Thursday, February 28, 2008

Technical Frustration

Went to ride at Wake tonight. Got all geared up, unloaded the bike started mounting everything, pumped up my leaky tire went to give it a test rolll in the lot. Good to go it seems, ride was getting ready to head out and.....blirp..... My light won't light....uh...wtf.....gloves off, try again. nope. DAMN it. Unplug, replug....Nothing. Fuxor!!!!! NO ride for me tonight. At least I didn't make the pilgrimage out to Rosary as I had started to contemplate earlier in the afternoon. THAT WOULD HAVE BLOWN!

New brakes seem to be good but I need to do some more adjusting to get the power to where it should be and get the rotor to stop squealing while breaking.

Now to find out if i can get that damn light working myself or if it's off to repair land tommorow. Damn. And I can't justify a second (backup) at this time. Probably will be june at least. Oh well.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Tired....

I need a nap.....No, I need 4 more hours of sleep. I have no frickin clue how I used to run on 4 hours sleep regularly in CA.

Anyways, I got home from my ride at 9:30 to find my new Juicy 7's waiting for me. And my wife panicking about possible Copper compound exposure. After reviewing the MSDS and other stuff I saw it was potentially pretty nasty but her symptoms were only of minor inhalation. Still worrying I took her to the ER at 10:30'ish. Fortunetly not much of a line. By 1am they had decided based on CDC/Posoin Control info that it was best to keep her in for 12 more hours of observation in case of the Pulmonary edema, a build up of fluid in the lungs. I had to run home and pick up her meds (a mile and change from the ER to home). I got back home at about 1:50 AM. I got up to go to work early due to frickin ice/sleet/freezing rain storm here in DC at 5:40. Ugh.

The ride, I wasn't ready for the accotink preride so I just went and tooled around the regular area's. I did 5 miles and headed back. The group returned 10 minutes after me. We all then spun out as a big group of 11 riders, alas I was already pasted and struggled to keep up with the moderate pace the leader was on. So after 5 and change more miles I spun off to get another GU and ride a bit slower. I did 5 more almost after that for a total of 15.1 miles in an hour and 50 mins. 7.8'ish miles per hour. The gps I started late recorded 14 miles, though it did miss the first half mile at least.

Power Nap Time at work.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Of Brakes and Kings

Watching dune after a busy evening. Waiting for the wife to get in from being out and about. My heat still doesn't work all the time, I had to fight with it for almost half an hour to get it to come on correctly. The house got down to 56 degrees. Brrrr!!!! It was working when I first got home.

After getting home I went directly to the bike cave and tried out my new tools I picked up at Sears, to try and remove the stubborn torx bolts holding it. The screwdriver version wasn't enough but the 1/4 inch drive socket version did the trick! Nice! So I swapped the disk. Swapped the QR and popped it in. Uh..Hu? It was tight going in? So I played with it, checked it vs the old wheel. Damn, disk is rubbing very hard on the fixed/adjustable inner pad. I adjust it out....all the way out. Nope. I realize that this is gonna require an easier brake setup to adjust as the Hayes sole require sucky spacers, and it is gonna take a few!! Might as well wait for the new Juicy 7 for the front to come in. Much easier to adjust. Hoped it would come in today but no luck, probably tommorow or friday. So back went the damn disc to the old wheel, and such. Re-adjusted the innerpad and back it went. Lubed the chain, but it needs a full cleaning probably after this next ride.

Worked out today with a warmup jog, box jumping, pull ups, chin ups, push ups, a bike ride for 30 mins, planking, and a few quick single sets of chest, shoulders, and leg press. Actually showered at the gym. Not bad. Gotta do that more to make use of the damn $60 a month I pay, at least I'm using it 2 times a week. Minimum cheap drop in at any gym is probably at least $5 so when I hit 12 a month I really do make it fully worth while. Towel service rocks, the large towels are just to darn small!

Tommorow I'm hopefully off to Rosary afterwork hopefully for a ride.

Monday, February 18, 2008

WOOO HOO!!

SWEET RIDE TODAY!!!!!

I met with a ton cool people near Quantico VA this morning and we went down to Ashland VA and rode Poor Farm. It ended up with 8 DC folks, and 5 locals/semilocals from the Richmond Area. We had a very knowledgable leader, Kevin and Dave as sweep. They hooked us up some great loops. We ended up riding near 13 miles. I was with the faster group till really the last few miles. And I probably could've/should've hung in and pushed harder.

This is the Motionbased.com Map Player of my ride!
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/player/5003457

The weather was frickin AMAZING!
70 Degrees, Nice Breeze, Trail was moist. BBQ afterwards and finding out it had been raining on and off in DC made today's ride TRULY PRICELESS! The new rear wheel was awesome, I ran it at around 38 psi, but probably would have been cool in the mid/low thirty's. Climbed really well, and was solid. Gonna monkey with them a bit more soon.

Rain on the way home cleaned up the bike nicely.

Great place to ride, gotta get down there with the wife on a planned ride this spring.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Fitness Disease, Beer Cure

oy....Busy week here in the natty capital. Ice storms and elections played hell with the town yesterday. 2 Hour commute and icing roads kept me from the gym last night. It was rather nice to have a calm night.

Today I was determined to hit the gym and put in a solid workout A. After interminable shopping hell for tomorrow's festivities, I hit the gym a bit after 8. I warmed up for 7 minutes on the treadmill then kicked off with lunges, trying to optimize my lunges especially to improve my weaker left leg. Another few of those workouts and I hope to step up to a 30lb lunge from 25. I feel like I'm getting closer to being solid there. My right leg is to the point I can thrust up off of it out of the lunge pretty strongly. Step ups at 40lbs were a bit harder than last time. NOt sure if i struggled more with legs or arms....ugh. Pull ups weren't gonna happen but I did managed 6 chinups. Pushups were good I started out with 25, then did 12 then 15. Explosions sucked, especially doing them after so much other arms. The 25 was very challenging. Ugh.

The real disease is upon getting I home I picked a bit of chicken off a roast chicken then while toasting a english muffin I decided to try some Whey Protein supplement. Straight up in cold water. UGH. That was gross. A new low, but still not a bad way to make sure I got in plenty of good protein quick to help muscle building.

To make up for it I will drink an extra beer tommorow :) To remind myself being health is good, but living and enjoying is better.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Going Places, New Faces

I guess my working out is starting to show the beginnings of dividends. Today I went and rode two laps at Rosaryville SP. The first lap was done in 1h:9m and the 2nd was 1h:11 min according to my cyclecomp. The GPS is a bit off as my first lap I didn't start it till almost a mile in. IN distance I got a measurement of 18.8 or so. I finished the entire ride in less than 2:30 which is pretty impressive to me as stops used to take me much longer. Basically I stopped once on each lap to eat a GU and then had to walk across 2 log sets. The final lap i did end up pushing the last hill but much better than my first ride where thats what I did that final hill on 1 lap. Once I got going and warmed up I felt decent only after mile 15 or so did the tiredness catch up a bit. Gotta continue to push myself for more endurance I guess. Met a guy in the lot there for his first ride, Mark. I let him lead off, caught him on the bastard climb before mile 4. I lead up till about 5 or so and let him pass. And he was gone...heheh. I coulda tried to keep up more but oh well, he said he only beat me to the lot by about 3 minutes. He ended after 1 loop. Cool guy.

At the gym, I am pushing myself more. Doing my A circuit a lot but working in bits of C also. B sucks, as often when I'm there the main room is in use and I can't use it. Oh well. I'm doing much better on push ups, my pull ups are up to 6. I did some box jumps yesterdya and they didn't seem to leave me in bad shape for today. Saturday I rode for an hour. Sunday I walked for half an hour, hoping to ride today.

Tommorow, I will probably try and do a full circuit of A again. We'll see.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Too Much Rest???

Feast or famine in all things it seems. Last week I was definitely famine on sleep, moderate on cycling/working out and such. This week I am determined to turn that around and have a good week of sleep and activity. Weather wise though I don't think there are going to be many rides, so it's probably the gym. I caught up on sleep majorly on sunday with almost 11 hours of beautiful sleep, monday I got another 9 I think.

At the gym yesterday I upped my A program weights on many of my exercises, where I am now doing

4x8 Step ups at 40#
3x10 Squat Explosions at 25#
Pushups I did 17 first set, then I did 14 and 12 respectively, thats a huge jump.
Pull ups 5 chin ups 4
3x10 Lunges at 25# (didn't increase this one..lefty is still too weak).
3 30Second Planks
Then i did 20 minutes of intervals on the stationary bike.

Today, its been feasting on Chili. My 2nd Tier boss brought in some great chili, spagetti, fixins, cornbread and brownies. I pigged down on 1 bowl of spagetti and chili then a bowl of just spagetti. UGH. Damnit.

I need a nap. :)

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Rest?

Wednesday I met with the trainer for my final PT session at the gym for now. Unfortunetely one of the classes was using half the gear the trainer wanted me to, but he did show me what he wanted to do. So I only ended up doing 3 new exercises. The first was a push up on one of those big inflated rubber balls, next he had me hold myself stable as he would slap the ball and I had to use abs to stabilize myself. UGH! HARD!! The final exercise was the lateral box jump. 2 sets of 8 on the 18, and 4 on the 24. Do each side with at least a minute break between each half set.

Thursday I was originally hoping to ride Rosaryville but the rain left all trails way to muddy, so I went to Wakefield and rode the CCT, I did a 6 mile warm up then did 14.5 miles with the group ride towards rt 50. By the end my fingers were freezing and so were my poor big toes! There is a huge difference in wind chill between 7mph and 12-15 and open trail and hills/valley riding.

Rain Friday has unfortunately made it very unlikely that I will be able to ride much of anywhere fun by Sunday and maybe even Monday. We'll see. I'd love to go ride Rosary again.

Gonna try and spruce this thing up with some video/photo's and such over the next few days.

Grrr gotta go deal with a Heat problem @ home.