Blather on Bicycling

This year I re-focused my attention on some new priorities. Most of these were new work projects. Last fall we did a lot of work in our performance lab. More recently, I’m really proud of the work being produced at UniCommons.com, a site I developed at the beginning of this year. My work activities coupled with increased enrollment in my classes have kept me extremely busy, which also provides a financial and professional benefit–something at which volunteer work doesn’t do as well. Then things got even more crazy when, for some reason, I got inspired to finish my MBA and enrolled in classes for spring term. I had taken several supplementary business classes in graduate school at other universities that I intended to contribute toward finishing an MBA someday. Now I’ve lined out a schedule to finish at EOU in about a year by taking one or two classes a term.

And on top of all that, cycling remained  a priority. My original plan was to train more and race less. Instead, I trained more and raced even more. I picked out all of the toughest stage races within driving distance of La Grande and tore myself up. . .and loved every minute of it. I’ve been all over the west racing and riding my bike this spring. The only thing I missed out on was racing as a collegiate racer this spring, which I found out I am eligible to do now. Maybe next spring.

One of the casualties of my priority shift and work load was an intentional reduction in blogging. No, I haven’t switched my attention to tweeting, although I did set up a twitter account that is currently disgracing community expectations on ubiquitous tweets. I’m glad you “readers” still find my blog site interesting and continue to visit. After all, it’s not a static site. New content is being added even when I’m not writing.

So in this post, I’m filling in the gaps with a “Last Few Months In Review” bit. Here is what you’ve missed, in reverse chronology:

• Werst Result: On behalf of all cyclists, yesterday I valiantly defended the Morgan Lake climb against an angry mob of runners. Yes, the Werst Race cup still resides on a bike. As I approached the final ramp, still in the lead, I looked back to see a runner and a cyclists neck-and-wheel within striking distance. The corner marshal said, “There’s a runner catching you.” This brought back nightmarish thoughts from 2 years ago on the very same hill. The chopping sounds of a runners footsteps approaching me from behind still sends chills up and down my spine when I think about it. It is one of those moments that you remember distinctly for the rest of your life just like when the space shuttle blowing up, 9-11, Saddam’s hanging on YouTube, the fall of the Berlin wall, the Kennedy assasination, and D-day. That flashback inspired me to charge up to the finish showing a clean set of wheels. Apparently Rad was inspired too, because he out-sprinted the runner in a frantic lunge for the line that had the front of his tire across the line before the human torso entered the frame. As a side note, this year I rode it with a full on road bike setup, even including a regular (not compact) crankset.
• I’m a Critter: In an unlikely turn of events, I’ve now finished 2 straigh stage race crits. Ironically, these were two crits that I was sure I wasn’t going to survived and I didn’t even need to survive them to retain my position. The last one of these took place at the Treasure Valley Stage Race where I finally figured out why it is called the Snake River. The peleton rolled over a several rattle snakes down by the river. This caused me to think back to all the other rattle snakes I’ve experiences over the years at various locations on this river.
• Good PR: I set another PR on the climb to Andes Prairie. This is one of the first field tests I did when I started training the first year I raced. So, I respect it as the benchmark that has the most history. Every year I’ve set a better time so this will probably be the indicator that will someday trigger my retirement from racing. I’ve also had a couple other improvement indicators to go along with this one.
• T&A TV: I revamped my home entertainment setup, which now included some new TVs. This was installed just in time to get the Italian feed of the Giro so I could enjoy mostly-non-stop bike racing interrupted only by short cut aways to zoom in on cleavage and butts of female bystandards.
• Gila Monster: At Gila, I managed to lose over 40 minutes to the winner despite being with him at the base of every final climb. On the final day, I lined up with a couple Tour de France winners and podium finishers, only to have them ride away from me as I had to wait 20 minutes for my race to start.
• New Coach: I bought a motor home. Now my family travels and we enjoy most of the comforts of home. I’ve found this is definitely the way to travel to bike races. Apparently Lance knows this trick too, but his home was much bigger than mine in New Mexico. Even though we were staying the same neighborhood, he also gets a lot more vistors than me.

So now that you are up to speed, what is in store next? I’ll probably do a few more races and then call it quits for this summer. . .as in this local summer. Then I’ll start training for Summer 2 in Australia. After that, I’ll probably be back to race next spring here. Then, I’ll probably take Summer 3 off. Notice there is no winter scheduled for awhile.