Any one have a CAR

Seriously…I wanna buy a car…I have made it to 24 without one really but the VAN city requires at least a little tinny thing. I am looking for a 1996 - 1999 Golf or Civic HB…I have found a few but am still looking…If any of you blog readers out there are trying to sell one or if you just want to help out a broke cyclist with a mad deal on some wheels…that would be great…hell I even have a P3 I might trade for it…I know this is a long shot bit if there is anyone who might be helpful in this respect…let me know…Leave me a comment or something…for real. This is no joke.

Hoping to be rolling the 17″s soon
later party people…

UP HERE

So As I said I would tell the story…mostly of the points race. It started with three guys taking a lap at a soft pedal pace. This ended up screwing me bad in the end. these guys didn;t get any more points the whole time. I am not sure what the pack was thinking…they just let them go…I think I actually said “are you serious” out loud in the race. Despite that the race average was still about 51.4kkm/hr. INSANE.

Anyway, I ended up scoring a lot of little points and working my ass off…I mad good choices but I didn’t make great ones…and in the end that was the difference between a much better result… and a good on. It was still good. But I have so much room to improve it is exciting.

I would have a good suffer face picture if I could find one…but the russian photage where not out in any kind of force.
But I am still tied for 1oth on the old WC standings…pretty sweet…here is hoping I can keep it up.

Thanks for the supporting emails…etc.

What made you boy….

Well I know all kinds of people always ask me where I am from and I try to discribe it. Well I was doinga little search on the old web tonight and I came across this some what cheesy promo video for the town I grew up in. Now, if you watch this video you will learn a lot about what I am all about, I worked in that star theater the year it opened…I turtle waxed that water slide, ran around that lake, swam in thouse hot springs before there was wood there went to that school, shot bottle rockets on teh baseball field, curled in that curling rink, road my first road bike down that highway. So I know it is cheesy to me…and maybe to you too….but it is the best way I can think of to really discribe my home town in this hot media world.

Rethink your mental space…

“Success at any endevour, on any scale, is enlightenment…”
- IronMIike - From a man who understands the true meaning of success better than anyone I know.

Tipping Point

Well I think the beatings on friday got me fired up for the points on saturday…I came out pissed and tried to stamp some authority on a race that I feel holds my future on the track. I qualified 2nd in my heat behind olympic gold medalist Mikhail Ignatiev. A good start no prizes but it got the job done and got me feeling better about my riding anyway.

The final came around again in only a few hours so I went back to my casino/hotel and ate a casino/hotel sammy…that was gross and not ideal but fuel anyway.

In the final it was pinned from the gun. I scooped some points in the first sprint then a dangerous group rolled away and I wasn’t there..bad move…but with me and a few others working for almost 60 laps we held them at half a lap and slowly pulled them back. Then once we where a group I rolled away. And who else was with you ask, Mikhail Ignatiev. Dude was a wrecking ball…oh yeah and did I mention he rode the team pursuit and won only 5 min before…the rest of the race was just him putting the wreck on…and me hanging on…in the final sprint I had a good turn of speed but bad position…with smarter riding and similar legs I can improve on the 8th place finish I had here…but it was a good start to a world cup season that I hope is on an upward trend…coming in I didn’t feel like I would ride very well…and thel legs didn’t feel great here. I rode with alot of fight but in the end the job got done…more or less. Anyway I will be heading home to BC and hopefully get a solid 2 weeks in before I head to Moscow…If I can keep my form moving in this upward direction I think moscow will be a good race for me.

Thanks for all the support and emails over the past few days…it helped a lot.

We need Some “POOP OFF”

Well After the first day of racing at sydney we team Canada has come out a little worse off then a porche under a telephone wire. Travis, Gina and I all…all seasoned competitors came out looking like JIT’s…What the heck happened. We have all raced at this level before…what is the problem? Well the general concensis seems to be lack of current experneience. We have experience yes but the first world cup is always a wake up call… “johnson pull your head out of your ass”. I basically rode a respectable pursuit…good time (4:35 somthing) and 2o min later jumped on the track for the scratch qualification…granted I was probably the only guy doing that and if I had been in the race and not had the legs maybe I would complain but that is not what happened…I had the legs legs where comfortable infact. I just made a tactical errors…was not cut trought didn’t grab the balls of it or whatever…in the end I didn’t qualify in a race I should have been able to no problem. I just made a bad move…granted it was a very bad move…probably the worst move of my international career actually…and in the end it made for no spot in the scratch final. Now don’t worry I am going to brush off pic up and hit it hard for the points tomrrow…that is the one I am REALLY here for anyway…the scratch was almost an option…and I am happy with my pursuit time…even if it didn’t put me where I expected it too.

But the long and the short of it is…we need to race more…not sally johnson sissy races but really hard ass stuff…at least once before we roll into a world cup. Every year we all come out with good motors and make tactical mistakes against guys that have 1 or 2 mor races allready under their belts this season…no point in puttinhg all your eggs in one basket if there is a hole in the bottum that you can see. I am lucky cause the stupidity I seemed to suffer from came in the least important race for me this year…if there was one race this year I could suck in it was the scratch here. Anyway I am going to use the poo remover to clean teh crap out of my sheets and use more than cromagnon portions of my brain tomrrow…that with my half decent engine right now should produce something a little better. Wish me luck…

Congrats are in order…

Well I am over her in the land of Aus and the world seems to be spinning all around me…and as a track cyclist it should be the other way around…I just heard that my man Ryan Mckenzie just got hitched to his hip and GROOOOVY broad Laura…Well dang yo…god on you and a big shout out of congratulations. I would say I hope you are very happy together…but I know you are so no need for hope.

As for the rest of you out there in blog world. Well I am busy planning some interesting things…I may have a guest blogger join the Z-Rail feed on a some what permamnet basis…to bring a little edge to line. I will also have some interesting pics and fottage once I return from the world cup. It is the first time I haven’t had to Race Pack Fly on sunday…so I will have some free time to wonder the beach or check out the nitty gritty of one of the worlds most famed citys…

What’s Your Genus? - - - Quiz

As I promised, the Zrail team of crack scientist have been researching for weeks to assemble a Cycling Genus reference guide. They have come up with what they believe is a set of 8 Genii that represent every facet of the competitive cycling family. If you want to find out what they cam up with take this Quiz and see how you fit. Then you can also see the other Genii and how to beat your friends in a weekly race. write down your ansewers on that recipt you have in your walet from Subway. Then go to the results page, and match your anwers to the numbers, Cosmo…err….I mean MENS HEALTH style. Tally up the numbers. The number you have the most of is your genus. Click on the number at the buttom of the results page to see your results. Sorry it is not more web friendly but the html just didn’t work out for me. Come back here and click on the poll bellow…the Zrail
scientists are trying to make a pie chart that represents how the cycling population is divided into these Genii. Enjoy

* The findings in/on this website are no way factual and are not intended to reflect directly or indirectly on an individuals or groups of people in an informative way. So don’t take offence, this is fictional fun*

Athletic Narcissism…

Athletic Narcissism is something that every high caliber athlete will struggle with at some point. It is almost inevitable, you train and train and focus so much on your goals and how you can over come and be the best. You have to be confident in yourself and abilities, which in and of itself isn’t narcissistic. It crosses the line when all you talk about is yourself and what you do and you become convinced that you and your accomplishments are the most important thing in your own life. I have had some wake up calls in this area as of late. Not that I think I am a narcissist, but I feel these recent experiences have helped me move away from that.

Just yesterday I attended a wedding. The wedding was for someone who I conceder a very close friend. I haven’t spent much time with him since I began cycling but I still count him as one of my best friends. Throughout the wedding ceremony I began to realize something. As I saw him celebrate in his new wife, new life family and friends, another friend of ours who I had attended the wedding with mentioned that we could probably go because we where “at the bottom of this weddings food chain.” It got me to thinking. Who in this big world of ours would put me at the top of that food chain. Who in the world would count me as one of their very best friends? As I thought, I drew no names. I also started to think of who I would have as my best man. I came up with at Least 5 names…names of people who where significant enough in my life that they could easily deserve to be my BEST. Yet I doubt I had played a significant enough role in their lives to be considered there best. It seems that sport and total dedication to it has turned me into wedding plankton. This does not offend me. It is what I deserve, I am barely around enough to be important in my own romantic relationship, how can I expect that any of my friends would see me as playing a significant enough role to hold me any closer. But I will tell you one thing. I thing the narcissist died yesterday. Why should I be the most important figure in my own life when I am not that important to anyone else in the world. They world of a wayfarer athlete is a lonely one. It was a humbling experience and made me realize just how much I have sacrificed in only 4 years for this sport. I have gained a lot too, but when I do re enter real life, I will have a lot of meaningful work to do for all those people that mean so much to me.

I am almost done the Cycling Genus Quiz…just have a few more genus deffinitions to write up then you too can figure out your destiny with a simple nonsensical quiz.

Book Review and…

So it is that time of the year where your body just shuts you down no matter what. I was coming off track nationals with good form and was wondering how this would effect my training. But Then my body checked the calender and decided it would be sick. So in my spare time I did a little reading. I kept seeing the Da Vinci Code poping up all over. All the hype it got a few years ago made me wonder what was going on. So I picked it up. Well, it was interesting and easy to read. But all the hype? Um…right…so there was all this talk of conspiacies and plots to undermine the church. Apparently all those scholars forgot to read the cover. See right above old Mona’s left eye. A secret hidden message in plane sight. “A Novel”. For those of you not familiar with this code, it is an achient masons word for FICTION, as in made up, as in for entertainment value only. Granted all the “things” he talks about in this book are factual…but if scientific reasurch can be orginized to prove almost any theory, so art can be interpreted to do anything. So if you are going to read this book…read it for fun on a weekend when you have nothing else to do but drink tea.

Anyway it is back to training and the like this week….I did the “Run for the Cure” yesterday. Not only do my legs hurt beyond all understanding. I also determined that men only look good in pink if they are, in fact, riding for T-Mobile. Sorry Optiks team you guys just can’t cut it. Anyway look for a quiz coming down the Z-rails later this week. I was trying to make it total work free for you but, unfortunatly my html skills are not worthy of any geek squads. So it will be cosmo…errr um…I mean MENS HEALTH style. as in write down your ansewrs and look up the appropriate result. You’ll see.