Alphabet Soup

In sailing there is a phrase, alphabet soup, used to describe any of various blights on your scoreline - DNF, DSQ, DNS (did not start) and various penalties like ZFP, OCS and RAF. All of these mean the same thing - your points for that race are worse than the last place finisher.

Yesterday, the Giro di Cardiac dealt me a nice DNF. I showed up hoping against hope that some miracle would swoop down and give me the juju I needed to get through despite a chaotic week of work that had left me pretty well cooked. By the time we were onto the course, two people had dropped chains right in front of me, leaving me a healthy amount of work to just get to the start. And from there I proceeded to hang on with my teeth for three laps and get dropped. I rode the last lap solo, keeping the field pretty much in sight (at least when you had a real good long view). There was no way I was going to catch back on, but I'm not one to quit, and I figured it was a good exercise. About a mile before the finish, my chain broke. The little Sram clip apparently broke. No chain tool, no hope of getting to the finish. After about 3 minutes guys who had been dropped earlier started rolling by. Arrggh. Reed from Coppi was good enough to give me a ride - thanks again, man.

This Coppi course is freaking awesome. Every bitch I've made about too soft courses this year was answered in spades. What a murderous thug this track is. Nothing in and of itself is anything to write home about, but the whole thing taken together just keeps you under water the whole time. There's never any break from it. And an extremely well executed event to boot. I haven't been ushered to a parking spot at any previous race. Well done, Squadra, and thanks.

I hear Sean Ross won. He's a good guy who is always aggressive so good for him. Nice to take out the home win.