Ski Time

Finally got some time to update the ol blog. Had quite a busy weekend. Schmoozing with the Fisher Rep, xc skiing saturday and sunday and dinner with Erin's parents Sunday night.



Super psyched to be on board with Gary Fisher again for next season. Had a hell of a time hanging out with the Fisher Rep Friday night. I think Erin did too as she got a little bit into the shots!Found out I'm gonna be rocking a 29er again; this time it'll be a dualie. Fisher Supercaliber with a sweet set of the Bontrager Race X Lite TLR 29. I can't wait to throw the legs over this bad boy!! It's gonna tear sh*t up at the endurance races this coming season. I'm still piloting the paragon, but having thoughts of possibly transforming it into a singlespeed...





Get a good look at er fellas, cause most likely you'll be watching her ride away from you!





Headed down to Hi Tor with the Hollow Crew for some xc skiing saturday morning. I've been thru there a bunch to snag the DEC descent, but never really tooled around. After spending some time there and exploring Saturday under Dave's guidance it's got a ton to offer. The trail book is starting to get quite thick at this point! I think the area is going to come in awesome for some hill training and wet conditions riding on the fireroads.



Conditions were pretty much perfect for a nice, easy going kick and glide. Sun was out and we got off the trails just as they were starting to get sticky.



Overlooking Canandaigua Lake from the South end





So, what button do I push on the camera again?





Your's truly striking the pose





Val Fuels up for the assualt on the downhill





Dave and the pups glide away thru the woods





Dave descends into the gauntlet





The Gauntlet



Sunday was some more skiing; hit the woods behind the house for some time. I chickened out on the ride down in the Hollow as it was a little chilly so early in the morning (10 degrees). Come to find out conditions improved quite a bit throughout the day and overheating was more of a factor than freezing you toes off. Serves me right in the long run. Guess I'll just have to make up for it :)

Only Temporary

Our brief respite from ol' man winter was quite short. A few inches of snow falling overnight has me prepping the skis for the weekend rather than the bikes. Our "heat-wave" brought temps that were in the low 40's on Tuesday and upper 30's with sunshine on Wednesday.



Tuesday I put the tires to the asphalt for the first time since early January, when we had an actual heat wave. It was a good feeling to see the ground move past me on each pedal stroke. The air flowing created by actual movement. Quite invigorating. I plotted my course down thru South Bristol and back; pushing a good hard tempo pace. 2 hours passed and as I was making my way home contemplating putting some more time in, a few drizzles helped ease me into the warmth of being back home. My choice was the right one as it turned into a steady rain.



Wednesday was a good group ride. Casey, Matt, Mark and I met up in Bloomfield. Our intentions were to ride the new GVCC course. We started out heading on the correct route, but made an early turn off in the wrong spot. No big deal, as we all knew where we were and decided to head down and around Bristol Mt.





Churning along the ridge on our way to Mosher Hill







We hit the backside of Mosher hill for our first true climb of the day. Brutal for being one of the first climbs of the season. After struggling up and over the top and around to rt 64 we, confronted a decent headwind heading north. We set to work and got into our usual pacelining session. One great thing about riding so often together is that we work flawless. No gapping on pulls, no accelerations, just precision and execution of the task at hand. I lucked out and managed to be on Hanggi's wheel, which equates to having a mac truck in front of me the whole time. We stopped at the convenience store in South Bristol for some calorie re-supplies.





Casey puts the burn on as we pass Bristol mt.







Slackers! Don't you guys have real jobs!



After refueling we headed back north and onto the GVCC course proper to got back to our recon mission. The course itself is going to be a beast compared to the old Perinton course. It's quite rolling with some steep climbs and sections that are easily going to cause some splits in the groups.



Right now I'm 50/50 if I really want to do anything on the road at all this season. I've raced the GVCC Giro's and the Spring Classic for a few years and they work well to bring the legs up to speed. I'm refocusing completely on the endurance aspect for this season, but we will see what happens. Maybe, I'll throw some road tires on the Paragon and run that during the Giros. I'm sure that will give me a warm welcome from all the pure roadies!



This weekend is psycho-cross take 2. Hopefully the weather sticks and I can get a decent write-up and some picks for you....

Weekend Wrap; Power Training Seminar Review

Yesterday was the Peaks Coaching Group Power Training Seminar, hosted by Hunter Allen. Hunter is the Co-Author of the excellent book Training and Racing with a Power Meter. The seminar basically followed along the book, but it was an intriguing insight into the world of power training. I learned some great nuggets of information on how to properly use my power meter and how to use cyclingpeaks WKO+ to review a ride or race afterwards. I'm not going to spill any of the secrets that I learned here, I paid good cash for the info so you gotta read the book.

Power training is essential in cycling today. Take a look around at some of the top teams and riders in the Pro Tour and you will see them always training and often racing with a power meter. An American team Slipstream, will have every rider during every ride and race throughout this year on a power-tap. (not sure what's up with the argyle uni's though? Didn't Trek's mtb team try that our a few years ago?). I'm personally hoping to pickup an ergomo system for my mountain bike this season. I think having that would bring my training to a whole new level.

I didn't manage to get in any training time yesterday due to the entire day being taken up by the seminar. As soon as I got back had to head out to dinner with Casey and Val. Made up for it today by packing in a load of time on the xc skis. Headed over to MPH with Mark, Suzanne, Erin, Casey and Val. 2 good hours in the super deep snow. The poor dogs, they'd be running across the top of some of the harder snow then it would give way and they'd be swimming practically to get out. Lizzy was having a hard time if she got way off track. At one point she started whining as she was so frustrated with not being able to go anywhere at all and being stuck in the snow. After the 2 hours at MPH I headed over to Mendon Ponds for 2 more hours on the groomed stuff. I think I prefer the backcountry snow as compared to the traffic jam/highway that was Mendon.

On a side note, local racer and friend Brandon Furber has a new blog; The Champion of North Huron. Be sure to check it out

Technorati Tags: bicycle, book, coaching, cycling, endurance, lizzy, power, racer, racing, sports, tips, tour, training, writing

iBook is Back in Action

Picked my iBook back up yesterday from the Apple Store. Pretty much a whole new computer. New processor, motherboard, hard-drive. They removed my 3rd party ram (which I'm really missing) and claimed that was part of the problem. I'm not sure if it is or was, but the RAM is guaranteed forever and I have an email out to the company. I tried calling them a few times, but each time conveniently it seems there is no one available?



As far as getting setting up with the new harddrive, I had everything backed up so just dumped it back on. The pain in the ass was re-downloading all my applications. Luckily, I still had all their preferences (.plist) files saved and no searching for serial numbers or registration codes. My email was quick and no problems to get back into action. Having my email piped into gmail I noticed I got zero spam. I also really liked using the gmail interface with the greasemonkey scripts for firefox. Made it all quicksilver like. I'm unsure right now if I'm gotta fully make the jump to gmail or not. Right now I'll stick with my system. I did however give up my rss reader Newsfire for the web based Google Reader. After using that for a bit I'm gonna stick with it.



I did try out one of the video sites I recommended yesterday, TotalVid.com and downloaded the video Elemental. The only gripe that I have about the system is that it adds windows .DRM. It's not a big deal overall, but you gotta download some windows stuff, only available through IE, forced to watch it in Windows Media Player. Nothing like having your arm twisted when it comes t your choices. But for $3.99 I have a week to watch it and its on my work laptop which has a much larger screen than my iBook.



Looking forward to tomorrow's Power Training Seminar. I'll give a wrap-up of that and the video this weekend.



Listening to: Punkrocker (Feat. Iggy Pop) from the album "Soft Machine" by Teddybears

Technorati Tags: drm, firefox, freeriding, gmail, greasemonkey, ibook, laptop, mtb, personal, gmail, Google Reader, quicksilver, rss, trainer, training, video

Snowed In? Check these out

ipIf you're stuck with all this snow and itching to get your mountain bike fix, check out some of these mountain bike video sites:



Rip.tv

TotalVid.com this site looks cool as you can download entire movies

Mountain Bike Zone.com

MTB Movies.com

PinkBike.com



Hopefully those help give you some extra trainer motivations

Fresh Powder

Measured up the snow on the back porch this morning; 18"!! Plus its a lovely 3 freaking degrees outside. Man I shoulda took Erin up on those plans to vacation in CA for the Tour of California... A look ahead in the forecast shows mid 30's next week!! :)

Put some time on the skiis again last night. Right in the backyard, luckily the snowmobiles had a nice little loop packed in. I've only been out there to walk the dog during the fall, but it looks like come spring/summer time I can put in a good little loop and do some decent training. Lizzy was having a tough go of it as every time she went off the path the snow was up to her neck and she had to bound around, but that didnt really stop here. Poor dog, the snow is piled so high everywhere she is confused as to where to even go to the bathroom.

Saturday, I'm off to the Peaks Coaching Group Power Training Seminar in Buffalo. Looking forward to learning a great deal of info on power training and the inner workings of the software. I've read through the book and implementing a great deal of the info already.

If you missed it last night Lance was on the Colbert Report, be sure to watch it all the way through. Good line at the end

24hrs Of Pain and Glory Trailer

Trailer is up for the new 24 Solo movie; 24hrs Of Pain and Glory. These are the same guys that filmed Off Road to Athens (which also happened to be my movie du jour for hitting the trainer this past weekend) believe there is some kind of link between the director and Rochester, but not sure what. I'm super excited for this film to come out. Mark your calendars as the ticking clock on the website says 59 days from today. Looks like you canpre-order the DVD now

I'm hoping that they do a movie premiere in Rochester as they did with ORTA. I was lucky enough to catch a premiere for that at the NORBA National at Snowshoe a few years back and it was a great event.

Miss my iBook

Man, only a few days and I've been without my trusty iBook. Didn't really realize how much of my day I spent on that thing. Seems like my whole system is outta whack. All my emails, todo's, calendars, projects, cycling info, web browsing, music, etc, were all wrapped up in that bad boy. Hopefully I'll get her back real soon. In the meantime I have dreams of securing myself a Macbook Pro. But, that's definately far fetched! I can dream though can't I????



Winter weather is rearing it's ugly head again as it looks like we might get walloped by snow this week. So this week looks like some more time on the trainer and busting on the xc skisto enjoy the fresh powder. My man Furber though is all hopped up about the snow as he is racking up the miles on his Pugsley along the snowmobile trails



This is the current radar situation! Hoping that the snow stays south of us, but it isn't looking very good right now

Solid Block of training

Wrapped up a good solid block of 3 days of training. Loads of trainer time and some xc ski action. A rest is welcome today, especially as I'm out of town in Jersey for work. I probably shoulda hit the roads yesterday as it was quite warm (26) compared to what its been and the roads were nice and clear

Props out to my man Brandon Furber for pulling out the Pugsley and putting in some time up in the snowbelt!




Hey Brandon, you didn't smash a beer bottle over any of those snowmobilers heads and steal one? If so we are waiting for the story!! :)

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At least I'm not there....

But I did just drive through it this past Monday morning. 110 Inches of snow and rising!



Thoughts of firing up the snowmobile and heading out dancing through my head

Poomba

This is the lizzy girl

iBook goes down

My ibook went down this past week. Hard drive failure. Hopefully I should have it back and repaired by the end of next week. What a pain in the ass that is. At least I got the majority of everything off of it that I needed. I'm hoping to be able to create a blogger account and post right to my site now as my trusty rapidweaver has a 3rd party plugin called rapidblog. This once figured out will let me pretty much post from any computer, my phone, etc. If I can get it working out expect to see quite a few more posts!

In the world of training, I've been doing a bunch of xc skiing this week. I'm enjoying it and so is Lizzy. She just loves to run around Dryer rd and play in the snow. What I would give to have a dogs life :). If the aliens ever invade us they will all probably think we are the slaves to our pets as we are the ones that are obedient to their every need. I've also figured out how to give my xc ski workouts a TSS score so that perfomance manager helps to keep track of the workouts. I'm coming along smoothly in my training and can't wait to see what happens when its time to throw down!

~J

Doh Bears!

Ah well, the first half of the game was kinda exciting. Then the usual happened, Grossman turned the ball over not once, twice, but 4 friggin times. I'm not a pro football player, but dude, work on the footwork, seen it all season. As soon as you throw off your back foot = interception. The Bears Super Defense was a dud. Play cover 2 worried about the deep threat and Peyton picks em alive with the swing pass out of the backfield. Every play it seemed like. I mean, these coaches get paid millions, and I think my brother could put down a better game plan than the Bears came up with. (That's not a jab, I think he could actually out-coach them). I think Grossman will be back next year and so will the Bears!!

Saturday was the cycle for hope; I raised 255 dollars and thanks to everyone who donated!! I made it all 6 hours, it was tough but I managed. There was a organized spin class around each hour, but I just put my headphones on and joined in when I felt like joining in. I'll never complain about the trainer again after that. Besides, if some 300+ lb lady can ride it for 3 hours I think I can manage a few hours during the week.

I went to my brothers place right after the ride up in Malone, suppose to take 4.5 hours took about 6+ with the snow. Had to get up and on the road at 4:30 am this morning to get to Syracuse and it took 6+ hours to go 3 hours normal. Crawling conditions, rt 81 is closed right now. It was super slow. So bad that I was taking inventory of my food and drink (1 bag sunflower seeds, 2 diet cokes), plus gear/clothing (1 fleece blanket, 2 pairs gloves, winter cap, clothes on my body, spare sneakers, bag full of clothes) just in case I had to hoof it to some town or something as there ain't much up there.

Looks to be friggin cold this week...spend some time on the skiis and some more time on the trainer and practicing my no hands, one-legged spin on the rollers (yes I can do it without crashing!!0

~J

Cycle for Hope Charity Spinning

On February 3rd from 9am to 3pm, several fitness centers in the Rochester, NY area are holding a Spinning Event.  The Event "Cycle for Hope"  is a Fundraiser for Camp Good Days and the Golisano Children's Hospital.  

Last year's event drew nearly 200 cyclists, who together raised $10,000.

More information can be found here 

http://www.cycleforhope.com

/

The minimum ride time is 1 hour and the maximum is 6.  I will be riding for ALL 6 HOURS!!

For those of you in the area and willing I recommend you visit the website 

http://www.cycleforhope.com

/ and sign up to participate yourself.

The Iron Butterfly in Victor is where I'll be participating. Anyone that wants to bring their own bike and trainers, they are willing to accommodate us!!

~J

In the comments section I will put all my donations!!