Last weekend

Wow, I've really let myself go...a long time without posting. It's been a busy past few weeks at work. I think i worked 120 hours this pay period not including travel time to Georgia. Here's what i wrote on the plane on Tuesday:

Well I thought I’d write this now since I’m stuck in an airport for the next hour. The last 48 hours have been pretty wild.

Hold on. I made the shop ride on Saturday morning before getting ready to head down to GA. It was fast. I spent most of the ride in zone 4 but rode at that level for an hour and a half. I only got dropped once but managed to catch back on. Top Speed, 33.5 miles per hour. There you have it, the only cycling content in this entry.

The rest of Saturday was spent preparing for the work trip down to GA. Here’s the timeline of the weekend.

Saturday:

1200 Receive a lift back to my house from Tony.. no I wasn’t to lazy to ride, but I was getting short for time.

1230 finish up a shower and head to the office.

1430 finished at the office…do I have everything I need? Yep.

1515 all packed up time to head out… Do I have everything? Nope

1518 turned around and got my cell phone charger.

1700 board flight

2100 boots on the ground in GA, a colleague meets me in the parking lot

2130 arrive at hotel and head to Fridays (on foot) for a much delayed dinner

2134 Fridays is packed

2139 Arrive at chili’s

2230 Back to the hotel…smoking room is nice but smelly, the south baby. Check e-mail and head to bed.

Sunday:

0530 WAKE UPPPPP CALLLL

0600 On station

1000 Complete the majority of the reason for my trip down there. Spend the rest of the day following colleagues learning about what they do

1230 Scored some sweet maps of foreign countries!

1830 arrive back at hotel

1700 arrive at supermarket on foot for some food and to try and sample a local microbrew.

1710… I’m told by the cashier that Georgia does not allow alcohol sales on Sunday. This explains why the lights were off in that section of the cooler.

1711 Buy a vitamin water

1714 stopped at a sweet pizza place while walking back to the hotel dejected (until now), and have the best calzone since as far back as I can remember. Seriously if you’re ever in the south check out www.johnnyspizza.com.

1800 I order a slice to go. Hey I gotta have something for breakfast. Something tells me that being on station by 0530 won’t allow for a stop tomorrow morning.

2200 Catchin Z’s


Monday:

0430 Up at O-Dark-Thirty

0455 Cold pizza and Vitamin Water

0530 fighting the urge to fall asleep despite a cup of Dunkin Doughnuts Coffee

0700 the sun is up now, I’m not as sleepy

0900 back by the compound, I check e-mail and call a the home office

1230 lunch at the chow hall- Breaded veal, mashed potatoes and gravy, and some noodles (also with gravy).. pretty good actually. The DFAC (pronounced Dee-Fack) reminds me of the old dining hall in college.

1300 some down time. I wait for some sosi guys to arrive back at the compound. We’ll head to the range to fire some weapons before I head back to VA.

1500 arrive at the range, fire the Glock 9mm pistol. I fired approximately 8 clips…Sweet!


1530 This M-4, was equipped with optics, and a combat grip and also very sweet, and way louder than the Glock.

1545 I’m handed an AK47 and told “Just point that thing down range and pull the trigger as fast as possible. It’s impossible to aim that F’n thing”

1600 Gotta hop to the airport

1638 I hear “Sir please step aside for a search” Oh no.. I must smell like a firing range… needless to say I received a very intimate pat down, but managed to keep out of the private room, than goodness.

1710 flight one, wheels up

1800 wheels down, time to scrounge some food

1925 While writing this in an airport restaurant, Outkast’s Roza Parks comes on the radio, Atlanta ain’t so bad… keepin it oldschool.

1927 What kind of restaurant plays regular radio?

2055 cruising at 30,000.00 ft over North Carolina listening to Into Thin Air audio book on IPOD.

2058 I’m exhausted, going to take the liberty of rolling into the office tomorrow around 11am. I think I might grab breakfast first. A job well done and some fun as well.

BS

Tour of CA is heating up!

I got 50 miles in yesterday on the road bike in just under 4 hours. Not a very fast ride but I could feel it in my legs. The Garmin battery died exactly half way out.

I spent a lot of time today reading Matt Cazalas' blog about the six months he spent bike touring around the States. There is something about the notion of riding around the U.S. self supported, staying the nights in tents and cheap motels, stopping at laundry mats and supermarkets that has a certain romance to it, however masochistic it may be. I think I'll put that on the bucket list. Maybe I'll do a Tour of Virginia next summer.

I headed over to The Bike Lane today to pick up some tubes and some on-the-bike snacks for training. Our employee party was postponed till the Thursday following this one, the 26th. For those of you I didn't tell in my excitement, we're going to Shenandoah Brewing, to brew our own beer, and sample a few of the craft beers on draft while doing it. Psyched!

I've been DVRing the Tour of California. Saw the prologue on Saturday night and the first stage yesterday. Francisco Mancebo held an impressive breakaway for most of the race. He was caught by two other riders but out-sprinted them at the end which was pretty cool. It was raining and miserable, and every time the camera cut to his face you could see that he was in the pain cave. He earned it.

BS

Double posting

Sorry about that...looks like I wrote about the same thing twice down there.

Happy Valentine's day. I did my valentines thing last night, so I thought I'd e-mail Luke and get a night ride planned. We're supposed to go at 8, and it's 7:20. I need a 2 hour ride today and since I lost some of the morning and spent six hours at work I figured going with the night ride is the way to get it.

I planning on a 4 hour W&OD ride tomorrow on the roadie. I'll probably have about an hour or two of work and then I'm going to spend the rest of the day in fornt of the TV relaxing.

Looks like I'll be heading to Georgia next Sunday night till Tuesday for work. Nice thing that Monday is planned rest.

BS

New Toys!!

Haven't checked in for a while. I'm sure it has been tough for those of you following these chronicles, patiently awaiting the news of my decision, solving the dilemma in my last post. I bought a Garmin Edge 305, and a training plan from Lynda.

I started the plan Monday night with some core training, and I did a heart rate test on the W&OD on Tuesday night. From the heart rate test, you use a mathematical formula establish heart rate zones 1-5 and spend time in specific zones for training depending on the workout.

Tonight I had pedaling drills and core work on the menu, but I got out of work late, after a rough day so I switched tonight and tomorrow's workout. Tonight I did Zone 3 intervals. I felt pretty good out there and really enjoyed the warm weather. It must have been 65 degrees out there tonight!

I'm going to do my pedal drills tomorrow, and take Friday off and prepare for some tough riding this weekend. Woot!!

BS

P.S. I registered for Lodi today. 12 Hour Solo here I come!

Twelve weeks till Lodi

Lodi is twelve weeks away and I am about to start a serious block of training leading into the race. I bought one of Lynda's 12 week plans and a Garmin Edge 305 GPS/heart rate monitor.

The plan has me on the bike five days a week, with Mondays and Fridays off. The off-days will allow for recovery from previous mini block of riding. I'll be doing higher intensity work during the week( T - Th) and longer duration endurance work on Saturday/Sunday. By week 12 I should be a beast, ready to scare the townspeople at Lodi, or at least finish mid pack (hopefully).

I got out for a road ride yesterday and I worked at The Bike Lane today, we had a steady flow of customers and it felt great to be selling bikes again. I probably won't be back there "on the regular" until April though, which is fine by me. I think Saturdays there will be pretty conveinient for training as the longer of the two weekend rides is Sunday.

Later!

BS

12.5 weeks till Lodi!!

It just so happens that Lodi is 13 weeks away. I decided to take this week (Sunday through Friday) as a rest week because I felt myself getting sick this weekend, probably from a lack of sleep. Since this weekend I'll officially have twelve weeks till Lodi, I need to determine a specific training plan to lead me up to and through the whole race. 12 hours on my bike is a long time and I'm not ready for it, not yet.

I'm contemplating purchasing a training plan form LW coaching, but I'm not sure I want to pony up that cash for the plan and for a heart rate monitor. The nice thing about the 12 week plan is that I can use it for my 12 hour, then take a month and half and do intensity work (increase power and lactate threshold) and start the plan again 12 weeks out from the SM 100. but the same money I could spend on her plan I could use on new riding shoes that are literally molded to your feet.

Ahhh decisions!!

Oh yeah, I forgot to include this picture below. This was taken right before our race this weekend. Me and Matt K:
BS

Time Warp

Well this past weekend was snotcycle, and our preparation (or lack thereof) began on Thursday night when Matt K and Jessie arrived just after 12:30am.

The following day I ran into work for a quick meeting and took the rest of Friday off. We headed over to The Bike Lane to do some work on Jessie's bikes:
Then we saw a fat squirrel:
Then it was off to preride the race course. We were some of the first few riders through so there was still a lot of fresh snow on the trail which slowed things down a bit. By the next morning everything was packed and smooth. Our prerides usually take 2-3 times the amount of time it take to actually ride a lap. We stop and ride fun features a few times and never miss a photo op:

Race day began in the next morning, when we found out Jessie was not feeling very good so she was gonna sit this one out. Jessie was nice enough to let us take her car, so Matt packed most of the items in my car into hers and we loaded all our bikes onto the roof and rolled out.

Here's Lurana right after she registered and I installed a bottle cage on her bike. It was about 22 degrees at that point:
Here's Matt K when I told him he forgot grabbed everything but the water bottles out of my car:
The race itself:

Matt and I waited for the race to start outside the timing tent next to a fire, trying to stay warm. Once Race Director, Rob picked up his bull horn we headed over and grabbed a spot in the back and took off with the group. The race started a little slowere than most XC races because of the ice in the field.

Lap one:

Matt and I rode the first two miles together. I got hung up on a technical section and had to let the group we were riding in go by. That was the last time I saw Matt K. till after the race. The first lap was real smooth hard packed snow and I managed to pass a few guys. I was feeling pretty good at this point despite not having any water. 7.6 miles down.

Lap Two:

Soon after coming through the transition area, I passed a guy on a green Niner. My new nemesis stayed with me about half way around the course. Now I'm really starting to miss water. I did not bring any food to eat during the race either, so I knew I had to be careful and not burn too many matches to early or I'd have nothing left. Normally I would have had a gel coming through the transition area.

By the second lap, the amount of riders that had come through pushed quite a bit of snow out of the corners, leaving some bare ice. Midway through the lap on a descent I hit a patch of ice and did a complete 180 but managed to stay upright. So here I am facing up the hill I just came down and Green Niner comes right by. I gathered myself up and followed through the rest of the course. I was OK but that close call was a match burnt, I may have well as crashed. In the spin I tensed up all my muscles, lost all momentum, and a bit of confidence. The rest of the lap went OK. 15.2 miles down.

Lap 3:

By my third time around, I knew I was probably going to hit the wall. By this time in the morning the fields were pretty muddy. Coming through the transition area I chased down Green Niner. He stayed with me in the woods, until I saw him dab on a technical section. If I've learned anything yet, this means attack. I grabbed a handful of gears and dropped the hammer. I looked back a mile later and he wasn't in site. I dropped him, there goes another match.

By the second half of the lap I was in rough shape, My legs were on the verge of cramping and my throat was dry. I was slowly slipping into the pain cave. I know the course pretty well and I knew I had about two miles left when I came up on Vince riding his single speed. This part of the course winds through the trees allowing you to catch a glimpse of the field of riders behind you, I saw green pants, and I was close to empty, I rode the course out with Vince (from TBL) and 100 yards before the transition area I here a bike behind me. There goes Green Niner right past me. I shifted and stood on the pedals... ahh cramps in the legs...nothing left to sprint...let him have it.

And that my friends is the difference between 38th place and 39th. I had a good time though, If I had food and water I think I could have snagged a few places down, but what can ya do. The field was about 60 riders (not all of em finished though).