Memorial Day ride

Happy Memorial Day to all of the veterans out there, both living and passed.

This pic of the family is from out Subway sandwich lunch at Greenwood park. We followed lunch with a paved trail ride around Grays lake, Principal park and back through Waterworks park. 10.25 miles on knobby mtb tires. The girls held up pretty good.

Summerset Shootout Report

The Iowa MTB race series has 11 races and I've already missed three. I'll be missing another while we are on vacation in Montana, so that means that I need to hit the remaining seven to have any chance at retaining my Masters title. I'll need all the points that I can get. So, even though I haven't trained for racing yet, I knew that I needed to race at Summerset this past Sunday. All I was looking for was points, a good workout would be a bonus. I had hopes of having a good race, but wasn't planning on much.

Nine of us lined up and if I was trained, it would be hard to get 5th at best with this group. No problem, I lined up at the back and figured I'd give it my best. I felt tired from all of the trail work that I did to prep this course, but I also had semi-fresh riding legs. What would happen?

As the race started, I followed the group into the single-track and had no problem holding onto the back. The speed started lifting and knowing that it was over 85 degrees, I thought I should let them go. I could still see 8th place towards the end of the lap, so I figured that I would be giving up 1 minute on the first lap. We had seven laps to ride, so maybe some of these guys would blow up.

Lap 2 had my stomach churning a little bit, so I had to back off a little. Laps 3 and 4 were a little better. Each time that I came through the finish line, my split times were within 60 seconds of each other and my heart rate was steady between 162-165avg. I was actually riding pretty good, I just didn't have any high end power (normal race pace would have the heart rate averaging closer to 175 a lap).
During these first 5 laps, I had a few of the fast Cat2 riders and singlespeeders come around me and I would use them to pace me for awhile. At the end of lap 5, I could see another Rassy's rider in front of me and figured it was 8th place. I picked up the pace to try and chase him down and 1/3 of the way through the lap, I caught him. I was surprised to see that it was Rick. I tailed him for a bit and discovered that he had blown-up. Probably went too hard and with the heat, it had beat him down. He was toughing it out for points and after a few minutes, he let me by. I pushed it hard to see if anyone else was catch-able. In the end, I couldn't find the next guy, I had let them get too far out in front.

In the end, I placed 7th, as one person had a mechanical. I think this was 4th place in the 35+ category, so it should be worth some good points. Looking back, I'm happy with how the race went. My lap times and heart rates were consistent. I think that I ended up closer in time to a few guys that I marked (compared to last year). I need to work on the upper end heart rates and get some endurance rides in. On the positive, I think that the fact that I'm 4lbs lower than last years, end of season, race weight helped. I also rode the new wheelset and tires and they definitely spun faster. I'm glad that it appears that I haven't lost too much fitness, with proper training, it might be as if I hadn't missed a beat.

Stole the photos from Nick, thanks!

Best lunch ever

Loving the flavors, but it hurts like hell when I open my mouth.

The home stretch

Down to the home stretch of my latest injury ordeal. Holly's terms, not mine (but I understand). The pic above shows the hardware that I've been sporting for the last 40 days. I am now down to 34 hours. I'll be sitting in the dentist chair getting them unwired on Friday, then headed to breakfast. I hope that I don't gain the entire 13lbs that I've lost in one sitting. By the way, the scar from the cut is on the left side of this pic (my right), almost invisible. Great job by Dr. Cherny.

The family at the zoo. Tim, Hiliary. Zoe, Holly, Hannah, Madison.

Trail Report

Walnut Creek as of 5pm on Thursday night. It was expected to rise from this point.
Don't forget about the Cita workday tomorrow at Summerset/Banner State Park @9am.

Kitchen Upgrade

We have never been totally satisfied with the original kitchen in the house, but being stubbornly frugal, I've never wanted to upgrade. On the other hand, I've upgraded a few bikes in the past six years, so the chance of adding another new bike before the kitchen was slim.

The original look. White appliances, white Corian counter tops.

The new granite counter tops, with the white appliances. Had hoped this would work, but still not the finished look. We did sell the appliances and counter top on Craigslist.

The finished product. The new appliances completed the look that we were going for.

Birthday Photos

As stated in the past post, the girls had their birthday sleepover last weekend. Six friends and the two of them. Holly and I mostly left them alone and they had fun in the basement.

Sign of the times. Everyone checking their text messages. Probably just from each other.
The birthday girls.

Lots of gift cards for shopping. They went out with Holly to spend them on Sunday.

Then watched a movie before crashing for the night. All of them were well behaved and good memories were created.

Birthdays, Braces and Bikes

It was a long week so sorry about the lack of updates.

Friday was the designated night for the girls birthday party and sleepover, so near 6pm we were invaded by 6 tween-agers and their high pitched voices. We feed them pizza and sugary drinks and sent them to the basement. They proceeded to gossip, dance, scream and play games. We brought down the cake and I tried not to embarrass them as I snapped several pics (they will be uploaded later). They had fun and all were well behaved. We can probably stand to do that once or twice a year.

Braces: I made it past week three (just barely). I can definitely say that week two-three is the hardest as the novelty of eating the same 8-9 items becomes old. Once I made it into the work week it got a little easier. I'm in the home stretch now and will get them cut off on the 21st. Officially down 10lbs as of this morning.
Bikes: Was able to commute to work two days last week and hope to continue that for the next two three weeks. I did ride another 30 miles today and too a nice tour of the city. I even stopped by the scene of the accident and took few pics. The bench was made by "Squirrel" with the tree that took me out. If you zoom in on the other photo, you can see the scar from where the tree I was standing on had rested against this tree. I was obviously higher than I had anticipated.