Saturday, May 17, 2008

Sittting on my butt, going nowhere fast, I can still get in shape.

I just picked up a Lemond Revmaster spinner bike for my exercise program. I got it from a fire sale - literally. They guy I bought it from had his house catch fire and the bike was damaged in the fire. It's pretty smoked up and some of the plastic is melted, but it seemed mechanically sound. Looks like it needs about $150 in parts and a thorough scrubbing and it should be good as new, though maybe not quite as pretty.

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Friday, May 16, 2008

Two-stroke Championship Video

Short video of Round 3 of the DEP British Two-stroke Championship. Pretty cool. This makes a hell of a lot more sense than the 4-stroke MX championships now that two-strokes have been all but outlawed from all national and international MX competition.

Chad Reed Interview

Chad Reed did a 50-minute interview with the guys at DMXS Radio this week. It was really good. I'm always amazed at how open and accessible many of our top racing stars are. Only NASCAR fans have a similar level of access to their favorite drivers. I can't imagine getting this kind of interview with an F1, Indy car, or any other racer.

Which brings up another point - why in the world do so many people hate on these guys? I just don't get it. In my not-so-humble opinion it takes a real dweeb to get off on carping, whining, and generally bad-mouthing any of the top MX racers. These guys put so much of themselves on the line, give up so much to achieve their success, and have so much talent it's scary. People whose lives are so small all they can do is complain about this or that racer should go spend their time watching professional wrestling, where they belong.

Super Hunky Fighting Cancer. Don't You Be Next.

Reported on the Cousin Weedy Y! forum (and not independently confirmed,) moto-icon and super journalist Rick Sieman (aka Super Hunky) is undergoing radiation treatment for cancer. Almost everyone knows who Rick is from his years at the helm of Dirt Bike magazine. If you are among the tiny minority that don't know Rick, he's was probably the first real journalist to cover dirt biking and is credited with coining the term moto-journalist. Let's all wish Rick a full and speedy recovery.

As an aside, be sure to get your annual prostate exam. If you're VMX age you are old enough to need it. It's not pleasant, but it's not that bad and takes, literally, 5-10 seconds. Get "the finger" every year, whether you think you need it or not. Also, get your PSA (prostate specific antigen) blood test. This test is cheap ($30-$40) and is usually done as part of a routine physical exam for men. You may also want to consider having both a total PSA and free PSA blood test. The free PSA test is $70-$80.

PSA is a protein produced only by the prostate, but it is measured in two ways - total and free. Total is the normal test. But some PSA is always bound to other cells in the blood and only a limited amount is circulating free. The ratio of this "free" PSA to total may actually matter more than the total according to this video on WebMD. Prostate cancer is a pernicious scourge on men. It is said that sooner or later we all get it. Let's raise the odds in our favor with regular checkups and blood tests.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Don't Make My Mistake With Your Back Injury

I broke my lower back (T11, T12, L1) about 10 years ago in an auto accident. Thanks to a mis-diagnosis by the rent-a-doc at the local two-bit trauma center and my own stubborness and stupidity, I did not get proper medical treatment for more than six (6) months and was left with a permanently damaged lower spine that put me completely out of action for over three years. Given the incorrect healing and residual problems, I never did do the level of rehab and strengthening that such an injury requires and over the years the resulting muscle weakness has started causing other problems. Now that I'm nearing 50 I know it's "now or never" if I want to get things back in some semblance of working order.

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Sunday, May 11, 2008

One Moto for the Nationals?

Jason Weigandt (the "Weege" - the guy who makes the SPEED commentators sound like total amateurs by comparison) just posted a disturbing rumor - that the nationals will go to a one-moto format for 2009. Man, if true that sucks and completes the emasculation of arguably the toughest sport on the planet. Weege says he got the rumor from the crew at DMXS Radio. Despite the fact that those guys take a perverse pride in sounding like total dufuses, they do know the business of Pro MX.

No doubt such a change would be seen as "TV-friendly" and more understandable to a "mainstream" (i.e. moto-ignorant) audience. After all, it is a lot to ask an American audience to understand a sport that has two starts and two finishes in a day. The two-moto format has survived for more than 50 years because it works - even if we have shortened them a bit over here on the west side of the Atlantic. But it may not work if the goal is to try and make outdoor MX a TV competitor to NASCAR or American football or any of the other sports that saturate our TV screens every weekend.

Personally I hope this never happens. Getting mainstreamed is not the panacea that many seem to think it is. But that's just my opinion. What if the one-moto format was an hour+2? Would that work? I don't know. Weege points out some of the obvious pros and cons of such an arrangement. I don't think such an arrangement could be moved to the amateur ranks, though. The fitness level of most amateurs is just not high enough to handle that, and people are almost certain to balk at paying a high gate and entry fee for one, single, short race a day as an amateur participant.

On the upside, having just one longer race per day would eliminate a lot of time spent having to gate 37 motos at an amateur event. But I don't know. It just seems unnatural to me. We'll have to see if the rumors persist throughout the 2008 season.

Texas MX in the '70s

Here's another cool site found via Texan Paul Burnett - Rider's Digest. This vintage Texas MX weekly was produced from the mid 1970s through the early 1980s (I think) and followed the MX scene in Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. I don't remember ever seeing it, which is odd because '77-'83 were my most active racing years. My '74 Ford Econoline with the straight six and three-speed shuffled me and bikes all over the state to race at Swan MX, Rio Bravo, Burleson, Wolf Creek, Mosier Valley, and Lake Whitney, among others. But it's neat to look back at the race reports from the local tracks I ran as a kid. The site is a bit hard to navigate. It would be nice if the owner could add a "Home" link to each page instead of having to back through all the pages to get to the index. But that's a nit. It's a fun site.

Unbelievable! 30 Years of Hi-Point Boots.

Here's a neat site pointed out by Mike Kincaid - Classic MX Boots. Site owner Jerry Palmer is clearly a boot fanatic. There are six full pages of MX boots, including Hi-Point, Fullbore, and others. Not to mention the thousands of other boots he has stored in his display room. I have no idea what inspires a man to collect such things, but Jerry has an amazing collection. Check it out.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Staying Healthy as an Aging MX Racer

Just got back from my first full physical in a number of years. By full, I mean I had a complete blood workup, a bone scan, body fat measurement, and VO2 max stress test. The good news is I've stayed pretty healthy despite my pathetic exercise regimen. I have good base fitness for a guy who hasn't exercised in five years, and most of my cardio risk factors are quite low. The bad news is that some unfortunate genetic tendencies are catching up with me.

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