Sunday, July 04, 2010
The spell is broken
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Monday, June 21, 2010
Update for my 2 readers..
We are filling the pool and it's almost topped off. Liner has shrunk due to the fact that previous owners let it go empty for two seasons and it may be leaking some place. We also need a pump installed before it turns into a swamp, due to the fact that this house was a foreclosure and they probably sold the pump to put food on the table. Still we swam in it over the weekend after a nice shock treatment turned the water crystal clear. I have a cordless vacuum to keep the small amount of sediment on the bottom cleaned up. I guess we should just enjoy it as much as possible before it (the liner) fails completely. A new liner is $3000 installed. No me gusta.
Work? I don't want to talk about it, but rest assured that I have contingency plans which make certain that I land on my feet no matter what happens. Send me your positive thoughts. Let me say this.. when your livelihood is threatened, bike racing is about as significant as playing with your Xbox or PS3. In other words, you can live without it and not die. I mourn the hopes and plans that are dashed for me this season, but I also look forward to mounting a comeback and seeing what damage I can do at the end of summer. Cyclocross? Maybe it's time to upgrade my cross bike to something that weighs less than 25 pounds..
Thanks for reading.
Thursday, June 03, 2010
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Monday, May 17, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
It's time get crackalakin..
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Saturday, May 15, 2010
2010 Mystic Velo Criterium
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Friday, May 14, 2010
Want to ruin everything?
If you’re interested in wasting/ruining months worth of physical training, lowering your performance at work, increasing your stress and blood pressure to unhealthy levels, or hanging on to your sanity by a thread while being thrown around emotionally like a red-headed step-child.. BUY SOME REAL ESTATE!!!
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Waiting is Torture
Add to this the stress of selling millions of dollars of contracts- or I should say- the REQUIREMENT of making these sales- while my job hangs in the balance, and you have another ingredient necessary for a nervous breakdown. Contractors are in no hurry to make buying decisions, and again, the burden on me to continue performing while I wait, is impossibly difficult. Imagine a photo finish at Nationals, where you're required to start the next race while the officials decide if you're the winner. Concentration and focus escape me. Understandably I think..
Top it all off with the inability to train on the bike properly for the past couple of weeks due to the paralysis of waiting and it's clear that lighting my fuse is not a good idea right now.
All I need is one win at work and to close on this house and I can get back to feeling human again.
God help us.
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Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Reset Button
Okay last week was a bust for training- all I did was the Blue Hills RR, and poorly at that. I’m bike commuting this week, and already logged 108 miles in the past 40 hours. Now I think about tonight’s training race at Ninigret and seriously don’t feel like doing it. I hit it hard last night on the ride home, and this morning I can really feel the soreness in my legs. I will probably drive home tonight, skip Ninigret, and resume training tomorrow after work. Sterling RR is this weekend- a race I’ve never tried. I’ll go if the mood strikes, but would prefer to keep my money and do a couple of longish training rides instead. One other option is to go to NYC for a couple of crits, but Saturday’s has a 6:30 start time-
In case you thought it couldn’t be done, I just installed my rear license plate to my new Land Cruiser using VELCRO around the entire perimeter. Previous owner did a horrific job of removing his plate- he ripped it off and effectively destroyed the left hand plate boss- there’s now a gaping hole. The right hand boss has the bolt snapped off in there. I started out by hanging the plate temporarily using speaker wire. Now [with Velcro] it’s so secure I don’t think I can ever remove it without slitting between the Velcro with a sharp knife. I’m going to press my luck and leave the front one off- I’ll keep it in the car. So far so good- my 1994 Toyota Land Cruiser has not disappointed me. The A/C blows ice cold and the suspension is as smooth as a Cadillac. There’s an aftermarket radio and really hokey aftermarket speakers in the doors. They will all be replaced with OEM replacements. I already found the original radio on Ebay- it plays cassettes and CDs. The speakers will be a little tougher to find. I also need to figure out how to drop the spare tire which is clamped underneath the vehicle. There’s a port where you’re supposed to insert a crank and screw it until it descends to the floor. I have a feeling it’s all frozen up same as my previous Toyota pick-up. I ended up cutting away the rusted mechanism with a sawz-all. I’d really rather not have a 275-70R16 wheel in the back of my new truck though. Now that I own this monster, commuting to work by bike is a lot more cost-effective. I think the 60 mile round trip will cost me four gallons of gas. That’s $12 a day! Thanks for reading.
Monday, May 03, 2010
2010 Blue Hills Classic
Let's begin with excuses: it was a highly stressful week, what with the house we're buying, shopping for a new car, career challenges, and no training whatsoever for six days straight.. Needless to say, my head was fixatedupon upon simply surviving and finishing when I lined up Sunday morning. A slow leak in my front 404 required me to take a wheel before starting. Somehow I forgot to take a short sleeve jersey, but was glad to have grabbed a long sleeve one in case it was needed. I got a little warm while racing, but it wasn't too bad.
Fast forward to the final lap (first 5 laps I just sat-in and tried to judge how I felt after 6 days off the bike) bottom of the hill I started looking for opportunities to move up, and did. 1/4 way up the whole field swung right abd the door opened for me to get right to the front, which I did, but not without a nice push from some wise guy who is presumed to have a low opinion of one who sits in all day and moves up with 1k2go. Okay I get it. I'm up there hoping to help Alain or Matt or Adam, that is all. Long story short, I went to the front for 15 seconds, burned the one match I had and shut it down the last 1/4 mile, to finish almost DFL.
Now there's 2 minutes you're never going to see again. Sorry about that.
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Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Does it bother you to miss workouts?
Monday, April 26, 2010
Do you know why 6 is afraid of 7 ?
No racing for Murat this weekend, not even any real crazy hard training- I did enough of that Mon thru Fri.. and it appears I've logged 305 miles this week in 17-1/2 hours overall. Not that I didn't want to race TP and Quabbin, I did.. but I really need to bring my A game to the start line of any hilly road race, and this week's volume put me at about a C or D for form, and I'm not that interested in racing myself into the ground and off the back, not to mention driving 2 hours each way and paying $30 a pop for the privilege. I'll save that kind of commitment for the road races that I care about- like Blue Hills. Now if TP and Quabbin were flat criteriums, I probably would have found a way to be there. The risk/reward ratio is a lot more favorable.. You can bang your head against a wall "training your weaknesses" but as a friend recently shared with me on FB:
"Don't let what you cannot do, interfere with what you can do." -John Wooden
That's good advice, IMHO.
the answer to the riddle, per our 6 year old son Reis: "because seven 'ate' nine". He told that one out of the blue today while we were driving home from IKEA. Thanks for reading.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Ninigret No 2
It's not that I won it or anything, so I won't bore you with a race report. The interesting story is that I rode my bike down to the race, then I raced, then I attached my headlight and rode home. 86+ miles in about 4:14. I've done this ride before, and it has always paid dividends the following week. I got home in the pitch black- about 9:15. Previous attempts to do this ride ended up with severe cramping both during the race and on the ride home. Yesterday I did a little better- one calf cramped a tiny bit for a moment and that's it. Added to my two bike commutes to work on Monday and Tuesday, I already have 200 miles in 3 days. Today is a rest day- hopefully a bike path bike ride with my son if anything at all. Racewise- I tend to hold back a bit when I know I need to ride home afterwards. Feeling a little fresh at the end of the crit, I easily took my place in the lead out train and got 3rd in the field sprint. The usual suspects had broken away and had a big gap. Nice big field last night also included G-Diddy in his 1st ever [Wed night] Ninigret Crit. Didn't see him after the start as I think he was tail-gunning at the back, enjoying himself. That's what it's all about. Interestingly, my first 60 minutes riding into the wind down to he race was my CP60 for the day, racing was actually easier than the ride down. Nice tailwind on the way home was thoroughly enjoyed. Thanks for reading.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Solobreak Wins Rick Newhouse Criterium
You heard it here first. www.Solobreak.blogspot.com
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2010 Rick Newhouse Criterium Results
Friday, April 16, 2010
Year To Date PMC 2009 and 2010
These charts give you an indication of training load. (top one is 2010, bottom one is 2009) The blue line is CTL- Chronic Training Load- a running average of TSS for the past 42 days. The pink line is ATL- Acute Training load- a running average of TSS for the past 7 days. The yellow line is TSB- Training Stress balance.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Tour of Turkey- Rifat Caliskan's family presents
Above, André Greipel (Team HTC - Columbia) took a hard-fought victory in stage five.
Ninigret No 1
Looking at the weather prediction for this weekend, it was apparent that racing enjoyment would be curbed quite a bit on Saturday, making it all the more attractive to go to Ninigret last night. The same tired script played out of course, with all the big engines detaching themselves and surfing the field for an hour- Gary A- Tobi S- Billy Y- Billy M- Adam S- Randy R- Todd B (hope I didn’t miss anyone) they duked it out for the win (I think Tobi got it) while us mere mortals in the field worked it as a training race should be worked. I went for a prime at one point and got outgunned by a tall dude who I think is a junior (?) Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t quit because it was a 2 place prime (Nice six pack of Narragansett Lager- Ninigret has the best primes!) I almost tossed my cookies after that sprint, and had to really dig deeeeep to stay attached to the field- something made a lot harder by the many folks who were dropping out and jumping back in every other lap. I was getting gapped and it was even more painful to go around the bodies that were being spit out the back. This was a windy edition of Ninigret for sure. At 5 to go I had pulled myself together in the sprinter’s lounge and started moving up. By the time we heard the bell, I was 5th wheel. On the back stretch I was 3rd wheel. We had barely hit the final left hand curve and I became impatient and started my sprint 333 yards from the line. My leadouts were cooked and it was time to either GO or be swarmed and end up fighting for a wheel or a clear path. Field sprinting for 8th place? Meh... It’s a training race. Why not practice some sprints? I wasn’t exactly sprinting from the back of the field.. The correct thing to do would have been to hug the right hand curb, but that’s not what I did- stupid me- I left a lane open on my right side and [correctly] held my line to the finish. Tall junior rider and someone in Cox uniform passed me on the right. 3rd in the field sprint- I’ll take it. It was an excellent workout. The bad news is that when I got back to the car, my wife was in the driver’s seat while my son was kicking a soccer ball around. I put the bike up on the car, yelled at Reis to get in the car and jumped in the passenger side- I was cold. What do you think we left leaning against the car as we drove off? A Bontrager Race-X-Lite front wheel. We do not recall running it over, but it sure as hell didn’t make it into the car. I’m hoping a good Samaritan saw us drive off and is holding the wheel for me. It matches my Powertap wheel and I really want to get it back. Has a blackwall Conti 4000s tire on it and a Polar magnet on the spoke. Thanks for reading.