Skinny #1 Racing

Yup, you read it right. We beat both CU and FLC to win the RMCCC. It's pretty sweet, considering the fact that we are racing in the toughest collegiate conference.

I didn't do too well this weekend. I was off the back so early in both races and it was just torturous. Yesterday we had a 20 mile out and back (40 miles total) that was just ridiculous. The first 20 were downhill with a tailwind and took 45 minutes, and the last 20 were uphill with a headwind and took 2 hours!!!!! It was probably the worst race ever. Today we had a crit and it was pretty fast, way too fast for me right now. Hopefully all it will take is a little anaerobic training and I'll be racing strong on the mountain bike.

Besides mountain bike racing when I get home, I have another goal, well kind of. If I want to race Fitchburg then I'm going to have to get my Cat. 3 upgrade because Cat. 4s are already full. The only problem with accomplishing this is that I really only have one weekend of racing to do so. The two races will be Lake Sunapee Bike Race and the North Stonington Cycling Classic. I guess I have an outside chance of getting my upgrade if I do really well in both of those races. Who knows, maybe the upgrade person will feel sympathy for me and just let me race anyways. It would be a shame not to race because I should be in really good form at that point in the season.

So there are these two black guys that work in the cafeteria in Newsom, and I must say that they are both pretty cool. Well one of them Marcus let me in on this secret of his called the Sushi Roll, and pretty much every time I eat there and he's working, I have him hook me up. Just to show the level of commitment this kid has I posted a picture of the finished product. It's great because he even put the dressing on top of like the pros do. Evan liked it so much that he took a picture and sent it to me which meant that I was obligated to put it up on here.
So here's the stupid peice of metal that I got in my tire that made me cut my ride short. I was just riding along when I heard this noise. I thought I picked up something that was in my spokes, but when I stopped to check it out I heard the pssssss that is idicative of a flat. My first one on the road this year. So I pulled into a gas station and fixed it, and was quite surprised when I found this in there.

Looks like this weekend I'll be doing three races. Saturday will be a 62 km road race, followed by a 20 km team time trial. Then Sunday will be the 45 minute criterium. I'm looking forward to it because I haven't raced in so long. I'm sure my form won't be as good as most people's but that's no big deal this time of year. Just wait until those two East coast NORBAs and we'll see who's in good form and who isn't.

I changed my flight today so I get back May 11th at 2:00 pm. I'm pretty excited because I'll be able to race the Belltwon Classic, which kicked my butt last year. I think the real problem was that I was on my old 9.8, and that's the best full suspension course of the year. I aslo missed a turn so this year I'm definitely gonna learn where I'm supposed to go so nothing crazy happens during the race. It looks like Ethan and the other fast junior were only a little slower than the Pros/Semi Pros at Farmington, and I'm sure that this year I'll be a lot faster than I was last year so I shouldn't do too bad racing Semi Pro.

So I finished my Java yesterday. I was trying to post it here, but that wouldn't work, so I set up geocities account so that you can all view it there. Here's the URL: http://www.geocities.com/bigdoubler125805y/bigdoubler125805y.html. It is ridiculous, all of the login names that I wanted were taken, including: timmyh, timmyh87, psychobiker04. psychobiker04 is the most surprising because that's a pretty unique name. Anyways, check out the final project!

The name of this game is Roll Back. Basically we change the prices on misc items. Today was the first day that we actually got evidence of this. The chips were really funny because they were pretty much in the main aisle. It's so funny. Some time we are gonna wait around until somebody is like, "Wow. Can you beleive the deal on those chips?"


My favorite part about the last one is that we even changed the little sign. I can't remember what it said before but it definitely said "Husky Sizes $4 More" when we were done.

This other game is called the Movie Drop. I haven't done this one yet, because it's way too risky. But what you do is you take a completely random movie (it's funnier if it is a terrible movie to begin with), and you place it in somebody's carriage without them knowing it. That one is really funny.

I also created a game the other night that we haven't tried yet, it's called the Item Count. It only works when you are in the express aisle. All you have to do is look over the person's shoulder in front of you and count (out loud, so they can hear you) the number of items in their basket or carriage. I have a feeling that one will be really funny too!

Well, while I was working on my Java I also found time to check the live coverage of the Tour de Georgia every 15-20 minutes. It was pretty cool doing it like that. Looks like JJ Haedo got a stage win, Landis won another stage race, Tommy D took second this year, and my main man Todd Wells had an unbeleivable week of racing. I'm guessing nothing changed today which means he'll finish 19th on GC. Not bad for a mountain biker competing in the most hardcore domestic stage race.

I finally finished my java project. As much as I hate that class I must say that the project I made is pretty cool. We have to post it on the internet (that's part of our grade) so I'm gonna see if I can get it up on here so you can all take a gander at it. I felt like crap yesterday so I took today off in an attempt to fully recover before starting some intense training this week. We have regionals this weekend and UW, so hopefully (homework permitting) I will finally be able to race again. I have another play tomorrow, and then I'm done. Can't wait!

Well, while I was working on my Java I also found time to check the live coverage of the Tour de Georgia every 15-20 minutes. It was pretty cool doing it like that. Looks like JJ Haedo got a stage win, Landis won another stage race, Tommy D took second this year, and my main man Todd Wells had an unbeleivable week of racing. I'm guessing nothing changed today which means he'll finish 19th on GC. Not bad for a mountain biker competing in the most hardcore domestic stage race.

I finally finished my java project. As much as I hate that class I must say that the project I made is pretty cool. We have to post it on the internet (that's part of our grade) so I'm gonna see if I can get it up on here so you can all take a gander at it. I felt like crap yesterday so I took today off in an attempt to fully recover before starting some intense training this week. We have regionals this weekend and UW, so hopefully (homework permitting) I will finally be able to race again. I have another play tomorrow, and then I'm done. Can't wait!

Well the weekend has arrived and once again I will not be racing. I really wanted to race in Grand Junction this weekend, but because of my stupid Java project that is due on Tuesday I won't be able to attend. Java really does suck, you know that? I guess I lucked out though because we dont' have a final in that class, we just have to complete a take home test. I also don't have a final in my honors seminar, I just have a long paper that I need to write. Looks like my only finals will be Chemistry and Calculus. I'm not too worried about the Calc final, it shouldn't be too difficult. The Chemistry one on the other hand is probably going to suck because after all, Chemistry sucks.

Right now I'm watching the movie Swordfish. It seems like they play that movie every weekend about 10 times, because every time I flip through the channels, it's on. I watched the last 1/2 hour or so a few weeks ago, so when I saw that it was on today I figured I would watch it. I'm really tired after my ride today, and I really need to stretch because my left calf cramps on occasion. Last night I woke up and moved it wrong, and it cramped up on me and it sucked a lot. Hopefully I can get rid of that. I would have gone and done some yoga with Evan, but I was busy riding. I bet that would have helped out, because last time I did yoga I felt really good the next day on the bike.

Looks like this week and weekend are going to suck quite a bit. I was planning on going to the race in Grand Junction this weekend, but turns out my final project for Java is due on Tuesday, so that probably wouldn't be a good idea. I have a calculus exam tomorrow, so I still need to do a little reviewing for that. The great thing about calculus (or just math in general) is that if you know it you don't really have to study, you just have to do a little reviewing. However, I guess I'm pretty fortunate that math comes easy to me because some people suffer with it like I do with Chemistry. I have a test in that class on Tuesday...but I'm not too worried about it. I want to get a B on this one, maybe even an A if I do enough studying and reviewing.

Yesterday I rode the trainer because it was so cold and windy outside. I was gonna do VO2 intervals followed by some lactate threshold riding, but by the time the second VO2 interval came around I was already toast. I rode the trainer again today because it was windy out, for about 1.5 hours pretty easy. It was funny because I played Super Smash Brother Melee with three other people the entire time. I couldn't decide if I was lazy for playing video games, or motivated because I was riding while playing video games. I guess it could go either way.

The play yesterday went really well. Anne Marie (that's my teacher and that's what she has us call her) thought that it went pretty good. She even took us out for ice cream afterwards. We have another performance on Monday, and afterwards we are having a cast party at her house which translates into me eating regular food. YUMMM!!!!! I can't even wait for that, even if I have to go hang out at my teacher's house. At the beginning of the play, the principle of the school was reading some thing, and apparently he wanted me to come out on stage early, but I didn't realize it. I guess he like prompted me about five times before somebody pushed me out on stage. It was pretty funny, especially because I had no idea what was going on. I had a whole bunch of those elementary schoolers that were diggin my sweet mohawk.

I gave myself a haircut yesterday and let Eric touch it up once I was done. It's at 1/2 inch now, but that was as long as I could go because that was the length on the sides of my mohawk and it didn't grow enough in the week I had it to cut it at a longer length. Thanks to Hannah for sending me the new TI cd. It's really good. So far my favorites are Headbank, Ride Wit Me, What You Know, King Back, and I'm Talkin to You. Those are pretty much the first few songs on the cd, but I still haven't listened to the last tracks that many times. So far it is about as good as Urban Legend, maybe even a little better.

The record hits are continueing, so keep on reading everyone. I haven't been doing anything too exciting lately. Mainly just homework and riding. We're preparing for a play that my honors seminar class is putting on tomorrow and next Monday. I actually have the lead role and am playing Terra the Terrasaur. It's pretty funny. Basically it's me being a complete idiot and hurting the environment, and then these dolphins (or big horned sheep) tell me that I'm being stupid and what I should do to fix it. It's made for elementary schoolers so it's pretty easy to follow it. I don't think I'll be able to race this weekend because I have my final Java project due on Tuesday of next week. Wish me luck with that one. I'll give a good update about how the play goes.

I'm having record hits on my blog lately and I think it's due to the crazy haircut. If I had known earlier that all I needed to do was cut my hair then I would have done it a long long time ago. I went to Wal-Mart the other night and picked up a hat so that I could rock the mohawk without looking like a complete idiot when it wasn't spiked. I went with white Red Sox hat, I'm pretty sure Phoebe would be proud of me for making the right choice.

The past few days I didn't feel really good while riding. Last night, we did some yoga, and today I felt great. I did my first VO2 intervals of the year. I had 4 by 3 minutes at 182-187 bpm. I could only get my heart rate up to 182. By the time the last one came around, I was beat, but still had another hour and a half to ride. It was good, I feel a whole lot better on the bike this year than I did last year. Looks like this weekend I get to put in back to back 4 hour days. I'll probably do a good road ride tomorrow, and then a hard mountain bike ride on Sunday. I need to get my mountain bike skills up before the first race, which should be on May 14...the good old Cow Bell Classic (Belltown Classic). Last year I missed a turn and had argueably my worst race of the year, it was terrible. Hopefully this year will be a little different.

Well, I have been in the process of creating a good mohawk for a while, and I didn't want to post until it was complete and in good shape. Yesterday was my first full day of wearing it. I did it myself, and it held up pretty well. I used Elmer's Glue and a blow drier from some random girl (I still haven't given it back). The first time it was OK, but most of the hair was positioned way at the top of my head. After seeing that it wasn't done properly, Taylor volunteered to do my hair this morning. He spent 40 minutes creating this masterpiece that you are seeing right now. The thing about mohawks is that people either love them or hate them, there really isn't an in between. I like, so I'm going to try to keep it for a couple of weeks. The only bad part about it is that it will take forever to set up in the morning. Also, when I don't have it up, it looks terrible. It looks like I have a dead squirrel lieing on my head. I guess it's pretty funny actually.

I like this shot. It really shows how evenly spread out the hair is. I think it's about six inches high almost at the highest point.

Anyways, Happy Birthday Aggie. I hope you have a great day. I hope you enjoy this surprise and get a good laugh out of it.

Well this weekend started off pretty well. We had our second night of capture the flag on Friday. Pretty much everyone on our team had walkie talkies. It was a lot of fun just communicating on them. We split up into three attack group: delta, bravo, and red team. Me, Cole, and Marcos were on red team. Cole oversuses the walkie talkies so much it's just ridiculous. So we played two games last night, the first of which we won. The second game, however, we couldn't find their flag. We had all three of our attack teams on offense looking for the flag for two straight hours and we still couldn't find it. After the game they wouldn't reveal the location of the flag, so we are really suspicious now that it was 1) not hidden or 2) hidden illegally.

I have a new song now, it's "Soul Survivor" by Young Jeezy. It's a pretty good one. I've listened to it about 40 times in the past three days. My rest week is almost over. Me and Eric are going mountain biking today, so that should be a lot of fun. I like being able to ride with people that I normally couldn't ride with because I'd be going too hard. I went with Josiah on Thursday, and that was a lot of fun. Well, I have to go check my mail before the Masters comes on. Hopefully my man Phil can get a little higher up on the leader board today and win a second green jacket tomorrow.

I got this picture in an e-mail today, and I still don't know who it's from. Either way it's a good one. I'm pretty sure Sager would be proud.

Today was probably one of my best days of the year. I woke up late, knowing that I didn't have close until 12 so there was nothing that I really had to do. I usually have a 3 hour lab, but today Kaitlyn and I got it done in under an hour, so I was back to my room by 3. When I got back, Josiah decided that he would come for a mountain bike ride with me. It was a lot of fun, I rode down the stairs in Newsom and out the door. He kept up pretty well, we were going pretty slow, but he still hung in there. We got back from the ride, and then me, Josiah, and Robbie went to the driving range and hit a large bucket of balls. The bucket was huge and took me forever. I was hitting some great 3 irons though. It's great that I can finally play them off the fairway now. After that we got back and Josiah and I skated for a while. I came up with this new trick called the Halliday Trio (that's the name Josiah gave it, it's really nothing spectacular). After that we went some acting thing for class which lasted a few minutes and then I watched the OC. I think I got Coop hooked on that show now. He seemed to be around my room a lot when it was on.

I heard Todd got 6th today. I wonder if he found some time to watch the OC tonight after a hard day of racing. Maybe cyclingnews or usacycling will get some preliminary results up or something pretty soon because I can't really live without knowing how people did.

The best thing about rest weeks is that I can do pretty much whatever I want and not have to worry about it. Today I went and played tennis with Evan for an hour and a half. It was a lot of fun. I wanted to play a real game but Evan didn't want to. The hardest part about tennis is deciding when to charge the net. It seemed like every time I did I ended up having the ball lobbed over my head and I couldn't get to it. I figured that If I dressed like a tennis player, I would play way better. I ended up wearing blue mesh shorts, a white polo with blue stripes, a headband and an armband, and my running shoes. I looked so funny with the headband on because my hair is so ridiculously long right now. I think I'm gonna try to play again on Thursday.

In other news, we are having another capture the flag game on friday night. I decided that I am not going to race this weekend in Golden so that I can play capture the flag. I also decided that this time around I am going to play D most of the time. Playing D is better because you can't get put in jail, you can stop chasing people whenever you want, and there isn't any pressure on you to try and get the flag. Offense is fun, don't get me wrong, but I think defense will be a little better.

So we went to Wal-Mart the other night, nothing new there. I saw this headband which I just had to have. However, Josiah decided that he wanted it, too. I told him that if I let him get it, then he would have to get the matching double wristband to go with it, and wear it to chemistry the next day. He agreed. Unfortunately, Josiah decided not to attend chemistry, so I told him that he also had to wear that get-up to our honors seminar. It was hilarious, when the teacher walked in she laughed at him. It was probably one of the funniest moments all year. In case you can't tell from the picture, that's a mini hot dogs Lunchables that he's eating. It's probably the most disgusting Lunchables available and I somehow talked him into buying it.

I registered for my classes yesterday and I got everything I wanted thanks to priority registration. It's pretty impressive that I get to register at the same time as D1 athletes. It works out well though because all the athletes take the super easy classes, while I mostly take the harder ones. Next semester I'm signed up for physics I, calc II, matrices and linear equations, schooling in the united states, and golf. I am looking forward to golf so much! With the addition of my sports medicine major I actually have a legitimate reason for taking that class, and that's because an ex100 is required. I'll definitely be bringing my clubs out here with me next semester. I have that class from 12-2 mwf, so on mondays I'm going to stay after class and play another round. If I get a season pass there (I have no idea how much they cost), then I'm sure I will play a lot. Robbie signed up for the 8 am session, so hopefully he'll get a pass too and we'll be able to play in the afternoon sometimes.

I get a rest week before jumping into the build stages next week. I need to get a strap for my heart rate monitor before I am ready to train though. Maybe Lee's will have one in stock or something, or I guess I'll just have to order one. I think I have decided that I am going to run v-brakes on my new hardtail. After all, I already have a sweet set of Crossmax SLs that are rim brakes wheels, so I mine as well use them. And in case you didn't notice, guys like Julien Absalon ran a hardtail with v-brakes at a lot of the world cups last year, and at the opener this year. The only disadvantage to this is that I won't be able to get a set of 700c disc wheels. This wasn't even that necessary so it's not too bad. Either way, it is going to feel great to have a hardtail and a full suspension. Both of the bikes are going to be really nice, so come race day, the only decision I will have is which bike I should race. There are definitely some Root 66 races where a hardtail would be faster (like the Farmington races), and there are definitely some where a full suspesion would be better (like almost all the other races).

I put my Jamis for sale on ebay yesterday, so if you want to bid on it here's the url: http://cgi.ebay.com/2004-Jamis-Dakar-XC-Pro-21-FS-Mountain-Bike-Frame_W0QQitemZ7231562713QQcategoryZ98083QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem. So far it's up to like $50, but I have my reserve so it should be all right. I think it should reach my reserve because that frame is like $1300 new, and it's still in pretty good shape.

I was gonna go for a 4 hour mountain bike ride today, but that ended up gettting shortened to 1 hour because the wind was so bad. I rode up the A Trail to the Horsetooth Reservoir and the wind was so bad that I was forced to get off my bike and wait for it to let up. Unfortunately, it didn't let up so I decided to just turn around. Descending the A Trail was pretty scary, the wind was practically blowing me into rocks and stuff...it was really intense. We're going to play basketball tonight so I won't have any problems worrying about not getting in a workout today.

Watching Off Road to Athens this morning before my ride, I found the quote that I want to live by. Mary said it in one of the interviews, "Who cares if we're not making any money? We're living a dream here." I think that's really cool, especially because she is argueably the best domestic female racer. She just took 5th in the world cup and Broderick took top American rider, a few spots ahead of Adam Craig. By the way, I can't decide whether or not I like Adam Craig, and I'm leaning more towards no. I just don't get the same vibe from him that I get from other riders...

Me, Evan, and Daniel just got back from Wal-Mart. First of all, I feel like that place is my new home. I have been there 3 times in the past week. Every time I go in there I am forced to buy something, and most of the time it is food. Today, I bought Lunchables and ate it right away. It was so good. I got the pizza one, and it came with Starbursts and a Capri Sun. Believe it or not, it was pretty nutritious. It has a lot of good stuff in it. I also had to buy some Cow Tails, which helped remind me that my Mom's birthday is tomorrow. Happy birthday, Mom! I had to wait in the checkout line so long that I was also forced to buy some Soft Batch cookies, sooo good.

I did my favorite ride today. Climb up Poudre Canyon and desend Stove Prarie. I like it a lot because Poudre Canyon is a lot of fun to climb (and it sucks to descend) and Stove Prarie is a lot of fun to descend (and it sucks to climb). Descending Stove Prarie is so much fun, you are going so fast for so long, it's such a great section of road. There's one section that's probably 5 minutes long where I break the speed limit the entire time. To be honest, it makes me feel cool when I'm speeding on my bike, haha.

I'm pretty tired from the past few days, so I just got up from a nap. I wish I could have slept longer than 45 minutes but oh well. Tomorrow is my final day of base, then I get a rest week and then begin to build. I can't wait to start doing some harder rides. I'll probably go skate again tonight with Evan because he just got a new set of rollerblades. I still have to get comfortable enough on the skateboard so I can skate to class without making a fool out of myself.