Skinny #1 Racing

At the beginning of each year, there is a 3 on 3 soccer tournament. Our hall was lucky enough to have two teams in this tournament; the best team and the worst team. I didn't really sign up for this thing, but when I was asked to play for fun I figured I wouldn't pass up the opportunity. I donned a pair of Jeremy's (new Jeremy that is) soccer cleats and off I was. That day we lost both our games. The first one I guess we were just settling in, and the second game things kind of clicked and we started playing pretty decent, but the other team was just quite a bit better. We were eliminated from the tournament, but our other team was still staying strong. There are two more games tonight, and if they win the first they advance to the finals, and hopefully they will be able to win that. It's a lot of fun watching and cheering them on.

After the game last night we played some hardcore games of knock-out. I think we ended up playing about 8 games from the free throw line, 3 point line, and halfcourt. It goes without saying that I dominated the halfcourt games before I got too tired and didn't play for the win anymore. What else would you expect from the person who sank the half court shot at the Alumni Game a few years ago?!?!?!?

I have a scheduled rest week so I've been taking it pretty easy on the bike. 1 hour easy on Tuesday, and then 3 hours easy yesterday. Today I think I have two hours. Hopefully next week I'll be able to do Wednesday Night Worlds...I'll have to talk to Bill about that one. I'm working on getting my skis for next year. I think I found someone who has the same pair of 1080s that I do that are for sale. Hopefully he'll get back to me pretty soon. I figure I would pick those up pretty cheap and give them to Hannah because she said that she liked mine. I'm also giving her my snowpants so she's gonna be all set to rip this year. I think I'll be getting a pair of Public Enemies, except I'll mount them at at least +3, because my old ones seemed a little too far back. I've got two people on NS right now that are selling some of the 04-05 ones so I'll see how things play out. A ton of people on my hall ski, along with tons of the other people I know, so I won't have any trouble getting to the mountains this year. I hope we win tonight...

Well, I thought the king was gonna be back, but looks like he didn't show up quite yet. After my ride I decided that it was time for me to handle the back to back foot long subs from Subway. Up first was the meatball marinara, which I cleaned up pretty easily. What I was about to face I could have never predicted though. The BMT that was on deck was just too much to handle. I ate the first half and then got about halfway through the second half. In other words I ate 3/4 of the BMT, totalling 21 inches of Subway, not too shabby but I've done better in the past.

I felt as good today as I have all year. I was supposed to do 3x6 minutes in zone 4, but I decided that today was the day to see what my time up Rist Canyon would be. I started my clock at the dirt road right before you enter the canyon, which is where I assume most people time from. I rode at about 178 beats per minute for most of the climb, sometimes falling down to the low 170s on the flatter sections and reaching into the high 180s on some of the steeper stuff. I ended up cresting the top at 54 minutes. If I remember correctly Andy said that we should be able to do it in under an hour, but I will verify that at our next meeting. It was a good effort but I think I could go lower. There was one section where I went to hard and had to pay for a while before I could recover and get back up to a good pace. Also, I had 3 water bottles, a cell phone, a seatback with tube and CO2, an ipod, and my keys, so I was weighed down a little bit.

Looks like I should get a rest week this week, and then have one hard week of training before Beaver Meadows and the race season starts. I just watched "A Walk to Remember" and I must admit it was a pretty good movie. Well, looks like it's time for me to do my calculus homework...

Well I'm getting back into the swing of things back here in Fort Collins. A day in my life looks kind of like this. Eat, class, eat, class, bike ride, video games, homework. In the middle of all this is a whole bunch of internet and more video games, because a lot of times you'll just have about a half hour or so just to kill some time before you have to do something else.

There has been a lot of quality Super Smash Brothers Melee action going on in Newsom already. So far we have three rooms set up with a GameCube and, depending on where we want to play, we just bring in some extra controllers. I must admit that even though I practiced a lot over the summer, there are a couple freshman that are pretty good, making it hard for me to win. One kid is just ridiculously good and none of us can beat him (not even Pat when he's spamming the up B). Hopefully I can take it up a notch and teach this kid a lesson though.

Somebody explain this to me: Tuesday I rode for 3 hours and I got back and had a newly defined tan line. So, I decided that Wednesday was going to be the day to extend my tan lines. I put my shorts about 4 inches above my old line, wore a sleeveless jersey (thanks Mom), and no socks. When I got back though, there was absolutely no new tan. I did the same thing yesterday and got the same result. I guess I'm just going to have to get lucky some time if I'm going to try and accomplish the tan line extension.

This weekend we have our century ride that helps us make a lot of money. There are actually like 4 different lengths. I only have 3 hours scheduled for that day so I think I'll just try and go through as many aid stations as possible so I only have to carry a bottle or two. If you were wondering, I was able to put 3 bikes in my room this year. It's pretty amazing. The whole center of the room is still empty, so there's plenty of room to sit down/pull up chairs/do whatever. Well I think I've written enough for one day...

So Sunday was my first ride back in Fort Collins, and I flatted. I had rode to the Dixon Reservoir and done a loop around that before completing some intervals. Then, about an hour and a half into the ride I flatted and had to turn around. It's amazing that I didn't flat at all back home but here I flatted on my first ride. I'm thinking twice about equipping my whips with the new Maxxis MaxLite 310 tires...
I did see this guy riding though. He weas insane. Just out of the picture there is a row of rocks and he was managing to ride over it. I must say I was pretty impressed.

I had my first day of classes today. I pretty much shouldn't even have gone because the teacher would just hand out a syllabus (??) and read from it before letting us leave a few minutes early. My chemistry teacher is French (I think) and she does this annoying "eh" after everything she says. I think it would normally be an "umm" but with her accent it comes out sounding a bit funny. My schedule is pretty nice so it should be a good semester. Tomorrow I go to Attributes of Living Systems for the first time, so it should be another easy day. Tonight I had 16 calculus problems. I can't even believe I had that much due on the first day!!!!!

I think I put this huge dent in my wheel at Hodges, somewhere around the same time that I snapped a rail on my SLR. I decided to leave them at home becase they have taken such a beating and just aren't performing like they did when they were new.
My little neice. Sometimes it's kinda hard to snap a picture of her with a smile on her face.
The plane ride was spacious...to say the least. I watched Rocky III from Boston to Pitt. and Rocky IV from Pitt. to Denver.
I've got a new set up for the room this year. There is enough space for at least one more bike back there, maybe even two if I move my desk over a little more.

In case you didn't know, that's what Clubber Lang (Mr. T) says to Rocky Balboa in Rocky III in their rematch when Rocky is letting Clubber tire out by just swinging; just a little side note to go with all the pictures and stuff I have to say now that I'm back to the real world of fast internet!!!!!

Today was the Hodges Village Dam mountain bike race. Last year, this was my best race, and nothing changed this year. There were a lot of good riders there today, like the Alessio twins from Pennsylvania, Aaron Snyder, and a lot of the regulars. I didn't get off to too good of a start, and I was struggling to hang onto the back. By the end of the first lap I was about 5 minutes off the lead. Then I started coming around and I rode the next 3 laps with Skip Brown, who was on a rigid singlespeed, but still moving along as fast as I could go. So, we were able to maintain our positions (which were last and second to last, haha), and not lose too much time to the leaders. He pulled away from me on the last lap, but I still had my strongest ride of the year so far. I think I would have beat everyone in the expert category so at least I can feel good about racing with the big boys. I just started intensity training so I can only get better from here, too.

I have concluded that I do have the Curse of the Blue Tees. When I played with my uncle on Thursday I shot an 80, with two double bogeys. I rolled in 2 birdies on the front side and shot a 37 (3 over), but fell apart a little on the back with a 43 (7 over). All in all a good round of golf.

I guess I'm back to the world of training in zones 4 and 5, and what a rough world that is. Last night I went on the Gearworks ride, and right before we were about to leave I was somehow placed on the A ride...great. We started out climbing for about the first hour and fifteen minutes, and I was always at the front of the group, hanging in really well. We started out with seven and managed to get rid of two guys on the hills. After that we hit the flats and I hit the wall. Once we got rolling I just had such a hard time pushing that big gear and they completely wore me out. I ended up limping home struggling and hanging on as best I could. That wouldn't have been that bad if I didn't have four hours on the road bike today. The first two were OK but then the thorough whooping that I had recieved the night before began to take affect. From that ride, I have decided that I need to readjust the saddle on my road bike, it's so uncomfortable right now and I don't even want to begin to get into the specifics of why I want to change it.

Tomorrow I have a big golf date set up with my uncle. I haven't played with him in a long time so I'm really excited. I'll have the home course advantage as we'll be playing at Winchendon. He's getting old so we'll probably be playing from the whites, another advantage for me. 1o yards less on each hole doesn't seem like a lot but it certainly makes the difference on some holes. On #5, it's the difference between a good 3 iron and "easy" 3 wood. I don't carry a 5 wood so it makes that shot super hard from the blues. Well I've got water to drink, food to eat, stretching to do, all in hopes of recovering before my pyramid intervals in zone 5 tomorrow. Wish me luck.

What a day. I got an Ipod Shuffle today, the smaller one that holds 120 songs. Right now that's about 8 hours, so I think I'll wait until I get to school and get some new music before I even bother changing what is one there. I only rode with it for a few minutes today, because of events that I will explain later...

I got the brakes for my hardtail today and put them on my bike. I also brought the disc wheel from my full suspension to the shop so that Andy could see if we could just tighten the hub up. As expected it has cartridge bearings and we're going to order a few of them before it starts working good again. Hopefully the wheel will be all set before I leave for school. I think I'd rather run my hardtail at Hodges rather than my full suspension anyways.

I made plans to ride with my sister, Aggie, today. That was good, we were just cruising and I had some sprints to do so I would do those and then wait up. It turned bad when I tore an Egg Beater off the spindle though. The ironic part is that it was within 1/4 mile of where I did that a few years ago. So, I called my mom and had her pick me up so I could go put on a different set with reliable spindles. Ok I'm good to go this time, along with my new Ipod because I was now going to be riding by myself. 10 minutes down the road I run into the Thursday night road ride (which is the easier one) so I decided to pull a Nick Martin and tag along. Tonight was the sprint night so we had some hardcore sprints for the town lines. I took one sprint and it was just because everyone was regrouping at a corner and I took off and surprised them...haha. All in all a good day, hopefully I'll be able to listen to the new Ipod a little more tomorrow though.

I wrote a big update yesterday, but when I tried to upload a picture of my little neice my whole post was denied. Amen to dial up. A few more weeks and I'll be back to reality...well I guess that's what one might call college life.

I have never swam so much in my life as I did today. I thought I was going to die at one point. I hitched a ride on the back of a kayak over to a ropeswing that we were sessioning that is a couple houses down on our second villa (this one is on a lake and owned by the family). Anyways, on the way back I decided that I would rather swim because kayaking is so boring and requires so much work. Bad decision! It took me so long to go the distance and I was so tired when I arrived back to the camp. Anyways, to make a long story short, swimming isn't nearly as easy as it seems.

I was right about the rest week, tomorrow I have some sprints and saturday I have 40 minutes in zone 4 and that is the extent of my training for the week. My new brakes should be coming in tomorrow so hopefully I'll be able to go rip around on the hardtail after work or something. I just got done watching the movie Hitch and I have added it to the list of lame movies that I will probably never watch again. Recent additions to this list include: Constantine, Sideways, Match point, or pretty much any movie that my mom gets from NetFlix. I have yet to watch a good movie that she has ordered. I hope it cools down because I don't really want to have to try to sleep in this heat...

I wrote a big update yesterday, but when I tried to upload a picture of my little neice my whole post was denied. Amen to dial up. A few more weeks and I'll be back to reality...well I guess that's what one might call college life.

I have never swam so much in my life as I did today. I thought I was going to die at one point. I hitched a ride on the back of a kayak over to a ropeswing that we were sessioning that is a couple houses down on our second villa (this one is on a lake and owned by the family). Anyways, on the way back I decided that I would rather swim because kayaking is so boring and requires so much work. Bad decision! It took me so long to go the distance and I was so tired when I arrived back to the camp. Anyways, to make a long story short, swimming isn't nearly as easy as it seems.

I was right about the rest week, tomorrow I have some sprints and saturday I have 40 minutes in zone 4 and that is the extent of my training for the week. My new brakes should be coming in tomorrow so hopefully I'll be able to go rip around on the hardtail after work or something. I just got done watching the movie Hitch and I have added it to the list of lame movies that I will probably never watch again. Recent additions to this list include: Constantine, Sideways, Match point, or pretty much any movie that my mom gets from NetFlix. I have yet to watch a good movie that she has ordered. I hope it cools down because I don't really want to have to try to sleep in this heat...