Why I Love My Sponsors Part I: WN Precision

Welcome to my many part series!  The folks that make the Volkswagen Boise Cycling Team happen really are some of the best at what they do, and I'm going to tell you why.  Today, I got a fit done by Tom at WN Precision.  Here's a bunch of reasons why Tom is the best:

• He's located inside Joyride Cycles.  I'll get to them later in this series, but the Joyride folks are some of the coolest around.
• WN uses super-secret computer technology!  Tom pulled up a webpage with a bunch of words that I didn't understand and boxes to input measurements of said nonsensical words.  Here's a couple screenshots of what happened:

Tom put stuff in here (not here, but something that looks close)

"Brian Parker is the Vitruvian Man" - direct quote from computer

• The computer said that I was man in ideal form, but Tom said other stuff about me.  For example, I'm have one arm and one leg longer than the other.  Then he told me that I'm "gunstocked."  I assumed that he was referring to my massive arm muscles, but apparently it means that my humeruses (humeri? humeren? I have no idea) are rotated in.
• Details!  Tom measures and adjusts everything.  Everything.  I spent a solid 3 hours in there, for my first session.  At one point, I was laying on the floor, legs straight up the wall, shrugging my shoulders. I did repeated squats.  At times I wondered if he was just seeing what he could get me to do ("stand like a flamingo!"), but he always pulled out a measuring tape and plugged something into the computer.
• Pedaling!  Once my cleats and bike were properly adjusted, Tom had me go ride up and down the street in front of Joyride.  Every time I went by, he would tell me to try something different with my feet.  I never really put to much thought into what's happening at different points in my pedal stroke.  I mean my feet are going to go in circles around the bottom bracket no matter what, right?  Wrong.  By manipulating the angle of my feet at different points, I can defy gravity!

I took off on a ride right afterward, feeling like a pro, and it was great.  There was a noticeable difference between my guess-and-ride-around method and WN's magic science box.  There is definitely a reason that the walls of the WN fit studio are covered in photos of National and World Champs.

The New Team

As some of you may know, I am riding on a brand new team this year.  Our title sponsor is Volkswagen Boise, and we are awesome.  Here's why:

• They eat my crazy, crazy foods.  We had a team potluck and the people that knew of my dietary ways were a little concerned.  I couldn't disappoint them!  I utilized many of my staple foods all into one fantastic dish.

Step 1: Macaroni
Step 2: Bagels
Step 3: Bacon
Step 4: More Bacon
Step 5: Eggs 'N' Os
Step 6: Serve on giant platter

Bacon!

It was surprisingly well received in that most of the people there actually ate it instead of just me.

• Our sponsors are supercool (compound word, look it up).  I plan on discussing this further in future posts, but for now just envision this rolling down the freeway: 

Don't worry, I have a helmet on all the time.

• They ride bikes fast!  Riding bikes naturally makes a person cooler, but riding fast makes them extraultracool (triple compound word.  Do not try beating me at Scrabble.  It won't happen).  Colton and I went to Cherry Pie a couple weeks back, and he took 4th.  Not a bad start to things, a good little pre-grand debut.  This weekend was our full rollout as a team in the Echo Red to Red mountain bike race and the Hammer at the Slammer road race.  Red to Red was on Saturday and the only person on the team more laid back than me, Brent, took 5th IN THE FRIGGIN' PROS!  OUT OF THE 600+ RACERS, 4 WENT FASTER THAN HIM.

On Sunday, the road guys came out to do what we do.  I, as usual, raced aggressively and wound up spending the better part of the first lap by myself off the front.  I got caught, hung in, then spent the last lap chasing the field by myself.  While I was doing that Colton WON OUT OF THE 3 FIELD AND EARNED HIS UPGRADE!  Then Joe raced in the Cat. 4s and took 8th.  Then the girls went and TOOK 1ST, 5TH, 8TH, AND 9TH!  

Ballers!

At the end of the day, I was the only team member that raced not in the top 10 on the series omnium in 11th place.  The season is here, things are coming together, and we're only going to get awesomer.

In other news, my trainee, Ryan Thompson, WON THE SECOND RACE HE EVER RACED IN!  Suck it Chris Carmichael!

The Outcome of Today's Ride

Today was a "practice race."  An email was sent out, and the valley's top riders showed up at the corner of Hill and Seaman's Gulch.  We took off from there up around the dump loop to the finish on top of the last climb.  Here are my thoughts on that:

1. I'm almost ready to crush.  This is right where I should be.  I can hang with anybody, but I can't quite kick it over hard enough to beat everybody.
2. Exergy should have beat us up, but instead everything fell apart.  A broken chain and a dropped chain made everybody else's day easier.
3. THIS IS GOING TO BE THE TOUGHEST 1/2 FIELD BOISE HAS EVER SEEN.  There are 3 really good elite teams (a.k.a. 2 more than normal).  If Exergy has a guy or two, that counts as a 4th.  The fields are going to be bigger and the tactics much more dynamic.
4. Crushing yourself for the first hour of a ride is not the best way to do things.  I continued on for another 2 and a half, and was a tired boy by the end.
5. I need to improve the nature break skills.  I've been trying to learn this ability for a while now, and today was the first time I got rolling flow going at all.  It was less than proficient though.  It's a good thing I put on my neoprene booties after the practice race.
6. Chicken + rice + pineapple + bell pepper = awesome.

Dream

I had a dream last night, and after the week I've had, it just made sense.  I was at my friend Jordon's house playing video games like I had many times before.  Suddenly, there was a mountain lion in the living room.  Not an ideal situation.  I rushed outside and was standing on a car waiting for the cougar.  The key to scaring mountain lions is to appear really big.  This is a real thing, but what I did in my dream is not.  I decided that no sane mountain lion would want to fight a naked guy, because, well, who would?  I saw the cougar come out the front door of the house towards me.  I threw my arms up and shouted to try to frighten the beast away.  It didn't work.  The cougar pounced on me.  I started fighting and wound up ripping its throat out, MacGruber style.  The cougar had killed a dog, I was naked, I was clawed up, but there was suddenly a puppy on the front seat of the car.

Give Me a Job!

On Tuesday, I will begin my final semester at Boise State.  While it's awesome that I'm finally finishing, that means that it's time to start looking for a real job.  Without further ado, here are two reasons you may not have considered as to why you should hire me instead of some other fool.

• Food - I ride my bike a lot.  A lot.  I burn a lot of calories and my metabolism is usually fired up.  You might be wondering why this is a reason to hire me.  Here it is: I will always have food at my desk.  Bonus: it's not typically going to be boring granola bars and Triscuits.  It will be inventions of mine such as the Fluffernana:

I'm an innovator

• I'll let you touch my hair whenever you want - It's like having a pet sheep who's also proficient with Microsoft Word and Excel!  If you turn the break room into a bike repair studio, you can cut it, spin it into wool, and win every ugly sweater contest at every holiday party ever.

Employers, good luck finding this on anybody else's resume.