Not the ideal way to lose weight, but I’m down to 165 pounds this morning because of a rancid gyro sandwich I ate for lunch two days ago. Did not sleep a wink the night before, and last night was only marginally better. My guts have been having painful spasms on and off for the last 24 hours. I don’t really know how I managed to ride to work yesterday morning without blacking out and crashing. It was cold, damp and I was going on no sleep. You know, I was suspicious of the sandwich they served me when the meat seemed to be overcooked.. a telling sign that they are not too confidant of it’s freshness or suitability as food. The lack of good places to eat around here (in Cumberland) is really getting on my nerves. Back in the day when I worked at Millwork One, Haruki Japanese restaurant was only 2 minutes away. Now there’s a Chipotle 1 minute away from there too (Garden City).. Here in Cumberland, I don’t know what f people eat. I am not the type who brings lunch from home. I don’t have time for that, though I do try.. but my plate is too full as it is to stop and put leftovers into Tupperware.. oh and to remember to bring the empties home and all that. The weekend appears to be very crappy weather, making it an ideal time to hit the gym and lift some weights, do a spin class, and complete my 2009 tax returns. We are purchasing a home in Warwick and yesterday something happened which makes me feel a lot better about the deal- after 4 months working at this new job, I finally got my first win yesterday. It was a publicly opened filed-sub bid for the laboratory casework contract in a brand new high school in Groton CT. My bid was the low number and not by much, meaning that I didn’t leave a lot of money on the table. It feels pretty damn good to sell ¼ million dollars of product in one fell swoop, and it does a lot to help secure my income and to make the purchase of this new house easier. Another huge win this week: one of our team’s sponsors had reached out to me last fall and offered to write a check for the 2010 and 2011 seasons. I declined and told them they didn’t have to pay us so early- let’s wait until the early spring when racing begins. Over the past few months I was beginning to second guess my approach, but I resolved NOT to call and pester them for the money. My faith and my patience paid off- the check arrived yesterday- enough to pay a large number of entry fees over the next two seasons. Anyway. Here’s a picture of our new place, below. And why not, here’s a picture of our old place too, which is now a rental property (orange shutters). The 3rd floor is available for $700 a month, heat and hot water included. It’s a nice space. I installed figured anigre wall paneling up there which I salvaged from the old Arthur Anderson space in Boston- it was taken over by Standard & Poors and they threw away truckloads of figured anigre paneling and doors. If you recall Arthur Anderson was tied to the whole Enron debacle. Please direct some of your positive energy towards the houses- I could use all the help I can get in keeping one rented and for closing the deal on the other. Those of you who bought some wool apparel from me the other week- I am immensely grateful. Thank you.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Four commutes = 106 miles
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
FOR SALE: EPX Carbon Road Bike with Campy Chorus and Rolf wheels
Murat's back-up road bike is FOR SALE
Very lightly used with minimal wear and tear. First $1250 takes it. Or you can bid on it at EBAY and see where it goes.
The wheels are perfect. The drivetrain is like new. Weighs 17.8 pounds.
Monday, March 08, 2010
The first bike commute of 2010
Riding 4+ hours is easy..
Fifteen minutes into my ride on Division Road, I passed Mr Billy Y.. presumably (and later confirmed) to be on his way to meet the ArcenCiel ride at 8:00.. I sort of hoped he would pull a u-turn and trade pulls with me for 4 hours, but I was also tempted to turn around and head down there with him.. The problem with big group rides are the stops. Not that I mind them so much.. but the quicker you get the four hours over with, the better. In a big group, there is a preliminary stop to wait for everyopne, there are flats, pee breaks, kwik-e-mart breaks, dropped riders (sometimes me!).. all of which can make a 4 hour ride take 5 hours to complete. My plate is full, I can't afford to waste an hour, as much as I love the company I am in, I love my wife more. Anyway, long story short, I pictured a ride in my mind and in spite of repeatedly feeling like I wasn't going to make it, the ride was completed successfully in just over 4 hours. Speed was not impressive and neither was power, but relative to the usual big group ride, I actually clocked more TSS in 4 hours than I would have otherwise done in 5.
Saturday was beautiful and I treated wife and child to some off-roading at Big River for 90 minutes. What could be better? My legs were smoked from Saturday's TSS and I needed to shut it down for a couple of days. I'll admit though, that my OCD got the best of me and after the end of the season finale of Big Love, I went down into the basement for a one hour tempo spin, just to keep the engine primed.
Today I plan to ride home after work, then ride back in tomorrow morning. First bike commute of the year! 27 miles each way. Wish me luck.
Friday, March 05, 2010
Tour de New York is Coming!
My good friend Todd Scheske is in the news again. Between being a promoter of races such as the Rochester Twilight Criterium and the Tour de New York and being President of the very prestigious Genesee Valley Cycling Club, Todd helps me to train effectively and to time my peaks correctly. Today’s news article at VeloNews is pretty exciting, and if I’m not mistaken, the Tour de
Thanks for reading.
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Racing this weekend?
Monday, March 01, 2010
Sunday: The Return
Obsessive compulsive types like me go through a living hell when they can’t ride due to illness, due to life requirements, or due to any reason at all really. Your hero took one final day of rest Saturday (but not without doing a one hour indoor spin) and on Sunday morning, he was ready to hit it hard. First off, I felt under-dressed. I blame this on the fact that I perspire profusely when I’m sick, and the extra moisture was giving me the chills.. Also, it was a very damp kind of cold on Sunday morning. I got to the meeting point ½ hour early too, meaning that after riding fairly hard for an hour (to keep warm) I had to spin easily back and forth on route 3 until everyone showed up. I shivered some more and at one point almost swore that I was going home. Two total hours of riding in this miserable cold felt like enough foolishness. As it is, my legs felt completely thrashed and dead to me the whole way there. I knew I was in for some punishment if I stuck around. But I don’t throw a leg out of bed at 6:00 am just to ride for two hours.. So I waited for all attendees and much to my surprise we were honored by the presence of a recently crowned National Champion and World Championship medalist. Those of you who need to know who this is, already know.. Well from what I read relative to the previous weekend, this was going to be another “average 20+ mph-or-die” kind of a ride.. Fine and dandy.. My Blackberry has GPS. I can always shut it down at any time that I need to and find my way home. Things were pretty civil and low-tempo up until we turned right onto route 49. Here, we split into two groups and let a gap open up- to practice pacelining. I wasn’t feeling too stressed until the road turned up and pointed up albeit gradually, for basically the whole way.. My front group was caught and passed after about 10 minutes, and the profile of route 49 is such that after another 5 minutes, your hero fell apart completely and some friends waited up for me and towed my ass back up to the rest of the group, a couple of times.. My lungs and head are so filled with goo and I am hacking so much throughout this ride that my judgment relative to riding is being questioned by others.. and rightly so. After the tempo mellowed again, I took the B-Line home and ended up with 75 miles in about 4:15. Slower than usual, but Sunday rides are hilly, and I’m sick.. The rest of the group apparently did just under 100 miles in just over 5 hours. I expected to be put into difficulty all day. That’s why I did it. And that’s probably why I am tolerated by this great group of guys: because they know that my heart’s into this 110%. At the end of the day, I am satisfied that I did the best I could with the situation I was in, and that puts one hell of a spring in my step today.
Thanks for reading.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Stella Azzura retro bar tape
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Friday, February 26, 2010
TSS=68
20:00 WU
10x:
1:00 EN 110rpm
1:00 FT 90 rpm
5:00 RI
5x:
1:00 EN 110rpm
1:00 FT 90 rpm
15:00 CD
Apologies to those of you who would have preferred to see me thrash myself randomly for 90 minutes without any real structure or purpose, and then judge my workout by the amount of sweat on the floor.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
HasyunUSA and WeeBIKE- now separate websites
To make our Google Adwords campaign for wool underwear more effective, it seemed pretty obvious to us that those who want to buy wool are not interested in kid’s bikes, nor are they interested in buying wool from a site where kid’s bikes are featured. For this reason, http://www.hasyunusa.com/ was born. As simple and plain-jane as this site appears, it is no easy task to get the domain name transferred over and get the merchant account codes, certificates and passwords installed. This Hasyun site took me about 2 hours to create, and it’s automatically populated with everything that I have in my Ebay store, within a minute of launch. This meant that I had to go in and delete all the non-wool items, but this only takes a few minutes. So now you know.
Some of you also know that I am sponsoring the ArcenCiel Racing Team with a combination of merchandise, discounts and cash. The ass-end of their kit is going to look something like this:
It’s an honor to be affiliated with such a classy bunch of masters. I won’t drop names here but the initials of TB, RR, DK, BM et al represent incredibly strong men who ride all winter long and win races regularly. They are also an older group who has an appreciation for wool cycling apparel.
We’ve been in business 2-1/2 years and so far, so good. We haven’t lost any money, and we’re blessed that a lot of our money is sitting tight in the form of inventory. This means growth! Even so, every cent we have made that didn’t go towards purchasing more inventory, has gone towards the support and cash sponsorship of the M1 Racing/WeeBIKE.com Racing Team. We have been covering nearly all entry fees for our riders and we are probably the only team offering prize-matching- something which a few of our guys have done very well with- our team won six races last season.
All this cash outlay means we are basically running the operation hand to mouth. We recently had to take a loan from a family member so that we could put a deposit down on a home, said loan being in anticipation of my tax return check. Don’t let the 2 retail websites and the 6 blogs fool you: we are not wealthy people. I own a rental property in West Warwick and I rent a condo in
There was some point which I needed to make but it’s lost on me at the moment.. Indeed- here it is. It would please us immensely of the racing community which we support could consider reciprocating and maybe thinking about buying some of our Hasyun Wool Underwear or one of our many brands of kid’s bikes. We have sold wool underwear and bikes to people all over the world, but our recent decision NOT to open a brick and mortar retail store was directly linked to the fact that we are selling to people everywhere EXCEPT in
This morning I was flipping through my new Velonews and discovered one of the product promos was for a short sleeve merino wool base layer, by a company called Capo. This “limited edition” item is selling for $80, and from the picture I found of it online, it’s practically see-thru, and no indication is given of exactly how much wool is used to construct it, or where it’s made. As a person engaged in the wool trade, I can tell you that the cost of this piece is probably about $7-10, depending upon the volume. The rest of the $70 mark-up goes to cover overhead, advertising, distribution, fancy web design, freight, customs, packaging, and expensive ads in Velonews. If you detect a little bit of frustration, you are right-on.
We sell a high quality short sleeve merino wool blend base layer for $29.95, plus $2.95 for shipping. Our competition, be it Capo, Ibex or Smartwool, is engaged in some kind of delusional price-point which only the wealthy and ignorant can afford to pay. There is no way that any of the people I train and ride and race with can afford that kind of dough for a paper thin wool undershirt of unknown wool content and unknown origin. That being said, I want to announce that our introductory period for our apparel is ending on February 28th. On March 1st the new price of our 75% merino wool blend short sleeve base layer will be adjusted to $39.95, which is still ½ the price of the boutique brands. For select teams in the New England area, I will be sharing one of two Coupon Codes which can be used at checkout. One will be for 10% off and for teams which I sponsor, it is a LOT more.
We have recently added two types of long underwear for men: black in 75% merino wool blend, and beige in 100% merino wool. Please go to the website and browse the selection: http://www.hasyunusa.com/ These are both reasonably priced for $38.95 and $39.95, respectively.
Let me tell you what happened to me last night.. Some of you have heard that I’m in the middle of a very nasty chest/head cold. Well last night I was feeling a little better, and I went to bed with my Hasyun Merino Wool base layer as a pajama top, because I had the feeling that it would be a night where I am going to sweat buckets. Four hours later, I awoke to heed nature’s call. Lying on my back, the covers pulled up to my neck, I felt very snug and comfortable. It wasn’t until I threw the covers off of me that I realized that I was lying in a pool of sweat, the sheets, blankets, wool shirt and flannel bottoms all soaked through completely. The important distinction to make though, is that wool retains 70% of it’s insulating properties even after it is soaked through. With any other type of undershirt, I probably would have woken up 3-4 times to change shirts. This means that the wool shirt allowed me to get more rest, and keep warm too. For the record, I have one Hasyun base layer which I bought 3 years ago- and it fits me better and better with each washing. Seems to have a ‘memory’ relative to my body shape. These things are built to last with flat stitched seams using a double knit interlock fabric.
Well I’ve said a lot more here than I expected to, but hopefully you have learned a few things about our business, about the teams we sponsor and where to go find foreclosed homes. Thanks for reading.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Grandpa got a bath..
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Friday, February 19, 2010
PowerTap Crap
This is from last Saturday.. I did not require the device to tell me how much force to apply to the pedals, no, that kind of worked itself out in accordance with the company I was with. I like using the device as a flight data recorder though.. comparing successive weeks and seeing a pattern which indicates success.. Thanks for reading.
Monday, February 15, 2010
best luggage ever
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Thursday, February 11, 2010
Thoughts about Coaching
Consider this: On top of racing a bike, you are working a challenging life smothering job and running a home based business and managing a masters racing team and you have a demanding wife and an active six year old son and you rent an expensive condo and own a rental property and you manage a retail website and contribute to five blogs, and from this hurricane of stress you manage to steal 10-15 hours a week for bike practice (a miracle in and of itself)..
Successful self-coaching.. as it relates to a correctly planned training program, with the optimal amount of volume, intensity and rest, is not something you fall ass-backwards into, especially when you don’t have the luxury of riding as much as you want, whenever you want to.. Sound familiar?
It’s not so far fetched that the person described above may not have the brainpower left at the end of the day to figure out the best way to optimize their limited training time. For masters like us, it’s “now or never” time. Masters are chewing through their handlebars in the last 1k2go for their results, rightly so, as they are not getting any younger. Indeed, for those who really want to be successful, the age of 40 is not the time to “wing it” relative to a successful training program, and even if we know how to get to 90% of our potential for success, it’s the last 10% which matters and it’s the last 10% which is the easiest to screw up. Some race results are measured in millimeters. It doesn’t take a very large advantage in form to break from the top 10 of your races into the top 3 of your races. Hire a coach for the correct reasons.
Thanks for reading.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Nonplussed
Let you in on a secret:
There is a house for sale on Ives Road in Warwick- happens to be ¼ mile past the main entry to the infamous Goddard Park- a picture perfect little house with all of the features, the price, and the taxes which we were looking for- walking distance to the park and to the beach- front view of a golf course, fenced yard, solid foundation, mature landscape, deck, shed, etc- it was a foreclosure being sold by Fannie Mae- priced $100k less than the previous owners paid for it 2-1/2 years ago- we offered a little bit over the asking price on the 1st day it was on the market.. and lost it to another buyer somehow.
It’s funny how you can attach yourself emotionally to a home that you want, imagine your family’s future in it, even look forward to using your windtrainer in it’s basement, and then *poof*. A bucket of ice water when you are informed that your *above-asking-price* offer wasn’t good enough. Yeah we have a rock solid pre-qual letter in-hand. I should feel blessed and lucky for having the ability to buy a 2nd home but.. instead I’m nonplussed.
Thanks for reading.
Thursday, February 04, 2010
2010 Field Test No 1
Update: Added below is the 20 minute TT chart from last night, and at the bottom left, find the data from a field test from the same time last winter (1/23/09). Last night's data is on the right.
It pleases me to see that the winter program is bearing some fruit. When you consider that I am 5 pounds lighter this time around, it looks even better from a watts/kg standpoint. Thanks.
1989 UB Classic Criterium
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