Good News!!!

I have been waiting to share some very good news with everyone until now but now I can share with everyone.......

I have a faculty position in Florida. I will be on faculty at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, FL. YEAH!!! After the years in graduate school I am happy that I have finished my Ph.D. and that I have a great job. I feel very luck to have a job given the academic job market. The fact that it is a job that I am very excited about makes it even better.

So now I will be transitioning from the role of graduate student to faculty member. Plus transitions from living in Texas to living in Florida. I am excited about teaching several classes in the fall and starting up my research. Hopefully, I can still find the balance in life to find time to fit some bike rides in around time with my family and work.

Now we are trying to finish up all of the plans to move to Florida. We have found a place to live, rented a moving truck and are packing up. So it will be an interesting couple of weeks but the end result of the work will be great.

Summer Trip

We just got back from our family summer trip to North Carolina to see our family and friends back in Cary, NC.  It was nice to get back to NC and have some time to celebrate finishing my dissertation. While I did not get to see all of my friends, I did get to meet with a lot of them. I was even able to take my bike on the trip and join in four rides while I was there. The Capitol Cycling Club 4th of July ride in Cary holds a special place in my heart since it was the first 100K ride that I ever did. This year I went with the lead group for the first time. I expected that I would be able to stay with them for about 30 miles but that I would be dropped and find a group of folks I know to ride the rest of the ride with. To my surprise I was able to stay with the lead group for the entire ride!!! We ended up averaging only 22.2 miles per hour but the first hour was much faster. I guess getting my rear end kicked by Cat 1,2, and 3 Texas Racers has made me much stronger!

The trip to NC was much nicer since we had my wife's new car. We got a Honda CR-V and I love it. I am pretty jealous of her new car and the drive to NC was very nice.

Dissertation Defense

Last Friday I defended my dissertation and following the defense I was greeted by my committee with words that I had never heard addressed to me. Before I tell you what they were let me describe the dissertation defense process for those of you who do not know about it.

The first step in the entire dissertation process (after you have a good research idea, examine the literature, and write a proposal) is to have a proposal meeting in which you give your committee a proposal document that reviews the existing literature, describes the research project you want to do, and how you will analyze the data. Assuming that your are able to convince your committee that the project you want to do is well designed and needed, you then start collecting the data (after you have IRB approval), analyze the data, and then write up your findings. Once you have written up the findings and your committee chair (Advisor) thinks that the document is ready to go, you send the manuscript out to your committee schedule the defense meeting (with the committee and notify the department and grad school).

At the start of the defense meeting everyone except the committee members leaves the room and the committee decides if the candidate can proceed with the defense. If they think that the candidate is ready then everyone can come back in the room and the defense starts. During the defense the candidate (student) presents the findings of the dissertation project with probably a good deal of questions. The night before my defense a friend sent me a link about a part of the defense that I was not aware of (the snake fighting portion- http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-portion-of-your-thesis-defense They never tell you about the snake fight in the grad school manual but prepare anyway). Thankfully I had time to prepare.

My meeting was scheduled for two hours and given the number of hypotheses I had and number of questions that I received the meeting took the full two hours. Once the presentation and questions are finished, everyone except the committee members leave the room and the committee deliberates regarding whether the candidate has successfully defended the dissertation and earned their Ph.D. I can tell you that waiting in the hall during that time is brutal. Thankfully I had two very nice people waiting with me (THANK YOU SHANA and DANIEL). When I went back into the room I was worried that the committee wanted changes and for me to defend again (I guess it was just a lack of confidence). The committee greeted me with just a few words: Congratulations Dr. Banks.

WOW

For the first time someone was using the words Dr. Banks and not talking about my parents!!!

Following my defense my committee had suggested a new analysis and a handful of changes, which I was able to take care of this week. Today I submitted what should be the final paper work to the graduate school!

So now it is time to celebrate! And there is additional good news that I will share soon regarding what I will be doing in the fall.

So thank you to everyone that has been a part of my success over the last several years.

It all leads up to this

Tomorrow I defend my dissertation and accomplish the last step in graduate school. I started in graduate school in August of 2001 in a developmental psychology program. After several years of classes and research I discovered that developmental psychology was not my main interest and I was much more interested in cognition. Once I finished my masters degree I left the program and worked for several years. The years that I spent working, doing research for a living, changed my focus and interest in research completely. I realized that I loved research and needed to go back to school and earn my PhD. So my very understanding wife willingly moved to North Texas so that I could do so.

After several years of classes and many hours working in the lab collecting data and writing I am almost finished. The last step in the process is to defend my dissertation. Hopefully I will have good news to report tomorrow!

Morning

It may shock some of the folks that I work with but I am not a morning person. I have always been happier staying up late rather than getting up early. However, once I finished my masters degree and started working I switched to an early schedule. I always like getting to work before many other people. When I started back in school to finish my PhD. I really enjoyed getting in to campus before 8am because it usually meant that I could work for an hour or two before there were a lot of other people in the lab. So I was able to get a lot done!

I still like getting in to work early and getting a lot done when it is quiet but in the last few weeks I have been trying to get up a little earlier and go for a run a few days a week. While I like riding in the afternoon when it is hot I can not run in the heat. Now I do not like running but I know that it is good for me so I am trying to do it more. Maybe it is because I do not like running and maybe it is because it is early in the morning but I have had a very hard time waking up early to run. I am still getting up at my normal time to work but getting up earlier to run has not been working.

I am not trying to run five days a week but twice a week would be nice. I do like the way I feel when the run is over and it is a great start to the day. I put a new playlist on my ipod for the run, hoping to encourage getting up to run but still no luck.

So if anyone has any ideas...I am up for suggestions.

Progress

The week has resulted in a pretty good amount of progress for both school and riding. In the last week I have finished my dissertation, set it to my committee, and scheduled my dissertation defense. I started at UNT less than 4 years ago but on some days it feels like we have been here for much longer. At the same time I can not believe that my dissertation is less than two weeks away. Hopefully I will have very good news to report in the next few weeks and until then I need to get my powerpoint for my defense meeting ready.

On the riding front I am feeling much stronger on the bike. Maybe fixing the brake that was rubbing and raise my saddle a millimeter or two made a difference but I am also starting to really feel pretty fresh and able to respond to attacks. Yes I got dropped tonight on the King of Wednesday ride (KOW) but I stayed with the group much longer than usual.

Ooppsss

It pays to keep up with your bike maintenance and I found out one of the issues that I have had on some recent rides my not have just been my legs (or lack of legs). I noticed that my front brake was rubbing on the wheel. Yes that can slow you down with out you noticing if you are not paying attention. The brake was not rubbing so much that I could notice it unless I was really paying attention.

I was able to clean my bike this weekend and fix the brake issue by simply centering the brake. While I was cleaning the bike I wanted to try and fix another issue that I had been having with shifting. A couple of weeks ago I broke a spoke on my rear wheel. I took it to a local shop and had it fixed the same day and did not think any thing about it. The only issue was that after I had the spoke fixed was some shifting issues. Now I need to get a new cassette so I assumed it was just wear in some gears I use more. When I really looked at my cassette once I had removed the wheel I quickly noticed the issue.

The order of cogs on my cassette should be 11-12-13-14-15-16-..... However, the order that the cogs was 11-12-13-15-14-16-17....

No wonder I was have issues with shifting. Hopefully I have fixed the issues and will the riding will be much stronger. The moral of the story keep your bike properly maintained.

Why can't we all get along

Today I had a experience that shocked me. One of my friends posted something on facebook that I just could not believe. The exact quote was "you know what really grind my gears? People on bicycles holding up busy roads. Or people on bicycles on winding country roads"

Now as a cyclist I feel very strongly about cyclist right to the road and safety on the road. My friend is not a cyclist and I bet just does not understand what it is like to be out on the road on a bike. The comment resulted in a debate that went on most of the day about whether bikes belong on the road or not. 

I spent the day thinking about how to show him that not only do bikes belong on the road but that people should stop taunting us thinking that it is funny. My main concern is that if I can not convince a friend of this, how can we possibly change all of the drivers out there that we don't know. I know that I don't have the answer but maybe the place to start is to get more folks on bikes. I know that once I got on a bike I realized a lot more about driving and how to safely pass bikes when I am in my car.


So talk to your friends and get them out on a bike. Even if it is just for 1 ride. You never know....they may decide that they really like riding.

Frustration

This past weekend I had two rides that were very frustrating. I am used to getting dropped on my Saturday ride since that ride usually has a ton of racers much better than I am. However, this last Saturday there were several races in the DFW area and so most of the racers were not on the ride. Yet I still got dropped. To add insult to getting dropped as I was chasing back I ran into this guy:

I have no idea what kind of snake it was. I did not really want to get that close. It looked a little like a copper head from what I saw. I was happy that I had good brakes and was able to come skidding to a stop before running over it.  The delay in stopping for it to finish crossing the road made me miss regrouping with the rest of the pack and I road the rest of the ride by myself. It was especially fun given the 25mph head wind with 30-35 mph gusts.

Sunday was even a little worse since I was getting dropped by a group of strong riders but no Cat 1 or 2 racers. Very frustrating.

What is most frustrating is that I know why I am not strong on the bike and how to fix it. Fixing it has been difficult thought. I need to ride a lot more. I have gained some strength in the last month and I am very hopeful that I will get a lot stronger in the next month. I am scheduling my dissertation defense now and will hopefully be done with that soon!!!!

So time for more intervals and lots of time on the bike.

Dissertating

Ok so dissertating is probably not a real word but it is a reasonable single word description of what I have been doing. I finished collecting my data during finals week and after finishing posting final grades I have been working on my dissertation full steam! I had my data analysis finished last week until I had a great idea that I thought I could test using some SEM analysis. After spending five days working on cleaning data and trying to find a good fitting model in SEM it was time to give up on the SEM and call my data analysis complete.

So with my results section complete and a first draft of my discussion section finished as well I am feeling pretty good about finishing things up. I am hoping that by the end of the day tomorrow I will have a good draft to send to out. Hopefully I am getting very close to being finished.

Until I the manuscript is done I will press on with dissertating.....and a ride or run when I need to clear my head and regain some focus so I can write.

What a difference a year makes

So a little over a year ago my son was born. I can not believe that it has been a full year. A year ago it my wife and I were still in awe that we were parents and now (on most days) everything seems pretty routine.

A year ago:

Now:

Yeah he has grown a bit and I could not be more proud of my little guy.

Crazy times

I wrote this last week but it has been a little crazy lately...

I am writing this from the DFW airport as I wait to catch a flight to a university in the south for a campus interview. I am not disclosing where I am heading right now b/c I will post this later and don't want everyone to know where I am interviewing. By the time you read this I will likely be back home.

The reason I am writing this now is to share a little bit about the interview process for faculty positions. From everything I know about the "real" world (i.e. business) the faculty search/interview process is very different. After sending a ton of information in with my application (teaching statements/research statements/teaching evaluations/letters of recommendation/VITA(academic resume)/ cover letter/transcripts), search committees typically want to do a phone interview. If they like you on the phone interview then they will bring you in for a campus interview. Rather than the campus interview lasting a couple of hours, it can last several days. So right now I am heading down for an afternoon with a lunch, tour, and dinner. Tomorrow I have a breakfast with faculty members, meeting with some faculty members, meetings with deans and a vice president, a teaching demonstration, and a research demonstration and then back on the plane to come home. And then back to campus the next day to teach and check on my data collection.

Yeah it is a long day and a half but hopefully it will end with a positive outcome. If you are lucky in the application process you end up with several of these campus visits so you are "jet setting" across the country. Which means that you have to have people to cover classes and things of that nature.

So I want to say thank you to everyone who has covered my classes and campus responsibilities while I have been out of town.

Hopefully this will all end with a good announcement and I will be able to tell everyone where Nici, Connor, and I will be moving in August

Junk miles are good (sometimes)

Every training book that I have ever read and any coach that I have ever talked to has always warned against junk miles. Now junk mile are what many of us end up riding a lot of. These are miles that are too hard to be considered endurance or recovery miles but too easy to provide the effort we need to really get stronger. So we end up hurting ourselves but not quite enough for a really benefit. (I am sure you can find better descriptions of junk miles but that one works for me). Now many of us ride these miles despite the fact that we know better but it is fun to ride with friends that may push us to ride these types of miles so that we can keep up with them.

But I was out on my bike over the winter and fall and realized that I was riding a ton of junk miles. When I got home and looked at my computer my heart rate was too high for base but not high enough to really help me increase my VO2 max or other high end thresholds. The odd thing was that I felt great. I started to wonder why I was feeling so good while I knew that the training that I was doing was not the type that would make me stronger for this season. It finally hit me on one warmer fall ride. I was having fun with my friends. Sometimes we can get so locked into a training plan and making sure that we are going hard enough or slow enough to work on a specific area that we forget why we ride. I don't ride for glory or for wins (lets face it I am simply not fast enough) but I ride b/c I love the feeling of being on my bike. And that is why I miss it so much when I am not able to ride. I don't miss the intervals or crawling into a headwind. I miss riding with friends.

Junk miles may be bad for a training plan that can be absolutely amazing for the soul. So, if you have not had a FUN ride lately go call some friends and get in some junk miles for the soul.

I promise you won't regret it.

My 1 dollar Table

My Sophomore year at NCSU I purchased my first piece of furniture for a new place that I was moving into my Junior year. After a spring semester camp out (camping out for basketball tickets was an experience that no NCSU student could miss) one of the guys in my dorm left a outdoor table at the location we were "camping out" for tickets. A mutual friend grabbed the table and took it back to his dorm room. For almost 2 months that friend kept reminding the owner of the table to come and pick up the table. After 2 months my friend decided he would sell the table to the highest bidder. Now this was a brand new outdoor plastic table. At the time the "origional" owner of the table had paid about $50 for the table. My friend gave the owner every possible chance to come and pick it up but he never did.

I knew that I was going to be getting an apartment and wanted an outdoor table. So i made sure that I was present when the "bidding" for the table started. Since my friend simply wanted the table out of his room he started the biding at 25 cents. After just a couple of bids, my "high" bid of 1 dollar won!

So I have had the table since the spring of 1999. I have had many many BBQ's with friends and this table has served as a perfect place for so many of my friends to gather around and enjoy hanging out. A couple of years ago my wife an I purchased a very nice metal table for our patio. We actually now have a true patio set (Yes I feel old just typing that).  Since then my 1 dollar table has spent it's time collapsed in the garage.

So my wife and I were cleaning out the garage this last weekend and decided that it was time to get rid of the 1 dollar table. Tonight I put the table out for the trash folks to pick up tomorrow. It is now a rather old table and no longer looks as bright and shiny as it did my Sophomore year. But it is still kind of sad to see it go. It was such a cool thing when I got it. Especially since I love sitting out with friends and grilling. To me the best time hanging out with friends (other than on the bike) is always hanging out in the back yard by the grill.

I am secretly hoping that someone spots it tonight and grabs it for themselves.

Thanks $1 table for all of the memories!

Table with snow:

Training

Over spring break I was able to resume training. I had planned a long endurance training block. Four back to back days of 4 to 5 hour rides. I have done this training block before and experienced some wonderful results. The first time that I tried this was in NC and I had a few friends who joined me on some of the rides (Thanks Sandra). They were the only reason I was able to complete all of the rides! This year I had planned to complete the training block early during my spring break week (Sunday-Wednesday) but the cold on Monday and Tuesday encouraged me to delay the block to later in the week (Thursday - Sunday). I was able to push through the Thursday (4 hours) and Friday (5 hours) rides without much of an issue. We had some really nice weather, lows in the 60's and high's in the 80's, but spring in Texas also means WIND. 25 mile an hour winds gusting to 35 is nice as a tail wind but brutal as a head wind. I kept saying "I love the wind, I love the wind, I love the wind". Somehow that kept me moving forward. I will take hills any day over wind. But hopefully it will make me stronger!

Well at least I am back to training and have a plan to keep it up so that get back to the front of the group rather than hanging off the back.

Denton Crit Report

My first race back after an almost 4 year break from racing went about we well as I could expect or even ask for. As I have said before my winter training did not go as planned and I am still pretty far behind in terms of my fitness (still a few pounds to lose and a ton of miles needed in the legs).

The important results from the race were pretty simply: 1. I did not crash, 2. I kept racing despite being lapped, and 3. I LOVED IT! For those of you who don't know my last race did not really go as planned. Less than 15 miles into my last road race I ended up on the ground with a cracked helmet and a cracked frame. Since I was headed back to grad school I decided I would not race again for a while (way too expensive to replace the frame), but I got tired of waiting. So the fact that I made it through the crit with no crash and feeling good about it was a great boost to my confidence.

The race was a pretty standard crit course in a parking lot around a football stadium. It was not a perfect rectangle but it had a nice curvy stretch on the backside of the stadium. The only downside was the wind. It was very breezy and so we had a nasty head wind section at the finish and some fun cross wind sections that left everyone guttered. Otherwise it was a very fast and non-technical course. I only had to touch my brakes twice during the entire 40 minute race!

I was able to stay with the main pack for the first 5 laps of so. I even put in a nice pull on the front for about 1/2 a lap. I had a teammate and I wanted to work for him as much as I could before I was done. I was really hoping that there was a photographer there who got a picture of me when I was on the front with a teammate on my wheel but no-such luck. After I got dropped I attempted to chase back on but the wind was not going to make that possible. I kept a steady pace and then jumped back in when the pack came back around.

The cat 5 races in Texas have a tactics discussion before the race starts and sometimes a experienced racer (Cat 1) will jump in and race with the cat 5 folks to give advice and help teach folks how to race safely. I really enjoyed this and was able to sit on one of their wheels after I was lapped and watch how the raced (Thanks Kurt Bickel).

So I finished 20th place and stayed upright. The only issue now is that I want to jump back into racing full force now. So I have to find a way to build up my Casati frame, buy a racing license, and afford racing fees. Any one want to buy my mountain bike??? Or sponsor me? I have room on my helmet for ads!

Ok, now it's time to seriously train!!!

Nerves

Tomorrow I take a step back into bike racing. I have not competed in a bike race in almost 4 years. I had said that I would not get back into racing until I 1. had built the Casati frame and 2. was fit enough to ride away from a cat 5 field. Well.....neither of those are true right now but I am doing it anyway. I am tired of waiting and tomorrow I line up for a crit.


I am a little nervous. Ok to be honest I am pretty nervous. The crit is at 8am so from the time I get up until I start I won't have a ton of time to worry about it (hopefully).

Well since it is an early start I am keeping this short and heading to bed. Hopefully I will have good news to report tomorrow. At this point good news would be not getting completely dropped and being able to hang in the group with out any issues.

Here goes...

Up and down

A few weeks ago I had put together a great training plan and was ready to get serious about training for the season (Yeah I am a little late). Of course at that point my son got a nasty stomach bug. While we typically encourage sharing we are working on keeping somethings to ourselves. Specifically illness. We would like to be able to keep him from sharing any illness with us but he really likes to share. So both Nici and I ended up coming down with the stomach bug. I don't know if either Nici or I have been that sick in a couple of decades. It was BAD! It actually knocked us out for three days or so. I managed to make it to campus to teach but that was about it. While there was a lot less walking around the lecture hall I teach in and a lot more using the podium to stay upright class went pretty well.

The oddest thing about that week was that while we were all feeling so horrible I kept getting really good news. Had we not been sick it might have been one of the best weeks in a while. My IRB approval for my dissertation was approved and I was able to start collecting data full force (thanks to some great undergraduate RA's). I got some good news on the job front and Connor got over his illness pretty quickly.

It was a very odd week with the extreme positive and negative emotions but the positive certainly outweighed the negatives.

Now to get my data collected quickly and get back to training. My first race of the year is this weekend. WOW how did that get here so quickly????

Back to Racing

I have been wanting to get back to racing since the last race that I was in. Ok maybe not right after my last race but shortly after. I have not raced since May or June of 2007. My last race did not end well and since I am in grad school I knew that I could not afford a new frame if something happened to the one I have. Well about a year ago a very nice guy took that excuse away from me. Peter Erdoes gave me a frame that I have been trying to build up.

The build has been slow. To be fair it has pretty much stalled. But I really want to get back to racing. So I made a decision today to just do it. I have signed up for a race 3 weeks from today. YIKES! Yeah my training is probably 2 months behind schedule but in order to push myself to train at 5:30 am I needed the pressure of knowing that the opportunity to race was real.


While I am taking the risk that something happens to my Madone I have a plan in case it does. I will have to sell my Santa Cruz Superlight mountain bike so that I can a)repair my Madone and b)build the frame that Peter game me. I have been holding off on selling my mountain bike b/c I do really like riding it but I have not been on it for over a year now. Hopefully it won't come to this but I am prepared.

So now I just have to make sure I don't look like an idiot and my legs can actually keep me in the race for more than 10 minutes!

Hoops

So on a cycling related blog you would assume that anything entitled hoops probably has to do with wheels. While I do need a set of wheels to build up the frame I am still working on building...this post has nothing to do with wheels.

The hoops I am referring to are the important ones that you have to step through as a graduate student to earn your Ph.D.
They start far before you enter the program. Earn good grades, good GRE score, letters of recommendation, apply to school. Once you are in you have a whole new set of hoops to jump through. Take classes, do research, thesis proposal, thesis defense, written comprehensive exams, oral comprehensive exams, dissertation proposal, dissertation defense.

Well today I successfully proposed my dissertation so I only have one hoop left to jump through--dissertation defense.

Now on to the data collection and defense!

Remembering what matters

Often ours best plans simply don't work out. Missed rides or runs when we have a training plan, having to work late when we want to stop at 5 to relax and spend time doing something fun, ect. We all have had it happen and it can be very frustrating. When life gets in the way of my plans I tend to get very frustrated. Especially when I have been trying very hard to make all of the plans work out. Sometimes it can feel as if I will never be able to get all of the work done, spend time with my family, and ride. I can usually get two of the three in but not all three. Hence my continuing focus on getting the balance right.

But the last few weeks have reminded me of what is really important and no matter how discouraging it can be when things don't go according to plan I am very lucky. In the last few weeks several people close to me have lost someone close to them. My good friend lost his mother a week or so ago and my sister lost her dog after many amazing years. These losses have left me thinking about how lucky I am to have an amazing wife, son, sister, brother-in-law, parents, friends (2 and 4 legged). So when life gets crazy and you get frustrated trying to fit everything in take a moment to think about all of the people in your life that matter to you. Maybe a missed ride or run is not such a big thing.

2011 Goals

Ok so I have a pretty big list of goals for this year. Of course they are in several different areas of my life. While I do plan on going into more detail (basically so I am held accountable for each of them) later I want to get the gist of them down now.

Professional Goals:
-Collect dissertation data
-Defend dissertation
-Graduate
-Get a faculty position or post-doc
-Rewrite a number of articles and resubmit them to journals

Family:
-Spend more time with my wife and Connor
-Be the best dad and husband possible

Personal (non-family):
-Get back into racing shape
-Lose the weight I gained in the last 8 months (back down to 140lbs)
-Race ???


Ok so basically in order to accomplish all of these goals (this spring) I need to find the perfect balance in my life. Either that or stop sleeping and I am pretty sure that there is not enough caffeine in the world for that.

So more details later on how I will accomplish all of this and still enjoy life. Yes I know that some of these goals are a little vague and I will be making them more specific soon.

New Year - New Start

So it clearly has been a while since I last posted something here. The last seven months or so have been pretty crazy. Getting into a balance with family, work, and riding it seems that I can usually manage two of the three but not all three. Especially with trying to finish school and apply for a ton of faculty positions.

The last few weeks have been wonderful. A trip back to NC to see our family and travel with Connor for the first time was amazing. The only thing that did not go smoothly was the snow storm the day after Christmas. We had arranged to have Connor baptized the day after Christmas and the snow ended up closing everything in town. I guess it just gives us another reason to get back to NC soon!

I have been working on figuring out a way to get the balance in my life so that I can get my work done, graduate, find a faculty position, spend tons of time with my family, ride, and maybe even race. My plans are coming together in my head and once I put them down on paper then I will share them here!