Father's Day

Yes it has been two days since Father's Day. I just wanted to quickly say happy belated father's day to all of the father's out there. It is an odd feeling to go from celebrating father's day for your father to other people doing nice things for you as well. It has only been a month and a half since Connor was born so I am just getting a taste of fatherhood. What I have experienced has made me even more greatful for having such a great father. Hopefully I can be as good a father as he is!

Thank you to my parents, sister and brother in-law, and especially my wife and Connor for an amazing 1st Father's Day! I am a very very lucky man.

Late starts, trains, and junk miles

For the second Saturday in a row I got to do the Mad Duck ride. Thanks to my wonderful wife I got to go out for a few hours and enjoy riding. Not only was she ok with me riding while she took care of Connor but she is the only reason I woke up in time to make it. I had set my alarm for 6am but apparently turned it off with out actually waking up. She woke me up at 6:30 and ask me if I was skipping the ride due to being up longer last night with Connor. Once I woke up enough to realize that I could still make it to the ride if I hurried I got up had breakfast, espresso, and was out the door.

I had a great ride but given my lack of fitness got dropped from the group twice (It is always nice to find short cuts). When I was trying to chase back on to a group I got caught by a train. Sure a train is nice when it stops the group you are trying to chase but not so nice when the group gets through and you don't. While I was sitting and waiting for the train to pass I started thinking about how I had been riding between times I was with the group.

When I am with the group I don't mind riding as hard or easy as the group is riding and so I don't really pay much attention to staying within a certain heart rate zone. At least that is true with my Saturday ride. Other rides I do a better job staying where I need to be for training. However, when I was taking short cuts to get back with the group I was riding hard but not super hard. I was in a "comfortable" zone 3. Standard junk miles. It worked to let me get back to the group but I started wondering about the impact/ effectiveness of the ride on my overall fitness. Now I am not racing now but I do want to make some progress regarding my form and being able to stay with the groups. I rationalized that I was doing what I needed to so that I could get back to the group and stay with them a little longer. However I did ride like that for 45 minutes or so before I was with them again.

So I guess I want some advice/opinions/critiques. Once you are dropped from a group like that is it better to do what you need to so you can rejoin the group OR is it better to go to either base ride mode or do intervals? Granted I am just trying to regain some fitness but if I can get into racing shape I would be very happy.

So if anyone has any thoughts let me know.

Connor William Banks

Connor was born about 4 weeks ago. After 16 hours of labor and a c-section Connor made his entry into the world. Nici and I are both very happy to have him here and we are slowly figuring things out. I think that he wishes that we would figure things out a little faster.

My parents were able to come out for a week after Connor was born to help us take care of him and get a little more sleep than we would otherwise. We are so glad that they came and were able to give us a hand. It was a huge help! Thanks Mom and Dad!
My sister and brother-n-law were able to make it out here over the memorial day weekend to meet Connor. My sister was worried that she would break him but she and David did a very good job. Naturals!


Connor is healthy and doing very well. He is growing nicely and taking it pretty easy on us. We are only getting up twice a night on average to feed him and he gets back to sleep pretty quickly. He is already starting to grow out of some of his newborn cloths (scary!) but fortunately we have more 0-3 months items of clothing that newborn cloths.

Thanks to my wonderful wife I did get 2 rides in last weekend and I am pretty sure I will get at least one in this weekend. I need to get my trainer out and spend some time on it inside when Connor is sleeping during the afternoon (Thanks for the tip Donald!). Hopefully I can get back to some passable form by July.


Unfortunately, the three of us will not be making our usual trip to North Carolina this summer but we all have our fingers crossed that we will be moving back to NC in December. Until then we are enjoying NC folks coming to see us. It has been great seeing my family over the last few weeks and we are looking forward to my parents coming back in August for a conference!

Well I can not have this post without including a good picture of Connor

Here are my sister and brother in-law doing a great job with Connor:

Well I will be updating this much more frequently with school, cycling and Connor news!

I am back!

So I have not posted anything for a very long time. I did not mean to be gone so long but this spring has been a little crazy. I have been doing a lot of writing (just not here). This spring I wrote a grant to fund a post-doc position at a university in North Carolina with a researcher I greatly respect. I have also spent a lot of time writing several papers and sending them off to journals. So while I have not written anything here I really have been busy.

I should find out about the scores on my grant proposal in about a month. Both my wife and I are really excited about the possibility of getting back to NC so we can be closer to friends, family, and the area of the country that we love.

I have been able to get some time in on my bike. I am not in the form that I want to be right now but hopefully I can get there soon. I have been slowly working on building up the bike that I mentioned in my last post. Unfortunately it is a very slow build but I may have some one willing to sell a 9spd ultegra groupo to me. If that is the case then I will just need wheels. If not then I am still looking for a cheap groupo.

Then there is the really big news. For anyone who has not already heard.....my wife and I now are parents. I do think that is worth a separate post (with pictures) so that will be up very soon.


So I will be doing a better job keeping this updated....as long as Connor lets us get some sleep!

Busy week but a very nice end to the week

This week has been a pretty busy week. In fact the last two have been a little crazy. Between teaching, writing up papers, and keeping up with general life stuff I have not had a ton of time to sit down and take a deep breath.

Despite all of the craziness, stress, and less sleep I did have a very nice thing happen this week. On Tuesday I was working at home on a paper and took a short break for lunch and checked the Texas bicycle racing association website/forum and saw that someone had just posted that they had two frames that were free to a good home. Luckly they were my size and so I emailed him. But in the time that had passed both frames had been claimed. I received an email from the guy giving away the frames the next day asking what I was going to do with them and if raced. I explained that I wanted to build it up so that  I could use it to race and he responded by saying that he actually had another frame (a nicer one) that he would give me! My lucky day! So today I met him and picked up the frame and fork and now I have some parts to look for. So if anyone has a spare handle bar and stem, set of wheels, and oh yea a entire groupo let me know. So I have quite a few parts that I will be looking for but hopefully over the next 6-12 months I can find good deals on all of the parts that I need.

So without further delay here are a few pictures.  It is a very nice Italian frame. Which probably means that most will say that putting Shimano components on it would be a no no.

 

  

Fortunately the guy that gave it to me even included a Selle Italia SLR saddle with the frame (exactly the kind that I have on my Madone.

So Thank you Peter!!!

Snow/Icey roads=Indoor trainer

In case you have not seen any news this week, we got a lot of snow in the Dallas TX area. The DFW airport got 12.5 inches of snow (yes that is a record). So despite several hours above freezing yesterday the roads this morning looked at little too nasty for me. With out a cross bike I was not so interested in riding in the slush. Since the NCSU-UNC game is no now I wanted to be home to watch the game so that ruled out riding in the afternoon. All that was left was some time of the trainer.

This mornings trainer ride was the first for the year and my lack of riding in the last few weeks really showed. If nothing else the time I spent on the trainer helped to remind me that I really need to get my training plan set and stick to it. So after the game I plan on spending some time finishing the plan.

Until then it is time to watch the NCSU game. I am really really hoping to see a wolfpack victory. Beating UNC would be really nice.

Birthday Present

So my birthday was last  week and I got some great presents. I have to point out one that my wife gave me and include a picture. So just in case there was any confusion:

Yes I am not Ted King. In case you don't know who Ted King is then you really should catch up on your up and coming professional cyclists. Ted has a great blog: http://www.iamtedking.missingsaddle.com/
If you are new to cycling then you have some things to learn.
1. How to ride in a group (safely)
2. How to ride fast.
And just as important as riding fast...
3. How to look good doing it.
Ted King has a great alter ego (The King of Style-KOS) who dispenses some great style advice. So if you sock height is not right or you are lacking any white riding cloths you should check it out.

I like the blog so much I wanted to get the shirt. Plus 1/2 of the profits go to a brain injury foundation. Always a good thing.

So check out the blog and remember that I am not Ted King.