En route to winning the 24-hour solo National Champion's jersey in Moab, Josh Tostado not only looked dashing, but actually ate several of his opponents. Liam Doran photo...

If we’re talking about mountain bike racing champions, 24-hour solo national champions in particular, crowned just last Sunday to be precise, what would the breakfast be? A tube of Gu? A Clif Blok? A tortilla with peanut butter on it? A mouthful of dust?

Doesn't 24 hour racing look like fun? Liam Doran again with the shot.

Hell if I know, but judging from the look on our favorite crusty endurance racer guy Josh Tostado’s face in the closing stages of the 24-Hours of Moab last weekend, I am willing to bet he could have chewed a piece of road-kill and not known the difference. Way to take it, Toast! By all accounts this was a hard fought win, and a well deserved national title. Wear it with pride…

Kinda makes it all worthwhile, don't it? Congratulations, Josh! Way to make our bikes look good... And thanks Liam, for use of these images.

The interwebs have been kinda retarded in picking up this story, which is a shame. This is the second time Josh has stormed Moab, and he’s due his 15-minutes. He also came second at the national 24-hour champs last year in something of a nail-biter to Chris Eatough, and has been proving himself as one of the best, if not THE very best, 24-hour soloists in the country. But I swear, some days it seems that the media is so busy kissing the ass of retiring headliners that they can’t get their story all the way through. Case in point, this piece of reportage covering the race from cyclingnews.com. Note to Sue George: “You’re fired!” Next time, try to mention the people who actually won, or maybe even who was in the hunt. Especially if this is going to be the sum total of your race coverage. Velonews.com didn’t even touch the story, but their dirt-specific new site that stole it’s name from the magazine associated with another site did a fair shake better job than cyclingnews.com at least. (Hmmm, very surprising to see that cyclingnews now has a race report for moab that wasn’t up there yesterday. Using the same pictures of Eatough and Sawicki from some other event though. So they’re still not off the hook…)

Ah well, what’s a bitter old hack of a washed up journalist to do? Complain, it seems. As  palate cleanser, here’s a sweet video piece that superhumanmag.com put together from the event. If you were ever wondering how crispy a 24-hour solo racer gets toward the end of a race, watch this.

For cyclocross!

Helmet nazis everywhere are sucking their breath in through their teeth right now...

First up, the local news. Front and center with regard to Santa Cruz’s long and dirty affair with the sport of cyclocross is the welcome return of the original badass, the Surf City Cyclocross Series, this Sunday (that’s tomorrow), October 11th, at the more than awesome Soquel High School venue. Been too long gone, old friend. Welcome back. Speaking of old, while trolling around for old pics frm Surf City and getting skunked for “just the right thing”, I managed to find this sweet piece:

“Somebody ought to take steps”… Knee Slapper Extraordinaire!

Too bad the weather that makes ‘cross worth hurtin’ for won’t roll in until Monday…

Meanwhile, while we’ll be burying ourselves at the back of the 45+ masters, The Racer Formerly Known As Clark Natwick’s Experiment But Who Would Prefer To Now Be Called By His Regular Name, Kirt Fitzpatrick, will be throwing down in Providence. Here’s his latest check in from the pointy end of racing. Seems that quitting smoking and losing the neck brace have done some good. We’d like to think it’s the bikes, but, really, they’re just bikes. This is ‘cross. People can ride just about any old shitpile and go fast so long as they now how to taste their own bile:

“Hey 104Bronson, What’s that?  No, I haven’t been avoiding you. … What!?  No! I haven’t been seeing someone else! … Yes, I still like you.  … I’ve been busy. … I’m on the East Coast racing cyclocross. … Because the races are bigger and there’s mud. … Why do you always get this way? (sigh)

So I’ve been out here for two UCI race weekends so far and I gotta say these people are fast.  Whether they are good at cross or not I can’t say, but man do they ever ride fast.  If I were back home I would have had about a thirty minute gap on the field last weekend.

I remember a friend of mine saying a while back that what’s really important in cross is rubber.  To a certain extent I agree with him.  That’s the most important piece of hardware.  But what’s most important in cross is power.  A metric crap-ton of it.  The last two weekends have broken down like this, crawl out of some corner, bust out five or ten of the hardest pedals strokes of your life, then settle down to just “on the gas hard” for about thirty seconds, then setup for some crazy technical, probably slow section.  Repeat for an hour.

Another thing I’ve noticed, the first third of the race, forget you have any sort of skills.  You won’t be able to do anything useful with them.  If you try only two things can happen, either you’ll piss people off or you’ll lose a spot.  Don’t get seduced by that better line you tried in practice because someone will jump on that worse line you left behind every time.  And almost as a rule the crappiest line through a corner is also the one that gets you to the tight spot first.”

This goes to show how lonely it can be in the land of fast people. This ended up being what 29th place on the day looked like. Ouch.

We think he'd go faster if he tilted his bars up a bit further. But hell, he ain't OUR experiment, so we'll leave that up to Clark...

Meanwhile, our Northwestern ‘cross correspondent, tile guy, massage therapist in training, former World Cup racer, husband of April Lawyer, sometimes retail fiend, maybe one day realtor, Chris Sheppard, hasn’t been having such a rosy time of it. This, his last text message:

“Pisn rain wrong tires 2 many crashes bent shifter dropd chain – no spare gear – beer was warm wrist is swollen, what else? May retire! Welcome to cross season…”

Followed by a couple photos:

Shep, modeling his superhero inspired new 'cross season race togs AND his sweet new cast....

... and seen here, paying the bills. So much for the wonderful office boy dream of watching the old boy run Trebon ragged into the ground. Maybe not this season...

And finally, while on the subject of ‘cross, how about that Niels Albert? Damn, way to wear the stripes, kid… Gonna be a long season for the rest of Europe.