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

Monday, February 16, 2009

Race day starts at 5 am, in the dark, more than four hours before my start time. All of the prep the night before is loaded into and onto the car for the 90 minute trip to Hiram. Traffic is light giving time to organize the race in my mind. The big question is, will it rain?

I arrive at the trailhead. How many times has it been that I've done this race? Six? The weather's always different. This year looks wet. Robert's here, I see the tent. I sign in and get my number. 502. There's the usual seeing fellow racers from years before and saying hi and a quick catch up. Ronnie's here to organize the Aaron's team. He and I used to race together and we're still good friends. I unload the car and set the trainer up. The big question means a big decision. Do I go with the PowerTap rear wheel and get data to improve my training or run the more aerodynamic disk? If it's dry I run the PowerTap but the head unit doesn't work in the rain. I put the PowerTap wheel on the Cervelo for warm-up. I slip on the Security Bank skinsuit for the first time. It feels good.

Todd's ready to go off and I get on the trainer. U2's on the Shuffle as I begin to spin up. It starts to rain again. Start numbers are being called but I tune them out for now. How does my body feel? How do my legs feel? Five minutes into the warm-up I start the series of harder efforts designed to bring my body to point where it can put out the power I'll need. Everything feels good. Really good, actually. As the efforts get harder my legs respond well. No laboring; everything's smooth. Sweat blossoms. Bono's singing "Elevation" and my legs are turning the cranks. Everything feels like it's in rhythm. It's all good.

At thirty minutes for warm-up I mentally make the call. It's still raining. I'm going to switch to the disk. No power data today but I'll go faster. I can't say that I'm disappointed. I feel good and I want the win. I haven't felt this good at this event in three years.

Five minutes to start. I down two gels and some water. I put on the new aerodynamic helmet. The team's getting ready to start and I'm the last in the team line behind Jeff "Stoney" Clayton. He's my 30 second man; my rabbit. The guy behind me is a Cat III from a team I don't know of. I'm not going to let him catch me. Robert goes off. I make sure the bike is in the right gear for the start. Ronnie shoots out of the start house. I get clipped in and I make sure that everything's set to go. Jeff is sent off and I'm up. I thank John, today's head official, for helping to make this possible. The volunteer grabs my seatpost and holds me up. I clip my other foot in and rotate the cranks to a good starting position. I focus on Jeff who is down the road. I start taking deep breaths and listen for the countdown. 5...4...3...2...1...Go!

I'm off and sprinting up to speed. One hundred meters down the course I sit down and shift into a harder gear. The shift is good and I relax a bit; the gears are going to work OK today. My heart rate shoots up and I realize I need to back off a bit like I always do. I settle into my aero position and try to tuck my head in behind my hands as best I can. I start the mental checklist: breathing, legs, position, effort, gearing, gut. I'll go through this a hundred times in the next twenty minutes evaluating my performance. I can't let my mind wander or I'll lose focus and slow down. I've got to always push.

Jeff's ahead of me and I'm starting to close in. Not much right at first but more as we head out to the turn around. At the two mile mark I turn the screw a little bit and go just a bit harder. I can feel it on the gradual rises, I'm right at threshold now. Jeff's right there and I know I can get him. A mile before the turn around I catch him and go around. Where's the next rabbit?

Two minutes later I'm at the turn. It's tight and I take it slow on the wet concrete. It gives my heart a chance to get back on top of my effort and I stand and sprint up the little hill. The next rider is right in front of me. It's not Ronnie. I catch him one hundred meters past the turn and start looking for Ronnie. He's my next rabbit, I think. On the way back I turn up the intensity again. I'm just about sick which is right where I need to be. I can't feel my legs burn, they're that good today. I catch another rider. And another. None of them are Ronnie. Lots of traffic to get around. I'm flying but where's Ronnie?

One mile to go. I nearly catch air going over one of the road crossings. I know the spot from previous races so I'm prepared. I start to bury myself. I see the overpass that's two hundred meters from the finish. It's uphill from here to the overpass and so I stand up and give it everything I have. I'm wide-mouthed and my legs are screaming when I crest the hill. I drop back into my aero position and click to a harder gear for the last effort. I can barely see when I cross the line.

As I head back down the Comet, I catch up with Robert and Ronnie. It turns out that Ronnie almost caught Robert. He's had a great ride. There are lots of congratulations handed around as we know we've all ridden well. Results won't be posted for a couple more hours so four of us take a long cool down ride. There's a lot of talk about the race and how each of us felt. I'm riding the endorphins and I feel good for a while before the wet and cold catch up with me.

When we get back, all the riders have finished and our times are posted. Robert and I scan the Cat 4 results and find our times. I've got a 22:17 which is surprisingly good given the cold and wet conditions. As we continue to scan the results I realize that I've won the race. It's been three years since I stood on the podium at Tundra. Today I'll return. It's been a long road with a lot of ups and downs. It feels good to win and even better to do it riding in the team colors with my teammates around.

There's still a lot of work to do but it's a good start.

Thanks for Reading .

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Monday, February 02, 2009

Wow, it's been a long time since I updated this thing. It's been a busy month and, somewhat unfortunately, that doesn't seem like it'll be slowing down any time soon. The biggest contributor has been the addition of one extra class to my teaching load this semester. Over the last three semesters I've had a three class+lab load (as all my classes have labs). Last year this was due to being Chair of our Faculty Senate and Fall 2008 was the first semester of our new 3/4 load scheme. Now before I get any hate mail telling me what a cushy job I have one should first understand that adding a course represents a 33% increase over the load I've taught for the last 18 months. The addition of 6 contact hours plus class prep and, more importantly, lab prep is really taking a big chunk out of my schedule. I've found it pretty hard to adjust and get back into the swing. What amazes me is that I used to do this all the time. No wonder I felt like i had no time for scholarly activity and little time for course or curriculum development.

Here's a brief update on my New Year's resolutions. While I've read (in several places by several different authors) that most resolutions have been abandoned by this point, I'm still trying to go strong on mine.

I've lost eleven pounds to date, which puts me about 2 lbs ahead of goal. This is very encouraging to me but it means that I still have a long ways to go. This was made abundantly clear this weekend on our annual Pine Mountain Challenge double metric. I was able to stay with the team for the first 100 miles or so and even did the one climb reasonably well but I had to use a lot more power on some of the short, steep climbs to get my fat "blork" up and over the top and it cost me near the end.

I'm making progress on the organic/whole food eating thing. I'm not sure I'm at 30% but I'm thinking a lot more about it. I've eaten fast food exactly once this year (I got an order of Wendy's fries and a Frosty yesterday) and have really focused on thinking about what goes in my body. What's really hard is making time to cook when I'm crunched for time. It's amazing how much easier it is to just eat crap. I have to admit that my wife and I are still allowing bad food in on our official "Crap food Fridays". I'm guessing we'll eliminate even that when Lent gets here.

I made good progress in the simplification of my life for a time but have stalled a bit of late. Still, we have a good batch of stuff to take to Goodwill and I'm near an effort of attack all of the old cycling stuff I've accumulated. That closet is a mess and I expect I'll have a lot of old jackets to give out. I was struck recently by a saying of one of the early church Fathers. If I remember the quote correctly, "If you have two coats in your closet, you have stolen one of them from the poor." I'm pretty sure I have some returning of property to do.

I've started growing some food. Granted it's only some simple lettuce and greens but it's the start I've been looking for. Part of this effort has included getting more plants into the house. I really think having plants makes a house more healthy but I've not done a good job maintaining them. Hopefully I can do that and create that environment I'm looking for. I'll start working on building the garden later this month. I've already got some ideas of what I want to do and I have some interested helpers so I'm pretty excited. I really hope than before the end of April that we can be providing some part of of our community's weekly meal from teh garden in my back yard.

Finally, I'm making some progress on the class that need the most work but I've got a long ways to go. This is a resolution that may have to wait until summer to make a lot of headway on. There's just too much going on to have much time to do the serious creative work to really finish off the courses. I'm not giving up but I do think I'll focus on my new course of the elementary ed program in order to make that as exceptional as I can this semester and then finish the polishing of the physics class when I have more uninterrupted time.

So that's the update, I'll try to write again soon with a few other things that are going on and some thoughts I've had about fear and how relevant it is in our relationship to God.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |