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.