Epic mud here we come!

I'm stoked!!! I'm getting ready to bail out of work and head to Portland for the USGP of Cyclocross. This week has been nuts. I had plans to leave midday today and carpool with teammates but given some work developments I couldn't take the day off, so Wednesday I decided to skip it. Then last night I started thinking about how much I really wanted to go. The problem is that I have to drop off the dog in Olympia by 7 for dog-sitting, but can't leave work until 6. Ugh. Finally today I said, "Screw it!", ran home, packed my shit, grabbed the dog, and headed back to work.

So, I'm hoping to leave now and get to Olympia by 7. At least the doggie sitters are willing to wait for a bit if I'm late. I'll definitely post some updates once I get down there. How can I stay home when Portland is forecasting mud, snow, wind, and rain?

I think I should duck

Not sure who in the world of the overlords I pissed off today, but wow has it been one of those days. This morning I drove a new route to work and got nabbed for speeding with a bogus radar gun reading. Since the cop was on the opposite side of the road, she had to point the radar gun across two lanes of traffic: one moving southbound and one moving northbound. There was a lot of traffic so I'm certain she ended up catching a car northbound, which wasn't me. Now I have a $200 ticket I need to contest. Fantastic.

And boy, don't I wish I could blog about work, but I can't. I wouldn't stoop that low anyway. But seriously, today something happened that made me lose all faith in my employer. Admittedly, I didn't have much left anyway, but I feel like the wind has been completely knocked out of me. I came back after last week's vacation totally energized and excited to work on some upcoming projects and it's quickly been squashed. I think the environment there is slowly sapping my will to live.

Wake up body it's time to go!!!

I looked back at my training log today and the last two times I rode my road bike were Oct 13 and Oct 20. I've done cross races nearly every Sunday since then, but haven't really put much effort into it. Cross this year has been mostly for fun and even though I've pushed it in a few races, I've been fairly mellow. In the last five weeks since that Oct 20th bike ride, I've been on a couch-potato, Oreo Double Stuff free-for-all.

Today became my official giddyup and go! I hit CycleU for a performance test not having any clue how I'd do. A mere minute into the first 5-mi time trial my body hated me. My heart rate soared into the 200s, which is normal, but about 10 beats higher than usual. I couldn't get comfortable on the bike being in an aero position (hello! not used to that) and kept fidgeting all over the place. At about the 2 minute mark my legs were toast. F***. I had a long time left. At the end of the first TT I seriously couldn't get off the bike and thought I was going to puke. Sweet.

Keep in mind, I'm not even close to being a mediocre time trialist. Hills are my thing but I need to embrace this time trial thing and really get it figured out. I left CycleU convinced I had posted horrendously crappy times. I got home and pulled out my old test results and couldn't believe it. Yes, my times suck, but for me they were PRs. My first TT time of 15:33 was about 20 seconds faster than my test in February. I faded nearly a minute on the second one but still beat February. Somewhere during those five weeks of Oreo binging I uncovered an extra 5-10 watts. Unbelievable!

I guess at my worst I'm better than I was at my peak last season. That's encouraging news! Next week I'll be getting back on the road bike and putting in some easy miles before I get my new training plan. I need to get back in the saddle since I kick off the CycleU indoor TT workouts soon. Every night before I go to bed I tell myself ten times: "I love time trialing. I really do."

Happy Turkey Day!

Hurrah! I got out of bed before 8 today! But I decided I still wasn't motivated enough to hop on the bike for a south lake loop so I bailed on the Turkey Day ride. The roads around my place were pretty frosty anyway and I wasn't too thrilled to test my luck on the steep descents down to Lake Washington Blvd.

Here's a pic of that nice bruise I gave myself at Sunday's cross race. It's pretty. While shopping at PCC last night for Arnica cream, I found something called "Trauma Oil". I think I need that in massive quantities. It must have been made just for me.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm in the bell jar

I took this whole week off from work, which is great since it's the first semi-long vacation I've had in probably a year. I planned absolutely nothing and I love it. I'm always stretched to the max with work, biking, and the dog so having a few days to do nothing is like a gift. Last year around this time I had this really bad problem with motivation and sleeping. I felt like I could sleep all day long and be happy about it. The same thing is happening this year. So far this week I've slept until noon almost every day, then taken a nap in the afternoon, and gone to bed around midnight to start the trend over. I could just easily spend the whole day in bed. What the hell is wrong with me?

Maybe there's some type of truth to this SAD thing or something. I swore I'd get up early this morning and despite waking up at 7 I decided to stay in bed all day AGAIN. Well, tomorrow I'm supposed to do the Turkey Day bike ride so I guess I better break this nasty trend and get my lazy butt up. I'm going to end up with bed sores if I'm not careful. Geez...

Everyone else got hardware...

...I got a big fat bruise. Of course, I'm talking about the State Cyclocross Championships today in Bremerton. Zoka rocked the house with five podium spots. Paul Guillien killed the competition in the 4s and easily cruised to victory. Then Bill Huggins won the Master Men's 3 35+ field and JoAnne took 2nd in the Women's 3s. Bill geared up again and took home 2nd in the single-speed field for two medals on the day. Unbelievable! Rick Heckenlaible secured Zoka's 5th piece of hardware with a 2nd place finish in the Men's 1/2 45+ field. We also had several other top finishers who narrowly missed podium spots and had great races. Great day for the team!

On the other hand, I rode my way to my worst cross race ever. So far I've stayed upright in every race but today all I could do was go down. Hmmm, where do I even start? First off, the course was mostly flat with a few short steep pitches that were ridable for most. Throw in a few mud bogs and it definitely favored the power rider. Definitely not my thing. I got my usually shitty start and in a very strong, small field of 10 this wasn't so good. I hit the first set of barriers bringing up the rear so I was already in trouble at this point.

I bought a new pair of Sidis last night to replace my crappy flat-soled traction-less commuter-turned-cyclocross shoes and found out the hard way that I should probably test them before racing in them. My cleats were new and a little tight, so when I tried to dismount for the first barrier my left foot didn't come out and I took a header at full speed. Awesome! Trying to jump a barrier with your bike still attached to you doesn't work so well. Thank goodness I don't think anyone actually saw it. I'm not sure my right calf is ever going to forgive me. Tune back in a few days when I post a picture of my bruise. Ugh.

Shortly after that crash I managed to slide out on what looked like a simple left-hand corner. Turns out three people on our team went down here so I don't feel so bad now. Between those two incidents just on the first lap, I was way behind the pack and pretty far off the pace. To make matters worse, my seat fell again.

With the course setup, if you were more than about 30 seconds behind someone, you really couldn't see them, so it became difficult to keep up the motivation. I was so frustrated on the second lap that I nearly called it day, but my teammates kept cheering at me so I credit them with keeping me in it. Unfortunately, I picked today to wear my new supercool pink and black-striped lightning bolt armwarmers, which just managed to draw attention to the fact that I was way behind and sucking. Oh well, at least I entertained the crowd.

On the third lap the leaders of the Master's field passed me on the fast single-track part of the course, so I pulled off to let them by and lost more time. Despite my crappy race, I got a top 10 finish due to a small field, and I wasn't last! Crazy.

For some reason I felt really flat today. Even if I had ridden a clean race I don't think I would have done any better. My legs were toast, my cardio was toast, and my legs were not diggin' powering through the mud bog. Not sure what was up, but hopefully I'll be in a little better shape for South Seatac next Sunday. And I'll still be rockin' the lightning bolts, even if I'm not moving lightning fast.

My dog is trying to kill me

Well, I broke my nose today. Yup, that's right. I wish I could say I did it in a gnarly cyclocross crash or something, but of course I don't work that way.

I was getting ready to take Jake out on his morning walk and leaned over him to clip on his leash. At exactly the same time my less than graceful cat jumped onto the bathroom counter, knocked over a ton of stuff, and scared the dog. He jumped...right into my nose with his head.

After the pain subsided I went about my day but stayed home from work because my head and my eyes hurt so bad. I'm still having difficulty looking at a computer screen. Later in the afternoon I stopped by my doc's office and she confirmed the break. I guess it's pretty minor and I'm lucky to say that I've been spared excessive swelling and bruising so far. If you look at my nose, you can't even tell it's broken aside from a tiny bit of swelling on the bridge. I really hope I don't wake up tomorrow all black and blue.

Current score is Jake 2, me 0.

Flagler fun!

This past weekend I traveled to Fort Flagler on the Olympic Peninsula for an infamous cross double-header. Ferry traffic proved a little challenging Friday afternoon so I didn't roll in until well after I had planned. I checked into the army barracks with a few teammates and then we spent the night trying to catch some sleep while howling winds threatened to flatten our building. Lack of sleep and a bit of burnout drove me to skip Saturday's race, so I helped with registration and became a cheerleader for the day.

Gorgeous weather and an entertaining sand pit on Saturday's course turned out to be a spectator's dream. Tons of people lined the sandpit screaming, yelling, and ringing cowbells at the bicycles and bodies flipping through the air. If someone rode the length of the sandpit they definitely got the crowd's admiration. I've never seen so many spectacular crashes in a cross race before!

At the end of the day we headed to the fort's mess hall for a lasagna feed complete with a free supply of Fat Tire and a showing of Evan Schmitt's cycling documentary One. Kudos to the race organizers! The ample supply of beer gave me a great excuse to carbo load. So many teammates gave me shit for not racing Saturday that I had to commit to racing Sunday and did some fine preparation. My teammate Rick isn't a Fat Tire fan, so I had to drink both my beer and his. Then I tried a bottle of the ale we bought in town. Then Dane encouraged my Sunday race preparation by handing me another Fat Tire. Who am I to disagree with a race official?

After too many beers I headed back to the barracks around 9:15 and noisily crawled into my sleeping bag in pitch darkness while everyone else slept soundly. Slacker! The only good thing about drinking that many beers is that I slept really well despite a few racers doing naked cyclocross practice through the barracks at midnight. The funny thing is that no one in my building said a word or even muttered, "What the f***?" Everyone was too busy trying to get back to sleep - haha!

I woke up in surprisingly good shape Sunday given the previous night's beerfest, worked registration for a bit, then lined up for my 9:30 race. The course was mostly flat but used old army bunkers to create some short, steep run-ups and a quick gravity-defying downhill. We even got to ride through a concrete tunnel that was part of the bunkers. Very cool! The wind proved challenging but wasn't nearly as bad for our race as it was later in the day.

On the first runup I lost my traction and face-planted right into the hill. Luckily, it was so steep that I didn't have far to fall. When I remounted my bike I felt my seat fall and quickly realized I was about 3-4" lower than I should be. Despite the mechanical, I did manage to pass a handful of gals, barely escape getting lapped by the guys, and finish the race. Never did it occur to me to go to the pits and get my seat fixed. The low seat definitely explained my lack of power, sore quads, and wrecked knees. A friend joked that it looked like I was riding a kid's bike. Thanks!

After my race I cheered on my friends and teammates still racing. As the day wore on the wind got stronger and how anyone stayed upright in 30-40mph wind gusts is beyond me.

Zoka had a great showing at Flagler and snagged some top finishes. Everyone had a great time and enjoyed the interesting courses. Despite the mechanical I had fun and Sunday's race was just what I needed to get re-motivated to finish the rest of the cross season. I think I just needed a week or two off the bike to put things into perspective.

Today I'm taking stock of my multiple bruises, mostly from bad cyclocross form. I have a massive bruise on my butt, probably from the pedals nailing me when I face-planted. Nice job. I also bruised the hell out of my shoulder roughly throwing my bike around because I was too lazy to softly place it higher up on my shoulder. I think the shortness of the runups lead to a little botched technique on my part.

Unfortunately my camera battery died early on Saturday so I only snapped a few pics of Saturday's races. I'll upload some funny video of the sand pits shortly...

Dog training 101

A little over a year ago I walked into the Bellevue Animal Shelter to look at dogs and ended up coming home with a very cute, very out of control 9-mo black Lab. It's hard to believe I've had him over a year! Since bringing him home, I've learned that Labs generally come in two styles: the very mellow ones, and the very crazy ones. I got the crazy one. Ever read Marley & Me? I can definitely relate.

Jake's big problems are with personal space and patience, meaning he respects neither. As soon as he meets someone (well, sees them from afar) he breaks out in a wiggle and he can barely contain himself. Usually it's a matter of seconds before he's pulling me down the street, jumping on them, and giving them a great big kiss. To say that he likes to jump up is an understatement and since he's a solid 90 lbs, it's not cool.

I've enrolled him twice in beginner training at two different dog training studios and invited over scores of friends trying to unsuccessfully solve this problem. Finally, one of my friends gave me a recommendation for a dog trainer, Jeff Tinsley. He stopped by this morning for a one-on-one session and I learned more in an hour and a half with him than I have in countless dog training classes.

Most of all, I learned that I'm a horrible dog trainer! Jeff spent time working with Jake but I think he spent most of the time teaching me how to train him correctly. It's amazing what a difference it makes. Already Jake is doing things he never would have done yesterday. I may actually end up with a well-behaved, obedient dog sometime in the next 10 years! Awesome!