From H.P. to Paris-Roubaix

For starters, the weather was actually pretty good down at H.P. today, and the amount of people that showed up for the noon ride justified that. I love these mid-week crits, so to speak. For me, it seems like I always learn something new about the way I ride or find out something new that I never want to do again. I try to use the times I go down there as a learning experience and so far I think it's paying off.

Anyway, for the latter part of the evening, I bought I ticket to go the Road to Roubaix movie at the Arlington Drafthouse. The event ended up selling out so I was pretty glad that I didn't wait till the last minute. I think the mixture of cycling, food and especially beer really gets a lot of people excited, so it was easy to see why this event would sell out. For me, I really just wanted to see a good film. Since I don't drink, that didn't factor into the equation at all for me.

After getting a good seat around 10 after 8 pm, the movie finally started at about 9:45 after raffles and sponsor shout-outs. My personal opinion is that the movie wasn't that great. I've seen Off Road to Athens. I own it, and I really liked that documentary. I figured this documentary would be along the same lines but to me it lacked something. I guess I was expecting to see a little bit more about how the cyclist prepare for Paris-Roubaix. I wanted to see something about the training and the equipment selection and everything that goes into racing the race. I thought that everyone that spoke just kept saying the same thing over and over for 75 minutes. "Paris-Roubaix is a difficult race and takes mental toughness" and "You have to be a little crazy to do Paris-Roubaix", with an English, French, German, Italian and Dutch accent. I was just a little disappointed, and I like road racing more than mountain biking so I really wanted to like this movie. Maybe if I had had a couple of pitchers of Dogfish ale in me I would've liked it a little bit more, but that's just my opinion because I'm sure there were people there that absolutely loved it and thought it was Oscar worthy.