On and Off

Taking forever to feel 100% but the time off work sure has been great! It seems like most people are off or not working very hard this week since our messages and email have been really light. Sounds good to me.

Tuesday was an awesome day and I hit the San Juan trail with Noah, everytime I ride it I'm reminded why people call it the best trail in Southern California, it's that fun.

Check out all the tiny switch backs going to the canyon floor

Wednesday turned into a drizzly mess and I rolled home after 1 hr on the road bike already soaked. Took a nap and took the Rodeo to get the tire fixed at Wal-Mart. Not exaclty the perfect afternoon.

Today was back to awesome with beautiful blue skies and another great mtn ride after busting out some work in the morning. Best part was my slight nagging cold symptoms disappeared once on the bike. We rode the Santa Anas and ended up going to the peak - 18miles of climbing followed by an amazing 10mi decent... 2.5hrs up and 1hr down. The legs were good, trails tacky and views amazing. If I stay well tonight and back it up with the New Years group ride tomorrow I'll finally be on my way to the solid endurance training i've been so anxious to get started. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Time Off

Finally feeling better from the forever flu. I got sick on the 19th and finally felt good for a full day yesterday the 27th... In the meantime Beth and I had a nice Christmas holiday, did a few easy rides, and got more than enough rest. Now I'm ready to get going, get out of the house, train and find some other fun things to do with the time off this week. Tentative plan is to head for NorCal in a couple days here and take our time going up the coast to get there. It will be a little cold, but if it stays dry there should be plenty of good road riding on hand.

I've already logged enough comuter time this morning, so it's time to pack a lunch and head for the beach. Maybe I am spoiled...

This Week

This week did me in. It started as a couple long days at work and easy days on the bike - but led to even more tiring days at work, a crazy holiday party and now being sick...

I looked forward to this weekend for a while now knowing that a couple big projects at work would be behind us and I could do some long easy rides in the beautiful weather. Somewhere early in the week I wore myself out a little too much or touched the wrong thing and slowly throughout Friday I started feeling more and more questionable. Full on chills, aches, and a slight fever for the last 24hrs now.

I've watched more tv today than the rest of the month leading up to today combined. If it just wasn't so nice out... Hawaii ironman was on but their coverage drives me crazy, they don't show much in the way of racing.

Yesterdays news on the 2010 mtn bike Triple Crown is interesting - http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/us-cup-announces-new-triple-crown-all-mountain-series With both that and the Pro XCT series being promoted as the top races to hit it's hard to say if all the tops guys will pick one over the other - or just do both. Interesting article (and even better comments at the bottom) from JHK - http://singletrack.competitor.com/2009/12/features/another-day-with-jhk-incredibly-frustrated_5050

If UCI issues caused the split thats a shame because no more than 15 racers (at the biggest events) were getting any benefit from the UCI status anyway. The focus should have been on spending the money to imrpove the series otherwise and once established, the UCI status could follow. The THREE-FOUR riders who have a chance at the olympics will be in Europe to make that happen regardless. The people there love cycling and mainstream Americans never will. That being said the sport of cycling is very popular in the US by those that do it, and the majorty of them don't follow Pro racing. Changing that is what can grow the sport here. Having a great National series with better coverage would make more of a difference with these potential fans than an American doing well at the Olympics once every four years. Good news is the sport is still alive out there even if not promoted to it's potential and people like Tedro are trying their best to improve that.

Now back to my green tea...

Working Away

This week has flown by! I guess that's what happens when things are busy. My Tue - Thur routine was pretty tough and I am finally just chilling this evening. The days I trained this week started with rolling out on the bike just after 6am. 2:15 ride time followed by work from 8:30 to 6:00 or so. Then on Tues and Thur I went straight to the gym for a short but solid weight workout. After dinner Beth and I would hang out for a couple hours at most and then it's bedtime. Not so glamorous, but that's what it will take for the next couple months to build some sound fitness while dealing with the short daylight.

All the changes in the National level mountain bike races lately have been pretty crazy. I think the main issue is USAC not stepping up to the plate in helping to promote the pro series. It's too bad, but at least there are a lot of good promoters out there making good races happen anyway. Still not sure if I want to focus on making it to the uci races, and eventually a world cup so I eventually have a chance at worlds - OR go after the most popular west coast races and actually win something for a change... Lances ranch on May 31 will most likely be on the schedule either way though...

A recent trip to trader joes - i eat a lot of granola bars...

Vegas

Busy at work - so of course the power went out during the "storm" yesterday and my hard drive crashed. Not good timing with a ton of stuff going on right now. Also a little frustrating riding in the cold at the crack of dawn and looking out the window to see perfect conditions now. I guess there are worse things in life. We did have a solid weekend!

The strip sunday morning

Beth was awesome - 3:32!!!

wind made the climb to mt charleston tough

the way down was so much worse though - pretty but so cold and windy

Tenth Avenue North

Beth and I were lucky enough to see these guys (well 2 of them playing acoustic) Tuesday night at Calvary Chapel in Santa Ana. Gotta love the messages of their songs

Turn up your speakers and check them out - http://www.tenthavenuenorth.com/media/music

East Coast

We had a great trip to Virgina for Thanksgiving with Beths family. Lots of visiting, great food, and nice weather made for a really nice trip. Flying across country for a 3-day trip and a messed up eating schedule messed up our energy a little, but a nice cruise to the coast Sunday evening made it all better.

Now it's non-stop busy with work and training. Thats right, official training, since the CA mountain bike season will start in February next year it's time to get going. More details on the actual training routine to follow.

Here's the 2010 Pro XCT schedule - looks good if you live in Socal! Not sure that's the best thing for the overall health of the series, at least one east coast event should be on there, as well as an Oregon event in place of one of the SoCal rounds... I still believe it's promotors not wanting to get involved for some reason, not just the guys from ShoAir wanting a CA based series. At least the other rounds - Bump and Grind, WORS race, and CO Springs are all cool, technical race courses. I dont think the same can be said for the Big Bear round out here. http://www.uscup.net/index.php?schedule

Never know who you'll see at the airport