Battenkill Picture-palooza

Well, maybe not THAT many photos. I was certainly kind of busy ruining myself that day. But Kevin Jones got a couple of great shots of me (many more shots by Kevin here in his SmugMug gallery):

Slogging my way up Meetinghouse Road. Somehow after the cramping episode, I was able to get out of the saddle long enough for Kevin to grab a couple of frames.

The whole story is written there in my face.

Air in, fire out.

After my race, I grabbed my G10 and got some shots in the tent-area near the podium:

Todd Prekaski (always thinking NECX) and Gary Sclar, amazingly able to smile again the moment he got off his bike.

Carl Shimer displaying a nice encrustation of salt.

Todd Prekaski on his 5th? 6th? cider donut.

Here's our friend, Tom Keane (right) on the podium after getting 3rd in his Cat 5 45+ field. Joining him are team mate Dana Brown (2nd place, on the left) and winner Rejean Rochette (center). At least the guy on the far right isn't scratching his nuts.

In other news, I took the MTB out two days later for a "recovery ride" and managed to fall off it about half dozen times. The last time I went down, I broke the saddle. Of course, this happened when I was about as far from home as I could possibly be.

The nose of the saddle had some plastic bit that held the rails to the seat top, when it broke, the front lifted off and would slide completely off the back of the rails, leaving my tender bits in mortal danger. I did not relish the prospect of having to ride home like this:

So, I start pawing about my jersey pockets looking for some way to secure the saddle for the ride home. This is what I came up with:

Where the rubber meets the load. It actually wasn't all that uncomfortable.

Earned my Boy Scout knot merit badge with this one.

MacGyver himself would be proud but would have given me points off for leaving my Swiss Army knife home. I replaced the broken saddle with a vintage 3ttt unit off my ancient Bianchi Nuovo Racing road bike.

The rest of the week found me settling back into a regular training routine capped off this morning by a nice 3.5 hour ride that included a visit to the Ride Studio Cafe for a choicified latté.

I felt so good about it that when I got home, I treated myself to the summer haircut:

Coefficient of drag reduced by .02