Thursday, December 11, 2008

got 9 minutes to spare?

If so, spend it watching Sean Kelly carve up the Poggio like a two day-old slice of pepperoni pizza then give Mo Mo Argentin the grazi grazi. It's a thing of beauty, thanks Belgium Knee Warmers.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

By the skin of my teeth

Fell asleep with Ryan this evening and nearly missed this post. Tomorrow morning sounds like our only shot at a "Snowy Day". I'm not picturing 3 foot drifts or anything, but it might make the cycling study interesting. We shall see, later.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

What we used to do ...




Tonight we went to the movies to catch Twilight. Tuesday night at the flicks is not the most hopping night here in the chemical city. Note the lone over-rotated hot dog back at the concession stand. Two medium drinks, large popcorn and M&Ms $18. NICE

Anyway, interesting flicks promoted everywhere, the most fascinating of these is Valkyrie starring Tom Cruise. Not sure which particular barbiturate his agent was on when he spun this one to him, "You're not just a Nazi! You're a Nazi Hero! and of course you get to run", which is in all of his contracts.

On to Twilight, it was ok. Not good, not great. Casting was questionable. The Edward Cullen character apparently attended the Hayden Christensen school of acting, which is "look constipated". Not very intimidating when it appears that your leading vampire is about to take a dump at any given time.

Also, none of these "vampires" had fangs. I guess True Blood spoils us with their switch-blade incisors. These vampires could run fast, in the end i wondered if that was all they could do. The baseball scene was BORING. Some characters were good, i liked Alice and Jacob but Jasper resembled an anorexic Edward Scissorhands. Bella seemed like a sexy young version of Molly Shannon. The villains were great, the makeup was just awful especially Carlisle.

All that being said (typed), i'm glad we got out. And the microbrewery was nice too.

Monday, December 08, 2008

holidailies day 4

Yep, back again t-15 and counting.
Tomorrow i will blog before noon or not at all.
Completely addicted to True Blood, not sure what we'll do once we catch up.

Sunday, December 07, 2008

on giving your dog medication

Use cheese, large pockets of cheese with pills inside.
Experiments with peanut butter produced cleaned ejected pills.

Saturday, December 06, 2008

Life is short never regret anything that makes u smile



That was the message that greeted Riley and i yesterday at the Vet. I liked it but at the same time i had some worries that Riley's number was up. It was about a year ago that our golden Emily passed away. Before that Dr. Armstrong was with us twice when we had to put cats down. So while it's always great to see him and catch up, there's a sense of foreboding there, as though he's gonna drop some sort of bombshell on us. Luckily yesterday the word was that the Riley Dog has a slipped disc. The old dog is getting older, which we knew. She seems a lot better today.

Friday, December 05, 2008

Argh

i did blog tonight, maybe it will show up tomorrow. BUMMER

Monday, August 25, 2008

the conflict of running

Tonight, the conflict was between the inside of my running shoes and the epidermis that covers my feet. For many weeks i've run without socks, for over two and half weeks i've taken part in the Rocketboy Big Chainring Circus sans chausettes. So, tonight, the first night of Jenni's Half-Marathon training program i figured i was ready to become what i've always dreamt of ... the sockless runner. Well, i was, and i'm not. I slowed down over the last 2+ miles and i'm not sure if it was the lack of fitness, Ryan's increase in body weight, or just the pain in my feet. When i looked down at my white and red Nike's, i noticed there was red on white, where it hadn't been before. BAD NEWS. I took my shoe off and it looked like my foot had met a pirahna or something. Needless to say, i will not continue the sockless runner experiment. I'm going back, get ready sockguy.com

Sunday, August 17, 2008

"Brother, you are some brave!"

That's what the sheriff told me, as i chilled out at the corner of Bluebonnet and Highland at 5:25 am Saturday morning. With only my two meager blinkie lights going, i explained to the officer, "I've got this helmet light, but it runs so hot, i can only turn it on while riding". We laughed and he asked where i was riding to, probably so he could later accurately answer the question, "Where did you last see David Alexander alive?" All went well though, Charles and Norman stood me up, at first i figured it was an initiation rite, to make me ride in the dark by myself, later i deduced that Norm had probably drank too much the night before, which was true. We all regrouped at Alex Box stadium for 6:00, a nice sized group that continued to grow the longer we went. My favorite addition was Ed who greeted us with a deafening "F YOU!" Classic. Anyway, this ride is the bomb, you get 3 hours in before your significant others are even close to awake. Also, i find Baton Rouge is really beautiful in the pitch dark, so that works. Finally, no more being the only guy on a road bike, all these people are just blasting me on their tt machines. Norm put it best, "it feels like you're being motorpaced" except with conversations going on.

Finally, it's really inspirational to see SOOOO many groups out riding before the normally huge 9 am group ride. Our group was big, but we probably saw 4 or 5 groups of 5 to 10 riders going out while we were coming in.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

olympic thoughts

We're completely addicted to Olympic coverage, watching everything including handball and field hockey, it's all good.

A couple of observations though,
synchronized diving, what's up with the synchronized shower footage after each dive? It's the only sport i know of where you're treated to the competitors "cleaning up" after each round. It's odd to say the least.

It was great to watch the girls playing beach volleyball apparently in their underwear, but who would have thought that James Carville would have showed up to represent! Unreal

ridin like an amateur (dumb-ass)

Training races are always filled with ups and downs, tonight was no different.

The turnout was awesome considering we were under a tornado watch. Consequently, winds were everywhere. Right after we started going hard, we were forced to snake our way through a state trooper blocking the road and a tow truck preparing to extract a car out of the ditch. The driver looked to be ok, then we started up again with a huge tailwind at our back.

I know this, b/c i pulled through spinning hard, pulled my shifter a few times and realized i had no more gears. I looked down to see i was going 36 and was now alone. I tried to tuck this deep into my anaerobic consciousness and not think about what implications it might have later when the wind changed.

It wouldn't be long before i found out. Nearing the split my spin stopped working and it went to squares. Winds picked up, Chris kept it honest and voila, i popped off. Ride over in 25 minutes! The fastest i'd been dropped since i was a cat 5! After two training races last week and the crack of dawn ride Saturday, he spin home was probably more of what i needed.

Friday, August 08, 2008

Mitch at the Training Race


Just a few observations from last night's River Road training race

* mitch has never lost a race, been slow or dropped. The last 30 years have been one complex periodization training program culminating in yesterday's training race as the peak


* in the 1970's, mitch was known as Mitch "Dope" Evans. Out of respect, people who ride as fast as him today are called "dopers", it's only a coincidence that they also use epo. no one could ride as fast as mitch clean.


* mitch is so fast, chuck norris tried to roundhouse kick him once and missed


* mitch has tried to grow a beard for the last 10 years but the friction caused by cutting the wind on his tt bike has permanently depilated his face


* i don't think i've ever seen mitch and troy porter in the same room together, coincidence?


* mitch can ride as fast as he did yesterday at any time, but the folks at the levee board asked him to only do it once a year, so that the wash produced by his bike not harm the structural integrity of the levee.


* i asked mitch what he had for lunch yesterday and he replied "Sea Bass", only later did i learn that he had actually eaten Sebastian Alvarez and channeled his unearthly cycling powers into his performance at the training race.


* when i bridged up to mitch and tom, with tre and benny, i told him "there are five of us now". He thought i said, "35 go now" and obliged me with a 35mph pull, such is the power of mitch

Monday, July 07, 2008

TIOOYK

The power of the Le Tour is great, so great that Saturday morning after not being able to gain satisfactory free access to any eurosport feeds over the net, i bit the bullet, called an emergency family budget meeting, and made the decision to bring back digital cable into our household. This wasn't much of a decision considering that the 70 odd channels we currently have are mostly worthless. Why not triple our choices?

Anyway, life is good with Le Tour always on. It just feels right. Not having Paul and Phil chatting in my house during July is wrong, plain and simple. One thing that sticks in my craw however is the new Versus commercial showing reversed video of Floyd taking his yellow jersey off and Vino rolling backwards into the starting gate. As if to say, "We got those two cheats out the Tour, it's all good now". David Millar said he doped, why don't they show him throughout each day's stage riding in reverse? Or maybe conduct new interviews with Vino played backwards, since we couldn't understand anything he'd say anyway.


I was also shocked to see that Frankie is behind the mike. For some reason i figured he'd been shelved after admitting to epo use and all. I think he takes it too easy on his former riding partners. Here are a few questions i'd like to see him ask Julian or George or anyone else who will still talk with him.

"So, is it a relief knowing when you get back to your hotel tonight that you don't have to dope?"

"Remember when we were doping, how easy the Tour was, how is it now?"

"Since nobody is doping this year, do you not dope at all? or do you just dope a little? you know, to take the edge off?"

"When you say you're not doping this year, do you still rub down with that testosterone balm that Floyd took or is that just medicinal?"

"I noticed that the teams of the sprinters mistimed the chase down of the breakaway today, is that because you guys aren't doping anymore?"

"Now that it's out in the open that nobody's doping this year, where's the craziest place you ever shot up?"

"Tomorrow's TT is shorter than most, do you think average speeds will be up or stay about the same since you're not doping this year?"

Friday, March 21, 2008

i'm basically a morning person

not at all.
but, inspired by a facebook call-out, i bravely rode away from my house yesterday morning at 5:30 am, armed with the HID headlight blazing to meet up with Pat and Will. Like a sherpa heading out to make his summit bid, or maybe just like the Frenchman, every morning, it was pretty awesome. Huge silver full moon overhead, 30 minutes later became a orange disk, then finally sunrise. Excellent way to start the morning, the day and render yourself unconscious before 10:00 pm. I'll be back tomorrow morning.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

It's like that like this and like that

Ah, the allure of the Tuesday night training race.  I escaped it for a week, but i couldn't stay away last night.
Who could?  with winds gusting to 40+mph, (no lie!) this was an epic stage to showcase my non-existent fitness that i haven't been working on.
Unfortunately for me, the group that showed up was pretty small, so not much to hide behind. 
All was going pretty well, i pulled when i could, when i couldn't, i strove for the sweet-spot behind the rotation.
Some dude i didn't recognize was battling me for this spot, traffic-copping the paceline.
Literally saying "go ahead, go, you go, go now, go ahead, go, go now, go now, you got it, go, go ahead" with each rotation.
I longed for my ipod.
So, all was good, then we picked up my brother by another mother, Chris A.
It's really amazing what a multi-day UCI stage race can do for your fitness, really.
We as a group had been slugging 19-21 into the wind.
Chris hops on and pronto tonto it's 24, i look back, and it's just me and him.
Not good, we hit the split, i go to the back to resuscitate myself and Chris forms a 4 man echelon that is GONE, gone like leaving and not coming back.
Me, Tom and Bennie chased and chased and chased and chased and chased and chased.
With shifting winds, we'd do 23, then 28, then 26 then 24 rinse, repeat.
The whole time i wanted to say to them "You'd be really proud of me if you knew how little i've been riding!"
But all i could do was marvel at the volume of the wind through spokes and my exhalation.
It took the whole loop, plus two tri volunteers and they made it back on, they ... not me.
The get-up-and-go got-up-and-left and that was it, i watched as they made contact and left me.
Dr. Bob swung by in his Mini Cooper and motorpaced me at 31 for a mile maybe, and i still couldn't make the bridge.
So i rode back ALONE, waiting for a group to catch me that never showed up, but it was fun to be back.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Natalie Lives!

We do what we can to keep hope alive.