Neglected maintenance

Need to be a little better @ blog maintenance!  Mostly it's just been busy and cold and cold. Finally got out on the wet roads yesterday for 25mi. Trainer time has kept me feeling somewhat ready for race season, so the pavement felt easy, but I know I need to work on sprints more if I want to prepare for the early Spring crits. Officially joined the Bicycle Shack Racing squad so I'll be sporting the blue & green for 2010. Most of the fast Tuesday & Saturday group rides done with these guys in the past assures me that I'm in with the right group if I want to get better. Faster.

Speaking of blog maintaining, I need to do the same for my road bikes. Esp getting my old Santa Cruz Roadster tuned up as a good backup for the season in case the BMC goes down.

Anxious to see where I can take my fitness level if I seriously devote the effort. Right now it's obviously not into this site!

Enjoy your ride!

Theory of Weatherelativity...

...states that sequential days spent considerably below 32°F will condition the mind & body to believe that a subsequent windy, misty, 36° day suddenly seems like splendid conditions to go for a bicycle ride. 

Brushing up

Got some fun bicycle paintings in the works right now! Working with a few ladies that are starting up a mountain bike touring co. for women. The painting will become their logo & I thinks it's gonna be cool! Then another painting that's going in a shop down in Tucson AZ. Sketching some ideas for the next Bicycle Times cover and below is a sneeky peek at some inside art for the next issue of Dirt Rag. I wish I would have done this piece larger (now that I'm done), but when I look at the finished piece it still makes me smile real big. Success!

Gonna sit on the trainer tomorrow morning for 90 min. Yeah!!!

No train(er) / No gain

...but what a pain.

Finally got the trainer out for the first time and it was all the suck I remember it to be. Actually, it wasn't THAT bad but it's just boring. I bought the movie Tropic Thunder at the HyVee pre-used DVD $3.99 bin so that should give me a better 1.5 hr workout next time! Basically it comes down to two choices for winter riding: Deal with the excitement-level shrinkage & ride the trainer  indoors; or deal with the other shrinkage and go ride in the cold. 

Here's to a mild winter!!!

A little Monday Music...

Early resolution

Of course this one is bike-related. Aside from learning web-design and other personal growth blah blah... I have a goal to become a Category 3-level in bicycle racing. I did a couple Cat5 races this summer, felt good & wanted to get more racing in to get my 10 mass-starts in so I can move up to Cat4 where I should be but weekends always seemed to get full of other more important activities. So next year, I will line up at my first races as a 4 and have to earn 20pts in order to make it to 3 before season ends. I think if I stay healthy and launch into spring in the same fitness levels I am ending November with, I'll be good. Been riding with a bunch of Bicycle Shack racers and from seeing their 2009 results it looks like they've been placing well in local races. Time to kick it up a notch and reach the 3s before I turn 40 in a couple years.

Here's me in my tshirt (left; yellow tire; forgot my jersey!) mixin' it up with some young cat fivers in the 2009 Tour of Lawrence campus circuit race. Stinkin' 6th that day because I ran off the road (actually a sidewalk) into the mud while attacking on the last climb. Went from first to sixth pretty fast. Legs felt really good that day, too. Learning experience! 

November, for the most part, is treating us very kindly. Got out & rode again this morning. Been getting around 100mi per week in and still haven't dusted off the dreaded trainer. 

Resting? Don't mind if I do...

Loons

One of the reasons I get up early:

I shot a deer using a Canon SD1100

High Life indeed.