Too much travel

Last week my work sent me to Virginia for some lame training. Aside from living in France for a couple years I've never traveled much at all, so getting over to that end of the country was kind of nice, but many parts of the trip realy kinda sucked.

One saving grace was that a few weeks ago Kayla and I finaly needed new cell phones bad enough that she let me buy some. I got one to satisfy the tech nerd inside:

Its a Blackjack 2, and comes with all the bells and whistles to make me clap my hands and shreek with joy!: GPS, Windows Mobile 6, full media player and even caller ID! One of the first things I did was download an NES emulator along with about 800 nintendo games. Needless to say my bathroom breaks have gotten alot longer and Kayla has hated this thing since about day two. Sadly though even in my tech nerd glory I'm still a bit of a poser, I didn't buy a data plan so I can't realy use it for email and internet surfing like it's made for, I even have to cringe a bit when I get text mesages because I have to pay for them individualy.

So, the phone did help alot to keep me pacified on the planes and bus, oh yes the BUS. My company is super cheap and my travel plans were not too well organized so since I had to return to Boise instead of Pocatello, I had the pleasure of taking a Greyhound from SLC to Boise. It took 9 painful hours to make the trip, since my MP3 player was out of order durring that week I was treated with listening to the old ladies behind me get aquainted by telling stories about their health problems (mostly tooth loss) and illegitimate grand children they had living with them.

After 17 hours of travel on Friday I woke up bright and early Saturday to do the LP200 relay bike race from Boise to Sun Valley. It's a fun race where you have a team of 4 riders who work together to cover the distance. The course is broken up into 10 sections where different riders can swap out and take turns and/or ride together. I rode the first section, a couple in between and we all rode the final leg together. In all I rode something like 90 miles and our team finished in about 8hours45min, good enough for 12th out of about 60 teams. Not too bad and I'd say mainly thanks to Justin M. kicking butt on the hilly stretches.

After the race I had to get back to Pokey so Kayla met up with me in Twin Falls where I loaded my bike in our car and we took off. Unfortunately it wasn't until we got home that I realized that when I loaded my bike I forgot my bag of bike gear on the curb in front of the gas station back in Twin. Luckly I called them up and they found my bag to set aside for me. Sunday was busy with church stuff and I was wasted all day, so I had to wait until Monday and take the day off work to go back to get the bag. I convinced Kayla and Susie to make a day of it with me so we went and checked out the falls while we were there.

Hmmmm......

Durring a little Saturday afternoon channel surfing a few days ago I thought of something that may have been lingering in the back of my mind for a while without realizing it:

Anybody else notice a resemblance? No offense Susie, honestly I think you're the cutest little Miss Stay Puft I've ever seen.

Winna-Winna-Winna vs. Debbi Downer

Kayla decided she wanted to run a low key race and push Susie in the jogger for it. So she found a little fun-run 5K in Idaho Falls that we went to yesterday morning. I thought I'd run in it too just because it was cheap and I was there anyway. So when all was said and done out of the 100 or so folks who showed up for it........I won! After I crossed the line with a good 20-30 yards on 2nd place I was feeling realy good about myself and my result in the first 5K I've ever raced and walked around to cool off while I waited to cheer for Kayla and Susie as they finished. They came in as the first stroller by a long shot and she was even up really far in the women's overall. After Kayla was done our conversation went something like this:

Me: good job
Kayla: thanks
M: I won!
K: Cool, what was your time?
M: I donknow? 19:somthing.
K: Oh...that's a good high school girl's time....

Whhaaaaa-Waaaaaa

Really she is proud of me, but there's nothing like a little off-the-cuff brutal honesty to keep things in perspective.

Boxed kind of week

I know just saying I had a boxed kind of week doesn't really make any sense, but...I guess that's what the body of this post is for.

First off, as anybody who knows me well, knows well: I am a huge fan of breakfast cereal. But normally I stick to the off-brand bagged stuff, not only is it cheaper but I've also grown to like it better than the name brand stuff it is made to imitate. Then comes along a sale at Abertsons for 10 for $10 on General Mills cereals and now Kayla and I are quite stocked up on all the brand name goodies I've kept away from for quite some time. It sure is a nice feeling to open up the cupboard and have such a bountiful selection.

Second, on Wednesday night the local bike club put on a time-trial that's part of a season long series of races. I can usually TT pretty well for being such a skinny guy (most times it's the big powerful riders that dominate this kind of race). This time I had to work later than usual and showed up with-out enough time for my normal warm-up on the trainer so I just pulled the bike out and rode around the start for a bit before my turn. While I rolled around I had some not too swell of luck and flatted both tires on the aero wheels for my TT bike (for those who don't race bikes: in a TT, equipment with low aerodynamic drag can make a very big difference and racers spend thousands of dollars to get it). Luckily Sam K. is such a cool guy he lent me a very nice extra front wheel he had but that still left me with an old school boxed rim rear wheel instead of my normal disk wheel. I took off for the race anyway just to record a time (expecting a terrible one) and ended up riding my fastest time ever on that course. My last fastest time was a few years ago when I came over here for the Gate City Grind stage race and was riding strong in those days.

Lastly in my boxed week just to round it out: Susie is on some crazy expensive baby formula her doctor put her on a while ago. To save some money I bought a big box of the stuff on Ebay that should be getting here any day. Kinda crazy when $110 for a six-pack is bargain shopping!!

Goings ons

This week I am yet again a lone man in the eastern Idaho wilderness. After running Robie this last weekend Kayla and Susie opted to stay Nampa until next weekend when I'll be going back for a race of my own. I've been passing my time playing on the computer which I just upgraded the RAM in (thanks ebay) and bought a kinda new super bargan monitor for ($25 from my work for a few month old 19" LCD!). Also I've been avoiding the TV by listening to the audiobook "Bringing Down the House" it's the book that the movie "21" is based on about a true story MIT blackjack club that works out a system to count cards and beat Vegas. Great book sofar, I will probably finish it on my drive back to Boise on Friday.

Kayla's race to Robie went pretty good. I think it went mostly like she expected, even though I could tell she had hoped to do a little better. She finished in the top 30 which is amazing considering she had Susie by C-section just a little over 7 months before the race. Now we're trying to figure out what her next race will be, but for now that depends on a few things that are up in the air.

My first two races of the year when ok, but not great. In the Slammer I didn't finsh as well as I hoped for, but I feel ok about it since I felt good all race and I think I just played around a little too much with some of the hopeless break atempts, oh well it was nice to be in a race again. Then I went down to SLC for the Hell of the North race and that was kinda weird. I got dropped at the halfway point, I didn't realy feel like I blew up, I just plain couldn't go fast enough at the right times. But at least several other people mentioned how hard the first half was, so that's at least some consolation. And add onto that, the last time I looked at the results they were botched and had me finishing in 10th place!

This coming weekend is the Emmett-Roubaix race. I am hoping for a good result here, my main goal is to be with the leaders at the bottom of the finishing climb, which means I'll have to survive the gravel sections this year. If I can put all my effort into making it to the climb, then it's all just a matter of luck I think. If my climbing legs from the days of yore are there that day I think I can do well, but if they don't show up, I will just have to watch the finsh take place a few switchbacks up the hill from me.

It's that time again!

I'm heading off to my first race of the year in the morning. And all day today I've been getting ready in the best ways I know how. First off if you want to go fast everybody knows you've got to have a shinny bike. So I figure if a shinny bike is fast, mirror polished ought to be down right untouchable....

Unfortunately I couldn't get the digital camera to show it's truly obscene beauty, but for a good feel for what it looks like at it's best notice the reflection of the pedal on the downtube in the pic. After a really good polish job my bike goes from being silver to being so mirrored that it really doesn't have a color, it just reflects everything around it. I know what you're thinking and don't get me wrong, yes this level of shine does involve a huge waste of time, in fact almost a full year's worth. This is what happens when someone who's a nut about bikes spends a year mostly off his bike but not necessarily away from his bike. I ended many weeks realizing that I had spent more time wet-sanding and polishing my bike than I had spent riding it.

The next preparation for race day also has spent a long time in the making...

I think most every non-bike racer has questioned the leg shaving thing at least once. There's lots of reasons we give: faster healing of road rash, more aero, better for massages, ect. But I have to admit my biggest reason is probably mental. When my legs are hairy, to me they look and feel like these scrawny dangling appendages hanging from the lower part of my body, but when they're shaved they seem more like purpose built machines, they're not scrawny, they're light weight and efficient.

As for the actual race, I'm just going to show up and see what happens. I've done this race several times and it's always been a pretty big disappointment. This year might be different though. I've trained with a lot more focus and dedication than I ever did before, but it's still very early in the season and a long way off when I'm shooting to be in top form.

Probably the biggest difference I've noticed about getting ready to race this year has been my dreams. In all my years of bike racing, before this year I never once had a dream where I won a bike race. I had a whole series of them where I would show up missing most of my gear and be totally panicked and would miss the start, but this year was the first time I ever dreamed about a race going well and even winning it. I'm not at all predicting a win for myself anytime soon, but I'm sure that that's at least a sign that my mind and body might finlay be up to the task of racing with the big boys in the group that gets to toe the start line last.

I woulda, but...

After starting the week terrible with being sick and not being able to ride I thought I could at least finish it off with a nice ride. I had a great loop planned down into Arbon Valley with a bit of meandering thrown in. The weather forcast was the same as for the last several days and they all tuned out nice so I figured that wouldn't be a problem...

At about 9:00am I looked out and saw:

I wasn't too stressed, I just figured I'd wait for it to warm up a bit and ride in the afternoon. So Kayla did her Saturday run before my ride and a little while after she got home it looked a bit like this :(

After a good dose of cursing Pocatello winters I eventualy dried my tears and slinked away into the basement to ride the rollers. The only ray of sunshine was that I at least had the re-runs of the '08 Tour of California to watch as I pedaled away without moving.

Here's what it looked like outside when I finished:The cycling club here planned to start the weekly Tuesday night rides this week but I'm not sure the roads will be ready in time for that. But I do have my fingers crossed for the impromptu TT we have planned for Thursday night. I just need to get some new cables to string-up my TT bike and I should be ready to rock. Speaking of that, the Boise crowed kicked off the season this weekend with a TT that I skipped. It was a long way to go for such a short race and even if by some freak chance I did get lucky and do well in that race all that would have done is make me a marked man for the other races in the series. My racing starts in 2 weeks with the Slammer, which will have to both check my form and get me back into racing mode (not sure how my nerves will handle coming back from a year off).