Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

One week until spring break....One week until spring break...One week until spring break...

Can you tell I'm ready for a little time off?

This desire for time off has been brought about by the nice weather that has come over the state of Georgia in the last few days and my inability to get away from my work responsibilities to ride in said nice weather. It hasn't been all bad. Last Friday I did a really nice 50 mile ride and I had a century planned for Saturday even though it was supposed to be pretty windy. I got 40 miles into the ride and then picked up a 2.5 inch screw through my rear tire and that ended the ride pretty quickly. I should be glad it went out the sidewall instead of going through the rim but i'm still a bit frsutrated to lose the ride. Sunday was rainy and filled with an afternoon migraine (yuck) so no riding there. Hopefully I'll do 40 or 50 going down to Macon today.

I didn't do real well at the Tundra Time Trial but I'm not too concerned. It came at the end of a training block so I was pretty ground down. I found out that my lactate threshold is right at 170 bpm so I can definitely set my training zones now. If I get to feeling better I'll go down to Albany and race in the first Georgia Cup race but whatever got me on Sunday seems to be still messing with me so we'll see. I feel like I'm fighting a 24/7 sinus headache right now and the typical cocktail of allergy meds and ibprofen are just barely holding it at bay. If I race, it'll definitely just be to get some race miles in my legs and do a few hard intervals in the crit and short road race I'll be doing. I'm definitely building towards a summer peak this year instead of trying to do a two peak season like I've done in the past. I'm also starting to get very intrigued by the idea of endurance races. I may try to do a couple this year to see how they go...maybe one on the dirt and one ont he road.

That may be what I use Spring Break for...get some nice long medium intensity rides in. I still want to do the century route I plotted out for last weekend and I've got another new century route planned that heads west with what I'm told is a cool, old mill I can take pictures at. IF I get soemthing, I'll post it here for all to see.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Things are busy here...very busy. Between faculty teaching responsibilities, faculty leadership commitments, being a club advisor/campus minister and training for the new season set to start in just a few days I've been nearly overwhelmed for the last two weeks. For the most part, things have been good but I could definitely use a little more rest than I've been getting.

My classes this semester are really pretty good. You always have a couple of students who aren't doing well but this semester's groups have been really good. My drop, withdraw, fail rate right now is well below the typical 25% mark for the fist time in over a year. I'm feeling pretty good about a couple of small curricular changes that I've made and I'm contemplating a couple of others.

Training seems like it's really up and down. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that I keep comparing my progress to last year which isn't a good idea. I was flying at this time last year because I didn't really take my typical October/November break and so I really blew up during the summer. This year I've taken the break and so I'm well behind in terms of fitness from last year. The good thing is that I won't be exhausted and burned out by June and so I'll have a better season. Still, when I go to do hill repeats and I such badly, it's hard to remember that. I am racking up lots of miles: 1150 in January and 480 so far this month which is really good.

Our new dogs (they seem too big to be puppies anymore) are going through the ups and downs for growing into our pack. One day their great and the next they're chewing the belt on my rollers in half. It's more frustrating in a way because you actually know that they can be good but they sometimes don't seem to want to be good. One of them, when he gets bored, chews on everything he can find. The other just randomly barks at stuff: bones, the other dogs, the wall, the TV, the floor, his feet, whatever. It gets old after about a half an hour of trying to relax to some mindless TV that you can't hear most of because he barks in all the soft-spoken bits. Maybe that's why they're so cute. If they weren't I think I would've made soup and mittens out of them.

Anyways, thanks for reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |