Solid Block

Past few days have been a big block of training. Weather has been tolerable enough to get out there and get things done.

Thursday, I busted out the skiis and did some am xc skiing at the local golf course. It was a bit chilly, but tolerable and managed a quick hour prior to work.

Friday, temps were good enough to get out for an hour and a half and pound out some tempo on the road.

Yesterday, I pulled out the paragon and headed over to glenwood with Lizzy. I hit up the GBC before hand and picked up a new drivetrain for the roadie and some more winter clothing. Over at glenwood, the snow was a little bit deeper than I thought it was. Luckily, marky had gone out in the morning and laid down some tracks. There was also a few walkers who packed the trail in nice. After a few laps that felt like pedaling through quicksand, it was some good riding.

This morning I pulled out the roadie and challenged the coming rain. Weather was forecast to be quite a bit windy in the morning with some rains coming in the afternoon. I headed out the door and got some good time in. I suffered like a dog for 20k heading south into the brutal headwind. Pretty much felt like I was going nowhere for quite a while. To top it off the rain came in near the end of those last few k's. Even with the warmer temps, I was forced to take a turn and head home. The roads were quite wet and I was starting to get cold from the strong winds. It did manage to be a good ride overall.

Note the few spots where my speed just jumps up from having a huge tailwind

Hopefully, I'll be able to get out tomorrow in the am and put a few more hours in and top of this nice little block of training.

Snow is coming

Winter is back with a nice little treat these next few days. Guess it's time to bust out the ski's possibly the next few days. I'm actually excited a bit about a little bit of a change of pace. I hope the rain holds off though......

Not that things are getting tough, but It's winter, and I like to xc ski. Things are actually going good. Last night I even busted out the rollers for a little go. I've still got it; Yup I can ride no handed with 1 leg. That's smooth baby, smooth... One thing that frustrated me though is the power-tap torque values were a bit off for the first 25 minutes of my ride. I'm freaking busting my ass doing 1 minute intervals at 250 watts. I thought maybe the trainer was just on a little bit harder, but 250 is tempo, no AE!! Once I re-calibrated the torque all was well, but now I gotta figure out how to adjust 25 minutes of power data to sensible numbers (anybody wanna help me ?)

I also did manage to get out for about 3 hours this past weekend and just do some light tempo. Unfortunately, I worked Saturday and Sunday and was forced to shorten the ride. It would've been nice to pull of 5-6 hours of tempo. Hopefully I can catch a break this weekend and put in a nice loooong day.

I've got a new mantra also; taken right from Team CSC at last year's Tour. Go Here for what it is (NSFW).

Also, I re-enabled comments on my page, so feel free to drop me a note!

Bustin out the XC Skis

Snow is coming down outside just a little bit ;) 5-9 inches or more expected, with the possibility of a Nor'easter this weekend!

I did manage to get out on the bike on monday for some night riding at glenwood. I rushed home and put the supercaliber back together and headed over to the trails with Mark and the dogs. Temps were hovering right around freezing, but it was warm during the day. This meant that the exposed parts of the trail were nothing more than mud and muck. I managed to get close to an hour in then we called it quits.

So it's snowing out pretty good today. Looking like it's going to be a good night for some xc skiing. Road conditions are probably going to be too poor to head anywhere, so most likely going to end up over at glenwood. Lay some tracks down and can most likely get it worked in for the bikes possibly over the weekend.


View outside my car at lunchtime today!

Currently playing in iTunes: Velvet Snow by Kings Of Leon

Snow

Mark, Suzanne, myself and the pups made an attempt to ride over at Glenwood this morning. We got a few inches of snow last night and figured we'd head out and pack in the trails, and run the pups a little bit. Unfortunately, the snow was a little deeper than we thought making for a tough romp through the trails. We made it down one trail and after a bit of sliding, crashing and walking (well, Mark had no issues as usual) we decided to head home and just pull out the skis. On the way home the rain came down and we had to bail because the snow sucked. So basically we were out and just decided to stick home for the day and chill.

Oh well, try again tomorrow.

Course Creator

I just came across this a few moments ago and it looks really cool. It's called Course Creator. Just sign up for an account and right away you can start mapping out distances, elevation, and if you have a garmin gps you can get waypoints for your ride. This looks real cool and I'll be playing around with it a bunch for sure.



Ol' man winter looks to possibly be coming back tonight and tomorrow ; Really sucks as all the snow right now is pretty much gone. It's been real cold overnight so I'm hoping to hop over to dryer rd and maybe get a mt. bike ride in this evening before the snow comes. As far as tomorrow goes, I'm probably going to have to suck it up and do a little ski time and trainer time. I hope by Sunday they can get the roads cleared back up and I can head out for the gvcc giro.



I'm sure a few people are caught up in this weekend's training dilemma, How do I train and still celebrate St. Patty's Day?? Well don't have an answer for that one. Check back Monday for a wrap-up and see how I rolled. Will I be good or bad??



Back to work....

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 :)

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