Thursday, June 28, 2007

Cha-Ching!!!

You hear that? Thats money in the bank friend. No not the kind of money that will buy me anything. But that kind of money that will get me plenty of Tuna.

What the hell am I talking about?

Just finished another 4 days of training. I put in close to 120 miles by getting a 50 miler on Wednesday and then riding out to the Thursday night crit.


A few highlights from the crit:
  • When I get to the crit some 4 year old girl on a pink huffy with training wheels, toes up to the line. She headbutted me on lap four. (ok that didn't really happen.)
  • Some dood blew a snot rocket mid pack. Needless to say I fell victim to his little rocket attack. Couldn't he move out into the wind for 10 seconds and blow snot elsewhere.
  • Riding in the first 20 riders is much easier than riding in the last 20 riders.
  • I was sucking the wind of some Crit Monkey when he runs over a water bottle. That woke me up. For just a split second, I thought for sure we were going down. Luckily he was a good heavy crit monkey (perhaps baboon) and that bottle squirted out from his wheel and shot to the left.
  • Hung on for 29 of 30 laps. Died at the end. What can you do?
  • Looked up from finishing the crit, only to see a dark impending cloud of doom to the Northwest. How did that get there? Storms come from the east. I had a nice time trial home from the crit to avoid getting rained on. The tail wind in some sections sent me flying. I was dead tired, but I was a dry dead tired when I got home.
  • I need to think of something else to eat for dinner besides pasta and a protein shake. Anyone got ideas?
I pop my Cat. 4 cherry this weekend. Brownstone Road Race. Boohay!!!

Monday, June 25, 2007

Who goes to Hooters for the wings?

apparently someone

Editors Note: This pick is from the work fridge. Or the science experiment as some call it. I was grossed out that someone actually felt the need to reheat food from hooters.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Two beer Qu . . . you know the rest

There has been some riding going on here kids.

Over 190 miles this week. Getting work done.

I think all this riding may have lowered my tolerance quite a bit this weekend. I had a few beers, two to be exact. I was more than buzzed. I was stumbling.

Then the next day

After a 50 mile ride, I cooked up my favorite post ride treat. New York Strip steak, some veggie sides, and two Lionshead beers. Buzzed once again. The buzz would be expected if I was downing bottles of Chimay, but Lionshead is a light beer.

I guess this is a great reason to get on my ride on.

In case you don't know. . . . Lionshead is one of the best beers money can buy when low on cash. 10 bucks for a case and none of the oh crap I'm gonna die cause I just had too much Bud feeling.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Did I really just ride that much?

Guess who is a Cat. 4? This guy. Boohay baby! Boohay!

To get in shape for the next month of racing, I managed to do 120 miles in the last 4 days. Don't beleive me? Here we go . . .

Monday: 30 miles on the river trail. Ran into a friend of mine from racing this season. It was good passing the time on the bike with somebody.

Tuesday: 20 miles. Did some hill repeats. 4 minutes up the hill, 2 minutes down. Rinse, Wash, Repeat. Ended the ride on the rollers to avoid threatening storms. Yes, my vagina is deep and cavernous.

Wednesday: 30 miles around town. Nothing serious. Just some active recovery from the hills.

Thursday: 45 miles. I road out to the Great Valley Criterium. As I was riding easy, my teamates caught me who were riding to it. We ended up hammering over to the Crit and got there half an hour early. No worries about warming up.

The Crit started well. It was very windy. There were times when people in the front could not stretch out the field. I managed to get my fat ass up to the front for a lap and a half, but I was pegged after that. I dropped to the back and gave myself a lap. When I hopped on the field I road in the mid pack and let other people work for the rest of the ride.

Cruised on home with my teammates. It was a great day. Looking forward to a day off tomorrow.

No racing this weekend just riding. I'll break my Cat 4 cherry next weekend.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Much Better Cycling Blogs

I appreciate that you visit this blog. Maybe this is your first vist, maybe you are one of the few the proud, the regular readers. (all 4 of you)

Well here are some much better cycling blogs for your reading pleasure . . .

1) Mud and Cowbells is a great cyclo-cross focused blog. Occasionally straying into all things professional cycling and mountain biking. He has some well stated opinions and gives you some insight into cycling scene in Colorado. A must read for myself.

2) Belgium Knee Warmers is another fine blog. Much in the same vein as Mud and Cowbells just a little more road cycling focused. I have just regularly started reading this blog and I love it.

3) Gewilli a great cycling blog. He covers a lot of different aspects of cycling and goes into topics of riding that I find helpful.

4) DrunkCyclist. Do I need to say more? Oh, Big Jonny got rid of the porn so I am almost certain that site is safe for work. Enjoy.

Another fine thing about all of these blogs is that each has a great blog roll. If you want to find other great cycling blogs just click on any of their links. Chances are you will strike some cycling blog gold.

I should post a little honorable mention to a teammate's blog that just got started. Al, a very talented Cat. 2 cyclist for Human Zoom, started his blog, Bridging The Gap, a few weeks ago. If you want to feel slow hit it up.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Got more itches . . .

I've decided I don't ride enough . . .

I'm not talking about training rides. Although one could easily argue I need to be doing more of that.

I want to be ride to work. I want to ride to my friends place for a little barbecue. I want ride to the bar, throw down too many beers and walk home. Wake up in the morning and remember that I left my bike at the bar. Run back to the bar and ride back home. I want to ride to the grocery store. I want to ride all over town cause shit, I got nothing else to do son.

Needless to say there will be more riding in the next few months. I will start to explore ways of integrating the bike. Unfortunately, my suburban highway surrounded condo does not lend itself to the cruising lifestyle.

This may sound blasphemous to some readers of this blog but I don't own a mountain bike. But I've got the itch. Thinking about getting a Cannondale. Probably something I could race a little.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Chesapeake Bay Swim

So I haven't blogged much about this but several months ago I signed up for the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim, a 4.4 mile open water swim across the Chesapeake Bay. The swim took place today . . .

A little back story . . . I didn't really train for this. I did a few 2500+ meter swims a few weeks ago, but then I got sick and crashed on my bike. This ruined any training I had going. I did two 1000 meter workouts to get a feel for the water last week. Not one to back down . . . I shrug my shoulders and head down to Anapolis, MD to get this done.

The morning of the race, we (me and my lady friend) get off the shuttle bus that takes you to the race start. It is overcast skies and spitting rain. I keep repeating how I hope the sun shows up. We have 1.5 hours till race start. We chill out on grass after picking up the race packets. Before we know it has stopped raining, and it is time for the pre-swim talk.

The pre-swim talk was very important because this where everyone learns about what the currents are doing. This is key. Today the current was taking us out to the ocean until 11:15 and then it was a slack tide turning into a current that pushes you into the bay. My wave (the slow wave) starts at 9:30, so timing which side of the race "course" you swam on would be determined by your pace.

The course consists of 500 meters to a set of buoys then you swim under the south bound Bay Bridge. You swim between the two bridges for most of the race. With 600 meters to go you swim under the North Bound Bridge and swim to the shore.

I have the wet-suit on and I am in full triathlon mode. I'm goofing off, doing stupid dances and jokes to occupy my mind before the race. I head over to the start beach before my wave begins and joke with people about the water being cold (it was 73, far from cold) and how I don't like to get wet. The start was a running start into the water. My mind was in full triathlon mode that this point. (Let's do work!)

The gun goes off, and I walk into the water (very un-tri style). If it were a triathlon, I would have jumped in the water like Randy Macho Man Savage jumping in a wrestling ring. Well, it turned out the first half a mile was like wrestle-mainia anyway. I was swimming around, under and over people. When the turn was made into the bridges, I stayed close to the South bound bridge. This resulted into a scrum with other swimmers everytime we came across another pylon. At one point I put my hand on another swimmers shoulders and just pushed him off me. There was no point of him trying to swim on top of me and I felt it was the nicest thing I could do. In Tri-mode I would have kicked him for good measure.

After the wrestling is over, everyone finds their pace and thing settle. Before I know it I see the first mile marker. I try to focus on just keeping my pace and not getting too tired. I notice I am swimming in the middle of the two bridges, so I start to swim towards the South Bound bridge. The current must have been working, because despite swimming in that direction, my general location in the channel never changed.

Mile 2 came and gone. It felt fairly long. I told myself just another half hour to get mile 3 behind me. This seemed to take another very long time. I just kept swimming. While swimming, I would entertain myself by singing in my head or just imagining being done. Mostly I just focused on my form, the current and trying to feel good.

Finally I reached mile 3. A little after the 3rd mile marker was the second food boat. I decided to grab on to the boat and stretch my shoulders. They were definitely a little soar. I stretch a bit and keep swimming. The 4th mile marker came up way too quickly and that is because it was placed poorly. I start swimming with a purpose thinking I'm close to the end. At this point my shoulders felt like two hot irons were in each of them. With each stroke, my arms were crying. Screw it. I was almost done. Well, this almost done feeling lasted for about 40 minutes.

The biggest tease is seeing the shore very close and then crossing under the North bound bridge and seeing the finish about 600 meters away. My form was completely destroyed and my shoulders ached. This section was shallow enough to almost walk it in. I stopped a few times to stretch but I swam it in.

Coming out of the water, everyone cheers for you. Awesome. Someone get me a beer!

So . . . 2 hours and 21 minutes later I managed to finish the cross Chesapeake Bay Swim. My lady friend finished in 1 hour and 41 minutes. (I'll be worried when she cycles faster than me.)

It was a lot of fun. I think they should have created a race category based on who trained the least and got the fastest time. I am almost certain I won that category.