Sunday, June 17, 2007

The Devil never changes


A good weeekend on two wheels, four of the Spidey force on the group ride doing Diablo x 4.
Well, only one of us made 4 times(and can ya guess who that wuz) but the majority got up a few times before turning the rigs for home..
A green smoothie and a long nap and I pummelled myself again today on the MTB for a couple with the Xterra crowd, bastards are sucking me in :-)
The deal with the devil..... free lanes at my favorite pool if I coach a little.....
Getting a few bucks to run some running workouts already... good for cross anyhow.
Place to stay in Kings' beach.
MTB skills are half ass good right now.
Dusty wetsuit looking at me on the shelf....
MMMMMM
PR the first time up Diablo Saturday, took 4 minutes off the best at tempo/ threshold all the way.
Biig confidence builder for CTK, that is one bad mama jamma, and this boy don't go uphill too good :-)
Compact crank is going on this week, hopefully that will save my bacon.......

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Blow the Whistle

I keep trying to write a race report for last weekends' race at Laguna Seca, but just have been oh so tired in the head.

Lot's of family issues lately have got me down, and when Miz C. ate some dirt trail running at the ridge last Thursday, the trip almost got canned, a recurring theme all weekend, with me spending 3-4 hours a day on the phone debating whether to pack my shit up and go or stay and race, much vacillating went on, Miz C's leg felt better and then worse, but the little nurse helped out big time.

Vicodin is not a good drug for my wife, that's all I'll say about that.

When is the love of sport turn into a selfish thing, or more clearly, too much of a selfish thing?
This was the burning question for me during the downtime between laps.
My mom, my wife, my kid, all pulling me away from 2 wheel mayhem

Achieving balance is one of several reasons I stay away from Ironmans these days, the 25 hour weeks were sucking me in and bumming the family out too much, I really dig a hard 8-10 hours a week getting up for cross and whatnot and find some semblance of balance in there..... sometimes.

We put together the same team as last year, a good group of middle-aged dads out for a fun escape from yardwork and other suburban bliss.
Can-Am was nice, we were on the corner, so we saw everybody coming through, but didn't have to ride up any obscene hills after a lap.
The kits turned out nice, I believe WM sponsors a team of Cat 2's in Arizona and we got some of their extras, but we looked nice and matching, at least before the dust and blood took over.

Recapping the whole time would be boring, but a few highlights-

Rodney was snakebit fro the get go, I'd like to see a blog posting, but poor dude almost exhausted the entire tube population of Monterey County and still had to run his bike. And that was his FIRST lap.

Jimbo busted his shoulder hard in one of the new sections, a tricky descent on a old trail that grew a rut that looked like the Grand Canyon by the middle of the night, kind of a dusty piece of crap with lots of washboardy holes. Dude still rode 11 miles with a fractured shoulder and kept me from having to go again,- just a stud.

Kareem is getting way fitter than last year. And talking me into a 8 hour pain fest- just savage, dude.

The Seal was a rock as always. Need two laps? Got it. Need some food? Got that too.
Always bring a Seal with ya.

I had a good race, the fitness is coming on. I actually dropped some climber types on the "grind", a longish mostly middle ring kind of affair. A longer course this year and no idea how to keep track of my watch restrain me from throwing out numbers, but for the most part, I was doing well judging by how many people passed me/ I passed.

MY LIGHT SUCKS- I saw corporate team guys out there with HID set ups, looking like a combine coming up behind me on the singletrack.The stuff is everywhere now, how to justify a 600.00 light for once a year, hmmmmm.
The difference between a old halogen and the new stuff is ridiculous, it's soooo easy to outdrive the lights with the old school stuff. I finally just eased up and flowed by feel, it was only when racing the course that the big boomers were really needed.

3 LAPS IN A ROW SUCK TOO- 1st one, cool, just ride tempo.

Second one, light is failing, go to commuter backup and led backpack lamp, still hit the climbs hard.

3rd one (unexpected due to teammates' spectacular urp-fest)- the hammies were doing the shamalamadingdong on the climbs, sucking gatorade and Gu, feeling my own urp-fest coming on soon, good thing I stole his light, or I would bitch about that too :-)

THE FOG IS WEIRD.
It looks cold but is often warm.
You can really freak yourself out riding in it when no one is around.
I was halfway up Hurl Hill before I realized I was ON Hurl Hill.
Lights are kind of useless in it, especially when rummy at 2 am.

The off season weights are paying off, by Tuesday I was recovered enough to to hit some intervals up, my goal out of the weights was not to get majorly stronger, but to bounce back faster and survive my job for 15 more years. By the end of the Valley swing, I couldn't pick up a sack of concrete without hurting myself. I could feel the power coming out of the core muscles on the bigger climbs all weekend, strange how working rotational muscles can help with a vertical axis movement, good stuff.
Now to find some leg speed......
And 2200 bucks donated, with the match from Waste Management we are looking at almost 5k donated to fund ALS research, yeah!

Barely any pics, sad to say with 3 bloggers and a semi-pro aficionado, all we could come up with was a 2 MP snapshot or two.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

It is what it is....


The good - The EMC crit came off relatively well. Our (4th?) year and this one was the best, the new pavement and opening up the course really showed itself to be a positive, we were a little worried about people forgetting to turn right every once in a while and protecting a whole other side of a course gave us chills, but except for a couple of bonehead moves, the races looked good.


One of the interesting things about setting up a course is anticipating the lines taken by the beginning classes and then realizing that hay bale won't do any good at all when the pack goes to the complete other side of the course to give their buddies the gutter, yum yum .


Almost got me fired up about racing seeing all that suffering, good thing Yoda and Nome took me out to mines road the day before and thrashed me thouroughly, keeping me out of trubble.


Some family health issues have me spending time in hospitals lately visiting folks and my heart isn't in it yet, more than a little preoccupied with things.

This is a hard ass sport and way of life and when I can't focus 100% ?

It feels like a waste to be signing up.

So I go and train and some days are good, this morning was the first set of intervals for the new season, just some tempo work while heading into work on the crosser, backpack and all, with the Rage Against The Machine Live at The Olympic pouring into my soul, and I forget about the bullshit of life for a while and we are good today and the hemoglobin counts are up and that's what matters.


This weekend is the 24 hour race, we have raised 2100 bucks so far for ALS research, thanks to all the bloggers that contributed, you folks are really fantastic, here is a link to the donation page if you like, we should have some nice pics up soon, camping, racing, buddies, a good cause...

good stuff, all of it.


J