Once again the road racing season will end in Chico. This September 18th with the help of you, the Chico Corsa cycling club will host our 3rd annual Chico Downtown Criterium.

Anyone who races regularly will agree that our race is one of the best in Northern California. Most of the time racers are banished to a business park where the only spectators are the racers themselves. A downtown race is different. There are people all around the course cheering the colorful bunch as they fly past lap after lap. This pushes the riders to work harder.

During the first months of my first season in Holland a majority of my training consisted of loading my jersey full of food, grabbing a map and picking a direction. I was in the most cycling friendly place in the world and I wanted to see the entire country. I could barely contain my enthusiasm and I would ride all day if I didn't have to prepare for a race.

In Holland there are more miles of bike paths than there are roadways and twice as many people ride bikes for transportation as drive cars. As a result the bike paths are well marked with signs telling you which path to take to a particular town and how many kilometers away it is. What I usually did was ride for three or four hours in a direction and then stop and figure out where I was on the map. Then I would try to find an alternate route for the return trip home. Soon I had visited hundreds of towns and had a pretty good sense of where everything was.

Meetings: The next Corsa Club Meeting will be at Woodstocks Pizza on Friday August 28th at 6PM.

Announcements:
Corsa needs bikes and bike parts to build loaners for our future juniors. If you have any old equipment that is still serviceable e-mail me and we will make sure it gets put to good use...

This year there seems to be a bumper crop of goat heads out there. If you know of an area where they are especially problematic e-mail Rodney Cox and we will see what we can do about organizing a work party to tackle the worst areas.

Race Results:
From now on race results will be posted to the Chico Corsa Website in the race team section. (You will need a login and password to post your results)

Breaking News:
Our very own Maggie Jones was on T.V recently. You can watch the story here.

R.A.C.E. Calendar:
Chico Cyclist

NCNCA Road Racing Calendar:
NCNCA Road Calendar

NORBA Calendar:
NORBA Racing
TBF Challenge MTB Races
MTB Calendar - California

Chico Velo Calendar:
Chico Velo Western States Ride Calendar:
Ride Calendar

Rising Stars:
Mike Painter is showing surprising maturity in his competitive cycling debut. He is going head to head with the big boys at the local events and taking initiative in the sanctioned races. A large part of being a successful racer is psychological and in this regard Mike already possesses the attitude of a veteran athlete.

It's hard to know where to start when there are so many amazing adventures to be told. My trip to Europe has two parts, the second of which I expect to be more unpredictable than the first. I have been here something like three weeks which is long enough to figure that life in Lucca isn't so bad. It's also long enough to know the food is amazing, the cappuccinos are smooth and there are no words to describe how beautiful the training is.

Chico's mild winters and springs give us a "good news-bad news" situation. Unlike other areas, we don't get a true "off the road" season to really rest up for the good weather coming. If you're like me, you ride "medium" all winter and early spring, and then really hit the mileage come April; and by the summer it's centuries, crits, time trials, etc., depending on what your poison is. One result (along with all the positive ones like faster times, better endurance and new friends) is that you may be seeing some flattening out in your riding. You're doing the same rides with the same people at the same pace, and it's starting to feel flat, boring, predictable... you get the picture.

Part three of Janine's journal/emails from her ride across the United States.

We woke up pretty tired this morning, but set off relentlessly for the Wisconsin border (we didn't have a plan beyond that, because we didn't yet have a Wisconsin map). We made it about 12 miles before I got my first flat of the day, a pinch caused by hitting a large chunk of asphalt. Then, after half a mile more, I got another. I couldn't really figure out the cause of that one, unless it was a bad tire change causing another pinch. Of course, I was using a patched tube borrowed from Calamity Jon - who knows how that played into the equation?