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.
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!
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:
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.
Exergy should have beat us up, but instead everything fell apart. A broken chain and a dropped chain made everybody else's day easier.
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.
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.
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.
Chicken + rice + pineapple + bell pepper = awesome.
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.
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.
2011, you were a good season. 2012, I expect you to be even better. To do this, I have to make a few sacrifices. For example, I'm not training or racing again until after finals week. Of course this is when my friends all say things like "Hey, I'm going to go on this sweet 80 mile endurance ride tomorrow. Want to join?" Or "We're going to go do this mountain bike trail that you really want to do!" Or my favorite, "there's a cross race tomorrow at the Velopark that's going to be all muddy and they'll give you free beer and waffles!" I'm finding the phrase "Thanks, but I'm not allowed to have fun right now" to be very useful.
Speaking of waffles and things I'm not supposed to do, I am dieting right now. Some people would believe that I lose weight while I'm riding my bike on a regular basis, but they'd be wrong. When I ride, I feel really good about myself and the calories that I've burned. I also realize that if I want to ride again tomorrow and the day after that, I need to fuel myself. I really enjoy fueling myself. Many strips of bacon are consumed and many trips to Betos are taken. I tend to overdo it and gain a few pounds over the course of the season. From now until about mid-February is the time that I drop that weight and as much as I can so that I can eat my brains out for the eight months after that. Without further ado, my Ingenious Weight Loss Miracle Plan (tm):
Find a really awesome food that you really like to eat. For me, there are a lot. Most of them are cheese.
Weigh yourself when you wake up in the morning. I like to eat breakfast, rapidly lose the weight gained from that (I'm talking about pooping here), then weigh myself. That's just how I do things.
Do your every day thing. Way to do that stuff that you do!
Weigh yourself when you go to bed.
If you weigh less than you did this morning, way to go! Keep on living your life!
If you weigh more, don't eat any more of that food that you really like.
For me, most of the foods that I really like fall squarely in the "don't eat" category of the Paleo Diet. For those of you that don't know, the Paleo Diet consists only of foods that our cavemen ancestors could find and eat. This is mostly meat, fruit, vegetables, and nuts. While these foods are awesome, I really like cheese. And bread. And pasta. And Nutella.
Another recent development in my life is that I rented my car out to a friend. My reasoning for this is that I don't really need a car, but I do enjoy having money. I thought that I'd share some of my observations on being carless:
My friends are cool. They let me sit in their cars and drive to bike races.
There are times that cars (or at least a bike trailer) are needed. I'm talking to you Propane Tank.
WinCo by bike is awesome. First of all, you can park right next to the front door. Second, you start planning your purchases less by price and more by what will fit in your backpack. Third and best, I can totally out-green the ladies that bring their own grocery bags. I always knock the self-satisfaction right out of them when I set my backpack with my helmet clipped to it opposite of them in the bagging area.
I spend less money. Obviously on the car related stuff, but there's more since it takes more effort to get to places that take money in exchange for stuff. WinCo is right on my way home from work, so it's pretty easy, but making a trip to Target or Wal-Mart requires some time and planning.
Drive-Thrus that won't serve bikes are really annoying. MY MONEY WORKS JUST AS WELL AS THE FATTY IN THE CAR!
The last thing on my list of things is that I was temporarily without a computer. I was doing my usual activities of playing FreeCell on my couch when I decided that it was time to go to the bathroom. I stood up and began walking towards the bathroom when I felt the power cord across my foot. The laptop got pulled onto the floor. I tried turning it back on and it told me that it could not find the operating system. My guys is that it went out the Window (get it?). Whatever it was, it was not awesome. Being computerless is not a good way to live. Some things cannot be easily done with a smartphone. Have you ever tried creating complex spreadsheets on a phone? It's possible but terrible. So I called Lenovo and asked for assistance. The guy told me to punch some numbers into the Googles and download the first result onto a USB drive. So I did that, then plugged that into my computer. Then magic happened. My computer came to life just like I had left it, including my 1965 game FreeCell winning streak.
Over the past 3 weekends, I've become a bit of a crowd favorite in the local cyclocross scene. In the first weekend of the Waffle Cross Series, it rained a lot. This made for a muddy Sunday race, which made me really bad at staying upright. After about a half a lap, I realized that people were just going to go faster than me. I decided to work on my skills and try to ride everything as quickly as I could until I fell over. There was an off camber corner right behind the announcer's table and registration tent that I fell over nearly every lap (nailed it the last time though). After entertaining all the nearby spectators for the entire race, the promoters named the corner after me. Here's the end result:
The next weekend was much sunnier, but that still didn't stop me from entertaining. Here's my recipe for ridiculousness:
Gold Shorts
High Speed Barricades
End Result:
You're welcome.
I'm still waiting for some good photos (I'll post them as they come in) from this weekend but since it was Halloween, I stepped the costume up a notch.
You get the idea
Also, I fell in the creek crossing.
The whole reason I'm telling these stories is this: I'm tired of doing it for free. So here's the deal:
If you (the general public) donates $500 or more to BSU Cycling in the month of November, I'll do Kringle Kross on December 18th (last year's high was 41 degrees) in nothing but the gold shorts. Since I am Brian Parker, there's a pretty good chance of me doing something stupid. Not a fan of the gold shorts? The highest bidder picks the costume! Speedo? Sure! Borat man-thong? Of course! Bikini? Definitely! Gorilla suit? You bet! My only requirement is that it doesn't lead to me being thrown in jail. Beyond that, get creative and support Boise State Cycling!
I'm trying to simplify this process, but Club Sports doesn't really like it when I modernize systems. In the meantime, do the following to donate:
Make check payable to "BSU Foundation"
Enclose check with a note indicating that the check is a gift to Boise State Cycling Club
Mail the note to the following address:
Boise State University Foundation
1910 University Drive
Boise, Idaho 83725-1030
It is important to use the 9-digit zip code
Foundation will automatically mail back a receipt indicating that the contribution is tax-deductible
Send me an email to brianparker@u.boisestate.edu with some sort of proof of the amount you donated and your costume idea. I'll let you know if you've been outbid and tell you to step your game up! The highest total donor (not individual donation) will be the winner, so you can bid your way to the top.
Help us race bikes and help me make a fool of myself!
