Trip to NC

Sitting in a car for 19 hours alternating driving and napping all the way from North Carolina to Texas makes you pretty stiff and tired. The trip out to NC was not too bad b/c we were excited to get back and see family, friends, and the weather was great. The trip back was not as much fun b/c the weather was not as nice and we were tired before the trip started. We got home to a very nice surprise. The two folks that we had taking care of our place while we were gone did an amazing job and when we walked in it was as if we had never left.

It was great to see our family and get to ride with my friends. I was quite happy not to get dropped on the hills and be able to put in some decent pulls. Getting dropped coming across the lake after the hills was not as much fun but then what did I expect after not riding as much as I should prior to the trip. Getting to see most everyone, either on a ride or over coffee, was wonderful. It is always good to be able to catch up with friends and be able to talk about what has gone on since we last talked and then fall back into our normal routine (John sneaking up on me for a sprint sign--You think that I would remember to watch for him).

Having gotten back to TX and getting things back to normal (catching up on sleep, getting back on the bike, reading the bike magazines that have stacked up in the last two months), I am looking forward to the new year and the time that I still have between now and the start of classes to get some stuff done around the house, get some really good base miles in, and prep for the next semester.

Hope that everyone has a happy and safe New Year's Eve.

Merry Christmas

I hope that everyone has a very Merry Christmas

Here are a few Christmas lights that I had to get a picture of and share. Besides what Texas Christmas display is any good without Santa's Sleigh being pulled by some longhorns.

back in the swing/over dressed

Hi I am .......and I am an overdresser.

No I am not talking about wearing a tux to dinner, or wearing a nice pair of Khaki's to play football in the mud but rather freaking out because it is 45 degrees and I have forgotten how to dress for riding in the winter.

So one of the side effects of not riding much over the last month as it has gotten a little colder is that I have not slowly added clothing to my ride attire as the temps have fallen. So yesterday when I left to ride it was about 47 and the temperature was rising but rather than being smart and putting on some knee warmers, arm warmers, and a vest, I had on thermal tights, wool socks, wind jacket and some other things. So as the temp started rising my legs started baking. Now I am more than happy to make sure to keep my knees covered as soon as the temps fall below 60 and maybe even sooner but full tights probably are not needed in the 50's. Some embrocation would probably do the trick and not bake my legs. At least I did not have a fleece jersey on so the arms warmers and short sleeve jersey did the trick.

Maybe I will figure out the proper winter attire before I go for a ride in NC with my friends there and show up wearing all of the riding cloths that I own and get laughed at.

At least I was able to get back on the bike yesterday and back in the swing on things.

When does winter end again? I miss the 106 degree days.

End of the Semester

So I have reached that time of the year again. Finished with exams, waiting to get the grades, now turning my attention to the fact that Christmas is coming up very soon and I have not shopped for many presents yet! My wife is happy that I am not totally focused on finals and end of the semester stuff and I can focus on Christmas and getting to see family that I have not seen since July.

I am looking forward to seeing my family and riding with some friends that I have not seen in a long time, both in NC and TX. I have been off my bike, except for Thanksgiving day, since the beginning of November so as you would expect I can't wait to get back on! I am hoping for 400 miles or so before classes start back again in January. This should not be too hard since classes don't start again until mid January.


Now after finishing my last exam yesterday my wife and I engaged in one of our favorite holiday traditions, driving around looking at lights. So back in NC the light displays always were nice. In North Texas the displays are crazy. So you have your standard light displays with some lights on the roof and maybe an inflatable Mickey Mouse Santa in the yard but then you have your professionally installed displays that border on a National Lampoon's Christmas style display. Looking at some of these displays I can almost see the power meter spinning in the back. While I would not want to be their neighbors I did appreciate being able to drive by and admire their work (and payment of the electric bill). The house with the red lighted arrow on the roof pointing to the chimney may take the top spot for creativity for the year, unless I see one that tops it soon!

Well since it is starting to warm up outside (37 degrees) I may see if I still have any warm riding cloths and go and get the first ride of the break in. I am probably going to freeze when I am back in NC riding.

Manuscript submitted

So today I submitted my first manuscript to a journal in which I am the first author! So now I play the waiting game and see if it gets accepted, revise and resubmit, or rejected. We will wait and see.

On other news I am trying to decide between a Selle Italia SLR and a Selle Italia SLR XP, or wait and get something else with some extra money that I earned this summer.

Do the 30grams of extra padding really make a difference??

Any opinions??

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope that everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. Right now I am sitting on the couch watching a movie and the fire in the fire place, sitting beside our very good smelling Christmas tree. We just had a great dinner of the left overs from yesterday and they were just as good today as yesterday.
After a good afternoon of doing a little black Friday shopping it is nice to come home and relax.

No to get up tomorrow and hopefully put in a few more miles to take care of the extra turkey that I ate yesterday. And then of course enjoy the great football on tomorrow.

Endurance Racing

So with my weekend cyclocross race chances at an end I was happy to see today that DORBA ( Dallas mountain biking group) has decided to grow their frozen four hour series to three six hour races. I have not done any 6 hour races since I moved from North Carolina and to be honest I have only ridden my mountain bike twice since I have moved to Texas. I am really excited about the series and the first race is scheduled for 12/13 so I guess it is time to hop back on the bike and try to find some form. Hopefully the last three weeks of time off the bike will have been a nice "rest" and allow me to still have some legs so that I can actually do the first race in the series.

I may have missed the big cross races but endurance mountain bike races will be a nice way to start back with some winter base miles for this next season.

Cyclocross weekends

OK so wouldn't you know it. Last weekend 2 cross races in Dallas. This weekend 2 cross races in Ft. Worth. All part of the Texas cyclocross race series that has stops in Austin and Huston. So it would make sense that I would get sick last weekend and not be able to race and now on Friday I am starting to feel better but after two weeks of not riding my registration fee would simply be a nice donation to the cause. While I don't mind not winning a race I at least like to go into a race knowing that I have a chance to not finish last. Given my lack of a true cyclocross bike (have to use my hardtail mountain bike for now) and the probable lack of legs it looks like I will be leaving the cross racing for me to just some weekday training races that I can catch once classes are over in a week or so. That and the good Belgium beer I have waiting in the fridge. MMMM Delirium Nocturnum......MMMMMM.

Maybe next cross season will be better. Now accepting cyclocross bike sponsorship (ie. bike donations). :)


It is nice to have my wife back in town after a long 10 days of being out of town for work. We all missed her (me and the four legged crew).

Swimming

So I recently started doing some serious (or at least pretty serious) swimming. I actually got a real swimming suit (nike jammers) and goggles and set a weekly swimming time.

At first I could only make it to the end of the pool before I had to take a break. Then I could do a full lap without stopping.

Well last week I hit a new mark. I swam a full mile without stopping at all. I was pretty tired at the end but very happy that I had made it!

So what is the next mark- 1.5 miles, 2 miles? or just faster?

VOTE

So in case there is any one reading this who has done gone out and voted yet or have no plans to do so on election day, let me just say this------GO VOTE!

Our ability to go out and vote and make our beliefs known is one of our greatest freedoms. If you do not use your freedom then it does not seem like such a big deal when you lose them. Who cares if the government can tap our phones, as long as it prevents terrorism. Somethings we must stand up and scream about so that we do not lose. Sometimes the cost is not worth the gain. Losing our privacy so that we are "safer" is not as easy a trade. Nor should it be one we have to make.

Sometimes we must stand up and say ENOUGH!

So go out and make your voice heard. GO VOTE!

Balance (or what I learned about life from cycling)

Balance- It is a pretty simple word that means so much. Staying up right on a bike, Not falling over, keeping the rubber on the pavement....It seems so simple but it is not. Think back to when you were a kid and you were learning how to ride for the first time and you did not want to remove the training wheels. Maybe think back to the first time that you rode with clipless pedals and did not want to fall and do something like break your arm.

Once you get past the training wheels and the clipless pedals the training comes. Pushing yourself on hard intervals and trainer workouts until you are ready to puke. Or riding so hard that you can taste the blood in your mouth and feel the searing in your lungs just trying to stay on the wheel of the guy in front of you so that you don't get dropped in the middle of nowhere in a 20 mph wind.

And we all do it so that we can get faster, stronger, more able to attack at just the right time. Then again if all we do is go hard then we just end up tired and not able to even hold a 10mph pace, so we have to balance the hard rides with the recovery rides.

And then there is life...............
Balance is just as important in life as it is on the bike. Balancing demands of work/school, family, training and everything else can sometimes not go as smoothly as we and other folks would like. Sometimes work can be all consuming and you end up not spending any time on the bike and just enough time with family so that they remember your name. But then all of those other things and people start to remind you that you need to spend sometime with them. The family (wife) starts to make sure to schedule time with you for dinner and a movie and every time that you walk by your bike your legs start to ache, reminding you of all of the hours that you have spent on the bike building the form that you are losing.

So sometimes you spend a few more hours on work one week as long as the next you make sure to spend a few more hours doing those things that you neglected the week before. But then again with just the right balance.............then maybe everything will continue to work out and everyone will stay happy.


So just like on the bike rather than wobbling to one side just to wobble to the other next, staying up right and keeping "the rubber side down" is not as easy as we make it look sometimes.

Obviously since my last post was back in August I have not done the best job with balance in the last month or so but life seems to be coming back into balance and keeping it that way seems a little more manageable.

Here's to keeping life a little more balanced.

Hotter'n Hell-WOW

So yesterday I did Hotter'n Hell and all I can say is wow. The distance, the crowd, the temperature, the effort all of it was bigger than what I had done before. Ok so it was not so hot and the wind was not too bad but it was still crazy.

We left Lewisville at 3:30am to get to Wichta Falls by 5:30am and eat and get ready for a 7:09 start time. We made it there in plenty of time and picked up our packet and shirts (Good thing that we pre-registered b/c the line was long). As we were getting ready the sun had still not started and folks were already gathering at the start by 6am. The races left at 6:40 (still no sun). We lined up by 6:45 and the crowd was already very very large. We moved up as close as we could to the start but we were still aways back. The crowd of riders stretched for 11 blocks. After a jet fly over and a cannon blast we started walking our bikes for a little while before we could get to the point that we could get one and ride. Shortly after we started I saw 4 pairs of spare tires on the ground and I would have stopped to get them if I would not have been run over! When we finally got started I spent most of the first 20 miles in the oncoming lanes of traffic (thankfully there was no oncoming traffic) passing folks who had started prior to us. I would have hated to start any further than the half a block back that we did start.

I guess that is what happens when you have 11,000+ riders!

After about 60 miles we actually stopped for more water and gatorade. We made it to the 62 mile "Hell's Gate" several hours before the 12:30 cut off. They stop letting people pass and do the 100 mile route at 12:30 for heath safety concerns. After the 60 mile rest stop we powered on and kept up a great pace. Other than stopping for a flat and a lose crank (neither on my bike) we did not stop except for the 60 mile rest stop. At mile 80 the only thought that I had was what Todd had told me about never having a good ride over 80 miles. I kept topped off on water and gel and other than the hot spots on my feet I felt great. I took some really good pulls from mile 90 to the end and kept the pace over 20mph. We finished in 5 hours and 7 minutes and had 4 hours and 44 minutes of total ride time. An average of 21.3mph for the whole ride goes to show how flat the ride was. The roads were either flat or a false flat. Many of the roads were very well paved but the rest were typical harsh chipseal. The number of polar water bottles that I saw on the ground was astounding. I stopped counting after 20 bottles.

I still can't believe that I finished my first 100 mile ride in about 5 hours and I still felt fresh enough this morning to do strong ride ( I just could not hold back on the hills and sprint points- my legs were screaming but I had to go for them).

It was pretty nice to do something big like this the weekend before classes start up and the grind begins again.

We will see if I decide to do Hotter'n Hell again but I am very glad that I did it and it was, as they say, "An Experience Fundamentally Texas!"

Hotter than Hell

So Hotter than Hell is a big and I mean big ride here in Texas in August. Last year they had over 11,000 riders. We will have to see what this year is like. I have never done a ride with that many riders, it will be an experience. I figure that I have to do it at least once while I am here. I have never actually ridden a 100 miles so it will be interesting.

While the heat of the last few weeks has been killer it does seem like it has cooled off a little thanks to a front that is coming through. This weekend has been nice, with highs in the upper 80's and low 90's and Monday-Thursday of this week are going to be rainy with a high around 87! Hopefully hotter than hell on Saturday will actually not be that hot.

I will let everyone know how hotter than hell goes this weekend.

WHAT have I gotten myself into! 100 miles in August in Texas with 11,000+ other riders.

Back from NC and it is HOT

Nici and I got back from North Carolina almost a month ago and it has been a crazy time since then. I have spent a good amount of time back in the lab collecting data as well as working on a paper. I have been able to spend more time on my bike and am finally in decent shape.

I was great seeing everyone back in NC and getting to ride with everyone. Thanks to Terry for letting me borrow his bike and to his daughter for meeting me at his place to let me pick it up!

It was great getting do the old rides and new ones (great job on the new ride Sandra) as well as being able to ride to Chapel Hill and back, something that I had oddly enough never done.

Of course getting to see my family was wonderful! Nici and I got to go down to Jenn and David's new house at the beach and relax down there and see their place.

So after getting back to Texas the heat is on. Last Monday when I left my house to go ride it was 105 outside and the highs this weekend were 106 and 107! wow it is hot here. Hopefully it will cool off but at least with taking three big bottles of ice and water you can cool off a little by drinking a lot and pouring a lot over your head! I guess this is why the ride in two weeks is called hotter than hell.

Stay safe!

Late Spring makeover

So every spring a addition of new parts to replace the old parts that have worn out is called for. Maybe in most sports gear is not as technical and does not require as much maintenance but this is cycling and we have to replace parts prior to them getting too old. New chain and cassette (so that they don't wear out the cranks), new tires (so they don't wear through and you get a bad flat), new handlebar tape (b/c the old stuff looks worn out). Same old drill as usual. I had been acquiring parts since Christmas and I was waiting to put them on.

New parts:
















My bike prior to the changes:

















It was the first time that I had tried to change my own cassette but I had seen it done and it was supposed to be easy. Well it would have been had my cassette not dug into the cassette body!!! Fortuatly thanks to Bluebonnet bikes for telling me what was going on and making me feel like I was not an idiot and then a trip to Bicycles Plus to pull off the cassette and put the new one on I was in business. Plus I got to drool on the wheels that I would love to have. After getting home and getting some real work done ( I am writing a paper) I was able to do a really good job cleaning my bike and getting the new stuff on.

The completed makeover:















So I had to get the grey/black tires b/c Performance was out of the red ones that look so much better with the bike but they were cheaper and I decided that for this year I could go with the grey/black ones!

Now the last of the makeover was completed by Sunday. Thanks to new hair clippers my hair is much shorter and the legs are back to looking like a real cyclist.


We did make it down to Dallas this last weekend to watch a few races at the Matrix crit. The races were very good and despite the heat the shaded sidewalks made watching the races a lot of fun. It did make me want to be out on the course racing myself! So now to work on getting back into racing shape and doing some real races!

Back on Track

So I had a great weekend back on the bike. I rode much stronger this weekend on both the Saturday and Sunday ride and ended up getting a little over 100 miles in. I even beat everyone up the last climb of the day today despite a good amount of work that I had done into the wind.

Speaking of the wind. WTF. The wind has been pretty strong around here all week. When I say strong I mean 35+mph. Some how I managed to do ok today and yesterday in the 20-25mph wind, even taking a few strong pulls into the wind. I am looking forward to this week. I plan on commuting to campus a few days and then doing atleast the Wednesday KOW ride as well as maybe the Thursday night ride. I also have to do the work on my bike to put on all of the new parts!

Well we will see how the week goes.

Resuming a normal schedule

Well I am happy to say that I successfully completed my first training block of the year and I feel like I am in better shape and won't be horribly embarrassed on tomorrow's group ride. I will see if I am in better shape tomorrow since I have not done any fast group rides since the training block finished. I have been spending a lot of time on campus this week running participants for one of my studies. Now for those of you who may not be familiar with the process I will explain a little. We have undergrads sign up to take part in our studies at specific times and then we sit and wait in the lab for them to show up. Now most of the time during the semester this goes pretty smoothly. We have some that don't show but the majority do. The last few days I have had very few participants show up so I have been spending time reading journal articles and trying to put together an outline for a paper that I will be writing. Now if only more of those participants would show up I might have another paper to write!!!

So I am getting back to a regular schedule of riding, writing a paper, and running a study or two. Hopefully the rest of the summer will be relatively calm, but with a trip to NC, a two week job doing data collection, and probably moving I can only hope for the best.


At least the riding will help cure some of the stress.

First ride back

So today I went out and had my first ride in the 5 day training plan. Today was actually a free day that was added on thanks to the rain that came in a day early! So we will see how the next few days go. I have been off the bike way too much this spring and I am about 1000 miles behind where I need to be. Well hopefully the next few days go well and I will be able to catch up a bit. I do know I am going to be a little tired by the end of it but then again that is a good thing.

I saw a ton of riders out on the road today. I was not expecting to see anyone at all but I saw atleast 15 riders and I could not believe it. It was great to see so many folks out on a week day. Hopefully I will see as many tomorrow morning since I am going earlier and longer.

See you on the road.

Chicago

So I after the trip to NC to see my little sister graduate from vet school I had a little down time back in TX and got to do a little riding but not as much as I wanted to. It was nice to be able to get out and just ride. I did a few rides by myself and the rest were with a group and I was not too slow. On my last ride I was out in the country and saw something that I have never seen while riding before. When I moved to TX I quickly got used to seeing longhorn cattle, horses, goats, roadrunners, and even buffalo. Now during the last ride I actually stopped on the side of the road to see if what I was seeing was true. I had just done a short interval and it was getting pretty hot and I was starting to get low on water so I was worried that what I was seeing was a hallucination. Sure enough standing there was a ZEBRA!!! I took a few pictures with my phone so that my wife would believe me and then kept riding.

So right now I am sitting in my hotel room in Chicago at a Psychology conference, APS. I don’t have Internet access so I will have to post this on Sunday when I get back to TX. Last night we all went out and drank a bunch and stayed out really late. WOW, I can’t do that much any more. I know that with all of the food and drinks I am going to pay for it when I get back on the bike on Monday morning. At least I should be able to put in a lot of miles this next week and a lot of hours in the saddle. I am very disappointed with the number of miles that I have ridden this year so far and I plan on fixing that in the next month. I only have about 680 miles so far this year. My goal is to be at 2,000 by the end of July. If I can do that I will be very happy. 1,500 miles may be a more reasonable goal but we will see. We will see how the research goes this summer and how the job goes. If I can find the right job that does not require a bunch of odd hours then I should be able to do research and get the miles in.

One thing about being in Chicago is the number of bikes that are on the street. Some are old beaters but a lot are pretty sweet fixed gear bikes. Although I really don’t think that I would do well riding in the city. The traffic is bad enough walking and plus it is cold here while it is nice and warm back home in TX.

See you on the road.

The Plan

So with the spring semester over I have created the plan:

The plan will focus on three major things: research (ie. publications!!!!), a job, and RIDING! The part that I will focus on here is the riding.

I am way behind on miles so far this year and in a few weeks I expect to put in more miles than I have all year. With the right recovery in between the long rides I should be back to a decent shape within a month with the right training rides. Aerobically the running that I did this winter and spring has kept me in pretty good shape but the riding muscles are not what they should be so I will bring those back ASAP. As part of this large increase in miles I also want to finally get rid of the weight that I have been working on getting rid of for a while now. A light and strong rider is a better climber! As the first part of this plan my bike gets a make over next week. The new tires are on their way and the new handlebar tape will be purchased when I get back from NC. The new cassette and new chain have been waiting since Christmas thanks to are ready to be put on thanks to my wife! Once I get a few miles in the saddle and I am back with the faster rides the leg hair must go to fit in with the big boys.

So the Plan:
1. Clean and give my bike the spring cleaning treatment
2. Miles,miles, miles, and more miles.
3. Fewer sodas so that the miles result in a faster, more powerful rider
4. Clean legs so the racers won't realize that I am clinging to their wheels for dear life (At least until they see my face.
5. Hill repeats and sprint intervals so I can keep up when we go back to NC and I can show folks around here what a NC rider is like.

Well after I get back from NC the plan starts and I will keep the blog up to date with my progress.

See you on the road.

The end of the first year

So I took my one and only final today and now I am done with my first year of classes. Now I get to spend the summer doing research and writing papers hopefully. Along with a bunch of riding. I am very close to having a plan put together for training and the summer. The sole goal is to be in better shape by the end of the summer than I was when I left North Carolina. If I can do that I will not only be able to keep up with the groups that I ride with now but hopefully I will be able to take my share of pulls with the A group as well.

My wife and I get to see our friends and family this weekend! My little sister graduates from vet school this weekend. I can't believe that she will be a vet in a couple of days. GO JENN!!!

But for now....the semester is over and I am off to get some papa johns pizza, enjoy a Duck-Rabbit milk stout( man I wish they sold Duck-rabbit in Texas), and watch the primary results from NC tonight! The plan will start tomorrow!

End of the Semester

So the semester is finally winding down. I am finished with two of the three classes that I am taking this semester and only have a little more work to do with the other one. To celebrate I am getting up tomorrow morning and going for a run. The real celebration starts Wednesday when I get to go for a ride during the week.

Look out road here I come!

why a blog

So I started this blog to provide a peek into the life of a graduate student in psychology who is also a active cyclist. I just started back in grad school after a two and a half year break from school. I got my masters and then got a job and got married. After several years of a good job and money to buy a nice bikes and time to train and become competitive I decided to give up the job and free time and go back to school and get my PhD. Would would someone do this? Well who knows.

Hopefully by writing this blog about school and the new riding adventures I am having here in North Texas I can share my experiences with my riding friends back in NC as well as my family and anyone else who happens to stubble along.

As the Spring semester is winding down now I will hopefully have a lot more time to ride and get back into better form. I will try to share any worth while experiences along the way.

See you on the road.