Bad then Good (with some bad)

Not feeling all that wordy right now so here's the semi-short version of G'Ster. I'm bound to post more thoughts tomorrow (day off):

Saturday (Cat 4):
2nd row start, slotted right in behind Cookie who always starts fast. Hit the dirt maybe 10th wheel, started moving forward. Coming out of the litter box on lap 2 I had moved up to 4th and was still going forward. On the up and down behind the backstop my chain popped off and got horribly jammed. I have no idea how many places I lost while I yanked on it and finally got it unstuck. Took 2 or 3 pedal strokes on the pavement and found out that I must have yanked the chain too hard because it snapped. Proceeded to run (hop on and roll the downhills) all the way around to the pit. For anyone who doesn't know Gloucester that's really really really far. Got my pit bike and proceeded to half-assed race the rest of the way. Result = Epic Fail.

Sunday (3/4 35+):
2nd row again, but lined up way left next to T-Needham. So-So start, maybe 25th onto the dirt. I was (probably the only guy who was) really excited about the nasty runup today and it was total carnage when we got there as expected. Kept moving forward, but did have one mishap when I washed out on one of the loose corners. I think it was there that I lost my polar computer off my bike (but didn't notice until way later)... today's bad. Had a moment of fun when I got to heckle CTodd midrace as I made the pass. Thought I was reeling in the above mentioned Mr. Needham, but then he absolutely took off with 2 to go. Ended up 10th. Moderately satisfied I guess. Wasn't quite high enough up to make up for Saturday, but acceptable. I'll wait for the data to tell me how I really did.

Ramblings and semi-coherent thoughts from the weekend later...

The only way today's race could have been worse

Philosophy question

If a cross race happens on a farm and the results are never posted did it really happen?

Man this Interwebs thing was quiet today

No results from Eco Cross yet. No reports from Mr. Results, CCC, or Badass (ok, until just now). Hell, even G only put up one post today. What is up with you people? How am I supposed to be unmotivated and kill time reading about cross all day when there's nothing to read? There had better be some good shizz next Monday people... and lots of it ;)

Eco-Cross

Fun day today. Kudos to the folks at Coonamessett Farm for letting us come down there a tear up their lovely facility. I'd type the long version of the story now, but frankly I'm beat. Here's the short version:

Cat 4 35+: Average nondescript start. Moved up about 8 places on lap one and another 6 over the next two (I think it was two). Was sitting in and riding in third at the bell and then dropped a chain coming out of the sand pit. He got away, I couldn't close, I stayed in third. Good and bad all at the same time.

Masters 1-4: LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG delay of standing around while they took someone out of the sand pit from the Cat 4 U35 race in an ambulance. Really not a terrible start considering I started in the next to last row, but still tons of traffic on the tight technical course. Had no real gas, but I just sort of motored along. As far as results we'll just leave it that it took quite a bit longer to get lapped than I expected. I think it was the top 5 or so that got me and better people than me have been lapped by Mark, Frank, Kevin Hines and those other fast type guys.

On to the big one next weekend. Lots of TLC for the bike this week...

Pit bike

I just finished converting the Surly from full commuter mode to full pit bike mode... well at least as close as it's going to get. Man I hope to God I don't have to ride that thing. It will be the equivalent of Art taking a lap at GG on Brad's POS. But of course now that I have built it and gone and said that, watch for me to soon be mooning the crowd on a tank of a bike that's sorta way too small...

Thank God I didn't have to sprint by Dianne at the finish

Yes I'm still overdue on some stories from last week, but I'll get to that in an upcoming epic post. Today's events however demand immediate postage... There was no way I could trek to freaking Canada or wherever the Verge race was this weekend so I stayed home like lots of others to race at Bedford. Give it to the Quad guys... they put on a fun race last year and today did not disappoint either. Well my son had a football game this morning (ugly... don't ask) so I could only make it to the 3/4 U35 race at 12:30. I'll point out that I think Bedford may have been earlier last year and it was my first race back post-surgery. I got lapped by Lynne Besette. The weather this weekend ensured that it would be epic. Seeing the riders on course when I got there proved it. I got one lap in and found that it wasn't all that terribly technical if you don't mind mud. There was a power climb only because it was covered in a few inches of wheel sucking mud and a longish run only because it was faster to run than try to ride through the mud. The loop was short though so it was gonna be interesting.

Whistle blows and I got an ok start after almost crashing with Lil Stevie who nearly nutted himself after slipping out of a pedal. Unfortunately I then proceeded to ride like one of those hyper little chimps who had just drank a case of Red Bull. I was a mess as far as bike handling went even though I felt fairly strong. So we get maybe 1/3 of the way into the loop and there's this short little mud bog. Well in a pack it was carnage so I tied up with a guy to my right and basically threw him outside the tape while me and my bike landed on his bike. At the same time, I looked and my saddle was snagged on my shorts. It seemed like it was just one of those things like where it catches the chamois and sort of just pulls it forwards, but in the panic of being on top of two bikes I couldn't tell. Well I got up, remounted, and as soon as the muddy rooster tail started I could feel my ass cheek getting sprayed. I'm thinking "Dammit, friggin skin suits are expensive... and now I'm way in the back... and this sucks" but I plodded on and now I was riding angry. As I'm going though, it feels like a fairly large portion of the left cheek is getting covered in mud and I'm not so very comfortable with my short filling with mud and trying to ride. But I soldiered on and was picking guys off. Maybe 2 or 3 laps in, I'm noticing commentary and horrified laughs all around the course and I found Bauer near the pits. We had this exchange:

Me: Dude, how bad is my ass showing?
Rob: Oh, real bad! And I got pictures!

So now I'm pretty sure I'm effectively mooning everyone I pass. But I'm passing lots of guys and my bike is hanging in there despite the conditions. So I kept riding my ass off (pun intended). The highlights of the heckling from there:

- My buddy Ciaran yelling to me that he loved my ass (I worry about that dude sometimes)
- The random girl Ciaran was chatting with yelling "nice booty"
- JimmE and Sweenster waving dollar bills at me every time I rode by the pits
- There were also rumors of people calling me Ass Man (great episode of Seinfeld BTW)

Fortunately, the payoff for everyone who was there having to go home and bleach their eyeballs was that I brought home a big 5th place finish (according to the first set of results posted even though Ciaran counted me at 6th) which (in either case) means points for me in a race I wouldn't have expected them... yeah me.

Now I think I have to go do another round of scrubbing some dirt out of some places...

Stories

If my head wasn't spinning I'd be sitting here banging out long-winded stories of swanky parties, long rides through seaside farms, and the ultimate in tragic bike sagas... but instead I'll just have to drop this teaser on you and keep you waiting...

CX Amesbury Style

Sort of quick race report from yesterday:

Had to do the 3/4's because it was the only race I could make it to without ditching my son's football game again (1 TD, many tackles, 5 positions played). Wasn't sure what would happen with the course in the rain especially with last years roots, but I took off the file-tread tires Saturday night and switched to the Vittorias anyways (for the record, this is probably a near wash since the Vittorias are way more narrow and the tread is questionable anyways). Course was pretty different than last year with the skate park section along the embankment run in the opposite direction and less roots (hooray). Saw some people, warmed up, lined up (front row baby), riders set... go! Hmmm, that's funny, I was sure I had 2 pedals on my bike... oh wait, it must be around here somewhere... wow these guys are fast... Hey that's funny guys stealing my pedal like that... hey look more fast guys... Oh, there's that sneaky pedal... DAMMIT! Couple that little adventure in start land with somehow dropping my chain after the first runup and I got a nice solid view of the Colin-esque DFL start (ok, maybe wasn't quite DFL, but really close). The chase was on and chase I did. I felt ok, but was pretty pegged the whole time. In a highly comical twist, the combo of the runup followed by a rooty section (hooray for rides in Delaney and Stow Town Forest) meant I was making up huge chunks on groups through that section. I was getting smoked on the couple of straightaways and I rode the short steeps on the banking fine (except once when I botched it). In the end I think I was 16th and I just nipped Yash who seemed to have everything possible go wrong, but was still smiling afterwards. I want to see the results for some names of who was ahead and behind before I decide if I'm satisfied. There were definitely fast guys in there, just didn't immediately recognize which ones. Maybe if someone out there was compiling all these results and calculating some sort of point system so you could see how you did against others that would be awesome... when it got updated at least (stupid real jobs interfering with more important things like cross)...

Dear Dan

Here's that picture you asked for. I don't think the BMX world needs to worry about me joining them:

Oh by the way...

Maybe we could get USCF to start issuing everyone a set of rollers when they get their cat 5 license and as part of the 5 to 4 upgrade you have to demonstrate that you can ride them. I still kinda suck on them (as opposed to BB who is reported to be able to ride them no handed while pedaling with one foot), but I was comfortable enough staying in my little 16" wide happy place while hammering in the 12 last night. Can you imagine the carnage if (insert name of squirly cat 5 or 4 (or 3) rider here) tried this? Oh the humanity. Rollers are good. Try them... just make sure there's nothing sharp nearby for a while.

Quick check in

It occurred to me that it's been way too long since I checked in so I figured I'd throw down some mindless commentary to entertain the both of you. I had this whole thing in my head where I was going to describe what a typical day is like for me lately, but 1) you probably don't really care, and 2) just thinking about it makes me tired. Suffice it to say that I was completing a workout on my rollers last night at 10:30 p.m. because that's the first chance I got to do it. And yes, it's about 6:45 a.m. and I'm at work an hour away from where I live. You do the math on how much sleep I got... your prize for the right answer will be an empty XL coffee cup from DnD (which I'm about to empty).

Amesbury CX Sunday. The only one I can make it to is the 3/4's so hopefully I can minimize the beating I take. If I'm doing stupid shit like getting my intervals in on rollers at 10 p.m. I better be able to. Now if someone could just nudge me at the start line just before they blow the whistle to wake me up I'd appreciate it...

A quiet anniversary

This past weekend marked the unofficial anniversary of when I started running 20 years ago. Not knowing the exact date I started my Freshman year of high school, I've always just gone with Labor Day weekend. At one point this year I had thought about doing some big running related thing to commemorate this milestone, but somewhere along the way I lost interest and it came and went with only my relaxed jaunt around the Chalz Friday as time spent doing the left/right/left thing. Instead we'll have to go with just discovered photo evidence from a couple months back showing that the old man's still got it:

This was 3 laps into my 5:03 1600m effort... I think I disguised the pain face fairly well.

Sometimes you shoot and miss

I'm in the midst of trying out new saddles because I've become sort of disenchanted with my San Marco Aspide Arrowhead that I've had for I think ~4 years. The cover is in reasonable shape, but either the padding is starting to break down or my aging ass is becoming more sensitive, but I'm having some issues. I got 3 samples from the greatest LBS in the world to try out and I put 2 hours a piece on 2 different ones this weekend. Yesterday's was ok, but not great. Probably nothing I'd go with, but I wasn't miserable. Today's on the other hand was just a miserable experience. I could tell about 30 minutes in it was going to be a long ride, but I was committed at that point so I wasn't going home to change it out. It was just awful in every way you don't want a saddle to be awful. Oh well... I made it home and I'll recover. One more to try out, but I've got low expectations for this one. Maybe I'll start out with a trainer trial or just pedal a little 5 mile loop around home to start with. This is tricky business because you really can't tell until you hit the road and in my opinion you need to do several things to be sure: 1) ride at least 2 hours on it if not more, 2) ride a good chunk of time on it really really easy, 3) ride some time on it really hard. I'm finding that my whole body position varies depending on the effort I'm putting in and it has a big effect on my saddle comfort. To make it more fun, recommendations don't really do much since beauty is in the ass of the beholder when it comes to these things. Ah well, I'll find one I'm sure.

A reasonably good couple of days

I'll go with today being an above average day. This morning my son had a football game. Last Sunday I missed his game due to the race at the Blunt. That meant I missed his 2 touchdowns and key block that basically allowed the third for his team to happen. All week I got to hear about how great he played and what a shame it was I missed it. Well today he continued on his streak for me to witness. 1 touchdown, 2 fumble recoveries, umpteen tackles, many yards rushing. He broke at least 6 tackles for his touchdown too so it was hard earned. Very cool to watch. Then I got out for a ride. The weather was nice, the ride was good, the traffic was light... what more can one ask? Dinner was a little nuts with the boys, but it always is. And I got to drink beers from Harvard's with dinner so that dulled the chaos a little.

Yesterday was a super fantastic day... but I'm gonna make y'all wait several weeks for the story on that one...

Two Fitty

How fitting that post number Deuce Fitty is a race report from the Blunt. I'm a little short on time so this will be the slightly condensed version.

The Course:
Riders ready... TWEET! About 300 yards down the pavement into a 180 left that narrowed to about 4 feet, watch the trees in the middle of the course, turny stuff, right into the woods, log dismount (unless you are Coley), bunny hop the big stick/small log, left turn, right turn, dismount for off-angle log followed by large roots, high speed single track to high speed dismount over log (again unless you were really good), out of the woods, little left hook into the woods just to turn sharp right and ride over another small log, narrow stuff on the grass, watch the chicane around the two trees, dismount for a railing (yes that's #4), turny stuff, dismount for the 4 pack of barriers, 180, cross the pavement, more turny stuff, off camber right turn "uphill", 180, down, left, 180 right, huge log dismount, back onto start finish stretch, ~25 yards to finish line. Phew. And yes, that was 6 dismounts.

Cat 4 race:
Got the primo lineup and Brad captured what may have been my finest start ever. Dude on the right of that pic proceeded to ride away and win clearly. Me, Noreast dude in second wheel center, and some Colavita guy who came back from the cheap seats eventually ended up in a 3 way battle for the 2-4 spots. Noreast guy was technically superior. Colavita guy was no slouch. To get to a point, I got gapped just after the barriers on the final lap and there was nowhere to really close it down or pass. Came home 4th, in the money and finally scoring some points. Pleased overall with the effort considering I still suck at technical stuff, but the fun wasn't over yet.

Cat 3/4 race:
Mediocre lineup and equally mediocre start. Pre-reg list featured several MRC guys as well as some speedsters like Marro (BOB), Yash (HUP?), and Bailey (BRC) (sorry for no links). Fought the crowd for lap one and got warmed up again and came through to see we were doing 8 laps this time (as opposed to the 6 in the previous race). This equaled lots of time to just reel guys in which I proceeded to do. I held my own (mostly) in the woods and tried to minimize gaps. Every time I hit the pavement I drilled it and made up or created huge gaps. The highlight was finally catching Brad with 2 or 3 to go after his top 10 start. Shortly after I looked up and noticed that I was actually within sight of Marro. Probably no chance of catching him, but just being able to see him there was an accomplishment. By now I had moved to the top 20 and was starting to reel in a couple more guys. Sadly, somewhere in the woods, my suckitude or an ornery root got the best of me and I had the unmistakeable feeling of a squishy rear (and not the kind from too much ice-cream). Rode it as long as I could keep it upright, then shouldered it for a quick run to the pits. Reasonably quick change, but I lost at least 5 or 6 spots and it was too late to take them back. Rolled home as a contributor to the prize purse.

So to my earlier report of numbers... at 6 dismounts per lap, plus one extra when my tire was flat, for 16 laps of the course I did 85 dismounts and remounts. Not exactly the forum I wanted for that much practice, but it'll serve me later I hope.

OK, overused my free time so I gotta run. An aspiring rock star has guitar lessons...

Score Card

2.5 hours of driving
2 starts
89 minutes of racing
1759 calories
2 Clif Bars
1 pacakge Shot Blocks
1 flat tubular
~84 dismounts and remounts
4 upgrade points

Long version later. I'm cooked.

Few quick ones

1. Here's your TTBR: Rogue Dead Guy Ale. It's brewed in Oregon. The Oregon cross scene rocks. And it's hoppy like those really good riders who bunny hop barriers. And there's a skeleton on the bottle that kinda reminds you how you feel after a good hard race. How bad can this stuff be? Let me tell you... total absence of any hint of bad. Drink it.

2. PSA: YOU DO NOT OWN THE BIKE PATH! Yes, that is meant for you. I don't care if you're Mr. 4% body fat on his $5000 bike or the old dude with the shitzu on an extenda-lease or the daycare lady pushing the 2 wide by 4 deep stroller or the ignorant Harvard student who thinks they can go for a 3 wide stroll down the middle of the path with their ignorant friends. Don't be stupid people. Can't we just all share?

3. I'm training a lot. And THE season starts Sunday. Training + cross = fun. Fun is good. Good is what we want.

4. Dan was right... Chamois Butter Euro-style is great. Who doesn't want some soothing cooling action while they lube their saddle region? Use it.

Need food. See item 3 (and 1).

Dark

I've sort of gone dark lately and it might continue a little. I am racing Sunday so that will be plenty of fodder for the blogosphere. Between work, youth football, training, and day-to-day life time is short these days. Hopefully I free up or just say eff it to check in here more...

Recap

Finally getting a chance to give my recap of this past weekend. A lot of the details have been or will be covered here,
here, here, and of course here so I won't rehash all that. I will say that I'm pleased that my reverse psychology trick on mother nature worked and she pulled a "I'll show you" by providing picture perfect weather for the duration of the race. Everything leading up to the race however was what made the event most interesting.

Sort of going with the punch-line first approach, I'm really damn pleased with how I rode. I got in 7 laps. I rode nearly all of the deep mud sections on 6 of the 7 laps. My 4 laps in the light were I think all sub 50 or right at it and my 3 at night were all in the 54-55 range. 5 minutes seems like a predictable level of slow down when you can't see a whole lot, you're tired, and they gave you a warning about black bears during the rider meeting. Speaking of tired, I am almost certain I did not sleep at all from about 6 a.m. Saturday when the sun came up until 8 p.m. Sunday when I packed it in. I had a longish break Saturday from about 10ish to 2ish, but that was largely taken up with eating, cleaning, lubing, and trying to figure out what Art was going to do after breaking both of his bikes. That was a funny exchange at about 1 in the morning:

Art (outside my tent): Rich, we have a problem. I broke my other bike.
Me (trying to sleep and failing): What?! What happened?
Art: I snapped the seat post collar (he may have said seatpost bolt).
Me: Go get one from the Red Jersey tent
Art: Tried, they don't have one.
Me: Well you've only done 3 laps and we need to get your ass around the course somehow. Go get Brad's backup bike off the car.
(It must be noted here that Brad's backup bike is a 10-12 year old Kona that was too small for Brad and Brad is smaller than Art. It was also brought only with the intention of stealing parts off it if needed.)
Art: What? What kind of pedals does he have on it.
Me: It doesn't matter, I have a pedal wrench out there.

So to sum up, Art came back in a pinch looking for someone to ride for him and I basically told him to get his ass on the crappy bike and like it. Fortunately he only had to do one lap on it and later used Scott's bike and all was well.

Other incidents/observations/moments worth mentioning:
- My bike kicked ass. Hardtail 29er was perfect for that course and the thing was solid. Every time I was churning through the foot of peanut buttery mud I was praying that nothing snapped, but she held up. A nice coat of Pedro's Syn-Lube before each lap and I was rocking. 1 dropped chain and zero mechanicals for me... I'll take it.

- G's Dad was a cool guy. Seemed to be a man of few words. Apparently he and G balance each other out :)

- I'm running on leg one and I come up next to Colin. He first asks me why I'm behind him if I'm the runner. He then informs me that he thinks he's bonking already.

- Mechanical failure of the race goes to the guy who's front wheel completely failed on the steep part of the plunge at 3 a.m. I had moved aside to let him fly through and the thing just went with a huge bang. I look over to see his wheel folded in half with him supermaning into the woods. I checked if he was ok and then headed down the rest of the hill. At the bottom some guy who had walked down says to me "Man, you just had to pass him, you didn't have to shoot him". I almost wet myself laughing.

- The bag-piper at sunrise was cool shit. I was getting onto the last section of single-track when I first heard it. I was already in a better mood because I could see the trail again mostly and then I got to listen to him the rest of the way down.

- The team was awesome. We were in a tight race for the 6-9 spots in 4-man sport for the whole event. We finally settled in 8th with 26 laps of not the fastest course in the world. Can't complain.

Ok, so I could go on forever with tidbits from the weekend, but let's just say it again that it was crazy damn fun. Now on to cross season...

Apology to 24 HOGG riders

To all 24 Hours of Great Glen Riders,

In advance of the aniticipated weather and course conditions at this years race, I would like to apologize for inflicting this punishment on you. You see I have a long and storied history of epic race conditions. My palmares in this arena range from multiple editions of RTB in a hurricane, to some of the worst conditions ever for the Mt. Washington hillclimb. The reason I own a 10x10 canopy was the acceptance of the fact that the epic conditions follow me, particularly when I plan on event well in advance. Keep your chins up... maybe I'll let you cut me in line at the bike wash as retribution.

Sincerely,
The guy who wishes he practiced more at a nice indoor sport like basketball

Solving your problems

So if you're here, there's an above average chance that you own a bike. If you're like about every biker I've met, you own multiple bikes. If you're one of the cool kids, one of those bikes is a mountain bike. Now if you own a mountain bike, there's a well above average chance that at least once in your illustrious career, you've crashed your wheel into a rock/tree/wall/root way harder than you wanted to. Maybe at the time you had your nice wheels on so that made you mad. Maybe you didn't have your nice wheels on, but you were still pretty mad anyways. Maybe this incident left you wishing you had a good sturdy set of wheels to use as spares or to replace the one you just busted. Well here's where I come dancing into your life with the solution . You're welcome. I take cash, checks, or paypal.

Not sure how I feel about this

I'm all for capitalism, but there's two ways to look at this story: Either the public is really really stupid or EM is really really a bunch of crooks. They're contributing to crippling the economy, but we're helping them do it. I could now go off onto some philisophical tirade about who's more at fault, but I'll leave that to the master.

Fatass

Someone had to compete with Solo for the mangled saddle picture. Unfortunately mine is from being fat and/or a hack and not from doing 20,000 miles or whatever was on his. As it turns out, the Specialized Alias is NOT a good mountain biking saddle for a 190 (ok fine, 195) pound semi-skilled mountain biker. No, the rails are not supposed to be shaped that way and No, the nose is not supposed to point down like that.



I also can't remember if I ever posted a picture of the killer Haro that the middle one got hooked up with for learning to ride. Yes, Dad likes to play with this too...


Countdown to GG, 10 days. Countdown to cross season, 25 days.

Fitness means nothing...

if you don't know what to do with it. Right now the fitness is pretty good... even have the numbers from a recent LT and VO2 test to prove it. Not great, but pretty good. Despite that, the Norwell circuit race was just another demonstration of how I'm just not a very good bike racer. Still don't know how to get myself into position to win even if I do have the legs. Still haven't shaken all the ghosts of crashes past (and for the record what level do guys have to get to before they stop being sketchy... there's some 3's and/or 4's out there that are just trying to take down half the field). Still not quite good/lucky enough to attack and make it stick. Made a couple moves today... not the greatest timing or execution. As typical sort of just came in as pack fill. Pace of the field felt fine, but I just didn't have that little extra. Ah well... soon enough it's cross season anyways.

Phew

Summer class done... aw yah!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Going into the final I was holding all aces. Even drawing a duece wouldn't have killed me so perhaps I put a touch less effort into my feverish writing than I could have. We shall see what the result is. But really, is there value in recommending a corporate level strategy for a US winery at a point in time 6 years ago? I had to make a conscious effort to not just go and find out what they went and did. Ah, whatever... learning is good even if it's just flexing that squishy thing in your head every now and then (sounds like a G comment).

3 classes to go... 2 more semesters. But for now 5 weeks off... let's ride kids.

You win mother nature

We try to be good and not go overboard with heating/cooling systems in the respective season. Unless it gets brutal we try to stick with fans in the summer. In the winter we keep the heat reasonably low especially now that the kids are a touch older. Tonight I gave up the fight. It's been at least 88 degrees in the house for days. At night we catch a break sometimes and it goes down to 75. Crank the oven to 400 to make some chicken and you can't even eat it's so uncomfortable. AAaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, air conditioners. At least we'll try to keep them set at a reasonable level...

A milestone

No, not the umpteenth contribution to the blogosphere this time...

13 years ago today I met Mrs. Tall Freak on a blind date.
11 years ago today I proposed.
10 years ago today was the wedding (and a killer wedding it was)

(Yes this is all very convenient for countering the male propensity for forgetting key dates in marital history)

It's amazing she's tolerated me for this long. Then again I've only been racing bikes for the past 3 or 4 years...

Vaca from vaca

Just got back today from family vacation. Like always, I think I now need a vacation to recover. I actually shouldn't complain... Thursday afternoon through Tuesday morning up north and I got in 3 road rides and 2 mountain rides while there. One mountain ride was a GG recon ride so that should help in a couple weeks. 2 road rides were with one of the CCB super studs and I didn't die. Good solid training camp so now if I can get in one more race (2 if I'm lucky) before GG I'll be stylin. Full vaca review later... just need to relax now.

BTW, oldest got the start on the mound tonight in his first game. Recorded his first ever K which is huge... we'll just overlook the 3 runs he walked home... focus on the positives...

Freak shout out

Any of the freaks out there actually know anyone who has ever bought a Zinn frame? Reviews? As much morbid curiosity as it is future planning...

Bikes for Everyone?

Last night wathcing the Tour I saw a Cervelo commercial during which they claimed they "make bikes for everyone" and went on to tout how all their riders ride stock bikes. For some reason, the immediate response in my head was "No you don't... you make bikes for those who fit between 20% and 80% of the average human size. Just like every other company, you make bikes for MOST so that you can maximize sales and minimize stale inventory." Don't get me wrong, I think Cervelo is a decent company trying to do good things, just don't go making claims you can't back up.

You think too little sleep and too much school have me riled? This never should have gotten me so worked up... CTodd, you still thinking that B school thing is such a good idea? :)

Killer weekend

I'll warn you up front I'm feeling lazy and too stream-of-conscious to do the linky thingy tonight... sorry.

So it's been a pretty killer weekend. Thursday I rode to work and then had to race the thunderstorms home. Went ok and it was good to be riding. Friday we intentionally planned to not be committed to go anywhere. Me and the wife slept late and the boys were super good. No idea when they even got up. Then they brought me coffee in bed. I could get used to that. Worked my butt off around the house Friday and did a whole lot of this and that. Then I met 3 others for some night mountain biking. I had never ridden at night before. We hit Stow Town Forest for almost 2 hours and finished around 10:30. It was so insanely fun I can't wait to go again. Now if I could just get my chain skipping issues figured out... Saturday morning was some more sleeping in (sort of) a little playing and running around in the morning, then off to Landry's to work on the skipping issues. Worked on it for a while with the guys in the shop but we were stumped. Had to leave it and hopefully they can come up with something tomorrow. Always tricky when nobody in the shop is big enough to test ride. Friday afternoon/evening was a cookout with friends, many of which we don't see anywhere near often enough. It was good to hang and chat. The oldest had silly fun because he managed to shatter 6 generic wiffle balls the guy had picked up for the party... kid can hit I tell ya. Today I got up too late again and then puttered around a little. Had to hook up with a friend to pick something up so I decided to ride there. His house is effectively uphill from here, 30 miles away (need to create map). Ride there suuuuuuuuuuuucked. Ride home was awesome. Total for the ride I banged out 60 in 2:56 ride time... that made me happy. Happy is good. Sadly rest of the day has been mostly homework. Have I mentioned school may kill me?

Ok, so that was a big mess of run on nonsense... if it helps at all I feel better from rambling.

Oh, and how could I forget... the boys rocked Fitchburg and took 2nd and 4th in the 4's. Kid who took second is 17 (I believe)... he is a stud. 3's did well also and rode tough against some horses. Bud of mine in the masters scored a second in the circuit race and third in the crit, both behind Mahk and finished 13 on GC... dude is a stud. If things go right I get to have my ass handed to me by him this coming weekend up in the White Mountains. Should be fun.

Story time

So some may remember me claiming a while back that I was retiring from running (too lazy to go back and link the post). Since that assertion I have become a casual runner at best. There may have been a week that I ran 3 times, but I'm pretty certain it was no more than 2 in any week and some weeks it was zero. Knowing that I had the Marathon Cup Relay coming up I stepped it up a little and ran about 11 miles last week, but only in 2 runs. So I basically went into this event with my goal being not to blow a hamstring.

Last year I surprised myself by busting out a 5:16 at this thing. It was pretty shocking considering the horrible mangled-groin injury from Sturbridge and various other episodes of throwing my body into the pavement. This year I figured I'd put myself down for a 5:20 and this should be a reasonable goal. Did a couple miles of warmup and felt reasonably ok in that I at least didn't feel sloppy like I have been from not running regularly. Then I hit the track to do some 100m efforts just to remember what fast felt like and I remembered that fast hurt. Oh well... hold onto your hamstrings and see how it goes down.

My leg came up and there was lots of roadkill up the track so at least I had targets. I hit 200 and checked the watch... 33... aw shit... slow down idiot. 400m came in a slightly more reasonable 71 and I didn't want to puke yet. I tried to keep dialing back a little, but I think I dialed back too much because I believe I hit half in about 2:28 (can't quite remember). We had talked on the drive down about how much lap 3 sucks no matter how in shape you are so I just tried to hold it together and pick it up a little going into it. I can't for the life of me remember what my 1200m split was, but I remember thinking 2 things: 1) I don't quite feel death setting in yet, and 2) Holy shit, I could almost break 5. First 200 of the final lap was a tad too slow and I waited a little late to go all in on the finish sprint so I crossed the line in 5:02.

Now to put this in perspective, my PR (from way back in the day) is about 35 seconds faster than this, I was only 6th in my age group, and I don't even know if I hit top 20 overall at the event. On the other hand, my racing flats still had Hampton Beach sand on them from the final leg of Reach the Beach last September since that's the last time I ran against a clock and I think my long week since I declared myself retired has been maybe 12 miles. For a while I was almost embarrassed that I had somehow pulled this off on no training, but then of course the competitive side of me took over and I was pissed I didn't squeak out another 3 seconds :) Apparently this whole biking thing does make running a bit easier. Good thing since running every day is too painful anymore.

File this under absurd

1600m in 5:02

Story later...

Spicing things up

And no not just the tasty bowl of turkey chili I've got here...

Usually my commute rides are very uninteresting. Same exact route, generally the same time of day +/- a few minutes, generally the same crowd of other uninteresting routinized folks seen along the way. Well this morning I got a nice treat... some change of scenery and some brief company. There's this one road which is key to the relaxing ride to work in that it avoids major chunks of route 117 and route 20. They've been doing construction to totally repave the road which is a good thing. Well this morning apparently they decided they wanted to be done early for the weekend because the road was closed for paving when I got there. So we got to do some wandering and sightseeing. Fortunately I avoided getting lost as I wandered past the multi-million dollar neighborhoods of Wayland and Weston (how can every house in a neighborhood have a private tennis court?). So then a bit later I was chugging along and I heard something behind me. I peeked back to find that it was the Crack-O-Dawn crew out for a little hammer-fest and they were bearing down on me. Couple quick down shifts before they caught up and I decided to try and sit in for a couple minutes just for the sheer comedy value. There's me, commuting to work on the cross check with panniers on it, in a paceline on a hammer ride. Good fun if only for a few minutes. Oh, and not to start pissing people off, but if anyone out there knows anyone from the crack-o-dawn crew... it may be early, but there are still cars on the road. "Car Back" typically means move the eff over...

Bike-ology

I keep getting cross-eyed looks from my wife and non-biking friends when I make mention of another bike. Heck, I'm sure even a reader or two (i.e. one of them or the other one of them) has muttered under their breath that I must fall into the "deep-pocketed-mofo" category with several mentions of "new" bikes (don't I wish). I try to constantly refer back to the man with 43 wheels , but then again he does have a number of distinguished years on me so it doesn't seem to help. In any case, it got me thinking I could kill some quality case-analysis homework time by listing out the bike history (if for no other reason than to get that infamous head-shaking look from the dear wife).

Now if you take into consideration each discipline of cycling that I've taken up as it's own entity (I know it doesn't work that way... shush), it's really not that bad:

Road:
- First real road bike - Bianchi Eros. Purchased used off some CRW guy with a laundry room converted into a bike workshop. Once I realized how too small this was for me and I had a few bucks I stripped it for parts and sold the frame.
- First new real road bike - Lemond Buenos Aires. Later doubled as an intro to cross bike and a commuting bike. Ultimately run over by some guy who shouldn't have a license.
- Second "new" real road bike - Leader LD735R. Used the parts from the Bianchi and a few new bits to build my first racing bike when I decided I wanted to race. Later doubled as a commuting bike. Ultimately sold to some dude in Michigan when I accepted this was also too small.
- Current road bike - Old Skool lugged Guerciotti (model unknown). Frame purchased on ebay and the insurance money from the Lemond incident paid for parts. Later had custom fork added. Still in action

Mountain:
- First "mountain bike" - 24" Trek 820, fully rigid. Purchased for about $300 while in college. Later sold to a guy for his dad to ride bike paths.
- First real mountain bike - Nashbar 853 steel frame, hand-picked build kit. Just recently stripped and a few bits being sold (anyone need some wheels or a frame?)
- New (as in not yet ridden) mountain bike - Kona Kula 29er, everything usable from first bike reused, new wheels and fork.

Cross:
(Let's not count the Lemond)
- First cross bike - Bianchi San Jose SS. Purchased off ebay when the Lemond got wrecked and I wanted to race cross. Later sold to some college kid who was bringing it to Chicago
- Current cross bike - THE ANT (need I say more). And for the record, you can pry this one from my cold dead hands.

Commuter:
(Again skipping the Lemond and Leader)
- Surly Cross Check. Purchased this year to save abuse to the ANT and because wearing a backpack for 3 hours a day while commuting was getting old. Bonus double-duty as a pit bike if needed.

So there we are. One could say I need to make up my damn mind and ride the effin things instead of swapping them in and out constantly. Ok, maybe now that I read this she has a point shaking her head at me...

Mini rut

The worst thing that could have happened was Wells not sucking yesterday. Friday I had hoped to pick up my MTB and come home and ride it but it wasn't ready. In the mean time I got a call from a college friend to go drink beer. So I did. Saturday I was supposed to get up at 5, eat some breakfast, and then go get tortured by GD for 3 hours. But I rolled back over, realized at 5:35 that I was still in bed and I had about 5 minutes to be on my bike or in my car with the bike on it. So I went back to bed. I then did house work all day and finished off the day by playing golf. Sunday I met Danny boy for a great ride down to Wells and capped it off by not sucking. I even initiated a break that sort of lasted for maybe 4 laps. And I had someone tell me I did a good job starting the break. And I got to chat with CTodd. And it was a fun morning. Today I meant to run. Then I rolled the dice and guessed it would rain during the time I had to run. So I ate free lunch instead. And it didn't rain. Then I came home and didn't run. I didn't bike either. 1 out of 4 days not being a slug drinking beer is not a good training plan. Very soon I could be spinning the granny gear down the complacency highway to sucksville. I'm going to try again tomorrow to not do that.

P.S. That was the most linktastic post evah...

I needed that

I've been feeling lately like I had hit a comfortable point in my training where I was clearly doing a good amount and getting some racing in, but I wasn't doing any specific workouts where I was really pushing myself. Despite a lack of time tonight, I still managed to get a short version of one of my favorite workouts in. This loop is a bit over 7.5 miles and has 6 distinct climbs including the water tower climb and "the wall" which is the final one. The breaks in between climbs are pretty short. I'm pretty sure I've done 4 loops of this in a workout before. Tonight I only got in two. First loop felt like I was cold and not warmed up which was true. Second loop rocked. Climbed the whole water tower standing in the 39x19 which I don't think I've ever done before. I need to start doing this ride on a regular basis again. Who's in? :)

Where'd a week go?

Huh, it's been a week already? I think my excuse is somewhere between being outrageously busy and not having much interesting going on. I had to do 2 presentations last week on corporate strategy (contain your excitement, I had to) so that sort of screwed everything up through Wednesday. After that I spent 2 days unscrewing myself. Weekend was normal chaos although the wonderful family did allow me to sleep until the unheard of hour of 9 a.m. and then served me coffee and donuts in bed. As far as training, it was definitely a weekend of less is more. Thursday on my ride home I just felt cooked and then I upped it to well done by running too hard on Friday. Saturday was nada, yesterday was a 1 hour cross ride (aw yeah, it's gettin here folks). Ran again today so just hoping the rain goes away to ride in tomorrow. Oh, and someone needs to decide where they're racing next. Fortunately I got word tonight that the mountain bike will be back soon...

Recipe for success

1. Have a non-descript marginally ok spring of training and racing
2. Do 6800 feet of climbing in 5.5 hours of riding 8 days before race
2. Take endo over a not very big log on a not very big downhill day before race
3. Sit out in sun after endo and get sunburned
4. Sleep poorly for maybe 5 hours
5. Wake up at 5 for race feeling queasy
6. Make multiple pit stops on way to race due to queasiness
7. Win race convincingly.

How that worked I have no idea, but it did. The race story is actually kinda short in terms of back and forth action. I headed up the start hill second wheel, a group of 3 of us got to the first bridge together with everyone else gone, I moved to second a couple minutes later, passed up to first on next climb, juiced it going up the fire-road hill, hey wait, where'd everybody go?

I will openly admit that I mangled the course pretty badly at many times during the race. I was off and on though... rode some sections surprisingly clean and other sections I looked very much a beginner rider. Fortunately I can still run pretty well so that was put to good use on a couple sections. Hopefully I can start collecting some legitimate skills so I don't get destroyed in Sport. Now I have to pick a venue for the first test...

And the cries of Sandbagger rang out from near and far

Short version for now until pictures and results are posted and then I can create the in-depth linktastic report. For now let's just jump to the end of the event (for me):


Guy behind me: ... like this guy in the 30's... I mean c'mon, he should be in Sport.
Me (in my head): Whatever buddy... you'll get your wish soon enough.

Stunning 7 minute victory today proving yet again that in lower category mountain biking, fitness CAN beat skill. Now where's that upgrade process so I can start getting my arse handed to me?

Wednesdays suck

Yes it's Thursday, but I'm still "hungover" from another Wednesday. Wednesdays I have class therefore I end up having about a 19 to 20 hour day. Here was yesterday:

Up at 4:45
Leave for work on bike at 5:45
Arrive work 7:15
Work until 4:30
Grab a sandwich which gets inhaled
Class 6 to 9:30
Drive to 24 hour grocery store to buy laundry detergent, cookies, and wheat thins (hey, what else would you buy at 10 p.m.
Arrive home 10:40
Get my head on straight for a few minutes
Bed at 11:15

And then I started it over again at 5:30 today. This MBA thing better make me the strongest mofo ever because I'm too close to let it kill me.

Oh, and I finished 10th out of 30 Saturday. I'd imagine most/all ahead of me were sport or higher. Maybe time to jump ship on Beginner. Let's see how Sunday goes first.

He's got legs...

... he barely knows how to use them.


That's right folks, that's the end result when an adequate-at-best mountain biker rides a 6 hour race on a challenging course. I had said going into this race that I may suck, but I know I can suck at a consistent level for a pretty long time... that turned out to be true. Getting to the punch line, I finished 8 laps of the 5 mile course in 5hours, 37 minutes. I just didn't have it in me to head out for #9, plus 8 was my stretch goal so I was honestly thrilled to do 8 in well under 6 hours. Claimed climbing per lap was 847 feet so that new math thing tells me 6776 feet. And it's a damn good thing I can climb well because I still descend like a pansy. Having already written the race report on the club site, I'll cover the lighter side of the event here:

- They had a lemans start... it never fails to amuse me how much bikers, especially mountain bikers, despise running

- Lap 1, first downhill turn, Bad Brad washes out his front wheel and biffs in front of me. I was not feeling optimistic about my own fate

- As you can see from the pic, I followed Brad's lead... repeatedly. I think the count was 4. You might be able to tell that my right knee is swollen from when I cranked it off the stem. All the rest is superficial and the result of me sucking.

- I don't care in the least about all the skin needing to be regrown. This is in stark contrast to past experiences on pavement. I'm fine with taking myself out because I suck, but I have no patience left for sketchy guys aiming for me.

- At one point I rode by a guy in the camping area and that nice one on the outside of my left knee was bleeding down my leg a little and he commented "Hey, you're leaking". Definitely made me laugh.

- The crowd rocked. Family members and loved ones sitting around all day reading a book just to fill a bottle or get whatever a rider needed every 30 to 45 minutes and cheering the hell out of everyone else who rode by.

- The biggest reason I could never have finished the 12 yesterday: My hands had absolutely no strength left by the end of the 6. Like we're talking my thumb was too weak to shift from the little ring to the middle one. I know it's mostly a result of me sucking on the gnarly downhill, but it was an unexpected problem.

- I came in at the end of lap 7 and Wild Bill Doonan was sitting there relaxing and taking pics. I yelled to him to do me a favor and grab me a Coke. He said "OK, where do you have them." and I had to reply "I don't, I need you to find me one." He very kindly showed up at the tent 2 minutes later with a Coke... now there's teamwork :)

- My distinct level of suck went down progressively as the event went on. I switched from making mistakes because I sucked to making mistakes because I was tired.

- It was lap 3 or 4 that I was telling Art and another guy that I'd pony up some serious money for a giant iced latte. Sadly neither had one on them.

- I downed 160 oz of grape gatorade (plus some good old fashioned H2O) during the event. I don't think I'll be drinking grape again for a little while until I forget the taste.

I'd definitely do a 6 hour again. I could probably even be talked in a 12, but only after I suck less so that my body gets less tired from the crappy riding skills. Right now I just need to replace those 5200 calories with some barley and hops.

$5 Does Not Make You an Accomplished Bike Racer...

... but it does make road racing a little more fun.

That's right folks... no stunning double-W to report from Saturday, but I did win my first ever prize in a bike race on pavement. You got it, 5 bucks cash money baby. This stunning payday came as a result of a vicious attack out of boredom and the most fortuitous prime bell ever. As I mentioned Friday, I had plans for the 2 races and I did in fact manage to execute both (sort of). I also learned that I'm still a big skirt wearing pansy so I'm gonna have to do something about that.

4/5 race started the day and the lineup proved it was a cat 4/5 race... people didn't want the line because they didn't want to lead into the wind on the backstretch. Fine by me as my plan for this race was to be one of those guys who gunned it from the word go and tried to make the early laps hurt. They let me roll to the front and I jumped coming out of the sweeping turn onto the track. Several guys followed suit and the result was that a small group was lapped and pulled at lap 5 or 6. Other than getting the hole shot and riding like mad, my other plan was just to attack until I puked, someone else puked, or I got away with some guys who were strong enough to make it work. Well I attacked the crap out of the first half of the race as did a couple other guys, but the whole thing ended up amounting to nothing more than dick waving. Every time a group got any sort of gap, one or more guys decided it was more fun to be there than help. By halfway I had to go take a rest. I threw one more wild and unconvincing shot with 7 to go, but it was pretty lame and the field jumped on. Typical late lap 4/5 sketchiness set in and I decided I didn't feel like sticking my nose in the sprint. Rolled in as pack fill.

Cat 4 race was an hour later so I grabbed a drink and snack and then just rolled around to stay loose. Plan here was to sit in for a while and see what the pace felt like, then see if I could do anything fun. First 10 laps basically felt like a parade with nobody doing much. 12 or 13 laps in I decided to move up on the back stretch where it had been slowing due to the wind so I figured I'd just roll right through to the front when the pace slowed. Well it did, and I did, and then when I got near the front I decided it was time for a test. I went high and wide on the banked turn of the track and then hammered the finish stretch. I get near the tent and aren't they ringing the bell yelling 5 dollars. Well I hadn't checked yet and I figured it hadn't worked so I layed into the first 2 turns and then peeked back on the sweeping right. Amazingly I had opened up about 8-10 seconds. I was able to put my head down and basically pedal hard around for my big prize although one guy did close like a truck and passed me after I was fully across the line. He had come off the front to chase me and now we had about 12 seconds on the pack. Unfortunately he clearly wasn't going to do a damn thing so after 2-3 laps it was back to the pack. I again decided that I was happy enough so I just sort of hung out and moved around before sitting up and rolling in at the finish.

I'm a little disappointed that I never even stood up to sprint or tried to get in position where it mattered. I am happy I had the good sense to stay out of trouble. One of these days I'm going to have to get over last year's trauma and bang bars up at the front to try and take one. Maybe next time out I'll grow some stones.

In other news, boy #2 has cashed in on the "ditch the training wheels, get a new bike" deal. He was rewarded Sunday with a sweet Haro BMX that he's been eyeing for months. I like it too because it's a tank and I can screw around on it :)

Finally, I don't know if tonight's ride home counts as epic or incredibly stupid. I rolled the dice that the first storm had passed and the second would miss me. Well I crapped out and got absolutely pelted for about 10 minutes about 3/4 of the way home. I haven't ridden in the rain in quite a while and it was warm enough, but it still sucked. Better luck next time.

Oh boo hoo...

I empathized with this guy's unique bike fitting problem right up until the part about them cutting a custom mold to make him a bike...

Yes, I'm just bitter and should go train more instead of writing this...

Hangover

Well apparently my dear wife's trip was so good and my 6 days as solo dad were so tiring that it's been some time since I said hi to all 3 of you that check in :) Her detox and transition back to real life along with me trying to catch up on everything along with me starting up summer semester (blech) have made for a hectic week. Let's see... is there anything good to report... you know, I'm coming up empty. Saturday I'm heading down to Stafford for the speedway crits and since I'm making the trip I decided 80 laps wouldn't kill me. 4/5 race is first and 4's is later. I have some ideas on how to approach both, but I'll keep that a secret until I see if it works. Weekend after is Pats Peak which should be interesting. I have done absolutely nothing specific to get ready for a 6 hour off-road race so we'll see if natural talent and conditioning get me through... Come to think of it if that's my plan, I might as well stay home. It'll be a fun day anyways as I think the club has at least 4 going. If you're going to suffer, might as well suffer with friends. Anywho... like I said, not a whole lot going on so I'll just get back to eating which is what I seem to do more than riding these days...

Daddy, Sam called me Poopie

My desired response was "I'm going to call you much worse if you don't get your arse back in bed", but my actual response was "Ignore him and go to sleep". Such is about the excitement I get these days. My dearest lovely wife is currently strolling down a street somewhere in Key West with a fruity adult beverage in her hand. By tomorrow night she'll be doing the same in Cozumel Mexico. By Monday night when she returns I may be waiting at the airport with the kids and my own ticket to Vegas. We're hanging in there though... no trips to the hospital or things to repair in the house. I think we're even all wearing clean socks today. Did I mention I'm doing the Pats Peak 6 hour? Yes, there's a connection.

I must be crazy

There... you happy now?

Sterling Road Race Report

This is so weird I had to share

I have finals this week so I'm in grad school hell. Because of this my lovely wife agreed to bring all three boys to the oldest's baseball practice so I could get a jump on some homework. So I biked home (in shorts and short sleeves which was weird enough), came home to a quiet house, took a shower without being interrupted, and now I'm sitting in a silent house with all the windows open, listening to the birds and doing homework. THIS NEVER HAPPENS!!! Fortunately the baby next door is crying so at least I feel a little more normal.

Oh and my ride home rocked. I was putting in relentless attacks on the hills against the invisible guy sucking my wheel. He never had a chance...

Blatant Plug for the Sponsors

Here's just another reason why I think we're sponsored by a super LBS:

I recently bought a Surly Crosscheck for commuting to work. For $850, you just can't go wrong. Well, maybe you can a little. After maybe 4 or 5 round trips to work I found that the rear wheel was way out of true. I found that one spoke had just come completely loose. It's a very basic no-name wheel build so not a huge shock, but a nuisance anyways. I dropped it off at Landrys, they fixed it up quick, no charge. Well I rode it one more round trip to work and find that it's out again (another loose spoke). I called them up and was told to swing by with it whenever I could. Drove by there today, they grabbed a wrench, and changed my cassette over to a Ksyrium SL they had in the shop... here, use this wheel that's 5 times nicer than yours until we get this thing fixed up properly. Uh, ok.

And my wife isn't going to let me ride with the guys anymore... they were trying to convince me this morning that I need a 29'er. The problem is I WANT a 29'er, but have been convincing myself I don't NEED one. The mere conversation this morning is forcing me to remind myself over and over I don't need one...

I don't get it...

So despite a reasonable amount of experience in a few years and effectively no success to speak of in that time period, I clearly still don't get this whole road racing thing. There are a number of things that I just can't seem to get my head around:

1. The strongest and best trained rider has very little guarantee of winning. Maybe if you're Marky Mark you do, but I'm not, and neither are you.

2. You're at the liberty of the other 99 bozos in the race (completely accepting that I'm a bozo too). Past history tells me that the clowns are out to get me.

3. Everyone is just too freaking high strung. You so much as brush a guy's hand and it's like "Oh my God you touched me... hold your line asshole... I must swerve... ah a crash... OH THE HUMANITY!" Relax guys... ride rollers for a while, you'll learn how not to over-react. Better yet, have kids... you'll learn that overreacting makes things worse and just wastes your energy.

4. The amateur peloton is like the high school prom... look my bike is prettier than yours and I have the wheels you can't get. Kudos to the guy in Sunday's race who was riding a bike that was obviously not that new and not very shiny. And he was riding the crap out of that bad boy too.

5. The line between a good move and a bad move is so subtle and unpredictable. Maybe it's because I don't know enough or because everyone else doesn't either so we all just act like we know what we're doing.

6. There's too much thinking involved. I do this stuff to relax and not think. The simple fact that I've been thinking about yesterday's race enough that I bothered to write this proves that I'm not able to turn my brain off. Again, maybe it becomes easier/more relaxing when you know more and/or suck less.

7. My instinct is somewhere else. I'm more of a fastball throwing closer... I'm going to give you all I've got and you just try and beat me. Never was real good at strategy. I won most races in high school and college by just taking off and running away from everyone. Sit and kick... no thank you.

Anywho... ironic that Solo posted a comment about sucking others into the roadie scene. I think someone's going to have to try and keep me. Then again, it could just be the beer talking...

Palmer Report (or something)

If I had somehow managed to bring home the huge first W at Palmer yesterday you all would have gotten the gory blow-by-blow that would have dwarfed anything G would normally put up (ok, almost anything), but I'll spoil the ending and say I did not. Let's instead go with the Palmer edition of Good-Bad:

Bad: It started raining while I was out on my recon/warmup ride
Good: That was the end of the rain and the race weather was quite comfy (with long sleeves and knee warmers)

Good: I was moving forwards while most were moving backwards on the uphill sprint
Bad: I had a LONG way to go forwards because I was way far back coming around the last corner

Very bad: There's a lot of cat 4's out there who need some bandages and new wheels/bars/derailleurs today
Very good: I'm not one of them (for a change)

Almost Pro: We nailed back the break of the day with 800m to go
I feel cool: I feel like I definitely did my part to help bring it back
We still suck: Cat 4's apparently still can't sprint in a straight line (that much hasn't changed since last year)

Bad: There was a mini incident maybe 10 miles in due to general inattention and nonsense
Worse: There was a much bigger incident that took out maybe 6-10 guys (who can tell with that much flying carbon and aluminum) about 5 miles later.
Worser: There was carnage right in the middle of the road during the sprint
Worserer: To polish it off 2 or 3 more guys got together and went flying in the aftermath of the first mess
Awesome: The gods were smiling on me for a change and I was positioned away from said carnage

I get to try my luck again at Sterling for sure. Not sure if I'll get out again before then. Might try to sneak out west for some off-road fun on Sunday.

Executive decision

I got home from class at 8 p.m. I was all pumped on the ride home to come home and head right out for a run... until the second I pulled in the driveway. I have no idea what flipped the switch, but it was gone. And at 8 p.m. when you haven't had dinner, you're exhausted, and you have s-loads of housework and homework to do, once it's gone, it's not coming back. I convinced myself that there was no fitness benefit to going out for a 3 mile run tonight anyways... some may call it rationalizing... I'm going to go with smart training decision. So rather than run I'm waiting for some tilapia to cook. Food over low-return activity that I don't have time for is a no brainer.

Confidence Builder

I rode to work today. I rode the fully pimped fast bike because my other bikes are in all sorts of disarray. The way in I averaged just a bit under 20 and didn't feel super for the first half of it. The way home I averaged 21.5. The ride home is a net positive elevation gain... and I was wearing a backpack with my work clothes in it... and I was dodging traffic... and pedestrians... and annoying little dogs on those frickin extenda-leash things. I had a killer ride just before Sturbridge last year and we know how that turned out so let's try to not relive that.

Oh, and the world is in balance in case you were wondering...
This morning, a friend of mine was riding to work on a not very busy street with plenty of room for him and the few cars. Two idiots in a crappy old Crown Vic drove up next to him and the passenger yelled out "Get a car."

Tonight, I was going through Watertown and there was a line of cars at a light that turned green. I was going up the side of the line (in a bike lane) and the guy just in front of me throws on his blinker to turn right. I had visions of bad things when suddenly he looked in the side mirror, saw me, and stopped to intentionally NOT cut me off. I very cheerfully thanked him through his open window and had faith in drivers again for a second... then I remembered that a friend's wife got tagged while riding this morning. She'll be ok, but is a little banged up. Keep your heads up kids...

A different kind of pain

While much of the NE biking world was torturing themselves at BKR today, I saved myself that pain and instead got a new tattoo. That's #5. They're addictive... I can't possibly try to explain it. I'll post pictures once it heals and looks more awesome than it already does.

Need sleep... maybe I'll dream about what kind of ride I want to do tomorrow.

Off Day

Today was an off day (from athletics at least). I rode 187 from Sunday to Saturday last week. Between Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday of this week I did 150. I also did about a 3.5 mile run Monday. I needed an off day. Back at the commuting gig tomorrow. Friday may be another run. Weekend is up in the air. Next week will be easy-ish in prep for Palmer.

So in the rarely covered work topic here... do you work with that person who's the intimidator (thinks they can get things done just by intimidating people and throwing their weight around, a.k.a. the "don't you know who I am?" guy)? How about loophole guy... tries to find away around everything? I work with several of both, but one in particular IS both at the same time. He's a real treat. He visited me 2 minutes before I had to walk out for school today. Now the beauty is that I've only dealt with him twice so there's very little history to go on, I don't give an eff who he thinks he is, and I'm not easily intimidated. I know it drives him nuts to have to deal with me. I can only hope it drove him as nuts as he was making me. If I'm lucky, I'll get to drive him nuts again tomorrow.

Need sleep...

Math is cool

Especially when that math tells you that you rode 187 miles this week. 14 off-road Sunday (7 as fast as I could), 113 commuting, 60 today. Threw a 5k run in there for an added bonus. Looks like Wells tomorrow... should be interesting.

There you go CCC... even more to read.

Make up your damn mind

I had a very schizophrenic week... First I didn't think I'd be racing. Then I was trying to convince people to go to Turtle Pond. Then I was iffy about Turtle Pond because the weather looked sucky. Then I was re-looking at all the races this weekend. Then my wife suggested I go to Wells. Then I thought I decided I would go to Hop Brook tomorrow. Then I tried to get home in time Thursday to pre-reg for Hop Brook, but got home late, so I figured I'd just pay the extra 5 bucks. Then tonight I was 5 minutes away from packing the car for tomorrow and rechecked the directions. I discovered that Hop Brook Dam is 115 miles from here. Then I reconsidered. Now I'm not going to Hop Brook. As of now I'm riding with the team tomorrow and then racing Wells Sunday. That is until whatever happens next...

Good and Bad

I felt good and I dropped Paul which made me feel bad that I dropped Paul... Ah well, he got dropped close to home :) I don't even have a link to the aforementioned Paul. Here's the closest I have... you'll have to settle for Mrs. Paul. So nice to ride in the warm weather. I didn't even mind the headwind (much).

Thursdays are typically my only night off of the week... I have class Monday and Wednesday which means I have homework Sunday through Tuesday. Wednesday is class, Thursday is nothing, Friday starts the weekend. So I try to cram everything into Thursday. Oh wait... that's right... I should be cramming.

Friday yet?

Maybe wishing for Friday isn't such a good idea right now since it's so damn nice out and I think Friday will be less so. Rode in today for the second time this week and didn't feel so awful this morning despite going for a spirited 5k run last night at around 8:15 and then hopping on the bike this morning at 5:45. It was bearably cool with just a double short-sleeve and arm warmers, but I get to leave all kinds of stuff here for the shorts and short sleeves ride home (woo hoo!). I couldn't buy a freaking green light this morning so lets hope for better luck.

I'm 95% sure I'm headed to way the eff out CT Saturday for the Root 66 mudfest. I was going to do Turle Pond, but 30's and wet at the start didn't sound so appealing. Chris Hinds will be a swim meet so that didn't sound fun either. Lets hope I got all the mud out of the gears from last weekend... I should probably check that before Saturday a.m.

I'm hoping this ride home wakes me up... sooooooooo sleepy.

KOB

This will be the short version of the KOB race report since 1) I should be working, 2) I already typed the long race report for the team so my fingers are tired, 3) I'm sleepy.

Overally a wicked fun day. Me and my bike came home functional and covered in mud so how bad could it have been. My goal was sub 40 minutes. I really strolled through a warmup ride of the whole course in 45 so I figured that was do-able. I know I told G that I'd upgrade to sport if I beat him and I could argue either way that I have to now. On one hand, he obviously left out his post about the secret training camp he attended and he smoked his time from last year by like 2 minutes (if I read the results scribbles correctly). On the other hand, I did come in at almost dead even with his time from last year. Who knows... I have to decide if I should keep sandbagging or jump up and take a beating from those who know how to ride a mountain bike.

The goods and bads:
Bad - The guy 30 seconds behind me was already in sight in the first technical section about 5 minutes in.
Good - I never let him go and ultimately finished maybe 10 seconds in front of him
Better - I think I passed 4 of the 5 guys who started ahead of me

Awesome - I somehow had a revelation and figured out my cross remounts yesterday. Many noticed last season that I had this awful clumsy stutter step thing going.
Not so awesome - I had to practice it way too many times since I sucked over some of the tricky stuff

Good - I took home a new Hutchinson tubeless tire as a prize
Less good - I just bought new tires last week
Still good - My new tires kick ass.

Ok... I'm over my goofing off quota for now. More later.

Planning

When you're married with kids and in grad school, you tend to plan things well in advance and put them on the calendar on the wall at home which makes them almost unchangeable. If you do not, there's a risk that these plans get trumped by something. Truth be told, even when they're written down, they could get trumped by something, especially when they are non-required activities like racing. Now the hardcore types will argue that I just committed blaspehmy by calling racing non-required, but the family guys will get it. In order to minimize my chances of getting trumped, I'm trying to put together a race schedule or something that looks like it. In short, it's hard. I think what's going to happen is that I'm going to put as few stakes in the ground as possible, but have a lengthy B list which will get used whenever the opportunity presents itself. As part of this plan, I've determined there's a non-zero chance I may go against everything I've said and do that big stage race thingy that's all the rage around here in July. We shall see...

And in non-bike racing notes (proud dad alert)... my kids are brilliant. Last night was this fair that the elementary school puts on to display their work. Each grade level covers some theme and the kids do a number of projects on that theme. I discovered that my first grader can write, read, and understand words like 'metamorphosis' and 'chrysalis' (yes, I had to check my own spelling on those) and my kindergartener can write complete sentences with near perfect spelling with no assistance (I knew about this one, but I got to see it displayed). At least I know the tuition payments are being put to good use :) Now if the two of them could just keep themselves out of trouble too... boys have a knack for creating ways to get in trouble.

April... first?

I was all ready at lunch time today to join in the web-wide April foolery, but I couldn't go through with what I thought of. I was going to post that all my bikes were for sale. I was going to dig up the old Xray of my busted hand and concoct some story about getting doored on the way to work or something and how I was giving up and getting out of the game. Then it occurred to me that I still had to ride home and I didn't need that sort of bad karma. Karma thanked me and I was rewarded with a killah ride home despite the wind. Wasn't all that super fast (partially due to the wind), but I just felt like the whole time I was able to put down some consistent power. My legs never really quit or screamed at me so things were good. The youngins tell me good is what we're after so I'll take it. Oh, and road crud on a wet day blows. My bike didn't even want to shift by about half way home. Time to do some cleaning.

Oh, and I scored some Sox tix for Patriots Day today. They're only bleachers, but the boys are thrilled. I always take that day off for the marathon anyways so now we'll just hopefully catch the finish instead of the middle.

Finally

After way more grief than it should have been, I have an assembled road bike. Got fitted today and got in just over an hour 40 tonight. It's a pretty big adjustment from the cross bike so I have to get some more miles in to know if it needs adjusted. Yes, there's a lot of spacers. It's hard to tell from the pictures, but most of them are pink. Throwin a little support to the ladies via Chris King

Two milestones

1. I rode in today for the first time in '08
2. This is post #200!

And yes, despite what G may try to claim, it was frickin cold this morning. 24 when I left town. I warmed up nice, but sort of wished I had a neck gaiter or high collar or something. Just went with the double-jersey and base since the jacket is always too much when coupled with the backpack. I was surprised to also find out that I only missed last year's start by 2 days. I figured I was off by a lot more considering daylight savings is a couple weeks old now, but apparently not. We'll see if I make it in on 2 again this week.

Oh, and I apologize 200 times for making you read my babble. I'll apologize 200 more in a year or two :)

I just want to race bikes

There are times I regret getting really into biking. My wife jokes that in running it's just shoes and that's simple... days like today she's right. I was going to go into a big effing tirade, but I've been making her suffer through that all afternoon. Suffice it to say that my road bike is still in pieces and is now in the trunk of my car instead of at the shop. The fork is there too. It has no crown race. I'll stop there or I will rant. Before I even got to this bit of fun I was on my ride this morning and I flatted... when running late... twice. I traveled what would have been the final several miles home in a car. Argh. And I can't even hate my bikes and go to the shop and buy a new one... Hey Landry's guy... what you got sitting around in a 67cm frame? Ok, now I'm ranting.

But the packy near home now has Dale's Pale Ale. So there is a silver lining... or silver lined can as it may be.

Blatant Advertising

My dear children (2 at least so far) attend St. Michael's School in Hudson which is trying to do what every other small private/catholic school does... raise money to keep the lights on. Now if you're reading this there's a good chance that you are either a) family or close friend, or b) a bike racer. If it's a, then guilt can be very powerful. If it's b, then you either have well above average discretionary income or are a risk taker (or both). So what's this latest fundraiser you ask? It's one of those good old high price, high odds raffles. $100 a ticket, max of 2500 tickets. First prize is $50k. Second prize is a car or $10k. Prizes down to 20th. C'mon, think of how many 7 pound bikes you can buy with $50k (ok, maybe it's only 2). And how many races do you go to where you get paid for 20th? Besides, it's for the children. Pony up folks... otherwise when I win I'm not sharing :)

Lost days

I hate getting sick. And it's less because getting sick just really blows and more that I lose all or part of a day to do anything productive when I get sick. I rarely get sick. When I get sick enough to say I am, I'm totally down for the count. Today was one of those days. I didn't sleep well and didn't feel right when I woke up. The first couple hours I was up I kept feeling progressively worse. Finally I hit rock bottom and had to go back to bed at like 10 this morning. I think I took 3 different 2 hour "naps" today. I effectively did nothing. I'm 1) too busy, and 2) too type-A to do nothing for a whole day. Crap. I feel kinda better and in the morning I'm going to decide if it's better enough to go riding. There's lot of other stuff that didn't get done today either so I may have to draw straws on what I catch up on. For starters I'd like to feel well enough to eat something. I went today with one sip of coffee, half a plain bagel with butter, and 2 Ritz. Ah well... I'll start over tomorrow and hope for better.

PSA

Courtesy of CTodd. Pay attention out there folks.

Stick a fork in it...

I was going to go with the title of Fork Me, but I figured that was pushing the limits of family reading (and yes, I know there are family members out there... hi guys). So the local master of steel came through for me and I picked this up tonight. Yes, that's a 500mm steerer. Try finding that off the shelf. The real comedy will be how much (little) I cut off of it for the install...

Well that was fun

Got out early today to hit a 4 p.m. appt which took about 15 minutes. Got home and dressed as quickly as possible and it was out the door, two wheel style. It was sunny, bordering on comfortable, and a lot of roads were dry... it was the first outdoor day of the year for the road bike. With all due respect to my beloved cross bike, that thing is so effin fast! I literally have not done an outdoor ride on the road bike since probably August or September. Even so far this later winter it's been 42x12/26 for everything and on a pretty heavy bike. Contrast that to something probably 5 pounds lighter with 53x12/25 with shiny new 180 cranks. I haven't turned a 53xanything except on the trainer in a long time... I didn't put it away today. I'm still computer-less so I just know it felt fast... real damn fast. Maybe it was just relative to the cross bike, but I have a general sense of what gear gives you what and it was pretty damn fast. Fast is good... and good is what we're after. In my little world of biking, today was good.

And now let more snow begin... dammit... will it just be spring already...

License to Ill

Sorry folks, I'll admit I'm a closet Beastie Boys fan so I had to use that title... My license came today so now I'm officially registered to go out and kick some butt or have mine kicked as the case may be. And what better way to celebrate the arrival of said license by going out for the ever popular reservoir loop after work. To make up for yesterday, I got up way too early and was at my desk by about 6:15. I bugged out at 2:45 so I could get home to meet up with some of the guys around 4. Well a comical series of mishaps had 2 of them hooking up and me evidently chasing them on the whole loop around, but never getting close enough to see them. I'm just saying they got 10 or 15 minutes and the massive solo bridge wasn't in the cards today :) I know they had at least 5 minutes so we'll go with that. The loop is crazy hilly and I felt pretty good for March, solo, on a windy day, on a nearly 30 pound bike (cx bike with fenders, lights, beefy wheels, etc). That loop was a nice measure for me last year just before Sturbridge so let's see how the next month and a half goes. Now I'm sleepy, and hungry, and unmotivated... I may just finish my beer and go to bed.

Here's hoping the weather cooperates enough for both days this weekend.

Oh, and Happy 80th to my wife's Gram. Nice party/lunch in the works for tomorrow so that should be fun.

Sonsabitches

Overslept. Lost my time to go to the gym today. Wife has soccer tonight so I'm on monkey herding duty. Dammit.

Oh, and all the runoff from the rain and snow melt was frozen this morning to the point that tomorrow's ride in is in question. Dammit.

I'm training... sort of

Unfortunately I'm only sort of training and I'm more than sort of feeling it. My last several days:

Thursday: Lifted
Friday: Nada unless you count piggybacking a 55 pound kid from the Garden to the Gov't Center garage
Saturday: 90 minutes on the trainer with some 2 or 3 minute interval-type things
Sunday: 2 hours, primarily saddle time, but a couple of short spirited bursts
Monday: Ran 30 minutes
Today: Spin bike - warmup, 6 sets of 2 minute standing climb w/really high resistance, sprint the last 5-7 seconds, 1 minute seated with resistance lowered.

Sunday felt great... probably the best I have outdoors this calendar year. Tomorrow probably has to be an off day due to class. Thursday I'll lift again, Friday looks like it has strong potential to kick off the bike commuting season. I'm signed up for Palmer and there's a more than slight chance I'll do Wells or something prior to that. I suppose I should have noticed that Palmer is 60 frickin miles before I signed up so merrily, but oh well. Sturbridge last year was 49 and the first 48.75 felt great... we won't revisit the rest again.

More homework... why do I do this again?

Insert Clever Title Here

For some reason I'm all empty in the clever title dept tonight so we'll go with audience participation... just imagine your own either before or after reading. Anywho... so what's up? With me it's basically way too much of everything (except sleep) basically all the time. Too much work, too much stress, too much eating, too many places to go, too many dumbasses... etc, etc. I really can sort of see the end of the tunnel with the work chaos so let's hope there's not a crew down the far end still extending the damn thing. Then again, someone accomplishing something might not be a bad thing.

Training is going well in some ways and not so well in others. The past month or so I've gotten an acceptable amount of riding in on the weekends and have gone to the gym more than I have not during the week. Gym days are really mixed and are kind of a coin toss depending on how packed it is, mood, etc. One thing I have been doing is lifting at least once a week since early January so I'm hoping that pays dividends. And no, it's not an ounce of upper body lifting... you think I'd ruin this skinny white guy physique? I am seeing noticeable gains in the weight I'm using so that must count for something. We'll see how it translates as I start to add more miles. I haven't run for shit since my blister incident a couple weeks back so I need to do some of that. I am starting to weather watch for when commuter season begins and the long-long range looks promising for late next week. Mondays and Wednesdays are out until May when school ends (not riding in to work at 6 a.m. and home from school at 7:30 p.m.), but I'm going to shoot for the Tuesday/Thursday or Tuesday/Friday routine. Other than GG I'm not registered for any races yet, but I really need to buy my license (slacker) and sign up for Palmer and then Burlingame when it opens. Tufts is still a question mark and who knows if there'll even be a USCF race this year since they seem to keep cutting back.

So last weekend I had probably the weirdest virus/bug thingy ever. Wednesday night I just sort of felt like whatever I ate didn't sit well and was going to make a hasty exit. Thursday I woke up and I was just beat. All day Thursday at work I was just the walking useless. I didn't feel really feverish or queasy, but my head was just somewhere else. Thursday night I was in bed at 8:30... I average about 10:30 so this was unprecedented. I also wasn't hungry at all but I ate a little because I knew I should. Friday I felt more with it, but still had zero appetite. Either Thursday or Friday night dinner was an english muffin and I was stuffed. Saturday I was starting to come around, but by now we had a new problem. To spare people unpleasant details, I was just having some digestive issues in the form of none happening. It felt like every crumb I had eaten had formed this ball in my gut and wasn't going anywhere. Saturday night I ate 4 bites of a very nice dinner my wife made and I couldn't put down any more. Friday I had gone to bed at 9 and Saturday I think it was 8:30 or 9 again. Sunday morning I woke up and I could feel that I was coming around and finally my stomach started to sort itself out. By lunch time, I had an appetite back and downed a foot long Subway sandwich in about 30 seconds. It probably took until Tuesday until I really felt normal again. The whole thing was just weird... just 3 days of extreme exhaustion, no appetite, and some weird stomach malfunction. From stories I'm hearing from others, I got off well compared to the flu that's making the rounds. Maybe 7 years of being infected with every strain of everything from the rugrats has made me immune. Who's laying the line on how long till I start puking after making that comment?

Laundry calls as does bed. Maybe I'll catch a break and be able to check in sooner than a week or two.

The rare post

Well sadly, these things are becoming rare lately, but I finally have a few minutes so I wanted to say hi again and empty a little corner of my brain in the blogosphere. Mayhem and chaos still reign at home, but I'm getting everything done that I need to (including some training) so I think I'm winning the battle. It was a pretty good weekend for riding even though mid week last week sucked and then I almost ruined things for myself Friday. I knew I was finally going to have some time at work so I had planned to run "long" 6 or 7 at lunch. I headed out and after the first 5 or 10 minutes I could tell my right heel was going to give me issues. I have strange feet and I always end up with this spot in the padding on the heel cup in my running shoes that wears out. It's not a big deal because it somehow never causes problems and around the time the hole gets big, the shoes are dead anyways. Well I've been wearing new insoles to help support my arches and take some of the strain off my right shin and they raised my foot up in the shoe a good bit and thus just at the top of the developing hole in the heel. That coupled with wearing a crappy pair of socks meant that I could just tell a blister was setting in. Long story short, I had to cut the run to 30 minutes and I still ended up with a large and painful blood blister in the back of my right heel. Fortunately, there's no sliding of my heels in my cycling shoes at all so I still got in an hour on the rollers yesterday and then got out for about 2:45 today. My goal was 3 so I rode from home to the 2 hour team ride and then peeled off to come home at the end. I have to say that the last few miles weren't exactly easy especially into the wind so I was fine being 15 minutes short. I did let myself get roped into a mini-throwdown with another guy on the hills, but he had me beat more than half the time and we weren't going all that hard especially relative to the abuse we'll all give each other on that loop in a few months. The joys of riding with the team.

Just random other stuff going on... finally got my son's tilted skate issue sorted out thanks to this master skate doctor up in Wilmington. He's had a thing where he can't get on the inside edge of his right skate because his foot wants to just tilt out. Turns out his (and my... it's genetic) right foot is naturally turned outwards relative to the centerline of his knee-leg so it wants to go that way when he gets on 2mm of steel on ice. A visit to a podiatrist and a subsequent visit to the skate guy and they made some tweaks that have him up on center. It's actually pretty amazing to see how little they modified the skate and what a dramatic effect it had on him. It was also kinda weird to discover something about myself that I never knew and it sheds all new light on why it's my right shin that acts up first any time I have a problem. Funny how I get this far after how many thousands of miles of running and never knew it.

Ok, time for bed. Day off tomorrow so we're taking the kids to the New England Aquarium. Should be a good time.

Where the hell did Rich go?

Hi there folks (both of you). Yes, I've sort of fallen off the planet lately. The primary reason is that the work beatdown has reached UFC proportions lately and grad school certainly isn't helping. I'm pretty motivated on the school thing right now most because I can clearly see the end. This semester isn't exactly easy, but it could be worse. I had a couple good weeks of training going including riding both days last weekend (1 hour Saturday, 2+ Sunday) and then this week sucked ass. I think I went to the gym once, but I redeemed myself by getting out for an hour today. I had planned to set up the rollers, but then I stepped outside for something, realized it was pretty nice and the weather.com radar was showing that I had at least an hour. As it turns out, I couldn't have planned it better... as I was coming over the last rise around the corner, I felt just a few flakes hit my face and then by the time I was in the garage it had really started. Good luck for a change I guess.

I'll probably be putting some pictures up on the other blog sometime soon of the current disorder of the house. We got the downstairs mostly all set so now the chaos upstairs is beginning. The painter comes in a week or so and then we can get more of the next round of furniture shuffling done. All of this happens slowly these days, but we're getting there.

OK, gotta get ready... Mom volunteered to watch the boys tonight so who are we to argue...