Saved the day

Another weekend was spent working on the cottage in Door County. Brendan, my dad and myself left Friday morning early to get a jump start on things. The very things we left early to get a jump start on would have to wait. To make a long story short some other matters came up that involved pushing and pulling with a bobcat, truck and some shear muscles. As soon as the first distraction was finished another came to our attention. The last of the movie being shot up there ran into some trouble. They needed to shoot the last 2 scenes during dusk with a borrowed truck. The crew couldn't get the truck started and stay running on top of being scheduled to fly out later that night yet. The small crew and the 3 of us managed to get the beast running long enough to drive it down to the set and finish the last 2 scenes. We literally saved the day and the movie. It's pretty cool to say we helped in the making of a movie and I'm pretty pumped to see the trailer of the movie online soon. When it's online I'll try to post a link or small video. Ok enough about the movie lets talk cycling.

Nothing to exciting lately. Logged some decent hours over the weekend. 3 days of school and 1 midterm before spring break and some real riding. Who's going to win Paris-Nice? My bet is Frank Schleck in the last couple days.

Pre-Break #1

As promised here are a couple pictures of 2008's adventures. I'm getting pretty pumped!

T minus 8 days!

Dizzy Izzy

Busy is the name of the game! Just finished up my biggest training week for this block. I think I need a little chaos in my life but this might be pushing it. The good news is my rest week couldn't have happened at a better time. Midterms are in full swing with a couple labs and a big project thrown in for good measures.

T minus 10 days till spring break and only 5 days till more training time!

Had an eventful weekend. Brendan and myself went up to the cottage in Door County to get some work done on it. I forgot how much "fun" drywalling can be. Things are even crazy up in quiet Door County right now. Tony Shalhoub is one of our next door neighbors and is shooting a movie up there; there's an extra 50-100 people running around right now. The film crew was shooting farther back on the property when we were leaving so I just snapped a quick pic of some of the cars from the road.

The cottage is coming along rather nicely and I can't wait for the green grass and cool lake breeze to go along with my favorite place to take a nap after a long ride; the hammock.

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.