Bikes, Break and Cross on the brain!

Training goes so much faster riding indoors when you have the TOC to watch and ride along to. I thoroughly enjoyed watching Levi kill it from the start along with the whole Astana team. Logged some decent saddle hours over the weekend. Skied for 2 hours Sunday with these guys.

Rode a couple more hours Sunday during the Tours final stage.

Made some of these to help bring the glucose levels back to normal.

Found out I'm in! I'm going to North Carolina for spring break with the Madison cycling team in less than 3 weeks. Should make for some serious training with some not so serious people. This will be just a small glimpse of what break is like. I'll post more pictures as we get closer.

Stellar news! You can never start planning to far in advance.

Lastly I'm ordering a new steed this week. Either this one or this one but wouldn't mind this one.

Food + Training = Metabolism

How much food can a person training really eat? It seems like mounds compared to just a week ago. Metabolism is a crazy thing, especially when training. I'm probably going to go eat some more as I watch the Tour of California coverage right now! Burritos as big as our heads to begin with. I think Jon is winning. Remember don't eat too much at once or you'll get a food baby like this and you'll have to lay down for a bit. Bring on the green grass.

The beginning of the end

It's official the off season is over! Base training is under way and going to be bigger and better than ever before. I sat down with Brian to discuss 09's goals and determine how much work would have to go into accomplishing them. It's not going to be easy with the bar being raised as high as it is but I'm up for the challenge!

I just want to say I give anyone who gets up early before work or school to train a lot of credit. I forgot how hard it can be to get up early to get in a decent training ride before classes. Thursday morning was the first of hopefully many early rides which started at 6am. I managed to coordinate with Bender so I had a training buddy for the early ride. The pace was a little higher than I wanted for a base ride but totally worth it. A couple more rides like that and I'll be flying come May.

One week till the big event. It's going to be weird driving up for a race other than Chequamegon much less skiing bawards on the course. Should be fun.

Super weekend, Super Sick

I started to write this post on Monday only to get Super sick by Tuesday. I've been laying on the couch for the last 2 days with what I'm guessing is the flu. Who doesn't love the hot cold swings and complete body ache. Being sick is something out of the norm for myself, but when it happens it's almost always brutal. I'm just glad I'm able to walk around this morning and punch a couple keys on the keyboard to finish some homework.

This past weekend had a little bit of everything going on. Cyclocross world championships, major skiing, super bowl party, heatwave to ride outside. There's more to the list but these cover the "super" aspects from the weekend. I've fully committed to doing the Kortelopet and have been putting in some decent time on the skis lately. This last Saturday I decided to go big and raise the bar so to speak. For those of you who don't ski it doesn't translate into the same amount of work as cycling. I skied for 2 hours with an average heart rate of 168 to put in 12.5 miles, and that's on easier trails. Lets just say I was a little tired after but felt pretty good.

The alarm clock went off early Sunday morning to watch Brian race at Cyclocross World Championships in the Netherlands. The Euro's really love their cross, to the point of having in on tv and live feeds. The way I understand it cross worlds to them is like the Superbowl to people in the states. It was pretty hard to see Brian or anyone else from team USA for any longer than a split second. The cameras fixated on the leader and the first chase group pretty much the entire race. It was still totally worth it to be able to cheer for someone you know racing on a world class level.

Weather overall for the weekend was stellar compared to weeks past. I saw the sun and it was above freezing two days in a row!!! The weatherman told me it was the first time it was above freezing since January 4th. Nothing like having almost an entire month below freezing. It felt like a heatwave to me so I suited up Sunday after watching Worlds for a little recovery spin from the skiing the day before. I went against my better judgement and wore knee warmers thinking it was 55 rather than 35. It wasn't that bad but not the best idea I've had, lesson learned. It's good to ride outside again!

The last "super" part of the weekend was the Superbowl. Emily hosted the party and there was enough food to feed the 10 of us for 3 days. I cheered for the Cards the whole way and ate myself into a food comma.

Sorry nothing good was taken picture wise from the "super" weekend. I tried to snap a picture of the Worlds race but that didn't turn out. I should have snapped one of the food baby I had Sunday night. I promise to snap more for the next post.