I hate the winter

I used to love the winter when I was a kid. The snow was so fun and I did not mind the cold at all. I just figured that I could throw more clothes on and I would be good to go. I guess it was because I was always too hot as a kid, my parents would put me in too many clothes or something. Now it's different though. I lived for a few years barely being able to pay for my heating bill. My wife was going threw school and my job didn't pay well enough for us both to live on. Never feeling warm for 5 months at a time for 3 to 4 years was just too much. Now things are a millions times better but I still hate the cold. What passionate cyclist wouldn't? I know that there are guys that excel at cold rainy races but no one enjoys training in the cold, or rain. All I want to do is ride my bike but going out when it is under 20F is just crazy. So I am banashed to the deep dark depths that I know as the dungeon. I own a little 5' x 8' storage locker in the basement of my building that I set up my bike and trainer and go to town. I have it rigged up as good as it can get though. I have my little protable DVD player, a radio, plenty of light, some cool cycling photos and art. It is my little tiny man cave. Being able to watch movies or race DVD's does make the time go by a little faster but really it is still mind numbingly boring. It is the only way to improve for next year though unless I could travel to the warm places of the earth and train while staying at some 5 star resort.....we can all dream.

Maybe if there was something to do around here when it snows it might be more fun, like sking or snowboarding. There isn't even a really good sledding hill around that I know of. I guess I shouldn't complain too much though as this Fall was the best Fall in a few years. Almost no rain and plenty of time to ride.

Just please let it be over soon.

After over 8 days off the bike and 7 days of no working out at all I am getting back in the swing. I did two work outs today, one in the gym and the other on the trainer in the basement. The gym workout was a change from my normal gym workout. I have decided to up the intensity and weight after a talk with Kurt and Mike about what I was doing in the gym. I am sure that they would both feel that I am still doing too much work for this time of the year but I am gambling a bit. Really I have made two gambles for next season, one is by moving up to Cat 3 without too much in the way of great results last year, and two is my high volume of work at, and up to this point. I will just have to see if my body can take all the abuse and recover enough to have a good to great year. I do have experience in this type of training you see. I was an elite gymnast for 5 years and got there in only 3 years. I was not a top elite or anything. One year I was 25th in the country on the rings and I would place in the top 3 every once in a while but never on the top. The way I got there was a TON of work and I am hoping that I can do that same type of work on the bike. The big difference other than sports is that I was a teenager not 29 years old. But I have never done what people thought I should or could do. So why start now.

I have been looking up a lot of new bike toy stuff for next year. I have found a great Chinese website that sells inexpensive carbon rims. It may even be the wholesaler for the place I purchased my last set of carbon wheels. I am thinking of buying a set of 30 mm rims to build up a climbing set of wheels. I am also looking to build a disk wheel for my TT bike. I looked at lots of really nice disk wheels but there is no way that I am going to pay $800 at the least for a wheel that I wont use but 4-5 times a year. I really like building my own stuff and building a set of wheels is the last frontier for me. I know how to true wheels, and I have replaced spokes and nipples on wheels before but never purchased everything separate and then put together on my own. It is said that the mark of a true mechanic is a person who can build wheels. Soooo I really need to get on that.

Just last weekend I put a new bottom bracket on my road and TT bikes. I wanted to make my TT bike able to use my Quarq power meter so I needed to change the BB from a Shimano to GXP BB. I also needed to order an Italian threaded BB for the Pinorello. I had put a lot of miles into the original one that came with the bike and it was starting to get a little slack. Like most of my bike work lately things did not go smoothly. The BB of my TT was a mountain bike BB, they are really the same I just don't use the extra spacers that come with it. The thing that I think made things a little tough was at Italian BB is 70mm wide while and English BB is 68mm. So there was some slack in the cranks. I would need a 2mm spacer, I don't really have those laying around and I hate not having what I need right away so I stared looking at my pile of crap I have in my shop. I did not have to look far just at the old BB I just removed from my road bike. There is a spacer that is on the non drive side that has a little rubbery plastic molded onto it. I first tried to install the cranks with this extra spacer as is but it was just a little to thick. I used my dremmel tool and a grinding bit to grind off the plastic. This was all that was needed to do the trick. Then I had to install the crank on my road bike. Thought this was going to be easy as pie as I had been riding with these cranks on my bike for months with no problem. Well there was a problem. After torquing the cranks to the prescribed 130 in pounds there was still play in the crank. I found another very slim spacer, maybe .5mm and tried to use that to help with the play but it didn't help. I then said F it and used a normal allen wrench to torque the crank all the way down. That didn't work either, it bound the bottom bracket and made it tough to turn. Feeling very dejected and confused I started to play with my torque wrench a little more. I turned out out that my wrench needed to be turned up to 145 in pounds and then it was snug and free moving. I didn't try it on the TT bike but I will when I have the itch to play with my bikes again.

A long break

I have not been on my bike since last Saturday in Atlanta. I was a little sick this week and I think I am using that to get a short break from the bike before I really start to hammer for next season. I have never been good about taking time off, when I was a gymnast I would train 8 days a week. I know that it is imposible to train like that on the bike. A person would just ride themselves into the ground and could end up seariously hurting themselves. It is funny but I think that racing my bike has made me a better gymnastics coach. Not many coaches, even good coaches, know a lot about periodazation or how to use it. To be good at riding I have had to use this technique to train for the last year. It has brought a lot of improvements for me and my athletes.

So I am going to wait till Monday to start riding and lifting weights again. It is going to throw off my training plan but I have to be flexable. I mean I am not a profesional rider, I have a job, I have a wife, I have other responsibilities that may pull me off my training plan. So I will have to go back and re-think what I am doing for the next few weeks. This really isn't a problem as I have a long time before my first race weekend of the season in March.

Last night I met with Kurt Fletcher and Mike Rickey to talk over team issues. We met over at Dressels Public House in the St Louis Central West End. Great food, amazing drinks! So we are going over what the team kit is going to look like. Right now we actually have a problem with too many sponsors. Our kit was designed and then we are trying to make the logos look good inside it. I think that pro kits are done the other way around, that the logos define how the kit is going to look. I think we have it down though and it is going to be very differnt compared to what else is out there. Very retro.

Kurt is also bringing more riders onto the team, very cool. He is trying to get more Cat 1s and 2s to join. I would love this to happen, it would mean more knowledge that I could possibly mine to make myself better as a racer. I do have to work to remain a top management member of this team though. With all of these older guys coming on it would be easy to push me out. But I started Wild Card Racing and I am going to stay on the top with everyone else.

Gotta learn to love hills

I hate hills, I climb like a rock. But to be good at racing a bike you have to be able to get over hills, mountains, or whatever else is in your way. This off season I have been working hard to learn to climb better. Living in St Louis has been helpful in getting better at climbing, living in Champaign IL, flattest place on earth, made it hard. But still it is very tough to put together a route with over 2000 feet of climbing.

Well my last day to ride in Atlanta I put together a ride with over 4000 feet of climbing! That was great for me, and really put a big hurt into my legs. A lot of work that I have done is to be able to climb standing for longer periods of time. I have a slightly more muscular build as I used to be an elite gymnast and I carry more weight on the top than most cyclists. I have been told that riders with my build would do better to climb in this fashion. With the short punchy climbs we have around here this should help me quite a bit. It basically turns the climbs into a sprint for me. I have also been working on longer climbs that I will sit for half to three quarters of the climb and then stand and hammer up and over the rest. The only way for me to ever test out if my climbing is getting better is to ride with my buddy Mike Rickey and see if I can hang with him on climbs. He will always drop me at some point but the farther I get the better I am doing. Some day I hope to be able to beet Mike up a climb while he is at 100% strength.

The ride itself was amazing! It was the nicest roads and the most picturesque scenery I have seen on a ride. To make it even better it was like that for at 45 miles of it. There was almost no traffic, maybe 10 cars passed me. And this was in the city of Atlanta! The homes along my route were fantastic as well. Hundreds and hundreds of mansions, estates, castles, and every other type of home you could imagine. It was a nice experience to be totally lost as well, not only in my thoughts but geographically as well. I had my Garmin 705 to tell me where to go but I could only see where my next turn was. I did not know where I was in relation to where I started or anything else. I think this really allowed me to just enjoy what I was doing, not worry about how to climb the next hill because I had no idea. I just went up all of them as best I could.

Now it is back to normal STL training, and my continued plan for the start of next season. There is still a lot of time to get ready but it will be here before I know it.

Thanksgiving in Hotlanta

So Katie and I drove down to Atlanta Georgia to visit my aunt Amy, Uncle Dave, their four boys, my grandparents, my parents, brothers, and new nephew. Yah big group! We left Wednesday morning when Katie got off work at Barnes and it took about 9 hours. The trip really wasn't that bad of a drive. We only stopped once to eat at 1 and I had good tunes and almost no traffic the whole way.

I of course brought my bike with me and was really looking forward to some good riding. My aunt and uncle live in a VERY well to-do area of Atlanta so the traffic is low and people see bikes on the road often. This was great because it makes for a much more relaxing time on streets you have never been on.

I found a route on mapmyride.com the night before and loaded it onto my Garmin. This is also a huge help because it makes me feel like no matter what I can always find my way home. That was good because I felt totally lost the entire time, so I just enjoyed the ride and let the Garmin tell me where to go.

I left around 9am and there was a think fog in the air, a slight nip, and a light wind. It looked like it had rained that morning but I didn't hear anything. The nice thing was that it was 65* instead of 25* and raining like back home in the STL. The roads were totally quite, no cars and just a sprinkle of morning runners. The homes I went by were AMAZING! There were some that I thought looked like palaces, with large estates, bridges, rivers running through their front yards, large gates, it was too cool. I think it would have been way too dangerous for me if there had been more cars because I spent most of the time looking at all the great homes. The climbing was nothing bigger than back home in St Louis, I was hoping that my aunt and uncle lived closer to some mountainous terrain but I would settle for new surroundings. The ride really was only 26 miles and I am looking forward to riding more Saturday morning and doing a 50 mile ride that supposedly has 4-6K feet of climbing. I decided to not ride Friday morning as it was pouring rain, and I felt like I had my ass kicked from the family 2 hand touch game I played before turkey day dinner yesterday.

This is really turning out to be a great weekend, I have not seen my brothers happier in a long time. Getting to see my new nephew Will is great! He is only 7 months old but he is a monster! My mom said that my brothers and I were all big kids when we were babies though and now we are really nothing special in the size department. All pretty avg.

I have started looking for a new mountain bike. I will not get it till next fall but I can look and really do some good homework on finding the best ride for me. I think that I want something that I could race but I don't know if I want to really race that often. I am more dedicated to racing on the road. I think I will spend about 4K on a bike, I don' t know if I should build it myself or by a whole bike. I am worried about going carbon because I seem to like to crash so I am thinking titainium. I am pretty sure I will stick with a hard tail as no matter what you are never going to get a full suspension frame that comes lighter than a hard tail and with my climbing ability or lack there of I need all the help I can get. I also think I am going to stay with the 26" wheels. I was very close to going the 29" route but most of my reading says that unless I am riding on a gravel road 26" is the way to go. They are quicker on the trails, going uphill, and even downhill you have not trouble making time. So if I ever needed a 2nd mtn bike and I was going to do a LOT of racing on fire roads or something I think I will stick with the tried and true. Sorry Mr. Fisher but 29" just aint for me.

I am really liking the writing thing.

Let try this again

Sooo yeah been a long time since I wrote on here. I keep wanting to do this more but do people really want to read what I have to say? I don't really think so, so what I have decided is I am writing for myself. I always have these idea or things that I am thinking about and I dont really tell a whole lot of people. So really this is going to be my place to work out stuff that I just usually will just sit in bed and think about all night long.

My racing has made leaps and bounds since my last post back in 2009. I hooked up with a guy that had come so close to being a pro but life just started happening and took 12 years off. I coach a few of his kids at my gym at the St Louis Gym Centre. I feel like we have become pretty good friends over the last year. In the year that I have lived in St Louis I have not made too many friends. I like the people I work with a ton, they are great but no one that I want to hang out with and have a beer anytime, like Mike R or Mike F. Never realized how hard it is to make friends when you aren't going to school. It is cool that a guy named Rob from my racing team in Champiagn moved down here for his wife's work. He lives around the courner practicaly but he has kids like everyone else so like everyone else he doesn't have time to "get a beer".

I see that I have gotten off on a tangent. I am trying to talk about racing my bicycle. So in my last post I was riding a Trek 5200, but back in May I crashed bad and my bike was destroyed. My wife being the amazing woman that she is allowed me to buy a brand new bike and didn't even ask how much it was going to cost. Every now and then she gets mad about the time and money my riding takes but for the majority of the time she is my biggest supporter. My favorite days are days where I race and then we hang out and watch the rest of the racing with each other. She is even getting to know who the good riders are.

So now I race a Pinorello FP3 with a mix of Sram Red and Force. NEVER thought I would buy one, in fact I really wanted to get a Specialized but I couldn't get one in my size and model in time for my next race which was only 5 days away at the time. But I love this bike, everyone that sees it loves it. I love being on a rare bike for this part of the world.

So racing this year went great! In 2009 my racing season was over by early July and I was sucking ass at that time. Well this year I went STRONG into early September and could have gone a couple more weeks. I owe all this to my friend Mike Rickey who coached my through the entire year and was able to see my strengths and really bring them out. Now this year things are looking even better. I had stared a Wild Card Cycling STL team last year but now it has become 708 Racing. 708 is a clothing company owened by a super fast racer named Kurt Fletcher. He is one bad ass dude. We have also brought in a TON of other sponsors. I will talk about them more in another post. So Kurt is now helping me out as well and I am really pumped about it. We are now a team of 6 super fast guys that just want to kick ass. No pussy footing around, we all want to win and will dow whatever we can to win.

I have started my base miles for next year and am in the gym lifting weights. Iwill push my limits and make sure that my year as a Cat 3 is a good one. I will NOT be pack fodder all year long. I hope that if I work hard enough I can make my way to Cat 2. The more high level racers we have the better our money situation will be for the years to come.

It's been a while but things on the bike are looking great! I have been getting out about 5 days a week and over last week and this week I will have over 400 miles. All I am really looking for is a great start to the year at Hillsboro the first week in April.
I have a new bike and I think that is helping me tremendously. It is 3 pounds lighter than my old rig, as well as it has STI shifters. It was supposed to be a loaner from a friend on the team but I felt bad using such a nice bike so I offered to buy it from him and he agreed. Larry is his name, and he has really been helping me out these last couple of months. I have sort of been looking to him as a coach of sorts. It is strange being in a sport where you really have no coach, so getting help from friends is really nice.
I have my first 100 mile ride tomorrow since I was 13 or 14 years old. I remember that ride was the worst ride of my life. It was my 3rd attempt at doing 100 miles and I was determined to do it. I think it took me 8 hours and I did 40 or 50 miles of it on my own because I was dropped from my group. I think I will fare much better on this ride, although I don't think that we will set any speed records since we have a lot of slower guys that are not quite in shape for the season yet. Not that I should really talk, I have only just started to feel like I can hang somewhat with the fast guys on the team. And really if they ever wanted to drop me they could in a split second.
I need to start working more on my intervals and getting my power up higher. I am not really able to turn my big gears as well as I think I should. So now over the next few weeks that will be my goal. I know that I can spin and I feel very comfortable doing that, but I need speed. My top end just isn't where I want it to be. So I will have to work.
Later.