SPAWNING VS. SPRINTING

After all the excitement of another fun-filled night at the Wednesday Night Sprints, I had to do something to calm my nerves. So I went fishing. While it's nowhere near the time of year when Salmon run upstream to spawn, just being on the river made me think of those awesome, suicidal runs - and how much they resemble the final sprint of a bike race.

I mean, the fish have no conscious idea of why they are charging upstream to their death, and you could say the same thing about a field of recreational bike racers. Watching last week's final sprint, from my plush balcony seat, it was pretty obvious these guys had switched off their brains. So why do it?  The cookies? No. It's just some kind of instinct - one that seems to override another, basic, and strong instinct: survival. I also thought about other things that a sprint and a spawning run have in common, like wiggling next to each other to be first, spitting fluid all over each other, bumping, slamming into each other, and crashing into rocks. Yup. Sprint = Spawn. You know maybe we combine Spawning and Sprinting and make something like Sprawnting. The industry will have to develop super-stiff carbon fiber SPRAWNTING BIKES, and personal coaches will come up with training programs for serious SPRAWNTERS.

Above we can also see that being pulled from the river can be just like being pulled from a bike race. Hey USAC guy, could you get your hand out of my gills/ass? Is this a coincidence, or what?

And what do you think about the color matching outfits for bike teams and fish? The only thing the fish don't have are ugly logos splattered all over them. But they still have teams, THE KINGS, THE SOCKEYES, THE STEELHEADS. And I'm sure they all hate eat other, too, just like bike teams do. Go Team!

Of course, always remember that if you do decide to SPRAWNT at the end of a spawning run, or a bicycle race sprint, get next to the wrong dude, or fish, and you could end up off course and SPRAWNED into a brick wall. Really, the only difference between a bike race and a spawning run is that in the end only a handful of bike racers get mangled, while all of the Salmon die.