Winter training set up...

Yo, when it looks like this (see to the left) outside, it's time to ride the trainer damn it all. I hate the trainer. I loathe the trainer. I'd rather do nothing than ride the trainer, but since I have been doing nothing for like a month (or more), and the snow is piled up outside, and I don't have anything else to do, I might as well ride the accursed trainer. I already did my laundry for the travel I have coming up this week (Lansing, MI, and then Burlington, VT), I've already cleaned my bathroom. I suppose, I could always watch a million hours of Super Bowl pre-game, but that will only interest me for so long. So, again, trainer ride.

Here is the trainer set up right now, as it stands, in my tiny bedroom. Not optimal, but I've got the TV in front of me, iPod close by, and if I get really tired, I can hop off the bike, and jump into bed. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather ride outside, but currently, I've got no knobby tired bikes in DC with me, and to ride the road bike out in the crap out there right now, that would be, well, bad isn't the word for it. I'm sure there would be pain and suffering, and NOT the good kind. Continuing on the cycling path of things, I was sorry to see that Franco Ballerini died in a car crash in a rally where he was navigating for the driver. Gone too soon I think. He won some races himself, and then coached the Italian team, and sometimes even got them to stop fighting amongst themselves, in order to pull in a few world championships and not to mention, a gold medal from Bettini in Athens. He had a good career on the bike, and off. I'm sure he'll be missed. I'll leave you all with this little snippet of the 1994 Roubaix with Ballerini throwing it down...

Ballerini throwing down in PR.

Getting more fit?

Getting more fit. That is the question right now. Sure, I've been struggling with this whole riding thing for awhile now, but I do believe that I had what one might call a breakthrough yesterday. I'm still not as strong as I want to be, or used to be for that matter, but there were signs that things were progressing. Signs that I've been looking around for now for a little while. Yesterday, I was able to complete the Saturday group ride.

Now, bear in mind, that this is just a group ride. Some use it as a race, or race simulation, but let's face the facts, it's still just a group ride. It can be quite spirited at times, and some other times, depending on who is on said group ride, it can be just a faster ride with a bunch of weekend warriors. This weekend, it was somewhere in between. As a friend of mine who was also on the ride said, the hard parts were still hard, but the rolling/flatter parts were easier. In essence, everyone was drilling it up the climbs on the course, and on the flats, they were recovering. Hey, I'm all for it. It has been a LONG time since I actually did this whole ride. Over the course of the last year and a half or so, I've done portions of it here and there. I've ridden the harder parts of it, and I've ridden the easier parts of it. But, just a few weeks ago, I got dropped from the group ride at about only 30 minutes into it. So like I said, progress. I can't ask for much more. Getting out of shape, and losing fitness was so easy, getting it back, it's a bit harder. I think most of us know that. I was even feeling so good at the end of it, that I made a little half hearted attack out of the group to make a dash for the "finish line" (seriously, there is actually a line painted on the road where the group ride officially ends - the final sprint). Normally, I would not do such a thing. I would be one to sit in, wait for the sprint, and make my bid for "glory" at Saturday World Championships. Instead, I attacked. I did so because I saw the sprinters in the group all buckling down their shoes, sitting in the draft about 4 or 5 people back, and just waiting. I could not let them get away with this so easy. I jumped, got about 200 meters really quick, and 2 more guys jumped up to me, and we tried to motor it as long as possible. It sort of worked, because near the "finish" the group had shattered from about 20 people down to about 10 when all was said and done.

Post group ride, I took a nice easy ride home, and considered training for the day a success.

Next week, I start racing again. We'll see if I can get myself dropped in the first 15 minutes or so next weekend. If the race shakes out like the one I watched a few weeks ago though, I should be OK. Oh, and I'm going back to the cat. 3 ranks for now. No pro-am this coming weekend. That would be pure folly.

Look, it's simple...

If you happen to be out driving on a back road of Durham, NC, and you see a tiny light coming towards you in the opposite lane, do not, I repeat, do not hit the high beams.

Why you might ask? Well, let me let you in on a little secret. That small little light coming towards you, is me. Riding my bike. At night. When you shine your high beams, it hits me directly in the pupil, and I can't see. Seeing, is important when you're riding a bike at night, because you can't see that far down the road at night (obviously), and if I can't see, I might fall down, and tear off some skin, or maybe concuss myself. These are things that I don't want to happen to me.

So for the love of all that is holy, stop hitting me with the high beams. If I had something heavy to throw at you, I would. I'm just a guy, trying to get a training ride in after work, in the middle of winter. Give me a break will you?

One last thing, stop honking your horn at me. I can see the lights approaching behind me, you don't need to lay on the horn to let me know that you're there. This goes for the daylight hours as well. It scares the crap out of us when we're riding, and we're more apt to swerve into the lane of travel when startled, so knock it off. I mean, a quick little staccato "beep beep" when you're way behind us, is OK, it's a warning beep. But creeping up right behind us, and LAYING on the horn, you're likely to get an ass kicking for doing something like that, so stop it.

OK, one more thing. We all don't think we're "Lance" so stop shouting that at us out the window, and stop yelling to "GET OUTTA THE ROAD!" because contrary to what you might think, we paid for the road too. Just because we're riding our bikes at the moment that you see us, doesn't mean we don't own a car, or 2 (probably everyone I know that rides also has a car), and guess what? We pay insurance, gas taxes, vehicle taxes, and highway use taxes just like you little morons that yell at us that we don't deserve or pay for the road. Guess what Gus? We pay.

That's it for now. Seriously. That's all I've got.

Except for this evening, forecast is for "wintry mix" tomorrow. Which means, the whole State is going crazy in NC. Buying bread, milk, and eggs at the grocery store, and canceling everything in sight (even before stuff starts to fall from the sky). Now, I've been living here for almost 8 years now, and I've seen this all before, but it still never ceases to surprise me how insane people get when frozen precipitation comes down. I'll go to work tomorrow, just like always, except I'll be one of only about 20 people there. I almost guarantee it. Ah well, that's just how it goes.

OK, now that's all that I've got for now.

I have decided...

I have decided that I do actually like riding my bicycle at night. It's quiet, it's cool, and it's dark. It's good stuff. I actually think it makes you a better bike handler as well, since you have to "feel" the road a little more than you would during the day. Feel the turns, feel the road. If you don't, then you might crash. I catch more "smells" at night as well. The folks in their homes cooking. The smell of wood fires burning, and a bunch of other stuff. If you don't have snow on the ground, and it's not too cold outside, get a light, get a blinky for the rear, and go for a ride. It's 10 times better than the trainer.

Good times...

Went out riding today, it is now over 70 degrees (according to my dashboard widget, it's 71. Now, that might not sound that warm and all, but damn when it's January 6th, that's plenty o' warm folks. Plenty. Today, I was shooting for a 3+ hour ride, it being Saturday and all, and the weather being damn fine. I got out in Orange County, NC, and found myself flailing on the bike, feeling like absolute and utter shit. Yeah, I was cracking about an hour into it. I caught a few guys going about my pace, a little slower, but decided to jump in with them. It worked out nice. Good conversation about welding and other things, and I managed to roll in with a 3.5 hour ride. Which considering how I felt about an hour into it, which was like death, it turned out all good. Met some new people out on the road, and got the ride in that I needed to get in.

Now what I really need to do is start really buckling down, and get out on the bike during the week. I have to suck it up, ride more, train right, and eat right. Yeah, I'm starting to get obsessed about riding again. Just for the mere fact that I would like to race the bike again, but even more than that, I want to look damn find at my wedding come December of 2007. Especially since it's going to be on a beach. Got to have that "swimsuit" figure and all. Maybe, someday, I'll get fit again. Start of the race season ain't too far off now, and I don't think I'll be making it to the annual start of the season brouhaha in Greenville, SC. Might be more like Rock Hill weekend. Although, daylight saving starts early this year. 2nd week of March and all, so the light will be going on longer and longer earlier, which makes for more training time outside, well, training time outside when the sun is out. Which is always a good thing.

I'm thinking that this season, we'll give the old Pro 1-2 category another shot, if things don't go well, we might see a downgrade to cat.3 at least for a short while to get some race fitness back under me. We'll see if I can pull it off. My first season racing as a cat. 2 things went not too bad really for the most part, until mid season when I started slacking off and not doing what I was supposed to be doing for training, and then at the end of the season came back strong again. I know I can do well at that level, just have to drop about 50 million pounds, and gain a ton o' fitness. I'll report back on progress as things move along during the off season, and during the season.