Moving On

BDTT Goal - 18:00
BDTT Actual - 17:52 (24.18 mph)
Reality, I'm not a bike racer. I was 13/17.

Sunday is the Gearwest Duathalon (5k/28k/4k). I'm shooting for anything under 1:30:00. I should do better in the overall results, well at least in my age group. I mean we will be racing against these people.

Its Friday, I'm going back to bed now.

Indie Rock and Foodies

So Dana had a post yesterday about the major cooperation's that are behind some of the major organic foods/brands. You can check it out the tangled corporate web here. On Dana's post you can see my take on it in the comments. Whats yours? Wider distribution of food thats good for you isn't a bad thing in my book.

Doggystyle

So last night was pretty fun. I have no idea how I did because I have yet to glue a magnet on the race wheels for the computer, and I forgot my HR monitor so I couldn’t even time myself. It was pretty weird flying blind like that. I mean I just pushed myself as hard as I could, but I had no feedback. Wearing the HR monitor will at least let you know if you are starting to ease off….or blow up. Anyway, I’m waiting for them to post results, though I’m not holding my breath, just curious to how it all turned out.

It was kinda windy and I felt like crap warming up. My thighs were pretty tight from Tuesday nights 400 and 800 repeats on the Edina track. I rode the course 1.5 times before the start to get used to how the HED 3’s reacted in the crosswinds. I got blown around a little but nothing major. The race started and I took off after my 30 second man. The biggest thing I noticed was how far forward on the saddle I was the entire race. I mean I usually am when I’m on the TT bike, but over the past few month I’ve noticed how much more aggressive I’ve gotten. A few times the back end got pretty squirrelly when I went over bumps in the road. I ended up passing a few people, though they were not the fastest people on the course. I’m not so sure how good of a barometer that was, I’m not putting much stock in it. I was hoping to finish somewhere around 18 minutes. I think that would have resulted in an average speed of ~24 mph. I hereby conclude that racing; be it criteriums, running, time trials, whatever it may be if you are actually RACING they result in pain.

When I got home I took Louie for a walk. He’d been penned up inside all day so I went longer than usual. About ¾ of the way home I hit a serious wall. I didn’t even know you could bonk 30 minutes or more after your workout. I was wearing pants and a fleece as the temps had started to drop. By the time I fully hit the wall I was sweating through my shirt and super lightheaded. I thought I was gonna have to sit down and collect myself. As soon as I got home I killed some food. Ten minute later all was good again

Stop Crying

I linked to our wedding site through the sidebar on the right. Hopefully that fixes the problems some of you have had with the link. If not, well I guess we are all shit out of luck. That is unless the Cat6 IT Dude can fix it.

I went out to Opus last night for the first time this year. After watching the 4's race I remembered why I decided to never race out there again....Pain. Smithers posted the other day asking why people would ever run in a race. I ask the same thing about criteriums.

I think I may actually race at Black Dog tonight. I brought my bike to work today, and as long as no one breaks into my car, I'll be debuting the new race wheels. On the way in to work I remembered about 4 things that I left at home that would come in handy tonight at the race. Oh well I guess I'll need to be creative.

Thanks Ray!

I have to Thank Ray for my post today. He lead me to some great cards to send to your friends and family. Here's a sample of some of my favorites. There are some better ones that are more vulgar, I'll let you find them. Check them out here.

Finally, here's a fun picture of me and G at a recent wedding. Have a great weekend!

Music is the answer

Some stuff was happening in my head today. Things that make me think about the past and the future. A great soundtrack for it was:

Artist: Aqueduct
Album: I Sold Gold

Crank it up, shits awesome.
http://www.barsuk.com/shop/bark042

For the love of Pete

Can you believe it? It’s finally here, Friday. This has single handedly been the longest work week in about 5 years. Bachelor party followed by super busy work week, book ended by the tri-camp and the last 4 days leaves me a very tired kid. It’s gonna take every bit of this depth charge (wiki calls it the red eye, whatever) to get me to lunch.

Here’s a link to our wedding site if anyone is interested. We are gonna keep adding pictures to it, that way we’ll have embarrassing pictures of everyone involved, not just a few of you. I think that we are going to have a blast at this wedding. G and I met with the priest last night. It was kinda funny that we both made sure we had a least one beer before going to our counseling. He suggested that we live apart until the wedding, yeah like that’s gonna happen. The alternative he suggested was sleeping in separate beds. The whole church thing is more of G’s deal so I’m leaving that decision up to her. After meeting with Fr. Jim we rode up to Bryant Lake Bowl and sat outside for dinner and another beer. Man it was a great night for being out on the town with bikes.

Another friend has started a blog. Here’s a link to Dana. She doesn’t update it too often and is in the very beginning stages, but I’m sure she’ll have some interesting perspectives on things. We are both from Ohio and met while we were living in NC. She’s an idealist/activist/professional/hippie too. An all around great gal, check her out. She has a recent post about the shit storm that’s going on in DC regarding the DC call girl releasing cell numbers of her clients. She was a little shocked about one of the dudes recently outed, the head of USAID, as he has championed policy against prostitution. I have to say that I’ll never be surprised by some of the shady shit that goes down inside of the beltway, or in high places and seedy corners of Corporate America. The majority of those people didn’t get where they are because they are Saints. That one however is pretty high on the hypocrisy ladder.

I’m feeling pretty chatty today so I may post more later….we’ll see. The espresso will only last so long!

Fighting Peter Pan Syndrome

The closer we get to the wedding the more and more I watch every penny I spend. I mean throwing a blow-out party for 350+ people takes a lot of dough. The thing is, as I watch every penny I spend I also start to freak out about any debt that I have. This does wonders for your stress level. Its not that I need to be that worried about the debt or the wedding, I just am. Pile that on top of coming into a job everyday that you are less than thrilled about and it makes for some long work weeks.

I was planning on riding in the BDTT last night, but then got to thinking/worrying about cash. Before I left work I picked up a prescription, bought G some flowers, and grabbed a protein bar. In a matter of seconds I dropped like 50 bucks. If I decided to ride in the TT, it would add another $25 to the total. This would be a little above the $17/day that I budget for myself.

This also got me thinking about all of the time that I spend training and racing which pulls me away from G and my day to day “real life”. I spent all last weekend training, everyday during the week (usually twice) I’m either out on the roads or in the pool, and from here till who knows when all of our weekends are booked with races. So I ended up bagging the race. I got home and surprised G with the flowers and then the three of us went to the dog park. When we got home I went for a quick 30 minute run, and then we had dinner.

Last year some people from Cat6 were thinking about having a ride followed by dinner with our significant others. The idea was to kinda thank them for putting up with our selfishness of being on the bike and away from the house. At the time I thought it seemed kinda stupid. I mean why would we need to thank someone for letting us do something healthy? It’s becoming clearer as I start to grow up. Finding that balance between our time consuming hobby and the really important things in our life is difficult. I think I made the right choice in bagging the race last night. I have so much respect for those of you that have kids in the mix. I guess an end of the year thank you to our support team is the least we can do.

River Falls Base Camp

So the weekend of training is over. If you are interested in seeing pictures you can find some here. It was a great time. There was a lot of fun people, great weather, good running and riding. We even managed to squeeze in a micro-tri. It just so happened that the weekend that SCS planned the weekend camp, there was an organized race at the pool where we were having our workouts. I’m pretty sure no one even recorded their time. It was a 400 yd swim, 3.8 mile ride, and 1.8 mile run. It was a good way to round out the morning session. The rides were pretty sweet. The scenery out there is great and there are some pretty killer hills. A ride of 60+ miles feels like 100 over there. No wonder people say IM WI is so tough. Over the course of the weekend I got in 20+ miles of running, 110+ miles of biking, an hour maters swim, and the micro-tri. Good times.

Excellent weather is finally here. This weekend will be filled with training and yard work. It will be nice not to have to travel anywhere. I need to get the garden and flower beds in shape, so the lower back is in for quite a weekend. I’ll fire up the chiropractor on Monday. Wednesday night I think I’m going to go get my ass handed to me by all the roadies at the Black Dog Time Trial. Those guys just have a different type of fitness about them. They’ll all end up dusting me on the bike, but if they joined me on my run after the race, I’m sure I’d pay them back.