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.