Ah, Lucca. One of my favorite places on earth. We named our dog after this city we love it so. My friend Laurent sent this beautiful video for us to check out here in the States. Makes me weepy. I want to take my wife back there some day again…

Championnat d'Europe cyclo-cross 2011 from Petitesreines on Vimeo.

“Keep the faith, Gregory”. His voice saying those words still rings through my ears. My dad was not a overtly philosophical man, in fact quite the opposite. His introversion was by intent the antitheses of what he loathed…loud mouthed, hyper-opinionated people who had about as much depth as a piece of paper. But that one sentence was his mantra. A mantra to stick to it. To stay focused. To not deviate from what you know to be right and true and ultimately good. I use those words as a war cry. As a church hymn. As a poem.  As a form of therapy. All inside the privacy of my mind for no one else but he and I to continue our regular posthumous conversation. The words are my core. The words are the only ‘philosophy’ I teach my boys.

Now, the words mean more than ever. I’m using them to hold the line in our beautiful life my Amy and I have created. A life Amy and I promise each other we live in its present moment. When my instinct is screaming at me to rush for security and well-lit pathways in life, I use the words to remind me that the dimmer path is yielding fruits I’d never anticipated – seeing my boys at times of the day the well-lit path would never have allowed me to do and being able to do things with them I’d never thought there would be moments to spare to do with them. Supporting my beautiful wife as she creates her own business and realizes her dreams and the potential she never thought she’d see again. Diving head first into a business to learn what is possible of myself, our ideas and our abilities to execute on building something from absolutely fucking nothing.

And so now, dad, I continue to keep the faith. Even if it means I need to close my eyes because the path is so under-lit that the only thing that can keep me moving forward is my faith…and that is the confidence you gave me growing up in myself. Telling me that I could do anything, absolutely anything I wanted to do in this life.

And I have that now.

It’s in my grasp already.

It’s in the spirit of my children.

Victorious.

Our sponsor Clement has been on a tear this season, delivering some fine rubber to athletes like Ben Berden Ryan Trebon and of course the Boulder Cycle Sport Ambassadors! This rubber has notched some fantastic wins this season thus far from USGPs to the Boulder Cup this past weekend.

Here Pete Webber tells us about the mud-specific tire, the PDX.

Local film producers Celin Serbo and Sergio Ballivian (‘Serbo Ballivan Productions’) created this beautifully filmed short-length documentary about last season’s cyclocross races here on the Front Range. The film has made it into this years Adventure Film Festival! It’s showing this Saturday in the 4-6 pm slot at the Boulder REI. After this showing the tour continues to Chamonix, Santiago, Sydney, and Asheville, NC. So, for certain Colorado ‘cross will be seen the world over! This is the third film festival their film has been accepted to. Congrats!

Colorado Front Range Cyclocross from Celin Serbo on Vimeo.

We are just beginning to realize the power of ‘cross. It’s the new Little League for the generation that truly wants to move and push themselves. My son wrote this Sunday night after the Boulder Cup. Semi-wasted from the day yet still amped to convey his feelings. Imagine what that spectacle was like for a kid. Not only racing and getting cheered on from all angles but then seeing this amazing display of Pro prowess and fans going nuts. Well, it incentivized him enough to jam out a paragraph.

I’ve, ah, ‘translated’ his Aidenese below to ensure you walk away with the gist. The last paragraph kills me. ‘This is cyclocross!’ I love it.

Cyclo-cross

Valmont (bike park) Boulder Cup

I was ready to start and I saw my friends and saw he was wearing his timing chip! But I thought that we weren’t supposed to! So I looked around and everyone was wearing them! I called my dad and said: “Dad! My timing chip!”… He said that mom was in a hurry to get it and she got it RIGHT when I was starting to go! I was off! And I was in the lead. It was all muddy and my dad was watching. He said to look up and don’t get distracted.

On my last race, I fell down in my start! A kid on my team named Torin won the Boulder Cup and it was an amazing win! I was thankful that it he was on my team. The sad thing is that we did not do the 5280 run up! Wahh!

THIS IS CYCLO-CROSS!!!

Scott. Ridley. Sram. Specialized. redline. Boulder Cycle Sport. Boulder Junior Cycling. Me.

By Aiden

“It takes a big man to cry. It takes an even bigger man to laugh at that man.”

~ Jack Handy

Nah, this isn’t what you were expecting. Some emotive diatribe to get you all misty-eyed and weepy for a graying master’s racer who had a shit series of races. Oh, no. It’s more a tale of lunacy…of chasing windmills to some extent but the realization that after all these years of racing this sport I love…you never stop learning. And of all this self-inflicted ‘education’, the thing which continually boils up to the top of the soup is the sweet froth – the stuff which shows what you are made of to keep coming back. Quixotic, maybe. Passion for the sport, for certain. So sit back, relax and be the bigger man to laugh at this big man.

Day 1 – Colorado Cross Classic

One word: BOUPS! Aaron Bouplon is an institution of Colorado cyclocross.

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Tough tough day out at the Boulder Reservoir today but incredibly crossy...and incrediby fun. Here Joel White captures my boy giving me some TLC after my race. He'd finished his race as the Master A's started. Boulder Cup at Valmont tomorrow. Giddy up. 

And I am not talking about the Cheech and Chong kind. I’m talking about the kind that lights on fire given how fast the racers were tearing it up at Interlocken this past Saturday. Unbelievable speeds on an unbelievable course assembled by our friends at Boulder Racing. And much to the dismay of our really good Mass-hole friend and eternally-Colorado-‘loving’ Mr. Chandler Delinks (who incidentally will be here for the Boulder Cup weekend so cheer him on Coloradans!), the course was super sweet. Nearly 100% grass, technical off cambers and all kinds of fun shit to get yourself into trouble at high speeds with. Interlocken proves year in and year out to be a fave in the Front Range.

Even though not a Colorado Cup race, the weather was too epic and the course so well known so all the usual suspects in the Master’s A group (save a resting Mr. Robson) were there to light it up and have some fun at Interlocken.

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Each week it’s growing. The speeds, the intensity and of course the fun. As a group of old fast guys (or is it fast old guys?) we are thinking better in the heat of the moment, racing smarter, attacking harder and yet, each week, our boy Michael Robson is responding to our charges to reel him back in with authority. Incredible. Kudos to him and back pats to the promoters who are putting on awesome races in spectacular venues here in this incredibly arid fall we’re having in Colorado. Now if only the weather gods could start to cooperate and slow things down from the crits we’re having each week…

Day 1 – Blue Sky Velo at Xilinx

The Blue Sky Velo Club, as I’ve said time and time again, ‘gets it’.

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When I first moved to Colorado in 2004, one of the first people I met was this guy, slightly older than me, who continually beat the crap out of the Masters fields…Rus Kappius. I’d watch he and his 15 or 16 year old son at the time, Brady, ride, talk and genuinely ‘dad-and-son’ together at our local races weekend in and out. My boys could barely walk let alone ride at the time but these two demonstrated what it ‘could’ be like for me. Not all about the biking per se…but the time a dad and son could spend together in bliss. And so years later, it gives me a complete rush to see Brady chatting up my boys at the race courses asking about their races and to this day, I remind Brady and Russ they have been a model for me as I raise these boys on and near the race course. They are core. Believe that.

So blushing aside, Brady has gone on to immense things. We’ve all been so proud of his racing accomplishments here in Boulder, but his education at Mines and now applying a true entrepreneurial spirit in his own start up is laying upon him new dimensions of respect by all of us in this community. Not unlike the layers of carbon he adds to repair the war-torn bikes saddened owners bring to him in a last ditch attempt to resurrect their pride-and-joys. Brady has started ‘Broken Carbon’…a carbon repair service which puts to use his extensive bike racing experience as well as his left-side-of-brain engineering acumen. I wanted to get the word out about what he’s doing as it’s incredibly cool. I just hope I never have to use the service! Ha! But should my carbon meet a tragic demise, I know who can bring it back from the dead.

With that…”5 Questions with Brady Kappius”

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