Happiness and Sadness

First off. I had a great race last night. I am still walking like somebody beat me, but apparently my walking muscles and my riding muscles aren’t the same. I came unattached from the group on the last lap, but I was up there when the bell rang. I actually moved up with two to go, because I found myself slipping back. That took some energy, but it was kind of fun.

As I said in my feedback I sent to the gym for the Resolve Your Resolution competition, last night I found myself asking different questions. It wasn’t just, “Oh goodness, how long is this again? Hang on, just hang on…” It was more like, “Hmm, we’re coming up on this turn, I want to be on this side.” Or, “I need to get ready to step on it after this turn when we hit the tail wind, I’m going to follow that guy’s wheel around.” In other words… I was actually racing. It was awesome. 

Second Thing. The paper I have been working on. Let me frame this out some. This paper was on my dissertation work. We have recast it and extended it to make it interesting to a different community than I had, in theory, worked in during grad school. But, I like where it is, and I wish it would have had this direction from the very beginning. That being said… finishing my dissertation and defending was a weird and tough part of my life. I mean, let’s be honest, tough is a very relative term, I’m looking for no sympathy here. I still got to work in a nice office and with a nice computer and all, so I mean… I’m lucky and appreciative. But, emotionally it was straining for various reasons.

I hadn’t worked on Lagniappe much since then. On and off, but not really pushing on it. I couldn’t really. It was like hearing a song on the radio that you used to listen to when you were in the midst of teen angst, and all of a sudden you feel sort of weird. Oh, is that just me? Anyway… yeah, it was like that.

But today I submitted the paper. Finally, a full paper on the subject. Now, of course, it still has to go through the reviewing process. A submittal in no way guarantees acceptance, far from it. But just getting this paper out the door, and being proud of it in the process, is a big win.

Third thing. Tomorrow we leave for a 7 day cruise on the world’s largest cruise ship. Carrie and I are both very excited. I know that cruises are a love’em or hate’em sort of thing. Carrie and I have never been on one. But what I am the most excited about is that it is 7 days of not having to think about stuff. I don’t have to worry about how we’re going to get somewhere, I don’t have to worry about finding a hotel room, I don’t even have to worry about where we are going to eat. It’s all planned out. Sometimes the adventure and mystery is fun. But right now, I need the relaxation. 

And as a bonus, I got up early this morning to check us in to our flights and found out that we got upgraded to first class all the way to Ft. Lauderdale. Woohoo!

Not to end on a down note, but all these wonderful things that I am very blessed and thankful for are happening at a sad time. The oil spill that is now hitting Louisiana’s extremely fragile coast is heart-breaking and infuriating all at the same time. My home state didn’t need another tragedy. My hopes and prayers are out there just hoping that some good news will break on this. But right now, it just seems to get worse. 

Things To Do This Week

We leave for the cruise Saturday before dawn. I need to submit my paper on Friday. Oh, and I need to rock this week’s crit. So here’s my todo list for the week:

1. Survive.
2. Tell Carrie “I love you, and thank you” more. She has been a huge help not only during the Resolve Your Resolution time period, but specifically as I have been working more. I love you, Carrie, and thanks!!
3. Get my bike rides in. As the stress ramps up, can’t drop off the exercise. That has always been my downfall. 
4. Stay on wheels and stay near the front in the race. I am confident that I have the legs to stay in it. I need to work on my positioning and race smart.
5. Finish this paper strong. We have 5 days, need to work hard and put out a quality submission that will hopefully get accepted.
6. Pack for the cruise. Carrie is already packed. Me… eh, not so much.

I guess that’s about it for the moment. When we step onto that boat I will be ready to relax.

A good race gone bad

I threw out a tweet last night about this, but I wanted to break it down in more detail. I don’t know why, call it cathartic.

The course last night at the Driveway was very interesting. It had you going up the corkscrew, and then quickly afterwards taking a sharp, over-90-degree turn to the right. At the top of the corkscrew you turn to the left, so ideally you want to be on the inside of the turn at the top of the hill so that you can have the nicer line going into the sharp turn.

So while I felt great, even up and over the corkscrew, I let myself slip back in the group beyond halfway. I was maintaining that position with no problem. I just wasn’t working to get any closer to the front. Bad mistake.

Every time we went over the corkscrew I would line up early on the left side of the road. And every time I had to pull some maneuver to not get pushed off the course by some jackhole who decided he wanted to be where I was because he hadn’t thought fare enough ahead entering the corkscrew.

Then we were going up the hill, and I am looking ahead of me and see this group of people, and they all seem to be trying to get into one spot. I think to myself, those people aren’t all going to fit. 

CRACK CRACK BAHM SCRRAAPE

Yep, they didn’t fit. The pile of bodies and bikes continued to grow to the right. I squeeze my brakes enough to keep me from plowing into it. My job is to protect my front wheel. On that subject, my front wheel does role over or get hit by something on the ground, but I stay up no problem, though I come to basically a complete stop. The people further back all zoom past me.

Here is my fatal mistake. I didn’t instantly jump up out of the saddle and kill it. I got rolling and waited until we got around the two sharp corners and then started back down the hill to get on top of it. I chased like mad for a lap, slowly making ground, but when we came back up the corkscrew my legs popped for just a few seconds. 

I kept riding with an AT&T guy for several laps just getting some workout in. With a few laps left a side stitch cropped up. I am not sure why. I’m assuming the humidity had me sweating more than I thought, and that I didn’t hydrate enough pre-race. Who knows? I was able to fight it for a lap, but it got worse with like a couple laps left in the race I pulled out and spent some time spinning around the general area to cool down and get the stitch to go away.

So very frustrating. I mean, I really felt good. I felt comfortable in the pack, I didn’t feel nervous. I was able to keep up with the accelerations and never feel overexerted. My two mistakes were not staying near the front enough and not reacting fast enough after the crash to get back on. Oh well, live and learn. I was excited that I reacted fast enough to the crash itself to not go down. 

I am feeling great in my training, and the results are starting to show up in the race. I think this is the strongest I have ever felt. I am looking forward to the race next week before our cruise. I am hoping to actually come out of that with a solid finish.

Quick discussion of the paper. This paper, being about my dissertation work, is at times bringing me back to a weird place in my life. Finishing my dissertation wasn’t the happiest time ever. This paper, unfortunately, has occasionally brought back some weird ghosts of that time. I will be very glad to ship it out next Friday. That being said, cycling has been helping to keep me sane. Going out and riding my bike has helped me to focus and to let out some of the anxiety and frustration. While I have traded time working for riding, I find in the long run I have been more productive and more sane.

Death of a cycling computer

So the race last Thursday was really wet. Apparently, somewhere in the race or the drive home in the rain, my trusty Polar CS200cad decided its time had come.

Unfortunate considering it was both my heart-rate monitor and my cycling computer. And all my workouts from Drew are heart-rate based. 

I went out for two really enjoyable rides this weekend with no computer. I just went out and rode how my legs were feeling. The crazy thing: they actually felt really good. I haven’t felt that good going uphill since probably May 2007 when I really hit my peak of cycling fitness. I definitely am recovering much faster than I ever have. 

I am going to borrow Carrie’s heart rate monitor for the time being. In month or two I’ll pick up a new all-in-one computer. I could go and get a cheap one, but I have my eyes on a nice one, and I just hate spending money on something that I don’t really want.

The weather is currently looking good for Thursday, so hopefully it will be a nice and dry race. They are running a course layout that I have never seen (they apparently only did it a few times last year) so that should be fun. Lots of intervals this week, though, so it will be a tough (but shorter, time wise) week on the bike.

Paper countdown: 11 days. Cruise countdown: 12 days.

What a Growing Body Knee-ds

The pun is for Lynn.

Saturday did a great 70 miles out and back to Elgin. The nice thing about riding to Elgin is you get to get some barbecue to break up the ride. While my ride companions chowed down on brisket and sausage (oh, to be 22 again) I had the chicken. Still quite tasty, by the way.

Felt great the whole ride… except for the part on the way back when my knee started to feel a little catchy every now and then. I didn’t think much of it as it really didn’t hurt, it just was there. We stopped in Manor, and I stretched. But as we got closer to home I still felt it.

Then it started to really hurt. Not constantly, but anytime I stood up or did more of a forward mash than a supple spin, pain. And clipping in was unpleasant. 

When I got home I actually felt great. I felt like I could have kept riding. 

However, on Easter Sunday, I didn’t feel so hot. We got up to go to 9 AM Mass, as I was supposed to be riding three hours at some point. I also wanted to watch the Ronde on TV and we had to eat our celebratory Easter pizza. (We gave up cheese for Lent.) The ride didn’t happen, because I felt beaten down. I took two naps, and still went to bed early. After alerting Drew of the knee issues, it was decided to be careful and make this week extra resty.

So far, so good. I did an easy spin on Monday, and there was no pain. Today I did two hours in zones 1 and 2 and again there was no pain. It feels a little tight, but the painful catch has not come back. The inner quad right above my knee is tight and tender, so I have been hitting it with ice and the TP quad-rolller. 

Considering I went from sedentary to riding a lot pretty quickly, I am not surprised something eventually was annoyed. Saturday’s ride was also the longest ride I’ve done yet, and definitely the longest ride of “not my own pace.” I feel confident that this easy week will be good for things. I have the Driveway tomorrow (it’s the full two-mile course going down the corkscrew, should be interesting) and I am bringing the bike home with me to Baton Rouge for rides this weekend.

On that subject, we are going to Baton Rouge this weekend to celebrate my grandmother BeBe’s 100th birthday… crazy! It will be a quick trip and jam packed. Riding, family, friends… the camera is coming with me so I hope to have lots of pictures when I get back.

Finally, my experiments finally seem to be making some notion of sense (thanks Allen!). It sort of took one of those moments where you realize you were kind of an idiot, but you have gone so far down the rabbit hole it takes somebody else to snap you out of it to see it. But alas, the Lagniappe paper seems to finally be taking shape after all these years. Whew.

With that being said, I’m going to switch back over to my terminal windows and see how those experiments are going.

Not Getting Dropped

Last night at the Driveway an interesting thing happened. I completed a race in the pack, without getting dropped. This is really only the second time this has happened in all of the races that I have done. The first time it has happened in a non-collegiate race. Now, I didn’t win, and in fact I was in the back half of the group. But I wasn’t last, and I was still attached. It’s a big first for me, and it’s great to see the results of the work I have been putting in on the bike.

It was a good course layout for me. The little incline had the crazy wind blowing you up and over, so that was good, and the only other turn was a big 180 degree sweeper that is wide enough to pedal through easily. I was able to just focus on getting myself on a wheel and staying there. Get over the hill, power down it, get back into the group, and hang out until we were back to the little incline again. 

What was interesting was that getting up the hill wasn’t a problem, the hardest part was having to get out of the saddle to catch up to everybody. In the back half of the group we were slowing down so much getting over the incline and around the turn that the people in front were already on the downhill. But I wasn’t as concerned about that last night.

I had told myself that I was going to worry less about where I was and just that I was. Get on a wheel and stay attached. Recover as much energy as possible and get up and over the incline in contact with everybody. That was my game plan, and it seemed to work out.

When I made it to the lap cards, I was excited. I thought that was cool, but I figured something was going to happen, and I was still going to get dropped. At 3 to go, I really started to believe that I was actually going to make it. When the bell rang for the last lap, I knew I was going to finish the race. We got up and over the incline, and I knew that I could do whatever was necessary to stay attached at that point as we were done with the incline and it was all flat to the finish. And, I couldn’t believe, I finished.

All in all, I was pretty thrilled. But this is just a first step. I need to keep up the diet and keep up the riding to move myself up in that pack. Also, I still need to work on my comfort in the pack in general and going around corners in the middle of the group, specifically. Next Thursday I will get a chance to practice both of those.

Back up and running

I want to start out by thanking Austinbikes on their stellar job with my bike. This is the cleanest and most tuned up that bike has been since Spring ‘07. I went for a ride last night and it ran great. I also got to really test out my new lights, and they seem to work well. I no longer have to rush home when it starts to get dark, and it will make the ride home from the Driveway that much safer.

On the work front, my experiments are not lining up with my hypothesis. That is amazingly frustrating, because I don’t yet understand why. I have some things I’m going to try today. I think there is some hidden inefficiency that is coming up. In other words, I still think my ideas are right, but something I did in the implementation is getting in the way. 

One of the things that I learned in grad school was that you can’t show a graph in a paper or talk until you can explain every curve, nook, and wiggle. Up and to the right is not sufficient. You have to know why. It at times can be painful, but at the end you understand your system and your ideas, and you probably learn a lot in the process.

On a food note (I’m trying to hit all of my topics in the about section ;) ), Carrie’s channa masala is still delicious. She made it again this week, and we have enjoyed it several times. I am going to have some for lunch, and that makes me happy. This is Holy Week, and therefore Sunday is Easter. Carrie and I gave up cheese for Lent, and in fact I have gotten rid of all dairy from my diet. 

While I don’t plan on going back to drinking milk, I do plan on eating cheese again, although very sparingly. Cheat day kind of sparingly. I believe we are planning on celebrating Easter with a quality pizza. 

Quick bike update

Got word today that the wheel will be ready to go tomorrow. So tomorrow evening I should have the bike all cleaned and tuned up with both of my “good” wheels. It has been too long. Can’t wait to ride it!

The Weekend

We had a nice weekend.

I went for a ride yesterday out east. Made it out to the New Sweden Church and the Manda schoolhouse. The nice thing about riding out that way is that you get these long uninterrupted farm roads with little traffic. No stop signs, so lights, just road.

I got some work done yesterday afternoon, and then we headed to El Chile for supper. Delicious as usual, including the micheladas.

Afterwards we went see Hot Tub Time Machine. The movie is ridiculous, but I laughed a lot, and at the end of the day that makes me a happy movie goer.

Today I was not able to complete my bike ride because of a snapped derailleur cable. Brought the bike in this afternoon to Austinbikes, and I am having the guys there basically replace all the parts that wear out. With the amount of riding I’ve been doing, the bike needs some TLC.

Most of last year the bike got ridden maybe once every month, if that. Now, I’m riding 6 times a week for 10+ hours. Yeah, surprise surprise parts need replacing. My nice wheel should also be done at the same time as the bike, so by the end of this week the bike should be clean, tuned up and ready to go.

Today we also went see Phantom of the Opera at Bass Concert Hall with Lynn and Johann. We had fantastic seats (thanks Lynn for tracking down the tickets!) It was fun to see the show, and I am always impressed by the cool stuff you can do in a theater production. 

Overall, a great weekend. Looking forward to having a productive week.

Nerve

As I wait for the exercise clothes to finish washing, I decided to post on an interesting thought I had last night during the race. Well, it’s interesting to me. It was probably horrifying other people.

I don’t have my nerve in the race right now. There are several, probably pretty obvious, reasons for this. First off, I just have not been racing much. Being comfortable being in the pack and turning and all those things comes with practice.

Secondly, my fitness still isn’t there, so I’m not able to concentrate on the other aspects of the race other than, “oh jeez, stay on.” 

But my hesitation was starting to annoy me. We’d start to go around a corner and I felt myself going for the brakes and getting really nervous. I used to love to corner at speed, and felt really comfortable. I know that as I do more races again, it will come back. 

So I don’t have my nerve in the race right now. But I’ll get it back. Have to keep on riding, and keep on racing.