Training started!!

Yesterday was supposed to be the start of my 2008 training. But last Thursday I rear ended someone in traffic (really stupid and I don't wanna talk about it!) so yesterday I went out to my parents house where my father helped me straighten the front end on my car. It's not quite perfect yet but we got it pretty close. Anyway I got back home too late to go for the 3 hour training ride I had planned so instead I decided to go running...

21.4 miles. From my house west along Poudre River Trail, over Bingham, up the North Dam Hill, down Maxwell, behind the stadium, around Dixon to Cottonwood Glen and then home along Spring Creek Trail and campus. My goal was to maintain a 9min/mile pace so I had the run split up into 5 mile sections to be completed in 45 minutes each.

I was ahead of schedule at 5 and 10 miles, then at 12 miles I realized that I was in dire need of a "suicide kit" which is bad. With neither a kit nor a porto-john in sight I was forced to improvise but was able to make good time after that. I was 1 minute behind schedule at mile 15. Somewhere around 17 miles I cracked pretty badly and wasn't able to keep my pace up anymore. Ended up 5 minutes behind schedule by the end at 3:17. My goal is to complete the loop in under 3 hours sometime in November

I've Gotten Scrawny in the off-season ;)


But my wounds have almost healed :)


And I've got a plan for fixing the scrawny-ness :D


My body and brain have been complaining about my lack of physical activity, especially now that I'm officially not playing hockey for a month. The excess energy is spilling over, keeping me up nights (as evidenced by the hour of this post).

The time is coming.

So is the veloswap.

No gimmicks. No gadgets. No fancy-schmancy expensive wheels. I'm gonna need Assos, tires, a drive-train or two, and maybe some more bibs so I don't have to take any days off to do laundry.

Bring on the cold and the rain (I've got SCUBA gloves this year). Bring me my skull cap (yes, Will, this means you). Bring me that Horizon (Yes, Johnny Depp, this is plagiarism)

It's time to get ready to be fast.

It's time!

Training starts this weekend. Saturday is the Veloswap, the grand opening of the new trials park on the west side of town, and most importantly Ghettoween 2, The Drinkening which will be hosted by the coolest racing family in the Alta Vista neighborhood!

And then Sunday morning, 10AM at the Oval, the training will begin. I'm doing 3 hours of tempo on Sunday. Probably the Buckeye loop. I think I'll start with 9 or 10 full weeks of base training, aiming for something like 200 hours. And then the first or second week of January I'm going to start doing intervals so that I can be fast in March.

happenings...

Well life hasn't been very blogable lately but I'll make an effort to generally catch up with the goings on of the Racing Hickeys. Here's what we've been doing... in pictures:There's been a lot of hiking. Not always in matching shirts mind you. Months of doing nothing but riding bikes have turned us into strangely soft-bodies athletes so we look pretty gimp when we're expected to support our own weight.

There's been a lot of skating. For me, it's been topless skating for obvious reasons. I seriously didn't realize how white I am until I saw this picture. Anyway the situation has improved somewhat since then. And my skating skills are coming back too :-)

Lila is also learning to skate which is awesome. Here she executes a text book beginner emergency stop: run franticly off into the grass; windmill arms for balance and visual appeal. In all seriousness though, she's getting pretty good on the skates. Which is cool because despite the fact that Rollerblades haven't been cool for about a decade now, they are a really good way for cyclists to work their core, especially the obliques.

In other news I leave early Wednesday morning (5:30 flight) for Cancun! I'm going to do a half ironman with Robby's sister which is exciting. I haven't ridden in 3 weeks and the last time I ran more than 13 miles was May 2005 so it should be a nice exercise in pain and humility :-) But mostly I'm excited to see Robby's sister.

post season happenings

There's been lots going on in the way of regaining some semblance of sanity. Last weekend Lila and I climbed Longs... Lila's first 14er. Here we are on the top (14,255')
At this point we were both pretty tired and the Keyhole Route seemed long and tedious so we decided to descend the north face directly. In retrospect this may not have been the smartest thing we've ever done but we made it. It's hard to get perspective but here's a shot of what we came down


There aren't any difficult pitches, but the whole slope is pretty steep so if you slip you're gonna tumble a few hundred feet before you stop. Also there's snow melt running down the rocks so they get slippery and your hands freeze. From here it was a 7 mile hike back to the car, and then an hour drive home, trying not to fall asleep at the wheel. Good off season fun :-)

Season over :-)

Well, my season's done. Niwot crit was yesterday and it was my last race. It's an awesome course but unfortunately I had no legs. Not entirely sure why... I'm mostly chalking it up to end of season burnout. The thing that stood out was how much braking their was for the corners. It was a no-brakes course, but there were two 135 degree corners and people were braking like crazy for them. On numerous occasions I made use of the sidewalks to get around guys who hit their brakes. Alas, my sidewalk shenanigans did me little good since I couldn't hold the wheel on straight aways. I lasted 45 minutes and then I was done.

So... looking on to exciting things coming up:

• Climbing Longs this weekend
  
• Gonna do the Lee's ride... should be fun, not tortuously hard like Worlds
  
• Doing a triathlon on September 9th
  
• Doing a half marathon the next weekend
  
• Doing a half ironman the weekend after that :-)
  
• Nagging Lila to write a post cause my posts are more boring than hers
  

hiding...

I'm getting better at hiding. I am in this picture, but you can hardly see me :-) (right behind the 2nd VC guy from the left, talking to the Rio guy who is visible in the gap between VC riders. Now if only I could maintain that hiding job during the race...

Finally!

I FINALLY won Wednesday Worlds. Admittedly it was a bit of a weak week with only 7 of us showing up, but nobody was less than a 2 and I was 5th in the group in terms of experience and years racing.

Wind out of the south. Not super strong, maybe 8mph? Andy attacked from the beginning just to get things going and I went with him. We only lasted a couple of miles. Then at Owl Canyon I stayed near the front in case there were attacks. There weren't but going up the hill in the tailwind really hurt and I couldn't seem to get recovered. I kept pulling through just hoping I could make it to Buckeye. I was first through the corner onto Buckeye. Dan Porter came around and I jumped on his wheel, then pulled the 2nd half of train tracks hill to make sure I didn't get dropped. Tucker got dropped and I felt kind of bad.

After that all bets were off and there were quite a few attacks. I think I'm the only person who never attacked. I was always ready to make groups but never the aggressor. Once we turned into the headwind I felt good and was able to recover well. I was afraid Porter would attack near the final turn so I kept taking good pulls towards the end. Once people start skipping pulls the attacks come and I would much rather take pulls before a sprint than have to cover moves.

An older guy who I don't know lead the sprint out from the bottom of the hill. I was on his wheel and jumped into the headwind once we were around the left bend. Dan and Andy made runs at me but nobody was able to come around and I won it by a couple of lengths. A small step, but a huge confidence builder!

Superweek

So the big lesson from Superweek this year is that brakes are bad. I'd joked about this before but in all seriousness, brakes are for slowing you down which is bad. So, when riding crits brakes should be considered a last resort. You are much better off not braking and if you can avoid crashing in the process that will also increase your chances of winning :-)

Also, when it's raining and you have an urge to slow down in the corners, please don't.

I didn't get a photo of it but somewhere on I-80 (I think near Des Moines) there is an Adult Super Store. Initially this seemed odd but once I thought about it a bit I realized that lots of chains have "super" versions. One can only assume that in addition to the standard wares peddled by porno outlets this Super Store sells groceries and may even have a Tire and Lube. I wonder if they're open 24 hours?

progress

Lila and I went down and did the Pseudo-Mead crit again on Tuesday. The field was quite a bit deeper than in past weeks with Ian and Timmy, several Vitamin Cottage guys, and a bunch of the Real Aussie kids. There was also a slight wind out of the south.

I managed to contain my enthusiasm long enough to let the right break go before I tried to do anything. Got on Aaron Heun's wheels, he attacked in way too big a gear from second wheel so I stayed with him and then drove it really hard up the false flat to the finish line (tailwind section of the course, so good time to take a pull and set things up for a counter attack). I peeled off as we turned into the crosswind and sat about 6th wheel while a couple of other guys took big pulls. A VC rider attacked and I followed. I couldn't get on his wheel so we both ended up bridging to the break solo.

The break had all the right guys (3 Assuies, Jorge Espinoza, 2 VC, Timmy... can't recall if Ian was there) but it was way too big. I was waiting for an attack to rip it apart but in fact it was very much an issue of attrition. Turns out I didn't have the smarts to last very long up there as I was way too aggressive and worked more than I was able to. Went back to the field and barely latched on to the tail end.

A frustrating day, but probably the best workout I've gotten at any of the Pseudo-Mead races yet.

introductions, etc.

i, lila, am the person on the right. behind me is the kitchen.

anyway. injury makes me sad. :-(

but will cheered me up, via a demonstration of why i would fail a roadside sobriety test.

duly noted.

as of monday, i am back on the bike :-)

as of yesterday, i got dropped at pseudo-mead for the first time :-(

as any basic mathemotician can tell, this adds up to :-/

...but i haven't told you why i was off the bike in the first place, have i?

--------------------------------------------

three hours into my blissful 4th of july training ride, i was charged and knocked off my bike by a dog.

oh man. heh. sometimes my fingers move faster than they should. i just wrote "knocked off my bike by a god."

if greg henderson knocked me off my bike, that would be true. and you know what? greg henderson can knock me off my bike any day he likes.

if only.

getting back on topic, the aforementioned dog...well, there were two, actually, but one was in the business of flanking, and the other was in the business of charging. the charging pit bull took me down hard, and was pressing the advantage when i was rescued by the arrival of two guys on touring bikes.

and when i say pressing the advantage, i mean the dogs were circling slowly closer, like sharks. i may be a little sensitive on this point, but i think the three-inch gash on my right elbow was the focus of their attention.

the bad-ass sounding part of this story is the bit about how i then rode home (about 20 miles) with blood slowly coating my forearm.

the not-so-bad-ass part of the story is how i called my parents from marina hill and asked them to patch me up.

to their credit, they freaked out not at all. and they spent four hours sitting in urgent care with me.

in other news, i have a lot of stuff to do today. this is only one facet of my personality, etc. etc., enjoyed our time together, must be going, so on and so forth.

~li-lacious

bouncy rubber ball

Coming back from lunch I bumped into coworker who had his family with him including two small children. Then as I climbed the stairs I heard the unmistakable sound of a bouncy ball but since I had just seen children it didn't seem at all unreasonable to assume that there was yet another coworker's child, bouncing a ball at the top of the stairwell. Then the ball comes bouncing down the stairs. I round the corner onto the next flight and come face to face with Chris, one of the people who work here who's under the age of 30. He's got a sheepish grin on his face and is scurrying down the stairs after his rubber ball.

I couldn't help but laugh.

Anyway since the stairwell's security has already been compromised I think I'm going to start roller skating to work and parking my skates on the landing between the 2nd and 3rd floors. I'll be improving office efficiency by making good use of that dead space!

I know nobody comes here to read about the happenings of the office so I promise future postings will be race related... like Bush's cabinet appointments.

I'm tired

Well, I made it through my big build phase. Yesterday was the last day of my 3rd consecutive week of at least 20 hours on a bike. Prior to 3 weeks ago I'd never done more than 16 hours of training in a week (I think I might have gone over 16 at Superweek last year but that's different cause all you do is race, eat and sleep). I've been pretty shredded but my fitness has improved pretty markedly and my climbing is pretty good. I've been pedaling downhills like a madman to build leg speed. I've come down from Stove Prairie twice this weekend and both times I was keeping up with the cars and motorcycles which was sweet.

I've got 10 days now before I leave for Superweek which should be just enough to rest and build a little more speed. Then Superweek should get me in really good shape for the crits in August and September :-)

First post

Welcome to Hickey Racing. Since myself, my younger sister Lila and our older brother Phil all race road bikes it seemed fitting to have a blog for all 3 of us.

And I'm going to start carrying my camera more often so the blog won't be boring :-)