completing the E’Tape ride. Dad wants the facts.
“How long were you on the bike?”
“Totally was eight hours, 40 minutes.”
“Jesus, that’s slow!”
“I took my time and enjoyed it. Plus it rained.” Dad is not satisfied with that response.
“Did you even train?” Not training is a major sin.
“Yeah.”
“Shit. Talk to your mother.”
“Neil this is your mother. Are you still riding your bike?”
I love my parents.

My meter has been on the low side recently

I had been a little down in the dumps since returning from Interbike. I think it’s a combination of all the travel and general malaise that comes with the end of the racing season. But the coupe de grâce was Interbike. That place just crushed me on so many levels, professionally as well as personally. Being on the road for so long I missed the people in my life. You are surrounded by so many people on these trips, yet you often feel alone and tired, which is not a good combination. Not to help, but I was also listening to a lot of Placebo, which isn’t always the most cheerful music. Thank God that these trips are over for the time being.

My life both professionally and personally revolves around the racing season, so I think as the season winds down, my body does as well. I’ve had little energy and haven’t written anything meaningful since Interbike, not that I write a lot of meaningful stuff anyways. I was loading my bike to my roof rack yesterday when Tony sees me and asks where I’m going. I tell him that I’m going to train in the local hills, but I am really lacking motivation to train, but I need to. Not to say I haven’t been training at all. In my classic Type A, obsessive compulsive personality that is so attractive, I have thrown myself into Pilates. But I still need cycling conditioning as well because I kind of committed to doing a road race in Death Valley at the end of the month and ‘cross season has started, so I need to be in shape for that beat down of biblical proportions.

“Yeah me too. I’ll start riding again when I feel motivated.” Tony says. However, Tony has enough residual fitness that he doesn’t need to train to be competitive for the local ‘cross races. That is not the case with me. So I’m training yesterday for really the first time in about a month and starting to feel better physically and mentally. Even today as I write this I continue to feel better and will ride up Old Road in Santa Clarita. Hell, I think that maybe I’ll even write something for the magazine today as well!

Cruz not too concerned with training right now

* an inside joke about how I have characteristics of the armadillo

You’ve probably already read Neil’s account of the Industry Crit – claiming that he was up against the likes of Cipo and a few other notables such as McCormack, Hegg … Well – we do have the photos to prove it.

Then of course there was the cheering section – for some reason known as the umbrella girls (I certainly didn’t see an umbrellas). With this kind of attention – this race could soon rival the Tour de France.

Early in the race Neil works…but after all the late nights working on the magazine (yeah – right), and the absence of serious training..it’s no easy task….

…following the likes of Mario.

Add in a crash or two….

…and it’s time to say good night…or head to the Rock and Republic party at the Mandalay. Check out the race action on streaming video at WCSN video.

The SRAM booth continues to have a lot of traffic due to their road group. Last year it was the buzz because they had just unveiled it. Now that it is avalible people seem to be clamoring for it. We were wondering how far FSA is in making their own group…

We picked up pair of tubless tires from Hutchinson. Shimano is making a tubless wheel, but Mavic and FSA is taking a wait and see aproach to the tubless tire. People who have riden the new tubless tire say it’s the best thing since sliced bread. As soon as I get home I’m mounting them onto the pair of Shimano wheels and see if the hype is true.

On Wednesday night was the Sinclair Party and it lived up to its reputation as the party to be at. Everyone who is anyone is there. I was in classic form which means drinking martinis for way too long and waking up in the morning thinking I’m getting too old for this! So Tim and I took a more conservative approach last night. We ate dinner at a nice Italian restaurant and went to bed watching Charlie Rose.

I’m interviewing Mario Cippollini in a few hours and I’ll let you know how it goes.