The Legend of Lacava: Part II

Some call him LaStrava. Some call him the Golden Boner.

There are many names for him, BUT THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE:

It was one year ago that TEAM ROBOT presented you with the first installment of "The Legend of Lacava," based on the crazy mind blowing shit that Paul puts on his facebook page on a regular basis with a straight face.

The first post went up in January of 2012, and we were hoping to put another post up in the next couple months. Unfortunately, the well spring went largely dry, and the level of unbelievable shit coming out of the Legend dropped off precipitously. Maybe he got a girlfriend. Maybe he got his ass kicked. Maybe he finally figured out how to chill out like the rest of us. It seemed that the Legend had passed...

Until winter rolled in. With the changing weather came an exciting trend in social media world: THE LEGEND HAD RETURNED


Nov 9:
New mud tires, embro, perfect fall colors, and mud. After a two week sabbatical from racing, and a week of hard training, a.k.a. chasing supreme mountain bike conditions, followed by good rest, this weekend is back to the single minded obsession of hopping barriers and racing skinny tires around in the mud between the tape.... And the legs feel fresh!

Nov 16:
Despite a serious addition to [typo. should read: exaggerated affinity for] this beer, somehow managed to finally get down to fighting weight this week with some heavy training. Should be a good weekend between the tape.....peak fitness for the year is here and now!

Nov 18:
#s pinned on. Embro, on. Tire pressure: low. Trainer warm up: on that. Slept in till 10am, yep. Beer in the cooler. Check. Time for the hardest hour in cycling. Its go time!

Nov 26:
Dang legs barely move today. Must be something to do with two days of trail running and then a 40 mile beer drinking jaunt in the woods yesterday.

Nov 27:
Just swam 1,500 meters in 35 minutes. Last best was 45 minutes! Not fast, but no longer a slow drowning either. Surf trip to Cali may have to happen soon....


Nov 28:
Didn't buy no lottery ticket because i dont believe in luck. Just good ol fashioned work your ass off and meet it with opportunity and the right timing. Not leaving much to chance here!

Dec 1:
Buzzing trees, laying it over, and flying by course stakes and tape has taken a toll on the kit. Ducttape fixes everything...

Dec 4:
Intervals. Run. Eat. Sleep. Work. Eat. Drive. Pain. Pushups. Eye of the tiger. Laundry. Regluing tubulars. Suffering. Ride. 'cross aint over till it's over. Best races of my life in 4 days....it's go time....


Any one of those would make an incredible t-shirt. I would buy one in a heartbeat:

Paul Lacava:

 I don't believe in luck.

Paul Lacava:

Peak fitness for the year is here and now

Paul Lacava:

Intervals. Run. Eat. Sleep. Work. Eat. Drive. Pain. Pushups. Eye of the tiger. 

It's go time.

And the obsession with Embro? Do you know anyone else on the planet that refers to it as embro? Do you know anyone else who would brag publicly about their Embro?

NO YOU DON'T. THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE!

Brands on riding kit? Many. 
Sponsors? None.

Sure there are lots of plain black skinsuits available for cross, but who's gonna photograph someone wearing a black skinsuit?

Lee Gilmore at Cross Crusade, by Mike Albright. Photo of the Month on Pinkbike, 29890 views.

And no Paul, if you work there, that doesn't count as a "sponsorship."

So why the sudden return of the Legend? It was a stunning trend, and one that demanded an answer.

Thanks to the new Timeline feature on Facebook (Thanks MZ!) I could scroll unfettered through Paul's Old Unbelievable Shit (OUBS) from the past year. Organizing and classifying his 2012 OUBS, and cross-referencing it against his Strava records for 2012, I was able to graph the relationship between Paul's riding and his shit talking. The results were telling, confirming my hypothesis and the data that had been observed through anecdotal evidence:

In general, the results were very encouraging: Based on my numbers from 2012, we should be able to anticipate a continuing output of unbelievable shit (UBS) from Paul at or above the current level for the next 4 months, until the spring and summer riding seasons kick in and put Paul's epic philosophizing back into it's summer hibernation cycle.

As an added bonus, the Predicted Level of Unbelievable Shit (PLUS) is at it's lowest level in the months when others are most likely to be riding with him (June, July, etc). This means that most people will not have to suffer through peak-season Paul UBS. However, this data is not encouraging for LBS workers, as Paul is a sales rep for a major bike company and does most of his work during the winter months. Keep your chin up and stay strong, guys.

A quick qualification of our data source:

We are fairly confident in our mileage numbers, but they are still subject to some error. All of TEAM ROBOT's anonymous sources have confirmed that Paul does, in fact, Strava every single ride, even short trips down to 7-11 to buy beer (training is training, right?), so that suggests that the numbers are not underrepresenting the Legend's actual ride time.

The only source of error we suspect in our data is that in the days and weeks leading up to casual, recreational races that are supposed to be fun for everyone, sources indicate that Paul will often peel off early from the ride to "keep the legs fresh for my big race, bros," but still toss his iPhone in a friends backpack so he can look like he finished the ride on Strava. We cannot account for or correct error stemming from this cause, but we estimate amounts to less than 70 miles of bitched out fake miles per week.