Ironclad Cycling

Hey folks, it’s about that time to say goodbye to 2009, take down the old calendar and hang up a new one. Sure, you can go to the aisle in your store and get kittens, or balloons, or monkeys, or clowns….sunsets, hell, why would you want one of those styles? Didn’t you have those in junior high?

Nah, now you’re all grown up and you’re a cyclist and you’re skinny (or you hope to be in 60 days) and you need images more in line with your lifestyle by which to keep your calendar. Or since you have a sock aversion and you can’t buy socks for your friends for Xmas, a calendar makes a perfect alternate gift idea.  So here are Ironclad’s top two picks for your 2010 calendar …. pretty much your only two choices, in no particular order.

1. Oregon Cycling Action 2010 Calendar

Here you can see possibly yourself and definitely your foes in glorious full color pictures AND donate to the community cycling center while you’re at it. A percentage of each calendar is donated to the CCC, and for $12 total you can’t go wrong. Click the link to see more about it and order yours today!

2. Chris King’s Pretty and Strong 2010 Calendar

This brilliant collection of PDX Cross images commerorates the continuing fight against breast cancer in 2010. The calendar is $15 with part of the proceeds going to the Susan G. Komen fund to help find a cure. Complete with factoids of the scourge of cancer, with great images of Oregon Cyclocross women in action, you can’t go wrong.

So there you have it, people. We’ve solved all your gift giving woes in one simple post. If your Santa looks like our Santa, then you know you’ll end up doing all the shopping work again this year, so we just made it easier for you.

We’ve all seen funny things. Monty Python, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, Fox News, but you wanna see something really funny? We mean side-splitting, knee-slapping, guffaw like paw kinda hilarity?

Watch cyclists play football. In another window, you should let this slideshow load up, then read on…..

laughing imminent

For some close friends, it was the 1st annual you-shouldn’t-quit-cycling Turkey Bowl on Thanksgiving Day, 2009. Several cyclists from HPC, Veloforma, Sunset Cycles, Ironclad, and Team Beer gathered for a good hearted game of touch football to commemorate the large turkey feast on this holiday. Mostly, it was a lot of fun, save for one ill-timed twisting of the knee early on. Heal quickly, Sharon!

the able carry on

Obviously a few folks were more familiar with the ol’ pigskin than others as the game quickly became lopsided, but fun was the ingredient spread evenly and we all had a good time in the cold rain. Perfect football weather, actually. And only the one injury. But, best about Sharon’s injury only relegated her to the couch early, where she promptly had Bloody Mary’s delivered by Lana during halftime. Talk about a trooper!

After drying off and warming up and the addition of a few more friends, the bird was served and the gluttony began in earnest. Good times.

now, you know you have to eat all of this little bastard, right?

After multiple runs to the food station, everyone laid about and laughed along with the fine film Bloodsport, which is of course a fine American holiday tradition, right? The feast was a farm-raised turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, brussel sprouts, several casseroles of varying vegetables, two pumpkin pies, apple crisp, lots of good wine, homemade chex mix, nuts and dried veggies, and a few other blessings. There was very little left when all was said and done….just scales glittering in the sunlight.

And we mean “sucked” in an aural sense. The wheels going by made sounds we think not unlike those you’d hear on a porn set. We can’t begin to fathom how to spell any of those sounds, but we could easily spell all the swearing we heard going on. That race was, in a word, hard. The deep formidable mud saw more participants running than riding, and many a drivetrain were infected with corn stalk bits and rendered useless.

For most of us Ironclad sorts it signaled the end of the season, and it couldn’t come any sooner. So long, 2009!

why and how is Harwood smiling?

Any rider who finished is worthy of respect here. The winners of each class are to be given their due, but otherwise we don’t think there was any “beating” of people, it was more “finishing ahead of” for whatever reason. To say you “beat” anyone really isn’t correct. Mud clumped up in cantis and drivetrains forced several to stop just to clear out gobs of mother earth. The deep ravines on course took riders and threw them to the ground at will as well, adding to delays.

aiming for puddles to clear out debris

For us there are a few success or craziness stories. Your riders for the day were Anna Clark, MK47, Stephanie Croy, Brody Boeger, Bryan Voytilla, Dave, and Jeff Harwood. Steph Croy got 8th in her first race as a B, and Brody gets the Looney award for racing the SS and the A race, and by Looney I don’t mean Canadian dollars. Dave attempted a hand down to Brad Ross, who had the look of a lost 4 year old on his face, and he grabbed Dave’s wrist instead of taking the beer. The can of Budwesier was tossed in reverse, and no one knows what became of it.

who wouldn’t chase Tina around?

So for most of us, that’s all she wrote for 2009. Thanks to all the promoters and OBRA officials for your diligence. Thanks to all the fine teams out there for beating up on us so regularly.

We’ll see you  out on the smooth roads from here on out. Have yourselves a fine Thanksgiving!

If cancer was Spider Man, Kira just whipped his ass. And in such style no less.

Yes, we’re happy, proud, elated, ecstatic, and jumping for joy at the news that Kira has completed her entire round of chemotherapy in her effort to whip ass on breast cancer. 7 rounds with Muhammed Ali result in Kira looking fine and fit, albeit with a wee bit less hair, and she even let the bastard have the first punch.

grace under pressure

If you know Kira, then you know she’s got nothing but fight in her. To exemplify this, she continued working out during chemo, even attending spin classes. Yeah, the issue was never in doubt. Cancer picked the wrong person to fuck with. Aside from that, she plans on training again for the 2010 road season. After something like cancer, I do not think any race or opponent will phase her much.

always laughing, this one

Aside from the super serious rad b/w photo at the top, Kira was always smiling and always laughing through chemo. Sure, there were hard days, rotten days, terrible days, but she’d never let you know it. And in her “class” of fellow chemo takers, she was the light of the room, keeping everyone revved up for the fight with a smile and a laugh.

always at the races, no matter what

So please join us in congratulating her on this, her most important win of her life. And to make matters extra sweet, today is her 40th birthday as well, so let’s all raise a toast to this awe-inspiring, impressive woman. Please leave a comment and wish her a great day and congratulate her on winning the war.

It won’t be long before you see this again….and when you do, I’d run.

Ok, no one in the office speaks Hungarian, but if you do, you’re in luck. Otherwise you just get to look at pretty pictures of a small bike team in Hungary using Ironclad gloves. Check this out by clicking HERE.

And of course, after your brain is all rattled from listening to Hungarianese, then you can go HERE and watch the new music video straight out of the 303 entitled All You Haters Suck My Balls – no doubt an homage to El Snob.

As initial reports flood into Ironclad HQ, we’re learning that the Barton Park Monster, known to eat collarbones as if served on a buffet, went hungry yesterday in the final Cross Crusade race of 2009. Most of the forward bombers have come back to the airfield, albeit with a few bullet bites and usual wear-and-tear to the machines, we’re happy to report. Guess it’s off to the soup line with you, Barton Monster!

despite death defying descents, dude dives direct!

A fairly healthy number of the pukeorange went on down to the gravel pit to bid our fond farewell to the Crusades. Mud, gravel and a few tumbles were on tap for the day, but as stated earlier, we survived the usual conundrums we’ve learned to expect. We hear even Kenji survived. We have photographic evidence right HERE.

Voytilla channels Evel

Given the extent of the danger, Flyin’ Voytilla channeled Evel Kinevel to ensure that if he were to be daring, he would be so in style. Nice helmet, Bryan. Glad it kept all the gray matter where it’s supposed to be kept.

Josh Hunt, Bryan Voytilla, Marylynn King, Brody Boeger, Brian Gerow, Trevor Spahr, Atlin Sestrich, and Jeff Harwood rounded out your team for the day, while the rest of us sat around and watched football after two consecutive weekends entailing activities that should have landed half of us in rehab.

MK, elegant in the traditional black robes

So it’s ‘so long’ to the Cross Crusades for 2009. Good riddance! We as a team had it like most teams – some ups and some downs. We put our first 2 bonafide A’s in the mix, and we also got our first ever Cross Crusade victories in our team’s short 3 year history. We kept in line with our team tradition and brought some brand new riders into the sport, and much to our collective happiness the top headline is we suffered no major injuries over the 8 weeks. Well, unless you count hangovers as injuries, then we sustained a few. We had orange vs. black. We found some good parking spots, had a great rental house in Astoria, had some laugh-til-it-hurts moments, and all around just had a great Crusade as a team.

We got Kruger’s coming up, and some of the more cross-oriented sorts are in for USGP and Natz, but for about half of us, it’s time to hang up the knobbies and get to thinking about Road 2010. Most of us are happy because this means no more orange, as we’ll be Back in Black, like we should. We’ve made a few changes to the interior or 2010, and we’re excited to bring our new charges to the fore. Stay tuned, and as Vasquez says, stay frosty.

For Haywood, and everyone else, the last hills of the Crusade have been climbed

As a team, we just can’t take it anymore. Sure, we won a lot of races in 2009, stood on a lot of podiums, blah blah blah. But we’re selfish power mongers so for 2010 we’ve decided no measure is too bold to undertake to ensure we win EVERY race on the schedule. And since we only take performance decreasing drugs, we’ve turned to the surgical world for the needed enhancements to be victorious.

First under the knife was Drew Willis, who had his septum removed and replaced with a V6 Twin engine, the newest toy in the non-chemical performance enhancement world. It will also provide power to his feeble brain, and it has external ports under his hairline where he can plug in and power some smaller appliances in his home. The beauty part is it runs on vegetable oil so the smells aren’t so bad and he’s not flammable.

put me in coach…..when the gas wears off…..

Ok, none of the above is true. They roto-rooted ol’ Drew’s schnozz since he’s had a lot of sinus problems. Heal up quickly, dude!

You can take the TV out of the Barker,….but……well, click this to watch Wend’s Cyclocross Diaries.

Brody’s tandem stoker is also interviewed towards the end.

Ironclad Performance Wear is proud to announce a new sponsorship agreement with the Therapuetic Associates Inc. cycling team!

TAI will be another team outfitting its riders in the quality gloves and base layers Ironclad provides, and we’re happy to have this fine team on the ledger!

You can check out what their team is up to at their official website. What are you still doing here? Go check it out!

Keeeerist on a crutch. This is Eagle 5 to base…come in base? *static* Eagle 5 to base, over?

Is there anybody out there?

I think we won:

Carrie and Brody redefine tandem

Ah, what wonders does the SSCXWC reveal? We think all of them, truth be told. Thunderdomes, stripper short cuts, all kinds of enhancements….both on and off the bike. Good times, boys.

We got a bunch of photos from the day’s action at PIR right HERE. Go check them out, and don’t forget your one dollar bills!