Splintered

I seem to open my entries with the same lamentation of it being too long since my previous posting. This was not the intent, as I had intended to post something in the wake of doping & suspicions thereof that made up this year's Tour de Farce (wow, just noticed that only an "n" is missing to make 'farce' an anagram of 'France'; what a coincidence), but decided better of it. I've just been too bitter over the state of cycling -- professionally & personally -- to say anything on the subject.

Personally? Yes, well, in addition to not having ridden half of the miles I should have been able to ride during my summer hiatus (bloody weather), my main road bike had to go & break its fork. While I could bemoan the cheapness (of manufacturer -- certainly not of price) of a certain carbon fork manufacturer that also dabbles in baseball bats and so on, I will instead count my blessings that the cracks in the fork's epoxy were noticed when driving to a ride and not actually on a ride.

Here's where it gets (more) depressing: My ride (a no-frills Sandvik titanium frame loaded with Campy Chorus) has a 1" headtube, which makes matching forks a difficult thing to find...at least those within the price range I have set. A Ritchey fork was about all that was available, but was not full carbon; it sported aluminum dropouts and an aluminum steertube. The former I could tolerate, but the latter would have just added too much weight to an already less-than-svelte bike. With as little as I've been riding, I need all the help I can get, so adding weight to the bike was certainly not to my liking. Fortunately, though, a friend had a 1" fork (with a carbon steertube!) lying in his garage, and offered it to me, so it's going on the ti rig this week. After that, the bike will be posted on Craig's List for an amount that will hopefully afford me a new Chorus gruppo.

I really shouldn't be here writing this, right now. I should be just about to turn off the access road onto Retama Parkway on my Wednesday morning run. However, the long run got cut a lot short because, quite simply, I felt horrible. Extremely winded, sore quads, and my shins hurt like heck. I'm still not completely sold on the shoes I've been running in for the past few weeks, as I seem to have suffered through more shortened runs since their purchase. True, they feel great on my feet, but for the rest of me...I think I might just have to go back to Waveriders. Good, solid shoe, even if it is pricey.

Phone's ringing.

Okay, back, but I think it's time to wrap this up before it becomes a session about how expensive sports are ($200 for a fork [which I technically didn't have to pay, but you get the idea], $3000 retail for the new bike, $90 for new shoes, and $70 for a new watch [yeah, there were some that cost a little less, but, for whatever reason, I really like Nike watches]). Besides, I need to shower and would like to get some breakfast before I head off to my final day of GT training. As always, thanks for reading. See you in-line at the cashier.//d