Happy Birthday, Blog

 

Finally had a few minutes to sit down and update the good old blog, and realized it's birthday had come and gone.  As a present, I'll make sure to actually update a few times this month rather than once. :)

Where to start, well... my wife got a gorgeous new Track Bike that the weather gods have not allowed her to race on Friday yet.  Hopefully tomorrow will fix that.

PIR on Monday nights in the 1/2/3's have turned into a total clusterfuck of late and I have better things to do than be taken out by a sketchy-ass rider who isn't paying attention.  Yes, I'm talking to the guy who put my teammate into the fucking concrete wall on the last lap of the 6/22 race.  Thanks for not bothering to see if we were okay after!  Ass.   I DNF'd my last two races (one mechanical, the other the crash) so I figure its time to step back and relax and do something safer.  ShortTrack maybe? :p

Speaking of mechanicals, huge thank you goes out to Mark Duff from VeloForma who light a knight in tight spandex came to the rescue and assisted with the fix of my front derailleur hanger on the VeloVie.

We've been cleaning out our garage, and recently sold Traci's old road bike to a good friend of ours, its her first "big girl bike" (her words) and she's absolutely in love with it. 

We also recently parted ways with my 350z, which literally had been gathering dust over the past 2 years.  (1700miles put on the car since Oct 07.. 2400miles put on my new VeloVie since March 1st of this year.)  Ironically we owned the car for *exactly* 6 years, with the purchase and sale date being 6/20.  With the TT bike being demo'd by Burke (dude, you back from the islands yet?) The garage looks spacious even with the Mini in it.  Hmmmm we could possible fill it with...

A Tandem!  Well, at least a borrowed one.  Last Saturday Traci and I celebrated our 11th Wedding Anniversary.  I was on the tail end of a rest week and I wanted to ride with her, so I borrowed a tandem from our good friends Dean and Barb and we rode with the 21's on the Saturday ride.  I'm happy to report we are still married, and I have both my kidneys intact.

In non-biking related news, the 2009 edition of Bridgetown's "Stumptown Tart" will be released shortly.  Last year this beer (a Marionberry infused Belgian) was my favorite beer of the summer.  This year they went with a Yamhill sour cherry rather than Marionberries.   I look forward to seeing it in the market soon.  I'm also happy its just about the end of allergy season.  After previously posting this season wasn't to bad, Murphy drop-kicked my sinus multiple times over the past few weeks.

Stay tuned for some exciting news about the upcoming months!  I'll give you one hint.  Cross.

One and done...

 

For those in the cycling community, the TTT stands for "Team Time Trial", an event where a group of riders work as a team to through a set course as fast as possible.

For those in the cycling community who have actually done a TTT, I put forth that the definition should be known as "Team Torture Testing", where you push yourself as hard as you can without shelling your teammates, knowing that they will be doing the same to you in a matter of moments.

My team for this endeavor were Bigwood, King, and BRat.  Basically PV Fast Twitch.  Our goals were to finish together, ride smoothly as possible, and have the fastest final K of all teams (a joke).. and if possible have fun.

We had practiced a number of times as a group and got a good feel for each others riding style, and cornering abilities and are roughly the same strength so we felt we had a good chance of accomplishing what we set out for.

The day started at Longbottom's to load up the caravan, and relive stories of my attempt to kill the entire team on Saturday by spooking a cat that was sitting on the side of the road.  We hit the road with a single stop in Albany for traditional pre-race cheeseburgers from McDonalds (seriously, we got cheeseburgers.  It's sprinter food.)

We arrived at the Allergy Factory staging area got setup and started our warm ups a bit late.  Our start time was 1 minute behind the real PV TT team, so with 8 people watching the clock we managed to get to the start line in time.  My start was a humorous showing of "how not to clip into your pedal" which was unfortunately captured on film by Mary-Kay Babcock.

aaugh n00b!

After we got settled in, we started our motoring.  I was slotted in behind BRat, which really started to hurt by Lap 3 when he was making monsterish pulls.  Bob trailed behind me.  I felt good on Lap 1.. 2 things started to hurt.  3 I questioned my sanity. Lap 4 we were all getting tired and our bike handling started to suffer.

I was probably the weakest rider of the group, but I can ride corners very well, so tried to time my pulls so I could pilot the team through one of the many corners that broke up the course then peel off.  By the 4th lap, patterns started emerging in our riding styles.  I found myself at the front in specific locations on almost every lap.  Unfortunately that meant I got dumped off in the head wind coming back all the time!

We came in as a group, just a bit spaced a part.  My hamstrings pretty much seized up about 200m after the finish line and I was barely able to get back to the finish line let alone ride a cool down with the team.  My skin suit was crusted with salt.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon laughing with the other PV folks who were down there and trying not to cramp up in the increasing heat.  The journey home had us swing through Carl Jr's, which Bob swears is the official sprinter recovery food, and was punctuated with sneezes, groans of soreness and lots of laughter.

It was a sadistic sort of fun, and a good way to finish my career in the world of Time Trialing. (Yes.. I'm done with TT's.  Anyone want a bike?)

"What if?"

 

Its Monday evening.  Thirty minutes earlier we completed a 4 day, 6000 mile round trip from Portland to Seattle to Miami and back where we took part in the wonderful wedding of our best friend.

Stress of travel piled on top of the chaos of the weekend, lack of sleep, and not being able to catch up with our good friends regardless of the fact that we were sitting next to each other turned into a roller coast of emotions that finally got to me when I no longer had something to do.

I stood in the middle of our family room holding on to my wife, and there were tears streaming down my face.

I can't pinpoint the last time this happened.  It may have been when I crumpled to the ground in pain when I tore my left ACL in '03.  It might have been in '98 when an imbecile of a nurse dropped my just surgically repaired right leg off of the hospital bed.  Tears of frustration and sorrow are something I don't shed often, and I don't know why.

I tend not to get too introspective.  Could be because I'm content with what I have and where I am?   Maybe because I'm resistant to change?  It could be because I'm far more extroverted than introverted or normally think about how my actions impact others rather than myself.

Five years ago I had a pretty eye-opening conversation with Traci on our drive back from L.A. during the last leg of our sabbatical.  A couple of good question were asked and ideas were presented that for a number of reasons I didn't decide to pursue.  I've been asking "what if?" for a while.  I may have been given a second chance this weekend, and I won't let it pass this time.

TACGBODAS!

 

Cough. Sniffle. Sneeze.

No, you haven't contracted swine flu, it's allergy season!  So far I've been pretty lucky with allergies this year, although the major grass pollen season hasn't hit full bore just yet.  A lot of folks however are suffering from the increased tree pollen that is currently in the air.

Since I'm heading out of town for the next 5 days and won't be doing any riding, I figure now is a great time to entertain my 2 loyal readers with some re-posted content!  So back by no ones request, I re-present for your reading pleasure, TACGBODAS or "The Aggregate Cyclist's Guide to Being Outside During Allergy Season".

Busy weekend to start a busy week!

 

I got a rare chance to start my weekend early and took Friday off.  Normally with the development schedule my team has Friday mornings are packed with a bunch of meetings and the afternoons are often spent catching up on stuff that happened in the morning...

Friday I got the chance to sleep a bit later than normal, kit up and ride to breakfast over at Longbottoms.  I met up with the usual Friday morning group and got a good 2+ hour ride in that was a bit harder than I wanted to go, but still fun.   After a few errands, Traci and I headed over to Alpenrose for the first Fast Twitch Friday of 2009.  I'm a bit bummed that I wasn't ready for it as they were doing flying 200's, but I did get to cheer on my teammates Einar, Malcolm, and Bob along with capture Traci's first ever race at Alpenrose on video!

Saturday morning was picture perfect when we rolled out of the house for the club ride.  A HUGE crowd turned out for the loop south to Holly Hill which the team ended up climbing twice for grins.  I made sure to pace myself on the long climb since I know I'm never going to be a pure climber.  The patience paid off later on when I had plenty in the tank for the smaller sprinter climbs that I was able to hit hard.  Was a great day and a great route with an awesome group of folks.  I capped it off with some steak and beer's with our good friends.

Sunday we went to the zoo in the morning, then did a nice 2.5 hour recovery ride.  (Was funny that while at the zoo my legs and lower back really hurt from walking around on the concrete, but once I got on the bike I was fine.  Pretty fascinating how your body adapts to different things.)  Spent the rest of the afternoon and evening lounging at our friends house celebrating a birthday.  I was super tired most of the afternoon and only started waking up around 9pm.  Ah well!

Today I'll spend watching the weather reports and radar map.  Planing on jumping into the 1/2/3 masters race tonight while Traci does the women's development racing class.  The rest of the week is up in the air until Thursday when we leave for Seattle to fly to Miami for a wedding this coming weekend.  I'll be off the bike for probably 5 days, which is the longest period of no-riding since my surgery.  Fun times!

Monday morning update

 

Hello blog.  Had a crazy week at work last week, and it will continue to be this way for a couple weeks rolling into a software release for work and a wedding on the East coast in a few weekends. Sorry for neglecting you, but realize training has suffered a bit as well.  Life pops up, ya know?  It's probably good that it happened as we really needed to get the house cleaned up. (What are these boxes from? Christmas?!?  How much laundry do we have to do?)

So, our house is cleaned up now.  (The downstairs mess migrated upstairs.. I guess that's clean?)  Clean enough for company!  We had an awesome time with our closest friends yesterday, including an appearance by the Crazy Prospector Dance Team.

The "Monster Cookie Beatdown part Tres", took place last Sunday (4/2) and was crazy hard ride.  11 PV race team folks along with about 40 club members descended on the state capital grounds for this annual ride put on by the Salem Bike Club.  The team left at 9am and rolled back into the finish around 12:40 with a quick stop in Champeog State Park at the half way point.  The Black and Blue Pain Train rolled through the 63miles at roughly at 23mph average and called out "on your left" roughly 2145 times.  Next year we think we might bring out the Cookie Wagon to run lead on the train.  I will also not start the ride hung over.

April PIR wrapped up this past week, with B-Rat taking a very hard fought April series that unfortunately went sour in the final moments.  A wreck in the final sprint took out Jeff Harwood from Ironclad along with Jeff B from PV and a couple other folks.  Jeff Harwood was the leader on the road at the time of the crash and was riding really strong.  Hope you are healing quick!  I think I took 3rd overall for April.  Not too shabby for only racing 3 races. This will probably be the last 3/4 race I do on Tuesdays for a bit, and just in time it seems.  Apparently there was a second wreck in my race when someone's pannier rack hooked another riders handlebars and dragged them down.  I mean seriously?  I'm all for folks commuting out to PIR via bike and the fenders don't cause issues, but a pannier rack sticks out well beyond the arc of your wheel and just shouldn't be out there in the peloton.  

In another "heal up quick" note, PV's own "Kromonster" suffered a compound clavicle, AC separation, and a pair of broken ribs along with a busted bike after saying hello to the side of a SUV.  Alex unfortunately overcooking a corner on Newberry earlier this week.  Anyone who's been down Newberry probably knows the corner being referred to.  Fortunately Alex was able to make it to the First Friday party the next day.  He's a machine.

My own bionic knee is feeling much better after a regimen of stretching and deep tissue massage on the hip flexor and peraformis muscle group.  Rides on my road bike don't hurt that much anymore, and the diagnosis was further cemented by the amazing amount of discomfort when I was on the TT bike on Saturday.  (The more aggressive position on the TT leads to more stress on the regions causing the knee issues.)  I plan on hanging on for dear life racing the TTT this year with a few of the PV guys, so I'll be spending a lot of time stretching and adapting to the bike over the next couple weeks (hopefully!).

Monday afternoon musings...

 

• It is seriously gorgeous outside, and I'm glad I rode my bike into work today.  The 4.5 mile ride home will be a nice way to cap off the day.
• This weekend's riding had one serious beatdown of a ride book-ended by two lazy recovery days on the bike to total about 160mi of riding.
• Allergy season is coming.  Are you ready?
• I finally was able to mix it up with the team on Timber Road during one slug-fests out there.  Very happy!
• It's stuffy and probably 77 in our office building right now.
• Last week felt like a super hard week on the bike, but the overall stress of the workouts was not terribly high.  Glad I've got a rest week this week.
• PV continued with a very strong showing out at PIR and put me across the line first for the second week in a row. I <3 the team.
• My wife has been under the weather for the past week and it hurts me to see her feel this way.  I'd gladly take her place if I could.
• Hubris is a bitch. My knee started acting up two days after I posted this.  I'm still trying to sort out what's going on.
• My "O.F." got together on Saturday for a joint birthday party for James and myself.  Was great fun and they surprised me with an awesome gift.  Silly details here!
• I received an envelope in the mail on Friday from OBRA.  Inside was a sticker that said "ROAD:CAT3" along with my other details.  I'm now a very small fish in a very big pond filled with very fast fish.  At least I can cross off one of my goals for this year though. :)
• It was silent at 6:50am when I got into the office.  Its now 3:36pm and again, it's silent.  I'm going home.
• For whatever reason, this didn't publish until Tuesday morning, but I'm not changing the title.