Geez, yesterday's race bugged me all day today. Such a goofy race. With any luck, that stuff won't happen again the rest of the year.

Beautifully sunny day, cool temps and moderate winds ringed in the season today with the Froze Toes Bicycle Fun Club Ride. Rumor was 99 riders were in the 3/4's field. The perfect size field for a race on a one lane road. I rode backwards past the start line at about 11:15. No one was milling around the start so I rode the back stretch a little ways with Justin. We came back and I was starting from about 90th place. It was going to be a teriffic race.

As expected the race was brake, start, brake, start, brake, start. Halfway down the backstretch I finally wormed my way up front. A handful of us got a little paceline going and strung the field out a little. It was so nice to be able to pedal regularly for a couple miles. Turning onto the outer road in the top 15, the field was still intact for the most part. Did the race get serious at that point. Of course not. With the southerly wind I figured the yellow line would be the easier place to move up. Instead, people steadily moved past on the inside. I guess I could have been really forceful and tried to get over there but the field was a bottleneck.

The braking continued for the whole race. Apparently people didn't read the word RACE on the flyer. Going downhill approaching the first of the two hills on the outer road and there was noticeable braking. We're going downhill on a straight road. Not even a steep downhill. STOP BRAKING!!!!! If there was any opportunity I was going attack off the front until I cracked just so I would feel something was accomplished. Instead, the WHOLE race, except for maybe the last mile, was braking. Crazy shit.

The topper to the race was yet another instance of the video cameras used to help with scoring the race being totally useless. What you saw on the TV screen was a colored blur. The brief time I spent at the officials tent they asked that anybody who felt they were top 10 to report to the tent. Ah yes, rider scored races. Love 'em. Even at 2pm, the posted "top 10" had two spots left blank.

On a positive note, CBC did a nice job with the race. The roads were generally good and registration in the gym was great. Please, please, please have registration there every year.

Yesterday at work I suddenly realized that I still had not renewed my license. Can you say procrastination. Actually, it was more forgetfulness but there have been a few times I thought about needing to renew but put off actually doing so.

An hour ago I got off one the trainer for one last time before tomorrow's race. I felt decent. The position felt more comfortable and I did a couple moderately hard 10 minute efforts. Nothing killer but enough to wake the legs up.

Now we will see where I stand in terms of fitness tomorrow. Those first few miles are going to suck as usual. Big fields. People nervous about riding in the pack for the first time in a while. Lots of braking and accelerating for no reason. Blah! Then there is annual lines to register. My impression is that registration will be in the gym this year which can only help. A hundred or so people trying to register at any one time in that little school lobby bites.

Post ride weight: 149.1

Did a basic hour on the trainer. Nothing fancy. Nothing structured. Just logged some miles. Everything felt normal after dropping the saddle back down. That's good. I would have hated to try to adjust to a new feeling on the bike only a couple days before the race. Now I need to clean up Ol' Blue. The wet and snowy ride on the 12th really crudded things up.

The weather for Froze Toes keeps changing a little bit. The forecast temps are up to a hi of 44. That's good. Supposed to be windy, though. Every day the forecast shows the wind blowing in another direction. We'll see what happens when Sunday rolls around. You can't trust those weathermen. It will probably be good to bring clothing for every possible condition.

Gift certificates are nice. Ever since swapping out my gruppo, I have been using my old Look pedals since my right Speedplay was stripped and could not be removed from the old crank. With the race coming up I really wanted to get back to the Speedplays and my normal bike setup. The Looks along with my Carnac shoes that have the Look cleats forced me raise my saddle and I never did give much care in doing so. I pulled over to the side of the road and quickly eveballed what I thought would be an appropriate rise. Turns out I raised the saddle a touch over a half inch.

Getting back to my point about gift certificates, I went to the Shark today after work and came home with new pedals for $25 thanks to a gift certificate. Sweet! A little later this evening I will drop the saddle back down and try to dial in the setup or at least get used to the old position again.

On the way home from the shop I saw the new Trek Store jerseys in person for the first time. Scott Hill, I think, was the modeling the kit while stopped at a light along the Forest Park bike path. He is on the Trek team now isn't he? It looked like his tattoo'd leg anyway. The jersey looks nice.

Went Spinning last night for the usual hour long workout. My heart wasn't into riding for the first 10 or so minutes but my attitude improved and got a good ride in. The heart of the class was a pyramid of intervals. 5 minutes, 4 minutes, etc down to 1 minutes and back up to 5 minutes. Or, would that be a reverse pyramid? Hmmm. All depends on your perspective I guess.

My cold is getting better and better. The nose is still runny at times but I feel good physically. No weakness or fatigue.. Trainer time on Sunday was good. No huge gears but a real nice tempo for an 1:40 and would have had no problem going longer but I didn't want to push it.

Forecasts are looking so-so for Sunday. It should be sunny. Thats good but it appears that the temps will be chilly and a pretty strong breeze out of the north.

Last night I recorded the Tour of California prologue and watched it while getting ready for work. The coverage by ESPN was solid. Sherwen and Roll were their usual selves. Sherwen was the more reserved Brit and Roll was his typically exaggerated in his descriptions. Unfortunately I messed up and ran out of DVD space just as the heavy hitters were going to start. Still, I saw all but the last few. Missed Leipheimers winning ride, though.

A couple thoughts.

You would think Discovery would have helmets that match their teal-ish colored jersey, instead of standard blue.
Danielson LOOKED really quick going up the climb. Not quick enough but still quick.
Landis has to have the most beastly TT position I have ever seen on a standard UCI frame. He's quick but I'm uncomfortable just watching him.

I needed to get back on the bike after spending much of the week taking it easy in the hope of getting over this cold. My nose was still producing garbage but I couldn't justify not riding, especially with Froze Toes only a week away. I went at a moderate pace and felt surprisingly strong. The smaller gear was probably why. Still, I was happy with the ride and plan to go longer today.

Hard to believe Froze Toes is only one week away. A month ago I felt I would have done real well but after several less than stellar weeks of riding I am tempering any ambitions I may have had but should do okay.

Spinning Tuesday was good for about 45-50 minutes. Then the illness that started Monday might have taken effect. The last bit of the class I was tired and didn't have a lot of fight in the legs. The last couple days I have been feeling decent enough. The nose is still stuffy or runny or both. I took yesterday off and will most likely skip riding today, too.

Viewpoint: Some random thoughts from watching the Olympics.

- The Italians are proud of Ferrari but was it appropriate to have a F1 car doing donuts at the Opening Ceremony?

- I find myself rooting against Apollo Ohno. The guy strikes me as a punk and I don't like him.

- The medals handed out at this Olympics make me think of bagels
- One reason the Winter Olympics are better than the Summer is that they tend to be in visually more dramatic/beautiful locales.

- A big thumbs up to the women's US Curling team sister act of Cassie and Jamie Johnson. Very easy on the eyes. Especially Cassie

Last night I was feeling a little funky and this morning I work up with some scratchiness in my throat which has lasted all day. Some queasiness in the stomach has come and gone as well. Maybe riding this weekend was not such a good idea. Maybe I can shake this quickly.

This morning I began the deforestation of my legs while getting ready for work. I gave the clipper a quick pass over my right leg and it has begun to look like a leg thats ready for competition. Tonight I hope to finish off the right leg and maybe do the left. Now my pasty white legs need to get a little color in them.

Snow was falling lightly when I awoke this morning. The online forecasts called for the snow to end early so the 8am was a go for me. Temps were in the mid 20's and the snow stopped by 8am. Good job Mr. Forecaster. We got our usual late start and decided to do a short loop and double back to the parking lot to possibly meet up with some guys what were showing up at 9am. Sure enough, Messrs. Hill, Nelson, Hardy, Strothman and new guy Trent had arrived.

While preparing to leave, the snow started lightly again but it was no big deal and we headed up on the bluffs with the intent of going to Waterloo on a route the others did last week. We were not up on the bluffs for long and the roads began to get a light covering of snow. Then some more. And some more. Before long there was some talk about dropping down to the flats. Yet, we pushed on. Mr. Hill, riding his fixed gear, thought better of riding in these conditions and went back to Columbia. He was probably the smart one of the group. I was riding like garbage. Maybe it was the cold or the snow or who knows what. I noticed in the parking lot that when the bike was leaned over I felt a rubbing like the brake was rubbing but it was not. Maybe something is wrong with my rear hub.

The conditions were really quite crappy. I wish I hadn't left the camera in the car. Eventually we reached 156 where the road was only wet, probably because of the increased traffic. We elected to descend Mont Valmeyer to the flats. Down in Old Valmeyer the roads were, at most, damp. Turning north on Levee Rd saw Cooper head out on his own. Strothman went in pursuit a minute later and later still the rest of the group tried to get a paceline going. The effort was disjointed since some were beginning to hurt. As we exploded, Hardy looked like he really wanted to get up to the lead two. I pulled through, had him get on my wheel and bridged the gap. After doing my work I dropped back to wait for the others. We rode as a group for a while and then they told some of the stronger guys to go on ahead. We had five of us pacelining in half inch snow. An interesting experience to say the least. Trent apparently was chasing solo that whole time and when we eased up for a little bit he caught back on. A nice effort on his part.

I got home and my feet were cold. I hopped in the shower and had too warm of water early on. My toes hurt and the my right toes turned darkish. Upon seeing that I cooled the water and gently massaged my toes. The pinkish color came back, thank goodness. After getting out of the shower, though my toes were visibly swollen and hard to the touch. Right now, at 6pm, the swelling is better but still tender. What happened to our warm weather?

ride time 3:10

Rode to Meramec Saturday for the ride. The weather was not as bad as I expected but I stuck with the planned counter-clockwise tour of spain route. I was really surprised that 11 people showed up. For some reason I felt poor the whole time but particularly on the hills. If the road turned up, my legs seemed to scream much more than usual. Maybe the cooler weather had something to do with how I felt. Still, I was the first or second guy to the top at each hill. That still makes no sense to me. The others must have been willing to just follow 'cuz I'm positive I was not going quickly.

ride time. 1:45 plus 50-55 to and from ride
week 4:45

Just an ordinary trainer ride tonight. One hour long. Five minute warm up, then a half hour in the 53x19, and later the 18. Had a real good cadence the whole time and was really satisfied with how my pedal stroke felt. The second half of the ride was in the small ring, the 17 I think. I felt rather good tonight.

Ride time: 1hr

Spinning was kind of hard last night. Surprisingly, Amy had more of a power workout. The first half of the class was spent moving to a tougher gear. The second half was spent doing a series of shorter "hills". After this weekends events I needed to get on the bike again.

Post-ride discussion brought up the scintillatingly hot topic of the Lance/Sheryl breakup. Word through the grapevine is that he is seeing a former Playmate. Lance sounds like he is really crushed by the breakup. Understand that this is a fourth-hand rumor so the accuracy is suspect. The girls in the discussion thought that it was a shame that he would even consider a playmate. Apparently, posing in Playboy brands a woman as unworthy of ever being with a man.

Ride time: 1hr 15min

Spinning tonight. Somehow I completely forgot about the team meeting last night. At 8:30 I looked in the TV book to see if anything worthwhile was on and the realization hit.

The last couple days I've been looking at a touring company that does bike tours of Italy. They built bike tours around the many Gran Fondo's that take place in Italy. They look like pretty good tours. These things are never cheap but this looks reasonably priced and you stay in 3 and 4 star hotels. Only of the tours is in May (early May), however, so it would be necessary to extend the trip to see any part of the Giro. It would be cool to get over there and ride. There are several mountains over there that are on my list of things to ride.

On the subject of Gran Fondo's. Today I started to consider doing another Gran Fondo like last year's Ste Gen ride. Of course, it's not a true Gran Fondo. Really it is just a century-plus ride. The Ste Gen ride is really nice but it is something of a hassle arranging for transportation back from IL. I mapped a tentative route today that stayed in MO and was 103 miles. Much of the first half is similar to the Ste. Gen ride but then I head back through DeSoto and Hillsboro, etc. The ride would be about 13 miles shorter. Without the flat IL side to finish on, the route could well be more difficult. All this would be subject to road conditions. Those counties down south are still fond of gravel roads y'know.

My weekend sucked for riding. My usual Saturday ride wouldn't happen because I had to help at work with the move of our 1,000 lb gorilla of a printer. Still, I had some hope that if things went really well I could get a little trainer time in the afternoon. I clocked in at 7:40am and was pleasantly surprised by how smooth the move went. By 2pm, including a lunch break of Imo's pizza, we were ready to fire the big boy up and get out of Dodge. We were ready to do that but the printer gods had other plans. Our Xerox serviceman plugged in the power cord, flipped the switch and one of the internal fans started. That's all that started. No lights, no whirring, none of the other usual noise that the beast of a machine makes. The printer was eerily comatose, minus the one fan, but there was no bad smells or smoke or any other really bad signs. He turned the printer off and thought for a minute. First rule of troubleshooting... check the power. He puts his voltmeter on the outlet and got about 205 volts. Not what he expected and his guess was the new connection was wired as 3-phase 220, and we needed single-phase 220.

We called our boss, who called the electricians, who called us. We explained and then he called some of his men. Then he called some more. Then called some more. Finally, he got someone to drive up north to check out the situation. Sure enough, the electrical was setup incorrectly. I won't assign blame because I don't what the specs called for, but the fix was relatively easy.

It was time to test the printer again. And with great fanfare, the same fan started. No more, no less. Our printer tech, started diagnosing the problem again and determined that one of the components got messed up when the wrong voltage was applied earlier. He was able to have one of the other techs pick up the part from Fenton while he worked on removing the part. The part eventually got replaced. The printer was started and... the same fan started and that was all that happened. Time for more diagnosing and it was guessed that the printer's power supply was fried but they would have to take it down to their office in Fenton and test it on a test machine. An hour and half later they return with a new power supply to replace the one that was shown to be cooked. Finally, the darn thing fired up and worked like a charm.

A Giuseppe Fullerini-like 15 hours later, I finally headed home.

Sunday I was up early, chatted with an old online friend for a while and headed off to church. Afterward, I ate breakfast and was still tired from Saturday and layed down for a nap. A couple hours later, at noon, I groggily crawled out of bed. I had no ambition at all. I did nothing. There was the occasional thought of riding for a while but I had no energy. Saturday was a long day but I wouldn't have expected it to mess up Sunday too, but it did. Oh well, I won't worry about it.

Viewpoint: Thoughts while watching the Super Bowl... Aaron Neville sucks. The whole national anthem sucked. The Super Bowl is a nauseatingly commercialized, over-produced, over-hyped pile of crap. The Seahawks jerseys are ugly. The Rolling Stones should be quiet. Retire. Please! Paul Tagliabue's presentation of the Lombardi trophy couldn't have been any stiffer. Good move by Bettis to retire on top.

Thoughts about the game one day later... Seahawks fans are a bunch of whiny pansies. Contrary to many expressed opinions it was not the worst Super Bowl ever. It was not great, or should I say Super, but most Super Bowl's are not. It was a game. A game like many NFL games. I will gladly watch a Super Bowl like this than a 45-10 blowout. There was an ebb and flow to the game and at several points either team could have seized control. That works for me.

Work is preventing me from doing the usual Saturday ride at Meramec. At least the weather will not be particularly warm so I won't feel like I am really missing out.

My left knee felt "odd" today. There was no pain but it felt... what would be the word to use... unstable, perhaps. For that reason I stayed in the small ring (39x16) tonight and tapped out a good pace for an hour and a half. My legs feel like they worked.

Ride time: 1:30
Weight: post-ride 150.1

News Item of the Day: This evening, Lance and Sheryl officially announced that they have split up. Boohoo! And I thought those two crazy lovebirds were going to be together forever. Yeah, right.

Today is the 47th anniversary of the day the music died. But this morning I
walked outside to get the newspaper heard the awful musical strains of some
poor animal in a fight. Not sure what type of animal it was but the shrieks
went right through you.

When the time came to get on the trainer this evening I found myself trying to weasel out of the ride. Eventually I buckled down, threw on some shorts and got the bike on the trainer. I didn't feel like goofing around once I got on. After a little warmup in the 53x19, I moved down to the 16 and got down to business and went hard for something between 25-30 minutes. I am not sure of the exact time I started. The legs were burning by the end but I was happy with how well it went. I needed to do a long, hard effort and see how it felt.

Ride time: 45 minutes
Weight: 153.7 before the ride, 151.1 after

Punxsutawney who?

There are events that mark certain times and milestones in the year. Some of these are traditional, some are more personal. At this time of year, there are events that show we are on a downhill slope to the end of winter. That the end of cold days and bare trees is in sight.

Among the things that mark the approach of Spring to me is being less than a month away from the first road race of the year. The race may well be freezing and snowy but the road season is the de facto start of Spring. The
24 hours of Daytona always gets me in the mood for Spring, too. Seeing the sports cars circle Daytona always gets me a little excited for the end of winter.

Groundhog Day does not get me excited but, by chance, one of my personal markers of Spring happened this morning while walking in to work from my car. In the cool, pre-dawn hours this morning a bird was chirping. That welcoming sound drifts away, unnoticed, in the winter but when I suddenly hear it again I can't help but pause and realize what has been missing for so many weeks. Spring is on the way!

Mike led Spinning class last night. Each instructor has their own style and Mike is no exception. His classes are more power and strengh centric. Here is a dramatic over-simplification of last nights class.
1. Lets begin our warmup
2. move to a harder gear
3. move to a harder gear (repeat about 4 more times)
4. you should be feeling warmed up now (in reality, a heavy sweat has already developed)
5. move to a harder gear
6. move to a harder gear (do this for another 25 minutes)
7. barely able to turn the pedals over at more than 30 rpm
8. take all the gears off for a 2 minutes
9. move to a harder gear
10. move to a harder gear (for another 15 minutes.)
11. move to progressively easier gears for about 5 minutes
12. do four short-ish efforts
13. collapse in a sobbing, ball of flesh.

I was ready for class to end.