good stuff

Great weather, ahead on homework, sponsored New Orleans trip and described as "a beast," life's been pretty good to me recently.

First of all, the weather has been off the wall the past week! Saturday started as foggy and nasty but turned into a sunny 60 degree day. Sunday, in true Portland fashion, promptly returned to rain. Monday, flipping cold and wet. Tuesday and Wednesday: great weather, sunny, 'warm' and dry. Portland, you're an awesome city but you need to get you s*** together in the weather department!

There's this really funny phenomenon that happens fairly often in my life; no matter how much homework, riding and other stuff I have to take care of it seems like it always gets done ways ahead of schedule, even when it seems impossible. Take for example this last weekend: I barely did any homework until Sunday evening and I managed to complete 4 huge homework assignments, 2 projects, work 6 hours, read 50 pages of handouts my Marriage class AND get 2 good workouts in. Honestly, I don't know where all the time came from but I'm not complaining.

Next: New Orleans. I've decided to go. While it may be incredibly stressful and I don't get to ride for at least 4 days (probably 5) it'll be a worthwhile experience. Initially, the cost was a major deterrent but Acumed (a local biomedical engineering company) hopped on board and offered to pay our entire registration fee to the conference. Pretty awesome deal if you ask me. THANK YOU ACUMED!

Below is the excerpt from an email that was forwarded to me. As I was reading the previous messages to get an idea of the history of the message when I stumbled across this: "On the cycling front, the guy is a beast... rides a carbon fiber Scott... raced 'cross this past Fall and got bumped into the B's, as he was a newcomer I think..." I know it's not much and I'm not really looking for anything but it's interesting to hear other people's take on things when you have a different view (aka, I have a damn long way to go before I'm competitive/at the level I want to be).


Cruising along on today's ride:

long day

This one will be short, I promise.

No ride today, the solid yellow splotch covering Portland on the radar and the dumping rain kind of put a damper on that. Instead, I worked on homework all day and felt like I didn't accomplish anything. It's days like this that make me feel like the suitcase in THIS video clip. Don't worry, I don't mean this in a bad or depressing way, it was just one of those days that really wears on you.

brain dump

First of all, I want to apologize. It's been almost 2 weeks since the last post and this one is most likely going to be long. That oddly corresponds with the start of the semester... weird.

As a follow up from the last post, the shoes and pedals are absolutely amazing. Molly Cameron at Portland Bicycle Studio did a great job on the cleat fitting and would highly recommend getting fit by her if you're looking for a custom fit. I still have a little but of pain in the left knee I'm blaming it on my riding style. There is such an incredible difference between road and mountain shoes/pedals, the power transfer, the stiffness and the locked-in feeling are incredible. Ok, the shoes and pedals are great, enough of that.

If you have not yet see my friend's new special effects video you need to check it out. Click HERE to go to it. Yes, it is rather short and kind of gory (usually not my kind of thing) but the amount of work and attention he has put into this project are truly colossal. If you like it leave a comment or subscribe, he likes that kind of thing.

Next, here's a neat picture I took while downtown studying one night list week. I was in the middle of crossing the street and looked down and saw this reflection. Sorry for the poor quality but I was trying to not get run over.




As far as training goes, this week was really tough. I got a ton of riding (maybe too much) in but my legs are shot. Took Monday off but Tuesday I destroyed the normal Germantown loop with an incredible ride, Wednesday was spin class and rollers, Thursday was a cake ride (only 53 minutes and 14+ miles)... yeah. I made up for it on Friday with the hardest hills I've ever ridden and then spin class. As if that wasn't enough I decided to throw on a long ride at the end of the week. What was supposed to be a 65 miles ride turned into about 80 miles after the typical "hey, do you know where we are?" -- "no, I thought you did" exchange. We made it back and still felt strong at the end but my legs aren't talking to me right now. Here is a link to the planned route, if you ever get a chance to ride it, do it. The ride goes out to the Canby Ferry and is pretty scenic with no major climbs, just a few short kickers and a bunch of easy rollers. Yet another link, this one for the pictures from today's ride.

I leave you with this:
this is EXACTLY what I feel like in spin class, minus the sweat and profanity

Don't forget to look at Wren's video. Even if you've already watched it, go watch it again!

damn, actually a roadie

Damn, I have to be fast now...
Cyclocross was fun. A lot of fun, but I realize that I have no hope of advancing by doing what I did last summer and just riding. I need to compete on the road to give myself a chance of riding into the A's this next cross season. As much as I like cross and have told myself I'm not a roadie, it's slowly coming to that. At this point I'm just biding my time and conditioning for next cross season.

Ok, enough about cyclocross. Road season is coming up soon (as in the first race is 5 weeks from TODAY)! While I in no way feel prepared for it that's good. It's base building time and I shouldn't feel ready to race. That being said I keep looking around at all the other racers putting in 12+ hours per week on the bike and get kind of nervous that I'm not at that stage. Oh well, it all works out right?

We're still working on getting all the club stuff worked out with the school. The team kit order will HOPEFULLY be going out soon so we can wear that for a few of the races before schools gets out. Other than that, the semester kicks off tomorrow, somehow corresponding with a significant increase in my blood pressure.

Things to look forward to: rollers, spin classes (yuck) and the inevitable homework. Let second semester of junior year begin!

best day of break (so far)

Oddly enough my best day of break was my first full day back in Portland... imagine that.