In a triumph for geezers everywhere, 55-year-old Ned Overend won his fifth Iron Horse Bicycle Classic today in Durango. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Chapeau to The Lung.
In a triumph for geezers everywhere, 55-year-old Ned Overend won his fifth Iron Horse Bicycle Classic today in Durango. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Chapeau to The Lung.
Mad Blog Media 
Holy crom-moly! What time did they start racing today? Now I wonder if the Lung will do the dirt side of the Iron Horse?
Damn, Ned. Congrats.
But that means we have no excuse to sit around as fat bastards.
Dude does set a bad example, doesn’t he? Ned’s unofficial time was 2:18:54 — my best time, in 1991, when I was at my lightest and tightest, was 2:31:33, good for 12th in masters 35. Today they’d be timing me with a calendar.
Power to the old people! Great job.
In sadder news, Gil Scott-Heron checked out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGaoXAwl9kw
K, thanks for mentioning G S-H. I Facebooked his passing, but got caught up and spaced mentioning it on the DogSite.
I particularly loved “Revolution,” “Winter in America” and “Message to the Messengers,” the latter being something of a wake-up call for gangsta rappers about shitting where they eat.
Never been much of a rap fan, but then I can’t listen to this stuff they call “country” anymore, either. Come to think of it, rock ain’t exactly rockin’ lately. No wonder I have all that Mozart and Miles on the iPod.
We have his “Best Of” CD.
I saw GSH live back at SUNY Stony Brook in my grad student daze. He did a great song about Ronald Ray-Guns and the Star Wars debacle, in conjunction with Whitey on the Moon. Hell, I was getting half my GRA support in those days from NASA, while the South Bronx (which I drove through to get off Long Island) was a war zone.
I can’t find that Star Wars song on Google so wonder what the name of the song really is.
There go my excuses for being a fat slob. I was banking on the AARP excuse. Will have to come up with something else. Too bad there’s no established link between being ugly and piss poor physical conditioning. Then I’d get a free pass for sure.
Steve, if there’s a podium for fat and ugly, I’m the dude on the top step with his flabby arms in the air.
Won’t no podium chicks kiss me, though. They’ll lay that Hollywood air-kiss on me and then wonder why they’re jonesin’ for french fries afterward (“I dunno, I just got this whiff of beer and potatoes and all of a sudden I feel hungry for some reason. …”).
These old farts who were good then are often still good today….and vice-versa. The only chance I’ll ever have of winning a bike race is to live long enough to have my own age group! I still remember lining up in the 30+ category next to some former National Team guys and getting my a__ kicked right away.
On another note, it was a great day at the Giro yesterday. The 19 kms to the summit if Colle di Finestre were closed to motorized vehicles so EVERYONE you saw in those crowd shots either rode their bike or walked up (and down) to see the pros race over the unpaved course. The organizers had watered and rolled the surface into tennis clay-court smoothness! There should have been NO complaints about the surface, I’m sure Fausto Coppi never raced over any dirt as manicured as this. It was pretty easy going back down too. We should have a blog post up soon.
Well it looks like the Ned-inator killed it in the XC race: 8th in a field with some pros. What blew me away is the woman who finished fourth in the Iron Horse Crit: http://www.ironhorsebicycleclassic.com/sites/default/files/Crit.pdf
http://cycleitalia.blogspot.com/2011/05/day-at-giro-ditalia.html
for anyone interested in our day at the Giro. Our first clients of the season arrive later this week for “Vineyards to the Sea” so we need to get going on the wine selections here at our HQ hotel. Tough job, but someone has to drink the Grignolino, Dolcetto and Barbera!
Larry, this part-time job of yours looks like a keeper. Watching the Giro from roadside beats the mortal shit out of watching it on the iMac, near as I can tell.
And I could get into a little of that homeboy Barbera, too — it’s been one of my faves since I first got into wine, back when Louis Martini still made a drinkable B. It used to be nearly black, if I recall correctly, which seems unlikely.
Herself and I have friends who will be celebrating their 25th anniversary and 50th birthdays shortly, and I may have to grill you a bit about Italy on their behalf, ’cause they’re thinking about doing a couple of weeks there to celebrate.
Happy to throw out some tips for you to pass on to your pals –what a way to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries–everyone should do that! We had a great day seeing the Giro, now its back to “work” doing some routes for next year’s “Best of Piedmont” guided tour. We’re boiling it down to three hotels with multiple-night stays to reduce the packing/unpacking and making it possible to avoid any van-transfers (other than the one to/from the airport) for the duration. Forecast is for rain the next couple of days so spending time in the van instead of on the bike will be OK…our clients begin arriving later this week so we’ll take the rain now and hope for the sunny skies to come back later. Supposed to meet with Herbie Sykes, author of the excellent “Maglia Rosa” book on Saturday morning. We’ll try to promote the book, one of the few in English (don’t forget our friend Bill McGann’s “Story of the Giro d’Italia which has just come out as well) about La Corsa Rosa. Everybody and his fratello’s written a book on LeTour, it’s high-time English readers learn about the Italian tour! Biased? Me?…of course!