First Race Week

It's race week and I'm ready. I've been itching to get out there and see what I've got; see how good my training has been going and see what I can do. I took the TT bike out on Sunday for a brick workout as part of race prep. Before the ride, it fell down by the garage and scraped the clear coat on the top tube. Crap, haven't even ridden 100 miles on it and already scratched it up. The ride didn't seem to be going that great, but I still gave it what I had. I did the local tt road, C.D. Smith in 4:10 which is fast; I think. I didn't look at the distance, but I think the road is supposed to be like 2.25 to 2.5 miles long, which would mean I was hauling. Let's hope I can do that next Sunday. I didn't realize I averaged 21.2 mph for the 40 mile ride until I looked at the computer the next morning. Dang, this bike is fast! Didn't even fell good about it, yet still managed to ride fast. I'll take that. The run didn't go quite as well, so be it.

Monday I struggled through another swim workout and then headed to the gym to prove something to myself. I was going to try to lift a lot. A lot more than I ever had. I started squatting 245 back in February as part of my strength training. From there I moved up to 265 for a while and then 275. Last week I tried 295 and then 3 sets of 20 reps of 315 last Wednesday. Success. So why not push it, right? I started out with a warm-up set of 20 reps of 315. Then I put on 355 and did 15 reps of that. I asked a guy I've met at the gym this past semester to come watch me while I tried this next one because I had no idea how it was going to feel. I put on 405 and got out 6 reps before I dropped it. I was pretty happy with that. I then backed off and did another 20 reps of 315 and called it a day. You could say I've been feeling it in my legs and back today, haha.

Today, I threw the Cannondale Slice back in the trainer and did some adjustments to it. I wasn't quite happy with the fit I was riding on Sunday. I also mounted my Profile Design aero bottle and made it race ready. I started out doing some easy spin work to loosen up, then tested out the new aero position. Then I started practicing putting my shoes on and off while on the bike with them clipped in. Not quite as smooth as I was hoping it would be. The real test came when I took the bike out on the road. It's fast. Easily hit 36 mph while I was cruising around the neighborhood making sure I was comfortable on it and practicing taking my shoes on and off. I probably looked really weird wearing a Giro Advantage 2 helmet, 2" inseam swim speedo, and no shirt. Oh well, practice how you race.

Even better news is that my Niner finally came. I now have all my parts for my new mountain bike.....almost. Sram is still falling behind and failing to send out all my items. Who knows what's going on over there? Anyway, off to the bikeshop to put together what I have and hope that somehow I can scrounge together a complete bike to race on this weekend. Either way, I'm ready to let it rip and give it all I got. Hope it's not a complete swamp over there after these storms.

Looks better than my Ironman position. Man if I'd had this bike.....

Ceramic Bearing Press Fit 30. It's legit

Okay, maybe the bar isn't on right yet. Give me a break; there was a tornado.

Just another "Day Off"

Tuesdays are the one day of the week I don't have school or work. Work that I get paid for at least. On today's day off I managed to track down my Mavic shoe order, track down my Sram order, track down my Niner order to the point of it's in port and waiting to go through customs (so I probably won't get it in time to race on it next weekend), cut the grass, weed-eat around the garden, water my seedlings, replace a board in the fence, and mountain bike 30 miles. Great rest from school and work.

The mountain bike ride was a little different. It is definitely Spring time now here in West Tennessee. The trails are starting to get overgrown and reach out and grab you. My arms were all cut up and itching 4 miles into the ride. The mosquitoes are out and so are the snakes. I saw three snakes today on the trail. I took a picture of all three. The first one was stretched out across the trail and I rode past it. Of course I stopped and turned around to go mess with it. Its head was off the trail and in the undergrowth. When I grabbed his tail he shook his tail at me like he was a rattle snake. After hissing a bit, I decided to leave him alone and get moving again so the mosquitoes would stop biting. The second time I saw a snake, they came in a pair. I rode past a blob that looked like a snake that had gotten hit and was curled up nursing his wound. As I walked up to it I could see two different colors of scales. I figured maybe his tail was just another color. However, when I started poking him with a stick he uncoiled and revealed another smaller brown snake inside. The larger black snake quickly left the trail while the smaller one started to come at me with his mouth open. He snapped at the stick a few times. I want to say he was a cottonmouth, but my friend Brandon isn't sure. I almost rode over a big one in Arkansas a few years back while we were on a biking/camping trip together. After I skidded to a stop and somehow avoided being bitten out in the middle of nowhere Mountain View Arkansas, we began messing with it and ended up picking it up. We are very bright children.

After I finished my ride and cleaned up so I would stop itching so much, I headed out to do some yard work. Taking notes from a wise friend of mine named Burt Colbert, I decided to walk around barefoot and rejuvenate my energy. I ended up cutting the grass barefoot. I know, Mom, that we were always told we have to wear shoes when we use the mower, but how much protection is that mesh and synthetic leather upper really going to give me when those blades are spinning so fast it mulches pine cones and sticks? You weren't home and I did it. The fresh cut grass under my bare feet felt great.

I'm growing up. My days off are full of all the chores and "to do" lists. Welcome to the world I guess. Now I need to write a final paper and get ready for another hard day of training tomorrow.

Almost May

It was a struggle to get on the bike this morning. After my alarm went off at 6:30 this morning, I managed to play with the dog, drink coffee, fall back asleep, watch TV and finally get around to my workout I had planned at 9:15. Once I did get to it, it was a good one though. I had taken the past two days off and I guess gotten out of my routine a bit. I didn't plan on taking Saturday off, but after I got up and took the dog out, I fell back asleep in the recliner with him until it was time to go to work. I did an hour and twenty minutes on the bike and then got off and did a 46 minute 10k. Better time than I was expecting. Hopefully that's how Southeastern's will go in a few weeks. I have one more big week before a little recovery and then racing starts. This next week is going to be rough and tough. I'm stepping my running game up a bunch with speed workouts on the track Monday and Wednesday on top of my normal swim, lift, cycling, yoga routine. Tuesday I plan on doing another endurance brick workout and who knows how the weekend will go. I'm also going to increase weights this week to do one last push for strength before I back off to just maintaining while racing in May and June. Training is coming along and going as planned. Now, I have to hope that my bike and all the parts for it arrive before next Thursday when I leave for my first two races. The shipments have been on order since late March, but I've yet to get a definite answer on when it will actually be here. I'm hoping for the best. Sure would be nice to race on an Air 9 Carbon by Niner with a full X.O group by Sram and some hand built wheels by yours truly.

One week of hard training left and one week of lent left. I gave up drinking for lent because I figured it would be a good challenge and it would be good for me to focus on training and not have anything distract me or keep me from getting up early every morning to work out. Now that I'm almost there I'm considering prolonging the drought until after my first race. Make sure I'm on my game and racing strong before I start any celebrating.

Waning Attitudes

School is such a drag. I dread going everyday...the whole two days a week I have class.....and when I actually go to all my classes. I am just completely over it. My classes are stupid easy and completely pointless. Honestly, I would probably go even less if it wasn't for the workouts I do before class. I swim and lift weights Monday and Wednesday and these workouts fit perfectly into my schedule right before classes start.

I think back to how I started college, and then back to how I started high school. Freshmen year of high school I was reluctant to play sports because I didn't think I'd have enough time left to do all my homework. I did sports and it along with all the homework pretty much became my life. I read every book, the unabridged versions (and I read very slowly). I did all my homework on time and did every problem, even if they weren't graded. I aced all of my test and had a 4.0. As high school went on, I slacked some, but I still took all the hardest classes. I did the homework and class work I needed to get by and do well on the test. I didn't sit at the kitchen table doing homework every night. I went out more often and was hardly bothered down by school. I still kept a 4.0 throughout high school and graduated with 30 hours of college credit from the AP classes I had taken. I still worked hard, I had just learned to play harder. I would skip out on lunch and my break period sometimes to go run through Germantown and lift weights: showering in the locker rooms before heading to 5th period. Becraft and I skipped some calculus classes when we had to run home and get stuff or do other errands. I also left sixth period early sometimes when we weren't doing anything in English so I could go to Prairie Life and lift weights or swim before going to work at 3:30 at Carrabba's. My die hard attitude of being perfect in school had died.

I recall as I went off to Colorado for Freshmen year of college, I was back to working hard. I was doing all my homework and trying my best to get a 4.0 in these college classes. I wasn't going out or drinking in the beginning, but that was mostly because I was focusing on Xterra Nationals that I had coming up shortly. I still stayed on top of my game after that and the few days I had left out there I enjoyed the mountains and landscape, rather than partying on Market Street or the frat houses. Changing over to UT was a little different. I was pledging a fraternity, but I still stayed hardcore about school. I made a 4.0 while taking 3 math classes one of which was on the junior level and got me qualified for a scholarship. Sophomore year I partied. Sophomore year was probably the year I partied the most. And looking back on it now if I could do it again......I'd party even more, go to more mixers/date parties, more booze fest with the brothers, and more weeknights out at the bars. It was an AWESOME time. It was fleeting though. The next year the fraternity house shut down and we all moved our separate ways. We still got together and partied, but it just wasn't the same. Junior year I started to not care as much about my grades. I was no longer set on maintaining a 4.0 GPA. I just wanted to get B's in my math classes and be done with my major. (Upper level math classes were the only classes I didn't make A's in and I still finished with an overall GPA of 3.79. One tenth off from Summa Cum Laude.) I skipped a lot of classes, sometimes just to sleep. Other times were to go play in the park or eat sushi buffet. Now that I'm in senior year, it's a complete joke. I hardly ever do any homework outside of school and give little thought to classes. Like I said I go more for the gym membership than the education. Overall, it is really easy to see how my attitude and behaviors change and decline as school progresses. They usually pick back up with the start of a new term or year or level of school, such as college and hopefully graduate school. But still by the end, I am just over it. Get us out and let us move on to the next thing.

I'm moving on to the next thing this August as I start physical therapy school at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. This should be fun. I finally get to take classes and learn about stuff I really care about and am interested in. I think my attitude and interest in studies will pick back up just like it did at the beginning of college. And maybe by the time it's sliding off, it will be my third year of school and we won't be having any more classes, just clinical internships. Either way three years is a shorter time and it always goes by fast.

Today I skipped out on three classes. I should be in econ right now where I have homework due. I just slipped it under his door at 11:30 before I left campus. I only have 5 more days of undergraduate schooling left. I can make it, but I sure don't want to go. I'd rather be working at the bike shop or training for my upcoming races. That's where my heart really is right now.

Car Shopping

Since all my inquiries on the almost too good to be true ads on autotrader.com have fallen on deaf ears or been located to far away to be reasonable, I started looking more local for cars and lowering my expectations of what kind of mileage I could find on a car for the price I'm trying to find. I looked at two Honda's and a Toyota at Landers Ford the other day and today after school I went and looked at a Honda at city auto. It is a 2005 Honda Civic hybrid. It had 95,000 miles and the asking price was $8,990. He was ready to give me $8,500 right there. I like the car and it gets about 35 city and 42 highway. The way I drive I might be able to get more. I drove it around a bit and it seemed to ride well. The heating and A/C worked really well. The guy that owned it previously had it meticulously maintained. The Carfax record shows a ton of maintenance including oil changes, brake pads and rotors replaced, battery replaced at 85,000 miles, and so on. This is higher mileage than I originally looked for but it's also a lower price. The gas mileage is better than I was originally looking for too. It seems like a good deal. I want to call tomorrow and offer him $8,000 for it. I also sold my Vanguard Mutual Fund today. The markets closed at $4,084.10. It finally came back up close to that $4,100 range after dropping down to $3,840 after it hit the 41 back in December. I watched the market today and had been watching the fund the past few days and figured it should be stable. When I saw the market was doing well today, I figured the fund should remain stable if not improve, so in between classes I got into a computer lab and made the sale. Things are lining up.

I don't know where I am

I've put in some good, hard workouts recently and my body has confirmed this by its dead and sore feelings. I'm now four weeks out from my first race, perfect time for a little recovery before ramping back up. I took the second half of this week pretty light and easy in hopes of getting the spring back in my step. I really need to push myself the next three weeks if I want to perform as well as I have dreamed in my mind.

So, Thursday morning I went for a nice 1:45 easy spin recovery ride. I took some roads that had been suggested to me by a coworker and was having a good time. I then found a road with no sign, but I figured it looked good. This is one of the great parts of cycling. I find new roads and different back-country places: beautiful deserted roads, cow and horse pastures, the sun rising over fields and white picket fences. I had no idea where I was riding down this road and never did see a street sign. I saw signs for Fisherville and Memphis so I guess I crossed the lines somewhere out there. I took a few pictures which are below. Some didn't come out very well since I was still riding, but you can still get an idea.

After work I decided to go for my first trail in the Merrell Barefoot Trail Gloves. I hadn't run any longer than a mile on the road and it had been about a week since I had run in them. However, I wanted to try them out on the trail since that is where I will hopefully be racing them and what they are more designed for. I brought my shirt, shoes, socks, gps, and heart rate monitor with me to work so I could run at Shelby Farms right after work. Did you notice I forgot my shorts? Yea, so I ran in khaki shorts with a leather belt. Yea, get that image in your head. Anyway, the run went great. I wanted to go for 1.5 mile, but ended up doing a full 2 miles. It felt great. My calves didn't complain like they had been when I ran on the road and I felt very nimble through the trail. I started out slow and easy because after all I am trying to recover, but it was hard to hold back in these shoes. Mile two ended up being a 6:17! This really helped my confidence in these shoes and my possibility of being able to race in them later this month. Most of my races are only 3.5 miles long and I just killed a 2 miler. 6:17 is pretty fast already and then through a twisty trail? I'll take that any day of the week. Well onto a rest day and a long run before I start hitting it hard again next week.