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????