Rob01 Rants

1200 Club

2012-01-01T18:57:00.000-07:00

Okay, everybody who knows me knows that I can be talked into some pretty dumb things at times - this is one of them! Last night I went on the "Resolution Run" put on by the Running Room on Dec 31 - it's just a 5km, but given that I pulled a hamstring less than a week ago, I wasn't planning on going very fast. I didn't, but it sure was an enjoyable run! Weather was fantastic, and it was fun to run in a group again. (It's been probably 20+ years since I've done a running race.) I had to catch myself from blowing snot rockets at those behind me - just not use to there being people there! A friend of mine, Patricia Beazer, started a club called the 1200 mile club. The goal is to cover 1200 miles in 2012. (That's almost 4 miles a day, 6 days a week.) So, tonight I talked my wife into a 4 mile walk with me. It was nice to get out and chat for awhile. I'm not exactly sure how to handle tomorrow, as I'm taking the family snowboarding. Not sure if I'll be able to go for a 4 mile run after a day of snowboarding (especially when it's going to be followed up with another day of snowboarding!) We'll see how it goes.

New Beginnings

2011-10-31T13:02:00.001-06:00

Saturday turned into a wonderful day for me. All in just an hour. John and I did a quick trip from Cardston to Magrath on our bikes - took just over an hour (I think about 1:08?) I was once again saddened, but not surprised, to see how terrible I was on a bike. But, we talked about some future plans, and I've decided to get there. The plan is in January to do a week down in Phoenix/Tucson just riding. It's been a few years since I've done that, and it sounds really exciting to me. I'll need to have dropped some serious weight by then, but I know I can do it.So I started in ernest yesterday. STRICTNESS is my moto for the next month. Give myself a good fighting chance! Then I'll start to allow myself the OCCASSIONAL treat - meaning something once a week. I've been amazed at how easy it became to justify a slip. "I'm doing something with my son, and so we should have an icecream together" or "I worked hard and need a break"... the excuses go on and on. This morning I jumped out of bed (okay, maybe "jump" isn't the right word - more like crawled) at 5:30am. Should've gone for the run then, as a little later it had started snowing and was just plain miserable. I ended up finding a reason not to go (there were lots) - and so tonight I'll set-up my trainer in the basement so that I always have a fall-back.

Minot, North Dakota

2011-09-11T23:03:00.003-06:00

After I returned from Minot, ND I learned that my Great Grandmother was born and raised in Minot - I guess this was a chance for me to say thanx to my ancestors. This is an article I wrote for our local paper, and I've included some pictures here.

Friday, Sept 2, 2011. My son, Brady, and I were leaving on what I hoped was to be a fun experience, but more, a way to really help somebody else – to make a difference, a positive difference, in someone else’s life. Ten hours later we arrived in Minot, North Dakota. Each person that went had their own unique experience. This is mine – I think it’s largely representative of what we all saw and felt.
My brain couldn’t believe what my eyes were seeing. Minot looked like it’d been hit by a bomb. What was more shocking to me, was this was TWO MONTHS after the flood had hit! This was a classic case of “it gets worse before it gets better.” Houses had to be gutted before anything could start to be repaired, and all that stuff was being piled outside on the curb. We immediately found our way up to the church (which was literally up, at the top of one of the hills.) When we arrived the first order of business was to get tents set-up and organized. It was funny to watch a churchground turn into a campground, complete with outdoor showers! A quick trip to Walmart for all the things we forgot and a quick meal and we were off to bed so that we could get an early start.
In the morning we were all assigned to a group leader (complete with our uniform of a yellow “mormon helping hands” t-shirt), and that leader then gave us our assignments. I was in a group of 16, with Bob Quinton as our leader. Our first assignment was on the outskirts of town. On the way there we saw lots of little lakes, later to learn that all of them were in areas that were once dry. The home that we were working on was big, and was situated by what looked like a beautiful lake – it wasn’t. It used to be a horse pasture.
In home after home the story was the same – weeks after the waters had receded homeowners were trying to get things cleaned up, but the sheer volume of work to be done was overwhelming. An individual could work all day and not notice a dent in the project. A crew our size could come into most average-sized homes and clean out the basement and main floor in 5 or 6 hours. It wasn’t just that there were more of us. We had the equipment to be efficient. We had the time to work straight through instead of having to go to work to pay for all of the repairs. And most of all, we hadn’t been fighting this battle for two months, we were fresh.
Our first home had deep mud in the basement – all of us in the basement had to wear gum boots. We found frogs and crawdads crawling around there. Water had been in the basement for about 8 weeks. One of our group got to taste his breakfast twice that morning. It was a slimy, stinky mess. We have a picture of the garbage we took out of the house – it’s almost 8 feet high, with a 10 foot base and stretches for 70 feet down the curb. It would have taken the homeowners 8 or 9 weeks to get it done, by which time the house would’ve been lost. Anytime you get a bunch of teen-age boys working together you know there’s going to be some kind of shenanigans – someone found some old golf clubs and a bucket of balls. Soon we were all making little mud tees and taking a swing to see how far over the “pond” we could hit a ball.
Sunday morning brought a sacrament service at 7am. I don’t think I’ve seen a sight like that before. Honorable men blessing the sacrament in pajamas and yellow t-shirts. As soon as our service was over we headed back out for another day of mucking!
The next home-owner we helped was serving in the airforce. He was on duty out-of-state when the flood hit, and his wife and kids were visiting her parents over-seas. They never had a chance to save any of their personal belongings. His neighbors shed (from three doors down) was in his backyard. His was upside-down. He was a strong man, and had done a lot of the initial work – but we still spent our entire Sunday morning helping him. His gratitude was evident as we left.
Our last home was a doozy. It was right beside the dyke that was breached. Water got 7 feet up the walls of the main floor. Everything had to go. The dark basement, with only small windows, was difficult to get stuff up and out of. The old steele tub, and all the mud and waste. It made for some hard work! Thankfully, the church has put into place some amazing emergency equipment – we had generators, saws, hammers, crowbars, sleds – anything and everything that might be needed! It was a remarkable experience to see how organized and efficient the church is at these temporal kinds of needs.
As we left we got the greatest reward ever – a tearful thank-you from the home owners. We were given this blessing time and time again all weekend long. What a wonderful opportunity to serve and to help some who had previously been bitter towards the church. They now see us in a different light. The “angels in yellow” as some called us made a real difference in Minot. The local members were grateful for the help – they had been working at this for the whole two months! They’d come home from work and put in a couple of hours of service each night. They were exhausted and our numbers were a welcome break. Local businesses didn’t get mad when we trudged mud into their restaurants. Instead they thanked us for coming.
I’m so grateful to the local men who arranged this service opportunity. I’m sure I’d forget a few names if I started naming them, so I’ll just say a big thank-you to all of those who gave us the chance to see and experience this. My son and I had our testimonies grow, and felt the Spirit of the Lord helping us. Hard work with good men, (and a few women!) engaged in a good cause – what a great way to spend the weekend!

Climbing To The Snow

2011-07-31T08:27:00.022-06:00

Like most of my grand adventures with John, this one got started late. We orginally had decided to leave around 9am. I called him at 8 and we moved it back to 9:30 - I think we got going by around 10:15.

I hate climbing the south hill right off the bat when I haven't had a chance to warm-up yet. After we got to the top I started to feel some real pain in my right achilles tendon. Oh oh - I've had my achilles blow up on me before, and it's extremely painful, and it sidelined me for about a month back then. I locked my ankle into place rather than letting my foot "ankle" through the pedal stroke and the pain eased up. I was sure hoping that this would be a temporary thing, but with my leg being pretty tight from my hamstring pull, I was a little concerned.

John and I decided that this was not going to be a hammer-fest (okay, I decided) and that we'd stop and enjoy the ride like we rarely do. So, here's a couple of photos from the first few miles.

Arrival at the border

I've never seen the line at the border this long - it stretched all the way past the Canadian customs side and started down the hill. I'd have taken a picture to show you, but John just kept on riding. Yup, he free-wheeled right past everybody. Being about 20 feet behind him I could hear the comments as people saw him go by - we weren't making any friends! We rode up to the front of the line, John's intent was to see if they'd wave him up. As we got to the front, a couple of kids from Cardston were sitting in a little blue truck. I chatted with them for a minute and then got this great idea. "Hey, is it alright with you guys if we jump in the back of your truck to cross the border?"

So we do, as we pull up the border guard looks at us and says "how do you know these guys? Did you just jump in the back of their truck to try and avoid the line? 'Cause that's not happening." I replied with - "we know them" - and she asks the driver how - he explains that we're all from Cardston. She lets it slide.

John mentions to her that it sure is busy today and she says, "yeah, seems like you Canadians have a holiday and everybody evacuates the country!" She waved us through and we jumped out to continue our ride.

I've never stopped here to take a picture (though it seems like everybody else always stops there.) We didn't stop here this time, either - just pulled out the camera and snapped a photo as we went by.

Did I mention that the ride all the way to the border is mostly up-hill? It took us an hour to cover 25km. But, there was NO WIND! (How often does that happen in this country?) Well, that all changed from the border all the way to St Mary's - we got to fight a head-wind all the way. A wind that consistently blew at about 30km/hr and there were places it was upwards of 40km/hr! YUCK! Being the kind, out-of-shape guy I am, I let Johnny pull as much as he wanted.

Here's a favorite photo I took as we got nearer to St. Mary's.

Finally, we arrived in St. Mary's - we'd been riding for awhile, so we decided to stop and get some lunch and refill bottles. The Cafe was pretty busy, so we had a bit of a wait, but the Turkey Sandwhich I had was excellent! We decided we'd be stopping on the way back for a piece of PIE!

The entry fee for cyclists going into Glacier National Park has gone up - it's now $12!! So, John and I both decided to purchase seasons passes for $35. The lady working the booth didn't have much of a sense of humour - so maybe I shouldn't have let John do the talking. He was trying to convince her that he was "an American with disabilities" so that he could get in free. I was bowled over laughing, but she didn't seem to see the humour in it. Oh well. 5 more miles to the beginning of "the climb"

Finally got past the boat docks. This is where we will often start our rides of Logan's Pass. From this point to the top is 12 miles. It's mostly all climbing (there are a couple of breaks in the climbs.) It's not steep - average is 7%, max is 10%. But, I'm overweight and out-of shape.

The hard part was keeping my heart rate in check - especially given where Johnny was today. My HR averaged 172 for the climb - John was around 150. We're usually within 10 of each other, but not today!

We continued our little stops along the way to enjoy the views and take some photos - which also helped to keep me from going too deep intot he red zone. Here's a classic photo of Goose Island.

This one here is a view I grew very acustomed to on today's ride:

This is one of the many waterfalls we pass on the way up.

Our last stop was one of the most entertaining - two young couples from Checkaslovakia. They thought we were crazy and were very impressed with how light and "cool" our bikes were.

Finally we reached the top. The last 500m were especially tough - I was tired and there was a fierce headwind blowing at the top. Finally got there, though - and there was lots, and lots of snow! (And alot of people. Normally we hang around up there for awhile, but there were so many people we just took a couple of pictures and headed back down.)

The ride down was ugly - the road had lots of gravel (which wasn't too big of an issue climbing, but going down...) and so lots of brakes used on the way down.

I learned an interesting lesson on motivation - as tired as I had been, and as bad as shape as I was in, after we got to the bottom and had 5 miles left to town, my stomache was giving me troubles and I needed to get to a bathroom - I pulled ol' Johnny at 40km/hr for 5 miles to get to town fast! I'd rather find a different kind of motivatioin, but...

A nice stop for something to eat and a piece of pie and we were off for the border and home.

All in all, a great ride, was good to get 105 miles in with some good climbing, and it's always a pleasure to ride with John! Next week's adventure will be with Steve (also known as BowWow) and a little road trip down to Flagstaff Arizona to ride with some friends. I can't wait!

Getting cold

2011-07-29T11:37:00.002-06:00

Okay, everyone knows that I've absolutely HATED the cold - and have threatened to move to Arizona for the winters if we have another one like this last one. Just to show how much I LOVE the heat - next week I'm heading down to Arizona (yes, in AUGUST!) for a bike event. My buddy, Steve (known on-line as BowWow) and I will be making a classic tailwinds roadtrip - drive all night and ride for the weekend, and then drive back. Should be alot of fun!

However, when it comes to weight-loss, I'm absolutely convinced that cooling the body helps. I wrote an article a few months ago that talked about my beginning efforts in this regard - and I'm now continuing it. I thought about video-taping my experiences, but thought that would scare too many people and leave permanent psychological scars... and then I found this today. This is pretty much what it's like, so enjoy!!

A Cold Shower Experience!

Now I remember...

2011-06-18T19:17:00.002-06:00

This morning I awoke early - too early. 4:30am came very quickly when one of the kids had been out until 2am. UGH! Steve had to wait for me as I collected the last of my stuff (I forgot a couple of things, but nothing major.) Then off to Magrath to pick up Johnny. Then the drive into Lethbridge for the start of today's little adventure. I probably should not have done such a tough kettlebell workout 2 days ago, as I was still feeling the effects of it.

Today was a charity century - they had arranged for a couple of semi trucks, with good bike racks inside of them, to transport our bikes, and a couple of school buses to transport us. We were driving 100 miles to the start.

The drive out was extremely entertaining - John and I found three new friends with the same warped sense of humour as us! The jokes came fast and furious for almost 2 hours! (School buses are slow.) Before we got there the inevitable questions came up on expected times - and turns out they were figuring the same kind of pace as us, so maybe we'd be riding together. Hmmmmm MAYBE!

It always amazes me how at every cycling event I go to it doesn't matter how many bathrooms there are, there will always be a significant line as it gets close to take-off time.

We stood and got a group photo before we took off - and then I ran to get my bike. John already had his - and wouldn't you know it, he thought I'd taken off already, so he took off. I spent the next hour and change chasing him down! Aghhh!

I rode the first 15km with my buddy Steve - then he tailed off. Then I caught up to my friend Jody. He was making a pretty good pace, so we worked together to try and close the gap up. He made me laugh, as he had his iphone with him while we were riding, and every now and then he'd pull it out and tweet. He had never drafted before and was amazed at the difference. I was about ready to start teaching him some of the tricks to smooth transitions when another group caught us. We jumped in with these other 2 guys and the pace kicked up. Another few km and Jody had had enough of that pace and waved me on. So the three of us hammered away for a few more km. We picked up another rider and she shared the work-load with us nicely. Then we hit a good hill and me and one of the other guys eased back. The hill tilted up at a 8% grade, and went for a couple of km, so I just stayed within myself and spun up it. At the crest the faster guy was waiting for his buddy (who was way behind me) and the girl had really layed it down. I chased. When I caught her she didn't want to hammer, so I went off solo. I probably should not have done that.

At about the 50km mark Phil rode by. Phil is awesome. He is one of fastest guys in our area. He had chosen his TT bike for this one, and was planning on shattering 4 hours. I was doing 46km/hr up a slight climb (nice little tailwind behind me) and he flew by me at 60km/hr. How do I know? Well, I was stupid enough to think that maybe I could use him to drag me up to John! I sprinted to speed, grabbed his wheel, and was only able to hold on for about 1 minute. I had to let him go. Another match burned, and once again in no-man's land.

John was riding with one of our new friends, and they were knocking out a pretty good pace. At the 80km mark (roughly 50 miles for my American friends) I caught up to them, and our time was 1:50. The problem for me was that I had been riding with my Heart Rate at 172-174 trying to chase! My LTL is 171 - I knew I was going to pay a big price for this down the road - I figured at around the 3 hour mark.

After catching John the 3 of us got into a nice little rotation and managed to hold onto a 44km/hr pace without killing me off too badly. Phil had stopped for a quick break at the 80km mark, so we got to see him fly past us again about 10km later. I was trying desperately to get fuel and fluid into my system HOPING that somehow the crash would pass me by. Over the next 20k we picked up a few more riders and got caught by the two guys and a girl that I'd ridden with earlier. As we came up to Fort Macleod we had a good paceline of 8 rotating through. HEAVEN! A hard pull, and then wheel-sucking paradise. Fort Macleod was where lunch was at, and was basically the 2/3rds done point.

I made a quick bathroom break, and when I came out, everybody in our little group had taken off - oh no! Another chase was in store for me.

I wondered at the time if this was a particularly smart idea - I knew 3 hours was coming up quickly, and I could feel things starting to tire. Oh well, I wanted to ride with these guys!

I hit the highway and started pushing hard. I could see them about 1km ahead of me. Over the next 25km I chased harder than I have ever chased anybody. I got the gap down to about 100m at about the 18km mark, but my HR was at 184, and I needed to ease up a bit. I got it back down to 170, lost about 100m, and began the chase again. I got back up to about 100m behind, and once again was pegged at 184 and had to ease off (my max is 192).

At this point I remembered why riding a century ride at full tilt when you've only put in a couple of hundred miles for the whole year is not a good idea. CRAMPS!

Both legs. Quads and Calves. OOOOUUUUCH! I had stood up to try and sprint that last 100m and get into the draft. I almost fell off my bike. I realized that now I was into survival mode. Just get this last 40k done and call it a day. John had finally seen me and was drifting back (at least, that's what he says, I suspect he was one of the guys pushing the pace BECAUSE he saw me!) He gave me a draft, but even with that, anything over 34km/hr would cramp me up. Hills, little as they were, were a killer.

Finally hit the second last hill. It's not steep - about 6% average grade, and only 2km long. I couldn't manage anything faster than 15km/hr up it, and the mosquitoes had swarmed me! (I later found out it wasn't just me they made a good lunch of, but at that point it sure felt like it was all me!) Pedaling without cramping was hard - and trying to swat my arms, legs, butt, face, etc. while doing it was REALLY hard. Finally topped out and got the speed up high enough to leave the mosquitoes behind.

Entered Lethbridge - and worked my way for the last 12km to the finish - one last hill. Down into the river bottom, then up the other side... The Pain! Both quads were right on the edge of a full-out cramp. I couldn't push faster than 8km/hr. For about 200m of the climb it tilted up to 10%. I couldn't stand, I couldn't push hard, and I couldn't spin (was already in granny) I eeked my way up. I knew if I stopped and had to walk I'd never be able to get back on again, so I forced myself to inch my way up the hill. Finally the top arrived and I spun the last km to the finish line. John finished just ahead of me. My first century of the year was done. What in the past I would've considered a pretty easy ride had turned me upside down.

They had massage waiting for us - which was great - and a little bite to eat, and the day was done. Said good bye to our new friends - and hope that we'll be able to get together for a ride again sometime. Off to home!

I'm tired. No sleep and that effort are really slowing me down. I need to make sure I keep riding now so that I don't lose the form I picked up in pushing myself so hard. I don't want to have to be reminded of how out of shape I am during a tough ride like that again!

Paradise on the Pedals

2011-06-10T23:01:00.002-06:00

I decided to spend some time with my bike today. Give it some of the attention it deserves, and that I really need. It started with a good cleaning. It's been awhile since my S-works and I have spent some time with a cleaning rag. I took a bit of a short cut for the really ugly stuff - there was some mud and grunge caked from yesterday's ride - and, come to think of it, from a lot of my rides 'cause it's all been rainy and ugly... - anyway - I went to the car wash. I even brought my bike stand and spent $1 and hosed it down. Packed it all up, and set-up again in the garage for a good cleaning and polishing (yes, I wax my bike, not just my legs!)

Then I went for ride. For old times sake I threw on my Bikejournal.com jersey. Been awhile since I had that one on! It's really a comfortable jersey.

Then I got some bad news - my Garmin died! I've had it for awhile, and we've been through alot together, but it's dead. Won't boot up, won't even recognize it's plugged in. Good thing I was able to get all of my data off of it last night!

So, today I ride NAKED! (Don't panic, that's what I call it when I don't have a bike computer with me!) I could've grabbed my Garmin running computer and worn it on my wrist, but I thought I'd just go out and enjoy a good ride. I haven't ridden without a computer for a long time.

The weather was nice and warm - about 20C - but the wind was up. I headed out towards Leavitt. I knew it was going to be a bit of a battle on the way out, fighting 40+km/hr winds, but the ride back would be sweet!

I don't know what my heart rate was on the way out (no computer) I don't know how fast I was going (no computer) I don't know what my cadence was (no computer) and I don't know how many feet of elevation I climbed (no computer) - except that I knew all of that stuff. I've ridden this course so many times I know how many feet of elevation it is, and based on what gear I'm pushing and my perceived effort and perceived cadence, I know pretty close how fast I'm going. It was really fun to just ride. I was surprised how many times I looked down to check the computer though!

After roughly 35 minutes of pushing hard to get to Leavitt I turned around and headed back. Going up Monson's hill (750m and average grade of 8%) it was interesting to note I was going UP the hill faster than I'd come down it. Okay, maybe not quite, but it was close...

I found myself in the 52 x 11 and spinning high cadence - over 100 and often-times up towards the 120 range - and just LOVING it! The freedom, the speed, and the great ol' 80's tunes pounding away on my ipod! A little Lover Boy and ACDC to keep me company. It took me only about 18 minutes to get back, but what a great 18 minutes!!

My legs are tired. (Went for a nice long walk with my wife this evening) - but it's a good tired. I'm looking forward to another good ride tomorrow. Today's ride didn't have any profound insights generated. I didn't learn any more about myself. I didn't learn any more about my bike. I just rode. I just enjoyed the wind in my face and tunes in my ears.

Speeding & Discipline

2011-03-27T10:02:00.003-06:00

This was originally written March 17, 2011 - I've since edited out all of the parts I didn't really want to post out here in the public domain.

Interesting week - I spent most of it sick and miserable. That's meant no working out - which makes me more miserable. I'm sure my family is ready for me to not be sick anymore. Completely off my topic (which I know I haven't gotten to - but remember, this is MY place for ranting, so if you don't want to read it, click...) ever noticed how those we love the most are those we take for granted and treat the worst? I'm working on that...

Anyway, I've been reading a GREAT book the last couple of weeks: The Speed of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey (Stephen Covey's son). It's not often I read a book that changes the way I see things - this book has totally changed my perspective, and I find myself looking at the world through the eyes of trust. The first level of trust I'm working on is self-trust. How does this relate to weight-loss and fitness? Wait for it.... wait for it....

How many times have I promised myself that I would get up early, go to bed early, work-out at such and such a time - not eat badly... and every time I do NOT do that it creates what Covey calls a "trust tax" - it makes it that much more difficult to trust myself. He suggests making - and keeping - small promises to yourself to build up a "trust dividend" - a growing confidence in myself that I'll do those things. This week I've been unable to put alot of this to work in terms of fitness due to my illness - but the coming week should be fun! I've made up a list of small promises that I'm going to keep this week - let's see what kind of results THAT brings!

Another book I've been reading is called "What the Dog Saw" by Malcolm Gladwell. I like his way of looking at the world a little differently and asking different questions (same reason I like "Freakanomics" so much.) The book is compilation of his essays that have appeared in the New York Times. Anyway, the title of the book comes from a story he was doing on a dog whisperer - a guy who could take the most hostile canine and with a simple touch turn him into a happy puppy. One of the people studying him asked "wow, what's he THINKING when does that?" Gladwell asked, "What does the dog see?"

The story that caught my eye was that of an experiment conducted with kids - I think they were 6 years old. They were put in a room and shown a small cookie and a large cookie. Then they were given a bell. They were told if they rang the bell, a person would come in and give them the small cookie, but if they WAITED until the person came in on their own they would get the large cookie. Amazing how many of the kids WAITED - and what they did to try and distract themselves from the task of waiting. The self-control and discipline they were exhibiting is amazing. They were willing to sacrifice something "good" for something better - they were willing to be patient and "save" for what they wanted rather than the instant gratification we seem to jump at so often.

So where do we go off the rails? Kids can do it - why do we search for that instant "numbing" with food? And is the answer as simple as finding something to distract us?

I'm finding that exercise does just that for me. When I'm working out hard I don't WANT to eat emotionally - in fact, it's easy. The work-out itself is not what causes me to lose weight - put bluntly, you cannot out-exercise the damage your mouth can cause! Figure that running a marathon burns anywhere from 2600-5000 calories, takes an average of 4-5 hours, and is EXHAUSTING. It doesn't take that long to pound back that many calaories! If you eat badly, no amount of excercise can lose the weight (I think I've mentioned before - I've bicycled 8,000km/year and not lost any weight.) BUT, the act of excercising - excercising HARD, really pushing myself - seems to distract me from the bad food, the bad habits. Is this my answer? Will this give me the insight/discipline to do what needs to be done? I don't really know - the answer will be revealed with time, my young padawan.

What Women Want

2011-03-15T17:01:00.003-06:00

Okay, I'll admit it - I'm a Mel Gibson fan. From the Patriot to Braveheart to the Lethal Weapon series, they're all great. Last night my son wanted to watch a comedy (it was late - that's when he usually wants to watch something.) and so I grabbed 4 movies and let him choose - he chose WHAT WOMEN WANT.

My favorite part of this movie is actually the Hat Dance to ol' Frankie crooning (I really do want to learn to do that someday!) I mean, that's just soooo SMOOOOOOTH! - but last night there was another part that grabbed me.

It's near the end of the show. Darcy (Helen Hunt) has cut-off contact with Nick (Mel Gibson) and he's wondering around in a daze. He's tried to vist her, then tries to call her - nothing. He goes to the fridge, opens it, and says, "What am I doing? She's not in the fridge!"

What?! You mean I'm not the only one that walks to the fridge and stares in it when there's NOTHING in there that I want? Move things around a little, after-all, there might be something REALLY AMAZING hiding under yesterdays left-overs. The problem is, so often I don't RECOGNIZE that what I want is not in the fridge! Emotional eating does not mean sitting over a bucket of ice-cream and crying. (though it can - but I'd guess that most people who are engaging in that behavior recognize it and choose not to do anything about it.) No, emotional eating can mean anything from trying to fill an emptiness to perking yourself up. Food can be used as a drug (I know, I've done it many times) - it can deaden the bad feelings and heighten the good ones. And I think I've figured out that almost all of it stems from not being able to recognize the feelings and deal with them in the moment. So what do I want? It's not in the fridge.

What I want is on the road somewhere. Yup, that's right - the road. I want to be on my bike grinding up a steep climb and feeling the burn. Or running down the road with nothing but the rhythm of my breathing to listen to. (Okay, and occasionally a little AC/DC!) The weather has finally turned a bit warmer, and now I can run outside. Tomorrow, if the weather holds, I may even try to ride my bike outside!

So, if you see a bundle working it's way down the highway tomorrow, say "HI!" - it'll just be me out for a morning ride - and hopefully I'll be feeling nothing but my legs screaming at me in that special way.

It's over - whew!

2011-03-07T11:56:00.009-07:00

No, not directly related to weight loss - though I suspect that the removal of this particular stress from my life will help!

The best place to start is the beginning - so here we go!

June 16, 2009 the local constabulary conducted a raid on a local business, Pic-A-Flick Video. A number of years earlier I had been a partner in this business, but had sold it to my partner, Dale Cahoon. On this particular day the police seized all of the movies. Why? Dale was running a "Clean Flicks" type of business - renting and distributing edited copies of movies.

Background: In the US, a Denver judge ruled that Clean Flicks was in violation of copyright and ordered the liquidation of their stock at all stores within District 7. There was an orderly liquidation and none of the stores incurred a loss, though they were no longer able to access edited movies. FYI - District 7 included Colorado and Utah. Dale found an editing company in Idaho - outside of that district - and that's where he was ordering his movies from.

Back to Canada - Canada's copyright laws are not like the US. A fact that our gov't has tried to correct a number of times, but they keep putting stupid things in. Like the most recent version: You can legally make back-up copies of any movie you own, but only if there's no security measures put on the original. Ever seen a DVD produced that DOESN'T have some form of security on it? That means you can't copy ANY movie, including changing the format to put it on your ipod. It's a poorly written law, is largely unenforceable, and I expect that it'll get tossed like previous versions.

At one point, one of Dale's shipments was seized by Canada Customs on the basis that it violated copyright law. He appealed that, and eventually got all of his movies returned to him, along with a letter apologizing for it and confirming that he was able to do what he was doing. At this point Dale made a deal with the editing company: rather than sending up all the movies, they would send ONE Master copy, and he would be able to make the number of copies he needed off of that and simply pay them a fee for the movies he burned. He asked if my son and I would like to do the work for him, and we said okay. That's how I got involved in this mess.

After the seizure I went down to the police station and gave a statement - I was there for about 2 hours. At numerous times during this interview the officer who was leading the investigation indicated that they had been doing this investigation for 6 months and that they "knew everything" including my ownership of the company. I pointed out to him that they didn't - that I didn't own the company anymore. He said I did, and as evidence pointed to the Alberta Registry documents showing me as an owner of the company, and a director. I pointed out to him the dates of DISSOLUTION - the company was a dead company and no longer functioned. When I had sold my interest to Dale I had not had myself removed as an owner or director because we DISSOLVED the company. Dale had simply bought the assets from the company. The number of other easily checked errors in his investigation piled up.

Two days later the Constable and a couple of other officers executed a search warrant of my house. I had a pretty good idea that they were coming. They had come the day before and ASKED if I'd give it to them - I called my lawyer and he indicated that I should make them do the work of getting a warrant. They seized some computer equipment from me and my label printer. (A couple of months later I was able to get that returned to me.) In a subsequent interview a supervisor from Calgary (I cannot remember her name now.) admitted to me that there was no law here - that they were attempting to set a precedent. I asked her to estimate how much time/money they had spent so far on their investigation and was told somewhere around 6 months, and probably $100,000 or so. I re-iterated that this was a joke - and that even IF what we had done was illegal, we had a "get out of jail free card" in that letter from Customs. Shortly after that I learned something else - this was not a "criminal" case. Even if found guilty, it's like getting a speeding ticket and does not create a criminal record.

For the next YEAR I regularly asked for my equipment to be returned to me, and what the progress of the case was - no charges were pressed - until ONE YEAR later. (I got my label printer back) A week before the one year mark, the officer approached Dale to ask him if the two of us would sign a form allowing the police to hold onto our equipment until their investigation was complete. I told him to "pound sand." - I'd go to court first. NO JUDGE would grant an open-ended seizure like that, and he knew it. The day before their one year deadline (at which point they would have had to return everything and drop it) they filed charges.

At that point I had to go down and get fingerprinted and photographed, and appear at court for first appearance - ideally to enter a plea and set a trial date. I went down and got photographed and printed. (At which point I learned that they still had all the movies and equipment still at the police station - that I had been lied to about it going up to Calgary for processing. They had told me that the reason for the delay in pressing charges was because they had to send ALL those movies to be checked. We told them numerous times we had already attested to the fact that they were NOT originals. That, unlike piracy, we were not wanting EXACT duplicates, that these were edited. In fact, Dale showed the officers conducting the seizure of his store how to tell which ones were originals and which were edited. Fact is, in court the prosecutor said they had sent TWO movies to be checked.)

Our first trial date came along - and the prosecution asked for a month more time, as they hadn't gotten disclosure to us yet. The next date came, and the same thing happened. The next date came, and the same thing happened. This went on and on...

Finally, they got us disclosure - it was a joke! The Crown handed me a copy of a single DVD that consisted of every document they had gathered and every interview they had done. (including the HOURS of transcripts of their interviews with Dale and I.) They had done ZERO further investigation. At any rate, we were finally, so we thought, going to be able to enter a plea and get this going.

Not to be. For the next 4 months the Crown had one reason after another for another delay. Fortunately for me, my lawyer was giving me advice, but was not actually retained by me - if he'd been showing up in court every time I'd have racked up over $10,000 in legal fees just to have him stand beside me while the Crown asked for another extension.

Finally, we got to enter a plea - and then a date needed to be set for trial. My defense was really simple - Color of Right. Simply put, I had done what was reasonable and necessary to make sure I was on-side legally. At the pre-trial conference between a judge, the Crown, Dale's lawyer, and my lawyer, the judge slammed the Crown for this mess. Basically, there is NO VICTIM (Dale's company bought one regular version of every copy of the movie, so "Hollywood" was not out any revenue - and then he destroyed that copy.), we had a "get out of jail free" card, and there was little chance of a conviction, and there was a good argument about whether there was even a violation of the Copyright Act. My lawyer said he wasn't even going to argue about the law, my defense was simply "color of right" - and the judge agreed that it would be pretty difficult to convict me.

Shortly after that the Crown called and made an offer to settle - they'd drop all the charges against me if Dale pleaded guilty and accepted a "substantial" fine. That got rejected by Dale. (Hey, I had no problem with it!)

Finally, today, a deal was worked out. Basically, Dale would plead guilty to one count of being in violation of the Copyright Act and pay a $1,000 fine and forfeit all the movies seized, and all charges against me would be dropped. My lawyer was unable to be there today (was in Phoenix) but I didn't expect anything significant, so wasn't worried. I believe Dale had a good argument to make that he did NOT violate copyright law. BUT, to make that argument in trial would cost him somewhere around $40,000. $40,000 to defend a business which had been shut down for two years, and still run the risk of losing. Or, pay a $1,000 fine and have it go away. He plead guilty and paid the fine. The Crown dropped the other 3 charges against him, and all 4 charges against me - and then asked that all of my goods seized be forfeited as well. WHAT?! NO CHARGES AND YOU WANT TO SEIZE MY PROPERTY??!!

I made an application to the judge that it didn't seem right that all charges could be dropped against me, and yet I could still be "made to pay". We discussed that for a good 10 or 15 minutes, and then the judge made his ruling. He accepted the $1,000 fine recommendation, tossing out all the charges, Dale forfeited his goods - and then gave me back all of my stuff. I wish I could remember the judges exact wording, but I don't. It left the Crown Prosecutor speechless.

In the end I learned this: justice is not done in the legal system. The police officer involved made a determination that a crime had been committed, and from that point on it becomes up to the individual to prove otherwise, and that's expensive. I've seen CCRA (Revenue Canada) do the same thing with taxes. Make a claim for $50,000 - knowing it will cost $20,000 to fight it, and settles it for $10,000. Financially, you've got to settle it, right or wrong. Dale lost his business - but even if he won he wasn't going to get that back, it was dead. So, the government spent how much $$$ to get a $1,000 fine? We were ready to go to court IMMEDIATELY - and had provided to the police all the evidence - we never tried to hide anything, we never tried to distort facts. We told them exactly what we had done, why, and how. Yet, the process took almost a full two years and alot of money - and stress! We weren't doing something evil, we weren't trying to break any laws, and I don't believe we did.

That's it. The whole story in a nutshell. Obviously there's been lots of drama I've not included here - I mean, it was TWO YEARS - but you get the picture. Dale's in a bit of an interesting situation, where he can't even say "I'm innocent" 'cause he plead guilty. But, I have yet to see any evidence that shows that he actually broke copyright law.

In the on-going saga of Hollywood vs moral choice... Hollywood argued in the District 7 court that it wasn't about money, but about the directors artistic ownership. (Which still didn't explain why it was okay for airlines and TV stations to edit, but not for anybody else to.) Offers were made numerous times to purchase the already edited versions of these movies - but they refused to sell them. Well, now you can buy some edited versions! Avatar and The King's Speech are available in edited format. Here's an interesting article in the Deseret News about The King's Speech.

To THE PAIN!

2011-02-22T12:35:00.003-07:00

I actually think I used this title once before. (March 2009 when I started hitting the gymn again.) But, the movie is such a good one, and there really isn't anything else that describes my thoughts.

First - I learned a valuable lesson this last week - just because someone isn't a "follower" of my blog doesn't mean it's not being read. Second: I have a nasty habit of opening my mouth a little bigger to stick my foot in a little further.

I've realized that when I write here I tend to "tailor" my comments to my percieved audience. I guess that comes from talking about money all the time. However, this is really supposed to be me talking to me - and letting whoever wants to drop in to this crazy, mixed-up part of my head listen in.

A big THANK-YOU goes out to Duanne for his help in getting my computrainer back up and going. I've been without a computer to run it (it's OLD stuff, and I just didn't have anything old enough to run it!) since my "friends" from the RCMP stopped by and siezed it. - he gave me an old laptop and POOF! I'm off and riding in my basement again. It's so much better than my rollers. I like rollers - great for improving my form and balance - but long rides on the rollers make things go a little numb, and standing for any length of time is difficult.

Of course, the disappointing thing is how far down my performance numbers are from a year ago!

I love my computrainer - it's basically a regular rear-tire mount bicyle trainer - except that for the resistance there's a cable that runs to this cool little box, and that runs to a computer. As the terrain changes (up hill or downhill - or even drafting!) the resistance is adjusted. All the while it monitors and records heart rate, cadence, watt output, leftleg/rightleg balance, time, etc. (and shows it all on the screen while hammering along.)

So this morning I went for a little 30km ride with a little climb in the middle. I was disappointed that my average wattage output has slipped by 60-65 watts. My max is almost half what it used to be. I worked hard this morning - and now that I've got it set-up, I can work hard again and get those numbers up in time to do some racing. Johnny, LOOK OUT! I'm coming for ya man!

On another note: I've gotten my numbers back from my DEXXA scan. Wow. I guess I'm going to have to hit the gymn. I've got some serious muscle imbalances. Pretty hard to correct those through running or cycling. The news wasn't all that great - but at least it tells the whole story and I know where I'm at now. I hope to be able to have another one this summer and that it'll tell a whole different story.

A special thank-you to my wife who is always so encouraging when I get down about where I'm at.

I Really Didn't Know

2011-02-10T20:54:00.003-07:00

So the big news I was so excited about on Friday was.... nothing. On Monday it got squashed like a mosquitto on the windshield of a Porshe at 200mph. It wasn't pretty. And at that moment I finally realized just how much stress I've been living with for the past 2 years. Stress that has permeated everything in my life - including my weight loss - and that because it's "always been there" I didn't really see how deep it was.

Two years ago my house got searched by the RCMP. It all had to do with "Clean Flicks" movies. I won't go into the whole legal battle here (someday...) but we've been fighting without being able to fight for almost two years. The first year was a year of complete unknown. Then, finally when deadlines were nearing they finally charged us. Then we fought for a couple of months (and court appearances) to get disclosure from the crown so that we could even enter a plea and then get to go to trial (and spend more legal money). We STILL do not have a trial date. On Friday I was told that the crown was going to drop all the charges against me (put simply, I have a "get of jail free card" and they KNOW they can't win.) - but with the weather on Monday court was cancelled and so nothing was put in front of the court, and, well, the battle goes on.

On Friday, for the first time in two years, I felt that burden completely lift. I felt "normal" - and then on Monday I felt it all come crushing down on me again. The sudden swing was the catalyst to make me see just how bad it was. I've known all along that it was there (kind of hard to forget that) but never really understood just how bad that stress was.

So, now we have another date to go before the court (it's another month away) - but I've heard nothing further from the Crown as to where they're at anymore. Long story, but there's some politics involved, too. I really do look forward to the day when I can finally tell the WHOLE story.

Anyway, weight is moving down, but not near as fast as I'd have expected. I'm glad that I took measurements, 'cause I've been able to see some of those shrinking even if the scale isn't co-operating much right now. I'm looking forward to next week having a meeting with Doc to get all the juicy details on my scan from last week.

That's it for now!

Ummm - WHAT? REALLY?!

2011-02-05T14:07:00.002-07:00

That line completely describes my last week. I can't go into much detail right now (hopefully more on Monday) but in virtually every aspect of my life and stress there's been major developments.

Sorry for it being just a teaser, but I AM excited and wanted to let the vast world of my followers (all one of you!) know it, but can't put any details out there just yet.

So, until next week...

Progress??

2011-01-26T12:22:00.003-07:00

So this morning at STUPID O'Clock in the morning (that would be approximately 4am) I woke up absolutely COOKING! Threw all the blankets off and curled up with just a sheet. HMMMMMmmmmmm that's better. Slept well for the next couple of hours. Is my metabolism finally starting to shift up? I don't know yet, but this morning's shower was much more bearable. (don't get me wrong, I'm still not enjoying the freezing cold, but I'm able to stay it in much longer.)

As I amp up my bike time and effort I'll start taking some ice baths. I'm putting that off as long as possible. I've done those before, and it's way more than just uncomfortable, it's very painful.

Weight was up this morning (WHAT?!!!) I hate it when that happens.

YIKES! That's cold

2011-01-23T12:51:00.005-07:00

Sunday 23 January, 2011:
Started my first REAL step into the world of thermogenex today - the cold shower. Here's the instructions for 5-10 Minute cold showers before breakfast and/or before bed. Like my Finanancial Planning life, I've broken it down to a 6-step process.

1)Use hot water for 1-2 minutes over the entire body (I like this part, no problem!)
2) Step out of water range, apply soap and shampoo to hair and face. (again, no problem.)
3) Turn water to PURE COLD and rinse head and face. (YIKES!)
4) Turn around and back into water, focusing water on lower neck and upper back. Maintain this position for 1-3 minutes. (This morning - ummm, ONE MINUTE!)
5) As you acclimate (does this REALLY happen?!) apply soap to all the necessary regions.
6) Turn around and rinse off normally. (Normally? Are you kidding? There's nothing NORMAL about any part of this!)

So, why am I doing this? Well, it's all part of the "thermogenex" stuff I mentioned in my last post. We'll see how this whole experiment goes. There's 3 other "options" for this phase, and I'll probably incorporate a couple of them - I'll tell you all about them once I've tried them.

Results so far? Nothing measurable of course, but I DO feel VERY awake! I'm going to try and do this twice/day and see what happens.

Last night's roller work-out was a little more adventurous than I'd have liked. I've got a bruised, possibly seperated shoulder this morning. Took a nasty spill off the rollers and couldn't get clipped out fast enough. It was loud enough that one of my kids, who was upstairs playing LOUD games heard it and came running. I got back on and finished my ride along with some ab-work and push-ups afterwards - but I HURT this morning!

25 January 2011
Still not enjoying these cold showers! Trying to do two/day. I've gotten the length of time for them up - last night I managed 10 full minutes at full cold. I also watched a show with ice-packs on my shoulders and neck as per protocol B. That and drinking 500ml of ice water first thing in the morning. Is it working? I don't know. Only a couple of days into it, and still not really doing it 100%.

2011 Thoughts

2011-01-22T18:36:00.002-07:00

Shock of all shocks, it's been two months since I've posted - again!
with some ideas this week. (related to weight loss) Here they are: I've said MANY, MANY times that I think I've found my answers, and that I expect the weight to come off. And, in fact, I've seen the weight come off in big chunks. And yet, this last week my weight was EXACTLY where it was 3 years ago. When I was challenged on that I struggled with how to answer that. I don't want to SAY anything about it, because I want the results to speak for themselves. I do think I've found some answers.

This week's big read is "The 4 Hour Body" by Timothy Ferris. Basically, the guy likes to experiment with his body and see what happens. Some of his experiments are things I've done myself. Others... not so much. I've decided to try out some of his thoughts. They all still fall within the general "lifestyles" program I'm committed to - but I've decided that enough is enough, I'm getting rid of this weight once and for all.

This month I've lost yet another friend to cancer. Her screen name is "Pansy Palmetto" - and she was a real charactor. A cyclist like no other, and one who has been fighting cancer for 7.5 years. She made a point of living every moment to it's fullest. What a great example. And so, I will try to emulate that.

Today my brother came over and weighed. I won't give his weight here, as I don't know if he'd appreciate that, but I think he was a little shocked. He's a big boy and I'm really concerned for him. So, I've invited him to join me in my experimental journey.

So, on to the experiment.

1) Nothing white. I've already started on this, but have had a couple of slip-ups. White bread has always been one of my kryptonites.
2) I'm going to try a little Thermogenex. The concept here is pretty simple: our bodies maintain a core temperature. If we make it work harder to maintain that, our metabolism has to increase. So, turn down the thermostat and turn up the metabolism. I'm sure it's going to drive my family a little crazy, and if you come into my office and feel a little cooler... well, smile and ask me if it's working!
3) TRAINING! Not exactly part of Tim's program, but I want to race this year, and I know that if I can shed 40lbs and put some miles in on the bike that I'll be very competitive. I've decided on a race schedule that I think my family can live with, and one that rewards me with some "trips" with my good friend, John.

Speaking of which - here's the schedule that I'm shooting for:
May 20-22 - Saskatoon's Bikes on Broadway. A stage race consisting of 3 stages. An Individual Time Trial, A Road Race, and a Criterium. I've done this one once before a couple of years ago, and this was the first race I ever managed to get on a podium for.

June 16-20 (or there-abouts - the 2011 dates haven't been posted yet.) Banff Bikefest. While there are many stages to this one, I'm basically interested in the Criterium in downtown Banff. It's a tough, competive race. My last trip there I didn't race, but took some photos (got some great ones, too!)

July 11 - Magrath Triathlon. I've participated in this one for years - this year I'd like to COMPETE in it. I'll be doing the Olympic distance again.

July 23 - Bob Cooke Memorial Mt Evans Hillclimb. Definitely the "peak" event for my season. I'll need to be down to weight and in top cycling shape for this one. Climbs to the top of Mt Evans at 14,264 ft. Pros and Amateur's alike struggle on this one, and it's steep and windy enough that if you have to stop, there's a good chance you won't be able to get started again.

July 30-Aug 1 Tour de Bowness - My final stage race for the year. Another stage race consisting of a Hillclimb, Road Race, and Criterium. I've competed in this one a number of times, and have yet to be able to finish the criterium. So, this year's goal will be to finish!

August 20 Fort Mcleod Triathlon. Done this one a number of times, and will be targeting a personal best here again.

That's the one's I'll definitely be going to. The two other cycling events I'm contemplating are the Hotter 'n Hell 100 (HHH) in Wichita Falls. I've done that one a few times, and it's a whole lotta fun! It's the 25th of August. I'll be going to race it, so better be fast! And the final possibility of the year will be the Tour de Tucson in November. 109 miles with 9,000 of my closest friends. I'll be trying again to Platinum (must finish in under 5 hours) - I came close 3 years ago with 5:14.

Yup, lots of events. Only 2 triathlons scheduled at this point (that's not to say I won't be able to be talked into one at some point.) and they're both Olympic distance. One open water, one in the pool.

All of it is hugely dependent on my weight getting down and I'm hoping that will give me the continued motivation to keep working hard at it. Speaking of which, my rollers are calling my name. Never seen rollers in action? Here's some pictures my buddy Steve and I took years ago - they're all hosted on the Bikejournal website, hope you enjoy the read!

Paceline Practice Canadian Style

Roller Wheelies

Hope you enjoy those as much as we did!! LOL

How long to BLINK?

2010-10-20T10:36:00.002-06:00

Ok, so it's been a month since I've written. Actually, it hasn't, just a month since I've posted. I've got half a dozen posts saved as drafts, but I'm going to just delete them all.

This last week I got to spend alot of time in the car again. A work trip to Edmonton with some little jaunts off the main road here and there had me car-bound for a few days. While travelling I like to listen to audio books. Drives my kids crazy, but I find it a useful way to keep my mind working, and I usually come up with some interseting insights.

This trip I was listening to a book called BLINK by Malcom Gladwell. I've listened to it a couple of times before, but this time maybe I was just ready to hear a few things. The premise of the whole thing is that our minds - our subconciose minds - are capable of figuring things out long before we realize it.

He gives two examples in the beginning that are really astounding. One is the story of the Getty Museum's purchase of a statue. Experts analyize it scientifically and determine that it is consistent with being 1,000's of years old. blah, blah, blah. The Getty decides to purchase it. Another expert in antiquities is shown it, and as soon as the cover is lifted asks if they've already paid for it - can't tell them why, but says something is wrong. Two other experts have the same experience. Later it's proven to be a fake. In the blink of an eye these few were able to determine that it was a fake.

Second example: University test. 4 decks of cards - 2 red, 2 blue. Volunteers are told to turn over the cards as they choose. Certain cards will give them money, others will take it away. The game is rigged so that the blue decks will consistently pay out. The red deck is rigged so that you'll lose. It takes about 50 cards for people to figure out that the blue decks are better, and after about 60 they can explain exactly what's going on. What's interesting, is that there were monitors hooked up to the sweat glands in their palms, and they started sweating and showing stress in picking up the red cards within TEN CARDS! Their subconcious mine already had it figured out!

Gladwell goes on to explain that we can TEACH ourselves to listen to what our subconcious is saying - and in a BLINK we can "recognize the fake" conciously.

So, what's this all got to do with the price of rice in China? I'm finally learning how to listen to what my subconcious is telling me. Sometimes I have to really break myself down physically to be able to listen - which is why I think I had such a great "wake up" moment doing the 1/2 Ironman. I'm hoping that as I become more concious and self-aware I'll be able to be more authentic and able to make the changes I so want to make.

Being Authentic

2010-09-16T14:08:00.002-06:00

Whenever I hear the word "authentic" I think of the movie "Bagger Vance" - a great movie. Well, today I'm recomitting to be authentic to myself.

3 years ago I started a journey to lose weight. It's had it's ups and downs - literally. And through most of it I've kept it pretty much to myself. I've been participating in the Lifestyles program through the Cardston Medical Clinic - and sometime I'll have to delve more into that, but the greatest value I've recieved is from a group counselling program that's tied to it.

The single greatest benefit from this group is that it's helped me to be more aware of myself and my surroundings. More aware of what I'm thinking, and why I'm eating what I'm eating. During the run of the half-ironman I did last weekend I think I've finally discovered some of those answers. They're very personal, and not something that I'm going to post here, but finding those answers has given me real hope that now I'm going to finally get back to where I once was.

So, as part of this whole process that I'm beginning anew, I'm going to try and post my weight-loss journey on at least a weekly basis here. Most likely this will be on Thursdays after I've had my group meeting and re-tuned myself to my thoughts.

Ironman wannabe

2010-09-13T13:16:00.005-06:00

Wow - still amazes me how fast time goes by and how much happens without me posting anything here. I'm not going to try and catch up - this is about my experiences this weekend.

John had convinced me that I should do a half-ironman is Sept - this was in about JUNE. I thought that would be lots of time, so I said okay and signed up for the Vikingman Triathlon, 1/2 ironman distance down in Burley, Idaho. I knew that running would be my weak point, so thought I'd try to focus on that.

Training went terribly wrong right away. I was wrestling with my sons on the front lawn when I pulled the muscles in my abdomen. It was so painful I thought I'd done something alot more serious. It was 2 weeks before I could move and 3 before I could run even a little bit. Not good.

I did the Magrath Tri (Olympic) in July - and I had a hard time staying down in the aerobars on the bike (I was only there maybe 20% of the time) and the run was extremely painful. Not a good sign.

In August I did the Olympic distance tri in Park City, Utah. Fun event, and would like to return again, but again, very difficult run.

My highest running week consisted of a total of 25 miles - 13 at once, and a couple of 6 milers. Most weeks was under 6. The only biking I had done was one long day with John in June, the tris, a day on the rollers for an hour, and a couple of other 1 hour rides. Swimming was pretty much hit and miss, too, though I did get out for a couple of open-water swims.

For the first time since I can remember, the night before the race I was actually scared. I knew I was not ready. I resigned myself to "just finishing" knowing there was a good chance I wouldn't. I had grabbed an old back brace to wear, hoping that it would help support my stomache muscles enough that I could finish. I wasn't worried about the swim - it was downriver, and I was comfortable enough in the water. The bike is where I feel really comfortable, so while I hadn't been training hard, I knew it wouldn't present any major problems. It was the run.

4am came early Sept 11. I rolled out of bed, walked around a bit, got some breakfast, and grabbed my stuff. I tried to relax and just enjoy the atmosphere a bit, and that helped. I got my transition set-up and got marked up. Then it was off to the start.

It was a cold morning - 39F to start. That wetsuit sure felt comfortable even before getting in the water! A couple of timing mat issues delayed the start for a bit, but eventually we got going. I got adjusted to the water pretty quickly. It wasn't a difficult swim - and there were lots of places where people were walking. If you stayed within 50 feet of shore the water was pretty shallow. Unfortunately, the current is pretty slow there, too. No such thing as a free lunch! I lost John and Dennis right away. They're both faster swimmers than I am, so I wasn't suprised they were gone so quickly.

As I stood up to climb out of the water, who should appear beside me but John! What a great surprise. Not so much for him, but great for me! He'd zig-zagged more than me out in the deeper water, and the difference had brought us to the swim finish at the exact same time. Climb up on the dock, and start the run to the transition area (about 200 yards away.) HOLY COW! That frost on the grass was cold on the feet! Got the top half of my wetsuit off and came upon the strippers. "Lay down" they shouted to me - and poof! My wetsuit was off. What a great experience that was!

First transition was slow. I put on an extra pair of cycling short over-top of my tri shorts - it was 56 miles! Also put on a jersey, arm warmers, and leg warmers. Not exactly a speedy transition - but faster than John's!

I knew that I was still fighting pulled stomache muscles, so I hadn't taken my TT bike, opting instead for the comfort of my Tarmac SL road bike. The only thing I did to improve aerodynamics was to wear my TT helmet and throw on a disc wheel. 3 miles in John went flying by me. I caught back up and we rode side-by-side for a little over 20 miles. We passed alot of people, and got passed by a few of the speedy ones, and a few that I guessed were doing the Olympic. Never saw Dennis on the ride. Shortly after the 24 mile mark I looked over to John and he was fighting to bring his aero extension back up. This road was ROUGH! Not as bad as the Death Valley Double had been a few years ago, but awfully close. His bars had worked loose and so he had to stop. I kept on going. I found out at the end that he also ended up with two flat tires. At the half-way mark I'd realized that I was on track for a 2:40 bike. That was 20 minutes faster than I'd figured I'd be able to do. It didn't finish that way. I managed to really slow down the second half and finished the bike in just under 3 hours. Transition #2 wasn't much faster than the first one had been. It had warmed up and I stripped off the arm and leg warmers, plus the bike shorts.

Surprisingly, I did not have the dead, painful, cramping legs that I was expecting. Had I maybe eased off enough on the bike? I didn't know, but it was a change from EVERY other triathlon I'd ever done. I wasn't exactly speedy, but I knocked out 3 miles at a sub 10 minute/mile pace. That doesn't sound like much, but it got even slower over the next 3.5 miles!

The first 5 miles of the run was out through some absolutely desolate country - or at least it seemed that way to me! It even had a stretch where we ran beside a runway at the airport. It was also the longest stretch between aid stations. I made a point of drinking at every station. Oh yeah - and the weather decided to warm up for us! Great, cold swim, hot run.

As I came into the Olympic finishing area (a VERY cruel thing to do - have a finish for the Olympics that we had to run by only half-way through...) I saw the clock - it read 4:49 - I realized that if I could knock of the next 10km or so in an hour and 10 minutes I could break 6 hours. That was something I never had even imagined, as I was fully expecting a 7 hour day. Stupid me - I kicked the pace up to a 8 minute mile. That only lasted for about half a mile and then reality kicked back in.

As I was running I was thinking how wise I'd been with my nutrition. I hadn't had any feelings of bonking. I didn't feel dehydrated. I hadn't had any cramps. I was thinking that even though I wasn't in good shape, I was doing pretty good! I saw Dennis at the 8 mile mark - he was on his way back, so only had a mile and a half left - he wasn't going to break 5 hours, but he'd be close. Except that he was having serious stomache issues. He had to slow down alot. I think he finished around 5:18

Finally saw the 10 mile turn-around - now only three more miles to go. You'd think that knowing there was only a 5km run left would be encouraging. That I'd be thinking really positive thoughts. That's not what happened to me. It took my full concentration just to keep my feet moving. All I wanted to do was walk. Thoughts entered my head of "you're not going to break 6 hours anyway, just walk it in.", "Nobody will know - hey, you finished, right?" With 2 miles left to go I passed John on his way out. Apparantly I didn't look as good as I thought I did.

Then my stomache started to rebel. I felt like I was fighting every part of my body. Before I knew it I was half-hunched over, retching as I stumbled along. I'm not really sure how I kept my feet moving, but I knew that if I stopped, I'd never be able to start again.

I started to have visions of rounding the final straight and seeing the clock tick by 5:59... and not be able to sprint to get under 6. Why did 6 hours suddenly mean so much to me?

12 miles done, 1.1 left. I had figured I'd need a 2:20 run time to get under 6 hours. My garmin was telling me that was going to be hard to do. My pace was down to 12 min/mile. The little changes in elevation on the path were getting harder and harder to deal with.

13 miles. Only .1 left. How long can .1 of a mile be?? A VERY long way. I could see the finish, but wasn't sure I could keep my feet moving. Then I saw the clock... 5:57..5:58... I raised my arms at the finish. Not in victory, I was a long way behind the winners. But I had done it. I had finished my first half-ironman, and I had done it in under 6 hours.

EDIT: The official results are now up, and I did NOT break 6 hours. My official time is 6:02:41. Missed it by 3 minutes.

Tour of Utah

2009-08-25T13:41:00.003-06:00

I really should have been posting stuff each day - but wow! What a fantastic experience this had turned out to be. I'll try and summarize and not bore you too much.

My first day there was ITT day - 14.5miles on the Larry H. Miller Speedway. I got there plenty early and watched some fast cars (and a few slower ones) zip around the track. It was open day, which meant anybody that wanted to race their car there could. I'll do another post about the fun I had touring the Larry H. Miller museum (some amazing cars!!) later.

The first team I saw coming in was the Rock Racing truck. It's pretty hard to miss! Fortunately for me, Ray, the driver, was willing to give me a peak inside the rig. A black leather sofa rests in the slide-out and a shower/bathroom at the back. The layout was comfortable, and the air conditioning cranked up!

As the BMC team van pulled up I was hanging with a couple of other photogs and noticed that a bike seemed a little askew - we ran up, waved them down, and just managed to save a bike from hitting the pavement. Soon Garmin/Slipstream and Ouch/Maxxis pulled in - and then it was everybody arriving at once.

I went down along the front side of the track, and as I was walking along almost got bowled over by a rider running for the track with his bike... it was Dave Zabriskie! I snapped a couple of quick shots as he hopped the barrier to take a warm-up lap.

The highlight of the day for me was the opportunity to be on the back of a motorcycle following Dave Zabriskie around the Time Trial course. WoW! The man is fast (and yet only managed 4th place!) I got some fantastic shots of him - again, I'll try and get those posted later.

I was able to interview a couple of the racers - and will post those as seperate posts when I get everything organized. I've got to get a couple of articles prepared and ready for our local newspaper (the reason why I got the press pass to begin with!) and then I'll also try and get some stuff ready for bikejournal.com

Legacy 1/2 Marathon

2009-05-24T08:15:00.002-06:00

This was a new experience for me, as I've never run a half marathon before. I've run the distance twice before - once was at Ricks during my first year of wrestling try-outs. They called it the "locker run" - finish 13 miles in under 2.5 hours and you get a locker. I don't remember my time, but I missed first place by not taking the short-cut at the finish. The last time I ran the distance was about a year ago when I was running 5-10km 5 times/week. I started out on a 10k run and ended up doing 28km. Wasn't fast, but boy did it hurt!

I have not been running regularly, as I've been more focused on biking. I ran 12km on Thurs and 6km on Friday - and that's the only running I'd done in 3 weeks! I really did not know what to expect, but really wanted to break 2 hours.

Paul Clarke gave me a massage on Friday, and then came up to the start early and gave me a foot massage Saturday morning. That was GREAT!

I was under the impression that the course was pretty flat - a gentle incline out, and a gentle decline back. So, I figured that we'd head from the JR. High down 5th onto the bypass, and then out to Aetna - WRONG - keep following the road out to the border!! That's not a gentle incline!!

I started off a little quick and was grateful to have my wife's Garmin on so that I could monitor my pace. Brought it back down to a 9 min/mile pace. That's what I'd need to average to break 2 hours. When I realized that we were heading straight through the intersection instead of turning to Aetna I was really wondering if I'd be able to break 2 hours, this is a hilly route!

I kept my pace, averaged exactly 9 min/ mile for the first half. HR average was 164, peaking at 176. I made the turn and kicked it up a notch. I started passing people on the hills, and then recovering a bit on the way down. I caught up to Chico, passed him on a downhill, he passed me back on the flat, then I passed him again on the next climb. Gradually continued to real people in. I averaged 8:04 min/mile for the second half to finish the race in 1:51:43! Shattered 2 hours. My average HR on the way back was 174 peaking at 188 (last half mile I sprinted trying to catch one more person before the finish, but couldn't quite do it - missed her by about 10 yards.)

It was great to see Melanie waiting for me at the finish! Total feet climbing was just shy of 1600 - I think that's a pretty hilly course! 900 on the way out, 700 on the way back.

Now to get the weight to continue to come off!

Racing in Saskatoon

2009-05-24T08:11:00.002-06:00

First chance I've had to post this here, so sorry for the delay.

Bikes On Broadway, Saskatoon Saskatchewan. 3 stages, ITT, RR, Crit. 8 hours of driving to get there.

Stage one ITT
I didn't get a chance to do more than just drive the course before hand, so I didn't really know what the course had in store. It looked pretty flat. John and I got there with plenty of time for a good warm up. The course was a point to point course, on closed - to partially closed roads (no having to watch for cars - YEAAH!) Short - only 8.2km. Only one real turn, and that was just 1km into the race - what APPEARED in the car to be a sweeping right-hand. My target it to break 12 minutes, as that has won this in years past.

I had a bit of a rough start - too tall of a gear, but I quickly got on top of it and then laid out on the bars and went hard. Before I knew it the Right hand turn was coming - I had figured I'd be able to just lean it and stay in the aero-bars, but as I drew close to the approach I realized that this was alot tighter corner at speed than I had planned on. I barely made the corner. 2km in I caught my 30 second man. 5km in I caught my 1 minute man. Ahead I could see my 90 second and 2 minute man. I hammered hard to try and catch them. (nothing better than a rabbit to chase!) I missed catching them at the line by about 20meters,

Results: 8.2km Time 11:39, Aver HR 175, Max HR 179. Turned out to be good enough for 2nd place - just missing first by 2 seconds.

Stage 2 RR

I got NO sleep. Didn't fall asleep until 2am, and then got up every hour on the hour until time to get up at 7:30am A little over an hours drive to get to the course. This course will be 60km, an out-and-back. On the drive out it looked like it was pretty hilly, not long, not steep, but lots of them. Should prove interesting.

The race didn't start good for me - 10 seconds before the beginning of the neutral start, I realize that my front tire is going flat. I drop back to the wheel car, change, and was able to get back on before the neutral zone ended. Sheesh! Unfortunately, that now put me at the back of the pack, not where I wanted to be.

I worked my way up, and finally got up to the front 5-6. Slooooow. Suddenly an attack goes off from the outside. nobody responds. That surprises me. Usually in Alberta it's impossible for an attack to get away cause nobody will let 'em go. I quickly learn why - after opening a gap of 50-60meters, the rider sits up. This pattern soon emerges - young guys go hard for 20 seconds - if a couple of guys go with him NOBODY pulls through, and they sit up and no chasing has to be done. The funniest one was the guy who attacked with a tailwind on a downhill. Before he sat up the peleton had swallowed him up just coasting!

The turn-around was pretty dicey - narrow, packed in tight. I almost had to unclip. Oh well. The turnaround was SUPPOSED to be neutral 50 yards either side - yeah right. However, the previous pattern re-asserted itself and within 1km we were all back together again. Things started to get a little dicey as some of the weaker riders got tired, but not tired enough to get dropped. I went to the front and decided to do a little pacemaking to see if we could spit a few off the back and make it safer for everybody.

Up front I go - nice little headwind to fight, but I'm feeling pretty good. I pull hard for a couple of minutes and ramp the speed up to 40km/hr. I flick my elbow to signal I'm done - nobody comes through. I flick again, nothing. I turn-around and nod my head - nothing.

Enough of this, I think, I'm not doing all this if nobody else is gonna come up here. So I slow down. Nobody comes around. I slow down some more. Still nothing. Fine, I'll really slow down and move to the far right of the road (wind is coming from the left, so I'm eliminating any draft.) Nothing. Johnny is sitting about 10 wheels back just laughing his head off. He could see what I was trying to do, and as I had moved to the left, the line just snaked around behind me and nobody moved. I slowed down to 21km/hr and still nobody would come around. I did the "move to the left" move twice and the same thing happened both times. Finally someone came around. I was ready to stop and see if everybody would unclip or what! Come on guys, this is supposed to be a race!

With 5km to people finally start to pick the pace up. I'm in the top 3, but feeling like I'd like to drop back a spot or two - the 3 guys I'm watching are all behind me, and I hate having to play swivel neck to see when they're going. Speeds finally get up to the 45km/hr + range and people start getting spit out the back. Sheesh! Why wouldn't anybody do this earlier??!!

At 1.5km to go the guy who beat me in the TT goes. He opens a huge gap by coming around the inside - right as I rode into a box. First thought that goes through my head is "hey, nice move, if you can hold that, it's a winner!" Oh, BTW, the guy who came up and boxed me? Mr. one-leg. Yup, that's right, this guys got one leg and he is HAMMERING!

Two guys go off my left to answer the attack - teamates, and they're working together. I try to grab their wheel but just miss it. We've got the first attacker - last 90 degree corner coming up and then it's a straight shot for 300m to the finish. I start to turn and have got the wheel I want for the sprint - I could get this one! Suddenly Mr. One Leg flashes through on my inside and pushes me outside - off the wheel I want and I have to break to stay inside the yellow - scrubbing even a little bit of speed kills my sprint. I manage to sprint for 5th, but because it's a sprint finish the only thing I lose is the bonus time for top 3 - and they are all far enough back that I'm still 2nd over-all.

Stage 3 Crit

Another sleepless night. The crit is over some pretty ugly pavement. My first crit of the year, and I really haven't had a chance to get my crit bike outside. I did a quick tune-up after the RR, but...

The crit is pretty short, just 25min +3

Got a decent warm-up in, but my legs don't seem to be feeling too snappy.

Off we go. There will be 2 primes - one for a 5 second bonus, and one for coffee.

I didn't have a great starting position, but quickly moved up into the top 6. #179, winner of ITT and currently in 1st GC takes a flyer early and I end up being the one to chase him down. I do, then I sit up. Another attack goes off the front, and I wait. Finally someone else chases it down. This goes on and on, but I'm having the most fun I've ever had in a crit! This is the first time I'm animating. I attack, I counter-attack, I chase. Sure, my legs don't seem to have alot of snap, but they're good enough so far!

The course is 2 blocks long by one block wide - the two stretches of one block have broken pavement and potholes everywhere. Picking your line in the corners is extremely important. We're taking these corners way faster than I'd have guessed we could. Diving in, hammering out. It's really FUN!

First Prime bell - 5 second bonus. I lock on to #179, no way I'm letting him get that one. Second last corner before the line and #175 comes flying around me - I let him go.... he keeps going and makes a concerted attack. Oh no! I want that 5 seconds. We turn the corner and head for the line. I lunge... NOT ENOUGH! #175 gets it, and drops back. I follow him back.

The coffee prime comes up, and nobody goes hard for it, though we do push the pace enough to split things up a bit.

Just a few more minutes left to go and I'm starting to plan how I can finally add a victory to my palmares. I know I've gotta get some recovery in, so I slip into 3 wheel and sit. Finally, 3 laps to go.

I'm second wheel, and don't want to be there. So I ease up a bit and force 2more to come around me - there's 6 of us. 2 laps. We're keeping the pressure up, and I'm pretty sure that I'm gonna be able to pull this off, my HR is way down and I'm feeling good. Last lap.

We take the first corner fast and tight - sprint into the second one - everything is playing out nicely. Coming into the 3rd corner I'm getting ready to make my move and I hit a pothole I hadn't seen - I hit it so hard that my handlebars turn forward on me - I'm sure I'm going over the handlebars and ease up on the pedals (though I don't grap the breaks - probably because they're turned so far forward that I couldn't possibly reach them. But, it's enough to open a 10 foot gap to the #5 guy coming into the 4th corner. I sprint hard, but carefully and manage to nip him at the line for 5th. The dirty rotten #175 that got the 5 second prime also got the win and picked up another 15 seconds - enough for him to win and push me down to 3rd on GC. So, it's my first podium finish for cat 5.

Catching Up & Tailwinds

2009-04-19T10:44:00.002-06:00

Wow, been a couple of weeks since my last post.

Roy - your Canadian buddies are doing pretty good! Johnny & I went for a great tailwinds ride yesterday - more on that later.

This last week was tough weight-wise. At weigh in time I was up 1 pound. I suspect that it was a water-issue, as it was about an hour after our tailwinds ride ended, and I'd been rehydrating and replenishing. It was also 7pm instead of 7am for weigh-in. So, I'm not going to get too uptight from it. It does have me on alert, though.

On to the fun stuff - yesterday was Johnny's birthday, so the two of us headed out for a tailwinds century. The wind started out pretty tame, but built up to about a 45km/hr blow - unfortunately, it was from the northwest, so there was never a full-on tailwind. Our route was basically East, then south, so we tried to keep the wind at our back as much as possible. John's wife, Sheri, was our chaffeur for the trip.

We chatted, we hammered, we spun and basically had a fantastic time. Our finishing time was 3:52:50 with an average speed of 41.9km/hr. Not my fastest century, but the fastest and farthest I've gone in awhile! Really felt good to push the legs for a little longer time. The legs have recovered nicely, no stiffness or anything like that. I did notice a bit of neck pain and lower back discomfort at the end of the ride. Just goes to show again that I'm in bad need of strengthening the core more.

My bike performed well - not seat post issues and everything seems to be tuned pretty good. I'm interested in getting a power-fit at some point to see if there's some tweaking that can be done to improve my power output. I'm also really needing a new set of wheels. While my Rovals are really aero and fast, they're also very spongy. I need something stiffer. I'd also really like to try out some tubeless, but there's not alot of used ones out there and new ones are over $1,000 USD. (The ones I'd want are $1400 USD)

I was really impressed this last week with Bicycling magazine. I'd all but given up on it, as it seemed like such a "nothing in there" rag. They've really upped their game and I might even consider a subscription now. Great articles. The most recent one I liked dealt with diet - and had an interesting blip in there from Joe Friel. He got me thinking and I've since started to do some more research on the whole idea of blood acidity levels. You can find the basics of his thoughts at Big surprise - it largely boils down to more fruits and veggies, and less grains and stuff.

With that, I've also been looking at his training plans. I'm going to take a look and see what kind of coaching he's doing, and costs, etc. as well. I know I'll have to add a power meter of some kind to my training if I use him, as he requires that of all his athletes. Ideally, it looks like a Garmin 705 with a Powertap is the way to go. Don't know if I'll be able to afford that for awhile.

Anyway, I will continue with the weight loss struggle. I'm hoping to make a big break-through this week as I increase the intensity of my rides, and increase the distance of some of my runs.

More snow

2009-04-03T11:10:00.002-06:00

Still doing all of my riding indoors on the computrainer - haven't been outside on the bike since March 22. YUCK! Snowed again last night. I'm really looking forward to being able to get outside again. In the meantime, I'm working hard.

I've found that running is really doing alot to help take the weight off, and I may change up my work-out schedule a little more next week to add more running (I've been trying to run 3x/week.) Longest run to date was this last Tuesday - I did 15km in 1:24. Even at that pace I won't be able to break 2 hours for a half marathon. However, the good news is I wasn't pushing it particularly hard, as my HR hovered right around the 152 mark. I'm sure as the weight continues to come off that my aver HR will continue to drop for that time. I do need to start doing more running intervals to get my comfortable pace up a little higher. 2 months until the 1/2 marathon, so still lots of time.

My watts/kg has definitely started improving on the bike. On 25 Feb it was at 2.6 - I'm currently at 2.98 That's a combination of raising my average wattage output from 231 to 245, and lowering my weight to 81.6kg. I'm still on track to hit my weight goal of 150lbs by Magrath triathlon, but I'm concerned about how the weight loss is going to come from the 160lb and on mark.

While I've been consistently losing 2 pnds / week, sometimes a little more - it hasn't been as easy as I expected it to be. I'm really having to focus and concentrate on it. That last 10 pnds is gonna be HARD!! But, for now I'll continue to mark off 2 pounds /week and try and get a pound ahead here and there. (I'm a little ahead of schedule right now.)

OUTSIDE!

2009-03-22T10:11:00.003-06:00

Went for the first outdoor ride around here yesterday. It was BEAUTIFUL! 52km of sunshine and low winds. (Headwinds all the way, but only at 10km/hr, I could pretend that it wasn't there.) The temp was around 10C. This morning there's a fresh 3 or 4 inches of snow on the ground. YUCK! It'll be another week before I'm able to get back outside for a ride!

I also did a little run - only 3km - just to make sure that I got some running time in. Weight loss did not do so well this last week. My body must be making some changes or something, 'cause my min goal was 184, and I only hit 184.36 - so we'll see what happens this next week. Hopefully it's a better week!

Today is the dreaded Sunday lag - so I'm going to be extra diligent on my eating today and hope that I can break this poor eating pattern.

Weekend troubles

2009-03-17T13:12:00.002-06:00

The weekend continues to give me troubles. Not as bad this time, but my eating on Sunday was really bad. I followed it up with a not-great Monday. I did, however, get some swimming time in on Monday, and I really enjoyed drowning - I mean, swimming again! My weightt is up from Saturdays, but still coming down over-all. If I can just get rid of the Sunday "jump" I think I could have a really big weight loss week!

My family has been selected to participate in a study regarding the activity of Canadians. As part of that, they sent us pedometers for each of the kids. We've been doing it for 3 days now (we do it for one week.) Some of the patterns I've already seen developing from this have been very interesting.

We all know that kids seem to have an easier time eating tons of food that's not great for them, but not putting weight on. (I've got twin boys that can pound back a gallon of ice cream and not put a single pound on.) - well, the pedometer is answering some of those questions already. My kids, so far, on an average day, without any "excercise" are taking 2, 3, and sometimes 4 times as many steps every day than I do. Add that up over a year and you're talking about a significant difference in activity levels. When the week is done I'll post the day by day numbers and you can see what I mean. The numbers do include excercise time, so when you see my numbers catch up to the kids, it's from going on a 10k run or something.

I'm seriously thinking of continuing this study for my family - the kids all seem to be getting a kick out of it, and the patterns that this information is already beginning to show could be life-changing.

We've gotta get out of our cars people! We live in a small town, we need to slow down and WALK a few more places rather than drive everywhere.

There's a lady that lives just around the corner from me that has lost aLOT of weight - and she's done it with a two-pronged attack. Of course, she's watching what she's eating, but she's WALKED everywhere. I rarely see her driving. I thought it was all a bunch of, well, you know. But, I now realize that something as simple as WALKING can make a very significant difference.

I'm not saying we need to never drive again - but we sure drive alot more than we need to. I'm going to talk to my family some more about this, but I really think we can cut back on the gas-bill, save some repairs to the vehicles, and get a little healthier while we're at it.

Humbled

2009-03-13T21:47:00.002-06:00

My little girl helped put things into perspective for me this week. In her school class her teacher has her write in a journal. Every month or two she sends all the journals home for the parents to read. One day, this was her entry:

"I like my parents because they help me. My mom is cool. My dad is old."

Keisha is always good for a laugh or two. Like today she had a friend over to play. We generally try to keep them pretty active when the kids have friends over, so when it was discovered that they were in the basement watching TV my wife went down to see if she could get them to do something a little more active.

"But we're playing!" Keisha cried.

Just exactly what were they playing?

"We're playing that we're supermodels - but we're just lazy supermodels so all we do is sit around and watch tv."

On to my work-outs - it's been tough. Wed I missed my bike time, as I had a full day of work/travel. (Which also made eating tough.) Today I was supposed to do a T-max interval and then some easy spinning, but my legs were tired, so I bagged the T-max and just did some high-cadence spinning for an hour.

Tomorrow I'm going to do a 10km run BEFORE I do any biking just to get a baseline of what kind of a 10k time I can turn in. That'll be somewhere around an hour of running, and then I'll spend two hours on the bike. Gonna be a hard day. I'm HOPING that after the run it'll be warm enough outside to be able to get outside for the bike! (snow is melted off the highways, so if it's not too cold it could be fun.)

Saturday

2009-03-07T15:52:00.002-07:00

My eating program continues to stay more or less on track. Yesterday was a bit of a step out - we went to the Rotary Dine and Dance last night, so it was a roast beef dinner. I thought I did pretty good by limiting my beef to just one slice and potatoes to just two spoonfuls. The rest was all salad and veggies. I splurged and allowed myself some of the ice cream with strawberries. My big weakness came latter in the evening while waiting for my kids to get home. I ended up eating a sandwhich and a couple of mugs of Hot Chocolate. Definitely not over-the-top like I would've done before, but not exactly "on program."

Today was my "long slow" day. So, I did a couple of hours on the computrainer - ended up a little over 67 km - and then went to the gymn and did an hour at a slow 5.5 pace. Good thing. It's been awhile since I've run much, and my knees were feeling a little sore. I may have to make sure and limit some of the running intervals for the first week or so and get some more running base miles in. Then I did some core excercises (amazing how little time those take!) and I'm done for the day. Just need to do some more stretching this afternoon.

The weight continues to come off right now. It's exciting to see it falling. I'm getting more and more optimistic that by May my weight will be down to a range that will make me competitive on the bike.

To The Pain!

2009-03-06T14:54:00.002-07:00

I hurt. I hurt all over, but especially my legs.

Yesterday I did a nice recovery ride. Kept my HR down and just spun along. I didn't let myself get sucked into a race against the computer guy - I just drafted him and kept my HR under 135.

Then, last night, I met with Corey - a local personal trainer. He got me set up on a workout routine that would help me deal with a big weakness of mine - my core and upper-body.

This morning I did my first work-out. Ran for 1 mile (warm-up) - then did the work-out Corey gave me. That took about 40 minutes - parts of it I simply wasn't able to complete 'cause I'm just not strong enough yet. Then I did a 1 mile cool-down run. Head for home.

Jump on the bike and did 4 T-max intervals. The last 2 of those were pretty sloppy. I couldn't do all 6. My calves were cramping a bit, and I was just plain TIRED!

Tomorrow is a "long, slow" day. I'll probably do 90 minutes on the bike and then maybe another hour running. Will make sure not to push it hard, but I think that running will really help get the weight off.

Eating has been good - I was surprised yesterday. Got to the end of the day and still had another carb and a half to eat, but had no appetite to eat anymore. Weight has started to come off again - hopefully this week will fire that up and help me stay on track for my weight loss goals (right now I'm about 1/2 pound ahead of my goals.)

I'll probably go for a light spin again later this afternoon just to loosen the legs up a little. Won't be a very long one, that's for sure!

Stick to the plan?

2009-03-04T11:52:00.002-07:00

Today was supposed to be a recovery ride. So, to keep my competitive juices from pushing me harder than I'm supposed to, I set the little computer guy to 150 watts. I figured that'd keep my HR nice and low. And it worked - for awhile.

Okay, I'll admit it. I got bored. I was spinning along nicely at 130-150 watts and listening to last night's American Idol. (my way of not really wasting time watching it - I'm working out!) Maybe it was the American Idol. I don't know, but I was feeling a little bored so I decided to do a little sprint. Nothing really tough, just see how quickly I could open a gap on my 150 watt pace friend.

I didn't pound it hard - in fact I only put out about 325 watts for that 10 or 15 seconds (I was watching my HR a little, you know.) But suddenly there was this gap of 30 lengths. And my legs still weren't really warmed up, so I didn't want to push it hard, but it was so boring just spinning! So I kicked the pace up a little.

When I'm time trialing I tend to do some "mental math" games in my head - if I can hold this speed for 10 more minutes, how much will that shave off my over-all time? Stuff like that. I started doing that. Before I knew it I was holding 300 watts for 2 or 3 minutes intervals, and then only letting it drop to 225 or so for recovery. The gap started to widen on my 150watt man.

Then I said to myself, "self, what's the biggest gap you've ever had on watt-man?" Realizing that number was only about 1km - mostly 'cause I don't usually give myself such an easy target of 150 watts, but that didn't matter this morning. I decided to CRUSH 150watt man!

I laid it down. 30 minutes into the ride I realized that my legs really were a little tired from yesterday's effort, and I really could have used a recovery ride today - but it was too late. I was gonna crush 150watt-man.

2km, 3km, 2.88 (Even 150 watts is fast when going down 5.6% grades while I'm climbing 3.6% grades!), 3km, 4km, 5km... yup. 5km is what I beat him by! I ended up averaging 209 watts. No, not a monstrous number - but I also kept my Aver HR under 158 - though at the end I did hit 178 while generating 429 watts in my sprint for the line. (Hey, who knows, maybe somebody picks him up and gives him a ride to the line sprint?! Always go hard for line sprints!!)

On a completely unrelated note - I've begun to put together a list of people in the area who would be interested in riding so that we can get some group rides together. Should be a fun year on the bike!

On a sadder note - no weight loss today. I'm thinking I must be eating stuff that I'm not calculating, so I've gone back to a notebook and will record everything I eat - and when. This weight MUST leave this year!

2 FER!

2009-03-03T14:47:00.002-07:00

I didn't get anything posted yesterday, so today is a 2 for one!

The weekend came back out to get me again - I never weighed yesterday, but I felt heavier. Yuck. Did really good on Saturday again, and then Sunday let things slide a bit.

Yeterday I did my first T-max interval session. I just used the one that John and I created last year. To be honest, I didn't find it that tough. Time to re-test and recreate it. Friday might be a good day for that.

For those who are not familiar with T-max, here's the story. T-max is defined as the maximum amount of time that you can hold your peak power output without succcumbing to exhaustion. (Get out the puke-buckets folks! This one's gonna hurt!)

To create the T-max interval:

1) Determine Your Peak Power Output. Using a power-measuring device from PowerTap, Polar, SRM or CompuTrainer, begin riding at 100 watts. Increase power by 30 watts every minute until you reach exhaustion. Laursen deemed test subjects fully exhausted when they could not keep their cadence above 60 rpm. You can use that benchmark, but let's be honest, you'll know when you're done. The number of watts you produce just before collapsing is your peak power output, or PPO.

2) Find Your T-Max. Rest for a day or two. Again using a power meter, ride at your PPO until you can no longer sustain that level of output. The amount of time you can hold your PPO is your T-Max. For most of us, that's between four and six minutes.

3) Calculate Your Ultimate Interval. Multiply your T-Max time by 0.6. This is the work phase of your interval. Double the work phase to set your recovery time between efforts.

That's it! So what I was doing wasn't exactly a full T-max - 'cause when we set it up I couldn't do it. I'm going to run the test again, and see where it puts me. Yesterday I did 6 intervals. Each interval was 2:30 long at 320 watts with a 5 minutes recovery in between (spinning at 125 watts.)

Friday will be the stage one of the test - warm up good (about 20 minutes) and then do the test. I'll keep a puke bucket close by so my wife doesn't have a mess to clean up.

Saturday will be recovery ride, Sunday completely off, and the Monday the second part of the test - riding at max PPO for as long as possible. Then I'll rebuild the program.

For the whole skinny on T-max intervals, you can read all about it at the Bicycling web site: http://www.bicycling.com/article/0,6610,s-4-41-16493-1,00.html

Today I did a hard ITT on the imn_thirty course. I managaed to average 219 watts and finished the course in just over 52 minutes. Definitely improvement!

Food today, so far, has been excellent. More control over evening eating (Khan was late coming in last night and I stayed up with him and ended up eating a bit of crap-food.)

My weight had jumped up a couple of pounds since Saturday's weigh in. Must continue to work - this week I must be below 188 by Friday.

An easy ride - no weight loss today

2009-02-28T10:51:00.002-07:00

The title says it all! Did an easy 90 minutes on the computrainer this morning. Just spinning along - average wattage was only 135, so you can tell that I really wasn't doing much. Watched last night's "Numbers" and "Battlestar Galactica" while spinning. Man, that's a great way to not just sit there and waste time watching a show! (By fast-forwarding through the commercials each 1hr show only takes about 45 minutes to watch.)

My weight is up about half a pound from yesterday, but I'm guessing it's mostly water weight as I didn't eat badly yesterday, but I was thirsty all day so drank a ton.

I'm hoping my back will start to really feel better soon so that I can start throwing a few runs in every week.

40km

2009-02-27T11:01:00.002-07:00

For the first time today, I did a forty km computrainer ride. I did the imn_forty. It's got about 161 meters of climbing in it, and I don't do any drafting (kind of defeats the purpose of the training ride.)

It took me 1:12 to complete it - gonna be alot of hard work between now and June to get that time down to hour! I was only able to average 190watts, and my HR averaged 168. My cadence was a little slower, too. That says to me that today wasn't a particularly strong day. HR high, but not able to push it (legs felt a little tired.) and wattage was down as was cadence.

I was originally planning on doing intervals, but I couldn't find the program that I'd written for it, so rather than waste time looking for it, I decided to do a 40km test as a baseline to see where I'm at.

My weight was down again today, and my diet this last week has been pretty good. The challenge will be to stay motivated as I exceed my 2 pounds/week goal and still not get carried away. I've lost the weight before - and in some cases done it very quickly. What I want to do is lose it steadily in the hopes that this time it will stay off. So far, so good.

Now, as bad as the ride felt this morning, I still had a watts/kg of 2.6.

I know that I've got to fit some upper-body /core work-outs into my schedule. Don't know exactly WHAT I'm going to do yet, but I know I've gotta get something put together!

20 Minutes of pain

2009-02-25T10:47:00.002-07:00

Well, I did it. OUCH!

I started off with a good 18 minute warm-up, and then let my HR drop for a couple of minutes. Then it was time. After 5 minutes I was really wondering if I could hold this pace for another 15! As it turns out - I couldn't. I dropped off a fair bit over the next 5 minutes.

I ended up averaging 231 watts for the 20 minutes. At 86kg, that gives me a watts /kg of 2.67. That puts me as a middle of the pack cat 5 racer. Not what I'll need to be able to win. Interestingly - by hitting my weight goal, without increasing my wattage output, I can boost that to 3.07 - middle of the pack cat 4. That should be enough to win some races and get boosted up to cat 4. Hopefully I'll be able to increase my wattage output, as well.

Average HR for the test was 174, and I maxed out at 186. I never felt like I was "sprinting" - so I could've probably pushed my max HR another few points higher, but I don't think I'd have been able to hold it long enough to have any impact on my average wattage. (Max wattage for the test was 471). Average Cadence was 92. Over-all, a good work-out.

So, the baseline has been laid down. I think I'll try and test myself once/month to see what kind of progress I'm making. Tomorrow will be a recovery ride for one hour - Friday will be a hard interval session - I'm thinking of trying the intervals that John and I built last year. That'll hurt, but I should see rapid growth doing those a couple of times / week. Saturday will be a long recovery ride.

The real challenge is going to continue to be the food intake. My weight has gotta fall.

WATTS!

2009-02-24T17:05:00.002-07:00

Well, in my workouts, I've gradually seen myself starting to get a little faster. Given that I've got some racing I want to do this year, I wanted to get a baseline of where my wattage output was going to need to be. Given my current wattage output, the fast way to get faster is going to be to get lighter.

The measurement to look for is watts/kg of body weight. Many top coaches have said that in order for a cyclist to win the Tour de France the magic number is 7. Seven watts/kg. While out looking for some more information on this, I came across a great article on it by Druber at True Sport.

Here's a link to the article Druber put up - it's got a great chart that gives some general information on what it takes. http://www.truesport.com/Bike/2007/articles/druber/druber15.html The chart shows that to be competitive at the Cat 5 level I need to be looking at generating 2.81 watts/kg

So where am I currently at? A measely 2.3 (upper end of "untrained") - but that's also for a one-hour effort, not a 20 minute one. I'm thinking that tomorrow, instead of doing my planned interval session, I'm going to do a nice little warm-up for 15-20 minutes, then do a flat-out 20 minute test to see where I'm at. This should fit in well, as today was a recovery ride. (I just rode for 1 hour with my HR around the 145 mark. I did let it climb a bit at the end.)

I also found a pdf book along with some computrainer files that I'm going to download. They're about $21.50 USD. Hopefully this will help in better developing my work-out program.

Diet is still my major issue. I seem to do well all week, but on weekends, specifically on Sundays, I do not do as well. I have managed to keep my 2 pounds/week pace going, but know it should be more like 3 or 4 and eventually this "easy" weight is going to be gone.

Back on the bike - sort of

2009-02-21T13:14:00.002-07:00

It's been so long since I've been riding. So, this last week I finally got my computrainer back up and running and started riding. I was shocked on Monday at how much it hurt to do just 30 minutes. Wow. Lost a lot.

Tuesday was more of the same, though I went a little faster and pushed a little harder - and went 35 minutes instead of 30.

Wed I took some heat from Johnny - he was going on about how I just wasn't cutting it. He was riding for an hour on the Canmore TT course at just shy of 200 watts and his HR at around 165. I rode for 40 minutes, averaged 180 watts and my HR was over 175 for a good chunk of the ride. I warned him to be careful, 'cause now I was gonna have to kick his butt!

Thurs was an easy spin for 45 min.

Fri was my first shot at the Canmore course - rode an hour at 204 watts and a HR of 166. Look out Johnny! I'm on my way.

Today I did 90 minutes, keeping my average HR at 150, average wattage was just 154. (I did do a little sprint where I kicked the wattage up to 700 watts and a HR of 185, but I kept that pretty short. Just trying to get some saddle time so that my butt can start handling longer rides again.

My weight continues to come off at a regular rate - nothing really fast. I'm now under 189. I'm trying to hold to 2lbs/week. So far that's doing good.

Just checking in

2009-01-27T23:29:00.002-07:00

Man, it's been along time since I've posted anything! Life has definitely been running fast for me, and I've been having a difficult time keeping up.

Just wanted to check in and say, yes, I'm alive, and I'll post more when I've actually got something worthwhile saying!

You're Doing What??!

2008-04-25T12:54:00.003-06:00

I can't believe I haven't posted since December. It's been a long, hard 4 months full of great personal growth and introspection. I'm not going to go into the details here, but the stress was high enough that it stripped alot of weight off of me. Not a plan I'd recomend to others trying to get some weight off, but it did work.

I'm in a much better place now. I'm still working hard at getting things right, and putting "first things first".

The good news? Well, In December I'd hit a weight of 196 lbs - creeping awfully close to that 200 lb mark again. Today I'm down to 170lb, and the weight is coming off in more manageable amounts. I've been running lots - and haven't been on my bike more than a couple of times in the last 4 months. (It's been cold and snowy around here!)

In some ways I wish I was more able to completely open up about this last 4 months worth of introspection and growth, as it's been a real learning experience - but they're the kind of thing I feel is better shared in a more personal way.

So, as part of my new look on life, I've decided to really become a triathlete. I'm already signed up for the 2 Olympic distance events I've done for the last couple of years - Magrath and Fort McLeod. But now I've decided to really suffer. While still wanting to do some crit, ITT, and road racing - I'm also going to try and do a 1/2 Ironman race. For those of you who don't know exactly how stupid this is, it's 1.9km swim, 90km bike, and 21km run. Needless to add, my training has become a little more focused. I'm going to try and complete the Sylvan Lake Half Ironman - that only gives me 12 weeks to get ready for it. I've run more than the run distance this year - back in Feb - but wow. I'm a little scared and intimidated by this one.

I wake up everything morning now thinking to myself, "You're Doing What?! you NUT!"

Doping In Sport

2007-12-31T15:46:00.001-07:00

You'll note I called this doping in sport, and not doping in cycling. Sports, in general, have had this issue thrust in their face recently, but it's not a new problem. The solutions are not going to be quick, and they are not going to be cheap.

Recently I had a discussion on bikejournal where one particular poster posted the idea of "who care? Let 'em dope. It doesn't affect me." I'd like to first address that issue.

What drives us to watch sport? In my own life I've found that it's the possibility of of seeing a human being lift themselves up to overcome. One of my all-time favorite movies, Vision Quest, has a scene where the wrestling hero, Louden, is wondering why his friend, a short-order cook, would take time off of work to come watch him - after all, it's just a wrestling match, and it's only 5 minutes! His friends reply says it all. He tells him that it's not the time, but what happens in that time. That sometimes an athlete lifts himself above a challenge and excels, and when he does that it lifts everybody that's watching it. Doping cheapens that. Suddenly it's not the human spirit over-coming, it's drugs.

Additionally, younger athletes look to those at higher levels for inspiration and direction in sport. If they're using it influences younger kids to use.

Who cares? I do.

Doping, and other forms of cheating, is not some recent discovery. In the late 70's and early 1980's it became a joke that the women competing for the Soviet Union could beat most of the men competing because they LOOKED like men. EVERYBODY knew that the Soviet's were using. This created the thought that anybody who could beat them must also be using. Evelyn Ashford ran into this when she beat the Soviet women (and later won the gold medal in the 100m sprint at the 1984 Olympics). The saying went, if she was able to beat the "shemales" she must be using herself.

It's common knowledge in cycling, especially the Tour de France, that there have been cheats. Everything from hitching a ride, to using amphetamines. Although it was well known there were cheats, there was a general belief amongst competitors that you could win clean. That all began to change in the mid 1980's. And, not just in the cycling world.

The Soviets dominated almost every sport at the Olympics. Women's sports, especially, were made a joke. I remember watching women's swimming events and being amazed at the masculine features of these swimmers. Initially Soviet dominance was credited with the fact that these athletes were able to train full-time - they were basically professionals but still credited as being amatuers. That story didn't last long.

Soon it became policy for everybody else to use some form of doping. Until just after the 1984 Olympics the practice of blood doping (removing your own blood and later tranfusing it back to you) was NOT illegal. It was policy within the USCF that you blood doped. I find it incredulous that a single cyclist on the 1984 team would even attempt to try and convince the public that he didn't blood dope.

The real problem that developed was that athletes started to believe that the only way to win was to dope. If everybody else is doing it, you're only levelling the playing field, right? I recently read the story of two Olympians in the 1970's. They were friends, one from the Soviet Bloc, the other from the US. They traded victories and records. Before they competed at the Olympics they got together to discuss their training. One told the other what drugs he was using. "Sounds like the program I'm on." was his reply. One won gold, the other silver.

One of the best articles I've read on doping in sport is a recent article (from which I pulled the above story) in RUNNING TIMES - a running magazine. It's in the Jan/Feb 2008 issue and is called "Protect The Innocent."

The bottom line to busting doping in sport is to create the biological passports that cycling teams like Slipstream and Team High Road are putting together, and that now the UCI is promoting. There is no way that testing is ever going to catch all the cheats. There will always be a new drug that can't be identified. (To this day there is not a test that can realiabley detect transfusing your own blood, though one is in the works.) Testing, by it's very nature, will always be one step behind the dopers. However, by creating a profile of an athlete it is possible to detect changes in their physiology that are sudden and enexplainable. The kinds of results that doping creates. Now you're not testing for a specific drug, but the physiological changes a drug is creating.

It also eliminates the ability of an athlete to challenge a test. The fact is the equipment used to run these tests is VERY complicated, and very sensitive. To get accurate readings it requires exact protocols to be followed. I've spoken with people who work on these things and all that I've spoken to say clearly that if the protocols aren't followed exactly the results can't be trusted. Guilty athletes rely on this to create doubt. Innocent athletes could get rail-roaded if these protocols aren't followed. A passport provides an avenue for an athlete to prove his innocence. In an ideal world he shouldn't have to. Everyone should be competing for the love of sport and honor - in the real world we know there are cheats, and the only way to catch them and level the playing field for those who are competing clean is to use the passport.

Doping is a complex problem. It's going to require complex solutions to get rid of it. The only solution I've seen that I would have any faith in is the passport. Is it perfect? Not a chance. There will be some who slip through the cracks - but combined with testing (note: I'm not advocating eliminating testing.) it will make it more difficult for athletes to dope.

The fact is: we KNOW of dopers who were NEVER caught by testing. I'm absolutely convinced that the only people who get caught doping are those who are stupid or who make mistakes. (The case of Tyler Hamilton and Perriero come to mind.)

Dopers suck. Let's get rid of them and return sport to that place where we can all be inspired by amazing performances.

Friday sufferring

2007-12-14T13:31:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks like computrainer problems are completely resolved. GREAT! Friday is my scheduled T-max interval day. wooohooo!

I had a few problems at the beginning - but they weren't the same kind of troubles. Looks like someone was messing around with me bike and the cadence magnet and pickup were moved. One of my kids is gonna be in trouble. A little frustrating to have to mess around with that, but it's done and off I went for my T-max.

I had changed the interval session slightly - increased the wattage on the recovery space by 25 watts, and decreased the interval wattage by 20 watts. My reasoning was that I haven't been able to keep the cadence up during the intervals, and that's one of the areas that I'm working on - so, I figured a slightly lower interval wattage would lead to higher cadence. I was right.

I was only able to do 3 of the intervals instead of the scheduled 6 due to some time issues (amazing how much having to mess around with equipment before a ride can eat into available time!)

I was able to keep my average cadence at 95 and kept the interval cadence over 90. That's a huge improvement. So, my intervals wattage was 300 watts even. 2.5 minutes at 300 watts. I was definitely working, but even at that, my max HR only got to 175, so I know I had more to go.

Later today Steve and I are hoping to be able to get a T-max test in for him.

TO THE PAIN!!

Computrainer frustrations

2007-12-11T20:11:00.000-07:00

A short post this go round - I'm getting really frustrated with my computrainer - well, not really my computrainer, but my computer.

For the last few rides - for about a week - every time I get to 30 minutes or so the computer loses the connection with the computrainer and my ride program is effectively over. I've been chatting with Computrainer about (their customer service is fantastic!) but as far as we can tell, something, somewhere, has been changed on my computer and it's making the program do wacko things.

Hopefully the changes I made tonight will allow me to go for a full ride tomorrow morning. As it is, I've just been getting warmed up when it goes Kapute!

Friday Night Thoughts

2007-12-07T23:36:00.000-07:00

My son and two of his friends are currently downstairs watching Mr. Bean. This means that I will be awake, upstairs, waiting for the show to end (it's not cool for Dad to be down there watching it with them, ya know.) and then driving 'em all home. So, I decided I'd blog a little.

The last couple of days I've done something I wasn't going to do - I've posted a few times to Bikejournal. I guess I really can't keep my mouth shut!

A few things that I've seen re-emphasized to me lately. I'm seeing more and more intolerance. Especially in the anonymous world of the internet - but not just there.

Yesterday morning Mitt Romney was basically forced to give a speech on religous tolerance and freedom. Being a bit of a student of politics I found his thoughts and comments especially uplifting. He didn't get into trying to defend his faith in terms of doctrine. He simply emphasized the founding fathers conviction that freedom of religion, faith, and values contribute to freedom in a general sense. I've recorded his speech so I can make my kids watch it - though I know that's not going to help any. Anyway, here's some links to the speech:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Back to my original train of thought. I posted on the low carb weight loss thread at bikejournal because I was getting tired of the intolerant expressions that were creaping up there. As much as I try to stay out of the way of some of this stuff, I really do believe the saying of "all that's needed for evil to triumph is for good men to sit idly by." - so I posted.

Time Trialing

2007-12-02T10:27:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow my TT bike will be ready to go. I probably won't actually get it picked up until Tuesday - so pics will be a few more days - but here's what I've got.

I have been riding a GURU trilite bike, but last year at a Provincial ITT 40km race my bike didn't pass inspection - I couldn't get the seat moved far enough back to meet UCI regulations. I made some adjustments, and I can now make it work, but I decided that eventually I was going to do something different.

Then one day last month, as I was doing my usual searches on ebay I found a Specialized Transition from 2006 that was for sale and coming up in a couple of hours, and at only $150. No, it's not the unbelievable machine that the 2008 Transition is, but the 2008 runs $8500. I decided to follow this bike, and if it went cheap enough I was gonna jump on it. I ended up getting the frame for $400.05 plus $70 shipping.

I then picked up a Renn 575 disc clincher wheel with rubber, cassette and skewer for $400.

As I started swapping components over I decided that I wanted more adjustability than what my Oval Concept A700 bars allowed, so I picked up a T2 base bar and mounted my T2+ clip ons onto it.

As I started putting things together I realized I really didn't want to have to fish the cables through the internal routing - so I took the bike into Ascent Cycle and asked them to put it together for me. I picked up a new chain and cables from them, too.

So, the finished bike will have: Dura Ace 7700 Front der and rear der, Dura Ace 7800 bar end shifters, Ultegra 6600 cassette, Ultegra 6500 brake calipers, and some inexpensive Tektro brake levers. I'll be running my Roval Rapide Star front wheel (the stuff I've been reading says that it's faster than the Specialized 3 spoke wheel is) and my Renn disc. I'll need to pick up some new rubber - as I want to put 20 mm tires on 'em.

I've also picked up a new TT helmet - a Giro Advantage 2.

One of the best articles I've ever read on aerodynamics and equipment can be found at http://home.hia.no/~stephens/aero.htm It's written in every day language and allows you to make some good predictions of what kinds of times your equipment will save you.

One of the big surprises I found was that slower riders actually benefit more in time saved than a faster rider does from some equipment changes. However, the biggest single factor is rider position, specifically, getting the back flat.

This year I really want to break one hour for 40km. An "excellent" body position with my current wattage output should be able to get me there. Of course, I'm going to be working on increasing my wattage output. Right now I'm able to hold about 225watts for an hour. (That's average wattage for an hour - with the hills there's points where I jump up well over 300 for brief periods.)

Me and my computrainer begin our December program tomorrow morning. In the words of Monty Python... TO THE PAIN!

Riding in each State

2007-11-29T22:50:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago I decided that I wanted to ride my bike in each state - and see where it went from there. Yet, I've never actually sat down and made a list that I could update as I went along. So, I've decided to make this entry my list, at least for now. I'll try and add more details as I work my way through my journal. This post will definitely be a continually updated one!

Arizona - Nov/07 El Tour de Tucson
Arkansas - BJ First Union 2004
California - Death Valley Double March 2006
Colorado - Triple Bypass 2007
Idaho - Far too many to mention
Illionois - BJ Reunion 2006
Montana - Tailwinds N/S Tour 2004
New Mexico - BJ First Union trip 2004
Oklahoma - BJ First Union 2004
Texas - HHH 2005 & 2006
Utah - SLC century and Alpine Loop, And Zion's Century, St. George (amongst others.)
Wyoming - Tailwinds N/S Tour 2004

Outside of the US I've ridden in Queensland, Australia and British Columbia

I also thought I'd keep a list of organized rides I've done, but will not include here the races I've done in Alberta.

HHH 2005 & 2006
SLC 2005, 2006, & 2007
El Tour de Tucson 2007
Zion's Century 2005
Death Valley Double Spring 2006
Bike Journal First Union 2004
Bike Journal Reunion pre-ride 2005
Bike Journal Reunion 2006
Triple Bypass 2007

Well, that's all I can think of off the top of my head. As I go through my journals, I'm sure more will come to mind.

Planning Next Year's Rides / Races

2007-11-24T18:37:00.000-07:00

I won't have my Alberta Bicycle Association racing schedule for a few more months, but I've been doing a little planning and this is what I'm tentatively looking at for 2008 trips, and why.

April - Tour of Phoenix. This is purely to go fast and see if I can qualify for Platinum at El Tour of Tucson for next year.

May - Salt Lake City Century. This ride is flat, and actually a little boring after having done it time and time again. BUT, it's close enough to Bart that he'll be able to ride it with us, so we'll go down and see just how fast of a century we can turn in there. To make it really fun, we'll probably ride the Alpine Loop the day before like we did last year. That one's great - lots of scenic, tough climbs (and this time of the year, closed roads on a big chunk of the climb!)

June - Elk Horn Classic. This one is Oregon. It's a 4 stage, 3 day race. First day is 80 miles of relative flat, second day is a ITT of 10 miles in the morning, and a crit in the afternoon, third day is a 100 mile mountain stage.

July - something going on in Colorado...

August - still open. Could bring a return to HHH

September - the possibility exists that I can be talked into doing the LOTJA - Logan, Utah To Jackson, Wyoming. 200 miles of racing fun through the mountains.

October - no plans

November - El Tour de Tucson.

I'll update this as things start to come together, but that's the tentative plans at this point.

EL Tour de Tucson

2007-11-19T00:04:00.000-07:00

John, Sheri, and I left Cardston about 3 or 4 hours late (thanx John) on Tuesday - and then began the journey south. We arrived in Cedar City, Utah at about 5am and woke Bart up so we could get what we euphamistically referred to as "sleep." It was a long drive, but an Ipod loaded with 3,000 some odd songs makes for some great "name that tune" moments.

Wed John, Bart, and I went for a ride. Boy, did I feel rotten! It was 18 miles of climbing (about 4,000 feet. From a starting altitude of 6,000 feet and finishing at 10,000 feet.) I don't know if I've ever felt that rotten on a ride before. I was seriously concerned whether or not I was going to be able to even finish the TDT, never mind my original goal of sub 5 hours. The descent down was frightening. Not because of the speeds, but because of the cold. Once the sun went down there the temps dropped fast. At one point Bart checked his thermometer and it was about 35F. I had sweated aLOT on the climb, as I was really suffering. (I won't go into the details, but the stats were really ugly.) I was shaking so hard that I had to stop because I was scared I couldn't keep the handlebars straight anymore. Finally I got cold enough that I stopped shaking and continued the dash for daylight. Took me awhile to warm up when we got back to Bart's, but I was okay. (Hot chocolate never tasted so good!!) It felt like a tough ride to me, and I pointed out that it sure felt tougher than the climb to Brian's Head had - Bart and John told me it wasn't, and that my thinking so was all because I wasn't feeling good.

Lesson learned so far?? Well, John and I simply didn't have much time to train for this ride. Our longest, most recent ride was Triple Bypass in July. The longest ride I did since then was I did one tailwinds ride into Lethbridge of about 2 hours. I just checked my journal, and I only did 3 other rides outside - and for the last 2 months John and I have managed 3-4 computrainer rides a week. Fortunately, we were doing T-max interval rides 2 times / week, so the intensity was high. We're hoping that it's gonna be enough, but after the ride with Bart I'm having serious doubts. Bart and John tried to convince me that it was just the travel and lack of sleep, but I'm really wondering.

Thursday we travelled to Phoenix. John's sister lives there, so we crashed at her house. I didn't sleep very well (it was very hot in their basement, and I was very uncomfortable.) - I think I finally fell asleep about 6:30 or 7am. Not a good start. Because of that we didn't get up in time to head over to JulieB's place to ride with everybody and share in RaleighDon's pie.

We jammed down to Tucson and headed straight for the convention centre. While getting our stuff there we ran into Z'man and chatted for a few minutes before he headed back to get his bike and deal with the Trek guys on it.

RustyRoadie knows us well, as he was able to walk right over to where he figured we'd be setup and find us. He lead us over to where the rest of the Bikejournal gang was gathering, and we went over and chatted for abit. Was good to meet a few new faces and a few old friends. I finally got to meet FastEddie (and he IS fast, as he proved at the TdT ride.)

Finally off to bed - and now, the actual RIDE REPORT.

John and I got up early - but not early enough to be right at the front of the Gold group! We actually got to the line about 4:45 and were probably 100 feet back. Saw RustyRoadie a litte further back.

I was just wearing my arm warmers and leg warmers - so it was a little chilly at the beginning. The start finally came and we were off! The start was FAST. I could see that there were alot of people in this group that shouldn't have been, and that there would be some crashes. I made a mental note to stay alert.

I saw DecafBeanBoy, and he let me know when we were getting close to the first Wash - for those who haven't done this ride before, this is not a simple creek crossing like I was originally led to believe. This is a "pick up your bike - don't ride it or push it along, as flats are VERY common along here - and carry it for what will feel like 20 miles (it's really only 19)

At the end of it my cleats were packed pretty solidly with sand. It meant I spent the next mile pounding my foot onto the pedal and trying to get it to clip in. Finally got both of them clipped in and continued to hammer. I had cleat covers, but somehow they got lost. Speedplay's don't do well in sand.

I got onto a quick paceline - more like a pack. Probably close to 200 riders in it. We were moving pretty quick and I was enjoying the ride. I saw FastEddie with this group. Ol' FastEddie was doing more than his share of pulling up front, and I made my way up to give him a hand. I made a couple of pulls, and felt pretty good - then I'm not sure where everybody went to....

First hint of trouble happened around mile 15 or so - don't remember for sure. My calve muscles started to cramp. I continued through and the cramping eased up, but I should've taken the warning and done something about it.

Suddenly we were at the second Wash. This one was worse. Forced single file. I heard lots of flats going off all around me. I was grateful for the advice I'd recieved earlier from an experienced TDT rider, "Do NOT, under any circumstances, think that you can ride this stuff - even if you manage to stay up with the deep sand, you'll end up with a flat tire. It's just not worth the risk." I saw that time and again.

I laughed when I saw the "wall" I'd been warned about. I didn't check what the actual grade was, but it couldn't have been more than about 12% for maybe a couple of hundred feet. Nothing that killed me.

A little later, while climbing a short little rise I felt my quads cramp - HARD. And then all strength left me. I knew right away what had happened, and I was very mad at myself. I was hitting the wall. I hadn't had anything to eat yet. 75 or 80 miles into it, and I hadn't eaten anything. Yes, I'd polished off a full gatorade bottle, but no food.

This was my first attempt at doing a century riding straight through, and so the first time that I really needed to concentrate on eating. Normally I just eat something at each rest stop. In this case there was no rest stops for me. I was hammering. "Was" being the operative word.

I pounded back some gel - I have no idea how much. I washed it down with more gatorade - and I crested the hill to see FastEddie pounding away at the front of the group and knew there was no way I was catching back onto this one. I looked behind me... oh oh. There wasn't anybody back there. I slowed. Finally after 6 or 7 miles of pounding along on my own another paceline came by - I jumped on, felt rejuvinated, and on the next downhill found myself coasting up to the front. Suddenly I was at the head of the paceline at the base of a hill. I decided to see what was in the legs and pounded up this short 2-3% grade. We crested and I started to drop back. Pants of "nice pull" invigorated me again. I hung on for awhile longer - and then the cramps hit me again.

With 25 miles left to go, we headed back into the wind. As another paceline came by me this guy calls out, "jump on, don't get dropped here, it's into the wind the rest of the way." I tried to jump on - I stood and up and felt my legs spasm hard - it almost threw me off the bike. Somehow I managed to get on for a little while. I soon fell off, though. I checked the time, checked my average speed, checked the miles left, and realized that if somehow I could pick it back up I could still make 5 hours but it would be close.

My speed dropped. Another paceline went by me and I couldn't even manage to catch it. I was really struggling to hold anything close to a decent pace.

At mile 100 and change I realized that I would be able to get close - maybe within 6 or 7 minutes, but I was not going to break 5 hours, so the next rest stop I went by I stopped and fuelled up. I dumped a couple of water bottles on my legs to help cool them off, and hopefully get the cramping to stop. It seemed to help. Another paceline came by and I managed to get on. I even gained enough strength to help pull a few times. But, I was cooked and I knew it. At this point it was just about finishing - and finally I did.

My time was 5:17 - I had about 10 minutes of stopped time at the one rest stop. I learned alot about eating on the bike and what I need to do for rides like this. I wished I'd have gotten it through my head earlier, but at least it's there now! I also need to find a way to do longer training rides - and definitely need more time on the bike!

I don't know if I'll be going back next year, but I will go back. I found the support at this ride incredible. EVERY intersection was manned by police. People lined the streets and really made the riders feel like they were wanted there. In discussing it afterwards with John and Sheri they agreed that there was amazing difference between riding the Salt Lake City Century and the TDT - and it's in the way we were treated by the organizers. I'll be sending a letter to the TdT and letting them know how much it was appreciated, and that because of that I'll be back.

El Tour Prep

2007-11-12T12:55:00.000-07:00

Well, tomorrow we leave for El Tour de Tucson. Originally my wife was going to join me for the trip, and I was looking forward to a little get-away with her to someplace warm, but she's decided that she needs to stay at home with the kids.

We're hoping to be out of here by noon tomorrow. We'll see whether that actually happens or not - you never know with John!!

Our schedule will have us blasting through Montana, Idaho, and northern Utah in one fast-paced trip. We'll stop in Cedar city for a little sleeps, and then a ride with Bartman on Wed. We'll stay the night with Bart, and then Thurs head for Phoenix. We'll spend Thurs night there, then head for Tucson on Fri - sleep in the parking lot Fri night, race Saturday - head back to Phoenix Sat night, and at least as far as Cedar City Sunday. We'll be home late Monday night.

Both John and I have been limited in our training time - no long rides. We've been doing high intensity work, and I've seen my average wattage for an hour climb by 23 watts. Will it be enough? Guess we're going to find out. I know that this kind of training is what John and I need to do for our crit racing next season. We've also decided to do the Elkhorn Classic stage race in June - that will mean some tough racing!

I'm still way overweight - weightloss keeps taking a back seat to other things. I'm hoping that I'm on the right track again, and that I'll actually be able to take off and keep off the weight. Fortunately there's not a lot of climbing on the TdT route, so my weight shouldn't hurt me too much.

Khan's football

2007-11-12T12:30:00.000-07:00

Well, the Oct 26 game was a good game and our kids fought hard. We came out of it with a win against McCoy from Medicine Hat. So off they went to the next round - the quarter finals. We'd be playing a team from Okotoks, the Foothills Falcons.

Our boys had some injuries to deal with, so all week my son was learning plays and a new position. I was excited for him, as he was learning the Full Back position, and it's where I really feel like he should be playing.

Okotoks had scouted us pretty good and they marched the ball against us pretty badly in the first quarter. Our Defensive Coach turned to my son and said, "I'm pulling you out of full Back and putting you on the D-line - now go stop them!" And he did. I'm sure there were other changes that took place at the same time, but from the time my son started playing d-line we were able to stop some huge 3rd downs and made some good progress. Turned out to be a very good quality game. Yes, some REALLY bad reffing (The head ref actually came over to the sidelines for a call and said, "Cheap shot to the back" as his call.) With less than 2 minutes left in the game we were down by 2 touchdowns. With one minute left we were down by one touchdown. We went for an on-side kick, but weren't able to complete it (really tough to do when your kicker is down with a dislocated knee!) So, the season is over. It was exciting. It was an amazing lift from previous years. The future bodes well for this program. A big thank-you to our new coaching staff.

Catching up... again.

2007-10-26T13:59:00.000-06:00

It's amazing how busy life gets. I really do need to make this a regular "must do" 'cuase to try and go back and remember the emotion and details of things that have happened 2 months ago is difficult.

Since I last posted 2 of my sons have been playing football and one volleyball. (I think he's decided that next year he's gonna play football too.) My oldest, Khan, was making a huge impact in the games he played in - and then got injured pretty badly. He was diagnosed with a torn rotater cuff, and so I began the research of what we were going to need to do. We were able to witness a miracle when just a few weeks later he fully recovered. Last week I let him play in his first game back, and tonight his team makes an appearance in round one of the playoffs.

Brady, my other football son, is doing great. He still plays like he wants to be Khan, but he's developing his own style, and is playing different positions now (he used to insist on being on the line - like his big brother.) He's made a couple of big receptions, and some big hits as a defensive back.

Michael has had fun playing volleyball, but kind of likes the idea of being a Barfuss twin playing football with his brother.

There - that's my boys all caught up. Keisha is doing ballet.

Me: Well, the weight loss has been slow to say the least. I would go weeks without getting on the bike. Life just seemed to be moving in high speed and I wasn't making time for myself. No more.

This last week I made the committment that I'd be going to El Tour de Tucson. And if I'm going to do it, I wanted to Platinum. (complete the 109 miles in under 5 hours) That will be difficult, but it is doable. John and I have been working hard. We won't be able to put in the kind of long rides we'd like to, so we're working hard at intervals and high-spin on the rollers. I have managed the occassional trip into Lethbridge for a couple of hours at a shot - and a couple of weeks ago did a 100km ride into Leth (out to Leavitt first) I felt good and was able to really lay it down during sections I'd previously had difficulty with. I hammered up every hill and recovered on the way down.

The weight has finally started to come off a little - but would definitely do better if I didn't succomb to snacks as easy. I don't understand why I've had such a hard time saying no to crap food lately. 3 years ago I did pretty good. I need to find the internal discipline re: eating again. Hopefully this week is the beginning of that.

Up, up, and away!

2007-08-26T12:30:00.000-06:00

Last year I never got out to do Logan's pass even once. This year I hadn't done it, either. So, yesterday John and I headed out to ride Logan's Pass. His wife, Sheri, decided to join us. We were planning on riding both sides, she was just going to do one.

We drove down to Sunrise campground and unloaded. Off we went. The wind was howling - but never from the same direction. Great. We stopped for a couple of pics at the bottom - and then John and I left Sheri and began to ride in ernest. John set a pretty good pace, and I dropped back a bit to get a pic. I guess I shouldn't have done that, 'cause shortly after John decided to do a little interval and hammmered away. We were coming up on a corner and as he hit I saw him rise and just knew what he was gonna do. We kicked the pace from 14km/hr all the way up to 25, and I saw him glance back a couple of times to see where I was. Dirty rotten scoundrel! He's not supposed to do this kind of crap until later!

I kept the gap the same, but couldn't close it. Then I settled in to recover. John gradually pulled away from me. A few times as we came around the corner the wind changed direction and where I'd expected a bit of a tailwind I ended up with a full-on head wind! Climbing grades of 7-12% is tough enough, throw in headwinds of 40km/hr and it gets ugly. There were places I was standing and hammering in the granny just to keep going.

I got a kick out of watching some of the tourists faces as they went by, amazed that anybody would want to do this!

Near the top, about 3km away, I came around a corner and saw a guy standing in the middle of the road, taking pics. I realized that he was taking a pic of me and decided to give him something exciting to photograph. I stood up and kicked it up a few notches. When I went by him I was doing 20km/hr on a 8% grade. (Of course, my HR was at 185) He waved and cheered me on.

I went hard, and when I hit the top I'd lost about 5 minutes to John. I told him there was no way I was going to do the other side today. In checking his HR - his max HR was only 163. I'm in terrible shape!! We hung around at the top for about 20 minutes, and then headed down to meet Sheri and ride with her back up. About 3km down we caught up to her and flipped around. She pushed it hard and made it to the top for the first time ever. Good job Sheri!!

We took some pics of Sheri at the top, and then just as we were getting ready to head out, a cyclist came up from the other side. I went over to talk to him, guessing that he was from Great Falls - turns out he was and we chatted for a couple of minutes and then I turned and headed back. I'll probably see Ron at the Belt Omnium next year, as he's planning on doing it as well. John and Sheri had already left.

Now the fun part - descending! Scary today because of the wicked cross winds, but also a whole lotta fun 'cause I can further develop my descending skills. I caught up to a motorbike and drafted off of him for a bit, as there wasn't any room to get around him, finally hit a section I could pass in, and laid it down, went around him and 3 other cars - that was fun!! (I always love the looks I get when I pass cars coming down a mtn pass.) I caught John and Sheri and we zipped down the rest of the mtn. John and I would stop, wait for Sheri to go by, then chase her down, get ahead, and repeat. Was a whole lotta fun, and we got to meet and chat with some interesting people at the pull outs while we waited for Sheri.

Near the bottom John was up ahead of me, and there was a BMW SUV between us, the BWM couldn't get around John (he was doing 60km/hr in a 40km/hr zone) and I just sat off of his bumper. Finally he got to a point where he could pass and accelerated to go around John - I laid it down and managed to stay in his draft all the way around John, and for a few hundred yards after that - then he laid it down and took off. No matter, our parking lot was right there (I almost missed it!)

Finally, we got to the bottom and this guy in a truck pulls into the parking lot where we're at and drives over to us, rolls the window down and says, "you guys were WAY over the speedlimit!" - I shout back, "Every chance I get!" He smiles and gives us the thumbs up and pulls away. Speed limit was 45mph, there were a few places I got up to 50, but it wasn't particularly fast because of the cross winds (I was on the brakes a whole lot more than I'd have liked.)

In looking at my data afterwards I see that I spent pretty much the entire climb in zones 4 and 5. Hit 180+ many, many times. Maxed at 185 5 times. I've really gotta get doing more intervals and riding more regularly. I haven't been on the bike since the triathlon in Ft McLeod a week ago. That's not good.

School starts this week, so I'm hoping that I can get into a better routine and get some good training miles in every day. If not on a bike, then by running. I've gotta get this weight off!

Some guys never learn

2007-08-26T11:44:00.000-06:00

Guys like me, of course. In July I went into a triathlon having only been in the water twice before, and having run a total of about 10km before the event. It hurt, I wasn't particularly fast, and I wanted to be better prepared for the next one in August.

August 18th. I seriously considered bowing out of this one 'cause I wasn't ready. I had done even less than I did for the Magrath one! I hadn't been in the water once since Magrath. I hadn't run once since Magrath. And my biking time was, well - I think I got out once /week. Needless to say, I wasn't expecting very big things from this one. I decided to do it anyway for 2 reasons. One, I'd already paid the non-refundable entrance fee and figured if I was gonna pay to suffer I was gonna get my money's worth. And two, my twin boys were entered and there was no way I was gonna bow out in front of them.

The scheduling was set up so that I should be able to be done before they started and so I'd get to watch all of their race. I was looking forward to that!

As we were lining up for our start times at the pool I chatted with the others whose expected swim times were close to mine. I was gonna be sharing a lane with a lady who looked pretty out of shape (look who's talking, right?), but she mentioned that she'd completed a half marathon the week before. At least she'd been running!

Finally we hit the water. I konw I'm not going to be able to hammer through this, so I've decided to alternate one length front crawl with one length breast stroke. My lane partner slowly starts to pull ahead of me. (Her name is Dawn.) I see Dawn get out of the water and figure she'd got about 4 lengths on me. I guess I must have lost count, 'cause suddenly there's the kickboard in the water in front of me and my counter is yelling "last lap" - I turn and go hard for the last lap. I'm a little surprised at how much strength I feel I have. I should work at this swimming thing... I'm out of the water in just over 38 minutes. 1500 meters in 38 minutes. Winning time was 20 minutes.

My transition goes pretty good, and I'm off and on the bike. I look down at my HR and am surprised to see it so high so quickly. Oh well, it's nowhere near the red zone right now, so I stay down in the bars and pound it out. 5 km out I catch up to Dawn and pass her. Now the climbing. I can see lots of guys in front of me. One of the really nice things about staggered swim starts is that there's always rabbits in front of me to chase on the bike. I really pour it on during the climbs.

This bike course is really hilly. There's one particularly brutal climb of about 3 km averaging 7% with kicks up to 10%. On a TT bike it REALLY hurts. But, I'm reeling in lots of folks because of it. I can see one of my Headwinds bike club buddies up ahead. His name is Don and he's a good guy - at Magrath he did just the sprint, and then for the last km or so of the run came down to pace me in. I pass him just before the turn around. He had about 6 minutes on me out of the water, so I've made up good time.

After the turn around I want to recover a little - so I ease off slightly. Don comes around me, and as he goes by mockingly calls out, "hey, slacker! Give too much to catch me?" That's all it takes. We're at the bottom of a hill and I stand and hammer hard. I pass him and start pushing for every second I can find. There's more people in front and I start reeling them in, too. I'm feeling pretty good on the bike, and know I'm making up lots of time - good thing, 'cause I know I'm gonna need this gap on the run.

I finally hit the transition area again. My bike computer says 1:11 - not a bad time for this 40km. Later I learn that there were only 4 guys faster than me on the bike - and all 4 of them placed 1,2,3,4 overall. My official time is 1:17 - a total of about 6 minutes of transition time.

The first kilometer of the run was extremely painful. Both calf muscles were cramping badly. I got to the water station a km 1 and took up after cup of water and dumped it on my calves. Cramping went away and I was off. My goad is just a 10km/hr average, as I know I pretty much suck at running. This 10k will make about 30km total running for the year. I used to really enjoy running, and there was a time I turned in 40 minutes 10k's regularly.

I finish lap 1 (5km0 and see Don coming up not too far behind me, I call out to him and we share a bit of a laugh. He catches me at the 6km mark and settles in beside me. What a guy! He's gonna pace me the rest of the way in. We are chatting, which is kind of amazing that I can talk this freely, as my HR is over 170 with a couple of jumps in the mid 170's. With 1.5km to go a friend doing the sprint distance passes us. He chastises us for talking too much and not running hard enough - my HR is at 179.

With 1km to go Don says, "ok, we'll hold this pace 'til the corner, and then kick it up for the final straight away." I agree and when we turn the corner we speed up - it's a bit of a down-hill. With a little over a block to go he kicks it up again - I tell him to go ahead, my HR is at 182 and I don't feel I have anything left. He takes off for the finish. With 100m left I feel that maybe I can close it up, and push myself to sprint hard. I hit 19.8km/hr, and my HR goes to 186, but I catch Don at the line and we cross together. My run time comes in at 59:46 - just under the one hour mark. I broke 3 hours by about 5 minutes.

There's so much room for improvement in the swimming and running that I really think it's possible for me to break 2:45 next year. Just getting strong enough to swim front crawl the whole 1.5km will shave a few minutes off. Transition is another area I know I can shave a couple of minutes off. And, finally, the run. I know I can get my run time down to the 50 minute range. This is the single greatest area I can improve in.

Tales of pain

2007-08-07T19:37:00.000-06:00

Friday night was a difficult night. My twin boys and I were out for a ride with the Headwinds Cycling Club (our racing club) and Brady had taken off with the fast group into a headwind. Him and John were holding the front - I stayed back for awhile with Michael - I THOUGHT Michael had slowed down to stay with the slow group (he doesn't like to go as fast yet) but had actually been dropped. He was really upset about that (it was supposed to be a no-drop ride.) I had gone up to check on Brady (a bridge that took considerable effort.) Anyway, there was a group of 9 or 10 of running a double paceline. Brady was #2 in line on John's wheel. John stopped pedaling for a second, Brady wasn't paying attention and hit wheels. Almost recovered, but not quite. Went down, I was at the back of the line and got to be the last one to pile in and go down. I ended up with some minor scratches and a little road rash.

Fortunately, one of our riders is a doctor (and an ER doc at that.) He did a quick assessment, and it was readily apparant that one of our number was hurt pretty bad. We decided to have the doc and injured rider hitch hike to the ER to get things going rather than wait for someone to show up (all of our family was 30-50km away, and most were in an area that had no cell coverage.)

They crossed to the other side of the hiway and waited for a ride - nobody stopped. This is on one of the busiest hiways in Alberta (#2 between Lethbridge and Calgary) and a long weekend - there was lots of traffic. Finally I got fed -up with nobody stopping, so I walked across to the other side of the hiway, stood in the middle of the road and started waving my arms.

Amazing - somebody stopped. Asked them if they could run these two into the hospital for me, they said yes, and off they went.

I went back over to check on everyone else - most were okay, bikes were a little scraped (wheels were really out of true) I told everybody that could ride, to take off and head back, we'd wait for someone to come get us. That left me and Brady out on the hiway in the sun. I tried to keep him in the shade of my shadow as much as possible. It gave us time to talk and reflect a little.

The injured rider turned out to have a broken elbow, and Brady's got some pretty bad road rash. What was worse was the night's sleep I got - or rather, didn't get. What I kept seeing in my mind last night was what COULD have happened. Brady, after he went down, rolled out of the way of the rest of the bikes - into the lane of traffic. We were on a busy double-lane hiway (with a nice wide shoulder) - if there'd been a car coming when he rolled out he'd have been killed.

It's amazing how when it's just been me cycling I've never worried about all the things that can go wrong - but now that my kids are out there... it really bothered me Friday night. He was in a fair bit of pain, and we'll changing dressing regularly for the next few days, but he's going to be okay. I've tried REALLY hard not to scare him, don't want it to take him away from cycling, but at the same time, I don't want him to ever roll into traffic lanes again!

That was crash number one.

Next up - Hill climb time trial in Calgary. Now, you might ask, exactly how does one have a crash on hill climb??

John and I were warming up on the hill - it's 1.3km long, and averages just under 10%. Most of it is 8-9% with a short kick up to 15%. The hill is at the park known as "Canada Olympic Park" - it's where the 1988 Olympic bobsled run was held - and it still is the main site for Canada's Olympians to train on. There's ski jumping and skiing on the hill, too.

Anyway, the route down was to take the bobsled path - this is a path that follows the bobsled run so that spectators can line the bobsled run. It's not really a good route for cycling, and everybody was warned at the top to be very careful, it was steep and there was gravel on it. (What they didn't add is that there's some stairs that planks had been put on to allow our bikes to travel.) No problem if you go slow...

John was making his way down, and behind him he hears this older guy yelling "Go, Go!!!" - and son is in front totally out of control. Kid goes flying. Somehow he hits John while flying through the air - John doesn't know what part of the kids bike hit him, but he's got some cuts and bruises to prove he got hit! John jumps off the path and heads down the grass slope (he still keeps thinking he's Lance Armstrong sometimes...)

Anyway - I was really beginning to woner if I ever wanted to be on John's wheel again...

We did the hill climb, and John beat me by 21 seconds. I finished just shy of 6 minutes (something like 5:50) I couldn't walk - I couldn't pedal. I had a hard time getting off the bike to lay down for a minute. My whole body hurt. I definitely did all I could, it just wasn't enough. To put just how slow I was into perspective, the course record was tied that night at 3:19 Of course, maybe the fact that the next day John and I were racing in a crit that turns out to be the Alberta Provincial Crit championships and so all the best racers from the whole province are there might have something to do with our poor showing...

Which brings up the next event. Provincial Crit Championships. John and I had planned at the beginning of the year to race alot of crits. Actually, to do alot of racing period! Yet... it just didn't happen. So we choose, in our infinitely optomistic way, to race our first crit of the year at the Provincial championships.

Because we're such super-dedicated and hard-training guys, the night before we went out for BBQ (btw, we found a place that has BBQ every bit as good as the best Texas BBQ we had down in Texas!) and then went to the hotel to have a not-so-good nights sleep. During our strategy planning over dinner we finally admitted to ourselves that we were going to get our butts kicked the next day. John decided that he was gonna go out in a blaze of glory... might be a blaze the intensity of a flash bulb, and for about as long, but it would be glory! I decided I was gonna try and hang with the pack for the finish.

Before the race things just didn't seem to be coming together for me. Took me forever to get ready - finally got onto the course to see what it was like. The course consisted of 1km. 100m from the start finish is the first corner - a right hadn 90 - at the end of the long straightaway. No doubt this corner will have some crashes - and the organizers knew it, as it was REALLY well padded. Up to a 45 degree corner, then up a little hill. Not much of a hill, but I knew that at crit speeds, and with a few laps, that hill would be the deciding point. At the top of the hill, a sharp 90 RH turn onto some of the worst pavement I've ever been on. Frost heaves, potholes, the whole works. Only 2 fast lines - hard inside, or really wide. Anything in between would risk throwing you off the bike. A quick 45 RH, followed by a 90 LT (again, really rough road, and the best line is only one bike width wide on the inside.) a 90 RH, another 90RH takes you back onto the finishing straight.

I do an extra lap - bad idea, as they're lining up and I end up at the back. That's okay, the announce the first lap will be a nuetral lap, and then as we cross the start/finish it'll be race on. Race will be for 30 minutes plus 5. Off we go. I'm relaxing, pounding back my gel that was half down my mouth when we started. I guess I should have realized that neutral does not mean slow. By the time we get onto the straightaway we're doing over 45km/hr. Then the racing started.

I'm hanging in the back third, trying to work my way up the group. I know I've gotta get further up, or I'll miss the big accelerations. Second lap and as we crest the hill the pace accelerates a HUGE amount - I'm still on the hill as I see... yup, you guessed it, my team mate Johnny burning his whole match book. He blasted off the hill and opened up a 20 foot gap - looked back and dropped the hammer. By the time he hit the finishing straight he was cooking with a good gap. The announcer was announcing that there was an early breakaway and it was john from the Headwinds... he was getting his glory. By the time we hit the hill again the pack had reeled him in and he was cooked. As I passed him I yelled "get on, let's keep this thing going!" He held my wheel for a lap or two, but he was done. A couple more laps and he was pulled. I didn't know that, didn't know where he was until I went by the finish line and here "go Robbie!!"

I get dropped - not by much, I'm just off the back. It's lap 9. I don't want to get dropped. I put everything in and just as we hit the hill on lap 10 I've gotten back on. In checking my stats later, lap 10 has an average HR of 176, with a max of 179 - I was throwing pretty much everything I had at it.

I'm struggling to recover - I burned alot of matches getting back on. As we hit the finishing straight of lap 11 the speed ramps back up again, and I can't hold it. I needed more recovery. I get dropped. Unknown to me, there's been a group of 3 go off the front.

Lap 12 - I go by the finish line - hey, don't they ever change that "time left" sign?? I'm suffering. I'm not far off the pack, they're only a couple of hundred yards in front of me, just around the corner - I might get 'em yet! An official steps out onto the road in front of me just before the corner waving me to slow down... there's been a crash in the corner. I find out later some guy blew a tire out in the corner and took down the front 5 or 6 guys. (minus the 3 on the break.) That little slow-down to get around the carnage costs me - takes me a bit to get back up to speed (I like that corner, as I had been diving hard into it and taking it at 42-45km/hr.) This turned out to be the decisive event of the race. That slowed the pack in general down enough that the 3 escapees stayed away.

I hammered as best I could, picking up pack-fodder drop-offs along the way trying to get them to work with me to survive to the end, maybe bridge back up. Most were way too cooked. 3 guys hung with me and we tried to work together. Eventually there was only 5 minutes left before the final 5 laps and we all realized we weren't going to make it back to the pack. Now it was about survival. That cost us 2 of our number.

The two of us tried to stay away. We heard the motorcycle behind us - saw it on the hill - and hammered for everything we were worth to stay away for one more lap. But, alas, the 3 breakaways caught us and we got pulled - only 2 minutes more and we'd have gotten to the final 5 laps.

My average hr for the race was 174, with a max of 179 (which I saw on two laps - 10 and 14) My average speed was 39.5km/hr. I couldn't hardly breathe. I couldn't walk. I was in pain.

Now that was fun!

Maybe I should train for this stuff

2007-07-22T11:01:00.000-06:00

When I sat down to develop my goals this year I had some pretty high hopes as to what I’d accomplish physical fitness-wise.

I’d planned on riding lots of hills and getting in lots of miles so that I could put some hurt on the Kitty at TBP – that didn’t work out.

I planned on losing 35lbs – that hasn’t happened.

I planned on running 5km 3 times / week – up to yesterday I’d run a TOTAL of 10km

I’d planned on swimming 1km 3 times / week – up to yesterday I’d been in a pool 3 times, and swam a total of 2.5km

The reason why I’d wanted to do the running and swimming was two-fold. One, I figured the extra cross-training would really help with the weight loss, and TWO, I was going to be entering a couple of triathalons this year.

Yesterday was the first. Open Water swim of 1.5km, Bike of 40km, and 10km run. (Olympic distance) I probably should have bowed out and done the sprint distance or something. I really wasn’t ready for this. However, I’d been giving the sprint distance friends of mine a rough time about not doing the Olympic. Guess I kind of hoped myself on that one.

My oldest boy kept me up until 1am Friday night – and even then I slept terribly. Not a good start. Up at 6am to get ready. It was hard rolling out of bed, but I managed. Unfortunately, it meant I was not thinking really sharp. I’d pay for that later.

Loaded my bike and gear (and this time I remember to grab my water bottle from the freezer. I’d put it in just before bed.) and headed out the door.

20 minutes down the road I remember I’ve forgotten my cleat covers. Normally not a big deal, but there’s a section between the swim transition area and where you can mount the bike that’s all sand and dirt for about 100 yrds. Speedplay pedals don’t do well in that crap. I called my wife and asked her to bring them for me. I called her a few minutes later when I remembered I’d forgotten a towel, too.

A little further and I realize I forgot to have any breakfast.

Got T1 set up, picked up my timing chip, etc. and then headed for T2 (the transition areas are 26km apart.) That’s where I realize that I don’t have any gels or powerbars or anything with me. Oh well, at least I’ve got some Gatorade, and it’s only going to be around 3 hrs…

Finally, it’s time, but my wife hasn’t gotten here yet. Oh well, no towel, no cleat covers. I’ll have to deal with it. I try to stay at the back at the start, as I know I’m not going to be fast in the water and don’t want to get kicked too much. No wind (how often does that happen in this country?!) so the water is like glass. One guy hits the water at the front and strikes out so fast that those on the shore can’t believe it. He ends up doing the swim in 17:46 I finish the swim in 36 minutes.

Bike time, my turn to shine. I drop the hammer. I’m trying to break the one hour mark on this one. Closest I’ve come in the past has been 1:08 for a 40km ITT (and that was a cycling TT, no swimming or running.) JohnnyE goes by me and calls out “catch ‘em in the hills!” I make sure that on the hills I really lay it down, and I catch lots of riders in the first 12km. They may have gotten out of the water before me, but I’ll be running before them! (and then I fully expect them to pass me on the run.)

At about the 15km mark I start catching and passing a lot of Sprint participants. Here is where I see my wife. She’s hanging out the window of the van, ringing a cow bell for me as I go by. I smile. Always amazes me how good it feels to have family watching, or friends cheering.

This is dangerous. The sprint participants typically are riding mtn bikes and wearing ipods They don’t hear me calling “on your left” and are swerving all over the road. It forces me out of the aero bars a lot. At the 20km mark there’s a 13% hill of about ¾ of a kilometre, and then a 90 degree left turn onto the main highway. Traffic is backed up most of the way down the hill, and I start passing vehicles on the left. Get to the intersection, hammer across into the main traffic lane and catch the eye of the SUV driver who turned at the same time as me and signal to move over to the shoulder. He gives me lots of room and I’m back down in the aero bars. 20 more km. I reach down for my water bottle and pop the lid to grab a drink.

You know, it’s not a good idea to freeze Gatorade in an insulated bottle unless you’re going to be out on the road for hours and hours and have more than one bottle with you. I squeezed as much liquid/Gatorade slush as I could into my mouth.

I’m in town now. I’ve conserved some energy on one of the big descents (where some people were hammering at 80km/hr, I held back and only did 65 and just coasted.) I’ve held 45km/hr across the flats. I’m close to the one hour mark. I hit the hard right hand turn that loops back on itself as I enter town – and get hit smack in the face by a headwind. Not a stiff one, about 15km/hr, but man, at this point it’s tough to hold speed. I hold speed through all the corners, leaning my TT bike hard. At one point I hit a little gravel in a corner and think I may have over-cooked this one and going down, but I stay up. The final stretch and I can hear my daughter ringing that cow bell from a block away. I smile some more, and sprint hard for the line.

As I approach the dismount area I’m coming up on another rider. I unclip my right leg, swing it over so that when I hit the dismount line I can start running. (or walking in the bike cleat way.) The guy in front of me hits the dismount line and locks ‘em up and swerves into the middle of the lane (he was on the far left.) I lock ‘em up. I feel the rear will lifting. The left hand crank hits my thigh on the way up, but I’m unclipped from it. I start running and save the bike from endoing. Sheesh! I hit the stop button on my bike computer. (The official times have all the transition times added to the bike.) My bike time is just under 1:03.

Now the run. I start out of the transition zone and immediately my calf muscles start cramping. Looks like I’ve pushed the bike a bit harder than I should’ve. Oh well, this should ease up. The first couple of hundred yards of the run are always the worst, right?

1km into the run and my calves are still cramping. Not full on cramps, just right there on the twitching edge where you know it could drop you to your knees at any time. I push on. I’m slow. I check my computer and I’m only doing 9km/hr, but I’m managing to keep my HR around 159.

2km and the cramping has eased, but my legs are tired. I can’t get any speed up. I try to increase the cadence, but my legs just won’t go. I tell myself just 8 more to go – and then I get passed by the first of many Olympic distance runners.

3km – a friend and organizer of the Fort McLeod triathalon catches me. I managed to kick up the cadence a bit to hang with him for a km before he runs off into the distance. HR is now mid 160’s.

Just before the turn around there’s a long hill of about 1km. I get passed by yet another Olympic distance participant at the bottom, but see my friend up ahead walking the hill. I figure if I can keep a good pace up the hill that I’ll catch him before the turn around.

Somehow, I manage to do just that – but my HR is over 170 now. As we turn around there’s a water station there and we walk through it while downing some Gatorade and water. I’m double-fisting the Gatorade in a hope of stopping the bonk and cramps from getting me. Off we go.

At km 6.5 my friend backs off. I’m on my own again. His pacing has really helped me to kick the speed up – I’ve managed 12km/hr for the last couple of k’s.

I get passed by some more folks.

8km – 2 to go. Holy cow this hurts! My body wants to walk. I won’t let it. Speed is down to 9km/hr again. I get passed by some people.

Less than a kilometre left. A member of our local cycling club who did the Sprint has walked down to the bottom of the hill, he crosses the road and starts running beside me, pacing me along, encouraging me – and then I hear that cow bell again. My daughter is yelling “there’s my Daddy!!” and ringing it as hard as she can. My wife and the twin boys are there beside her cheering. I start climbing this last hill.

Someone is a masochist, putting this hill here. It hurts. It’s not long, only a couple of hundred yards, but it’s fairly steep. I continue to speed up. I’m in my version of a full-out sprint now – only a couple of hundred yards left. People are cheering. I can hear JohnnyE screaming my name, one of my son’s has tried to pace me in for the last few hundred yards, but I drop him (revenge for his dropping me on a cycling hill climb.) As I cross the line they announce my name and I glance at the official clock – 2:51:10 A new personal best.

My running time was over an hour (1:06) I hurt all over. I know that’s only going to get worse over the next 24 hours. I enjoy the moment of being a finisher and chatting with my friends. Some people come up to congradulate me and they make a big deal out of my finish – I guess nobody can believe the fat guy did it.

I end up 15 of 26 men, 22 of 40 total. Right in the middle of the pack. Within a couple of minutes of moving up 6 or 7 spots. Lots of room to improve on the running, just need to do some of that stuff. Maybe I should do that before the next one I’ve got scheduled for the middle of August.

It's Not About The Truth

2007-07-20T19:32:00.000-06:00

Recently there’s been a great deal of press and turmoil regarding the use of performance enhancing drugs in sports – cycling in particular. A couple of year’s ago a journalist by the name of David Walsh wrote a book called LA Confidential. A book purportedly about Lance Armstrong’s alleged use of performance enhancing drugs. That book was never translated into English – and I don’t read French, so I never got to read the material first hand. Lance Armstrong has been fighting a number of allegations ever since his 1999 TDF victory. Coyle does a good job addressing some of this in “Lance Armstrong’s War.”

Last year Floyd Landis won the TDF – well, kind of. He won, but was later accused of failing a drug test for testosterone. David Walsh now had a much more willing market for his accusations, and released the book “From Lance to Floyd”. I will tell you right now, that I have some issues with Walsh’s writing style, his bias’ and his documentation of his accusations. On the positive side – he does use good punctuation. – oh, and he tells some interesting stories. But, more on all of that later.

My intent as I began reading this book was to offer my opinion on just this book. However, at the same time, I began reading Floyd Landis’ book, “Positively False” – it was an interesting weekend of reading! In order to really understand what both of these writers are saying about doping in cycling, I felt like it was necessary to start earlier, and cover a little wider subject matter. My intent here is not to be documenting everything I say. To put it simply, I don’t have the time to go back and find all of the specific references to what I’m saying. I hope I can provide enough information that the reader can check it out himself with a quick google search. I’m writing most of this “off the cuff”.

The first issue to determine is to decide what constitutes doping. David Walsh deals with this issue – kind of. He takes a very puritanical view. Here’s the two extremes as I see it.

First is the position of Dr. Michelle Ferrari (a much-vilified sports doctor. His story is fascinating, and if you ever get a chance to read it you’ll learn a great deal about endurance sports in general and the medical science that has grown around it.) Dr. Ferrari came out publicly and said that basically, if it wasn’t specifically illegal, or couldn’t be tested for, that it was legal. He said this in relation to rEPO. At the time rEPO could not be tested for.

On the other extreme sits Walsh claiming that there is a moral ground, and that anything that enhances performance artificially should be against the rules.

The problem with this position is this: what about B12 shots? It’s a vitamin, it’s something that’s been proven to increase performace, it is NOT illegal, and it used commonly at virtually every level of sport. Yet, you could not eat enough, or even take enough pills of B12 to do any good. Definitely not a “natural” process, as you have to take a shot to make it effective – but it’s not dangerous (the body will just eliminate any excess.)

What about sleeping in an altitude tent? The UCI has made some noise about banning that – so what about going to live and train in Colorado (at altitude)?

The question is not as clear-cut as some would want us to believe. I take the position somewhere in the middle. I’m not in favor of the use of drugs such as rEPO, but I have no problem with a guy sleeping in an altitude tent. I have no problem with guys in the tour hooking themselves up to IV’s to rehydrate, but am strongly opposed to blending in some chemicals with it. I have no problems with B12 shots, but would be opposed to amphetamines.

But do I have the right to impose my moral values as to what’s right / wrong on others? In simple terms, I believe we have to have an organization that will make the determination as to what is legal and what is not. Anything within those rules is allowed. So, in some sense, I fall on Dr. Ferrari’s side (with the exception of the ability to test for it. If it’s illegal to use it, then morally, it doesn’t matter whether you get caught or not.)

Okay, there’s my position.

When I first started reading Walsh’s book I sat-down with a highlighter and pen to make notes as I went along. I eventually gave up. I will try and summarize my general impressions along with a few specific examples.

Walsh makes some very good points occasionally, and even backs some of them up with what I would describe as compelling testimony – but then doesn’t tell the other side of the story. He conveniently either completely forgets to tell the other side, or makes a very concerted effort to minimize it. Unless the reader was already familiar with the details of the situation, you’d have a difficult time getting an accurate picture.

As an example: The testimony of Betty Andreau. (and, to some extent, Frankie) Simply put, the story goes like this:

Lance Armstrong is in hospital being treated for his cancer. Lance and 5 or 6 of his friends are in a room together when 2 doctors walk in. Betty was going to leave, but Lance said to stay. During that conversation Betty alleges that the doctors asked Lance if he’d ever used performance enhancing drugs and Lance admitted to using rEPO, steroids, etc. (she names them all specifically.) Frankie backs up some of this story. However, there is NO RECORD of it in the medical reports. I’ve yet to meet a doctor who didn’t record stuff like that. The other people in the room give conflicting reports of what was said. There are plausible explanations on record in court (this whole incident became very public after a lawsuit that Lance eventually won – but that’s another story.)

I, personally, believe that Lance used rEPO and other performance enhancing products. The most damning evidence against Lance, in my opinion, is not cloak and dagger stuff – it’s that the explanations for his change in performance between pre-cancer and post-cancer do not meet scrutiny. Things like the claimed 20lb weight loss. While his body composition definitely changed, you can see that in pictures, his actual weight, as recorded, fluctuated just 2 lbs.

In the case of Lance, there’s a really obvious point that Walsh makes in regards to his testing – none of the testing Lance took showed his cancer. It should have. There’s only a couple of explanations for it not: 1) Lance was doping and was using masking agents to hide that – and those agents also masked the fact that he had cancer. Or 2) The tests are deeply flawed. Walsh actually does a pretty good job explaining this issue.

Another indicator of drug use: look at the average speeds for the tour – they took a huge jump in one year, and have remained high. Interestingly, this year, when I suspect everybody’s scared to be using anything, the average speeds have come way down. There are days that are actual recovery days.

My issue with Walsh is that his view is tainted, and he doesn’t seem to want to tell the whole story. My assumption is that he believes that Lance and all the other athletes have had plenty of opportunity to get their side of the story out and his objective is to tell the other side. All fine and well, but that’s not how he portrays the book – he portrays it as the complete story. It’s not.

I really did enjoy some of the behind the scenes peekes that he gives us into professional cycling. That, specifically, was one of the really interesting things I found in Floyd’s book, as well.

Flipping over to Floyd’s book for a minute: I particularly enjoyed his inside look at the way US Postal worked, and the reasons why he left. I’d always wondered about that. Things like not being given a TT bike to practice on, etc. really emphasized that US Postal really was ALL ABOUT LANCE. I understand much better why he left, and can honestly say I’d have left, too. In Walsh’s book he makes a pretty strong accusation of Floyd’s blood doping – but then the only evidence he supplies is a IM transcript. Admittedly, it’s an interesting read, but is only a conversation between two riders discussing a rumour they heard and not disclosing the sources of that rumour. (Read some more on that at http://www.cyclingnews.com/riders/2006/interviews/?id=jonathan_vaughters06

I appreciated Floyd’s candor on what he got paid, and the other details of professional cycling that we’ve never really heard. Even Michael Barry’s “Inside the Postal Bus” never came close to revealing the kinds of details that Floyd does.

My conclusion on Walsh’s book – he’s done a lot of work researching it, but many of his witnesses are of questionable believability. Lots of innuendo, but not enough documentation. Too often he leads with “undisclosed sources” or such things. That’s not good enough. A reader not familiar with the background and details of doping in cycling would definitely be persuaded that all cyclists are doping. I don’t believe all are doing it, but I do believe it has been rampant in the pro peleton’s. Walsh’s book isn’t so much about tracking down the truth as it of getting his story out and slapping Lance back. He quotes his own writing a fair bit. (You’ll read comments like, “one of the author’s of LA Confidential said…”)

What can be done to clean up cycling? My thoughts are pretty clear on this, and on the surface it seems pretty easy, but the politics and money of cycling will make it very difficult.

1) The UCI must become a CYCLISTS union. It must be there for the cyclists. In his book Positively False Floyd talks about the politics of even getting pay he was owed. This organization must put the riders interests first.

2) WADA must become a standardizing organization. They must be absolutely strict in the enforcement of their rules – including those about confidentiality. They must establish firm standards as to what constitutes a positive test that is observed across the board by all WADA approved labs, and they must eliminate the stupid rules from within the organisation like not allowing WADA employees or WADA approved lab employees to testify on behalf of an athlete. Virtually all of the experts work either directly or indirectly for WADA, so if they’re not allowed to testify… you can see where this is going. This is the organization I referred to earlier that must make the determination as to what constitutes doping. It must be fair, it must be transparent.

3) Teams must be made more responsible. The recent signings of the athletes and the demand that trainers / coaches sign a contract guaranteeing that they won’t be involved in doping, and if they are, will forfeit a year’s salary, is a step in the right direction. It is useless if WADA doesn’t become an organization the athletes can trust – and I would suggest that WADA and the UCI should be signing a similar agreement.

4) In-house testing. Doping will always be ahead of the testers. That’s the nature of it. The only way to get ahead of the dopers is to be developing physiological profiles. Deviations from those profiles would indicate something is going on – that means either a new, legitimate response to new training, or doping. Programs similar to what Team Slipstream, T-mobile, and Credit Agricole are running go a long ways in this direction. I’d like to see these kinds of testing programs institutionalized and run by the UCI (the RIDERS union.)

Some have indicated that we should just let them do whatever they want. My problem with this is two-fold.

1) When an athlete does something incredible, for a moment he lifts every person watching it just a little higher. In the movie “Vision Quest” there’s a scene where Lowler is talking with his friend and he explains this very concept so well. When that inspirational feat is tainted by being accomplished by the use of drugs, it negates that lifting-up. Floyd’s stage 17 is a case in point. What a gutsy, inspirational move. But if he did it because of the use of drugs, how does that lift me?
2) The most important thing to me – my kids are looking up to some of these athletes and while I don’t expect them to be the moral compass of my kids lives – how can they dream of accomplishing great things when all they see is guys accomplishing great things by using drugs.

I do believe that most of the amazing cycling performances for the past 10 years have been tainted in one way or another. I still find them great to watch, I just watch them without that “wow, did you see that” factor. I don’t believe Floyd used drugs specifically in stage 17, but I do believe he has used. In fact, I’m convinced of it. Just as I’m convinced that Lance didn’t do it all on his own.

The recent press and investigations is not about searching for the truth. It’s about selling newspapers, books, and protecting individual positions that some leaders of organizations have taken. The Dick Pound’s of the world are not about helping to clean up sport – they’re all about reading their name in tomorrow’s papers. For a good look at the bias’ that sports reporters have had on this issue, I refer you to http://boulderreport.bicycling.com/2007/06/looking-for-the.html

That’s it – for now. I will probably update and add, edit this entry over the next few months. I will try to document the additions and edits. I just want to use this as an ongoing research paper. I welcome any questions or critiques.

EDIT: Wow, that didn't take long! One of the stories in Walsh's book that seemed very tabloidish to me was the story of a pro cyclist who had asked a friend to transport some shoes over to Italy for him - while packing the friend opened the box and found blood products. He dumped them out, and confronted the cyclist in Italy. Big blow up. In the book - NO names. Then, today, the names get released ... and the cyclist is Rasmussen! Wow. Details of the story can be found at http://www.velonews.com/tour2007/news/articles/12851.0.html

Doped Up Pros

2007-05-13T13:10:00.000-06:00

Well, tomorrow is the BIG day. The day that we finally (hopefully?) hear all of the evidence in Floyd Landis' doping scandal. So, who cares? I do, for a number of reasons. One, I like to be able to compare myself to the pros. If I ride a mtn that they've raced on, it shows me just how good these guys are - but if they're doing it doped up, what's that telling me? Two, the impact that drugged pro athletes have on our kids is significant.

Recently on bikejournal there's been a fair bit of discussion about dopoing and how guys are doing it and how it's being tracked. I don't even pretend in my dreams to understand all of the biological information out there. I have been following this a fair bit, though, and thought it might be a good idea to put some of my thoughts in one place.

First: I am against doping. Some are calling for legalizing it - let 'em do whatever they want. I want my kids to be able to strive for better performance without thinking they need to be using something in order to get better.

I recently had this discussion with my 15 yr old son. He's a football player and a very good one at that (recently selected to the Provincial All-star game and will be playing a week from tomorrow.) I also suspect he'll be starting on his High School football team as a freshman next year. He's strong, and he's fast - and wants to improve. He was asking about performance enhancing things he could take - like steroids, etc. Fortunately, we have a pretty good relationship and we were able to discuss it and he was willing to listen to what I had to say about it.

Second: I am convinced that there will always be a new designer drug or process that is designed specifically to get around the existing tests. We've seen it in cycling for decades. A new test comes out to catch people using a particular drug, and soon there's nobody getting caught for it anymore. Not that they're not using it anymore, they've just discovered a way to get around the testing. The only way I believe you can ever be 100% sure that someone is clean is to develop a physiological profile like what Team Slipstream has put into place. Here they're not testing for specific drugs, but building a profile that if there are significant changes or deviations from trends would indicate that something is being used. Won't tell you what, will just tell you SOMETHING is going on.

When someone is busted for it drug use, then I think it should be a permanent ban. One time, no second chances. Make the penalty so severe it's not worth the risk.

WADA needs to standardize what is a positive and what is a negative. Currently every lab has their own standards of what they'd call a positive and what would be classified as a negative result. An example of this is Floyd Landis' recent results. Those exact same results (not even questioning the accuracy of the equipment used) in a California lab (which is WADA certified) would all have come out negative. Yet out of this particular French lab, there's a positive result.

The process for hearing re: drug use in sports needs to be more open and fair. Confidentiality MUST be observed by those in control of organizations (not like Dick Pound's rants.) If the structure is percieved to be biased, there's no way the public will ever trust the results. And, bottom line, it's the public, us fans, that get hurt the most when these drug scandals develop.

I have a lot more thoughts on this issue - and maybe sometime I'll go through and copy all of the posts I've made over at Bikejournal into one post here so that it's all in one place.

I HOPE Floyd is innocent. I believe that Floyd should be cut a break on this one because of all of the mistakes that have been made in the processing of his samples, but I have my doubts as to whether or not he's really clean.

A Tale of Two Tailwinds

2007-05-09T09:19:00.000-06:00

My poor little Jetta needed some work done (maintanace stuff like timing belt, brakes, glow plugs, etc.) and the car needed to be in Lethbridge Monday morning by 8am. Rather than getting up at 6 and missing getting in a ride, I had Steve follow me into Lethbridge Sunday night, we dropped the car off - and then on Monday would be able to do a tailwinds ride into Lethbridge to get it!

We left Cardston a little later than planned, so it was going to have to be a quick ride in. Fortunately, the winds were co-operating. We jumped onto the Prarie Schooner and off we went. First check point was to be Magrath - 44 km away.

Up and down coulees, flying along. We hit Magrath in just over an hour (1:01) and an average speed of 42.7km/hr.

I felt strong. After a few minutes of warming up I felt like I could really go. The most dramatic moment to me on this ride was when we went through Pot Hole Coulee just East of Magrath. On the decent I'd let Steve get a couple of hundred feet on me, as we started climbing I started working my way through the gears. As I went by him I glanced down at my computer - I was pounding out a cadence of 103 (standing) and was going at 52.1km/hr. I felt like I was dancing onthe pedals and that I was "chainless" - what a thrill! What a feeling of freedom. I'm super motivated to get my weight down and my power up so that I can feel that on long climbs (this one is only half a km long.)

Then we hit the hard part - the last 23km of this ride is north, a straight cross-wind. I did most of the pulling, I was just feeling good. But holding 30km/hr was a tough slog. We hit Lethbridge in just under two hours, and made it across town to the dealership in a total of 2:13 or something like that.

It was great to be on the bike for more than an hour or hour and half. This was my longest ride of the year. This month will have some seious mileage in it - especially given our little adventure in a little over a week to Salt Lake City (back to back centuries.)

Tues morning I did a little recovery ride with Bart and Chico - NOT! Chico kept the pace high all the way out - Bart and I turned around at Leavitt, Chico hammered on to Mtn View. We had a nice little 37km/hr tailwind ride back, that was a nice recovery!

Tues evening I get the great idea of another Tailwinds ride! I call John and Steve (Bart had to work) and we get my wife to run us out to Waterton for a repeat of mine and Steve's tailwind ride a week or so ago.

I realized right away as we crossed the bridge and it wasn't singing to us that there was no way this was going to be a tailwinds ride! In fact, the wind had switched and was coming out of the South - we had a cross-wind of 35km/hr most of the way. Made for some hard sloggin'! Steve was feeling pretty good, and often mentioned feeling chainless. John was able to generate some pretty impressive power on some of the roller climbs. I just held on and hoped my legs would last long enough to stay with them. My legs felt heavy, and fighting the wind was really taking it's toll on them. Definitely not the Tailwinds ride I had envisioned! Oh well, I was on my bike - can't get any better than that!

This morning was supposed to be a hill climbing ride (South Hill repeates) but there was just no way my legs were ready for that, so I stayed in bed.

I feel like I'm getting some good miles in. I'm liking the performance of my Tarmac, but it's also taking some getting used to the new position.

The frame is considerably smaller than my last frame - and it has changed my position significantly. Muscles are working at different angles. In some ways I feel like I'm in terrible shape 'cause my legs are hurting in ways and places I'm not familiar with. However, the bike fits me better. I feel like I can handle the bike better - I have more confidence in what I can make it do. High speed decents are comfortable (I've only been up to just over 80 km/hr on it so far), and climbing is stiff and responsive. I do notice some of the road buzz more than I did on the Devinci. That's to be expected with a frame this much smaller and stiffer. (and lighter!) It would be great to be able to afford a Tarmac and a Rubaix - but given that I like to race, and I love the performance, the Tarmac is the bike for me! In a couple of years I may try to convince my wife to let me add a Rubaix to the Stable, but I'm very happy with the Tarmac!

Because I've been getting the feel of the Tarmac, my TT bike has been left hanging in the garage. I do need to make a point of getting out on it again sometime next week, but right now I'm really loving riding the Tarmac. I'd also like to put on my Zipp 404's to see how the Tarmac performs with them.

My new Ride

2007-05-04T08:55:00.000-06:00

I just realized that I haven't posted anything at all about my new Specialized Tarmac S-works!

My wife and I ended up flying to California to get it - as the bike shop there was the only one I could find anywhere in Canada or the US that could get me what I wanted in my size. As it turns out, if other bike shops had known what they were doing they could've got it for me. It all worked out good, though. Melanie and I were able to get away for a couple of days without the kids and really enjoyed ourselves. I've realized that I really need to make a point of taking off with her on a regular basis - even if it's just to Calgary - to get away from things for a few days and spend time with just us.

Back to the bike. It's a Tarmac S-works in size 49cm. Fits like a glove! SRAM Force equipped, and came with the Roval Wheels. I swapped out the Barmac stem/handlebars and went with the FSA K-wing bars and an FSA stem. I've also taken off the Roval wheels (currently for sale on ebay) and replaced them with Neuvation R28 SL3's. Using speedplay pedals, and riding on Conti GP4000 tires. Bike, with pedals, one water bottle cage, and all the mounting hardware for my Edge305 weighs 15.12 lbs. I'm looking at buying some Sprint 350 wheels to lighten it up another 200grams - that'll make it a real machine for Triple Bypass!! I'm also looking for the compact spider and rings to make the crankset a compact for that ride. I suspect I'll lose some more weight off the bike with that move. (Now to get the engine lightened up!)

I've loved riding the bike! It's fast, and comfy. I've still got lots to get used to with it, as my position has changed and I'm using different muscles now, but I'm really happy with it. I've got almost 700km on it in the last week since I bought it.

The original Roval wheels are fast - they just are pretty expensive and I've decided to sell them on ebay. If I get what I want out of them I'll have enough to have paid for the Neuvation's and a disc wheel for my TT bike and my Sprint 350's. Can't beat that! (And I'll still have my Zipp 404 tubulars!)

Which brings up my other new ride - my TT bike. It's a Guru with carbon seat stays. I've got it largely equipped with Dura Ace, but there's a few 105 parts on it. I'd like to get a 10spd bar end shifter for it so that I can run 10spd on it, that would mean less hassle with cassette changes and stuff. I've only ridden the bike once - a quick trip out to Leavitt and back - but the bike feels quick.

Tailwinds ride 29 April

2007-05-04T08:52:00.001-06:00

As written by my riding buddy, BowWow

Yesterday Mrs. Rob drove us 45 km into a stiff headwind, to the gates of Waterton National Park. There Rob and I disembarked the Robstermobile, thanked Mrs. Rob profusely, and leapt upon our carbon steeds for a True Tailwinds ride.

The wind was howling off the lake, my legs were howling at me to get spinning. I stood on the pedals without cranking, and was blown up to 4 km/h almost instantly. This was gonna be a goodun! We headed out, squirming to get settled in the saddles, working out the accumulated desk-jockey kinks in the backs. The road ahead bode well for us as we crossed the Shrieking Bridge. Rob commented that the car folks never hear that song...

Speed comes quickly when you have a nice tailwind. We soon were cruising at well over 40 km/h, looking at the big ring/smaller cogs before even getting warmed up. The rising road felt like a descent, the rollers rolled under our wheels, the wind roared it's impotent wrath at our backs.

Glancing to the south we were stunned by the glory of the snow-glazed ridge rising in Rocky majesty just across the US line. The grasslands in the foreground were an interesting mix of intense green rising inexorably through the brown remnants of last summer's graze. Rounding a rising corner we noticed three elk staring intently at us across the road. Not quite sure what to do, they started, then stopped again, wide-eyed at the humans. We called to them, asking why they were so far out of the park, and wondering where the other 997 were. They jumped, and headed into the sheltering brush.

Cresting the ridge then dropping into the river bottom, we both sprinted with the wind at our backs. Rob led out, pulling to 75 km/h. I glanced past him and instantly hit the pedals, spinning up to well over 120 rpm. I knew we had enough room to make 80 before the bridge. 83.5 to be exact! As I blew past Rob he jumped onto my wheel and we shot across the bridge without even noticing the expansion joints. Ain't carbon grand!

The climbs floated by, the flats became 50 k runs, the descents went to over 70. We "exceeded the speed limit" through Mountain View, crested the ridge past the Beazer turnoff and gave our mighty steeds their heads over the rollers and into the Leavitt valley. Rob let me get a good lead as we headed to the base of Monson's hill, then blew by me halfway up. I managed my pace well, keeping the effort under control, and crested without blowing up (still climbing way slow, but that'll come...), and held 21 over the top.

Rob mentioned running chainless - not today for me, but that'll come soon enough this season. And we both could have used that 11 tooth cog often on this ride!

We dropped over the edge of Tracey's hill and I took the pull (I do that on the descents...), and we rocketed around the final turn. Two quick rollers and one sign sprint (I caught Rob napping - hee hee!!!!), a very fast +50 k along the false flat, and we were into town and home.

It seems like the past couple of years of cycling have been focussed on fitness. Slogging into the headwinds, doing hill repeats, hammering the dark winter away on the rollers.

Yesterday was simply joy. The joy is back!

Racing Again

2007-05-04T08:35:00.000-06:00

Race Report from May 1, Tuesday night series.

Finally! First race of the year for me. I knew I was out of racing shape, and knew this was gonna hurt - but the best way to get into racing shape is to race, so here we go...

Group is small - more on that later.

The course is relatively flat with some long rollers of 2-3%. I only got about 15 minutes of warm-up time in, so I'm hoping for a slow start to the day. Race is only 33.42 kms long tonight, so my guess is that we'll stay together until the turn-around and then the attacks will come, we'll end up with 3 or 4 guys up the road and everybody else schlacked off the back.

Off we go. Pace is slow - only 28km/hr. Phil (by far the strongest rider of our club) and I are chatting off the back. BowWow is up front, and before we hit the first hill kicks the pace up a little and gets a bit of a gap. Only one guy reacts, and he grabs his wheel. Phil and I continue chatting, and as the hill tilts up a little, we reel 'em back in. Pace slows again to the 28km/hr range.

Down the backside - and then we begin the second climb - I'm feeling pretty good and start thinking about making a break, just to see if they'll let me go. I start moving up to the front, and then Phil moves up ahead of me, and then Roy (another REALLY strong rider) - I take 3rd wheel, and Phil kicks the pace up - we're now doing 32km/hr, still a nice leisurely stroll. I don't know where my head is at this point, but I obviousely was NOT thinking - I'm still in the small ring.

Phil suddenly surges about half-way up the hill. Roy doesn't respond at all and there's suddenly a gap of 15 feet. I jump and try to grab Phil's wheel. Instantly I'm spun out - that's where I realize I'm still little ring. We crest and I shift big ring and really hammer down the back side. (At this point we're only 3km into the race!) I do a quick check behind me and see that I've got about 200 yrds of gap - I'm in no-man's land by myself. Only one choice, gotta catch Phil.

I settle in to a hard TT - my HR is pounding at 177 as I hit the 3rd climb - this is where I know I've got to bridge the last 50 feet or so, or it ain't gonna happen. I accelerate up the hill - I'm within 4 feet of Phil before we hit the top. I start to ease off a bit to recover (my HR is pounding away at 185) - Phil turns, sees me, smiles - I swear he gives me "the look", he says he didn't - and then sprints over the top and drops me like a rock. That's all I'll see of Phil for the rest of the race.

As I crest I check over my shoulder - there doesn't seem to be a chase taking place yet - there's at least 300 yrds back to the closest riders. I drop my pace slightly to recover on the down-side and settle in to fighting the wind on my own. Suddenly there's Roy pounding past me! Where did he come from? I'm not getting dropped again today! I sprint up to his wheel, recover, and we start working a pretty good 2man rotation to try and pull Phil back.

We hit the turn-around, and realize that we've had a wee bit of a tail/cross-wind on the way out, now it's a nice little headwind. Hey, that might give us a chance to reel Phil in! We up the effort.

Half-way back we run into the rest of the group. Apparantly the reason our start had such small numbers is some guys didn't understand where the start was at and were camped out at "the other start" waiting for us. They turned around and joined Roy and I - suddenly there's 4 of us together (we dropped the others pretty quickly.) Fresh legs to pull us in? Hmmmmm

One of the guys with us blasts off the front - what's that about? He can't win, he's already out of the race. We decide to chase him down. There's a young guy with us that is pretty strong, and Roy and I decide to let him do his share of pulling. We don't seem to be making any ground up on our little break-away guy. Then the jockeying begins for the sprint. We're still 4 km away!

We hit the the long down-hill and the pace is up to 55km/hr, straight into the wind. Problem is, I'm running a 12/27 cassette and with my legs being tired, spinning at 106 is getting a little tiring. I'm barely holding Roy's wheel. Finally at the bottom I realize that official 3rd is as good as I'm gonna get today - Roy is WAY too strong for me today. Roy and I start chatting and he says he wants to clip this young guy at the line, I told him I'll try and give him a good lead out. We're closing into the finish fast, despite it being a slight up-hill into the wind. (We're still clipping along at 40km/hr.) So, I grab the young guys wheel and wait for the right moment. I've never done a lead-out in a race before, so really don't know how far out to go from, I"m usually waiting for someone else to make the move first.

The young guy reaches over to grab his water bottle and I decide it's a great time to let her rip, I look back and nod to Roy and go. As I go by the young guy I glance back, Roy's on my wheel - I look up the road... OH NO! I've gone WAAAAAAAAY too early. I'm still a good 700m away from the line. Oh well, I'm committed now!

I hammer away as best I can, glance back and see that I've got about 30 foot gap... is it possible? I try and find some more oomp for the last 300m. Suddenly Roy and the young guy are there. With less than 75m to go the jump - I try to catch a wheel, but there's nothing left in the tank.

And that is how the first race of the season ends for me, limping across the line totally spent and having made just about every mistake in the book. What a great night!!

So, Rob, Have you Met....

2007-05-04T08:32:00.000-06:00

Ride report from May 2 with Steve.

BowWow and I decide to get in an after-work spin this evening, and meet at 5:30 for a ride we expect will be around 50 minutes. The first half of the ride will be into a headwind, but the second half will be a beautiful tailwind!

We meet at BowWow's house, and off we go - only to turn around 'cause I asked BowWow if he had now decided to go lidless on his rides. On the way back a car burns into the intersection and almost takes him out... better get that lid on in a hurry!

Finally we're off. up hill to the end of the street, then turn to head out to the highway. The highway is beautiful. New pavement last year - two lanes and a wide shoulder, and traffic that even with one lane would seem like there wasn't any. We're headed out to Leavitt. The Reserve is on our right, town limits on the left. We're riding the dividing line between two different worlds. We're just spinning along at about 25km/hr, nothing even remotely strenous, and chatting. Enjoying just being out on the bike. We're doing more of that again since our tailwind ride of last Saturday.

BowWow turns to me and asks, "So, Rob, have you met the new German Sheppard out here yet?"

"Yup," I reply, "I've gotten to know him up close and personal."

Just as I finish saying that we hear a rustling in the grass and I catch a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. BOOM! I'm off, sprinting hard. BowWow's laughing - this dog runs right by him and is chasing me hard. Suddenly I hear, "Get him! Hurry boy, catch him!"

Yeah, thanx BowWow, like this mutt needs any more encouragement.

By this time I'm pounding away at 45km/hr, and this dog is closing. BowWow is laughing so hard he can't even encourage the dog anymore. Finally Eddie gives up and then it's my turn... 'cause bait is riding towards Eddie! Suddenly BowWow is a little less concerned about how funny I looked.

Unfortunately, the mutt was tired out and never even gave BowWow a scare. I looked down at my HR monitor and I'm sure it had just dropped back down to 200 something. We couldn't pedal for the next couple of kilometers 'cause we were laughing so hard - what made it really funny? It wasn't the German Sheppard, but this little mutt that has been running out by us for years. He's never caught anyone, but always gives a good chase.

Thanx again, BowWow, for a great ride.

Goodbye - Hello

2007-04-07T10:41:00.000-06:00

Wow, two months since my last entry! Guess I'm getting real slack these days.

This week I said good bye to my Devinci road bike. I knew when I bought it that I wouldn't be keeping it a long time, but it was still sad to see it go. Bartman found it a good home, and it's local, so I'm sure I'll see it around town.

Now, I'm bikeless - well, kind of. I have my TT bike - which I need to finish building today, it just needs some tune-up work. I'll get it done and get pics posted soon.

I have my custom titanium Kelson - but that's up in Fort McMurray for the rest of this month so that I have something to ride on the computrainer up there.

So Thursday night I went to a bike shop in Calgary for a complete "fitting" They told me it'd cost about $100, so as soon as my plane landed I drove like a madman to get there.

Changed into my cycling gear, and went upstairs to begin the process.

First I stood on the board, heels against the wall, and then Bob measured my inseam. Cool tool for that - a spring-loaded stick, and the spring makes things fit tightly - they get a good measurement from that! Another tool fits on the top of that and measures up to the collar bone to get your upper-torso measurement. While you're on the board it also measures your foot size.

Then he brought out a frame to start playing on - warmed up a bit, adjusted the seat to get to that comfy spot, then played around with stem length and stem angle... trial and error here. Had a mirror beside me that I was able to check out my form on... all in all a good experience. I learned some interesting things about my current bike set-up, and the reason why I do some of the things I do.

I've now got it narrowed down to two bikes - either a Tarmac SL or a Rubaix SL. I'd love to be able to spend some serious time on each bike to see how they feel, but it's going to be tough to find the right size frame to take out and hammer for a few hours. I'm hoping to be able to put something together for the Salt Lake City Century ride. Time will tell!

So, as I embark on this "last bike" purchase, I'm really trying hard to make sure I get the right one. I know I've been known to change bikes fairly often - but that has slowed down alot. I've kept my Kelson for 2 years now (though it hasn't gotten alot of miles on it.) This will be one of the last bikes I buy. I'm spending enough on it that there's no way I'll ever be able to get my money back out of it. In the past I've gotten such good deals on my purchases that I've been able to sell the bike for what I'd paid for it. Going to be pretty tough to get a deal good enough to do that again - especially given the frame size I'm looking for.

So you think you're Tough?!

2007-02-06T20:14:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been awhile since I've posted, so before I get too far a quick update - weight loss stalled a bit there at the end of the month, but I finished January up with an 11 pound loss. Not the 15 I was hoping for, but given the poor eating habits I had the last week of Jan, not bad.

Yesterday I had a REALLY good work-out at the YMCA. The best part about hard work-outs there is sitting in the steam room for awhile afterwards, and when I get tired of that, I head to the whirl pool for a human-soup soak.

Today I asked Khan (my oldest son) if he wanted to come work-out with me today. He's been going to the gymn pretty regularly lately to get ready for football season. He said sure, and we made a "daddy/Khan date" for after 5pm. I picked him up after basketball practice (he's the proud waterboy, as he hates playing basketball.) Off to the gymn we went.

I told him I just wanted to do a medium-weight circuit work-out, but him and his friend were welcome to do whatever they wanted. I set-up a small circuit of leg extensions,leg curls, lat pulldowns, dips, scrunches, and skipping. I had done a couple of those when he calls out "hey, Dad! You've gotta come and try this!"

Oh oh, these "try this" things never finish good for me.

Like the good father I am, I dutifully went over to check it out. There he is doing these squats - I don't know what the machine is called, but it's really designed for football players, as it does a kind of "dead lift squat" Anyway, he had 2 45lb weight on it (one each side) - each side moves independently - and he convinced me to try it. Holy cow that was hard! I went to go back to my circuit when he says, "hey, wimp, that all you can do?"

Oh oh, now it's on.

I replied, "listen, I don't have any upper body strength yet - you wanna go head to head, lets head over to the leg press" I figured this would scare him away enough, as he's seen me doing leg press and has a bit of an idea what I'm capable of. Not this time.

"sure - let's go - how much"

I try the Father's bluff again "How about we START at 600lbs?"

"ok"

Oh crap.

I load up 590lbs to start and rack of a set of 10.

Khan does 5, so I give him a rough time "I only thought we were doing 5" he says.

Since when do you do a set of 5??

Fine - let's put another 50 lbs on.

640 lbs, I rack of 10 again.

He matches me.

"fine, throw another 50lbs on, but this time we'll only do 5"

He matches me again. So, I tell him let's do 5 more with another 10lbs so that we've got an even 700lbs.

He matches me again.

Then he starts pushing me to do dips and chin ups, so I tried and he killed me. By the time I got finished and got home I was feeling very tired (okay, sick is maybe a better description.)

That kid is getting tough. Amazes me how these young guys gain so much strength in such a short period of time.

My twin boys are really excited to be able to get out riding their bikes again. I'm looking forward to the surprise we have for them this year - we're buying them kids road bikes. I've been shopping for awhile for 'em, and they sure ain't cheap, but they really like doing triathalons, so we want to encourage them as much as possible.

Mountain View in January

2007-01-27T17:28:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I've blogged - I've spent the last week not feeling too well. The big down-side to that is that my weight loss stopped, and I even put on a little. Not a lot, but a little.

Anyway, Bartman calls BowWow and says, "hey, it's just above freezing, but there's not much wind, how about we do an outdoor ride out to Mountain View this afternoon?" As it turns out, BowWow wasn't able to make it, but Chico, myself, and Bartman headed out.

As we're leaving town Bartman turns around and says, "Now, we're all out here just to enjoy being outdoors, right? No hammer-fest?"

I replied, "absolutely, just happy to be out here."

Chico replies, "no comment"

Oh oh.

The wind kicked up and before we're completely out of town we're fighting a 35km/hr headwind. Not the worst we've fought, but it also tends to make things a little colder, too. Not to worry, with the headwind and climbing (it's all up-hill on the way out) our heart rates are all in the 160's and we're keeping warm. We stayed together and got a pretty good 3-man paceline going. By the time we got to the turn-around point we running nice and smooth.

I remember when Mtn View was tough to get out to in an hour when there was no wind. We got there in an hour today after fighting this wind all the way out! Our turn-around was another kilometre past Mtn View.

We hit the turn-around, and the fun began almost immediately. There's these little roller climbs - only about 4-5%, and about half a km long. On every one of those Chico hammered up 'em. Bartman and I just sat back and let him do the work, but we had to work pretty hard to stay with him.

Across the false flats (about a 1% downhill run) Bartman and I were running out of gears. We had our climbing gears on, which gave us a 50/12 combination - Chico had a 52/11. Finally we get to Monson's Hill. This hill averages 8%, and lasts for just over a km - a great climb. Chico took the lead, and Bartman and I jumped on his wheel. Half-way up Chico kicks it up a notch, I match him, Bartman doesn't. By the time we get to the top I've still got more I COULD go, but I'm saving a bit. Bartman got DROPPED (he decided not to let his HR go over 173) We waited for him on the backside of Monson's, then Chico hammered up Little's Hill - Bartman and I both stood and sprinted to catch back to his wheel - and I caught him just as we crested. Bartman dropped off and we didn't see him again until the end.

Over the next few hills Chico and I hammered one another trying to push the other guy harder.

Finally, we hit town. There's a side-road that runs parallel to the highway, and I glanced over at it and saw a big SUV just up the road from us. I pointed it out to Chico and warned him that she'd probably blow through the intersection in front of us. As we approached, she stopped. Wow, I thought, that's unusual. We came around the corner at about 40km/hr - and then she turned in front of us. I swung out wide to give some more room and locked 'em up. She stopped in the middle of the intersection so that we'd have a nice broad target to run into T-bone style. Somehow we both managed to avoid her. Guess that'll learn me to trust my instincts on that corner!

Only a few more blocks left - Chico kicks the speed back up, we hit the last corner at 45km/hr, and just as I'm about to start my sprint Chico backs off and says "go ahead, take it." WHAT?! Oh well, I like to finish it off with a good sprint, so I unleashed my sprint for 2 blocks and crossed the finish at 60km/hr spun right out at 120.

Once again - a nice little stroll in the hills... finished in 1:40 for 50km - (hit the turn-around at 1:03, so 'twas a quick return.) No hammer-fest there!

It felt so good to be outside riding again. I won't get a chance to even get on my bike on a trainer for another week now, as I leave tomorrow to hit the road for a week. It'll be YMCA and hotel gymns for the next few days. Now, if maybe I could tape my mouth shut to food....

New PB!

2007-01-16T16:09:00.000-07:00

This morning I decided to try and hammer to a new PB on the 40km ITT course. It's a relatively tough course, the first 12km are all up hill, the first 8km at 4.6%, the next 4km at 2%. Then a 1.8% downhill ride for 8km to bring you to the half-way mark. From that point on it's pretty flat - the biggest climb is 1.8%, the biggest decline is .8%.

When I started I checked my previous best time - 1:11:30 - and 204 watts to get there. So, that was going to be the goal, better than 204 watts average. I quickly cranked it up to the 200 watt range and was pleasantly surprised by how good that felt. As I hit the hills, I decided to push it a little, and I think I managed about 250watts average on most of the 4.6% climb. I checked the HR - still around 166, so no problems there.

the next 4km I cranked it up a bit more - and actually averaged around 270 watts for a good chunk of the 2% grade. On the down hill I pushed it and kept the wattage in that 210 -215 range. Things felt pretty good! Hit the flats.

I watched as my average wattage kept climbing - I was suprised to see it pass 225, that's more than I expected! I checked my HR, and it was steadily climbing, but I didn't feel like I was dying yet. Was pretty consistently in the 173 range (where I'd previously calculated my LTL to be.)

With 6km to go I realized I was not going to break one hour (my long-term goal) but decided to really lay it down. I don't remember what song was playing on the ipod now, but it was a good hammer-fest tune, and I decided to stand and hammer - I held it there for the whole song, keeping my cadence at 89 and turning the 53x12 gear. I checked the wattage and I was average 290watts during this section. My wife and son came over and watched my little hammerfest progress for a bit - with my son there I sure wasn't going to sit-down anytime soon! I kept pounding it out.

Finally, I crossed the line - time was 1:06:42 a new PB. HR average was 169, Maxed at 189, and average speed was 35.96 This was a tough ride, and I really felt like I'd pushed it. Yet even after this go 'round I didn't feel like I was going to fall off the bike! Bike fitness is definitely improving, and wattage is going up - I averaged 241 watts for the 40km! I think I'm going to have to raise that another 20 watts to break one hour at my current weight - but, of course, losing weight and maintaining this wattage output should get me there, too.

Today's weight came in at 83.5kg. Up a little from Sat, but not bad considering Sunday and Monday were off days. A little more consistency in the diet and I'll be well on my way to some very light days.

Kitty Hunting in the Alpes

2007-01-13T19:08:00.000-07:00

I figured today would be a great day for a LSD ride - I was thinking something around 2 hours, flat, and about 60km. I wasn't even gonna let my HR get over 150. Nice and easy. Then Bartman called.

"Hey," he says, "wanna come over - I got my new toy!"

Now how am I supposed to say no to playing with a new bike toy? Especially when the toy is a new Tacx Fortius trainer! I threw my gear on, and headed out the door.

Then came the set-up problems. We tried to get it set-up on my macbook, running parallel, but couldn't get it to work. I'm gonna have to play with that for a bit. So, I hauled out my PC laptop and loaded it up on there - no problems. What course to ride to test this thing? Ahhhhh, yes, the Alpes.

I guess I kind of bit off a little more than I could chew - I decided to ride the whole course - it's about 82km long. Doesn't sound like much, right? It is if the first 20km is up the Col de Galibier (first 10km at 7-8%, last 10km at 10%) Then, a nice long decent of 20km - and then the next climb (can't remember name now) of about 15km, short decent - and finally, the Alpe D'Huez - 13.9km of 9-11% grades.

Me and The Cat had a good chase back and forth up the Galibier - but then I gave him "the look" and dropped him as I accelerated up a 10% section. I was putting out about 400watts during that acceleration, held it for about 1 minute, and then eased back down to 200wats of output. I managed to hold that all the way up the Galibier.

At the bottom of the Galibier I realized I wasn't going to have enough time to do the next climb AND Alpe D'Huez, so I stopped, and restarted at the bottom of Alpe D'huez. Holy cow this one was a killer! My legs were pretty cooked from the last climb, but I wanted to see what it was like. I passed lots of cyclists on the way up (like I said, the video on this is amazing!) - and, of course, one of them was Kitty (he got a head start on me.) He really looked like he was suffering. Pooor KItty! Unfortunately, half way up I had to stop as my wife called and reminded me that I had the vehicle and she needed it...

My foot cramped up pretty bad afterwards, and I realized that I"m going to have to spend more time on some long rides, and maybe look at getting some work done to my shoes.

All in all - a GREAT work-out! I really enjoyed riding Bart's new toy, and getting to drop Kitty was a real bonus. At my weigh-in today I'm down to 83.2kg. A little less than 3 more kg to get to my January goal.

As for the questions re: my sense of taste. I have no memory of anything different - so I won't say that I have no sense of taste - I think I taste things! I do, however, tend to really like spicey food, and I suspect that's a big reason why. Everybody around here always says, "wow, how sad, you can't even smell your wife's perfume!" I usually reply with, "yeah, but I couldn't smell her when she got sprayed by a skunk, either - so it's a wash."

Socked-in

2007-01-10T23:40:00.000-07:00

Well, the cold, blizzard conditions are here. It's now -30C out there and the temp is rapidly falling. Can't even get outside for a quick run. Heck, running to the car is bad enough. I suspect I won't be getting outside much at all tomorrow. Thank goodness I've got that computrainer!

I learned today that a good friend, Talimena Tammy, will be joining us at Triple Bypass. Wow, what a great group of people that are going to be there! I'm looking forward to seeing alot of my "old bikejournal buds" and meeting some new ones. I've noticed that there's alot of people I've never met from bikejournal that are planning on being there.

My diet today was pretty good - not great, but good. I'm hoping for a new "low" at tomorrow's weigh-in.

Also had a Dr. visit today to get my "smeller" checked. For those who don't know, I have no sense of smell. Lately I've also developed some infection problems and after a really hard work-out sometimes the mucus build-up in the back of my throat constricts my breathing bad enough that it's really hard for me to breathe. Well, the news wasn't good.

I will probably never regain a sense of smell. Dr. suspects that I contracted an infection while younger and it damaged the "smeller organ" - sometimes it heals, sometimes it doesn't. Doesn't look good for me.

On the hard-time-breathing after a hard-work-out issue, he figures it might be able to be fixed by more humidity. (Southern Alberta is really a desert) In other words, sorry, there's nothing we can do about that, either. Not a big deal, I generally only feel that crappy after a really hard indoor ride.

Hammer Time!

2007-01-09T18:20:00.000-07:00

This morning's ride was going to need to be relatively short, as I had gotten a late start to the day. Hmmm, I guess I could do the TDF Long course again (I don't know why it's called that, it's only 24.5km long. - and I think it's identical to the TDF short course.)

Anyway, as I was getting dressed and ready to jump on the computrainer (hey, it's CANADA - you didn't think that I was riding outside, did ya?) I decided that maybe an attempt at a new personal best without drafting was in order.

I started out with a pretty good cadence, the course has a slight positive grade the first couple of km, and let my legs warm up. The first 15 minutes of any ride always hurt until I get warmed up. I decided that the effort would be based largely on wattage output. I have yet to do a ride where I average over 200watts for the whole ride, so I decided that this time, that was gonna be my goal.

By the time I hit the flats my HR was pounding in the mid 160's and I had managed to keep my average wattage around 195. The rest of the course is either flat or slightly uphill and I figured now would be the time to try and bump the average wattage. The nice thing about riding a trainer for personal bests is that you can go all-out and if you crash and burn it's not like you have to find a way to get back home. The Kitty, I mean, computer generated rider, in front of me kept my pace high and hard. At one point I actually dropped back a loooooong ways (like 140 bike lengths).

With 1km to go my average wattage was at 207, and it's a slight down-hill run to the finish. I kept kicking the pace up, holding the wattage output in the mid 200's, and then with .2km left, I sprinted - HARD! I hit almost 700 watts and pushed my HR above 180. I wasn't completely exhausted, but I'd done a new PB both time-wise and average wattage-wise. I managed a 208 average. Now to extend that over a 40km ride.

I'd really like to break one hour for a 40km ITT this year. If I can manage that and get my weight down, look out Kitty!!

Music to suffer by

2007-01-05T16:23:00.000-07:00

This morning I jumped on the computrainer and did one of the harder courses I've done so far - the Madeira World Championships course. It's tough. (three climbs that hit 15% - and they go on for awhile.) This morning I set a new personal best - 1:23:34 This is the music I was listening to:

8675309 Jenny
Addicted to Love
Another One Bites The Dust
Ballroom Blitz
Barracuda
Bat Out of Hell
Bicycle
Black Betty
Bohemian Rhapsody
Centerfold
Cover of The Rolling Stones
Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Crocodile Rock
Cum On Feel The Noise
Doin' It Right
Don't Bring Me Down
Don't Bring Me Down (yes, repeat - don't know how that happened.)
Dude Looks Like A Lady
Everybody Dance Now
Eye of the Tiger
Fat Bottomed Girls
Gimme All Your Lovin
Girl You Really Got Me Now

I made it a point of really accelerating over every climb - in fact, when the grade lessened to 10% I was able to force myself to spin back up to 70-80 (my low gear was a 39X23) and then start shifting up as the grade continued to lessen.

Best part - I felt as good as I've ever felt on a bike - and afterwards I didn't have the "wobblies" that I usually get after a really strenuous ride on the computrainer.

Bart told me today that he's actually starting to get a little afraid - I think he's a ways from having to afraid, but I'm hoping that I can continue to make the kind of progress I've made the last week, then Kitty will have to be VERY AFRAID!

DQ?

2007-01-03T21:33:00.000-07:00

No, I wish it stood for disqualified. Last night our local church youth group had decided that a Father/Son night out to attend the Lethbridge Hurricanes hockey game was in order. I had forgotten about it, so hadn't actually gotten food for the kids yet. That meant that we had to eat at the hockey game. I guess I wouldn't have minded the calories so much if it would at least have tasted good. It didn't.

Afterwards the plan was to go to DQ - I didn't know that. So, off we went to Dairy Queen. By the time the night was over I was more than just a couple of calories over my allotment for the day. That means more pain this morning.

So, I hit the computrainer this morning - and for some reason my legs were really feeling dead. Half way through the work-out I was really thinking of just calling it a morning. Then the image of Kitty popped into my head. Suddenly the little silver guy in front of my was wearing a Club Hypoxia jersey and needed to be reeled in. Just like at Reunion, ol' Kitty/silver dude took off without warning first chance he got - then I had to chase him down. Unlike at Reunion, I have ol silver dude set so that it's impossible to drop him - so I blew by Kitty/Silver dude, and then watched him jam and catch up.

Which reminds me, tonight Bartman came over to ride the computrainer for a bit - I set him up on the Madeira World Championships course - it's tough. At one point, on one climb, the silver dude had dropped way back and Bartman had a 47 bike length lead on him. Then ol' Silver Dude kicked it in, on a 10.5% grade he accelerated up to 30+km/hr and blew by Bartman. Was great to sit and watch Rocky II while Bartman suffered like that beside me... LOL! Afterwards he thanked me and I told him anytime he wanted to suffer a little, just let me know, I'd be happy to help him out! You know me, always happy to help someone else suffer a little!

Here that Kitty? I'm really VERY willing to help you suffer a little.

Morning pain

2007-01-02T15:32:00.000-07:00

Well, got up and decided to hit it a little harder than planned - did the 95WTT course - it's basically up hill for 43.77km. OUCH! I definitely am "feeling the weakness leaving my body". I found the last 10km to be a survival fest. A couple of times I wanted to quit, but no, images of Kitty's big butt riding away from me at TBP made me finish it off. It meant more than an hour on the bike, but I'm okay with that.

Weight this morning was down to 83.6kg. Yes, more water weight, I'm sure, but I know I'm burning over 1,000 calories /day and I'm really watching the food intake, so there's alot of fat disappearing, too. Two more kg by Saturday and I will have reached and surpassed my first intermediate goal.

Steve wants to go do an outdoor ride this afternoon, so hopefully I'll get 22km in outdoors (the wind is really howling around here right now, so it won't be an easy ride out to Leavitt, but the ride back will be FAST!)

We've both also talked about getting out and riding South Hill Repeats through the winter. If this chinook coming in can melt all the snow off of the hill, I'll do those for the next week instead of the computrainer.

And why do I suffer this pain? 'Cause I don't know what I'll do if Kitty drops me at TBP!!

KItty Hunting

2007-01-01T21:14:00.000-07:00

The gauntlet has been dropped. My good friend, Shadowcat (or, as he goes by now, Sombragato), has engaged me in a challenge of pain - who can make the other really suffer at Triple Bypass in July. He says he's starting the new year out 10lbs lighter than he has been at the beginning of any other year. Images of Jan Ullrich come to mind.

This afternoon Steve came over and we did the "Biggest Loser 2" workout. It's a great work-out that seems to really help my flexibility, core strength, and upper body strength. I've decided to do it at least 3 times / week. I'm HOPING to do it 6 days/week in the mornings before my computrainer work-out.

As part of the work-out there's about 15 minutes of "kickboxing" - Kim, the trainer, keeps yelling to imagine hitting someone. So... well, let's just say that I don't have to actually put a picture up of the Kitty up on the wall. I know you're reading this kitty, can ya hear me coming for ya?? Be AFRAID! If I can't beat you on the bike, I'll just kick ya!!

On tonight's computrainer work-out I hammered pretty hard. Wasn't a long work-out, only about 44 minutes, but I think I'm going to focus on keeping most of my computrainer stuff around an hour for awhile. I don't want to worry too much about endurance miles right now, more interested in getting all this weight off of me.

All kidding aside, this friendly challenge that we have going and the goal of doing Triple Bypass in July, I think will be the real kicker to get this 30-40lbs off of me. Weight tonight after work-out was 85.6kg. Yes, a good part of that was water, but I'm making progress.

So, each day as begin my work-out, each day as I sit down to eat, I will picture lining up Kitty with "the look" before I drop him. Don't worry Kitty, I'm short, so the drop shouldn't hurt too much! *grin*

Happy New Year!

2007-01-01T12:10:00.000-07:00

Well, New Year's didn't exactly unfold as I'd planned - my wife decided to head down south, so she left at around 6pm. She took our youngest daughter with her, but I've got the three boys for the next week. Hopefully I'll be able to keep them busy enough to stay out of too much trouble.

Steve came over and we watched Predator on the big screen in the basement. Not a traditional New Year's, but it was fun. We've got some planning and work to do - we both signed up for Triple Bypass in July, so that ride's a definite. We're also considering doing a Mtb 100 mile race like Durango or Leadville. Steve will have a tough time making Leadville because of work schedule, so we're thinking of Durango.

I start today at 87.6kg. My goal is 72kg by the end of February. That's 32lbs in 2 months. Time to get busy! I know it's going to be more about managing my diet than anything else.

So, it's a new year. A new beginning. Starting today I get a chance to change everything I want - and the one thing I want to change more than anything else is my weight and fitness. I"m sure my blogs will get a little more light-hearted again over the next year.

Happy New Year to you - and may your new beginning's be successful and fun!

Outdoor Paradise

2006-12-27T22:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday didn't start off so good. I was going to be meeting with a client in the afternoon to teach their kids. For that I use a game to help teach some basic principles. I'd loaned that game to someone, but I couldn't remember who - and when I finally did, they weren't home. I called to cancel the meeting with the client - and just then BowWow called me.

"Hey," he says, "I'm going for a ride, wanna come?"

To make a long story short, I decided to go for a ride with him and work out some of my frustrations. While heading to the meeting place, I ran into Bartman just getting home and extended the invitation for him to join us.

The three of us took off towards Leavitt for a quick little spin of 22km.

I was thrilled to be out on the road again. All of us were so thrilled to be riding again that once we got to Leavitt we decided to keep on going - we ended up doing 45km. When I checked later I discovered it had been almost exactly three months since I had been out on the road.

I don't even know how to describe my feelings on this ride - it took alot of work for me to hold Bartman's wheel on the Monson's Hill climb coming back. I did find that in general I was able to hang, but until the final sprint (right after Bart had pulled for the final lead-out) I never felt really strong. In the sprint I felt strong. My legs were really capable of going hard.

On the way out I did some high cadence work - in fact ran it up to 155 for half a mile (yes, I was doing a fair bit of "bouncing" in the saddle!) - on the way back I threw it into the big ring for the whole way back and worked on some power.

It snowed today, and so I was unable to get outside for another ride. I realize now, more than ever, that it's important for me to get out whenever I can. I need to ride outside! Yes, the computrainer is good, and I'm going to be working that hard so that I can get my weight down, power up, and reach some of the goals I've set for myself for 2007, but getting outside was good for my spirit. It really lifted me. Even if I have to fly somewhere warm for a weekend, I'll do it. I don't suspect I'll have to, as the weather around here does get warm with the chinooks (at least, warm enough to get out and ride. This is relative, some folks wouldn't ride in our "warm winter weather.")

I wanted to take some pics while we were riding, but my camera battery was dead. Oh well, next time.

I've Been Tagged!

2006-12-22T10:51:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't know, once you've been tagged (as in, "tag, you're it") you have to post 5 little known, obscure facts about yourself on your blog - then you can tag 5 others. Howard, you shouldn't have, no, REALLY. Somehow, somewhere, I'll think of something to repay the kindness...

So, those 5 obscure facts about myself. This is difficult, as there isn't much about myself that I don't tell anyone about. I asked my wife last night for help - she laughed.

So, I've dug around in my past and present to try and find something.

1) My earliest cycling memory has me as a kid racing in a neighborhood "crit" - being the non-competitive type that I am I tended to push pretty-hard in some of the corners. My dad, being the thrifty individual he was, and not seeing any value in spending hard-earned dollars on a "toy" went to the dump and salvaged a rusted out bike for me. It was a piece of garbage - literally and figuratively, but I'd hammer it out with the other kids regularly. One race I was hammering hard through a corner when the bike fell apart - completely. The frame literally came apart at the head tube and the forks folded. I got pretty bruised and cut-up, but I was so mad at my Dad for not buying me a real bike that I remember carrying all the pieces home, throwing 'em on the front step and storming through the house. My kids all of pretty good quality bikes now.

2) In my mother's house is a picture of me holding a string of fish. It's supposedly the first fish I ever caught - it's not. Every year we used to go down to Kalispell, Montana to go fishing during Canadian Thanksgiving. The salmon run fell during that time period, and the river was literally over-flowing with fish. The limit was 30 fish/day/person - my family and grandparents made 9 - and we'd break the limit every day. I grew up thinking everybody had smoked salmon! I never had tuna sandwhiches, alwasy salmon. You get the idea. Well, one year the run was late, and there weren't any fish to be caught. I was down fishing with some friends of my parents, everybody else had left and for the whole morning they'd caught about 6 fish. They put the fish on a string and told me to go tell my parents that I'd caught these fish. Mom was so proud she took a picture and had it framed. Mom knew nothing of it until just a couple of years ago when I was telling the story to a friend - and didn't realize Mom was standing behind me...

3) On a more serious note - if you don't know me in the "real" world you wouldn't know this - but I have the GREATEST WIFE IN THE WORLD! She's supportive and helpful in almost every way (though when it comes to weight loss she sometimes is a little devil - like last night when she brought home Chinese, "this is for me and the kids - you can have a shake...") I don't talk much about her on-line, but she really is the greatest thing that ever happened to me. She makes me want to be a better person. I was told growing up that I should try to marry "above" myself - I sure did that. How she puts up with my "ocd" tendencies constantly amazes me.

4) I long to kick SombraGato's butt on Triple Bypass next year. Hold it, I guess that's not something that is unknown. Oh well. I'm running out of ideas and this one works just fine. TBP is my motivation for everything I'm doing right now.

5) The final obscure fact of Rob01? While in college my best friend and I would ride our bikes everywhere. One night we had both been dumped by our current girlfriends and it was a "preference" dance. Small college town, when there was something going on socially at the college there was NOTHING going on anywhere else. So, we rode our bike around campus, up and down stairs, etc. That got boring and so I jokingly said, "let's go ride the stadium stairs". He said ok and we spent the next half hour at the top of the stairs with the following conversation:

"you ready?"
"yeah"
"ok, one, two, ... you sure you're ready?"

Until finally my buddy Dave went - and fell. I went and endoed... but then the challenge was on. After many falls we finally made it all the way to the bottom. Later we went back to get some pics of our antics - here they are:

and on the way back from that was when I met my wife (a whole other story.)

Virtual Wheelsucking

2006-12-16T23:04:00.000-07:00

First, let me say that a couple of nights ago ol' Bartman came to visit and I put him on my computrainer. If you've got one, check out the course "Madeira World Championships" - it's got 3 climbs at 15%. It's a killer. Bart called my voice mail the next day and left a message "you owe me a night's sleep!" hahahaha

Anyway, this morning I dragged myself out of bed at 9am (after last night's 4am cooking fiasco, that was pretty early.) and headed down to get a computrainer work-out in. I chose a course I've done before, not particularly hard, and only 24.5km long, but I wanted to hammer it.

I haven't been on the computrainer for awhile - or any bike, for that matter. So, I really wasn't expecting to post up any great numbers. At the end of the ride I felt like I'd worked hard, but my average wattage was 22watts lower than my best time, my HR was a little higher, but my time was 6 seconds faster than my previous best! Yup, wheelsucking that little silver computer dude allowed me to be in worse shape and set a new PR....

Tammy would have been so proud!! I'm learnin'...

Chef Rob01

2006-12-16T22:36:00.000-07:00

Some friends wanted to have a bit of a dinner party. I love to cook. So, I volunteered to be the chef.

"Don't worry," I told them, "I'll think of something fun and creative that'll taste GREAT!

At first I thought I'd do Chinese. I haven't done a really big Chinese dinner in a couple of years, and I love the mess I get to make of a kitchen when I cook it. Then I thought about how badly I want to get my weight down and decided that a traditional Turkey dinner might be a better idea.

Hmmmmm, how do ya make that creative and fun? I know! It's been a few years, but I have this GREAT secret marinade recipe that combined with a DEEP FRYER would be FANTASTIC. (That's gotta be one of the best ways to make good-for-you-food suddenly be bad-for-you-food.) I don't have a turkey fryer anymore, so I do some quick checking and order one in. No problem, they tell me, it'll be here in plenty of time.

I buy the turkey, thaw it, marinade it - I'm ready to go! Go to pick up fryer - oh, we're sorry sir, that didn't come in. AGGGHHHHH! So, I start calling. Canadian Tire says they have 3 - but they're 45 minutes away. No worries, I get my wife to start on a few of the vegies for me. I jump in the car.

On the way there I decide to call and confirm - so I call. Yup, the computer says there's 3 of 'em, but, just to be sure the clerk says she'll check and call me right back. 20 minutes later I'm almost to Canadian Tire and still no call - so I call. Nope, nothing. Computer must be wrong. I start calling every place I can think of. Peavey Mart - sold out. Home Depot - sold out. Other Canadian tire - sold out. I'm getting desperate. I call Home Hardware. "Yes, we've got them on sale this week and we have lots of them!" Great - what's your address. Way over on the West side? No problem! It's only another 20 minutes, but I'm on a mission. I get there in 15. I talk to one clerk - she's not sure what I'm talking about, but takes me back to customer service. "Oh yeah - I know what you're talking about, but we don't have any left, and haven't for a couple of weeks - are you sure you're at the right store?"

"Well, unless there's two Home hardwares at this addres..." - I notice a clerk standing off to the side - I suspect he's the guy I talked to on the phone and I'm about to tear a strip off him when I decide it's just not worth the time or effort.

Frustrated would be the under-statement of the year.

Only one more place I can think of - Wholesale sports. I call. Yup, they carry 'em, but they're out of the kits and only have the components. It'll be more expensive this way, but I can get it. - I speed over as quick as I can. Did I say speed?

Speed limit is 50km/hr - I'm doing 80km/hr when I think I see lights on the roof of a car coming towards me, but my radar detector's not going off - ooops, I unplugged it to charge my phone up. The cop hits his lights, but instead of whipping around and plastering me, just gives me the thumbs-down sign to slow down. I do - for about 5 minutes, anyway.

Finally arrive at Wholesale sports. Pick up the stuff, and head for the till. I ask the guy - "you're sure this is the right size and everything, right?" He assures me I've got what I need.

I get home and start assembling. My dinner guests are already here, so we're gonna be about 1.5 hours late for dinner. I get it put together, fill the vat with oil, fire up the burner - and the vat doesn't fit on the burner. AGGGGGHHHHHHHH!

A little creative "McGyvering" and I'm ready to go. Turns out the burner won't throw off enough heat to bring the oil up to the temp I want it at - I throw the turkey in anyway. We're running a little later than planned (dinner was to start at 6:30 - we're now looking at 11:30 before we start eating.)

Turkey's cooking slow - It's midnight when I pull it out and start cutting - what's this - PINK?! Still not done. I hate to give up, but it's time to pack this one in.

By 1:00 my guests have left (we played some games and filled up on the veggie trays I'd put together earlier.)

I now throw the turkey into a roaster pan and put it in the oven. By 4am it's finally done and I pull it out, cut it up, and throw it in the fridge. Time for bed.

Don't know if anybody's gonna ask me to cook anything again! oh well. Guess I"m gonna have to go shoot a clerk at Wholesale Sports.

It's all coming together - sort of.

2006-12-13T13:08:00.000-07:00

Well, the work-outs are coming along great - I haven't been able to do all of my "two a days" 'cause I just haven't been able to make the time, but I have gotten in at least my morning work-out.

Diet is still my big problem. Yesterday was going pretty well - then I had to go to a funeral, and, well - I think I did pretty good there, too! (I actually said "no" to all those buns and pasteries! and for lunch I didn't indulge in any of those jello/whipped topping salads - stuck with a couple of slices of roast beef and glasses of water.) - but that night was a hurried night.

My wife was off to do some Christmas shopping, I was stuck with the kids and nothing in the house. So.... PIZZA!! Pizza is my kryptonite. I managed to limit myself to 2 pieces, but then snacked on some chocolate and, .... well, I blew it.

I've gotten back on the wagon today, and didn't put a ton of weight on after yesterday's slip, so I guess I'm making progress. I'm really trying to do something dramatic this month, though.

Tonight is season finale of Biggest Loser. I'm looking forward to seeing how all those folks "at home" have done. These guys/gals really accomplish something amazing, but what I'd like to see is something like the folks like me - people who have a 30-50lb goal in mind.

Weight struggles

2006-12-11T10:10:00.000-07:00

Well, I've now done what I had hoped to never do again - I crossed the 190 mark again. This weekend I weighed in at a monster 195lbs. OUCH! That's way too close to the dreaded 200 number that I swore I'd never cross again.

Last night I finally made a point of getting to bed at a reasonable hour - still later than I wanted, but a couple of hours earlier than my recent "evenings" have been. Then, at 5:45am I got out of bed and my wife and I headed for the gymn. I had a good upper-body work-out and am looking forward to tonight's run. It won't be very long, as I'm still concerned about my ankle, and with all this extra weight I don't want to do any damage.

I've planned out a two-a-day work-out schedule - every evenings will be running. Mon/Wedn/Friday are weights in the morning, Tues/Thurs/Sat is computrainer in the morning. If I can keep a handle on my eating I should shed some big pounds this month.

My fear is next week's trip up north to Fort McMurray. That always throws my schedule out of whack.

Hey Stupid! Wanna try...

2006-12-01T14:30:00.000-07:00

So I get this email from a friend. He's been doing some reading and thinks maybe he has something to really get me motivated.

I've been talking about getting my mountain bike out and starting to ride off-road again. It's where my start in cycling began, and, to be honest, I miss tearing down some single track. My friend (and I do use that term loosely here.) has heard about many of my adventures on-road over the last couple of years, and thinks he's found the answer to my recent lack of motivation.

The Leadville 100.

If you don't know about this race, it's 100 miles through the mountains of Leadville, Colorado. It's tough. Elevations that almost never dip below 10,000 feet, and LOTS of climbing.

I then chatted with my good friend Steve. See, Steve has been talking about doing the Leadville 100 for about 5 years. Yes, he's crazier than I am - it's his fault I did the Death Valley Double last spring. Oh yeah, he's game - but he's recently found this other ride in Colorado - the Durango 100. Supposed to be harder than the Leadville, and it's right smack dab in the middle of his already scheduled holidays... 18,000 feet of climbing and altitudes of 11,800 feet. Oh yeah, that sounds like a great way to spend a Saturday...

So, I haven't said yes yet. I haven't said no yet, either. I'm thinking. It would sure force me to get my weight down, 'cause ain't no way I'm climbing 18,000 feet on a mountain bike carrying an extra 30 lbs!

Been awhile

2006-11-30T14:30:00.000-07:00

Wow, does time ever go back quick! This last month has been a virtual write-off for me cycling-wise. I just haven't been able to generate the time to do what I should be. My weight is up, my cycling is down, and I'm grumpy. I think my wife is going to make me get on the bike tonight regardless of what I say.

That's it for now - look forward to some interesting pictures, as there will be some "Tailwinds Roller Lessons" posted soon...

OOOOUCH!

2006-10-24T19:50:00.000-06:00

I got up this morning - "self," I say, "let's do a different course on the computrainer this morning."

"Good Idea" I reply.

"What course?"

"I saw one called 'World Championships - it looked interesting."

"ok"

Off I go to the computrainer. I get warmed up, recalibrate, etc. Load the course, 3,2,1, GO! Off we go. Hey, I didn't notice that this was uphill right from the get-go. Oh well, it's not bad, just 1-2%.

Look at that hill in front - it looks steeper than anything I've tried on the computrainer so far.

I hit the hill, it gradually increases, topping out at 10%. Wow, that was tough! Nice downhill now. Hey! This is fun, downhill at 13%!

Hmmmm, that didn't last all that long - HOLY COW! Average speed is only 26km/hr! - and that's AFTER the downhill!

Oh, oh - I see a little bit steeper climb.

I'm watching the little bike guy on the profile inch (more like millimeter) his way up the hill - then I start laughing - the rear wheel of the guy is hanging out in space, as the grade is too steep for both wheels to show on it. 13% climb there - whew!

Downhill at 15% again, I hit 73km/hr, but I'm spun out at 134rpm.

EEEEERRRRCH! Okay, it wasn't wheels squeeling, but the wall I hit in front of me stopped me so fast I might as well have been locking the brakes up! For the next 2km I climb at 15%. 6-8km/hr is all I manage for some of it. I can't seem to generate any power! (230-250watts) - I glance at my HR - oh, that explains it, 183. That's only 95% of my max. I crest and try to pick speed up as I go. Down we go again.... not for as long, but it sure is enjoyable. Then 5 or 6km on a false-flat.

The last climb - coming at km #29. Grade creeps up to that magic 15% again - 2 more km of this! I'm no longer trying to go fast, I'm in pure survival mode. Once my pace guy even stops to wait for me. (AGGGHHHH!) Finally I crest and begin the final descent down to the finish.

I try and get my HR back to 95% of max - it takes a while. Meanwhile I'm picking speed up again. Hmmmm, I think, maybe I can take my pacer dude at the line - it's a downhill run all the way to the finish.

With 200 m to go I stand and hammer past my pacer. He lets me go by and then picks up the pace significantly to close the gap. Wheel sucker! He starts to come around, I kick up one more gear and sprint for all I'm worth. I glance at the wattage output - 450watts! Wow, where'd that come from! I've gotta sit, I'm getting close to spun out. I hit the line 2 lengths in front of the pacer. Yeah!!

I go to get off the bike. I can't. I can't walk. I can't stand. I'm having trouble unclipping. Would love something to drink - can't get up the stairs for more water. I'm cooked. I hurt everywhere.

What a GREAT machine!!!

Quick update

2006-10-05T09:10:00.000-06:00

I haven't been able to do anything for the last week - I'm up in Fort McMurray, and things have been busy enough up here that I haven't even been able to get to the gymn - last night I didn't get done until after 10pm.

I fly home tomorrow - looking forward to being back home for a few days (just a week) before my next tour up here.

Football vs Cycling

2006-09-30T22:36:00.000-06:00

Well, I was hoping to get a good, long ride in on the computrainer today - was thinking about doing "the assault on Mt. Mitchell" just to see how badly it would hurt. But, alas, it was not to be.

Yesterday morning my wife took off to Vancouver (about 1200km away) to help out a friend. She's supposed to be back tomorrow night - which is good, 'cause I'm leaving for Fort McMurray (about 1000kms away) for a week on Monday morning. Guess we'll literally be saying hello as we pass each other in the doorway. Yuck.

Anyway, today I had both of my football boys playing games. First up at 12 noon was Brady. He's in Pee Wee, and it's great to see him learning something that he really loves. I hope he continues to love sports. I suspect that next year he's gonna be tearing it up on a roadbike. Anyway, he played well, his team played well, and they came away with a tie. They learned a whole bunch. He made some great tackles in the second half that made me wonder how a little body like his can take that kind of impact. He bounces right back up, but if he doesn't get a little bigger he's gonna have to find something else.

Next up was Khan. They were playing Raymond. Arch rivals. Now you have to understand something about football in this part of the world. While Football here is nothing like football in Texas, it's treated about as strong. Both Cardston and Raymond are communities of 3500 - and the schools are little schools. Both high schools play in the 4A league (in Canada 4A is the biggest, single A the smallest) so they play against schools with as many as 2000 students. Raymond has won provincials so many times that I've lost count - I remember 3 years straight while we lived there a few years ago.

Anyway, this is Bantam age kids (Jr. High) In the Southern Alberta League, coming into this game, neither Cardston or Raymond had lost a game - and neither team had had a point scored against them yet. (They really dominate down here - it's sad they don't have more competition.) Anyway, we usually play one game during the season, and then usually meet in the league championships - and the winner goes onto the provincial finals.

This year we have a home and home series (today and next Sat.) My boy was excited for the game - and I knew it would be a hard fought learning experience for him. Game ended up 15 - 8 for Raymond, they scored a touchdown with 1:07 left on the clock on a great flee-flicker play from their own 35. Just one of those things (I won't go into how a rookie referee missed a clipping call right in front of him 'cuase he had his back turned to the play running for the end-zone...)

This year the Bantam league will be taking two teams from our league to the provincial playoffs. That means we could potentially play Raymond 4 times - twice during league play, once during league playoffs, and then possibly again in the provincial final. Wow, wouldn't that be something!

Anyway, getting pictures showing my boy in action is tough, as he was always buried in red shirts (every play he was double-teamed, occassionaly triple teamed. he still managed to get his share of tackles, plus two fumble recoveries.) Here's a pic of my boy - #62 - after having come all the way around and about to lay the big one on #20.

Here's another of him being triple-teamed (he made the tackle on this one, too.)

So, by the time I was finished with football I had just one chance left to ride, as Steve had made arrangements to do a 75km tailwinds ride into Lethbridge - but with me having the kids here... well, no riding for me today. But the football was great fun!

Not a gentleman like Kin

2006-09-29T11:22:00.000-06:00

Well, I don't rate like Kin does - oh well.

You Are 76% Gentleman

You are definitely a gentleman. You're very considerate and you have excellent manners.
Occasionally, you slip and do something foolish... but usually no one notices!

Are You A Gentleman?

OUCH!

2006-09-27T23:47:00.000-06:00

Well, the last couple of days I have begun in earnest my "program" - which really just consists of higher protein and not alot of calories - and a whole lotta pain. I've started using my new computrainer (thanx again Slantz!!) and it's everything it's been hyped up to be. It has the ability to 'cause pain like I haven't felt in a VERY long time.

That's all I've got to say for today - oh, current weight - after this morning's work-out - was 84.3kg. I don't want to hear any comments about how fast weight loss isn't healthy, etc. I'm not advocating what I'm doing to anybody else, it's what seems to be working for me.

It's Time

2006-09-25T13:06:00.000-06:00

No, I ain't gonna take no pictures of myself naked on a bike ala Mike Magnuson - but it's time to enter "The Magnuson Zone". Being the OCD that I am, jumping in and dedicating myself 100% is the only way I'm gonna get my weight down. I stepped on the scales this morning and cried when I saw 87kg - that's about 191.4 lbs. Took me awhile to be able to actually write that - it hurts. Now I must begin to pay the price for my slothfulness. I began my diet today - and will begin the work-out phase this afternoon. It's gonna hurt - alot - but I need to pay the penance.

Ridin' some lil' hills

2006-09-24T21:35:00.000-06:00

This last week I had to head out to Kelowna, BC for a business conference. My wife wasn't attending this year's event with me, as once again it was falling on the twins birthday. I really wish they'd change the date! Anyway, because it was just me, I loaded my golf clubs (which I hadn't even picked up since last year's conference) and my bike into the car (any guesses at to which was gonna get used more?) and headed for Kelowna - 857km away.

The trip out was pretty fast and uneventful - got behind some folks who wanted to act as rabbits for me and so I just cruised along at - ummmm, maybe I won't post the speed here - anyway... I usually don't book a hotel or anything when I'm travelling - more fun to just play it by ear and see what kind of an adventure I end up with. About 5 hours into the trip my cell phone rings and it's my partner, Kent, telling me he's got me a place to stay. Turns out to be at a resort, and I'm staying in a 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath condo. Would be really fun with the family - with just me it feel like a big, empty house.

The last 16km from the hiway to the resort it up and down and round and round - this road twists and turns every which way! It was dusk when I got out there, but the whole drive I'm thinking "I can't wait to ride this!" Then I get into the resort and find some really STEEP hills! (they don't let the staff try and drive the carts up these babies!) First thing next morning I went out and did a little loop on the bike - didn't have much time, so was only able to get in a few of the hills. I couldn't wait for the big event the next morning.

Next morning I jumped out of bed early. Phone calls and necessary emails conspired to slow up my exit, so I knew I wasn't gonna have as much time for the ride.

Geared up and out the door. The first km was a slight 1% grade, just enough to get me warmed up a little bit - then I headed out to the highway and down a gentle slope. Then the climbing began.

First climb was a nice little 6% grade - not really long, only about 1.5km. Fast decent - didn't think about it at the time, but I was gonna have to go back this way... next climb was about 9% for 1km. Again, not being very long, I kept a pretty good pace up it. A nice long, gentle descent - I didn't look at the grade on the way down, but on the way up I discovered it wasn't as gentle as I thought...

Next climb started off at a nice easy 7%, that changed to 8, then 9, then 10, then 11, then 12, then 13... I'd call this "the wall" but a hill coming up later gets that honor.

Did I mention that I'd forgotten to change my cassette from my nice, fast 11-23 used at HHH back to the 12-27? Yeah, that's right, I'm running my 11-23. The only saving grace is that I'm running compact cranks - but I've changed the rings out on those for racing, so the gearing is 52/36 instead of the 50/34 I'd have loved a little more.

I pass a couple out for a walk - they give me one of those looks that say "are you NUTS?! There's hills around here" - I wave, call out a friendly greeting and keep on. I'm still feeling petty good.

The next descent is steep - and long. Speed limit is 60km/hr, with signs posted for corners at 40km/hour. I hit 75km/hr as I passed a car just before the corner - leaned hard and held the speed as good as I could for the coming hill - car passes me with a wave and a honk. They passed 'cause this hill kinda slowed me down a little. Not a lot, just a little. I think my top speed climbing on this one was around 15km/hr, bottom speed was 12km/hr. It lasted for about 5km and averaged 12%. I turned around at the top.

Passed two cars on the decent. Did I mention before how fast I was able to go down this next hill? Well, going up wasn't a case of holding speed - it was more like - AGHHHH! The couple I'd passed earlier were near the top of this one. I thought I was smiling at them as I went by, but the look they gave me makes me believe that maybe it was more like a grimace of pain. I didn't say much, I guess. I thought I said hello, but it may have sounded more like "ugh". They clapped and cheered me on.

The next few hills go by relatively uneventfully, but I'm starting to feel pretty tired. My knees feel fine, no pain there, just the quads yelling at me. Seems that not riding for a couple of weeks and then subjecting them to this wasn't what they were thinking when I said "business conference." Oh well, they'll adapt or I'll die.

I get back into the Resort and head for "the loop" - going down to the bottom is hard. It's rained a little, so the roads are wet. Corners have some sand in them, and it's switchbacks all the way down. I'm riding the brakes hard and leaning back. I feel like I'm back on my mountain bike going down stairs.

There's the lake - the hill bottoms out at lake level, and immediately begins the climb up the other side. The climb weaves around the resort rooms on this end and through a couple of parking lots. The first 300m isn't too bad - only about a 8% grade, turn the corner and it kicks up to 13% really fast. I call out a couple of friendly hellos to the pretty girls getting into their cars in the parking lot - they just shake their heads. My speed is down to 12km/hr - and I'm solidly in the granny. A couple of more switchbacks at 12-15% and I turn the last switchback to meet THE WALL. HOLY COW! The grade climbs as I grunt it out. My back is HURTING! Knees are fine. Back is killing me. I'm down to 3.8km/hr at 26%! I'm forcing myself to not stop, knowing if I do there's no way I'll be getting back on. 'Sides, I ain't EVER let a hill beat me. My legs are threatening me. I know they'll really get their revenge in the next few hours/days. But for now, they will listen to ME!

I also refuse to zig zag up this hill. I've had to do that on climbs in the past (Talimena Parkway) - of course, it might have had something to do with the fact that the road is only 8 feet wide (it's one-way) and just not enough room to zig if you zag anyway. (I didn't even try.) I was gonna beat this hill straight up (and I do mean STRAIGHT UP!) With about 25m left to go I glanced down at my HR - 188. Yup, I'm working hard on this one! I begin to wonder if these nice, light handlebars can take the pounding that I"m giving them right now. My mind starts to wonder (I think it's a self-defense mechanism to keep from really feeling the pain I'm putting my body through.) I start to wonder what would happen if the bars broke right now (would be pretty.) I start thinking about all these emails I keep getting from Graham something or other re: building core muscles for cycling. Hmmm, maybe I should read those more carefully.

Finally I crest. I hear some noise off beside me and look across to see people out on a few of the balconies cheering and a few others looking not as happy. I found out later they were making bets on whether the fat man would make it up the hill. That made me smile.

A slight climb (only 5% - amazing how flat 5% can feel.) and then the km long coast back down to my room.

Whew!! That was some work. I can't wait for an excuse to go back there and see how many more of these little hills I can find! Of course, by then I hope I'm 30lbs lighter - and maybe I'll do some of that core work-out routine...

Random catch-up thoughts

2006-09-19T14:16:00.000-06:00

Last Thursday I underwent the knife - well, not a knife, actually a lazer. I got my eyes Lasik'd!

The procedure itself was pretty non-eventful. I got a little nervous before hand when a lady before me had taken 1mg of whatever relaxant drug they give you - and then just before surgery had come back out all shaken, was given another mg, went back in, 10 minutes later came out for a 3rd shot... Holy Cow!

I remember that JohnnyE had taken something - and I decided that being the rock I am, and much tougher than John, I'd take NOTHING. (I'm sure Mr Pharmacist will give me a rough time about that just 'cause it would've been a great excuse to take some drugs legally!)

My wife watched the surgery - and now I don't think she's going to be getting it done - it kind of freaked her out. (When I heard the nurse asking her if she was going to need to run to the bathroom I figured she was having a tough go of it.) I wished they'd have had it on DVD for me - I'd like to have seen it.

Anyway, the surgery went fine, that night I couldn't see much, but by morning and my post-op exam I was already seeing at 20/20. My eyes get tired by the end of the day, but my vision is getting sharper by the day. I still see halos around lights at night. If that stays forever, I'll live with it. Being able to see cleary during the day is worth it.

Now - onto my weight loss challenges.

I've put weight on this last month or two. It's frustrating. I know why - I haven't been riding much, and I've been on the road alot eating crappy food, and when I wasn't on the road I was still eating crappy food. I can't even guess at how much pizza and ice cream I've downed the last couple of months.

The only eating plan that has consistently worked for me in the past, and where I lost the first big bunch of weight, has been a low carb/high protein diet. So, as of yesterday, that's what I've returned to. It's not a "no carb" plan - I'm eating veggies like spinach, carrots, and other yellow/orange veggies so that I'm making sure I get what my eyes need to heal.

Work-outs are still in slow-motion, but I'm getting better. I know I really need to work on doing some weight lifting and working on my core - so I'm building a plan.

I guess that's what frustrates me so much. I KNOW what I should be doing. I know HOW to do it, I've just been too lazy to do it. No more. By next spring I'm gonna be a lean, fast machine!

To make my cardio work-outs more regular and effective (I want to do a good interval program) I'm looking at picking up a computrainer. Yes, lots of money - but I've already spent a ton of money on my bikes, shouldn't be such a big deal to spend the money on the trainer. Next year is Triple Bypass, and I'm gonna make Shadowcat hurt in the hills!! *grin*

My boys ROCK!

2006-09-11T11:10:00.000-06:00

Saturday was a day of football. First up was one of my twin sons playing Pee Wee football. He plays on the grade 4,5,&6 team and they were playing against the big boys from the grade 7 & 8's. Kind of an inter-squad game.

Brady, my son, is a small guy - probably one of the smallest on the field. But, he's got heart, and he's fast. I honestly don't know how many tackles he had (he plays defense) but it seemed he was in on every play. I'll post pics after I get them uploaded. The offense didn't do so well and the team lost, but it was a close game - literally 3 broken plays that went for touch-downs against them and 3 dropped passes for touchdowns for them, and the little guys would've won! Was really fun watching him go at it. It's his first year, and he's still got lots to learn, but wow - he's FAST!

Next up, my oldest son, Khan. Khan's not the biggest kid on the team (though he is one of the top 3 or 4) - and not the fastest kid on the team (though he's one of the top 3 or 4) He is very strong, powerful, and fast - especially for a lineman! He plays both ways, and even plays on a couple of the special teams - he's rarely on the sidelines!

Poor Coaldale. The got clobbered by my boys team. Khan's official stats were 7 tackles and one sack - but I'm positive that when we watch the game tape tonight that we'll see it was more like 10 tackles. That doesn't tell the whole story. One of his team mates was in for 7 tackles, too - and most of them were him just running through the hole that Khan opened up for him.

I've got a picture of him on offense opening up a hole by blocking 3 guys at once. I've got a couple of other really cool pictures of him that I'll post here, too.

I'm not a football guy - I got cut from my high school team 'cause the coach was too scared I was too little and would get hurt. But I'm learning now, and it's way more fun learning by watching my kids play!

After the game coach asked me if I'd be interested in driving out and taping a game of the two main rivals that were playing about an hour away. So Khan and I did a road trip out to the game. Raymond vs. Claresholm. Raymond always has a good team - really strong program there. It's usually Raymond vs Cardston for the semi-finals (they are the two strongest teams in the league, but the league just can't stand to have to teams from the same area in the final, so they put them up against each other every year. The winner of this game always wins the league championship.)

We used to live in Raymond, so I know alot of the fans and players at the game. Was fun to chat with old friends I hadn't seen in awhile - though a few of them are more than just a little arrogant about their team. One in particular went on and on about how Cardston could never beat Raymond (never mind that last year the score was 14-7, and Cardston was playing with 5 starters, including their QB and my son, injured.) I hope my boys team kicks their butts this year!

We ended up leaving at half time - the score was 27-0, and we obviously weren't going to learn very much about Raymond watching this game.

More football to come!!

C/Ya Zin!

2006-09-11T10:51:00.000-06:00

Well, the plan was to leave Cardston around 2pm, drive down to Great Falls (just over 3 hours away) and take Zin out for a farewell dinner. Sometimes my life just doesn't go according to plan - okay, maybe most of the time, but I really thought that getting out of the office by 2pm was doable.

As it turned out, I had clients stopping by all afternoon - and didn't get done until 4:22pm - I fired an email off to Zin letting him know that I was just leaving, and jumped in the car for the trip - of course, by the time I actually got out of Cardston it was almost 5pm.

Turned the radar detector on and headed for the border. Fortunately I managed to pass alot of people on the way down and got to the border without a line to have to wait for. Border guards were friendly and had me on my way quickly.

I don't know exactly how fast I averaged - but it was quick. I pulled into Great Falls at about 7pm. I made a quick call to Zin and zipped over to his place to pick him up to go for dinner.

We chatted for a bit before we actually got out of the door - and then had to hit a couple of places before we found a retaurant that didn't have an hour's line waiting to get in. We ended up at Tony Roma's. What are ya gonna eat at TR? RIBS! Both Zin and I order a full rack of beef ribs... holy cow that's a lot of food! I really should have just ordered the half. (Zin was thinking the same thing.)

Zin spilled a little sauce on himself and our friendly waitress asked if he wanted a bib - no says he - YES! says I! I had the waitress bring us bibs and we got a photo taken of it. Great thing is, you can't tell in the photo that I'm wearing a bib!! (but you sure can tell that Zin is wearing one!! hehhehehehe) I'll post the pic as soon as I get it off my phone. (not a high quality pic, but both zin and I had managed to forget our cameras.)

Dinner was great - good food, but even better company. Zin has become one of my very good friends over the last couple of years, and I really do think of him as "my brother from another mother."

After dinner we chatted for awhile longer, and then it was time for me to hit the road. I drove the speed limit going home, and it took me about 3 hours 15 minutes to get back. I lucked out at the border again and didn't get stuck in a long line - even though I was crossing at Coutts (notoriously long lines.) -- It was 1:30am before I dragged my butt into bed, but well worth the trip.

Running in the Northern Pines

2006-09-04T10:23:00.000-06:00

I spent all day yesterday driving up to Fort McMurray - yes, the bike and gear is loaded in the car. It was a long drive, but I impressed myself with my eating habits for the day - I ate alot of fruit! Only stopped for a bathroom break and to fuel up, so it was a straight 9 hours.

This morning I got up and was planning on going for a bike ride with Kent. I brought him up a new set of Neuvation M28 wheels to replace his 105 wheels with. But then I had another idea.

Last night my wife had mentioned I should go for a run in the forest just outside of Kent's door. She said there's some great trails there - so I convinced Kent to lace up the runners and we headed out the door for the trail. The trail head is literally across the street from his front door and off we went.

Wow. This is what I remember running to be like. It was nice and cool, the air felt crisp and fresh. Pine trees on both sides of the trail reached a hundred feet straight up to the sky. The trail was well groomed (except for a few mud holes) and we saw a few other runners out on the trail. Kent hasn't been runnning in years, so we kept a pretty easy pace - and after about 10 minutes had to slow to a walk for him to recover a bit. No record 5km times today, but wow, what an enjoyable hour out on the trail! I stopped the timer every time Kent needed to stop and so we actually ran for 30 minutes - I estimated it to be about 5km. We walked for another 15 or 20 minutes. I lost satallite reception, so don't know exactly how far we went. My HR never got over 165 (I sprinted a couple of hills to do some light intervals), so I know I really wansn't pushing myself hard.

It absolutely amazes me how beautiful this country is up here. These trails all turn into cross-country ski trails in the winter. The trails are all marked with sign markers (just like the ones on street corners) all over the place. We followed "deer trail" until it met up with "Beaver trail" - and then followed that all the way up to the end of it - there were lots of other trails that branched off. Then we turned around and came back. I think I might make a point of doing a little run like this every morning I'm here this week.

I'm hoping to get a bike ride in this evening. For now, it's off to the office for a full day. We've got lots to do there!

Recovery riding?

2006-09-02T20:23:00.000-06:00

After yesterday's hammerfest with Bart trying to drop John and I, I was looking forward to a nice, easy recovery spin. John's wife Sheri and my wife Melanie joined us, so I knew it wouldn't be a hammerfest. My wife is still a much slower rider, and insists that we just go enjoy our ride and that she'll see us later. It's an out-and-back loop, so I wasn't worried about her, we'd see her on the way back, and then when I got back I'd jump in the van and go track her down.

Chico showed up - hmmmmm, he's a hammer monster that takes some work to tame even on recovery rides.

Melanie dropped back at the 3rd or 4th kilometer. Chico took the pull up the first hill and kicked the pace up a bit - I jumped on his wheel. As we climbed he kept kicking the pace up higher and higher. "hey!" I thought to myself, "this is stupid." I looked back and saw Bart, Sheri, & John a fair ways back. I eased off and let Chico go.

Most of the ride out to the turn-around was like that - generally a nice, easy pace punctuated by the occassional flat-out sprint. I didn't get involved in any of those. My legs were feeling really heavy today. John and Chico hammered for a couple of signs.

A couple of kilometers after the turn-around I saw my wife coming towards us - she was looking really strong, but I thought she could probably use a food-break, so I turned around and rode for a bit with her and checked to make sure all was good. She was wearing a wind-breaker that was acting as a pretty good parachute - I suspect next time she'll take me up on the offer to get her cycling jacket... She sounded good, and looked good, so I turned around and realized that my friends had continued at a nice little clip and were now about 1km away. AGGGHHHH! Oh well, so much for a recovery ride!

I jumped back into the big ring, dropped to my 14tooth cog and began spinning madly. My HR started to inch up. I'd been careful to keep it around 135-140 except on a few short climbs - it was now inching up past 160. I got down low and wished I'd left my Zipps on. Hmmm, aerobars would be nice right now, too. I could see the gap coming down, but so slowly! On the hills I tried to push it extra hard, knowing that they wouldn't be hammering on the hills. Finally, I caught up to them (after chasing for a good 6 or 7km!) and tucked into a wheel. Whew! Now I get to recover - don't think this is what a recovery ride is supposed to mean.

We got to my favorite false-flats section. There's two of them on this ride, and this is the longest. Usually we have a bit of a tailwind through here and can easily hold speeds in excess of 60km/hr without pushing the heart rate. I called out, let's go! And off we went. Of course, we had a HEADWIND today, and top speed was only about 50km/hr, but it was still fun! The pace was too high for Sheri and she got dropped. We gathered a little at Leavitt and prepared for the assault on Monson's hill. Bart dropped off a bit as he took a drink. John went to the front and began the initial pull up the hill. This is always funny 'cause we all know how much this hill hurts at speed, and we all want to draft, but nobody wants to change their pace. John ended up being forced to the front. Then Chico went by him and I stuck to his wheel. Half-way up Bart came spinning by, looking really strong. Chico jumped on his wheel and I had to sprint to catch back on. Then Chico waves me by - it threw my pace out as I had to slow a bit as he eased up. I jumped onto Bart's wheel and we continued a pretty quick climb. Suddenly Bart eased up and said "I'm done." My HR was only at 173 (great advantage to sucking a wheel into a headwind! - Bart's was 185) - and then Chico accelerated past us. I knew I COULD have jumped on his wheel, but I just didn't want to hurt that much! Bart and I eased up and took it easy while we waited for John to catch back on.

The next hill was more of the same, but it's not much more than a roller. Then, the last "climb" - the back side of the first one that Chico and I hammered up. We all took it fairly easy, except for Chico who just blew us all away. The power he's been able to harness out of those legs this year is really impressive. As we crested Bart took the first pull. This is the beginning of the second "false flat" of the ride.

I took the next pull. We went by Chico with what I figured was about a 7 or 8km/hr differential. Amazingly he sprinted up and got on to a wheel. He really was riding strong! As we approached the corner everybody started to get nervous - the first traditional sign sprint was approaching - who would go? Bart was pulling, and pulling at a pretty good clip - about 50km/hr - so I know it would take a hard effort to get around him - the sign sits at the crest of a little hill, so it makes for a pretty good sprint effort.

I was 3rd wheel - John had dropped back a bit out of contention for the sprint. I decided to go early and started to swing out - just as I got my front wheel even with Chico's rear wheel Bart must have had eyes out of the back of his head, 'cause he kicked it up. Suddenly he was pulling at 54km/hr up hill into a headwind. Chico couldn't get around him, and I couldn't get around Chico - that's how we crossed the line. Chico kept hammering for a bit after the crest - Bart and I let him go. John joined us and we reeled Chico back in.

As you enter town we used to have to take a quick right hand turn and then a left on the access road - now that there's a good second lane on the highway we typically don't take that and stay on the highway - out of the corner of my eye I saw that Bart had gone hard at the corner and was hammering away on the access road. I yelled, "Bart's taken the access... Go! Go! Go!" Chico and I hammered for all we were worth - Chico got a gap on me right away, John dropped off, so I knew this would be all about time trialing it in. I knew I could make up alot of ground on the corner, 'cause I can pedal through some pretty tight lines. (165 cranks with Speedplays make for LOTS of clearance!) Bart and Chico got to the interesection at the same time, I cornered hard and closed the gap. Then I hammered for the last corner - oh oh, somebody's having a garage sale and lots of traffic at this corner. I shoulder check and only Chico is there - I cut hard to the inside and sprint through the corner - Chico stays with me for about 25 yards and then eases up - I continued on down the line. Admittedly, it was a rough finish as they are tearing roads up all over the place, but I won the final sprint!

So, our little recovery ride turned out to be another hammerfest. In actuality, this is what I really needed. Good riding, good friends. So what if it's not the best thing for building performance right now - it's good for me just to have some good motivation to get out and ride again!

I jumped in the van and went back to see how my wife was doing. Sheri had gone straight down to the bike shop, and we met her there later. Melanie's hip had really started to hurt, and I told her to stop and get in the van. She was disappointed at not finishing the ride, but better to prevent an injury and be able to ride again next week. It was great to be able to sit back and relive the adventure with my wife. She rode really strong and it won't be long before she'll be hanging with Sheri on these rides.

Let's go for a spin

2006-09-02T19:30:00.000-06:00

September 1, 2006

I had to head into Lethbridge to visit with some clients today - didn't think it would take too long, so called John and asked him if he'd be interested in catching lunch. He suggested I bring my bike in and we go for a spin. Sounds good, I've been feeling a little unmotivated to ride lately and thought this might be a good chance, weather was nice (about 27C) and very little wind. John's always fun to ride with, so yeah, I'll bring my bike.

Client meetings go a little longer than planned. I'm finally down to the last one, and call John at 3pm - he's got one meeting left. I agree to call him when I'm done and we can head out.

4:30pm and I'm finally done - John's running late, so I meet him at his office. He didn't bring his bike! So, it's off to Magrath to suit up and ride. While there we decide to call Bart, and the plan quickly becomes "we'll ride towards Cardston, you ride towards us, we'll turn around and ride back to Magrath together - then Bart and I will leave our bikes there, John and his wife can bring them up in the morning when we go for a spin in the morning." Great.

6:15pm - John and I are on the road heading towards Cardston. No wind, this is great! I haven't been on the bike since HHH, so my legs aren't feeling really active. We're cruising along at a comfy 30km/hr, nothing too hard. Riding side-by-side and chatting. Then we hit Shearer's Hill. It's about 2.5km long, and averages about 5%, with a couple of kicks up to 8%. John picks up the pace.

Now, generally I slow down a little while going up hill. Apparantly John hasn't figured this out yet, and drops the hammer. We're climbing at 32km/hr. OUCH! This hurts. I manage to hold John's wheel until the first ease of grade, and then I take the pull. I pull pretty hard the first third of the next climb - and then I just can't hold it, so John comes around. I grab his wheel again - for about the 2nd third, and then I pop. John hammers up to the top and then waits for me on the descent.

We alternate back and forth for the next 15km or so with some pretty good hammering along the way. At the 22km mark we're both looking for Bart, but don't see him yet. Man. This is getting hard! Finally, at the top of the climb at km #25 we see Bart and swing around to meet him.

Now we find out that there's actually been a bit of an East wind pushing us, 'cause now we're fighting it. It doesn't make sense, 'cause the grass isn't moving, the flags are hanging limp, and the windmills ain't turnin' - but the resistance is sure there! You'd think that Bart would be a little tired and not want to hammer too hard after fighting that by himself for the previous 20km he'd riddin' - or that John and I wouldn't want to hammer to hard after having laid it down against each other for the last 25km - and it seemed to be going that way for the first couple of km while we grouped and chatted.

Then we hit a coulee - nothing really steep, but a good descent to pick up speed, and then a climb back out. Somehow I ended up pulling on the climb. I was only trying to maintain pace, but by the time we got to the top the game was on - John hammered around me and I was struggling to hold a wheel. This went on for the next 10km.

Then we hit the false flats coming into Magrath. I can usually pull at around 55km/hr through here, and love the feeling of speed while pulling my friends along, so as I came around to the front I called out "hop on the Barfuss train, boys, I'll pull ya home." I hammered for the next kilometer at a lowly 44km/hr and had to give it up. Bart was next, and he ratched it up more than just a notch. He admitted later he was trying to ride us off his wheel, just to see if he could. I didn't have my HR monitor on, but I"m sure it must have been around 185 - I wasn't getting dizzy yet, but I knew I wasn't far from it. The only thing that kept me holding on through the pain was the fact that I knew it would hurt more if I got dropped and tried to catch back on.

Finally pulled into town, and Bart absolutely killed us. Great, I thought, I'm dead. No more pain. In the morning John's wife and my wife is gonna ride with us, so it should be a nice easy spin, which after this effort I'm really gonna need. A spin in John's book really means a hammerfest these days! Thanx for ripping my legs off and feeding them to me boys!

HHH Crit

2006-08-28T17:40:00.000-06:00

When I went to sign up for the HHH cat 5 crit I sadly discovered that it was full. No racing for me. I left. Then I got to thinking - maybe I could convince them to let me race in the Cat 4 race! I found out that Bonnie was the head referee and she would be the one that would make all these kinds of decisions. But, I couldn't talk to her 'cause she was in a meeting with the other referees. So I had to wait.

And wait.

And wait - John and Peter were getting rather impatient with me. (We'd already missed dinner at the Remington with Sabeard.)

Finally, at 9:30 Bonnie showed up. I presented my case. She asked me what races I'd already raced - my mind went blank. Finally I started to remember the names of some of them and rattled them off. She asked a few more general questions and then asked to see my UCI license - and then gave me the okay! I was in. Oh oh. I was kinda hoping she'd say no. Then I find out it's 60 minutes plus 5 - now I really wish she'd said no...

Night before the crit Johnny decides to help me out - breakes out the B12 and gives me a shot. Then breakes out his little pharmaceutical bag... my own little doctor working on me.

Day of the crit. We show up to the race about 1 hour early - lots of time for me to warm-up and get a feel for things. I start my warm up and realize immediately that the legs aren't feeling good. This is not good news, as I know this race is going to be fast. I start ramping up my heart rate and after a few hard sprints I realize that I can't even get my heart rate up! oh oh.

Cat 5's finish. Cat 4's now take to the course to warm-up. After a few laps and taking some of the corners at speed I know now that I'm really in trouble - this course is safe, yes - but it's FAST! There will be no slowing down in the corners.

They call us to the line. It's time. I'm in the third row - a little further back than I'd like, but I'm on the outside so I should have a fast line to the first corner. I hear my name called, look over and there's one of my BJ friends taking my pic - then I hear my name again and it's someone else doing the same thing! Hey, this is pretty cool. Instructions are almost over - we're good to go.

BANG! - okay, it was a whistle, but how do you make a whistle sound? tweet?

Before we hit the first corner, a left-hand 90 degree turn we're up to 37km/hr - and we're still accelerating around it - my HR is already starting to climb - that's actually good news to me 'cause I know that it's going to take a high HR to be able to stick with this crowd! A slight down-hill to turn 2, a hard 90 followed by a sweeping left into torn 3, then a hard 90 into turn 4. Another left 90 into turn 5. Turn 6, another 90- watch out here, there's broken pavement in the middle of the turn. Now into the headwind for a couple of blocks. Turn 7 is another 90 for a block, turn 8 is another 90 taking you onto the finishing straight.

I am right in the middle of things and know that this is not going to last - I'm hoping that the pace will ease up a bit if I can just hang with 'em long enough!

Lap two is faster - we never drop below 40km/hr on a single corner. Because the corners are being taken at such speed there's no slowing down for recovery - it's just flat out. I fight through the inside on a couple of corners and move up a couple of spots. (Amazing how far you can lean a bike over when you're riding 165 cranks with speedplays!) But then I lose a couple of spots 'cause I picked the wrong line on the next corner - it's back and forth.

Guys are getting spit out the back like crazy. I'm still hanging, but just barely. On lap 4 the guy 3 wheels up from loses contact. Nobody else can close it and before I know it I'm 30 feet off the back. Oh oh - this is really gonna hurt to try and get back on! I sprint hard, and almost make it, but the peleton kicks it up another notch and I"m blown out the back.

Over the next couple of laps I manage to keep them in sight and every time I go by another dropped rider I encourage him to jump on with me and fight to get back on. It seems every time I pick someone up we lose the guy that got on just before. I'm hurting. I look down on lap 12 and see that my HR is at 188 (my max is 192) - and suddenly the dizzy feeling I'm having is explained a little. I ease up slightly to bring my HR back to 184. Holy cow this hurts!

I know my time is getting short - in fact - it turns out that I'm down to one lap left before I get pulled.

Everytime I've gone around I've heard friends calling my name and encouraging me - it helps, but I'm completely outclassed. Soon I see 'ol Bonnie standing in the middle of the road waving me in - I"m done. As I go around my last lap the pace car blows by me and I get myself out of the way as I know these guys aren't far from me.

I stop. I can't breathe. I stop in front of Tall163, Sabeard, and JohnnyE - I can't even hardly hold my bike up. I'm cooked. We say our goodbye's, and John makes me run for the van so that we can make our flight. I don't run so good, but I do make it.

Wasn't much of a strategic race for me - more of a "agggghhhhhh this hurts!" kind of a day. I averaged 179HR - I covered 18.15km at an average speed of 38.5 - I really started to slow down the last lap as I was completely blown. I didn't make it half-way, but I wasn't the first guy pulled off, so I wasn't the worst!

HHH Ride

2006-08-28T12:25:00.000-06:00

Wow, where to start. JohnnyE and I left Cardston at 3am to make our 7am flight in Calgary. As usual, JohnnyE got all the breaks. As we checked in I had to pay almost $100 to get my bike on - JohnnyE paid nothing. I got to sit in THE BACK of the plane - JohnnyE got upgraded to a bulkhead seat... you get the idea.

Once we got to Wichita Falls and got our rental car we were off to find our hotel... sort of. I can't believe how turned-around John and I got - and that seemed to stay with John for the rest of the weekend. If John thought it was a right turn, it was really left. We finally found our way over to the hotel and unpacked. There I found that my good friends at American Airlines who had charged me $100 to fly my bike had decided that unclicking the buckles on my bag to take a look inside was too much like work and that a knife was much faster. Brand new bike bag - guess I'll be shopping for a way to repair that!

John and I got settled in and had an early night.

Friday was spent wandering around the MPEC - we stopped by the campsite a couple of times, but didn't see anybody that we knew there. SABEARD stopped me in the MPEC and we chatted for awhile. We decided to meet for supper at the Remington. We did eventualy get there - but SABEARD was long gone. Sorry about that!

My purchase of the weekend turned out to be a new set of bib shorts - bought some Sugino bibs, and all I can say is WoW! They are the most comfortable thing I've ever put on.

Finally, Saturday arrives and John and I are up and ready to go. Peter (HiGuy) met us at our hotel and we zipped down to the MPEC and parked by where we'd camped last year. AS we were getting geared up who comes up behind us but Kincannondale! We had a great reunion and worked our way together over to the start. While waiting, along came Talimena Tammy! She'd gotten in the night before. Her, myself, and John headed up another block closer to the start.

The ride itself was the usual hassle at the beginning. I really think that they should encourage people who are expecting slower times to start further back and let faster people move closer to the front. This could be done with different streets functioning as starting lines for expected finishing times. It would sure make it a lot safer. Fortunately we never had any problems.

The only problem I found was that John was feeling a whole lot stronger than I was - my legs just didn't seem to have the jump in them that I expected. One of the things that really had me laughing was the number of times I had to put the brakes on while going UPHILL! (And we're not talking about real hills here, just little bumps.)

We zipped through to rest stop #3. There I ran into Texas Bike Lady while waiting for the bathroom - a 30 minute wait! Unfortunately this was a theme repeated at future stops - the stops did not seem to be as well organized this year as last.

We ran into stops that had NO ICE, others that had run out of water - and ALL of them had half hour plus lines for the bathroom.

Tammy and I had let John go on ahead and were just keeping a comfortable pace - nothing too hard, but we were still averaging over 32km/hr of riding time. At the 50 mile stop Tammy had to make a bathroom break - it turned into a 45 minute wait in line.

We were staying well within ourselves, and well hydrated. Yes, the temperatures were climbing, but we were in good shape, and on track to get to Hell's Gate an hour and a half before it was supposed to close.

We got to RS #6, filled our bottles quickly and were pulling out when a gentleman informed us that Hell's Gate had just closed. 90 minutes early. We went by a couple of minutes later and I was MAD! I travelled 2700km to ride 100 miles and I was getting robbed of it. This was going to be my last chance to get in a century in August - so after 31 straight months of a century a month, I wasn't gonna make it. I thought about just doing an extra 20 miles or so after the end of the ride, but I knew once I crossed the finish line and went through the finishing line there would be no motivation to keep going.

I pulled alot into the headwind back to Wichita Falls. We did have one nice stop in that the cut-off route took us through the base and around some jets. We stopped for a few pics, and then continued on our way. I pusposely didn't push the pace hard at this point 'cause it just didn't matter and I didn't want to burn any more matches that I'd need for the Crit race the next day.

Finally we crossed the line, and they announced my name at the line. We finished with a 31km/hr average - even fighting the headwinds. However, it was only 120km instead of 162. I was disappointed and mad.

After everybody else had gotten in we agreed to meet for dinner at 5pm - and went to the Bar L Joint for some Texas BBQ - food was really good, the after-dinner entertainement was even better! I've never laughed so hard. We were welcomed by the Wichita Falls ambassodor (or so he called himself.) Good times were had by all, and before we knew it, it was time to say farewell.

I understand the officials closed the gate early - I'm mad 'cause had the stops been better organized this year with more bathrooms there wouldn't have been the long waits and we'd have easily made the early closure of Hells Gate. Had they told people down the road that an early closure was possible we could have made a decision to "hold things in" until after we were passed Hell's Gate - or we could have found a tree someplace. I don't know that I'll be going back to HHH. I know of one friend who has already said he's not going back. It's disappointing to be blocked from finishing a ride when it wasn't a case of not being able to physically do it. It wasn't a missed strategy. To the best of our knowledge we were riding the way we should, being careful, etc. Had they let us through Hell's Gate we'd have been done by about 2pm - that's still 2 and a half hours earlier than some were finishing up the 100km ride. I'm still very disappointed about it. Maybe I'll change my mind by next year, but as it stands now, I probably won't be going back.

Dealing with Idiots

2006-08-20T20:39:00.000-06:00

Okay - before anybody gets too carried away, let me say up front that I am the biggest idiot of all for putting myself in this position.

Above my office building I have a small apartment that I rent. I also own the building next door with an apartment above it. I have a partner in that building. I let him choose the tenant - he chose a shirt-tail relative and I said okay without checking it out - big mistake.

Unknown to me, she had a couple of cats - and a dog. That wasn't too bad. But, over time she was getting a little behind in her rent - and being the nice guy that I am, I let it slide for a couple of months. Then she gave her notice that she was moving. Said she'd gotten married. Then she left with a promise she'd be back before the end of the month to get her stuff out and catch up on the back rent.

Just before the end of the month she calls my partner and tells him that her husband's ex-wife had run her down and she was in the hospital. She wouldn't be able to make it for a couple of more days, but she'd make up the rent.

Two weeks later and she was going to be late for some other reason. On and on it goes.

THEN I find out that she's left TWO cats up there alone the whole time. Yeah, she's had a friend stop in to feed them. Great. I called my lawyer (enough of me being an idiot) and found out what I needed to do to evict her.

Now I have a storage place full of her stuff and hundreds of dollars worth of damage that I've gotta fix. (You wouldn't believe how bad cats can smell!)

Introduction

2006-08-20T17:55:00.000-06:00

Well, I've finally done it. I've created a blog. It's pretty simple, as I really don't know what I'm doing yet. I have no idea if this is the way I want to go, or if I'm going to go back to my old web-page. Maybe I'll end up doing both, but for now, this is the way I'm gonna post.

I spent the last couple of hours reading other blogs (I really haven't done much of that) and trying to figure out exactly what I want to say. I still have no idea.

One of the blogs I read was of a good friend - Talimena Tammy. She's one of my heros. The way she's been able to handle the adversity thrown at her with humour and grace is really inspirational. My wife and I sat-down together to read some of her entries. If ya happen to find me here, Tammy - thanx!

Tomorrow is the beginning of the next stage for me. I'm developing my exercise / eating plan tonight, and begin tomorrow with a nice "leisurely" ride with Bart out to Mountain View (about 50km). It's a great ride, and if I remember I'll take my camera with me and snap some pics.

On the eating side - my problem is definitely on the portion control side of things. I've been looking at a couple of options to help out with that. I really found Tammy's RestauRANT funny just because of that very issue.