Hello from our new home: San Diego

I often forget for long stretches of time that I have this blog. So I just remembered. FaceBook seems to have really killed blog readership. Maybe I'm incorrect. So lots of change for me in the past 12 months. We sold our real estate in Rhode Island, I quit my job in interior construction, we grew our business large enough support our family, and we moved to Sunny-D. Things are exactly as we planned, so we're feeling very blessed. I'm training and trying to race more than ever, although the bar is set quite high here in SoCal so I need to improve my game on the bike a bit. I'm also in my 45th year so there's this heightened sense of urgency to really over-perform and happify my ego. Truth be told, I am in the nasty habit of looking at bike riding as work, because every ride is a pre-calculated means to either inflict the correct amount of controlled inflammation, or a way to recover from it. Without purpose- I hate to admit it- bike riding is about a little bit boring to me. Lately I've even been opting out of riding on the road- even on a spectacular sunny day- in favor of a 90 minute session of specific training on the turbo or the rollers. Workouts are so much more successful, condensed, and efficient when you're indoors. Out on the dangerous roads, there are too many distractions, stop lights and hills, in addition to the possibility of being killed by an errant driver. So I prefer to limit my "fun" rides to going to the nearby canyon on my fatbike or mountain bike and enjoying the peace and quiet away from the rat race of SoCal roads. It's nice to hear the crunchy sound of dirt and gravel being crushed under my tires, like riding through Grape Nuts cereal. Sometimes it's hard packed and silent, and I welcome the occasional washout of sand or gravel to test my connection to the surface.. force me to shift my weight and threaten my control of the machine. These fun rides are not without a purpose though. They help clear the mind and usually make for a nice recovery day to shake off the previous day's racing or intervals. So here I am, in America's Mecca of cycling and racing year-round, and all I care about is making sure the correct amount of suffering, TSS, intervals and recovery are in the mixing bowl, so that maybe I'll have the perfect amount of form, speed and luck to be the answer to the most asked question in racing: "Who won?". That's my motivation to train, but if it were possible to substitute racing for training every day, I'd do it. Racing is the best kind of training. Thanks for reading!