Christmas break and getting going on training for 2010

I headed back home to Michigan for Christmas. It was a busy time where I got to see lots of family and friends. I intended to ride the trainer, but with everything going on, I hauled my bike back for about 1.5 hrs of total riding. Things did get better when I went up north to the cottage, as I did a fair amount of cross country skiing as well as a great night of downhill skiing. Here are some pictures that capture the event.


Its the time of year when getting ready for the next season really starts. I kicked off it off by doing a step test, in which I systematically increase my effort until I fail to increase the effort (or until you want to pass out or get sick). Specifically, you start at a power output of 100 watts (W) and increase 25 W every three minutes. The test went all right, and it will establish my training zones for the next little while.

I have been feeling a little under the weather recently, so as opposed to heading outside to ski or ride I have been doing a considerable amount of yoga. I think that I will continue to do yoga, I have been enjoying it and I think that it is a nice compliment to riding.

That is it for now, I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Almost famous and varsity cycling programs

There are monthly collegiate cycling emails, and this month there is a picture of me in it! Well I should say that I am not the primary focus, but at least I am involved. Anyways the article was about the status of varsity programs in collegiate cycling, and had numerous opinions on whether they should be perused or avoided. I tend to think that they are not necessary a great idea. The point of college is to get an education, and I think that some people may choose a better cycling school at the expense of a higher education. Regardless if you are varsity or not, you race the same races, fight the same battles, and still get the feel of a coherent team. The major advantage to varsity programs is the funding, you can't get beat getting every thing paid for. That being said, the two collegiate cycling teams I have been on have been fairly well funded, and I did not really feel that more money would have made a tremendous impact. Club teams are good because you can be as serious as you want, this allows you to focus on school when you need to, and you feel extra good when you beat up on the varsity programs ;) This being said, I still think it would be pretty cool to be on a varsity team.



I tend to agree with my most of what my friend Ian says here, and I am proud to be a product of a non-varsity collegiate cycling program.

Where have I been?

I have not posted in what seems like forever. With winter rolling in and business to take care of at school I am not able to go on any real picture worth bike rides, so I end up not posting. But, in spite of that a few things have happened since that are at least blog worthy.

1) I bought a power tap for my road bike. This will allow me to train more effectively as this device tells me the amount of power that I am producing, taking out lots of guess work on intensity, this should be a big help in the upcoming year.

2) I went cross country skiing for the first time this past week, I woke up to about 6 inches of new snow and I went out for about an hour, it was awesome. Good to be enjoying winter sports again!

3) I went downhill skiing for the first this past weekend, it was good, and I am looking forward to lots more of this!

and finally real training will be starting up in January, should be good!

Catch out this cool picture of some neat reflections off my rim!

The Weekend!

This weekend was great for riding. Both Saturday and Sunday I hit Earl's trails (which are flowey fast trails) on my single speed. Saturday I went out with two Jeffs, and Sean, and it was my first ride on my single speed in those trails in a long while, maybe since last fall. Below is a really weird picture of Sean, one of the Jeffs (Elie), and myself, yeah really weird.



Sunday it was Sean and Jeff (Cronin), and we did some good exploring. We sort of just went which ever way we wanted, and the trail network is so all over the place that it works well. Sunday was particularly good, maybe it was because I took off the suspension fork on my single speed and replaced it with the rigid "tough guy" fork, or because the weather was just perfect, or perhaps a lot of both.

Then on the way home from that ride I found there huge leaves on the trail across the street from my house. Attached is a picture below:



The leaves around the big leaves are normal sized [for comparison :) ], and all of these big leaves fell in about three days time, it was a really cool to see them all over the place.

This was one of the best weekends of riding in a long time, it was great to just go and ride the trails with some good friends with nice weather. I really like riding in the fall, it is most defiantly my favorite time of the year to ride. Maybe its the crisp fall air, or the end of the serious racing season, or maybe its all of the beautiful colors, one way or another, it is fun.

This upcoming weekend I will be racing in my first cyclocross race, should be an interesting experience. But for now, its time to sign out.

One Year Blogaversary

Tuesday Oct 27th was the one year anniversary of this here biking blog. I would say that I have more or less stated true to my original intentions, keeping the topics mostly about biking with a little bit of other jabber here and there. I will not supply a few statistics.

I made 40 posts this year, which is a little less than one per week. In turn you blog readers have visited my site nearly 1800 times, which is about 5 a day. People have visited from 20 states, and I am also an international favorite, with a few visits from Canada.

Well, enough about all that. Recently I have been getting on the bike more, and it is much better than not being on the bike. This weekend I went on a nice ride around the Quabbin Reservoir, which is a huge reservoir that supplies Boston with water. Either way it was a little more than 75 miles, and it was a great day, with lots of nice views. Below is a nice picture I took:



Well, thanks again for a great first blog year!

In the name of Science: Part II

Well, looks like all the hard studying payed off, I passed the cumulative exam! This means, that I am done with those things, and with the unfortunate placement on these exams on bike races, I no longer have to worry about this conflict.

Either way, I am commuting to school almost every day, but other than that I have not been spending too much time on the bike. I have started going to the gym to lift weights, which so far has been fun. Although I would like to start spending some more time on the bike, I think things at school with be more manageable, so I should have time to get out.

Well, thats it for now, Caroline is coming into town this weekend, should be fun!

In the Name of Science!

Hello again, and sorry for the delay in my posting. The last few weeks have been very busy, and little of that has to do with my time on a bike. The life of a graduate student is great, I get to do awesome research and enjoy my time at work, however it is a lot of time, especially lately. I recently started a new project, and this allowed me to travel down to Arlington, VA for a meeting on the project. This was a great trip, my research adviser, post doc in the lab, and myself headed down to the meeting where I learned some great stuff and also got to do some sight seeing. I have never been to Washington D.C., so one night the three of us decided to tour the monuments, and my adviser was a great tour guide as he had previously lived in the area. I really enjoyed all the monuments, they truly are something every American should witness. (Below is a picture of me at the Ab Lincoln monument)



After the trip I was busy making a poster for a large Polymer Event at UMASS which happens in a few weeks. And now, I am studying for my next cumulative exam which could be my last, so I am going to be working hard on passing. The exam also happens to be the same day as the Regional Championships in the collegiate race series, so I will not be competing in that race, or the race that was this weekend so I could study for the test. Either way, these tests have unfortunately been placed on the biggest races of both my summer racing and now collegiate racing, just another reason to finish these things.

Through all of us, I ended up taking about two weeks off the bike, so we will count that as my rest period, which now means that the next month or so will be dedicated to fun activities, on and off the bike, with little emphasis on racing. Lets not forget about the research, there is a conference I would love to go to in March, so I need to get some data together, so I will be in the lab for sure.

Either way, no one said that getting a Ph.D. and trying to race at the professional level was going to be easy, but it has certainly been fun so far!