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Tron Legacy

The Christmas holidays went swimmingly, but all too fast.  Not enough time was spent with my Dad, Mom, and brother, although quality time was spent.  I got some really great gift coming mostly in the form of cycling clothing and a new razor.  I got Ally an Amazon Kindle, which I believe was the go-to gift for American shoppers, but nevertheless, she was excited to have one.  Ally really likes to read, and I hope this Kindle will at least save some trees, if not our bank account.  So far it has sat on the table.  

Over the holidays, Travis and I saw Tron: Legacy (in IMAX 3D), which was very predictable but super awesome.  I knew the whole storyline from the first 5 minutes, but the graphics and music continued to surprise me throughout.  I have always liked Daft Punk, so for them to do a full movie score was incredible. They even made a cameo appearance in the club scene!  I plan on buying the soundtrack soon (which is already out), but I'm afraid I won't be able to recreate the way the music sounded with 1 bigazillion watts blaring out at you in the IMAX Theaters.  Seriously, the movie was ridiculously loud.  If people were talking in the movie, I would not have known. Below is a video (just music) of one of the songs from the soundtrack. 

The graphics in 3D were great.  Motorcycle and light air-speeders look sweet in 3D.  You could tell the producers concentrated all their efforts into this instead of the plot line.  The plot was the only disappointment I had, because they could have, with a little bit of effort, made it so much better.  They could have concentrated more on the duality between Kevin Flynn and Clu, or Good vs. Evil in Tron, or imperfect perfection of Quorra (sp?).    Or they could have just made it all about the battles on the GRID.  

On a more serious side of things, NYTimes came out with an article a couple of days ago about the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, that really moved me and was very interesting. It's sort of long so if you have some time, you can find the article here.  

Rest Week

This last week has been a cycling rest week for me.  After 4 weeks of at least 15 hours of riding each week, I was feeling like it might be time.  This left me plenty of time to catch up on YouTube videos, TV programs, and drinking beer.

Not only was this break good for me physically, but also emotionally. I feel like I am ready to "rage" on my bike again.  Rage means go fast and hard.  I will be doing five weeks of solid training before I have another rest week, and then the season starts! I will not be totally trained and ready for racing until March, but the early season races will help me prepare for this.

In other news, I convinced Ally to get a new phone, and NOT get an iPhone!  She ended up with an Android based phone, which is definitely the have to have phone of 2011. Plus Verizon probably won't get the iPhone until July of next year.  And the iPhone, while good, is not AS good as the Droid phones.  So now I have a DroidX and she has the Droid Incredible.  Hopefully she will still acknowledge my existence even though she has a smartphone.

I only work two days this week and then I am off for Christmas for 5 days. It will be nice to see the family and exchange presents. I am sad that I will miss skiing this year, but now that I don't have Christmas vacation for a month, it's harder to plan around a long trip.  Maybe next year, if I can still have vacation by that time!

Tips for Night Riding and Commuting

Almost every morning since we moved to Houston, I have been riding in the dark to work. At 6am, there are not many cars on the roads, and only a handful pass me while I ride. Because of daylight savings time, I am now riding in the early morning light at 6:15am, but my commute home is at dusk and dark. This has proven to be much more unnerving than the morning commute. In the afternoon, it seems like everyone has to leave right at 5:00pm. The streets are horribly congested for 30 minutes, and then the congestion lessens again. From this night-time riding, I feel that I have learned a few rules of the road that people should follow when riding at night, more specifically for commuting.

Notice the 4 bike lights, reflective tape, light clothing, but yet still generally looking Pro.

Ken’s Golden Rules of Night Riding /Commuting

1. Never leave the office right at 5:00pm.

That is when all the cars leave the office, and is the most dangerous time to ride during the winter. People are on the smaller bike friendly streets because they are not on the highway in traffic yet. Everyone wants to get home and they don’t care about anyone else’s safety. Time is their main concern. They are calling their spouse to see what they are up to and if they have left the office yet. Leaving at 5:15 or 5:30 will make you life so much easier. It also shows to your boss that you have commitment, if you leave later than they do!

2. Have at least two sets of lights.

If the car hits you because you can’t be seen, then you were asking to get hit. One single light can easily be mistaken for a street lamp in the distance. Two blinky lights are weird and people take notice to things they are unsure of. I have two front blinky lights totaling to 5 LED’s and two red blinkys in the back. It is best to have lights on the side so that you are projecting light out of every direction. I am going to use a battery powered Christmas light set to help with this.

3. Don’t be pro

Night cycling is not the time to be pro. During the daytime, you would NEVER catch me dead in dayglo. Dayglo cycling kits are not pro at all. They look ridiculous. But during the night, I want to be seen, because getting run over because you can’t be seen is not pro either. Wear reflecting clothing, gloves, vests, ankle bracelets, whatever it takes to get noticed. This goes for reflectors as well. Reflectors are not pro in normal training situations, but at night this is acceptable for safety reasons. Besides, if you WERE pro, you wouldn’t be riding at night because you would have a real job during the day. Damn…..

The only exception, IMO, is a rearview mirror on the bike or helmet. This is so ungodly NOT pro that I cannot bring myself to buy one. And they don’t work either.

3. Know your route.

Night riding is not the time to discover a new route, mainly because of potholes. Things that you can see from 50 yards out to you in the daytime might be only visible for 5 yards at night, equating to a half-second reaction time. Ride your route during the day, taking mental notes of all obstacles in the road and a way to know where the obstacles will be in the dark. For instance, when I pass the Churches Chicken on my ride home, I know that there is a giant pothole about 100 yards up the road that I will crash into if I don’t avoid it.

4. Be obnoxious, not timid (never ride on the sidewalk!!!!!)

I have been honked and yelled at for being in the street while riding my bike. The common trend between all these people is that none of them have hit me! I know that if they are honking, they have seen me and are avoiding me, and all I have to do is stay calm, and they will go away. The two times I have been hit, the driver said “Oh sorry man, I just didn’t see you!” Don’t be afraid to take up a lane, or ride a little out of the bike lane so that cars will not get too close to you. Legally you can always do this. The worst thing you can do is get scared and ride on the sidewalk. Cars will not see you and will definitely turn into you.

5. Don’t listen to people who tell you you’re crazy

When you tell people you ride an hour each way, the response you get 9 out of 10 times is, “That’s crazy, I would never do that in Houston!” Don’t be surprised by this. Houston, like most cities in the US, is completely set up around cars, so much so that people can’t imagine another form of transportation. They can’t think of a situation of why it would be a priority to ride a bike to work. They think that it is incredibly risky. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I have seen numbers that show that the rewards of lower cholesterol lower heart disease rates, lower obesity rates clearly outweigh the risk of getting hit by a car. And that’s with not even mentioning the fact that you are not stressed out by driving in traffic. I think people get jealous as well. I get to spend 2 hours a day riding my bike instead of an hour of sitting on the 610 loop in stop and go (mostly stop) traffic.

6. Use Murphy’s Law

There might be situations where something goes wrong, and you should be prepared to get out of the situation. For instance, if I get a flat, I can fix the flat, but I don’t carry supplies for getting 2 flats. But I do have some extra change to catch a bus back to my house. Also, the weather might say one thing, but it could change fast. You need clothing and supplies to adjust to that.

7. HTFU!!

Harden the %^*& up. Just go out and ride your bike. It doesn’t matter if it’s dark, rainy, and cold. Don’t let that keep you from something you love. Remember that if you don’t go ride now, you’ll be one day older when you do! I know a lot of people that like the idea of riding to work, but stop at just actually going and doing it.

Training for 2011!!!! (Actually NO)

I had everything completely reading for Operacion Training 2011 (J/K!). Yearly training plan. Bike Upgrades! New chain. Year supply of EPO (wait... wut?) Ready to go like never before. Motivation at 201.45%. Last Friday was my first real day back on the bike.... and then I get sick! Sicker than a dog, sicker than Guru Nanak Dev. Well not that sick, but sick enough to keep me off the bike for four very painful days.

Ally was telling me the whole time to wait and not ride, that I was going to make it worse. Of course she, in her infinite wisdom of all things medical, was right, but I wasn't about to let her know it. She decided that tough love was the answer as well, telling me to stop whining and that I'm not really that sick, to suck it up. In hindsight I appreciate her rock hard attitude of not letting me just sleep all day, but nevertheless karma (thanks Nanak, ole' buddy) decided that she was in the wrong and she is now sick with exactly the same symptoms I had. Who's whining now, eh? I think the tough love should be warmly but firmly reciprocated.

It's Wednesday now, and I'm ready to ride, with just a minor hick-up in the training year.

For Thanksgiving, Ally and I will be traveling to San Antonio to hang out with my extended family that is coming in from all over the place. Some I have not seen in a REALLY long time, and I am looking forward to catching up, except..... We have a well in Atlantis (that's the field I work in the Gulf of Mexico) that may or may not start up on or around Thanksgiving. Awesome. Atlantis has a history of being ready to go at the most in-opportunistic times, such as holidays. There is only one holiday in November, but it wouldn't surprise me if I found myself offshore in Fire Retardant Clothing. At least on the rigs they are supposed to have incredible food on holidays....

Time for Fall

Today was one of the first days in Houston where it did not go over 80. It was rainy and dreary and reminded me of the summer Anchorage when the weather is bad.

I haven't ridden my bike in over 2 weeks because it is currently being repaired for the 2011 season. Phil Shama is hooking me up with some great new gear to go on my bike. I decide to go for a power meter to try and take the training to a new level. Because I am so time limited lately, it is important that I use whatever time I have to train to the fullest. Training with power is sure to help with this. I am also getting new bars and replacing all the cabling and housing. It should be pretty sweet and ready to go for training this winter. Training will start next week, starting with long easy miles in the base period, as described by Joe Friel's Blog.

One thing I still have to figure out is how to keep my bike clean! Living in an apartment is not optimal for this: I don't really have access to a water hose. The one time that I have cleaned my bike since JULY is at a car wash! It did a pretty good job, but it took a lot of time and money. Hopefully I will figure out a better way....

Another travesty of the winter is now I definitely ride to and from work in the complete dark. As my co-workers pointed out, the ride home is more dangerous than the ride to work because of teenagers being on the road. The only people on the road at 6am are coffeed-out 9-5'ers driving to work.

A GREAT part of the winter is skiing. Hopefully I already have the first ski trip planned the weekend of Dec 10-13! I'm planing to go with my buddies Brian and Paul, flying in and out of Denver. I'm trying to decided whether it is more economical to buy or rent skis.

Sailing with Dad.

I call my parents about once a week, which I think is good for a guy. My mom has been out of town (Dallas) for about 3 weeks, so I called my dad and talked to him about how great the Rangers were doing and how excited we were for them. Soon the conversation switched to when mom and dad were planning on coming down to Houston, the trip that we have been planning since August. Finally I just suggested that he come tomorrow, and dad couldn't really think of a good reason not to, so he said he would pack his things and come down for a day so that we could go sailing.

The last time I had been sailing, the whole family went to Galveston. We sailed around the bay in a 30 ft yacht for the day, with a captain and everything. I still remember him with a huge beard and a captain's hat, but no parrot, to my dismay. This trip would be a bit different. Once I started looking at the costs of renting such a boat, I soon decided that a 16' luger with no outboard motor would be plenty for Dad and I to mess around with in Clear Lake and/or Galveston Bay.

Sunday morning we drove down to the dock after sleeping in until 9am (super late for me!). Dad got some sandwiches at Subway while I checked out the boat and payed the charter dude for the sailboat rental.

We chatted with the charter dude for a little bit about Dad’s racing days and how it would be good to get back out on the water. We were loading the boat up and about to shove off, but I suppose Dad “shoved off” a little too hard and lost his balance, falling over backward in to the water! He was unhurt except for his pride and soon got out of the water and on to dry land. The funny part was to see the demeanor of the charter guy get a little bit more nervous about letting these land ‘lubers take his boat out!

It was very difficult to get the boat out due to the strong wind that was coming straight from the direction we wanted to go. This meant that we had no way to get the sails up before the wind would take us straight into another boat in the dock. I paddle as hard as I could while Dad messed with the sails that weren’t put up correctly. Because of the wind, I couldn’t paddle hard enough to keep us from hitting parts of the dock and other boats around us, and my anxiety quickly grew. I kept thinking to myself, “Maybe the old man has forgotten how to do this, and we are screwed!”

After about 15 minutes of knocking around and messing with the sails, we got the sails up and started on a port tack. The wind was pretty gusty and Dad was not used to the boat yet. Because of this, he kept laying the boat over just a little too much, and water would rush over the gunwale and onto our feet. My anxiety at this point started to increase exponential, as described by the chart below, which shows # of expletives coming out of my mouth vs liters of water in the boat. I thought we were about to capsize!!

Soon we had the boat under control and I took a turn at the rudder. I was slow at first, being very cautious with how much list I would allow, so we crawled around the bay, even though the wind was pretty strong. Soon I became comfortable enough to let the boat go and we started to have a lot of fun.

During our cruise we also got to see a neat air show, with 5 jets flying around, looping and twirling in what looked to be an impossibly tight formation. AS the sun was setting, I felt like this was a great day with good father/son bonding. It was good to have him down!

My morning commute to work

I have been biking to work around 3-4 days a week, and have really been loving doing it. I have not ridden my bike on a work day other than going to and from work because of not having enough time. Commuting to work by bike is saving by fitness, and I have much more fun than sitting in traffic. Here is a link to a map of my route! Or just look below.........

The route I take is almost 14 miles, and takes me about 50 minutes. Driving to work usually takes me 30 minutes, if there are no wrecks. The way I see it, I am giving 40 minutes of time to biking on days that I commute, but get a solid 2 hours of cycling workout!! At 8 hours of biking during the workweek, this means that I have the potential to ride 16 hours a week during peak training. The is more than enough to keep myself in racing shape.

Right now I am taking my morning commutes really slow and easy (the offseason!!), but can potentially use this time for interval training and sustained efforts. Because of the complications of time constraints, I am contemplating getting a coach to help design a workout plan that really works well and maximizes the time that I do get on the bike.

I encourage EVERYONE to ride to work if you have the means. If you live in Austin, you have no excuse. Things like showers and lockers help immensely, but a lot of companies don't have these facilities..... yet. I think people should ask for these things! Commuting by bike is great for the environment (very 'green' policy) and help keep employees in shape, reducing medical costs and sick days. The initial investment of a small locker room and a bike rack would more than pay out over time.

Traffic Waves

Dear Aggressive Drivers,

I sit on the 9th floor of my office building. For some reason, I am told I am extremely lucky to be assigned a window office, with a view of I-10 Westward into Katy. The eastbound (toward downtown) lanes of this monolithic highway are just 100 yards away from the office building.

Because I get to work around 7:30am, I get to see people commuting to downtown from 7:30 - about 9:00am each morning. Most of the time the traffic seems to be going around 40-50 mph, but sometime the cars come to a standstill in every lane. Yesterday morning, I glanced over to see a car merge terribly (probably without a blinker), which caused the cars behind to have to swerve and slam on the breaks. This caused a huge traffic jam, even though no accident had occurred.

What was interesting is that the traffic acted as a "wave," propagating backward. What I mean is that on I-10, at some point there was a line of cars that slowed down across all lanes of trafiic. Naturally the cars behind them had to slow down as well, causing the people behind them to slow, etc, etc. The first line of cars then started to speed up again, and then the next line sped up and so on. So from where I looked from above this debacle, it looked as if there was a slow moving, higher density mass of cars moving backwards along the highway. Very interesting.

As I continued to glance every once in a while, it was cool to see these traffic waves propagate down the highway. Almost beautiful, except for the fact that it was a big mass of commuting, polluting cars that caused the phenomena.

It made me realize that a lot of traffic is caused by aggressive driving, you. You want to go where you want to go as fast as possible, and no one is more important than you. If you can merge into a lane and get one or two more cars ahead, even though you are being dangerous and aggressive, you will. Your action creates traffic, which will make commutes for everyone longer. The problem is that you, as an aggressive driver, do not care about this because the traffic that you create will not affect you. What will affect you is the aggressive driver ahead of them that pulls the same stupid move and causes traffic for them (I also find that slow moving traffic makes everyone more aggressive, exacerbating the problem). You, aggressive driver, are too stupid to figure out that IF the whole culture of trying to get to your location as fast as possible, no matter what, was eliminated, then they would actually get to their destination faster.

This seems counterintuitive at first, but trust me it's true. Traffic is caused by fluctuations, which are caused by aggression. If everyone would go a common speed, everyone would get home faster.

I think this is the same reason people get so irate about bicycles riding in the road. It causes their car journey to be 10-30 seconds longer than it would be otherwise, and so they think it is appropriate to put the cyclist's life in danger.

So, drivers of fury, please be kind and considerate to yourself and others, and drive with less aggression. Thanks,

Me

Plyometrics

The "Off Season" of cycling is almost upon me. There is one more race that I will compete in this year, the Texas Road Race Championships, at FT. Hood. After that, I will plunge head long into training for next spring.

Most people in cycling take a true off season, meaning they are off the bike for 2 weeks to a month, and then starting their preparation for the next spring. After reading Chris Carmichael's book on training, I have decided that I will try not taking a dedicated off season, and continue to ride all winter. This works well because most of my riding is to and from work, which I would not want to stop for fear of having to drive five days a week (which I haven't done yet since I started work!). My hope is that instead of having to work from a moth off deficit, I can use the base miles from last year to build to a strong 3's racer. The only problem that I will surely face is burn out, but after assessing my mental state (taking 5 seconds to tell my self to HTFU) I have decided that I will not burn out.

So for the off season I will be running, cycling, and doing routines of plyometrics. I learned of plyometrics from a tweet from Lance about his workouts last fall. I didn't take to them to much last year, as I was trying to work on sustained power and endurance. I was very successful at increasing this (i.e. going from last to podium in TT's), but lost a lot of my top end power for sprinting, which resulted in less than desirable finishes near the end of the year. This year, I hope that weight lifting and plyometrics early in the training season will increase that top end power.

For now, I will not use a coach. It's not really the money that would be spent on a coach, but the need to be self-reliant and have only one person to blame if my plan is unsuccessful: myself. The only problem is that I know that when I have a coach or mentor, I tend to keep on track better and not get lazy or complacent. I think these are the things that could derail my success for next year the most.

I'll plan in time to work on my ever improving golf game as well. Uncle Larry gave me a really nice set for a wedding present and I have been out 4-5 times to Memorial Park to practice already.

The Married Life

There have been significant changes in my life over the last couple of weeks, first of which is marrying..... wait, what was her name? Oh yeah, ally!

The wedding, on Sept 11, was really beautiful and I really enjoyed getting to see so many people from the past. At one point, I was looking over the crowd of people gathered to celebrate with ally and I. I couldn't help but start to think about how all of these people had affected me and made me who I am today at some point: some more than 10 years ago, and some that I had met only months ago. It was neat to see the melding of two random groups of people, brought together by our marriage.

The best thing to see was how well the bridesmaids and groomsmen got along. None of the girls had met the guys, and they all only knew of each other through stories that Ally and I had told. Even though the situation was potentially awkward, they all got along very well and had a good time talk about memories they had with Ally and I.

Many thanks to ally's mom, Bernardita, my mom, my aunt, Sharky (wedding planner), and to Paul Dorsey, just to name a few.

Life has gotten back to normal here in Houston. I hadn't ridden my bike to work in about a week, and I had forgotten how much I love/hate making the commute on two wheels. My bike is slowly starting to show the wear and tear of not being cleaned as often, as it is really hard to clean the bike in an apartment with no garden hose available. Maybe I will have a post on how I manage this feat.

Ally and I also got a dog! Her name is Snookie, named after the infamous MTV star, Nicole "Snookie" Polizzi. Snookie the dog is not exactly like her namesake, but is very energetic and puppy-ish. We got her from the houston pound, and I believe she is some type of German Shepard Dog/[something else] mix.

I am in the process of teaching her more complicated tricks such as stay and roll over, because she mastered sit and shake within the first week. She is also pretty much potty trained. I can't get her to stop barking when we leave the house, b/c I'm not sure how to correct something that I am not there for. Having a dog definitely keeps things interesting and noisy around our moderately spacious apartment.

The next race I have coming up is in late October, and is the Texas State Road Race in Ft Hood. The road race is in a military base, so they can completely close the roads, which should be fun. I am really looking forward to it, but I already have my eye set on next year. I will be racing with Shama Cycles, and will hopefully have a year of winning 3's races.

Houstonian Times

I have been living in Houston for over a month, and my first thought when someone asks me how that is going is always, "We'll it's not as bad as I thought it would be." Ally and I went to the beach a couple weekends back and I found a new love for skim-boarding. Ally is thrilled that I found another hobby!! (NOT.)

At Galveston Beach

Good things about H-Town:

-I like my apartment! It is starting to feel like home and I really like the location.

- I like the people I work with. They are friendly and knowledgeable and very excited to have me around

-I like biking still! I was really worried that there would be no opportunity for me to ride in the hugest, scariest concrete jungle there is, but it has actually been okay. Yes, I get honked at from an irate driver about once a week, but as one of my cycling buddies said, "If they're honking at you, they can see you." My riding mostly consists of riding to and from work, which is about 1.5-2 hrs a day right now.

Flower box in our apartment

Bad things about H-tiz:

-The weather. It rains almost every day. And it is very unpredictable in a calculable sort of way. For instance, it rains every day, but only for maybe and hour or two. This invariably seems to always be when I am riding home from work. It reminds me of Alaska.

-Traffic. The off chance I am in my car, there is traffic around the galleria between 6:00am and 8:00pm. It's not the worst I've every seen (read: Austin) but it's still pretty bad.

I have been racing in the Memorial Park Crit, which happens every Wednesday over the summer. The first week I did it turned into a disaster when I crashed in a break, almost shattering my collarbone. I am now known as "that Texas rider that went down really hard in the break." Already a legend at the MP crit? Well, no not quite....

The Texas part is soon to change because I have found a new team!! Shama cycles. I have been looking for a fun, easy-going 3/4 team to race with until a time where I decide to move to 2's (~2 years). Philip Shama is a great guy with a really neat bike shop near my apartment that I can ride to. I can't wait to start racing with those guys. Here is the website, check it out!

This weekend, Ally and I will be traveling to Dallas to see the Parentals and do wedding stuff. I will be glad when I don't have to go to Dallas every other weekend to do wedding stuff! It gets old being away from home and not cycling every weekend.

Moving Day

Today I move to Houston to start my professional career and married life.

I will be living in the Galleria area of Houston, by the Westpark Tollroad and 610, at a place called Broadstone Uptown Lofts.

I think I will love living with Ally, although there is certainly a lot of changes that come with being married and living with someone. Certainly it is different from a roommate, where if you get tired or cranky you can just shut yourself off in your room. With a 1 bedroom apartment, this is harder. I think that we will do great once we get settled in.

Hopefully when we get moved in, I want to go sailing in the bay with my parents and go to the beach. It has been a long time since I have seen the Gulf.

Musings of June

Anybody need bikes? My reign as the king of too many bikes needs to end. I am moving into a Houston apartment with Ally. She has graciously allowed me to keep one bike inside, but the other ones need to go! The problem is that they will not sell! I had planned to sell my former race bike for at least $2000. Yes, its worth that much. I know there are people out there that need race bikes, but I am having trouble getting the word out. Craiglist used to be an amazing outlet to sell bikes at, but there are over 100 listings a day, which means that your lowly small posting will have problems being seen. An alternative is eBay, which is daunting because of the hefty price of shipping involved with bikes. I just don't want to deal with the extra processes that go with it. I might end up having to do this though.

My mountain bike is another issue all together. Being the first bike I ever bought with my own money, it is really old. Most of the parts have been replaced. I have probably put about $1000 into the bike over the last 2 years, but I would guess that I would not be able to sell it for more than $200. It just has no market. People looking for mountain bikes are either looking for a Walmart bike for under $100, or they are looking for a sweet, awesome, bodacious mountain bike and are willing to pay for it. The bike I have is somewhere in the doldrums in between these two categories. It has some great parts, but others are complete crap. It needs work.

If I don't get my bikes sold, it will be an interesting rest of the summer until I start my job. I honestly thought that whenever I started to run out of money, I would just sell my old race bike and then everything would be hunky-dory. It has been a lot harder to sell it than I thought. Hopefully my luck will turn!

Engagement

ALLY AND I ARE ENGAGED!!!!

After many months of her worrying whether it would ever happen, I finally popped the question at the Arboretum last Thursday. I found a secluded area where it was just us and got down on one knee. I tricked her into thinking I was taking a picture, when I was really taking a video! That can be found on facebook. It might be a little mean, but Ally said it was okay for me to post it. Needless to say I am pretty excited.

Our website that Ally made for our engagement can be found here.

We have set a date for Sept 11. It is a perfect date, except for the fact that everyone I will tell will be saying, "OOOOOH Sept 11?" Seriously, I don't think that the day is that bad. I mean yes, one of the biggest tragedies in our nation's history happened on this date, but I don't think that means that we can't get married then. Actually, if we don't, George Bush would say that the terrorists won. I just don't want the terrorists to win. :~)

We are living in Houston near the Galleria in a place called Broadstone Apartments.

In other news, I have been off and on the bike for a little while right now. My drive for riding is not completely there, and it is extremely hot and muggy in Austin right now. I am still racing twice a week though, but not really training. This means that sooner or later my fitness will begin to wane, but for right now I am just enjoying the fact that I put in all those mile earlier in the year. I have also been golfing a couple of times a week in preparation for the business world. I shoot around a 100, which is really good for me! I think if I could do that consistently then I should be able to hang with a boss or two in the oil and gas industry.

I find it funny how life changes constantly, but the speed at which it changes is never constant. There has been a lot of good change in my life the last couple of weeks, and I am excited to see what is next.

Beware the Crashes of Spring

Both season that I have raced, I have crash. Hard.

This year it was at the Manda Road Race. After placing 8th the day before I was feeling like the world was mine to take. I could win if I wanted. I could take the race by storm. My confidence was sky high. I suppose the cycling Gods chose to humble me in the bloody kind of way.

At the start of the race, these Gods were already mad. The biggest and most evil of the cycling Gods is Wind. He frequently rears his ugly head in Texas road races and tends to get angrier and stronger as races progress. Sunday was no exception. The wind was blowing worse than I have ever seen (well, felt) it. I'm going out on a limb and say it was blowing at least 200 mph. Maybe a little less, I don't want to over-exaggerate.

We started in a gargantuan echelon across the road, and I tried to protect my teammates as much as I could. After the first full lap we started back in the cross wind, and I was in a sheltered position near the edge of the road. All of a sudden, a new cycling God wanted in on the slaughter. The crack. A huge crack suddenly opened up in front of me, and my tire thought it would be fun to play in the bottom of it. Not so fun for my skin. I went down hard on pavement. I did not keep the rubber side down. I took two people with me.

I had to pull rocks out of my skin, and I completely destroyed my bibs (they look like Texas Tech bibs now). Needless to say I learned my lesson the hard way from the cycling Gods. I was humbled. At least until the next time I win a race.

What is most important is that I was up racing again four days later at the Driveway, and did reasonably well. The hardest thing to get over in crashes is not really the physical ailments and road rash, but the mental recovery. It's hard to not be twitchy. But so far I'm doing a good job. Hopefully I'm done crashing for a bit.

Would you look at the time.....

I am slowly getting tired of riding the bus to school. I live about 3 miles from campus and ride a bus five days a week to and from classes. At the beginning, I had no problem riding the bus. Saving the environment, right? Don’t have to pay for gas, right? It’s just as fast as driving yourself, right? Not always. It’s nights like tonight where I tire of the Lake Austin Bus Route.

I got done with church at 9:00pm and left the union in the pouring rain, which is another thing I am growing weary of. After a 5 min walk to the bus stop, I was greeted by one person standing under the shelter. This is a terrible sign. One person means that the bus had recently come by the stop, and had already left. In the evenings, the bus only runs every 30 minutes, so I had some time to wait.

I tried to strike up a conversation with the girl standing next to me out of boredom, but she awkwardly walked away after a minute or so of me commenting on the beauty of lightning. I guess she thought I was hitting on her. Her rejection of conversation did not surprise me, as most people that ride my bus route are married grad students, who seem very set in their ways and not interested in undergrads who still have hopes and dreams.

9:30 pm rolled by and I began to wonder what was going on. As my boredom and imagination take hold of my thoughts, I am convinced that the rain has caused an accident, and that the bus will take hours to get back to campus. At 9:45, my impatience takes over. “I wonder where the bus is?” turns to “ Where the F*%^ is the F(#*$(%$ BUS?!” I have things to do. People to see. Homework to accomplish. Bike trainers to ride. I’m wet. Cold. Starved. Wasting away. Over-exaggerating? Of course. But in all seriousness, the bus needs to get here. I pass the time by bouncing up and down and playing with the puddles nearest my feet. It could be worse though.

Solace! The bus has finally come! Time to be home…. By 10:15. Homework time!

So that’s why I’m tired of the bus. I need to learn some patience, but really, who has time for that? What I really need is a helicopter.

Spring Break!!!

Since the DFW Road Race on Sunday, I have been in Red River, NM, relaxing and skiing for spring break. I brought my bike, not knowing whether I would have good enough weather to use it or not. As we were driving in to the cabin, it was snowing huge flakes.

The first day we cleared off the snow from the walkway to the front door. This was harder than I originally thought, as the snow had piled up to almost 4.5 ft in some places! Ally and I took all afternoon to clear it, but finally dug out a path to the road.

Tuesday morning could not come soon enough, as I was ready to ski! Ally and Isa were apprehensive at first, so I went up the mountain by myself while they stayed on the bunny slopes. The slopes were in the best condition I had ever seen. Usually Red River doesn’t get that much snow, but this year there was plenty and all the runs were open. Even the moguls on the blacks didn’t have ice in the bottom of them due to some snow they had gotten right before we got there.

One afternoon, Ally and I built a snow cave near the cabin! It was big enough for both of us to crawl into, but there wasn’t much room to move around.

Riding my bike was definitely interesting, as the high altitude was not good for huge efforts. Just a little work and I was breathing heavily. It was fun to do some long climbing though, so I didn’t really care that it wasn’t the best training. In effect, I have taken a little over a week break from hard training, and feel fully recovered and very motivated to put in some hard work before the end of the collegiate race season!

2010 DFW Race Weekend Race Report

2010 DFW Race Weekend Race Report

After a week of being sick after Tunis, I was at first apprehensive about the DFW race weekend. I wasn’t sure that my fitness would be there for the hard racing I was sure to encounter I think a 3^rd, 1^st, 4^th, placing is pretty good though!

First race on the list was the TT. Thankfully, I did not have my usual problems of not being able to eat correctly early before the race. Jacob and I drove out north of Frisco to the start, to find out that the were about 30 minutes behind. The course was a long 11 mile out and back course, with rolling hills, and headwinds on the way out. I passed a couple of riders, and then got passed by the eventual winner, Roy from MSU. I decided to try to more or less stay with him and let him pace me to try not to lose any more time from him. This strategy worked for most of the race and I ended up finishing 30 seconds behind him. I’m not sure who got 3^rd, but I think it was someone from A&M.

After a quick lunch at Betty’s Café, it was time for the Criterium. I slowly warmed up and started to feel really good about the race. My strategy was to wear down the two MSU sprinters, which would be my main competition for winning. This was accomplished by putting in attacks and making sure MSU was chasing me down. The first attack was put in by UNT which was brought back by MSU and A&M. A&M could be a problem. If they felt like doing the work for MSU, there was a good chance that MSU would let them and they would still be fresh at the end of the race. I talked with some of the A&M riders and told them they might as well attack, and they thought it was a pretty good idea. With A&M attacking, the only people to catch the breaks was MSU. I put in an attack and stayed away for about 3 laps, also winning a Prime in the process.

After I was caught, Whitney did some great work by attacking the field and not letting anyone recover. More counterattacks were put in, and you could tell that the field was tiring from the constant breaking away going on. With only about 4 laps to go, I decided that I should attack one last time, to test the field and see if anyone would chase. I waited and then put in a huge effort to get away by myself. After about 30 seconds of going hard, I looked behind me to see what the field was doing. They had sat up! No one was chasing me yet and this meant that I might have a chance to stay away. I had three laps to go, and I would have to give everything I had to try and stay away. At this point, I had played my card, and I was either going to win, or get last. I gave it everything I had left, and by the middle of the last lap, I knew they were not going to catch me. I slowed up a bit to make sure that I didn’t crash and tried not to think about winning until after I crossed the line. As I crossed the finish, I put my horns up! It was a great way to end the day of racing and get my first win! And I got some swag for the prime.

The road race was on Sunday and I woke up not feeling very great. It was hard to put down food, and I felt sick to my stomach up until we rode out. This is not that uncommon, as I sometimes feel this was before races. Our plan was to attack with the Aggies and try to get a break with no MSU riders. After a couple of different attacks by my teammates, I tried one that stuck. Roy caught me, and then three other riders ( A&M, LSU, and OSU) bridged up to us. At first I didn’t want the break to stick because Roy had caught on and I knew that he was stronger than me. When the three others riders bridged, I knew it would stick and I had to go along for the ride. The field sat up because all of the big teams had riders represented in the break. We worked really well together, everyone taking their share of the work. As we came to the finish though, I was tired and knew that I didn’t have enough left but for a desperate attempt at a surprise attack. I surged ahead, but didn’t have enough in my legs and was caught. I ended up fourth behind MSU, LSU, and A&M.

I was a bit disappointed with how the Road Race ended up, but overall was very happy with how the Team and I did this weekend. Go Texas!! Pictures are on txbra.org.

It's not over 'til it's over

I have never won a single road race yet. I have won some crits, but the road race victory continues to elude me. Tunis Roubaix was no exception.


Tunis is a very interesting road race, because most of the roads are dirt. This year, saying the course was on dirt roads really tends to misconstrue. Sand and fist-sized rock roads is more representative. Early in the race, we started the off-road section. We soon hit a section of very large rocks, that were devastating to the field. I heard atleast five flat tires as I prayed for my own tires to hold up. Some how they did, and I kept on riding. Another section of 2 miles or so was deep sand. In sand, bikes tend to lose all traction and slide around, sort of like a car on an ice rink. It took a lot of energy to keep pushing the pedals forward and stay focused.


By the end of the second lap, four of us had broken away from the shattered field: Matt Sauls(MSU), Jen (MSU), Josh (Texas), and I. Josh and I decided that we should try to slowly drop Sauls by keeping the pace high and relentless. After two more laps, it worked, and we were left with Jen from MSU. Jen is a woman's A rider, and therefore would not contest the Texas win for Josh and I. All we had to do was keep the pace high enough to stay away for two more laps.


By this time, I was really tired and beat up. We ended up staying away and thought we were home free for the finish, when I made my one mistake of the day. For some reason I broke my concentration for just a second and crashed. Just plain fell over. I have no idea why. Because of this, it took me way too long to get on my bike, and an MSU rider caught up with us. I was completely done, so all I could do is pray that Josh could take him. He ended up riding really smart and patient and won! I took third, which is okay, but I could have had my pick at 1st or 2nd. It is frustrating to get that close to a win and then lose. But that's racing. I know that I learned a valuable lesson for the future: the race isn't over until you are across the finish line. That was my takeaway for the weekend. And a cool brick/3rd place trophy thing.

I'm tallest short dude I know

I think in the grand scheme of things, most people know where their body geometry fits in to different body geometries of the mass population. They can use describing words such as fat, skinny, big, tall, short, petite to describe themselves. While it would seem that these words are totally dependent upon how you perceive yourself, I have recently discovered that this body image is also a function of the people around you. Statistically speaking, this would be a sample.

I discovered this because of a disconnect that I have been having with what I perceive my body image to be, more so with height than weight. Am I tall, average, or short? I think that most people would tell me that I am average, but this is only the case when sampling a large group, or everyone. But when I am on the LA bus going home, I feel very tall compared to the people around me. This is probably because 95% of the bus riders are Asian and tend to be shorter in stature. Conversely when I am walking to lunch with my petroleum engineering friends, I tend to feel short and very thin, as the guys I eat lunch with are all at least 6 inches taller than me. When I’m at church, I seem pretty average, maybe a little taller than average. When I’m around my biking friends, I feel a little overweight, because they are all super thin.

This just goes to show that height and weight, like many things, are pretty relative. This means that you must have a sample to judge against. Even though I say that I don’t care about what people think about my body (as do most people) I still have to be aware of other’s weight if I want to get a comparison so that I can rightly judge my height or weight. Not that height and weight are all that important, but I just use these ideas as an analogy for other possibly more important things in life. How do you know happiness without anger? How do you know good without bad? How do you know okay without awesome and terrible?

Ideas for the Future

Courtesy of Boulder indoor cycling association. (boulderindoorcycling.com)

As my hobby of biking becomes more of an obsession, I enjoy continually thinking of ideas on how to fund my habit and help others understand how sweet things are when you are straddling a bike. My newest dream involves a velodrome and indoor mountain biking park.

Austin needs a velodrome. Austin is arguably one of the best cycling communities in the country (most certainly in Texas) but doesn't have the infrastructure to incorporate one of the integral parts of cyclism: track cycling. There are plenty of people that have been pining for a velodrome in Austin, and I am sure that there would be plenty of ridership to make the place profitable.

The problem with velodromes is that they are too specific. You can only ride track bikes on them. This means that it would be hard to have such a niche business. How do you make money if there aren't enough people to come and ride your track? Enter mountain biking. All you would have to do is build cool tracks and rock gardens around the velodrome track in empty space. So you have space optimization and more clients. Complete it with a retail space (coffee shop?) and a pro bike shop and I think you could have a pretty successful business. There is a business like this in Boulder, here's the link: Boulder Indoor Cycling. Ray's mountain bike park is another cool place that is mountain bike and bmx biking.

I don't know if this could ever come to fruition, but I think I will ask around and see if there is any interest. Any suggestions would be really appreciated.

My first Omnium win

After a great day of racing in the first day of the Texas Tech Omnium, I was sitting pretty in second place behind Roy from MSU. The last race was a crit, with a very technical course with 16 turns per 1 mile loop! I was excited to see how my new Gary Fisher Cronus would perform in the sweeping turns.

As the race started, my original plan was to sit back and mark Roy through the whole race. While this wouldn't get me 1st, it would keep me at second, which at first I was satisfied with. I started to notice that Roy, for whatever reason, was struggling today and not at top form. Two MSU riders were already up the road, so I decided to go with an attack that an Aggie rider started to see if I could drop Roy. At first it was me, and SMU rider, the aggie, and Roy with one of his teammates. The SMU rider wanted me to help chase the two MSU riders up the road, and I told him I would as long as he helped me to drop Roy. Roy was trying to stay on, but couldn't quite keep up with our relentless attacks. He soon fell behind.

Now it was just A&M, UT, SMU, and one MSU rider. We tried to chase the group ahead but never quite caught them. I was really okay with this because I knew I just needed to be ahead of Roy to win the overall. At the end of the race, the aggie took a flyer to get third, and I outsprinted the SMU and MSU rider for fourth. Roy ended up at 9th, far enough down for me to overtake him in the overall.

I was glad that I have been working so hard all fall and winter long, and that all that hard work is finally starting to pay off. I like to say all the time that races are not won the day of the race, but in the weeks or months leading up the event. This was definitely true.

Next week at Tunis, we will have a full team of riders and should expect great results at that race. Hopefully my training will go well this week!

Also, congrats to my lovely girlfriend Ally, for passing her exams to become a nurse! Now she has a 2 month internship to complete before she can call herself a full-fledged RN! I am excited for her!

Texas Tech Race Weekend

This weekend starts my last season as a collegiate cyclist. It's going to be a great journey.

The first race is in Lubbock, and so far is going really well for the team.

I was quite excited when we left Austin for the 6.5 hr drive. Even that could not darken my spirits, mostly due to the witty commentary of Jacob Dodson. We enjoyed the ride up, sharing our love for eclectic music and talking about life. Sooner that I thought, we were rolling up to our hotel, a Howard Johnson in north Lubbock. After checking in, we tried to go to Olive Garden to carbo-load to find that there was an hour wait. Evidently, people in Lubbock love Italian food. We decided to go across the street to a Chinese buffet with a Mongolian grill and (fresh) sushi. Yes. They had soo much food, and the sushi was not half bad.... for Lubbock.

The next morning, I got up at 6:00 am to start preparing for the road race. In men's B's, we had Jacob, Daniel, and I. We were doing two loops of a pretty neat course, totaling 56 miles. I find it amusing that I'm pretty sure they found the only hill within 400 square miles for us to climb up. Jacob and Daniel, both being climbers, loved the idea to flaunt their stuff and get some sexy points attacking the climbs. My plan was to hang in on their daring attacks and finish well for UT in the sprint. My main competition would be MSU and their five or six sprinters.

.

Being a sprinting team, MSU decided the pace should be set right around completely stopped. If someone broke away it wasn't going to be on their dime. Unfortunately, there were no teams big enough to get good pace going. With only three guys, there was no reason for us to keep the pace high, because then MSU guys would just pass us at the end. Jacob and Daniel did a great job of attacking the climbs, and Daniel went on a great break with two MSU riders. Jacob and I figured that MSU might actually let this break stick, so we decided to bridge the gap. I guess they weren't willing to let us go, because one of their teammates on women's A reeled us back in. This was near the end of the race, but I had just enough time to recover and get ready for the sprint. I had been working and visualizing the sprint all race over and over in my mind, and I was getting excited that it was almost here. I was also on my own, with Jacob and Daniel being tired from their amazing efforts all day. With 1km to go, I was having trouble catching a draft, but was in good position at 4th. With around 300 meters to go, Roy from MSU opened up the sprint. That is a HUGE effort! I was in second and could not quite catch him, finishing second. Congrats to him for that huge effort. Sprints are usually less than 100 meters, so for him to open it up that early and keep the lead was really impressive.

The time trial, while not as eventful was still fun. It was a six mile course with two brutal climbs. I ended up finishing 2nd to (guess who?) Roy. I was four seconds behind him, and the third place guy was more than 30 seconds behind me. This means we pretty much killed. I wish now that I could have had a mic with someone yelling times in my ear, because I think I could have made up those 4 seconds and won. Congrats to Roy though.

Tomorrow is the Criterium, and it will be interesting to see how we match up in the crit. Ben took a movie of the finish from the Road Race, so hopefully I will post that later. For now, it's time to get some dinner and lay around doing homework!

Race Preparation

Here's a video that I made about the upcoming collegiate racing season:

Race Season Is Under Way!!

The first really legit race that I have been training for is tomorrow! I am pretty excited! I can be sure when I say that I have been working my butt of to prepare and I know that my training has been working. In fact, I feel confident that I can win some races! It just goes to show that races aren't won the day of the event, but in the months of hard work leading up to it. In preparation for this race, I plan on following these guidelines during racing:
1. Don't crash
2. Don't crash
3. Keep the rubber side down, i.e. don't crash

Seriously though, I don't think that I am that worried about it. Just a healthy level of concern for my well being.


During this part of the year, my church HCBCUT does the 35 day spiritual journey. This can be best described as a period where our whole church tries to be more intentional about our personal relationship with Jesus. In the past, we have been encouraged to figure out how we can better ourselves through a closer relationship with the God-Man. This year our pastor, Denny, has challenged us to also find ways to look out for the spiritual well-being of others. Out of this charge came the 10forHaiti campaign. This is where you should give $10 to help the Haitians rebuild their lives, both materialistically and spiritually. Or just materialistically if you're not into the whole God thing. I gave and hopefully can get 10 friends to do the same. Yes, it's a pyramid scheme, but it's for a good cause!

Anyways, Race Report for tomorrow will come afterward. Now I'm off to a UT hockey game. Hopefully someone will fight or I'll get bored. :)

New Years Resolution

So 2010 is now well under way by now, and I am thoroughly enjoying it. It is finally getting back into the 60's in Austin. I am always pleasantly surprised at how wonderful 60 degrees feels, especially when riding around and getting some good hill time in.

Riding is pretty much all I've been doing lately. Last week was training camp, and I ended up putting over 350 miles in over the week. I now know what the verge of over-training is for me, as I came down with a mild cold from a reduced immune system. It was nothing that a day of sleeping couldn't fix.

Training camp was incredibly fun! The first two days were cold but sunny, and the second two days were cold and rainy. Riding in the rain is never really fun, but it is necessary sometimes and seems to make me stronger and more willing to endure pain. For under 40 degrees and pouring rain, the combination of all the cycling clothes I own and soggy-ness made me feel similar to the Michelin Man moon-walking through a car wash. The moon-walking is vital for the visual image enjoyment while alluding to the sensation of your tires slipping out from under you on wet pavement. This happened to me four or five times and never ceases to take my breath away.

One interesting positive of raining and cold is that you must go much slower downhill. While this does eat up your brakes quite quickly, it also helps you from getting too chilly on these descents, because of less wind. Well sort of.... I was still freezing cold, but I suppose that can't be helped.

I know that I am becoming faster for only one reason: John Korioth yelled at me.... twice. John has many reputations in the Austin cycling scene, among which are "Lance's best friend," "The guy who yells things," "College," "Dude that owns the bar," and "Peloton boss." If yells things at you, it's probably because you are chasing down one of his teammates or you are beating him, which means you are doing something right. I got yelled at for semi- working with the Austin bikes team on a break and for some semi-deserved nudging of people during the final pack finish. I have never been more thrilled to be yelled at. Don't misunderstand that I have a lot of respect for College and show my appreciation for him by following him on Twitter. In any case he continues to be one of those people that I find extremely interesting.