Doge

I am and still watching. I was a ref for a decade or so. I enjoy the game. I post a bit on soccer forums still.
I think USA performance is as good as it will get for a while. Getting out of pool is a good result.
USA soccer is pretty wrapped up on non-soccer things. The USA woman's team got half the $13M or so men's purse. We tip share!
I will be surprised if we get out of pool next time, although they are among the most inexperienced teams playing. Maybe 4 years will help.

Hermes

Yerba Mate is powering World Cup Soccer players. Argentina, according to the NYT, brought 1100 pounds with them to Qatar.

TMonk

looks like I picked a good week to be resting! might be all on the trainer.

topflightpro

Wow, that forecast looks absolutely lovely right now.

TMonk

pretty rough by San Diego standards haha. It's warmer this week, but it had been in the low 40's for a while in the AM. Brr!

carpediemracing 

One of my SoCal trips (stayed near Carlsbad so a touch north of San Diego) it rained for something like 14 of 17 days. I guess Jan is the rainy season.

carpediemracing 

I've often noticed that there are more people in the track area than here.

Hermes

Happy New Year. Looking forward to a great year of training and racing.

carpediemracing 

Happy New Year!

For me 2023 will be relatively significant. I'm taking on more responsibilities with the spring series in March (registration in full, BikeReg page, and running reg at the race). I'm happy as I feel like I would have made some different decisions prior, and since I'm comfortable with certain things (like day of race reg), I hope to make it easier for people to try racing.

The next thing is the Missus has gotten a treadmill after many years of talking about it. We've converted the spare room into a fitness room of sorts, allowing me to move my cheap Weider weight station to it as well as add a pull up station. This frees up room in the bike room for two full time Rock N Roll trainers (track and road), the leg press machine, and the CycleOps spin bike (for practicing starts as well as max rpm stuff). I'm going to revise the set up a bit too so the monitors etc are a bit more integrated into the room.

Finally, knowing where Masters Nationals will be, and when, will make a huge difference in planning etc. I can start thinking about it now instead of finding out in a few months where it is etc. The Missus is on board for me to go again, and with my job being much easier in terms of getting time off, I hope that I have an easier time with the logistics for planning etc.

Of course all that wouldn't really help if I wasn't even minimally fit, and I'm finally a bit more than minimally fit. So perhaps I can stay with a group longer than 5 or 6 minutes this year.

Psimet2001 

"no one" races anymore. The numbers are so low it's gone far past depressing in to the realm of "why bother". Those that do still race no longer come out to a forum to learn anything. They have YouTube and brand new Cat 3 race videos to "learn" everything from. The old forms of mentorship that learning through a club/team structure used to represent were somewhat replaced by at least so forum interaction like here but it seems as though even this type of interaction has been "replaced".

Happy New Year.

Sorry. Just PO'd and need to blow off steam. Everyone in this sport and industry just sucks. Not you guys of course...

TMonk

Here at the San Diego Bicycle Club, we still promote racing in our community with bottom-up/grassroots advocacy and mentorship. I'm on our club (of ~1,000) BoD for the Men's 1/2/3 team director, and volunteer quite a bit to host events on and off the bike to do what we can to recruit new members and retain existing ones. From the top, our club prioritizes racers and has budget for reimbursement and clothing even all the way down to the 4/5 level with some minimum requirements, who does that???

I do agree with what you're saying on a macro level, but there are at least some organizations and clubs out there that are committed to the cause. We host one of the longest running SCNCA races (Barrio Logan GP) and a local TT series that are still going.

merlinextraligh

and, get off my lawn.

Doge

I suck - right? The fastest (juniors) are ignored while we pay attention to a group that has 1/10 to 1/100th the participants. You did that. You helped create that.

I saw this 10 maybe 20 years ago. In CA it is legislated that you gotta pay those that are slow the same as those that are fast even if it is a 50:1 ratio of who shows up - and it was.
Tour of CA shut down over that - I posted that.
USA is the only country in the world to split the soccer $ among those that earned it and those that didn't.

Strava at least tells the truth.

Flatballer

Belongs in geek thread, but whatever.

YouTuber made a video about my previous machine learning Rocket League bot and teased my new one (which trains 24/7 on my twitch). Kinda fun though.

And you may have seen stories in even Wired about another bot, that's referenced a bit in the video, and I work closely with those guys. It's been interesting seeing it in national, respected news websites.

topflightpro

I have to have a colonoscopy this week. I am on a restricted diet all week leading up to it. Basically, I can only eat refined foods - aka junk food.

I'm not complaining - I love junk food - but I'd prefer to eat some real vegetables or fruits.

Hermes

I have had 3 of them. No big deal - nothing burger. However, the 50+ forum members love to talk about them. Here is all you need to know...will you be faster? No. Will you be slower? No. Are they a determining factor in a race? No.

kensuf

I pooped in a box this morning. When I took the thing to UPS to get sent off I thought to myself that the guy behind the counter was probably think "what a pile of ****."

Enthalpic

Years ago I was sent home from hospital with a stool collection kit. The next day I was wandering the hospital (still very sick) looking for the lab to drop it off. Some employee stopped me and said they would deliver it to the lab for me. I handed over the bag of **** and said something like "make sure my crap gets there."

I was so out of it... some barely conscious guy wandering around with a bag of ****.

Cleave

Heartened by the fact that there are 44 racers in the Masters 55+ and 19 racers in the Masters 65+ registered for combined field (scored separately) at the Valley of the Sun Stage Race. This by itself doesn't say anything about the health of road racing in the US, but it looks like the other fields are healthier than the past few non-COVID years. I try to be a glass half-full kind of person.

TMonk

Cleave will you be there? I will be part of a four man team in the 35+ from the San Diego Bicycle Club

kensuf

I watched a video of the P/1/2 crit/circuit race from the Swamp Classic that was held locally a few weeks back. I wanted to cry, there were only about 25-30 people in the field and no more than 2 people from any single team, it looked like a group ride and not a P/1/2 race. The same course used to draw out huge fields for the "Bring it On!" series just a little over a decade ago.


Meanwhile, I'll run about 20 miles this week. The last two times I rode a bike on the road I was run off by cars.

TMonk

the last minute or so of that video illustrate why I don't like fast, flat bunch finishes anymore. I just don't have the nerve. I would have given up that rider in blue's wheel. I need things to be hard, hilly, technical, or ideally, in a breakaway. I have a decent sprint too, I just don't have the balls I guess.

Hermes

I am not racing VOS but we have men from our track training group that are going.

carpediemracing 

You must have something going on for the diet requirement? I've had a number of them, from age 35 (my mom and her dad both died of colon cancer, and they found a benign polyp on my first one). I never had a diet requirement, just the day of prep (which, honestly, is not horrible if you're at home, the heat works, and the shower works). And after the procedure it is sooooo relaxing. Also, if I'm fit, I like trying to set off the heart rate alarm by relaxing and getting my heart rate too low (38? 39?).

carpediemracing 

That was pretty sketch, to be honest. I mean, okay, I can ride in that stuff, but it's totally not necessary. Some of it I get, the grass surfing, it happens, and you have to take a "whole world" approach when racing. Meaning when you're battling to stay upright, you can't think of the course as the only place to ride, like a video game with invisible walls. You have to be able to encompass the whole world, like you would in, say, Grand Theft Auto. So when you get body checked hard to the outside, and there's a gigantic curb there, you just hop up onto the curb.

The body check stuff really irritates me. A long time ago I got body checked into the curb on the last lap of a race, I had to bunny hop onto the curb and the grass next to it, kept my out of saddle effort, and hopped back down a short time later. Totally unnecessary move on the other rider's part.

I have watched some cross race starts and thought, "man, if pushing was okay, I could plow through that field!" Of course after a minute I'd blow up and everyone would pass me wondering who the jerk is that pushed everyone out of the way.