Holy crap. Cross has made it, folks. A print magazine being assembled by some home boys in CA is on its way to press. People crazy brave enough to do this must be passionate about the sport and that makes me smile.

Read the blog and help them out with some of their voting choices for the publication. I'd expect they'd want some help with regional coverage as well as cross is exploding virtually everywhere. It's the sport of the future! Unlike kick boxing.

Cross well.

...can do a commercial like this, we absolutely suck here in CO:

This world is a small one. Christine --> Dave V --> Mike A --> Moi.

Talk about LinkedIn!

Christine (whom you see below in various posts) announced a relationship with Dave's VanderVitten team. Rad.

Dave is an old dual slalom cohort of mine. We used to travel to the most remote, cooter-infested reaches of CA to race our bikes on these slogs of dirt jumps dudes with a Bobcats would build. Passion is a fairly 'limited' world to describe Dave's bike lust. He and Mike have built a great duo in the VanderKitten squad. Mikes bikes are sick and Dave's new team concept and kits are rad. More women!! Great combo.

Mike A is like a brother and built some of my early dual slalom bikes, FS bikes, etc. I am HIGHLY anticipating my new Revolver 29'er from him!! Can't want to put it through its paces and start channeling the feedback.

It's truly amazing how small the world is. 6 degrees? This is like 3, stretching from California to Belgium.

'Cross specific training is on. Transitioning from all that climbing to speed flat land power combined with getting the body ready for the repetition of all the cross specific stuff is beginning to take over and take precedence.

On the bike...pedal...off the bike...port...remount...pedal....repeat repeat repeat. I love it. It's like meeting an old friend again you love hanging out with.

What'd y'all do today to get ready for cross?

...were worn today for the first time in a LONG time. The air was a bit damp and while you did not really need them, my recovery ride today was slow and nice...and the arms and legs kept the sore tired muscles nice and warm. Pulling back into the garage to put the bikes away before work, i saw my embrocation oils sitting there with a layer of dust on them. I opened it up, took a whiff of its minty fresh effervescence and smiled.

Cross begins in one month.

This weekend was annihilating. This was the final week of tearing the body down and working on weakness by climbing ridiculous amounts on Sat and Sun. Again, both days saw 4-6 pounds of weight reduced after each ride....even while madly consuming liquids during the rides. The switch to speed, moto pacing and the stuff my 6'2" carcass was meant to do takes off going forward. Mmm.

Clinics soon folks. Got to get my schedule worked out.

Do something 'crossy today.

So my homies and I are discussing this in a fairly heated way. That is, the brake routing debate. Moto style is left brake managing the rear cantis and the right brake managing the front. I suspect anyone reading this site is a cross geek and knows why your do this but or those who don't, I'll explain:

If you dismount on the non drive side and coast into barriers to run through (or run up as it were), having your left hand on the left hood will activate the REAR brakes and theoretically give you superior control of the bike to take the edge off speed you may need to do. You and I know you should not be touching them at all coming into barriers, but there's always that 'sometimes' to correct speed like in the event there is an apex into the first barrier. So if you're Sven Vantourenhout, this all doesn't apply because you dismount drive side and the brakes are logically in the right place.

So what';s the point of the post? Who does this? Maybe purists and traditionalists (and Joe Ball) but all the Belgian heavies I see from Bart-man to Sven (please say NICE) Nijs to others run normal MTB/road style. I've never run it moto style and never had a problem in a decade. Maybe I'm missing something?

Nah.

Evidence:

What did YOU do to get ready for 'cross today?

Check this sheeit out that Molly Cameron sent to me in a post below. Unbelievable. I need to get my Boulder-based bambinos all sorts of 'crossed up soon to compete against this kind of talent!! I guess we have altitude on our side, but this little champ has skeeeewz:

I linked to this through Gwadzilla's site. Thanks man! Awesome video of Ben Turner's Boulder Based TIAA-Cref/Clif Bar cross team. They are having problems getting funding from what I hear folks (will dril in to this more to see what's up) but is the deepest in terms of junior to espoir-level 'cross mentoring we have in thi9s country ) props to Alan and Rad Racing too!).

So I put a post up for my Scott Team CX a while back and have had some inquiries. Here are some photos of the frame, fork and post and a single ring set up with DA cranks I'll throw in. I have the BB too. $5hundy.

My lady and I are almost free! We're going to head up to Winter Park, MTB Capital of the World (or whatever the slogan is), and rip it together...alone....no kids...on our fat tires. So, in exchange of talking about Handy Manny, arbitrating border disputes over who's Transformer is whose and like 'stimulating' topics, we get to hang, drink some beers and rip it together. Invariably we'll fall into talking about our boys a huge proportion of the time. Such is life.

Got out today on the 'cross bike boys and girls. What did you do? I repeated 'weak side' remounts until I was dizzy. Nice and slow. Just dialing it all in. When's the last time you practiced getting back on the bike via the side that makes you look like a retard? Gotta practice! It's like eating peas. Ya just have to do it.