Updates, Updates, Updates!

By Martin • November 12th, 2009

RizPower So it’s been a few months since we all raced together, and it shows. More people (myself included) are riding around at 12 mph, local cycling blogs have little more than pictures of clowns jumping off of their bikes in mud to hop over barriers, and otherwise committed competitive cyclists seem to be reclaiming what peds refer to as a “social life.” But to prove that District Velocity Racing p/b The Bike Rack is still alive and kicking, here’s some updates from us.

We’ve Gone Web 2.0: We’ve got a Facebook page! Yeah, I know this might have been news in 2005, but it’s never too late to jump on the newest trend, is it? (At this rate, we’ll have a Twitter feed at some point in 2012.) Become our friends. Please.

We Lost Two Friends: A few weeks ago we found out that Tim Brown and Tim Rugg, who both had a great season, were being sought out by Battley Harley Davidson as part of the elite team’s plan to corner the market on local talent. Brown and Rugg understandably decided to make the jump. As they say, parting is such bittersweet sorrow. Both Brown and Rugg came to the team when we were but a ragged bunch of amateurs, and they fit right in. Brown was known for riding a relic of bike (a Trek T-1000 that weighs more than most mountain bikes) and Rugg for competing in his first race in a V-neck t-shirt and swim trunks. As the 2009 season progressed, they both racked up impressive wins, quickly moving from Cat 4 to Cat 2. And I’d like to think we turned them from boys to men — after all, they’re barely 24. We’ll miss having them on the team, but it should be fun racing against them. Good luck, boys. I hear Chuck Hutch is a mean hazer.

We’ve Raced Cross: So did everyone else, it seems. All told, it’s been fun and we’ve racked up some good results. Justin R, better known as Rez (pictured above in usual glory), saved himself from a whole season of placing just off the podium with an impressive Cat 4 second-place at DCCX. (He also handled beer hand-ups at Ed Sanders like a champ.) Tim Brown, who we’ve kept for the cross season, took third at Charm City and won Hyattsville, proving that for him doping is a year-round commitment. Matt R. was fast moving up in the results until a poorly-timed endo at DCCX convinced him that maybe cross isn’t so injury-free as he thought. Richard is still out there mixing it up, and I threw myself into a few races to see if my Northern European roots would make me a better cross racer than road racer. Conclusion? They don’t.

We Learned a Lesson: This isn’t so much related to our team, but rather to everyone who rides a bike. With the news that Mayor Adrian Fenty uses a police escort for his weekday rides and illegally rides on the Clara Barton Parkway, we’re again reminded of the responsibility we share on area roadways. I’ll be the last one to argue that the WTOP story shows much damning evidence against Fenty (I penned a response for DCist), but it does bring the issue of vehicle-bicycle relations to the forefront of public debate. Just as we expect drivers to drive carefully around us and respect our right to ride on area roads, we should remain vigilant of our own reponsibilities in making sure that we don’t totally block roads or do things that could endanger us and them. For the thousands of miles that we all ride, aggressive interactions with drivers are more the exception than the norm. But we should still keep up our end of the bargain and be as nice as possible. Heck, if we don’t do it for ourselves, we should do it for our teams and sponsors. After all, we’re not exactly riding incognito out there. And now I step off the soapbox.

That’s pretty much it for now. We’ll try and have some regular updates to keep this exciting, but at some point the posts about my sub-180w rides will bore everyone — including me.

Comments(2) Team News

Comments

By Matt R on November 13th, 2009 at 2:25 am

To set the record straight, DCCX was to be my last cross race this year in any case. As I have to stick to my training plan if I am to achieve another season of spectacularly mediocre results in 2010. Tacoing a wheel, faceplanting and ripping my nostril was but a bloody cherry on top of 2009, not the reason I hung up the cross bike. Misrepresent me again and I’ll have to kill you.

<3 Ringer.

By Rez on January 6th, 2010 at 7:37 pm

I plan to race in jorts all season long, only with much louder socks.