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...