Sunday, March 29, 2009

Am I the only one that does this?

Somehow, I have an amazing ability to procrastinate even when I am overwhelmed by how much I have to do. Maybe it's a subconscious effort to avoid reaching total burnout. Maybe it's a sign that I need to calm the hell down and realize that I probably don't have quite as much to do as I think if I can procrastinate and still get it done. Maybe I'm simple sitting here defining procrastination. Maybe it's all just the Delirium Tremens talking.

BTW, Intermediate Statistics is probably going to turn out to be the class I both loved and hated the most in my entire academic career. Data that tells a story is cool...

Overwhelmed

Just a few days ago I was flying high when I realized that I have only 6 weeks of school left (ever!). Now I've been hit with the fear that there's no way to get it all done in 6 weeks. It's partially the volume of work there is to do with school, partially work picking up at the same time, and partially the realization that I may finally have to push riding into the background. Going into this semester I had said that training/racing would have to be a secondary priority to school. Up until now I've managed to do both successfully enough. I'm not sure it's going to be possible to continue it. I'll see what I can do, but the fact that I didn't even bother considering when I would ride today when I should have been heading out for a few hours is not a good sign. Oh well... gotta keep things in perspective...

Saturday, March 28, 2009

I still just don't know if I get it...

I had started this post a different way, but then walked away and lost motivation to go on being all philosophical about road racing. The short story: I went to the Charge Pond race today expecting to do very well and didn't. I had to do the B-race in the interest of getting home early and it was, unfortunately, every bit the sketch fest that I feared. Several times during the race I went to the front and pulled everyone around for a lap or so simply to get the pace up and to stay away from people. With 6 to go on the downhill left-hander some guy on the inside of me must have panicked or something because he locked it up, fishtailed, and then when I tried to get around him he came close to completely t-boning me. Fortunately he sort of just grazed me and my bike handling skills are about a billion times better than a few years ago so I was able to ride out of it, but by then I was chasing big time since the pace picked up right at the same time as this incident. It took the better part of two laps to completely latch back on and by then it was getting pretty late in the affair and the general bike handling of the pack was not improving at all making moving up through it difficult. I thought I finally had an opening up the last rise, but then all but the first 8 or so almost seemed like they sat up cresting the hill so that was that. Disappointing to say the least. I got a good workout in so that's worth something, but I still find it hard to count a race as good if I wasn't where I had to be when it mattered. Then again I could always just stick to the dirt...

Monday, March 23, 2009

A: Oh Kiss My Ass!

Q: What did Rich say, out loud to nobody, when he got caught in a blinding snow squal while out riding yesterday?

We having fun yet kids?

Sunday, March 15, 2009

All's well that ends well

So despite the warnings I was being given by some people about attending opening day at Wells today, I gave in to the peer pressure and my burning desire to find out whether there had been any value in all the 4:30 a.m. sessions on the trainer to date. I may have just done a hard cut over to ice cream and Wachusett if it had gone badly. The original plan was to go all in and ride down from home (about 90 minutes) and then have the family drive me home. Unfortunately I woke up wearing a skirt and decided it was too cold at 8:30 to ride down so instead I rode to CCB wonder-stud (and eventual winner today) Ciaran Mangan's house in Natick and left from there around 9:30. It's only about a 30 minute jaunt over there from his house so there was plenty of time to sign in and get ready for the A race.

Now I must pause here and point out a couple things: 1) I'm licensed as a cat 4. It's a combination of not racing much and not having any results on the road save my $5 prime last season. 2) I've never done above an A/B combined race at Wells. 3) There were those warnings I was given about the crashtastic nature of March racing at Wells. 4) I knew there would be a big field because there are a lot of people who ignore those warnings and it was beautiful today. What all this meant was that my heart-rate was 102 standing at the line waiting to start.

Now I could go all G on you and give you the pedal-stroke by pedal-stroke recap of the hour 15 of racing, but I'll go with the more efficient short list of highlights instead:

- There were crashes. Two that I know of, but I didn't know about one until after the race so it must have happened at the back when I wasn't there (for a change). I was not in either.

- I made 3 or 4 legitimate efforts to get into a break. 2 never really materialized because we never got a gap. The last one was a group that went away with 11 to go including some big horses and I tried to go across but blew up about 5 bike lengths away. That effort got me a 60 second avg power of 544W and jack shit to show for it. Fortunately, they came back anyways.

- The big efforts hurt... a lot.

- My positioning in the pack sucks, but no longer in the sucky way that gets you in crashes. Now it's in the sucky way that has you burning energy to get near the front or missing breaks because you're not there.

- After one last-ditch try with 1 to go to get near the front I called it a day and rolled in rubber side down

So let's call it a good opener. I think the test of fitness was successful, but there's a ways to go. I protected the body and equipment so that's never bad. I got almost 3 hours of riding in once you add in the ride back to the car in beautiful weather so how can you go wrong? And then I got to come home and study for an accounting midterm... damn you grad school... damn you straight to hell...

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Has blogging become un-cool?

Is it just me, or does the blog-o-sphere seem more quiet these days? Maybe it's because bike racing hasn't started. Maybe it's because I've been more absent than not. It seems like it's partly related to everyone spending their time Facebooking, twitting, blipping, or whatever else it is they're doing. I've pretty adamantly resisted Facebook for a ton of reasons, not the least of which is that I have no time and it seems like the type of thing that's not even worth the effort to set up unless you can instantly turn into a crack-addict-like user. As I've told people, the few people from high school that I care about how they're doing I either talk to a few times a week already or I get the occasional update from my friends who did cave to the peer pressure. Ah well... not intending to turn this into a rant... more an observation.

I may just do something stupid and show up for the big kids race on Sunday... we'll see...

Monday, March 09, 2009

Colin save me

When your evening involves the computer command CHKDSK C: /R there's a good chance you're having a bad day. If you're computer illiterate, just trust me... it's all kinds of bad.

Reuter, I pay in whatever malted currency you prefer...

Friday, March 06, 2009

Burning it at both ends

I'm still running ragged full time. Work is a beatdown, still training fairly well, grad school, kids, wife, the occasional load of laundry, etc. Tonight I get home and I'm just a zombie. Wife tells me "You really should go pick up a belgian and plan to sit on your ass tonight" Um, ok... twist my arm. Sadly I'll probably still sit here and do various forms of work :( Go ride this weekend... bring the fenders.

Monday, March 02, 2009

Snow Daze

All who have had enough of this unrideable weather raise their hands...

Well with the entire state going into lockdown last night by 10 with the impending doom that was a whole 10 inches or so of snow, I lost the 3 out of 5 game of rock paper scissors and here I sit with 3 stir crazy little boys. I actually give them credit... they've been ok (let the bloody wrestling match ensue now that I have jinxed it). I'm trying to get little bits of homework and real work done here and there and being moderately successful.

Unfortunately the little weather preview we got yesterday coupled with me being slave to the MBA program meant I spoiled 2 very good weeks of training by doing nothing yesterday. I hate missing good training days, but at the same time I just remind myself that one day means very little other than me feeling like garbage the next day.

Ok, having trouble stringing coherent thoughts together so I'm done. Lets hope we can see the pavement again any time soon. Wells in 2 weeks? We'll see...