City Folk

Training Camp #2

Met in Forresthill above Auburn this Saturday for a ride with the Team. We dropped down Mosquito Ridge which is about a 10 mile drop, crossed the American River, and climbed the canyon on the other side for 15 miles. 7 of the guys did the long loop with Dan and the rest of us opted for the 3 hour out and back. Good fun. Here's the evidence.



History note; It wasn't always called Forresthill and the post office has been there for 148 years! Here's how it got changed from Forrest Hill to Forresthill.

Geico brings back memories to 40-year-old white guy

Come listen to a story about a man named Jed
A poor mountaineer. Barely kept his family fed.

Then one day while shoot'n at some food,
up from the ground came a bubble'n crude.

Oil that is. Texas tea. Black gold.

Well, the next thing you know ol' Jed's a millionaire.
The kin folk say; "Jed, move away from there."
"California is the place you ought to be"
So they loaded up the truck and the moved to Beverly.

Hills that is. Swimming pools. Movie stars

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exWljYapkAQ

Thanks Geico!

Hagan Park Cross Race

Sometimes, the only thing that matters is whether you beat your buddy. You can come in at the back of the pack, but when you get home and your wife asks how'd it go? You swell up with pride and say; "Pretty good, I beat Joe." Then it was a good day of racing.

Last Sunday at Hagan Park was one of those days. I went to a neighborhood Oktoberfest party the night before. When I went to bed I was seeing double and the room was spinning. Got up the next morning and if had not been for Colleen, Oz, and John racing I probably would have stayed home.

At the course, Johnny takes one look at me and get's the biggest shit eating grin I've seen in a long time. This is Johnny of BeatsGriffRacing fame. He's feeling good and thinks he's got it in the bag. It's his kind of course too. He pretty much tells me he's going to see me going backward after two laps.

I had a plan though. One I've been planning for a few weeks. Ya see, this was probably my last CX race for the year. CX is John's baby. I'm just stretching out some road racing fitness and having some fun. My last road race was Challenge on Labor Day weekend and I've been watching the fitness fade. I know John will get me if I keep losing form and he keeps building, so the trick is to get out before that happens. It's already been a painful year to have him beat me in Phoenix, at Sea Otter and Leesville.

My plan; ride John's wheel until the end and pip him at the line. I'm somewhat hopeful I can execute this even while hung over.

So this one's for you Johnny. Enjoy! (Actually, it's for me but I feel like I earned it!)

Training Camp #1

We have a good team going into the 2008 season. We all got together for Training Camp #1 on Saturday and had a great ride. So, 53 miles with the Team on Saturday followed up with a little quality time at Jeff and Sherry's Oktoberfest party and one very hung over but very fun Sunday cyclocross race at Rich Maile's Hagan Park CX race. Good weekend.

I'm sharp

Feeling super brianiacal this morning.

Maybe I should look into that tax audit... nah, going for a ride instead.

Yesterday at Dunnigan for our team

M1/2/3 - 1st and 5th
M4/5 - 2nd and 4th
45+ - 3rd

Good day.

Wednesday hill repeats

For Rick (Mr. 700) and Rick (Lovey):










Thanks for the workout.

Go'in to Esparto

Esparto TT race report (sort of)

One of the perks of racing bikes is going to places you would never otherwise go, and essentially seeing the backroads of California. When I go to places like Copperopolis, or Challenge, I always wonder what the particular history of the place is. I wish the places could speak and tell their story.

Esparto is one of those places. A little central valley farming town long abandoned by time and the railroad that once served it. It has a nice little shady park and its share of decrepit run down buildings. One of which is an old train depot which you see on your left just before the start of the TT.

Trappers and settlers came to the area in the 1820's as it sits on Cache Creek and the surrounding Capay Valley. By 1888, Esparto was served by the Vaca Valley Railroad which came out of Vacaville and through Winters. If you've raced Winters, you've seen the remnants of this rail running through town and the old rail bridge. By the end of the 1800's there were probably 3 trains a day going through Esparto to carry out the local produce to the rest of the nation. The rail went all the way up the Capay Valley toward Clear Lake with termination in Rumsey. Close to where the Cache Creek Casino is now.

By 1937, the rail line from Esparto to Rumsey was abandoned under Southern Pacific's ownership. Eventually the leg from Winters to Esparto was abandoned too and 1957 was the last time a train ran to Esparto. Over the years, most of the track has been pulled up. For a while there was a nursery operating out of the depot, but it's empty now.

As for my race, it wasn't one of my better efforts. I struggled through for 8th with a somewhat pathetic time. I probably should have warmed up a little better but didn't. I mashed a big gear the whole way and couldn't get my HR or my legs moving. There are some rollers near the turn around and I thought I would come to a complete stop on one of them and had visions of my chasers whipping by me in an instant. I had the misfortune of drawing the #1 start, so there were no rabits to chase and I really needed some on the way in. I was a perfect rabbit for a smack talking Paul Carter from Pegasus starting 1 minute back and finishing 10 seconds down. He came in 2nd (and won Patterson on Saturday). I also got beat by Brian Staby and I was pretty motivated to beat him too.

Anyways, I was home by 10:15 AM and got hammered last night so all is well.

Summer is here

Saturday: Went for a solo creeper in Truckee for 2 hours and 25 minutes.

The weather was gorgeous and warm.

Went out past Northstar and over Brockway. Down to Kings Beach and along to Tahoe City, and back highway 89 past Squaw to Truckee. Rode moderately hard (250W) from old town Truckee to top of Brockway, again from Kings Beach to Tahoe City, and then after stoping for coke and choco milk in Tahoe City I wound it up one last time to come back Hwy 89 at 25-31 MPH.

I flatted once just before the light near the tunnel on Hwy 89. So I went

to the bike shop in Truckee to get another tube and CO2. Chatted up the shop guys for a bit. They know the Chico clan (Creswell, Trowbridge, et al).

After I nice chat, I started my climb back up the hill to the cabin but then I flatted again on Bull Pine, went back to the shop for another tube and CO2, and finally finished the climb back up to the Oz Cabin. 220 average Watts.

It was a great day and we finished up with an awesome meal with Colleen, Steve, Little Sam, BC, Brian Bruckner, Lori, Big Sam, and McKinley on the back deck of Oz's cabin.

Sunday: Went for another solo creeper in Truckee for 2 hours and 55 minutes.

The weather was gorgeous again but a little windy.

The Sunday ride was to be a tour of local climbs with a plan to do climb over Brockway to Kings Beach, then turn around and do Brockway again back to Truckee and then head over to do Donner Summit.

I started out from the Oz cabin and immediately headed over to Skislope and climbed that. Then onto my planned Brockway summit. I was pushing near my 3 hour target by the time I finished the Brockway climbs so I skipped Donner Summit.

I'll have to save that for another day.

Another great ride. 200 watt average with climbing at a moderate 240-280 watts.

Again, we polished the day off with a great BBQ with the Bruckners and Ouzounian's at Oz's cabin. This time feasting on fajitas and margaritas.

Monday: Finally persuaded Oz off his mountain bike and onto the road with me for a targetted 3 hours and 30 minutes.

We discussed our ride plans as we drifted out of Northwoods to Truckee.

We both wanted to keep the ride as flat as possible with some long moderate tempo sessions. So we planned to hump it out to Tahoe City on Hwy 89, take a breather, hump it again along 89 through Sunnyside to Backwood and into the canyon, then hump it back to Tahoe City. Take another breather and hump it back 89 to Truckee.

We did just that.

Getting in 30 minutes on 89, then another 34 minutes into Backwood and back to Tahoe City, and finally 22 minutes coming back 89 to Truckee.

We were far short of 3.30 so we humped it

around Donner lake and back for another 26 minutes of tempo before limping back up to the cabin with tired legs.

All told it was 3 hours with 1 hour and 52 minutes of tempo at 250-280 watts and 210 average for the whole ride.

We made a couple of stops along the way to fill up on cokes and candy bars.

After a quick shower at Oz's it was load up and head um back to the homestead. Tulip and I sailed down the hill in our volvos. I with Spence and her with Phoebe. We met up at the Mickey-Ds in Colfax for some burgers and the kids enjoyed vanilla softserves while Tuli enjoyed one of her favorite Oreo mcFlurry and I enjoyed watching them scarf their snacks and begging for scraps.

We made home in time to sip a beer or two with Marty and Jill and let the kids play with the triplets.

Even though I'm still pretty sore from crashing at Madera, and have one scrape that refuses to heal up, it was a great weekend of riding and hanging with the Ouzounians and Bruckners and capping it off with the Yarboroughs. I'm getting over my crash and getting back to my old self. It was a very good weekend indeed.

Uh, Houston. We have a problem.

So I start doing my taxes last night since the anxiety of getting it done has finally surpased my need for procrastination. It's really become harder and harder to do my own taxes as I've gotten older. There's all this stuff that needs to be accounted for. Rental properties, stock trades, blah blah blah. And of course records are hard to find because I generally rely on electronic records and it seems some of my trusted and favorite companies, like eTrade, aren't all that great at preserving records. Anyway, it's huge pain but TurboTax makes it a lot eaiser... love TurboTax. And, I guess I'm a do-it-yerself kind of guy when it comes to my finances and taxes.

Well, last night it became apparent pretty quickly that there was a major problem. Why do I owe so much money when I was expecting to get money back from Uncle Sam this year?

Uh oh, looks like we have a little problem with my number of deductions on my W2... seems I haven't been paying nearly my share of taxes this year. This is going to hurt in a major big way. Like how am I going to pay this tax bill? Ouch.

How'd it go for me

I had a couple of good days of racing last weekend. Saturday I did the Master 1/2/3 crit at Landpark. I told myself that I wouldn't try any heroics. Just sit in toward the front and make sure I didn't blow up. Mike Hernandez was a one man wrecking machine as he got in a 4-man break and proceeded to ride John Fairbanks (Specialized/Sierra Nevada), Nathan Parks (EMC), and one other off his wheel. Mike continued his reign of terror by winning the Pro/1/2 later in the day.

I got a kick out of talking to my teamie Brian Choi after the race. He says: "I'm making a list. Hernandez is on my list. I mean he's a nice guy and everything, but he's still on my list. I'm going to need to wait another 6 months before I can start crossing people off." Brain is totally great to ride with. He's returning to racing after 12 years. He used to race P/1/2 in the Chicago area. He's totally cool and unassuming. He can totally bring it on the bike too. Can ride the flats and hills, and he'll burry it for his team. He unwound himself pretty good in the last 3 laps of the P/1/2 crit trying to set up our Tim Creswell (6th). I'm hoping for big things for Brian at some point this year, and I'm totally psyched he's on our team.

I was feeling pretty good at Zamora. At the end of lap 2 (20 miles in), I followed a Spine attack off the front and started rotating through with Spiney and a VSRT dude. We worked together nicely taking 20-30 second pulls and built a decent lead. We were a little underpowered as a breakaway. Spiney looked like he was a better ascender than a roller and VSRT looked like he was a better roller than ascender, if ya know what I mean. I didn't care if it was a winning break as long as my team was getting a free ride. So with three of the bigger teams not represented in our break, the pressure was on them to pull us back and my teamies were getting a free ride. I was also more than happy to ride tempo with these two rather than riding the white-knuckle lurch express with 60 or 70 of my closest buddies within 5 inches of me in the pack.

I believe the chase fell to AMD. I can't imagine they were chasing that hard because we weren't going all that hard in the break. Anyway, we stuck it for about 7 miles. By the time the pack caught us I was warmed up and feeling good, so after a few miles rest I launched off with another attack at about the same point the first one started (30 miles in). This time it was Chris Baker (EMC), AMD, and a Trumner Pils rider. No Safeway or Spine, so again I was happy to work this break. We were just starting to get organized when unfortunately Ron Castia bridged up from EMC. AMD and I stopped pulling as Ron sort of killed the balance. In retrospect, I should have kept working this hard as it really would have put Safeway under the gun and there was still plenty of race left to be worrying about a EMC loaded break. Live and learn.

On the back side of this lap a 6-8 man break got off with EMC, AMD, Safeway and Spine but no S/SN. It was a little too far to bridge and had to be controlled since all the teams were in. I and my team mates Dan Bryant, Matt Rozek, and Martin Tam pulled it back. We brought them in just before the KOM hill (really more of a bump than a mountain) and as soon as we got close attacks started flying from all the other teams. I was feeling my prior efforts. I hung on for another 12 miles or so (through 50 miles) and then took a powder on the last lap. By this time the "strong men of the peloton" (Ligget voice) had come to front and were driving it. See how it played out in the last lap on Hernando's blog.

Tuesday night ride

So we do this mid-week race ride on our team. Used to be on Wednesdays, but this year we moved it to Tuesdays. We did the first one yesterday. Basically this ride is all about Matt Rozek making us all suffer. Matt's one of the stronger local hammers and he likes to ride hard. Really hard. All the time. Most of us old geezers like to ease in to it a bit. But Matt typically drills it early, drills it often, and drills it some more until the ride is over.

I will typically try to go with Matt when he goes and inevitably he flicks me the elbow when I'm already red lined behind him. I will usually pull through because... well because pulling through just seems like the honorable thing to do. If everyone would pull through then we could take short pulls and have plenty of rest. The problem is many people don't pull through and I am usually completely blown 1/3 of the way into the ride. I can't blame them honestly.

Now, we also have Peter Allen on the ride. Peter certainly can hang with Matt, but he's a little more copacetic on making the ride fruitful for everyone. He guides us toward easing up a bit so we can have a better workout overall rather than ride to the point of explosion. And with Peter's experience of course we all listen. Well almost all of us.

My favorite part of yesterday's ride:

Matt: "Peter is going to yell at me"
Me: "Because we're going too hard?"
Matt: "Peter is going to yell at me. He wants us to ride tempo together."
Matt: "But I'm going to attack."

Ha Ha Ha, got to love em both. I'm so thankful to have the opportunity to ride with these guys on a regular basis. Even if it hurts.

Angel

She: "Come on, go with me. You're so hansome. Don't leave."

Me: "Can't do it Angel. I'm married. It's not my time."

Hulegu and the Assasins

Hulegu, grandson of Genghis Khan, set off with a massive army to conquer the Muslim states and their prize city Baghdad around 1255. Baghdad was the cultural and financial capital of the Arab world. A long the way, Hulegu first had to conquer a number of mountain strongholds of the Nizari Ismailis.

The Ismailis relied on hashish to keep their followers and to make them fearless in battle. For this they were called Hashshashin, or "the hashish users". While having no organized conventional army, this Muslim sect of Shiites maintained its political power through one effective method. They would kill anyone, particularly leaders or powerful people, who opposed them in any way. As a result, Hashashin eventually evolved to assassin and spread to many languages for the word meaning the murderer of high officials.

You'll have to pick up Ghenhis Kahn and the Making of the Modern World, by Jack Weatherford, for the rest of the story.

I think about this story from time to time when I see us trouncing around in Iraq. Think of the number of battles fought in that land since the time of Mesopotamia and the birth of western civilization. Think of the pride the people must have and the reluctance of being ruled by a nouveau rich state like the US. We should get out of there, but before we go we should also dismantle Iran and then support moderate Sunni led factions from behind the scenes in a Machiavellian way with the hope of a moderate arab state resulting.

But what do I know?

Hardee Ha Ha

My buddy John rides for Pegasus. He said he got a chuckle when they got their new uniforms for '07 because their blue/orange/white was similar to the Specialized / Sierra Nevada team that I ride for and dig so much.

Well, I've seen their new gitup now and what's really got me chuckling is how they've gone from one the best looking kits in the peloton to one of the lamest. And no, I don't think they look like S/SN.

Apparently the orange was supposed to be gold... a little known secret is our orange was supposed to the color of a pale ale (does it make sense now?). So it must be some Voler thing for mixing up gold and orange.

I wonder how many other teams out there are riding kits that aren't exactly what the designer was thinking?

Passing out

Racing season must be officially here because I've been getting dizzy spells from standing up too quickly. The usual run of the mill dizzy spell occurs when I'm kicking it on the couch watching TV and stand up to go to the kitchen. I usually get a couple of steps before I realize I'm blacking out. My knees start wobbling and nocking and my whole body sort of shakes as I'm about to pass out. Kind of scary, but it actually feels sort of good. Kind of how you feel when you sneeze. I've never passed out... until this week.

Couple nights ago, I got off the couch with my 5-year old Spencer hanging on my back. He wanted to go wrestle on the bed as per usual. I got to the doorway of the kitchen and realized I was going wobbly. "Uh oh, this is not a good time with the boy on my back" I thought.

Brain to heart (use your Star Trek voices): "Scotty, I need more blood up here"
Heart: "I'm givin er all I can Cap'n. Yer didn tell me yer was gettin up naw did ya."

I grabed hold of the doorway hoping the heart would deliver before I buckled. Next, I heard myself say "Spencer, please get off my back. You're hurting my back." with my eyes shut and a little confused. I thought I was still standing but when my vision returned I was looking at the kitchen tile floor only inches from my face. Spencer was crying and actually 10 feet away already looking for a hug from Mama.

These usually aren't the kind of things I tell my Mom about 'cause... well you know how Mom's are. I told her today just to test her reactions. It was typical: "You need to go to the doctor immediately". "It might be low blood pressure". "You might be diabetic". "Go get it checked out".

"No" I tell her. I won't go to a doctor. It's from riding so much. I just stood up too fast. A little googling confirms it's normal for a trained athlete (I even saw a note that cyclists, rowers, and cross-country skiers typically have the largest hearts from their training - two of the sports I've done consitently for 20 years). The info I saw says anything below 60 bpm is abnormal except for trained athletes. I'm at 54 right now, caffeine and all in the middle of the day. I'm not anal enough to check my resting heart rate daily, as some coaches have insisted, but I figure it's around 37. So what are you all at? OV, you're resting HR is probably 12... although I've generally observed the smaller the person the faster the HR, kind of like humming birds. So maybe you won't win this race.

Anyway, me and Spencer, we're both ok.

How to ruin a good thing

I ate three bowls of Trix today. 1 with Breakfast and 2 after my ride. Trix used to be an awesome product. They were sweet tastie puffs of corn in enticing muted colors of yellow, red, orange. They've totally ruined them now. Now they're more like Fruity Pebbles than the Trix you and I used to know. The colors are too vivid and too varied. They've got shapes, like a green and red shaped watermellon. They still give the requisite sugar injection, but they just don't look right in the bowl and now leave me unfullfilled despite having 3 bowls. Many of my sugar cereals have gone this route in some attempt to grab more morning breakfast share. Thankfully Frootloops have stayed somewhat true to form. Long live the king.

Tag

I got taged by Mondo (JohnyGo________) and have yet to respond. I better get on it before the few remaining bloggers I know have been tagged out. Working on it.