Busier than a one-armed paper hanger...

As is somewhat customary of me to proclaim, I find myself "busier than a one-armed paper hanger"... as my father would say... but with a stronger Alabama accent than I have anymore.

I got back in to San Diego late afternoon Saturday, around 5:00PM, and was reasonably useless the rest of the day. Sunday I was up early, though still pretty worthless, and then got my daughter around 2:00PM and my son a few hours later. Since then, I have been running at pretty much full speed- and then some. We have a major set of meetings Monday and Tuesday of next week and I am now feverishly working on a PowerPoint presentation for those meetings (have I ever mentioned my desire to choke the creator of PowerPoint?). Thing is, Friday is also the first day of the Bicycle Leadership Conference (BLC) and I will be attending all three days of the BLC, along with Haro MTB Brand Manager Jill Hamilton. AND I have a meeting on Friday (that I may have to skip) with my good friend Kendall Young from Ritchey Components. Saturday and Sunday will be consumed by the conference and then Monday and Tuesday we have the important internal meetings. All the while, I still need to wrap up and finish the Spring '08 catalog copy. The icing on the cake is that this is my week with the kids and I am going to have to shuffle them off to family members for a few days. AND... I'm getting a slight cold!

I rode my trainer tonight for about 45-50 minutes, for my first ride since the 4th of this month. Not surprisingly, I felt stiff and sore and had no lung power. But, the legs themselves did not feel all that bad. IF I can manage to hold this cold at bay long enough, I might still make it to the 3-day stage race in Henderson, NV starting next Friday (1/25). I'm not holding my breath because I know how hard it is going to be to stay healthy with all this stress and the lack of training time is going to really put my fitness in question. However... I still really want to go to this race. I haven't done a stage race in years and I really enjoy them. Historically, by day 3, my legs usually feel fantastic. Since the road race is on day 3 and it is very hilly, that might save me from being dropped on the first climb. Day 2's crit might suffer, but I can pretty much do a crit with my eyes closed at this point in my life. The 20K TT on day 1 might be a challenge, but since it is nearly board flat and is almost a straight line, I have a good chance of not losing too much time. We'll see what happens. Fingers are crossed... but I might just take the time off from work and spend the 4 days I would be racing/ traveling just riding and getting some sleep!

Got a bunch of goodies over the past couple days that make it feel like a late Christmas. I will have more on that in the next few days, if my head doesn't explode. Maybe I'll even do a vidcast instead of a blog post- been awhile since I've done one. Stay tuned...

Ok kids, I'm going to bed before my feeble brain finally cracks.

Tim

It's that time of year again...

It's that time of year again for me...

... time to sit on the trainer in the dark, in the driveway, freaking out the neighbors.

With all the work that needs to get done at work, it's hard to actually ride at lunch anymore. On top of that, even when I do get to ride, I know I have a lot of travel coming up and I will lose my bike time. So, like a desperate squirrel storing nuts for the winter, I'm packing in all the T.I.T.S I can get (Time In The Saddle... you perverts...).

What really freaks the neighbors out, aside from the fact that I'm spinning my ass off and going nowhere- complete with rivers of sweat pouring off of me- is when I do ILT (Isolated Leg Training... pedaling with one leg) workouts. They look weird, I know, but they are SO good for your neglected hip flexor muscles.


If the belt on my rollers wasn't busted, I'd be rolling on those instead- which really scares the neighbors for some reason. I really need that replacement belt though because there is no better workout than riding the rollers on a fixed gear/ track bike.

And a solid 45 minutes to an hour on the trainer, at high intensity, is quite the workout too...

... as you can see from the picture. For this time of year, with the schedule I have, it's a better workout than I care to admit- stupid fluid resistance unit kicks my butt!

The good news is that I'm down to 205 pounds, from 215. Hopefully that will start going back up as the muscle replaces the fat. I'm still hoping to do a few cross races this year, even though I can't run across the street without my knees swelling, so I don't know how I'm gonna survive a cross race. I want to come out of this winter with a decent level of base fitness so I can hit the early season crits with form next year. It's a pipe dream... but it's good to have dreams.

Tim