I Thought This Cali!?

Rain, rain, and more rain. That's what the last 6 days has been. I have been able to get out a few times, but today was the first time in the last 3 that it's been good enough to get out and not worry about fog. I still got wet today, but it was worth it. I was chomping at the bit to get outside. I get cabin fever so easily now that I live out here, you get used to taken the sun 350 days or so a year for granted. Then when it's rainy for a week, I go nuts.

The season for me starts January 30th, the first Crit of the year, Mothballs. I love this race, the course isn't techy at all, so it's going to come down to being patient and looking for opportunities to get away with some people. Not that that happens too much in my Cat. I'm still a lowly old 4, didn't really race enough last year to get an upgrade, but that's going to change this year. I have some good motivation to train and get my points. But it's time to show what I can do on a bike, show myself that is. A few more base rides and then it's time to get the top end going.

Rainy Days

This past weekend was the Giro di SLO, it's a birthday ride on mountain bike around the city's trails, a 50-70 mile ride and lots of climbing. I was planning on doing it, but with rain coming down at 5:45 am when I woke up, I wasn't about to get ready to make the 6:30 am start.

About 7 the rain stopped, I kitted up and hit the route I thought they would go to after the first bit in town. No such luck. I guess the first bit of trails were so wet, it was more like grease than mud. This meant that they skipped the place I thought I would be able to catch them. So I just did my own little ride, 4.5 hrs and some climbing too. I did have a few mechanicals, well a flat tire and a broken chain. All in all not a bad day.

A Chill's In The Air

Today I found myself part of a really great group ride. A usual time that everyone starts around here is 8am. But with the cold I've been holding off until 9 to get a little more warmth for the first hour. Even though this is California, it still gets cold at nigh here, like 28 degrees, but luckily this group of people decided to wait till it warmed up.

We took off from the shop and headed north on the 1 up to 41 and then over the hill to A Town, Atascadero for you non SLOians, and then back over the grade. A solid 3.5 hrs on the bike with a bit of tempo in there. Starting to feel better out there, getting a solid week in at the gym this week, with some running. Got to be in somewhat decent shape for the annual crazy birthday ride next weekend of a buddy, 50 miles or so and tons of climbing, I'll have my Garmin 500 on the bike and will post the details.

So I'm pretty sure that Thanksgiving isn't this warm in Minnesota. On the invite of Chris Stehula, current Collegiate National Tri champ to go south to Los Olivos/Santa Barbara area to ride Little Pine. It's a really awesome climb up a fire road for 10 miles or so, but the view is great. The decent afterwards was epic, one screw up and poof, you're gone.

After four hours, it was a drive back and then put the little bird on the grill and relax the rest of the day. Happy Thanksgiving!

Base

So lucky for me the rain broke this morning so today I started up my base miles for the year. I'm taking a slow approach to this, only 1.5 hours today, keeping the heart rate around 70%. I haven't really had myself on a structured plan in some time and I noticed some of the bad habits I got from riding with people that just want to try to drop you all the time. I find myself tuning out and just start mashing the pedals and then catch myself and chill out a bit.

Some new things I'm trying out are the Garmin 500 and a set of Quarq cranks. The power meter on the crank makes perfect sense, you don't have to worry about swapping wheels for racing or training. It's always there ready to go. So training with power is new for me. I used to train with heart rate only, but having all this tech is cool and hopefully I won't get fixated on numbers and lose sight of the goal here.

It's funny starting up base miles when everyone else that I know is winding their seasons down and starting to nestle in for the winter. I guess that's the Left Coast for ya, everything is completely different out here. But reading others blogs of the racing this year has me pumped up to get out there and give a real go this time around. Still getting my head straightened out, but everything is coming along. Until next time.

Runnin' Barriers

Had fun at the local cross race this last weekend. The SLO Nexus group did a great job with it and made a fun course too.

Starting Over

It's been a long while since I've written on this thing. Partially because I don't know if people really use the blogisphere anymore to tell their stories, but I figured why not give it a go again.

So over the last 8 months not a lot has happened. I had mediocre success in any race I did, either mountain or road, road a lot of junk miles, ate like crap and fell into a depression. It's been a real journey for me to get to where I am right now. Racing a mountain bike again was fun, and I did meet some nice people, and it was fun watching the national/international pros race and be able to shoot photos of them doing it. The thing about the racing out here is that the series is too short, the venues leave a lot to be desired and most of the people are sandbaggers. Even the guy who sponsors the series was a sandbagger. He was getting top 15 times of the pro and still racing the Cat 1 's. Something's wrong with that.

But, with that said, I realized that I forgot how I needed to train for racing again after being on the road for two years for Trek. All the racing I did hurt way more than it should've and left me very disappointed with myself. This put me further into my depression.

So onto the present. I have been on medication for the past 6 months and it's been working great. I have work to do still, but it's helped me get my head cleared and start setting goals. I raced Cross last weekend and finished 8th out of 16, so mid pack. That was a victory for me though, I suffered hard in that one. I got as high as 6th but started to fade at the end. So that gave me a boost in the morale and I have a plan going now for when racing starts up again in February. I plan on racing the mtn. bike in the beginning of the year, with a few road in there, and then switching over to road by June. The off road season is really short out here. Ok, that's the story so far.

Racing In The Mud

What a weekend it was. Last weekend I went down to San Diego for the first race of the US Cup West Series, the Sagebrush Safari. I left on Friday afternoon, since it was such a long drive from SLO to get to SD to see some old friends and hopefully get to preride the course on Saturday. Well the preride didn't happen, it poured all day Saturday. It was crazy!

So with all the rain, I went to a movie with an old Jr. High School friend and the girlfriend. Then after a bit, I decide to go out to the site just to get registered to get that out of the way. What an adventure that turned out to be. As we were heading out on the 8, maybe about halfway to the site, we saw two cars flipped, one on each side of the freeway, with in a half a mile of eachother! That freaked me out a bit. So long story short, we made it there, barely, and thankfully they were still there taking registrations.

So raceday is here. I'm feeling a bit like a fish out of water because it's been almost a 2 yrs. since I've raced a mtn. bike. I'm nervous and really don't know what to expect. So I get kitted up and start t warm up. The start of the course is a long paved climb to the singletrack, I think it's prolly 1.5 miles or so. We get sent off just after the pros, and no one was really pushing hard, until the raod pitched up. Then a few guys drilled it. The group split right away, I wasn't doing too well, and was getting popped off the back. I was thinkning to myself, man I really forgot what this was like. It hurt, hurt bad. The thing that kept me going was the course, it was fun and tough.

To make a long story short, I finishd the race, 14th, not good, but not bad. I now know that I need to change some things up to get back to where I was when I was doing this more frequently and getting better results. So that's it for now. Next weekend is the Bonelli race, can't wait to puke after that one too!