Run the Race

New Year's Resolutions-2010

2010-01-01T11:20:00.002-05:00

As I did last year, I thought I'd share my New Year's Resolutions for this first year of the century's second decade. The idea of these resolutions is to give me a sense of where I'd like to go in the coming year on a deep level. From these will flow long, medium and short term goals to which I will add a few more goals from things I don't see as deep but I do deem as important (such as goals related to cycling and course work).

One of the questions I get from cynics is, "Why do you make resolutions when you probably aren't going to keep them?" and "So, how did you do last year?" I make resolutions because I believe that it is important to state who I want to become each year. Will I achieve all (or even any) of these? No, most likely I will not. But by laying them out before me, I clarify where I want to go int he coming year. Last year, I did lose weight and keep it off which helped me reach my goal of winning the state time trial championship. I did shift our menu and purchasing away from foods that are energy intensive to produce and nutritionally deficient. Were there things I failed to move forward on? Sure, but that's not a reason to strive to be a better person. The question I ask in return is, "What's the alternative? Stagnation, cynicism and despair?"

So, without further ado, here are my 2010 resolutions:

I resolve to change the way in which I interact with technology in my life in the following ways:

I will forsake the use of technology as a means of mindless entertainment.

I will use technology and social networking media as a way to lessen the distance between myself and those around me.

I will better explore the creative aspects of technology to share my thoughts, ideas and values with those who come into contact with me.

I resolve to create an atmosphere of grace and peace in my life and my surroundings:

I will endeavor to create and keep simple and beautiful living spaces that encourage both contemplation and interaction.

I will endeavor to cultivate the finer things of life and to ask others to join me in enjoying them.

I resolve to keep growing in who I am and who I am becoming:

I will consciously seek out the paths of katharsis, photosis and theosis in my spiritual and religious live.

I will work to engage more completely in a life of prayer.

I will establish a habit of reading each and every day.

I will seek out and follow opportunities for professional growth and development.

By my example I hope to create the space and example that will inspire others to allow grow.

I resolve to work to find and engage community in my life:

I will renew my efforts to broaden my community of faith.

I will strive to invite new and diverse people to join me in community.

For all who took the time to work through this, thanks for reading. I wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.

Grace and Peace.

The GPS Dilemma

2009-12-18T12:50:00.002-05:00

So, we finally got a GPS; something I have sort of avoided for a while. For those who know my wife and I, this may seem a bit odd but to be honest, I was the one dragging my feet. We've seen friends' GPS systems and have appreciated and admired them for some time but I just never quite wanted one myself. Let me see if I can explain.

I think that for many guys there's a sort of "yes/no" think going on with GPS. It's not just a simple tool sort of thing that a guy gets as soon as he can afford it and he thinks that the technology is robust and mature enough to be reliable most of the time. As least it wasn't for me.

Growing up out West, I sort of learned a certain level of independence and self-reliance. This was heavily reinforced by my time as a Boy Scout. Given that I have a well-developed sense of direction and an seemingly innate ability to navigate around I was one of those guys who rarely asked for directions and rarely needed to. It isn't a stubbornness kind of thing but more one born of years of learning to find my own way combined with the genetics of generations of those who got to places before there were maps and a cultural environment that emphasized being prepared and being able to make it on what you had.

The second factor in all of this is a guy's general love of all things "map". If you ask a guy what one of the coolest things ever invented is, I would argue that if he put some real thought into it (something most guys wont really do because there are more important things to do like seeing who won last night's Colts/Jags game on Sportscenter), he'd say that maps are right up there with the wheel and the remote control; way above sliced bread and the disposable razor. Most guys can spend hours looking at maps. For me, the best issues of National Geographic were the ones that came with maps. I would study them for hours. When I got old enough to have a car and independent enough to use it to explore, I began collecting maps of everything with roads just to have the maps and to imagine where I might go. The GPS does away with the need for my precious maps because it is map of sorts. This is both a positive and a negative.

The final factor is that almost all guys love technology and the GPS is some of the coolest technology around and it is map technology. Even "retro-grouches" love technology. They may poo-poo modern tools and technology but that's really because they love the technology they have. They've fallen in love with the shapes and forms and functions of the technology they use and they believe that setting it side for something newer, shinier and more carbon fiber is akin to marital infidelity. That's the ting with maps. They're technology to be sure but they're technology that has romance. They're pictures of roads unseen and untraveled. They are the technology of adventure and the unknown horizon. The question was whether a GPS technology would destroy that romance.

So it was a attraction/repulsion thing for me (and for a lot of other guys I expect). The map/technology factor is a huge draw to get a GPS but there's the sense that with the GPS I'd be giving up some of the independence I've relied upon for so long. Can one really be a trailblazer and pioneer when following the directions of a small box stuck to the windshield of one's car? Can one grow to rely too heavily on a piece of technology that someone else controls? These sorts of questions have tormented me for a couple of years as we've debated getting one. I love my DeLorme maps and I've used them to find my way around so many places. And yet...they're just not as detailed as I'd like, especially in the cities. While I can pour over them and dream and plan, they aren't as interactive as I'd like. I find myself on Google Earth and Google maps more and more as I seek better tools to plan my adventures.

So, my sense of independence and pioneering have been at war with my love of gadgets with the maps thing sort of weighing in on both sides. Finally my wife (who doesn't have the "finding her own path" hang up that I and many men do) prevailed upon me to get a GPS navigation system. Like many men, I rationalized it by sort of thinking that it was for her and maybe there'd be some cool stuff for me in it too. Truth be told, however, there was a big part of me that wanted it.

To be honest, I find it pretty darn cool. I don't use it a whole lot but when I do the whole map/distance/time of arrival thing is just amazing. When we go to Salt Lake, I think we'll take it and let it sort of guide us around to cool things to see. It should be quite interesting since I have always navigated that particular city by a combination of feel and the counterintuitive street numbering system. I wonder if once my Dad sees ours in use if we'll end up having to get him one or if he'll appreciate it but decide that his old school cowboy instincts are a better way to travel.

Thanks for Reading.

Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize

2009-12-12T09:01:00.002-05:00

I was planning to meet the team for a four hour training ride this morning but the seemingly never ending rain has quashed that idea. So before I climb on the rollers and trainer, I thought I'd write a few thoughts on President Obama's reception of the Nobel Peace Prize. For those who are polarized on both sides of the issue, you probably want to stop reading now (of course, by writing this I virtually guarantee that you won't) as I expect that I'll support neither position and likely say things that you'll both agree with and disagree with. This means everyone will be mad at me for something I've said and I'll catch grief from both ends. Such is life in the middle.

I was tempted to write about this when the Prize was first announced but both the firestorm of controversy and my usual desire to see how things play out convinced me to wait a bit before committing my thoughts to paper (on in this case, electronic media). As I've given the award some thought I've come to a few conclusions.

First, the Prize was awarded by a group not connected to President Obama. I was a bit dismayed by some of the conservative reaction that seemed to blame the President for receiving the Prize. Unless he somehow manipulated the Nobel committee from afar, I think he was just as surprised as anyone to learn that he had been awarded the honor. Was that award a bit premature? Perhaps (though I'll speak to that in just a bit), but that's not the President's fault. I think he acknowledged in his acceptance speech that he has much to do to "earn" the award.

The Nobel committee has always been a bit odd with this prize. Unlike the other five Nobel prizes which award accomplishments in their respective fields, the Peace prize has historically been awarded for reasons that are often times more nebulous. The two previous American Presidents to win the award, T. Roosevelt and Wilson, were men whose approach to peace were complex. T. Roosevelt, who won the prize for negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese war, also advocated a muscular American military presence both before and during his administration. Wilson, who ran on the promise of keeping the United States out of World War I (but was eventually swayed by public opinion generated in part by the work and speeches of one Theodore Roosevelt), put together the idea of the League of Nations and tried to create a just peace following the war but failed in the later and had the former rejected by his own people. The Nobel Peace prize is, at times, awarded for what a person has done but it it is also frequently awarded for the hope of what a person will do or for the symbol the person becomes or represents. In this are probably lessons on the nature of peace itself.

It is in these last two senses that I think the committee acted in awarding President Obama the prize. The hope is that the President will take a different approach in his diplomacy that the previous administration. In a way, I see the giving of the prize as one final European rejection of the Bush Administration's policy of American unilateralism. In this sentiment, I think the committee has been petty. Bush and his advisors are gone. We all understand that the governments and intelligentsia of Europe didn't like him. There was no need for a final "don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out" type of statement. Yet the hope in Europe is that the new administration will take a different approach; one that is more inclusive, less impulsive and less confrontational. Interestingly enough, the presentation ceremony cane just days after the President's announcement to increase the number of troops in the conflict in Afghanistan.

The second point that I think can be made is that while I do believe that the Prize was given to President Obama in the hope of the new approach he may be taking, I also believe that it was given in the recognition of the fact that he stands as a symbol of how quickly change can take place and how rapidly justice can come about through the actions of those committed to peace. Here I believe that the Peace prize was, in a way, a second prize awarded to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. That America has elected a black president only two generations after Dr. King marched and spoke out against the institutionalized policies of racial inequity is a powerful symbol to all of those who wonder if things might ever change for the better. The awarding of the Peace prize to President Obama sends a powerful message to all those who fight injustice and violence in the world that while progress in the moment may seem very slow, the transformation they are seeking to bring about may occur in ways they would never have imagined possible. Dr. King's dream was that children of all colors could play together in peace. I wonder if he would have imagined that within forty years of his speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial there would be enough political will in America to elect a black man as its leader.

Another interesting thing is the reaction here at home to Obama's acceptance speech. A number of conservative politicians from Newt Gingrich to Sarah Palin (and I use the word politician liberally in regards to Mrs. Palin) have praised the President's remarks. In them he puts forward the ideas of both American exceptionalism and the need for America to act vigorously in using military force to ensure peace and stability in the world. There are two comments I would make here. First, many conservatives are saying that Obama is saying the same thing as President Bush did and, as such, his remarks are a confirmation of his policies. I would disagree with this. Saying that America has a role in insuring world peace through the use of military force is not the same as saying that America has the lead role and that the rest of the world can go to hell if it doesn't agree with how we choose to assert that role. Secondly, I profoundly disagree with President Obama's statement that violence can be used to create good. I believe that violence and force are often necessary to restrain evil and will need to be used to stop others from inflicting injustice on those who are weaker. I believe that force and violence, in doing this, can be used to create a space wherein good can take place or structures can be created that will lead to better circumstances. But violence and force will not create good. Good can only be created through the positive action and agency of those committed to human dignity and justice.

The final comments I would make regarding this topic stem from an editorial cartoon that Mike Luckovich drew for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In it he showed Obama emerging from the barrel of tank's gun to receive the medal awarded with the Peace prize. The tank was labeled Afghanistan as a pointed reference to Obama's increase in troop levels signaling a renewed commitment to the war effort there. The President has received some heat from democrats and liberals who claim that they voted for him on the promise they believe he made to get us out of the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I remember consistently hearing candidate Obama say that Afghanistan was the real conflict that we needed to be involved in and that the Iraqi war was a mistake mainly because it distracted the country from that effort. While one may argue that continuing either conflict is in error, it seems rather foolish to elect a candidate who promised to focus more resources into a conflict and then criticize him for doing that very thing.

So those are my thoughts this morning before I move into the dreadfully boring activity of spinning my wheels and going nowhere. If my comments have offended, please forgive me. If they have stimulated you to think about something, even if that something is a response to disagree with me, fantastic; but don't spend too much thought on the ramblings of a man who will spend the next three or so hours in a gerbil like activity in hopes of winning a bit of colored fabric a bit later in the year. This activity is likely evidence that I am not of sound mind (even thought I hope the activity will make me "of sounder body"). I hope your day is a bit less dreary than mine.

Thanks for Reading.

Long Overdue Update

2009-12-09T10:18:00.003-05:00

Not too many people read my posts here too often due to most of them having facebook and seeing my notes there but I thought I'd write something for both sites.

Finals week is upon us here at the College and the students are in their usual scramble to get things done, study like mad and pass all of their classes. While I don't teach freshmen any more, my colleagues who do tell me it's been a rough semester. Our 18% enrollment increase hasn't been a completely good thing. It has meant that we've avoided layoffs and more serious cutbacks (due to increases in tuition revenue) but it seems pretty clear than many of the students in this surge are woefully unprepared for college and unwilling to exert any substantial effort to learn. I'll probably write more here in a few days on the topic but it's been a big issue for us here as I expect it has been for many of the access institutions in the state.

I'm back into the training swing of things. I've already got six weeks of work in the legs. It's hard to lose the fitness but I know I'll build to a higher peak next year. What makes it even harder is this is the first year I've really had good season over season power data (last year my PowerTap died until almost February). Seeing where I was at at the end of the season with an FTP of 310 and seeing where I'm at now with an FTP of 275-280 is pretty hard to take. I have to adjust my riding zone which has taken some doing. The focus this early season has been working on my short term power. I'm already way ahead of where I was last April and I did some short VO2Max intervals earlier this week that were really surprising in terms of how high they were. The longer term power will come around and the shorter interval numbers are very encouraging. The hardest thing has been the weather. It looks like we're on track for one of the wettest winters in recent memory here in Georgia so it means a lot of indoor time on the trainer. It's been hard to stay motivated to do long efforts at lower wattages but I need to get the miles in.

I just finished Brain McLaren's book, "Finding Our Way Again" which discusses the renewal of using ancient practices of spiritual disciplines in the life of the Christian. The book was very much of an overview so there wasn't as much specific discussion as I would have liked but I really liked his discussion of the intertwined ideas of katharsis, fotosis and theosis. I'm pretty familiar with the idea of theosis and katharsis is something I've looked at under other names but the inclusion of the practice of fotosis was new to me as was the practice of integrating them together. I'm very intrigued by the thought of intentionally including all three into my life in this integrated way and will likely build my Lenten fast and practice around such themes (strange to be thinking about Lent during Advent but I like to plan ahead sometimes). I may also work to create a series of events and activities for our GCF community to participate in together from this.

Finally, I've been giving a lot of thought to things in the sports world of late. I'll write a bit more about that soon but I'm disappointed in all of the local negative reaction to Tim Tebow's emotionalism in the SEC title game.

So with that I'll sin off for now.

Thanks for Reading.

Riding the Blue Train

2009-08-08T20:10:00.003-04:00

Today was one of those perfect days on the bike. Racing a bike is oftentimes a difficult and frustrating endeavor where a couple of hours of hard work and suffering only results in a mid-pack finish. One of the reasons I do time trials is that I control just about everything that happens in my race. There are no team tactics, blocking or positioning issues. My strength is my result; my suffering translates into my win. The downside to time trialing is that the preparation, suffering and either defeat or victory are generally held alone. The one discipline that transcends both the aloneness and the capricious nature of bike racing is the team time trial. In amateur races it usually involves four riders on one team all racing together to set the best time as a team. We race alone against the clock but the effort and pain is shared.

Today was just such a day. Our team colors are blue and white so we sometimes go by the name "The Blue Train." This is especially true when we participate in a team time trial. Over the last two years we've won just about every event we've entered including the State Team Time Trial (TTT) Championship last year. What distinguishes the TTT is that everyone still has to work together. The time for the race is usually taken on the second rider and four guys go a lot faster when everyone is working together. Since we all ride together a lot as a team and we train together over the winter and spring we've learned to ride fast together. There is a trust in the other guys. You know they'll suffer for you just as you suffer for them. You know they'll make you suffer so that you can get better but they'll never hold it against you when they crack you.

Today was maybe the last TTT for the Blue Train. Our primary sponsor, Security Bank, was shut down by the FDIC and sold to another bank. We don't know what our sponsorship prospects are for next year so even though we're pretty committed to racing together, it may be under different colors and in different circumstances and it mostly likely wont be in blue and white kit. It was a sort of bittersweet time as we starting gathering together for this last TTT in the uniforms that have made us respected and just a little feared around the state.

Today Robert, Trey, Jeff and I came together to lay down the law one more time. For me the event started with my typical warm-up. As we gathered, we were loose about the ride. No stress as the trainers were set up and the bikes set to spinning. I felt surprisingly good for a warm-up on a hot, muggy morning with no breeze. As worked my way through the iPod playlist my legs responded to every increase in intensity I asked for. I had rhythm in my head but more importantly, I had it in my heart and legs. As we spun over to the start line I was feeling strong and motivated. After a few instructions and a prayer from Trey, we lined up and got our countdown. I led us out and got us up to speed for the first minute and a quarter. As I pulled off, everyone was in line and looked good. I tucked in at the end of the Train and my teammates took over driving things. Each sat on the front for the time they could hold a high speed and then they too pulled off to let the next in line set the pace. When I got back to the front we were four minutes in and I was beginning to think this was going to be good. We were smooth and fast. I could tell that we were all working at the same level. I wasn't just coasting in the draft and there weren't gaps opening up when I new rider was on the front.

Today we were amazing...maybe the best I've ever seen. We hit the 9 mile mark at 19 minutes. We were rolling at over 28 miles an hour or 46 km/hr. When we hit the second, harder half of the course we didn't unravel either. We kept it together with everyone pulling through. I was on my limit and suffering like a dog but so was everyone else. We were four guys united in a goal and in the sacrifice and suffering it would take to achieve that singular goal. We had caught our 2 minute team at five miles and we caught our 4 minute team at 15. At 17 miles, Trey finally popped but Robert, Jeff and I continued to power along. With one kilometer to go, Jeff finally blew up and Robert and I finished together in exactly 42 minutes. 19.61 miles in 42 minutes gave us a speed of 27.5 mph or 44.5 kph which ain't too bad for a bunch of old guys. Jeff rolled in only 10 seconds later and Trey came in a minute after that.

Today I suffered and it felt good. I haven't hurt after a ride like I did after this one since the State Championship and yet it was so much better in a way. There I was racing for a jersey; here I was racing for my teammates. Several times I thought that I might have to let up or maybe even let go but each time Jeff would pull off the front and turn the train over to me to drive I would somehow find enough strength to pull hard for another 1 minute effort. And when I would pull off to let Robert drive us on and struggle to latch back on at the end of the train I would find the extra something to get me back into the slipstream so that I could recover just a bit until it was my turn again.

Today we won our category and had a former pro who is without a contract for a moment not brought a ringer team we would have won the entire event. We only lost by 42 seconds to the elite ringer team and we crushed the rest of the field, beating our nearest rivals by over two minutes. We were strong in our pain and dominant in our solidarity. Today the Atlanta teams were crushed by a team from the "sticks" of central Georgia that has learned to ride together.

Today was the day the Blue Train left the station for one final trip and I was proud to be on board. Thanks to DHo, Grasshoppa and Stoney for letting come along for the ride. It is a memory that I'll always cherish.

Old Age and Treachery

2009-07-06T22:50:00.004-04:00

So le Tour may have proved the old adage about Old Age having more power than Youth today. Armstrong saw the intentions of an old teammate and converted that knowledge into 41 seconds of tactical advantage both against most of the field and his own nominal team leader. That Lance didn't say something over the radio or try to clue in his teammates in some other way speaks either to his subconscious desire to be "The Boss" against or his assumption that everyone gets what he gets so easily now after so many years of riding and working in political circles.

Now in third place, Lance is in a position to take the Malliot Jaune for the first time in four years. I can't believe that he'd keep it past Arcalis but what a story it would make. His team has to beat Saxo Bank and Sparticus by one second for every kilometer in tomorrow's team time trial. Not an easy feat; especially considering that the last time these two teams essentially faced off the time difference over a longer distance was five seconds. Both squads have problems. Saxo Bank has used a lot of energy defending the jersey the last two day and Frank Schelck is banged up. Astana, while clearly the strongest team, is a divided squad and one has to wonder if that will manifest in the race through a crash or a split. I believe that Contador is too strong to get dropped but the Old Age and Treachery might rear its ugly head a bit.

The other two teams everyone is talking about is Columbia-HTR and Garmin-Slipstream and I think they'll both factor into the mix but I don't see them beating Astana. The wild-card team as I see it is Liquigas. No one is talking about them and maybe for good reason but they've got four or five really strong riders and they could make some noise tomorrow.

My prediction is Astana, Columbia, Saxo Bank, Liquigas and Garmin. Rabobank will lose a lot of time and doom Menchov's chances. Whether Silence-Lotto can put in a good enough ride to save Evans' chances in the GC remains to be seen but I could see them losing 90 seconds pretty easily tomorrow. Cervelo will ride well enough to keep Sastre in the mix, even if he's on the outside looking in. Give them sixth overall with a minute lost. Cancellara will still be in yellow tomorrow but only by a handful of seconds.

Thanks for Reading.

Stage 2

2009-07-04T21:27:00.002-04:00

Well, two out of three ain't too bad on my predictions for stage 1. The big loser for the day was Denis Menchov who lost a ton of time on a 20 K stage and will lose a bunch more in the TTT on stage 4 as Rabobank doesn't have the firepower to hang with Astana, Saxo Bank and Garmin-Slipstream. I just don't see him doing the double. Speaking of Astana, four riders in the top 10 is prett impressive and really scary for the other teams. If they can deal with the internal team rivalries it's hard to imagine them losing this race (barring bad luck). They are the odds-on favorite to crush the other teams on stage 4.

One thing to mention is the number of under 26 riders who did really well today. Nibali, Schleck, Krueziger, Martin and relative unknown Coppel rode strong time trials today. I dont know if all of these guys will make it to Paris but I think this bodes well for the future of the race and the sport if these guys will be dueling for the next five to seven years for Grand Tour supremacy. Contador may be the next three or four Tour winner but I won't be too surprised if one of these guys steps up in the next couple of years to challenge him.

Tomorrow is the beginning of the traditional "Sprint Stages". Stage 2 is a pretty hard first full day with a category 3 climb right out of Monaco and three more cat 4 climbs plus a lot of unmarked but hard bits with one of the worst about 15 km from the end of the race. To me it seems like someone who wants to wear the polka dot jersey will definitely try to get a break together since there are a lot of early points available on this stage. If someone can grab most of the mountain points here they might be able to hold the spotty jersey all the way to Barcelona.

Traditionally this is a place where a couple of riders from the smaller French teams try to do something to get some TV time so I expect the same script to play out here. This would be a great place for Moreau to lay a bit of a foundation for a KoM run (and then solidify it on the Girona-Barcelona stage) but the guy who I really think will try to make this go will be Thomas Voeckler. Add to that someone like Auge and maybe a first Tour flier by Nicolas Roche and you have the makings of an interesting break that'll last until the last 20 K or so.

After that it'll all be the sprinters' teams with Quick-Step and Columbia HTC vying to see who can control the leadout. If Cavendish can get over the last climb (and I think he can from his ride at Milan-San Remo), he's got to be the odds on favorite. There's not enough of a climb to open things up for Hushovd or Boonen so I think the pure speed guys are going to have the upper hand. Hence, I predict a Cavendish, Freire, Farrar finish.

We'll see what happens. Thanks for reading.

A Few Predictions

2009-07-04T06:23:00.002-04:00

Here I am at the last minute for a few predictions for this year's Tour de France. The race is one of the most interesting in years with four past champions racing (Sastre, Contador, Pereiro and Armstrong) and a bevy of strong contenders who have placed on the podium in the past (Kloden, Leipheimer, Evans, and Menchov) plus some new talent in Frank and Andy Schleck, Vandevelde, and Kruziger. There's a good bit of drama as four of the contenders actually ride for the same team which is sometimes a recipe for disaster. As always, the race uncovers who the strongest rider is.

So who do I think will win what?

Green Sprinter's Jersey: Four names here-Mark Cavendish, Thor Hushovd, Tom Boonen and Oscar Freire. THe last three have won the jersey in past tours and Cavendish is the best sprinter on the planet right now. From the looks of it there are some 10-11 stages that a sprinter might have a chance at. Four or five of those are pretty flat and suit Cavendish but the rest require that the rider make it over a few medium size climbs in good shape. Those will suit Freire who is the best guy going up hill of the four. He's the guy I would pick to win the Maillot Vert but his back isn't always so good for a three week race. Still I think it'll go down like this: Freire, Hushovd, Boonen, Cavensih, Farrar.

Polka Dotted Mountain Jersey: This is a real toss up. The guy who's won this the last few years has either been doping or has vanished off the face of the earth. To win this you have to be a guy with climbing talent that's good enough to win the race and either dominate the race or give up your chances to win the whole thing to win this jersey. Usually that points to a climber who doesn't time trial really well. The guy I'd liek to see win this is Christophe Moreau who has finsihed fourth in the Tour once in the past and isn't a bad climber. It's his last Tour and the French need to get something out of this race. The last few years he's made some noise about going for the jersey but has never seemed to give it his all. Maybe this year is his year. Otherwise I see one of the guys from one of the two Spanish teams but I honestly don't know which one. So I'll go with Moreau and leave it at that.

General Classification Yellow Jersey: I could go on and on for paragraphs as to who will win and why but there are two points to make here. First, if you're not on a team that can team time trial then you're going to lose at least a minute on stage four and that's going to be hard to make up. This makes things hard for Evans and Periero who don't have good teams for this discipline. If you don't recover well, then you're going to die in the time trial/Mont Ventoux double at the end of the race which will likely take Vandevelde out due to his recent injuries in the Giro. In between at least one favorite will explode and fall by the wayside and another will crash and end his chances. Having a strong team with several dangerous riders will help tactically but it's the guy who has the best day on the Ventoux who wins the race. By the way, if Armstrong's out of contention and the Astana is strong enough to protect Contador without his, expect Lance to do everything he can to win the Ventoux stage. So here's who I think will win:

1. Contador (really stepping out on a limb here)
2. Andy Schleck
3. Armsrong
4. Sastre
5. Evans

Periero, Frank Schleck, Leipheimer, Kruziger and Kirchen will all finish in the top 10. I don't think VDV will. Astana will win the team competition over Saxo Bank and Columbia-HTC. Cavendish will win three stages.

Today's ITT stage: Astana's sending Lance off early in case the wind comes up so that'll be interesting because it'll give Leipheimer and Contador good time checks to ride against. Miller, Dave Z. and Cancellara will also do good rides here. Hincapie may do well also. I'm going to go Cancellara, Contador, Dave z. as my top three.

We'll see what happens.

Thanks for Reading.

A Few Thoughts on the Death of Michael Jackson

2009-06-25T22:19:00.005-04:00

While I'm sure that some of my readers will already be sick of the media oversaturation of coverage on the death of the self-proclaimed "King of Pop", I thought I'd write some of my own personal observations as someone who was in high school when the "Thiller" album was first released. The intervening years have dulled the memory of that album for some who are my age and most of those who are too much younger than me never really understood the impact of the album. Instead they only remember the circus freak that Michael Jackson had become. To judge him on the basis of only that would be like judging Elvis only by his later years when he battled drug addiction and a music scene that had largely passed him by rather than by the revolutionary music he created.

Last night I was doing what I occasionally do and going through and giving a listen to the top ten songs on iTunes. For an older guy like me it can be an exercise in frustration, especially when I've moved from pop music into jazz, roots and folk music. Yet, as I sit here now and think back, every single song on the listen owes a huge artistic debt to Michael Jackson and his groundbreaking album, "Thiller", that was released in 1982. Prior to Thiller, African-American music was dying a sad, slow death. It had been consigned to the ghetto of disco where Donna Summer ruled and the niche of funk. Motown was no longer relevant in the American popular music scene as punk and heavy metal bands began to dominate what was the vast wasteland of "Easy-listening" pop. Jackson's first attempt to break that stranglehold, "Off the Wall", was a brilliant album but too rooted in Motown's past to make much of a difference. It sold well but failed to really make a critical mark. When he won no Grammy awards for the album, Jackson apparently went back into the studio to show the critics they had missed the boat. The new album was good but Jackson felt it was missing something. He and producer Quincy Adams knew that it would be another Off the Wall without something. Over the last weekend of recording, Jackson tapped into his anger and the sense of frustration he felt coming from black America in the early 80's and wrote three more songs; "Wanna be Startin' Somehting", "Beat It" and "Billie Jean".

I can honestly say I'll never forget the first time I heard Billie Jean. As a white kid growing up out west I had never, ever heard anything like it. I didn't understand the lyrics at first but I didn't care. It was the beat. Nothing had a beat like that. Nothing. The best word to describe it was propulsive; it propelled the song and the listener along involuntarily. As I think about it now I am still stunned by the power it had. "Beat It" caught a bit of the rage of the streets and "Wanna be..." gave a sense of a young male in a community that wasn't respected but "Billie Jean" was something else. The album saved African-American pop music in this country I think. It gave voice to a new generation of musicians who could now express the rhythm of a different experience. This rhythm hasn't always been well accepted or even well thought out but when I listen to those songs on iTunes, I know where that rhythm got its huge boost.

Too much will be said about Michael Jackson over the next couple of weeks. Some will focus on the circus life and the issues Jackson seemed to have with children and his own lack of a childhood. Some will focus on the cosmetic surgery and the indulgences and excesses of his life. My advice is for you to ignore all of that. To find the soul of the man, go back to his music. Listen to Thiller and hear where the dominant music of today began to come of age. Listen to "Billie Jean" and see if your foot doesn't start to move and you don't feel just a bit like dancing (maybe my Baptist readers should avoid this...). Listen and understand what all the fuss is about and why some feel so strongly about Michael Jackson's death. Most of all, listen and feel his music.

Thanks for Reading.

Another Mini Rant

2009-06-17T20:54:00.002-04:00

I wasn't going to rant again so quickly after my last rant but another thing has reared it's ugly head.

PC World has an article titled, "The iPhone OS 4.0 Wishlist". The 3.0 operating system for the durn thing has been out a week and they already have a wishlist for 4.0??? Are you kidding me? Tech journalists are like kids at Christmas who get too many toys and play with each one for about 5 minutes before going to the next. You haven't had the toy for more than a week and you already want a new, better one.

I wonder if these guys on the morning after their short honeymoon write articles like, "What we'd like to see in Wife 2.0," or on the day after they bring their first child home from the hospital, "Things we'd love to have in kid #2". Sheesh, what morons.

You have a piece of electronics that was unthinkable twenty years ago, a pipe dream ten years ago and hopeful thinking five years ago. Appreciate it for a couple of months will ya'?

That is all. You may return to what you were doing. Or you can go out and beat your local technology journalist. Whatever works better for you. OF course, I'm joking about that last bit. Mostly.

Thanks for Reading.

Rant On

2009-06-16T13:48:00.002-04:00

I haven't done this in a while. I've been trying to be nice and positive and insightful and the like but there comes a time when I just have to rant about something. What's gotten under my skin is what I call the nickle and diming of the American consumer.

What am I talking about here? I'm talking about the practice in some industries, especially the travel industry, to sell a consumer a product or service and then tacking on all sort of little expenses that never seem to be much until they're all added up. The company usually advertises some great price for their service or brags that they haven't raised their prices in tough economic times. It could be a $99 round trip airfare or a $79 room rate. But then they find a way to charge you for every little semi-essential service they can think of. The round trip airfare was $99 but then you add the $15 per bag luggage fee, the fuel surcharge of $10, the ticketing fee of $5 and all the rest and you have a $200 fare to you destination. In the hotel industry it's a internet access fee, a gym usage fee, a parking charge, a pay-up breakfast buffet and your great $79 room is now over $150 per night.

Now, I don't mind if the business decides to use a pay as you go business model. There are a number of reason that might actually benefit a certain group of consumers. What really fries me is that the business usually does everything it can to hide their way of doing things. A hotel will proudly proclaim that it has shuttle service to the airport or high-speed internet access or a gym knowing that most of it's potential customers will assume that since those services are usually provided for free they will not be charged for them at this particular place. Once the room is booked and the customer has arrived, the surprise is sprung. And don't tell me it's in the fine print. That stuff's usually in 6 pt or smaller font tucked in a corner of the ad or shown for such a brief period time that only a person with stop action TV could read it.

Can you imagine if an engineering firm did something like that? They give a presentation to a client that says that they'll create the plans for a bridge or building for a certain fee but hide the fact that they're going to charge a bunch extra for the actual blueprints of the plan on the last page of the proposal in a bunch of legalese. Or what if my college charged tuition and claimed you'd have everything you needed to earn a degree but then required textbooks that you only learned about a week into class or charged a "desk fee" for each class or required you to have an email account but then made you pay a daily fee to access it. Sometimes I worry that things are trending that way in higher education but at least we tell you up front what your fees and tuition are going to be and that your tuition only covers the cost of your classes.

The travel industry is struggling right now and I think that a lot of the anger that consumers feel towards airlines and hotels stem from these practices. I like staying at Holiday Inn Express not because the beds are supposed to be nice or because they have a great breakfast buffet but because I know that I won't be nickle and dimed there. The rate I pay includes everything that the hotel offers-breakfast, internet, gym, pool, phone, etc. Delta would do well to learn this. The more frustration people feel about using their services the less likely they are to make an impulse purchase to take a quick trip somewhere. These folks would do well to remember that it's the details that keep people coming back. Of course your room has to be clean and the flight has to arrive on time but it's the little touches that will keep customers returning. You can kill the goose trying to get the golden egg and that seems to be be what the airline and upscale travel industry don't understand.

OK...I'll be done now. Thanks for Reading.

Mission Accomplished

2009-06-08T19:52:00.003-04:00

For those who keep up with my goings-on over at facebook you've already heard the news but I thought I'd let the other three of you know what's going on and fill in some of the details. As the picture to the right shows, I managed to make it to the top of the podium again and this time it was for a big result. For the last 18 months or so I've had my training set on one goal: to win the Georgia State Time Trial Championship for the second time and the first time in a Master's class. Last year I was coming back to racing after a lengthly lay-off and while I had some good form at times, I wasn't able to hold it all the way out to the October date for the championship. When it was announced that this year's event would be in June I knew I had a good shot at doing well.

Most of my racing this year has been to hone my form and practice the pacing and the like to get ready for the full hour long effort that would be required to win. The Georgia Cup TT series events were perfect as they were all over 18 miles in length and lent themselves for building form. Since I last wrote I had two build-up events. One was an afternoon TT up in Gillsville and the other was a hill TT near Dahlonega. I took second in Gillsville after warming up too hard in the heat and then I won in Dahlonega. The only downside was that I came down with a cold a week before the big race because I overtrained heading into the Dahlonega race.

On a side note, the Dahlonega race has to be the coolest weekend I've ever done. The TT course was epic in that it was swoopy and ran through beautiful countryside. It even beat the Nationals course a few years back out on Antelope Island in Salt Lake a few years back. The circuit course and the road race were run through the Montaluce winery property (how cool is that...we raced on the Mountain of Light) with its Tuscan architecture and short steep climbs. In fact, that was feeling I had for the whole weekend: I felt like I was racing in a sort of mini-Giro d'Italia. I'll go back every year if I can.

So, back to the point. I babied my cold and medicated it into submission while I tapered into race day. We actually raced just over the South Carolina border in order to combine our event with the South Carolina TT Championship. I've raced the course once before but I had forgotten that the roads were pretty "heavy". That means they were rough and sticky in a sense. Not helping things was that it was warm and humid making the air heavy too. In my warm-up I felt good, best in over a month and I did a couple of harder intervals without much suffering.

One thing about a time trial is that it's a mental effort in some ways in as much as it's a physical effort. It takes a certain focus to tell your body to suffer just a certain amount without either letting up or pushing too hard. It's funny how the body will want to do that sometimes; just go really hard and then blow up after about five minutes. This focus is especially hard when you're physically tired or haven't had enough sleep. For me it was an issue because I never sleep really well the night before a big race. So when I got to the start line I tried to keep the butterflies down and focus on the task at hand. At the countdown came I took a big breath and shot out of the start house with a burst. After 100 meters I throttled back to catch my breath and settled into a rhythm. What bothered me at first was that I couldn't get my heart rate up over 160 which meant that my body wasn't going to put out the effort I needed. However, about a mile into the route I hit a highway overpass and that climb took me up to 172 beats per minute which is where it stayed for the next 55 minutes.

Six minutes into the ride I caught the rider who went of thirty seconds before me and I caught my 90 second man at 15 minutes. My minute man was a good rider and it took me almost to the turnaround at 29 minutes to pass him and I caught my 2 minute man almost immediately afterwards. The last rider I caught was my 2:30 man who wasn't going to let me pass without a fight. We dueled back and forth for about 4 miles and 10 minutes. I knew he couldn't keep up with me for the entire trip back as I had already put a lot of time into him just by catching him. Still, by racing me pedal stroke for pedal stroke, he kept me from letting up and forced me to stay focused on being just on my limit through what is traditionally a hard part of the race for me. When he finally blew up and dropped off I was in the last 12 km of the ride and I could smell the barn. I was ticking off 1:27 kilometers at this point and at 5 km to go I started to push myself harder. I had lost an overall podium spot in Gillsville by five seconds and I was determined that I wasn't going to lose something here by that much. At 3 km I went into VO2Max territory and started seeing dead relatives. As I crossed the line I was ready to yak and was completely spent.

Back at my warm-up tent I was sure I hadn't done well enough to win. My time was right around 58:30 and I had expected that I would need to better that by at least two minutes to win. When the results were posted I was shocked to see that not only had I won the 40-44 age group but that I beat all the 35-39 riders and took second overall in the entire Master's field with only Shawn Tyrrell beating my by a mere 12 seconds. Lucky for me he was racing in the 45-49 group which he won.

So I'm this year's state champion for Master's 35-44 which is a huge accomplishment for me. It's what I set out to do 18 months ago and while there were both setbacks and accomplishments along the way, to be here now is still settling in. As I've written before, I never saw myself as an athletic person growing up and through my young adult years. For some reason I bought into that brains vs. brawn thing. To do this is, in some ways, just as big an achievement as earning my doctorate or having a successful marriage after 15 years. It doesn't affect the rest of the world as much or as positively as the other two but it changes who I am in the way I see myself and that's important.

To wrap up I need to thank some people who helped me get here. First of all my wife has put up with a lot of travel and hotel rooms and race tents and training rides to be with me and support me in this part of the journey. She went to Yemassee with me even though she had the cold I gave her and celebrated my win with me. Second I want to thank my Security Bank teammates for encouraging me, being great examples and kicking my ass on the bike over and over so that I could get faster. Maybe now Bill will cut me a little slack. Also, DHo provided good conversation and the pain cave as I was searching to get some good early data. Finally, I want to give a shout out to all my students past and present who cheered and prayed for me throughout the parts of this journey. It was easier because of the community and I hope my victory will inspire all of them to go out and take hold of the opportunities in front of them.

Thanks for Reading. Grace and Peace!

Early May Update

2009-05-06T10:26:00.002-04:00

A short update today with more to follow. I have thoughts about good students, bad students, the Republican party and a number of other things rattling around in the ol' brain case but I'll stick to something a bit easier to digest for this post.

Cycling has been a bit up and down of late. The results from the two races I've done in the last few weeks, both time trials, have been OK and a rival or two have emerged but I'm struggling to get into some kind of training rhythm. After the end of the Chattanooga races I feel like my motivation really took a big hit. In trying to come back I think I overdid it a bit and had to back off. It's only been the last couple of days that I've felt like I've been able to get in some really strong training rides. Last Sunday I ripped off an epic ride with a full hour just short of TT pace followed by another two at solid tempo and last night I finally got to do Tuesday Night Worlds. It's amazing how much harder your teammates can push you than you can push yourself on a ride like that. While circumstances have kept me from doing the ride until now, I certainly plan to do it a lot more over the summer. I'm going to have to in order to get stronger.

The last two TT's I've done have been a part of the Georgia Cup TT series. The series has been pretty good overall with excellent courses. Some of my teammates have complained that the prizes being given out are a little cheesy (they are) but I'm really happy to have a series to race in. For a long, long time we time trialists have had to get by with short, "afterthought" events tacked onto omniums that do little to prepare us for state and regional championship events. These races have been so much better than that. My only real complaint is that since the results aren't USCF affiliated, the results don't get counted in our rankings. Still, that's a pretty minor complaint.

The cool thing is that, as is often the case in these sorts of discrete event series where folks can make a majority of the events, there is a bit of a friendly rivalry emerging between myself and two other riders, Igor Rudalev and Shawn Tyrrell. All of us are strong time trialist with Shawn coming from the triathlon community. Each event it's a competition to see whom will beat who. In the last event on a hard, rolling course in Juliette the three of us were separated by just 26 seconds after 19 miles of riding. Shawn beat me by a mere five seconds which is about a dropped chain cost me. I seem to have a bit more power at threshold so I do better on the flatter courses while Shawn, who is a good bit lighter than me, does better on the hillier ones. I'm in third place in the series due to my mechanical in the first race and it's unlikely that I'll overtake either of the other two unless they also miss a race or have a mechanical problem. Still the competition at each event is very cool, especially now that the organizer has decided to start the three of us at the end of our field so we have a better sense that we are racing each other. In Juliette I could definitely feel the mental pressure of having those guys behind me. I'm almost certain I rode faster because of it.

Thanks for reading and look for more soon.

An Update About Nothing in Particular

2009-04-21T14:24:00.003-04:00

I feel like this blog should be a Seinfield episode as it's probably about nothing.

I've shifted into a new phase of my training. More time on the TT bike now and more time doing high power intervals. This last week or so has been interesting because I've done intervals where I have been riding hard and then I would surge from that. What I'm seeing is that I can ride at a pretty high power output (something I knew) but that when I try to add much to that, it's really, really hard (something that's a bit surprising). I can ride at 300 watts for an hour or more but if I try to ride at 400 watts I can only do that for about a minute before I feel like my lungs are going to explode. This is only an increase of 33% where I feel as if my competitors can double their power output in a surge. So this is what I'm trying to train up. I need to be able to get this "surge power" up higher if I'm going to hang with the other riders in a pack when they surge (like on a power climb) or if I'm going to jump out of a pack and make a break stick. A hoped for added benefit is that it'll also raise the level of power I can put out for an hour which will be good for my time trialing.

This last couple of weeks have also been really powerful spiritually. We celebrated Passover, Easter and Orthodox Pascha all in the last two weeks and the combination just continued to build in terms of the symbolism and the joy of concluding Lent. Being able to lead the college students in our campus ministry through this as well made the time even more special. This is the one time of the year when I wish I could take a two week sabbatical from all my other responsibilities in order to focus on living a liturgical life. Of course, that would require being able to find a church that had such a liturgical life that also matched up with both my theological beliefs and, to a lesser extent, my beliefs on how the faith is to practiced. Orthodoxy and orthopraxy. I really do miss having a community of faith to worship through this time with. I love our student community but we aren't a church and we don't do worship together very often. I wish I could find a church that practiced a true orthopraxy of inclusion instead of the much more common orthodoxy of exclusion.

Anyways, we're moving to the close of the academic year. Some students are stressing, some are working and some are coming to terms with the fact that they won't fulfill their educational goals at this time. That's always an interesting process to observe; being very much the stages of grief. There is always an initial denial, followed by anger at the school and the professors and other students and just life in general. Accusations are made, fingers are pointed, things get broken and difficult words are said. This is a turbulent time where the person student swings back and forth between goals and relationships and generally creates an enormous amount of drama in the lives of the people around them. At some point there is a general sense of sorrow and withdrawal that takes place. The student is sort of seen as having given up by those around them though in reality they've finally stopped fighting the reality of their failure and they've started trying to come to terms with it. Not only do they not attend classes much but they often cut off friends, stop going to some activities and even leave school altogether. This can be a dangerous time if the student identifies too strongly with the sense of failure they feel as they can give up hope in a much broader way which isn't good. Many students will retreat to substance abuse while fewer (but not few enough) will contemplate something much more permanent. Finally, often at a time long after they've left school, the student comes to a state of acceptance where they are ready to take responsibility for what went wrong and to understand what went right. If they do this while still at the school there is sort of a peace that comes over their remaining time where they cherish their time with the friends they likely won't see again and the activities they are going to enjoy before going into a world that leaves less time for such things. In any case, it isn't until this time that a person is ready to look at doing school again. Too often, societal pressures and a relapse into a state of denial will send a student back into the academic environment before they are ready.

So that about wraps it up on my various musings and such. Maybe I'll try to write something positive about my good students in the next update.

Thanks for Reading.

Race Weekend #6-The End of the Beginning

2009-04-06T10:01:00.002-04:00

This weekend was the last race in the early season block-Chattanooga. What started in Powder Springs at the Tundra Time Trial ended with an Omnium event on both sides of the Georgia/Tennessee border.

A few thoughts on the racing. I decided to race with the Masters field to see if I was ready to do that full time and to see if I should ask to cat up. If I go by my time trial results that answer is an unqualified yes. It was my best TT to date on a power-style course and I won my classification and took second overall if you take out the Pro/1/2 field. I beat all the 3's and most of the 2's which was the best I've done all year. On the downside, I got dropped in both the crit and the road race events which means that I'm probably not quite ready to move up yet. So, I'll race the next quarter with the 4's and see if I can improve both my crit skills and my short term power in order to be able to hang with the surges. I have a ton more long term power than most of the guys I'm racing with but I don't have the same power for stuff under about 6 minutes.

For the first three months of racing I have to be pretty pleased. Five wins for five in the time trials I finished (and I'm sure I would have won the TT I flatted in), a podium in a road race and a podium in an omnium are good results. I still need a lot of improvement to get to my goal of making cat 3 but I can see winning the state TT championship from where I'm at. I still think I need to improve some things but some of that is equipment that I'll be able to invest in over the next two months and some will come with the eight weeks of training I'll get to do. My biggest concern is that some of the guys racing in the Pro/1/2 field are going to be in the 40-44 age group with me when the state TT happens and so I do have to race them and so I need to improve a bit more.

Right now I'm wiped out. I'm sore in a dozen places from this weekend's racing on top of the last three months. As physically tired as I am, I'm just as exhausted mentally. Racing takes a mental toll on you as you deal with the stress of worrying about crashing, staying in hotel rooms a lot and eating out too much. Staying home last week was a really big help and I'm looking forward to not doing a mass start race until late May. April and May is crit season down here in the south with some NRC events and a big crit series spread through the cities of Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Alabama. For me, I'll have a couple of time trials before then but they're a lot easier to deal with and the travel requirements are pretty light. If we can ever get some weather conducive to riding outside (which would not be today with our 40 mph winds), I'm really looking forward to going out and getting reacquainted with some of the local roads.

At what's just about the halfway mark of the season, I'm happy with what I've accomplished but there's still a lot more to do. Thanks for reading and I'll check back in soon.

Thoughts on Students

2009-03-25T08:57:00.003-04:00

Over the last couple of weeks I've been thinking about the students we have here at my local two-year college and some of the patterns I see. This is a difficult time of the year because there's a lot of stress due to unmet expectations. Pretty soon we'll be telling about 30% of our freshman class that they'll not be coming back due to their grades. Other students are finding out that certain attitudes and habits that once were successful are not working so well any more. The cognitive dissonance this causes can create a pretty negative vibe. I thought I might share of few of the observations I have with my readers. If you have any thoughts on these topics, I'd love to read them. Send me an email or, better yet, leave a comment for others to interact with.

Completing vs. Understanding

One of the biggest attitude differences I see is how a student approaches assigned work and what they are responsible for with respect to it. In my classes I see a large number of students who see assigned work as something that merely needs to be completed in order to earn a good grade. I see a lot of this because I do a lot of activity based learning and guided inquiry in my classes. Many of the students approach the activities I give them not as vehicles through which to learn the material but as something to complete and check off the "to-do" list. This leads them to spend as little time as possible and to do as little work as possible in order to get through the activity and then get a grade. Since these activities are the foundational tool I use to help them obtain an understanding of the physical concepts and ideas in the course, the student who takes the completion approach usually misses the learning that is supposed to take place. In a sense, they become technicians who know or complete a set of procedures in order to accomplish an end. What I want is for them to become scientists who understand the underlying principles needed to master the topic.

The reason this is an issue is that I think that many of the educational models now in practice in the secondary system allow the student to be successful even if they are only a technician. They learn that they can succeed if they complete a given task regardless of whether or not they really understand it. This certainly works well if the goal of the K-12 system is to produce either assembly line workers or technicians (which was its original intent) but it doesn't work well if they want to be successful in the university model which is focused on scholarship. When they get to us, the completion paradigm may work for a semester or two but once they get to their sophomore/junior level courses, the wheels come off the train. To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what to do about this problem when it comes to my classes. Obviously, there needs to be a lot of thought put into curriculum design so that students are forced to work towards understanding in order to complete their activities but that takes time and testing.

Responsibility

Another big issue is the idea of who is responsible for the student's success. I maintain that the university model of education holds that the student is primarily responsible for their own success with the institution and its resources being in a strong support role. This is different from the historically different K-12 system which was established specifically to take responsibility for a student's learning (thanks to Michael Drake for that insight). When a student gets here, they think that it's still my job to tell them exactly what they have to do and to hound and remind them to do it. Of course, that's not how I see it. I lay out my expectations in the syllabus and then go over that syllabus in great detail early in the class. After that, I think it's the student's job to make sure they keep things straight from there. I need to be fair but I don't need to be their mother.

Again, I see this sort of thing crop up in a hundred different places here from students not having any idea of what they need to do to graduate to not knowing deadlines to not keeping track of what assignments are due and when. Again, I think that this is rooted in the K-12 system where schools can't afford to allow high school students to make mistakes because of the duel factors that students have to take so much stuff all at the right time and the penalty to making Adequate Yearly Progress is so steep. What this leads to is a large percentage of students who are absolute aliens and strangers to the level of responsibility we expect here at the university level.

Anyways, I'd love to hear what my readers (all three of you) think.

Thanks for Reading.

Race Weekend 5-Boom Go My Legs

2009-03-22T21:03:00.002-04:00

Cycling is a sport of highs and lows; days where you are the windshield and days when you are the bug. Yesterday I was the former, today the later.

This weekend was the Union City Omnium. I think I've done some part of this omnium at least 5 times and the whole thing three times. I won my first big time trial at this race about 5 years ago and I've always used it as a gauge of my fitness. This weekend, however was one I should have quit while I was ahead.

Saturday Morning: Time Trial. No mistakes this time and no panic. I warm-up well on a cold morning with student Ray taking pictures of Jake, Todd and I as we huff and puff and turn the pedals 'round. I feel pretty good warming up with a lots of power. I go ove the course and my strategy. Long rollers on the course. Not too steep when you're riding in a group but they really get to the legs when you're going hard on your own. THe key is not to go too hard early in the climb so that you don't pop before the end. I get to the start line and Tony from ATS asks if I'm going to win today. "That's the plan, but who knows what the day holds," I respond. Today's official, Steve, welcomes me into the start tent and counts me down. I stand and sprint up to speed when he says, Go!" As I settle into my aero tuck I see my :30 man. Go get him I think. I bring myself up to full power and start the mental litany to stay focused. I'm gaining and just after the 2 mile marker I catch and pass him. I'm cruising as I hit the first big roller. "Keep it at the limit but no more," I tell myself. I can see the next two riders. They're dueling a bit unaware that I'm closing on them. On the second I close down on my minute man and catch him before the turnaround. Three hundred meters later I get my 90 second man. That's all the cat 4 riders that started in front of me. I have to bridge a gap to the cat 5's but before I do that I have to get up the traffic light hill. This hill broke me last year so I'm careful to stay within myself as I start the climb. Going over the top I'm just on my limit. I see the last cat 5 rider and set my sights on tracking him down. I do so at the bottom of the hill and blow past him on the flats. The next guy is a ways up. I hit the last climb up to the finish. It's a really long climb but there's nothing I have to do afterwards so I start on the limit and go into the red about halfway up. Two hundred meters from the finish I stand and sprint. I'm cross-eyed as I cross the line, completely spent. Ray tells me later that he got a great picture of me coming across looking like I was going to explode.

It turns out that I've won but only by seven seconds. Seven seconds over 10 miles and 22:45 in time. Less than 0.5%. The sprint might have been the difference. Overall I finish 15th and would have finished in the top third of the Pro/1/2 field. Take those guys out and I'm 6th overall. My form is coming around.

Saturday Afternoon: Criterium. The goal was to get more racing miles. The field was 50 and I know that my chance of winning a field sprint in this sized field is almost zero so I used the race to do intervals. I did my season best 5 second and 30 second average power so I can't complain. The troubling thing was that my legs were super heavy when warming up but they came around for the race.

Sunday Morning: Road Race. It was supposed to be a 45 ride through the back country west of the ATL. I've done the course and I know it's full of rollers. The race is always decided by the last climb and field sprint so my plan was to sit in until the last short power climb, try to move up and get in a good position for the sprint. On the first real climb, however, I knew that I was in trouble. I got popped off the back and had to sprint up to catch the field. I had felt really tired heading up tot he race and I knew that it was going to be a tough day for me. I hung on for 15 miles until the KOM climb and then could hold the group. My legs had popped and there was no sense in trying to make them do what they no longer could do so I sat up and rode the rest of the course tempo in order to burn calories and get some more miles in.

So, I tried to race exactly one day too many. No harm in trying but now I've got a little break until Chattanooga where I hope to pay back a couple of teammates for all the work they've done for me. After that I get a good sized break with only a couple of time trials as the heavy crit season takes over with the Twilight, Roswell and Sunny King criteriums bringing national caliber fields and a break in the racing that will allow me to train and hone my form for the state championship races in the early summer months. I'm looking forward to letting the stress of racing slide into the far background while I focus on doing solid intervals that will bring me to peak form at just the right time.

Thanks for Reading.

The Seige of Rome-Race Weekend 4

2009-03-16T11:12:00.002-04:00

And so that happened....

At the beginning of last week, the forecast was 70 and sunny. On Wednesday it was 60 and a little rainy. On Friday it was 40 and miserably wet. The Seige of Rome was EPIC, but not in a good way. Had the weather been good, the event would have been perfect but the weather was not good and so almost everything else stunk just a little bit too. Still, the Georgia Cup put on a mostly excellent event in really difficult conditions.

Here's a bit of a play-by-play.

Saturday Morning: We wake up to rain. Lot's of it. And cold. We're staying with teammate Robert who's recovering from a bad crash last week. He's slept poorly and we're trying to get him moving. He's hurting really bad but he decides to man up and try to ride anyways. The rain makes everything hard. We get to the staging area for the TT and it's really dark. I get my number and do the chip thing and set up and then realize I've left my shoes and helmet back at the hotel. A crazy trip back to get them leaves me with a 15 minute warm-up window. I just get a little hot and it's time to go. I get to the start house and the adrenaline is just wearing off. I never really get going but I'm solid. I struggle again with focus but by the end I feel pretty good. Robert gets back from his run and he's hypothermic. He can't stop shivering and there's something wrong with his right arm. We throw everything in the truck and head back to the hotel to get him in the shower. He's had a bad morning. He's slept wrong, pinched a nerve and has no strength in his right arm because of it. Once he gets warmed up we head to IHOP where we find someone who has a results sheet. I've won but with a bad time. I should have been able to do the 6.5 mile course 45 seconds faster but all that matters is that I beat the second placed guy. After a big brunch we head back to the hotel for some rest. We need it.

Saturday afternoon: A technical crit in the rain. Six turns with two narrow stretches; my favorite type of race. I love this kind of racing only slightly more than the kind of racing that involves riding your bike into a brick wall while wearing a helmet. But I've got to do it to stay in the overall so I suit up. Drew's come up for this race and he's looking for a win. Actually he looks like some sort of Terminator in cycling lycra. I'm pretty sure he's ready to crush this thing with his bare hands. Robert's out with the nerve thing. The race turns out to be a crashfest with at least four crashes in the 37 minutes of the race. One guy snaps his collarbone and his bike frame on a tree. I manage to stay out of trouble though I get gapped at one point. Drew is the awesome teammate and comes back to pull me back up to the field. I lead him out for a MAR sprint as a way of saying thanks. He finishes just off the podium for fourth and I manage a tenth place finish. He promises to "be back".

Sunday morning: More rain but warmer. 52 mile road race with a BIG climb that will decide things. Robert's back for an attempt and so is Drew. I'm hoping to hang on to the front group on the climb and see what I've got after that. It almost all comes apart when my rear tube explodes 5 miles into the race. Robert gives me his rear wheel and Drew pulls me back into the group. My race would be finished if not for my teammates. On the climb I can't quite hold the front group and they're gone down the descent before I can catch them. I decide to ride hard anyway to try and pay Drew and Robert back for their sacrifices. Drew's with the front group so I think we've still got a chance for a decent finish. I end up hooking up with a couple of other guys and we start time trialing as a way of catching any stragglers. A mile from the climb we're only a minute behind the lead group. It's sort of stunning to think we pulled back a much larger group. I ride my own pace up the climb on the second time up and end up tenth overall two places behind Drew.

Overall: With the win in the TT and the two tenth place finishes I managed to place third in the overall which is my best stage race placing since Union City last year. What's shocking is that I did it in an Omnium where the crit usually kills me because I don't win any points usually in that event. It's a good result for early in the season.

The Bottom Line: Two things can be taken from this weekend. One is that my form is better than it was at this time last year. The other, and much more important one, is that I have awesome teammates. Without Robert and Drew there is no chance I would have achieved this placing so the Truth this week is that the achievement is a team one, not an individual one. The result belongs as much to those guys as it does to me. Drew even managed to place fourth in the overall. I think if he had come up for the TT he would have been third and I would have finished fourth.

Next week is Union City and an appointment with the TT course that nearly killed me last year. I'm hoping to crush the thing this year with a powerful ride. After that, I'll see about working for my team to get them a podium.

Thanks for Reading.

Race Weekend 3-The Truth

2009-03-09T08:28:00.003-04:00

Another weekend, another race. The theme for this weekend's festivities could be called, "The Long Haul."

Saturday's time trial was up in northwest Georgia in a small town called Adairsville. Like last week, the course was really, really great. Straight out and back with some false flats and a single small hill. It was supposed to be sunny, but it seems that we can't have a TT in this state without some form of precipitation and so it started drizzling just as I got on my trainer to begin my warm-up. It was cool and damp but that usually means that we don't overheat or dehydrate and that leads to faster times. I love time trialing. I've said it before but it bears repeating. You go as hard as you can sustain and you don't have to worry about other riders and what they can or can't do. There's no real tactics and there are no teammates. The race tells you the unvarnished truth about your fitness at whatever length and time the course is. It is the Truth. No blocking, no drafting, no marking, no soft pedaling down hills or chatting in the group. There's just the purity of power and speed. The Truth.

After last week I was determined to finish the race. I felt like I could have won last week with my fitness and I wanted to prove it this week. I had some trouble focusing during warm-ups but when I got to the start house I was ready. The start was a slight uphill which made things interesting. I could see both my :30 and 1:00 men as I went off. I was the first 40-49 year old man to go so I was racing a bunch of guys younger than me. It didn't matter. I caught about ten guys on the way out on the course. I didn't always feel like i was on the rivet but I did feel fast, especially after I got over the little hill near the beginning of the course. On the way back I crossed the gap between the 30-39 guys (yes, I caught the entire 30-39 field) and started picking off the women and juniors. On the return I was flying. I felt really strong and for the first time had the "coiled spring" feeling I get when I'm in the right position to produce maximum power.

In the end I ended up winning my field by over a minute and placing fourth overall to the three pro/1/2 riders. I was three seconds out of third overall and 50 seconds out of second. The winner crushed my by two minutes showing me that I have a lot of room for improvement if I want to win the gold at the state championships. Still, I feel like I'm ahead of where I wanted to be fitness-wise. I was hoping to average 24-25 mph on these longer early season courses and I did 26.5 which is a 56:09 40 K pace. That's over 2 minutes better than the last time I did the course the state championship will be held on. I have some work to do but I like where I'm at.

Sunday's race was in Albany in the southwestern part of the state which meant a lot of driving (with a wedding in the middle). I had agreed to race in a category I don't normally race in so that the team could have several riders together in the field so I lined up with the cat 4/5 under 35 riders. The feel was smallish with only 25-30 guys lining up and I felt like we might just avoid some of the silliness that this field is known for: lots of squirrelly riders and lots of dumb decisions that lead to more crashes than are necessary. For the first 20 miles, that was true. One of my teammates, Drew, got into an early break and so Trey and I marked all the moves to pull the break back and they stayed out for a long time. We never blocked and we never impeded other rider's attempts to bring the break back but we would sit on wheels and not take pulls. The interesting thing is that the break stayed out there and wasn't brought back until Drew popped on the KOM climb and came back to the field. Once that happened, Trey and I went to the front to bring the break back and we had them within three miles.

After that I tried a couple of attacks to try and get away but no one was biting and I got brought back before anything could get going. At that point the AVX team with one of the good sprinters in the field got to the front and set up across the road and blocked. There is nothing more frustrating that this kind of negative racing. It's legal but it's just really poor sportsmanship. "Boo!" on the AVX team, you guys should race better; race like men. Put a guy or two on the front and set up a train to protect your sprinter. That's how you race with class. Jump on breaks and pull them back and keep your guy fresh and out of the wind.

What was worse was once the riding got negative, guys started jockeying for position if a gap opened up (which it did because the team couldn't block well or because guys started jumping the centerline). This led to a bit of pushing and shoving which was completely uncalled for and I wish the official had either seen it or been more proactive in DQing riders when he did. After a particularly bad bit where I literally got shoved into another rider by a guy who wanted my spot I slid to the back to stay out of trouble and upright. I sprinted in but stayed away from the worst offenders to finish near the end of the pack.

My power numbers were good and I'm showing more improvement in m short-term power numbers which is encouraging. I won't be racing in that field again for the rest of the season so hopefully, I won't encounter that again. What I'm looking at doing is racing Masters 40+ in that series and cat 4 in the Georgia Cup until I can upgrade where I'll race Masters full time. I feel that's a much safer course of action. Next week is Rome and the really, really big climb.

Thanks for reading.

Race Weekend 2

2009-03-03T13:28:00.002-05:00

Another weekend, another race. Actually two, which was supposed to be three. But more on that later.

Saturday, Race #1: Georgia Cup TT Series #1-Gillsville. Woke up this morning in the pouring rain. Sounds like song lyric. It's going to be a wet day. Not a little bit wet like last week but really wet. I get to the school parking lot that's the staging site. Getting set up to warm up is a pain; everything's harder when it's raining. My wife's back at the hotel dry and warm and still asleep. I envy her. I start the warm up. Not as good as last week at Tundra. I don't know if it's physical or mental but it's definitely not a "no chain" day. But it's a more structured warm-up. No decisions about wheels today. I get to the start house. The take off is downhill. I love those. The countdown starts and I'm off. My legs feel strong but they're also my limiter. They hurt before my breathing gets ragged. Still, in several sections I feel like I'm crushing the pedals. The wind is pushing the bike all over the road and the water makes the wide, sweeping curves treacherous. The bike feels loose somehow but I power on. I feel fast. I catch my 30 second man. Then my 2 minute man. And then I hear and feel a little pop as I go past the eight mile marker and I pray that it was just a small rock getting shot out from under my front wheel. Thirty seconds later it becomes clear that it wasn't. I have a flat and my race is over. I cruise into the turn around just as the wheel goes completely flat. I talk to the marshal there for a about 90 seconds before I think to ask her the time. 21:30...If I subtract off the time lost as I slowed down and the time chatting with her I've done 9 miles in about 20 minutes. That's twenty seven miles per hour. Did I really ride that fast? I don't know for sure but I was flying. But the result is the same...DNF. That's bike racing. When I get back to the hotel, the tubular peels right off the wheel. The glue has failed. Maybe the flat was a blessing in disguise. I would have hated pulling a Beloki on a slick, sweeping downhill curve at 30 mph.

Race #2: TopView Cycling Classic-Dacula Road Race. The rain has stopped but the conditions are questionable. The field is small but I've got a teammate. Robert is lining up with me and we're talking strategy. We decide to make it hard. Attack from the gun. I go first. The field shuts me down after half a mile. Robert attacks at the catch. Perfect. They don't react right away. He stays out for about three miles before they finally pull him back. It doesn't look like anyone's interested in getting into a break or letting one go. We'll see how people are feeling on the two hills in the seven mile circuit. We'll climb them five times. The hills hurt and I'm not sure I'll make the whole race but I hang on. By lap three we've shed half the field and I think I'll be ok if I ride around on the back but I don't want to leave it to the sprint if I can get away somewhere. On lap four I put in as brutal an attack as I can on a long 2% uphill. At first I think I've got something but a big Iron Data rider who remembers us from last year decides he can't give me any rope and he shuts the whole thing down. Now it's survival. I don't know if I can hold on if there's a big attack up one of the climbs but I'm going to try. Who knows what will happen in a sprint finish. I nearly die trying to hang on up the hills on lap four. The attack has torched my legs and I can barely stay with the group. I duck in behind everyone and try to conserve my strength as we ride around the last lap of the circuit. I get gapped on the last climb but the group marks each other and I claw my way back. There's nine of us left for the sprint. Maybe I can finally pull off a top five. I mark the field and don't go to the front too soon. Robert puts in a big attack at about 1 K Cancellera style. It doesn't stick but the strong riders forget about me and I drift to the left hand side of the road where the lane will open up the last 200 meters and I'll get an unobstructed run to the finish. As the lane opens up I go hard. I keep expecting someone to come around me from behind but it's just the two guys I'm even with. They're stronger than me but I might get third. Just then I see Robert surging on the far right. He and I bike throw at the finish for third place. It has to be the slowest sprint in Georgia bike race history for the two best time trialists in the race to be doing a bike throw for third. I think he's won. He thinks I have. The results show that I beat him by 0.003 seconds for third place. Less that the width of a tire. Crazy. I still think he beat me...I'll buy him a beer after Lent.

Sunday, Race #3: TopView Cycling Classic-Winder Road Race. It's Sunday and it's wet again. But the weather looks like it might clear for a couple of hours around race time so I pack the car and we go. There's a threat of snow and there's lots of wind. Not much fun but the team's paid my entry fee and I need to represent. Still, I'm praying that the promoter cancels. As we get close, the sky opens up. It pours. Torrents of rain driven by wind gusts that rattle the car. Oh man, I think. This is going to be bad. I keep telling myself that if I race I'll be the team "flahute" and I'll have a story to tell for the ages. I'm not very convincing. I get to the start and there aren't many cars. The pro/1/2 race is going on though the start/finish and I feel really sorry for those guys. They look completely miserable. As I walk up to the registration tent it starts to sleet and I hear the official tell the promoter that this is the last lap. The rest of the racing is canceled and I'm off the hook. I breathe a huge sigh of relief. I would have raced I tell myself but I'm really glad I don't have to put that to the test.

So all-in-all it was a good weekend with good sensations and good results. But for a flat tire I would have been 3-for-3 on podiums this year. Next weekend is Adairsville and Albany. One end of the state to the other for another time trial and road race. Wish me luck.

Thanks for Reading.

Tundra Race Report

2009-02-16T12:49:00.000-05:00

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 .

February Update

2009-02-02T09:03:00.002-05:00

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.

New Year's Resolutions

2009-01-01T19:18:00.002-05:00

I'm in the middle of break right now (though that's coming to a rapid close). It's been a pretty good break with a really nice visit with my family in Salt Lake. My Dad has pretty much eliminated almost all forms of entertainment outside of his room since my mom died so we found that we had a lot of time to fill which was a really good thing. Besides the time at the gym I managed to get a lot of reading done. It seems that much of this break's material is related to the crop we know as corn but should be called "maize". So far I've "digested" both "An Omnivore's Dilemma" and "1491". The first talks about the different ways in which food makes it to our tables and has really made me reconsider what and how I eat (more about that later). The second is a discussion of the indigenous populations of the America prior to Columbus' arrival in 1492; how they got here, what their cultures and populations where like and why those cultures and societies declined and/or disappeared. Of course, any discussion of Native American culture will be centered around the role of agriculture and the predominant place maize occupied in most (but not all ) of those cultures. Both books are really full of great information and I recommend them to anyone. The other long book I'll try to finish before school starts is "Guns, Germs and Steel" which, as I understand it, discusses the role agriculture plays in the rise and dominance of societies.

The other thing I've been doing is evaluating the last year and thinking ahead and I've come up with a few resolutions for next year. Here's are some of them; in no particular order:

I resolve to lose 11 kilos (25 pounds) by April 1 (hopefully I won't look like a fool on that date). I'm sure my teammates will be excited to hear that I'd like to look somewhat less expansive. The big goal is to burn 1200 more Calories a day than I take in on average so that I lose about 1 kilo a week. This is predicated on a basal metabolic rate of 2000 Calories/day. My hope is to ride or exercise so that I burn at least 1200 Calories each day allowing me to eat a meaningful amount of food.

I resolve to modify the food I buy and eat. I would like to work towards having 30% of our food being organic. Additionally, I want to have most of that food be whole foods (rather than processed from whole foods). An additional goal is to shorten the distance from which the food comes and to reduce the food's carbon footprint. With this in mind, I also resolve to plan, plant, grow and harvest my own garden. A lot of this comes from reading the two books and thinking about where my food comes from. What I read about meat wasn't totally unexpected but to read it in its totality leads me to want to buy meat that is not raised as part of the "feedlot" culture but is raised in a way that allows the animal to be what God made it to be. I know it sounds corny but the hidden costs of eating meat from the other system is a lot higher than I'm willing to pay. Both books gave me some really interesting ideas about what to plant and how as well as how to more quickly enrich the soil without resorting to unnatural means. I have some experience with enriching the soil using compost so I won't be in totally uncharted waters. I'd like to include the GCF community in this as a lot of the food that gets grown will go into feeding them at our Tuesday night Bible study next year.

I resolve to simplify my life in terms of possessions and commitments. Like a lot of people I have too much stuff. I have more books than I'll ever loan out or read again, I have too many clothes that I never read and I have too many gadgets that I don't use or that are redundant. It's time to get these things out of my house and free up that space for something else. As many will tell you, our house is cluttered and hard to keep tidy and it has a lot to do with having more things than we need. The same sometimes goes for my time. The big thing is that I waste too much time on things that won't last; things like TV and internet (and where am I writing this???). So, I'd like to reduce the time I spend doing these things and free up that time for more reading, spiritual contemplation/prayer and personal interaction with real people. Over the next couple of weeks I'll be endeavoring to clean up a lot of things to make space for a life that is both richer and simpler.

I resolve to finish my classes. One of the things that really bugs me is that I have a bunch of great classes that are almost done. Each of these classes is just a thing or a few things away from being really tight, integrated courses. Because I haven't finished and polished them I spend too much time not focused on my students. So I'm resolving that this year I'll finish everything I've started before adding more innovation. They may mean scrapping things that aren't working and polishing things that are but I need to get my labs well edited, my activities smartly focused and my lectures integrated to support the rest of what I'm doing. The time for this will come from turning down some of the things the school asks me to do and really putting a focus on excellence.

Most of all, I resolve to live each day intentionally. I will choose each thing that I do with a purpose in mind, not just as a placeholder or as a fallback. I hope that my wife,my friends, my coach and my students will kindly and gently hold me to these resolutions.

Thanks for Reading.

The Shepherd

2008-11-27T20:40:00.000-05:00

My final post in this series will be to look at God and how He relates to our sin through the metaphor of "wanderlust" and Shepherd. In this metaphor there is ample Scriptural evidence that portrays God as a Shepherd that tends to, protects and even rescues members of His flock. The most common examples of these ideas are "I, Myself, will send a shepherd" passage in Ezekiel 34, Jesus' parable of the lost sheep and Jesus looking at the crowd in Mark 6 and seeing them as sheep with out a shepherd and, finally, the "I am the Good Shepherd" identification Jesus makes in John 10.

In this metaphor the sense of what sin is seems to be more implied than stated and I see it a a sort of desire to go off and blaze our own trial without the protection or provision of God. It is the impulse to rely on our own skills, gifts and wisdom in order to "do our own thing". In perhaps Jesus' best known teaching on this, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the son, who represents us, disowns his father and treats him as if he is dead with nothing left to offer the son. The son takes his inheritance and leaves the protection of the father's lands. He seems to be afflicted with a sort of, as I put it in the opening to this post, wanderlust.

In the same way, I think our sin nature, or nature to follow our own will, drives us away from what God offers in terms of guidance and protection. The Father offers some pretty clear instruction as to pathways that lead to danger and peril for us and still we choose to follow them. It's like we're hiking along and we see a little used trail that leads down into a dangerous box canyon or something. We know that the area is prone to flooding, that the trail might be unstable, that it might lead us down with little chance to climb back out of the canyon but we are still drawn to it. Our curiosity and sense of invulnerability tell us that nothing bad will happen to us even though we see the bleached and dry bones of others who have gone before us.

In this metaphor, God is the Shepherd that can lead us out of the canyon. He will establish a place for us to be safe and guard it with His life in order to keep out the Predator who stalks around it like a wolf or a "roaring lion seeking whom he may devour." In the Ezekiel passage, He is the Shepherd who provides for His sheep when the strong and unjust seek to steal, take and hoard. Branching this out into David's great psalm, He sees that we will want not but will have ample pasture and clean water in order to rest and to be restored.

In seeing sin this way, we can understand that not every tuft of good looking grass is what it seems, especially when it's pretty close to the edge of the path or pasture. Just as importantly, seeing God as a Shepherd changes how we respond to His voice when we have wandered far from the "sheep fold" and have become separated from the herd. If we see Him only as Judge then all we see is judgment and our tendency is to run. But if we understand that He has come to rescue us from the perils we have gotten ourselves into, we will run to the sound of His voice. When we see others as fellow sheep and we understand how sin has drawn them away we are less likely to judge and more likely to understand and help the person hear the voice of the Shepherd. We will realize as a fellow sheep or another Prodigal that we have little ability to lead a person back to the fold. Instead we will understand that by listening for God's voice and recognizing and responding to it positively, others will be drawn to listen for it as well. In this way, we follow St. Seraphim of Sarov's advice when he said, "Save yourself and thousands around you will be saved."

The Physician

2008-10-22T14:00:00.000-04:00

If we acknowledge that the metaphor of sin as rebellion and God as "Just Judge" is limited and of use in describing both sin and God's way of dealing with it in limited circumstances then we must wonder what other metaphors may be used to describe these things. In Eastern Christianity a very common set of metaphors is to describe sin as a disease which infects the human condition and to think of God in all of the persons as The Great Physician who heals the afflicted and brings wellness and wholeness to those who are sick. This picture of sin and God is derived mainly from Matthew 12:9-13 and offers a compelling metaphor as it comes from the mouth of Jesus itself.

When developed theologically, sin becomes an affliction or disease that affects all of humankind. In the West, it is the sin itself that infects us all while in the East it is the heightened desire to sin the we contract from Adam and Eve and their choices in the Garden. In either case, God is seen as the Physician who comes in to heal all those who seek his aid. As with all untreated disease, the end product of sin is death. God comes to restore wholeness to all who desire it. The passage in John 5 that relates the story of Jesus healing the lame man at the Pool of Bethesda is an example of this. When Jesus asks the man a question, He asks him, "Do you want to be whole?" (Contrary to most translations which translate the passage as "Do you want to be well?" or "Do you want to walk again?") When the man is made well but then denies any responsibility for being healed of his lameness on the Sabbath, Jesus finds him and tells him to stop sinning or worse things will happen than being lame. In this we see that Jesus seeks to do more than just help the guy walk; He wants to make him whole again.

As another example, when Jesus describes the person of the Holy Spirit as streams of living water, He calls forth the life-giving, healing and cleaning properties of running water as a curative to the thirst that keeps one from eternal life. A Jewish reader of this passage would have clearly seen the symbolism of running water as a source of cleanliness and healing. Several passages in the prophetic writings of the Old Testament say that God withholds water due to the sinfulness of the nation of Israel and that He uses water to both save the people and heal the land.

What is interesting is the sense I have that over the last twenty of thirty years, this metaphor, once in more common usage in the mainstream, more liturgical churches in America (as evidenced in songbooks, calls to worship and scholarly commentaries), has slowly fallen out of favor for the more juridical model discussed previously. I think that this is really unfortunate. John Burke is his book, No Prefect People Allowed, suggests that the two issues facing emerging, postmodern generations are addiction and sexual brokenness. Addiction in our culture is usually described as a disease which allows for the use of a "God as Great Physician" model in a very natural way. In addition, such a metaphor leads to the drawing in of and opening up to God to deal with sin rather than Him being separate, distant and judgmental. For this reason, I think it may be time for the North American Church to re-examine and re-energize this particular metaphor. Healing and wholeness are both processes rather than events and thus the metaphor also works well with a model of spiritual formation that focuses on deification or growing closer to God through a lifelong practice of spiritual disciplines. They work well with the idea that our growing more like God does not rely on a single event (justification) but that sin is dealt with through time as a process (sanctification).

For those reading this, I would ask you to consider what it might mean to view others as struggling with a disease rather than looking at them as rebels or criminals. The "Just Judge" model leads one to think of others not as fellow travelers on the journey of faith but as transgressors against it or highway robbers along the trail. Shifting the ground by shifting the metaphor leads to seeing others as battling a hideous sort of cancer that only the best Doctor can treat. The idea then becomes one of helping someone "get an appointment" and supporting them as they try to get better. As a culture we're very good at this sort of relational approach to dealing with real disease (though we still struggle with applying this to addiction) and I think it would help the Church to reach out so much more effectively.

Thanks for Reading. More to Come on this topic.

The Judge

2008-10-19T21:28:00.004-04:00

As promised, this is a follow-up to my previous post on the metaphors for sin and God found in Scripture that we commonly use to help us understand how to view both. As I mentioned in that entry, I feel that there are at least four commonly used metaphors in Christian literature but the conversation in evangelical Christianity here in North America tends to be dominated by one of those metaphors; that of sin as either rebellion or crime against the kingdom of God and God as the "Just Judge" who passes sentence on those who are sinners.

The Scriptural support for this view is found in several places in the Bible, most prominently in the Psalms in the Hebrew Testament and in Romans, and to a lesser degree in Hebrews and Galatians, in the New Testament. In my discussion here I'd like to focus on the metaphor as expressed by the apostle Paul to the church in Rome. Many commentators have noted that the language Paul uses in discussing sin and the process God has in dealing with it is very technical. It is loaded with specifically judicial words from Greek that any citizen of the city of Rome, the seat of the greatest empire of the time, would have been familiar. Much like Washington, D.C. now, Rome was filled with law and policy makers from all over the Empire. While the Romans weren't always known as the most artistically creative people ever, they are notable for their abilities to administrate, legislate and engineer. This led to a society that placed a lot of emphasis in good law making and good law enforcement which led to a very strong judicial system. So, when Paul writes to the church in Rome he chooses to use a metaphor with which they will be familiar to describe how God deals with sin. In this metaphor, he describes sin as an infraction against the kingdom of God (either as a crime or, more seriously, a rebellion). He explains very clearly that the sentence for this infraction is death (which was always the Roman penalty for rebellion). In the dealing with this sin, God is described as the adjucant or judge; the One who will decide whether rebellion has taken place and what the sentence will be by an examination of the evidence. If the rebel is found to be innocent, not only is a verdict of innocent registered but the very accusation that a crime has ever occurred is removed from the defendant's "record". The way in an innocent verdict is arrived at is through the intervention on behalf of the rebel by the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who vouches that He knows the defendant that that the accused is "with Him", as it were.

This is expanded upon by the church in the West through the inclusion of other Scriptures to produce a fully judicial model wherein the defendant (you and me) will stand before the Judge on the "last days". At the prosecutor's table will be the Accuser or Adversary whom we usually refer to as Satan. As our side will be the Paraclete, which is the name given to the Holy Spirit by Christ at the Last Supper as recorded by the apostle John. In the Roman legal system the defendant had to conduct their own defense but could have someone to stand beside them to offer counsel, advice, support and comfort. In this court the Accuser will offer up to the Judge all of the ways in which the defendant has committed crimes against the realm. He will exhort the defendant to admit to the guilt of his or her actions and to accept the punishment of death for the rebellion they have lived out. The Advocate will stand beside the accused and counsel them to confess their rebellion and beg for the court's mercy, unwarranted though it may be. The Judge will then call but one Witness, the Lamb, to speak. The One will speak and either say that He knows the defendant and that He has taken upon HImself all of the guilt for their crimes or He will say that He knew them not. On the basis of this testimony the Judge will render His verdict.

I think Paul uses this metaphor not only because the church in Rome and it's descendants will understand it in the context of those things that were important in their culture but because it offered great hope. The time at which Paul wrote was a time of great political and judicial instability. For those who still followed the old Romans gods, they had to admit that Jupiter and the gang were a pretty capricious bunch. As one writer said, the gods were more like superpowered humans than some sort of moral force upon which to found an ethical system. They lied, cheated, had sex, fought wars and much, much more for reasons that had more to do with their own egos than any higher purpose. In his metaphor, Paul was offering a God that ruled according to just principles and the higher ethic of love. In addition, the Roman judicial system was often compromised by corruption and the machinations of the three immoral and increasingly erratic emperors; Caligula, Claudius and Nero. In describing God as a Just Judge, Paul was, in essence, telling the people of Rome that while true justice might not be attainable in this world, the One, True God would see that justice was done in the hereafter.

This is a powerful metaphor for an oppressed, minority church struggling to survive persecution and terror brought about by a system hostile to its existence. I believe that this metaphor still has a great deal of resonance in America in reaching out to the disadvantaged or to those who are locked out from social or economic justice. Many African-American spirituals sing of a God who is just and good and who will judge fairly. In addition, in third world countries where justice can be bought and sold and where right is determined by the people who have accumulated the most power, a metaphor of God who is above such manipulation is one of astounding hope.

The difficulty with the metaphor, especially when it is the only one offered, is that it can present a significantly distorted picture of God. In this picture, God sits far away from creation and humanity on some great and royal throne. His purpose becomes only that of pronouncing judgment while the other aspects of the Christian message are placed on the persons of either the Son or the Spirit. With that assignment, Christianity can become a faith of judgment rather than love and of division and separation instead of inclusion and unification. For those who have not suffered oppression from any place but a church that struggles with judgment this is a very difficult picture to accept. There is a real contradiction between the messages of "God so loved the world that He sent His Son to save and redeem it" and "God is a righteous judge that will send you to eternal damnation if you don't have the right relationship with Him." In a postmodern society which questions whether anyone, including God, has the authority to pronounce such judgment it is clear that a different metaphor is needed in order to reach out to those seeking to escape the emptiness of a culture that sets each person up as their own authority with no accountability to anyone or anything and that offers nothing beyond the titillations of the here and now. What is also clear is that this metaphor must offer things which the "Just Judge" metaphor does not; things such as unification, wholeness and rescue. In my next post I'll begin to speak to just such metaphors.

Thanks for Reading.

Metaphors for Sin and God

2008-10-18T10:53:00.005-04:00

In the Christian group for which I am the faculty sponsor there is a discussion that seems to arise every year regarding God and how He deals with sin. The specifics of this conversation change from year to year but one of the things that these students seem to want to do is to understand the theology of redemption beyond a mere "Jesus died for my sins" level. While such an understand is correct insofar as it goes, it doesn't offer much in the way of dealing with the often complex issues and situations that college students encounter.

This year, the conversation began in a conversation about whether we should remember our sins or not. My colleague in leading these studies, Gary, is Orthodox and much of the writing of the early church fathers on this topic indicates that perhaps it is better that we remember our sins as a way of reinforcing our humility before a holy God. Some of the students who came from an evangelical mindset found this particularly challenging as they've always been taught that since God has forgiven their sins and remembers them no more then they should endeavor to do the same. The great thing that happened is that we managed to avoid the occasional east/west impasse that develops in the conversation. I was able to do this by understanding that while east and west often times use the same words, they can have different meanings or implications. In this case, Gary meant that we should remember that we are prone to sin and use as evidence of that fact our past actions and present tendencies. What a couple of the students heard was that we should remember our guilt associated with that sin due to the Western emphasis of the association of guilt with sin. What ensued was a great discussion of how we can remember our sin even as we acknowledge that God has dealt with and removed the guilt. I think it was a real eye-opening insight for the students and for us as leaders to understand that while the traditions of the East and West often use the same language, we sometimes have very different understands of the words. This is especially true once you move to North American evangelical Christianity with it's roots coming out of so many different theological traditions.

The more interesting thing that this led to for me was a discussion Gary and I had about the metaphors we use as a faith to describe how sin gets described and how God deals with it. As an aside, I have to say that Gary and I end up having one or two of these sorts of extended dialogues a semester regarding Christianity and I have found it to be one of the most rewarding conversations I've ever had. What emerged in my mind from this specific part of the conversation is that Scripture holds within it several metaphors to describe both sin and how God deals with it. In the West, especially in the tradition of Protestantism, we have focused on one of these metaphors (almost exclusively within some faith traditions) while neglecting the others. There are good reasons for this but as Gary and I considered and compared views from the East the West it got me to thinking very deeply about how such metaphors inform not only how we deal with our own sin and it's affect on our relationship with God but also how we deal with and treat others who are struggling with these things.

The specific metaphors for sin that I've found to date are sin as rebellion, sin as illness, sin as a wandering away from God and sin as brokenness. Another metaphor that I've used is that of poison but I'm not sure I've found much Scriptural support for that metaphor beyond a few references to snakes. The corresponding metaphors for how God deals with sin are God as "Just Judge", God as "The Great Physician", God as "The Good Shepherd" and God as the repairer of the divisions. I'm sure that there are more metaphors than just these, I just haven't found them as of yet. The unfortunate thing I think is that here in North America there's a really strong tendency to focus on just one of these and then claim that anyone who doesn't see it the same way is somehow changing the meaning of Scripture or teaching untruths.

A better way to look at this, I think, is that each of these pictures are metaphors for God stated in terms that humans can understand. Each of them is true as far as the metaphor goes but they aren't exclusive to the other metaphors. In some ways the rebellion/Just Judge metaphor is true and in other ways the illness/Great Physician one is. Neither of them completely describes or explains God because no description, metaphorical or otherwise, in finite human language can describe an infinite God or our relationship with Him. What's important to understand is that whatever metaphor we use, it affects how we look at and treat others. Thus it's important for us to understand this topic through as many metaphors as we can.

I'll discuss each other metaphors as I see them in later blogs but this is a good start.

Thanks for reading and Grace and Peace to you.

Wagging the Dog

2008-10-17T10:36:00.002-04:00

I may have written this before but at the risk of repeating myself I have to talk about assessment for just a minute. One of the things that I've realized in my long years as a college professor is that while educators may say that assessment comes in basically two forms, summative and formative; there is really a third type of assessment: behavioral. The main reason I give roughly weekly quizzes in my classes is not because I want to assess what they know at a point in time or because I want the quiz to help them learn a new skill or piece of knowledge but rather because I want to them to keep up in the class. The assumption is that if I give quizzes every week, the students, not wanting to do poorly on them, will keep up with the work and studying in the class.

What this means is that I'm using a relatively minor assessment to drive the big thing I want to change, namely the students' behavior. The quizzes become the tail that wags the dog of behavior (using a metaphor often used to describe the escalation of response to Serbian nationalist killing the Archduke of Austria in 1914). A colleague of mine and I often refer to giving a quiz as "Wagging the Dog". Usually this is a pretty effective technique for modifying the typical student behavior of waiting until the last minute to study for the bigger exams in the class.

Not so much in one of my physics classes this semester. I gave a quiz today and the number of answers that showed that almost no preparation had been done was pretty high for a sophomore level course full of students who have said that they'd like to enter professional careers somewhere down the line. Most of those students who did poorly have also managed to miss at least one class period a week for each of the last three weeks which certainly is a contributing factor to their cluelessness. Again, usually the fear of doing poorly on the weekly quiz over the previous week's material at least motivates them to come to class but not some of this group.

Not to be a curmudgeon or a cynic (or that old guy that says everything's going to hell in a handbasket) but it really seems that there's this increasingly pervasive attitude among many students that a college education is an entitlement. Usually students who have this ailment of thought don't make it to my class as they are washed out in their earlier coursework. However, this semester I seem to have gotten a group of students whose really strong natural talent has allowed them to get through much of their first year coursework with sufficient grades to allow them to make it into my course. Unfortunately, most of these students have ignored the lower than hoped for grades in the two courses that are the best predictors of success in my class, Precalculus and Chemistry II, and so have not learned the lessons necessary to be successful here.

Unfortunately, the last day to withdraw from the class without penalty has come and gone.

The End of (Cycling) Days

2008-10-04T20:31:00.003-04:00

Well, in spite of my best intentions, the cycling season has come to an end. Unfortunately, that means I won't be racing the state TT championship. Before anyone gets too concerned, I haven't gotten injured or anything but I can tell that if I continue to try and push to extend the season I will endanger next season pretty seriously. I tried to stave off this occurrence by taking a week off a couple of weeks ago but when I came back it was pretty clear that my body wasn't having any of it. As I tried to ride with effort during the week I could get my heart rate to a good place but I was worn out after 45 minutes and I was suffering from a lot of post ride muscle pain. Add to that the fact that I can't seem to get enough sleep and I've had a couple of episodes of slight vertigo I see all the signs of overtraining. If I try to push for another two weeks I can see that I might push my body way over the edge or make a big training mistake and injury myself. So, it's three weeks off the bike and into some low intensity, low impact stuff. It's also time to go on a diet to make sure I don't put on a bunch of weight and maybe I can lose some without having to worry about negatively affecting my training.

I have a good plan for the time off. I'll do yoga/Pilates work three days a week to develop core strength and flexibility and on three days I'll do some light weightlifting to prep by joints for some heavier work in late October. I'll probably add some swimming to the mix to keep the aerobic systems active and to help rebalance by nervous system from mostly lower body to a full body state. I'm hoping that the pool work will also help me to work on breathing in rhythm for time trialing next year. It's weird how everything is planned in my mind for the three week "off season" to make for a better next season. I really want to take a biger step up next year. I'm tried of being a great time trialist and then not seeing anything for it in many of the stage races. I think that with some coaching I can develop enough of a burst that I can be threat to win road races that have any sort of selective section. It's all going to be in the training I do from January through March that's at or above my Lactate Threshold that develops my VO2Max system more fully.

I'm amazed at how much I've learned about racing and training this year. The high point of the season has to be the Tour of Atlanta and my second place finish in my first race for the Security Bank team. That's the other really great aspect of the season. For the first time I'm riding for a team that actually rides as a team. To work with Robert, Ron, Bill and Doug to get an excellent set of results has been fantastic. I really believe we've been the best team in 4/5 in the state. We've managed to start changing the culture of negative racing in the cat 4 group thats plagued racing in Georgia for a long time. That's a hugely positive development and I think next year will be a much more wide open season because of it. Add to that the fact that we've moved Doug and Jake into higher categories and have something that's looking like a good small Cat 3 team and I think we have a lot to be proud of. We won every team time trial in our division including the state championship and took a first and second in the ToA.

Looking forward to next year I'm not sure if we'll all try to race Masters class (and get our butts kicked around for a while) or if we'll try to move more guys up but I'm game for whatever it is. For me, I'll do a better job of managing my season so that I don't end up digging myself a hole in late May and early June and then spend the rest of the year fighting to stay out of it. I think the new Georgia Cup schedule with a big break in the summer will really allow me to work hard in the spring, take the good break and rest in the summer and then finish a lot stronger in the fall. I'll definitely restructure my training and see if I can breakthrough in '09.

As I write this I'm witnessing some thing I never thought I'd see. By beating Auburn, Vanderbilt is in first place in the SEC East division ahead of Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. I remember the days when Vandy was the doormat of the SEC East and now they're leading it. They still have to play Florida and Georgia but 5-0 is an amazing thing. Nice to see the geeks doing well.

Thanks for reading and I'll update a little later in the week.

The Gospel According to U2

2008-09-25T22:17:00.000-04:00

I have been digging on the music of U2 over the last couple of weeks. It all started, at least in it's most recent manifestation, with hearing about a Bible study someone did using the music of the Dublin band as the lead in to talking about faith in a post-modern era. I thought, "What a cool topic," so I broke out some of my old albums and got some books on the topic from Amazon. As one thing led to another I've gotten more and more into both the music and the message.

As a guy in his early 40's I got into the band about the same time everyone else my age did in the early 80's after hearing Sunday Bloody Sunday and seeing the Live at Red Rocks video of the song on MTV (back when MTV was worth a damn and actually changed the world). Al the geezers who read this will know what I'm talking about. Like a lot of teenagers, I was really only interested in what got airplay and so I didn't listen to much of Unforgettable Fire outside of Pride (In the Name of Love). It was my first exposure to Martin Luther King Jr. because out in rural Oregon the race troubles in the South were something that might as well have happened in a foreign land. I had never thought of King's life in the terms the song presented and it changed me to some degree.

I was a sophomore in college when the Joshua Tree album came out and it was one of three great albums of the time; the other two being Paul Simon's Graceland and and Sting's Dream of the Blue Turtles. The first three songs on the album, With or Without You, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and Where the Streets Have No Name, may be the best three song album set ever (and Joshua Tree may be the best rock album ever). I couldn't have told you why at the time but I Still Haven't Found... was maybe the best three minute song I had ever heard. I was hooked on the band and when the Rattle and Hum movie and album were released I was first in line. I still think it's the best album the band has ever done or maybe back in the day it would have been the second LP in a two LP set like those old 70's bands used to do. I remember that I used to sing Angel of Harlem and When Love Comes to Town in the shower. Blues was undergoing it's subculture rebirth at the time and seeing U2 perform with B. B. King, who I had recently discovered, was fantastic. The perfect song in the movie was the gospel version of Still Haven't Found. I'm a little embarrassed to admit it now but I cried in the theater when the gospel choir came in the first time on the song in the movie because it was so perfect. It has taken me 20 years to figure out why but the song is so true.

In grad school came Achtung Baby and that was not exactly what I expected. It was a lot harder and edgier than I was wanting, though that was mostly because I was still thinking that bands should do the same thing they had done before. Still there were a couple of the best songs U2 had ever done: Mysterious Ways and One. The first has a groove that rivals just about anything and the second just reveals such a deep hurt. I wish I had remembered the second tune later in my life when I felt like the Catholic church rejected my marriage because it hadn't been performed by a priest. The words of the song perfectly express how I felt and wish I could have given it to my wife to explain what I was feeling inside when I couldn't say the words.

After Achtung Baby U2 took it's foray into electronic music and parted ways then. I sort of got the parody of rock star culture the band was doing on Zooropa and PopMart and I thought it was cool and all but I just didn't dig this kind of music. So for about 8 years I didn't listen to the band much unless I was pulling out "the good old stuff". Then All That You Can't Leave Behind came out and it was like the old U2 was back but with cooler lyrics. It was as if something had come unfettered in the band and they were expressing themselves as truly as they knew how. The song Elevation is a great example of this with a funky tune and elliptical lines that could be taken more than one way but that somehow led to something so much deeper than just the stuff of typical rock tunes.

The truth is that the lyrics weren't cooler but I had grown up a lot. More importantly I had decided to really follow and investigate my Christian faith and all of the sudden I found this well-spring of Christian thought and expression that was a thousand times more authentic than the stuff Word and Sparrow and Integrity and all the rest were spoon-feeding the contemporary Christian subculture. I found this band that was Christian but that sang about sadness and anger and lament and joy and love and all of the rest of the human conditions that connected it all to a holy God who loved His broken creation. How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb has just continued this and made it all the more obvious.

Now when I listen to Still Haven't Found I don't just hear a modified 12 bar blues but a Biblical lament worthy of King David and Psalms. When the New Voices of Freedom sing "I Still Haven't Found..." I just connect with the old black spiritual sense of searching for God and finding Him but not finding Him; of loss and hope, of triumph and tribulation. To me it's the best piece of Christian rock ever recorded and maybe the most authentic. Listen to the lyrics and tell me you haven't been there; that you haven't searched and serched for the answered and not been satisfied. Tell me you haven't looked in passionate relationships and emotionally based religion and come up feeling empty. And then you find that something more and you know the Truth and that "All the colors are leading to water". You believe it but like the man with the demon possessed boy at the foot of Mt. Tabor you find yourself at the foot of the One saying, "Lord, I believe...but please, God, help me with my lack of faith."

"But I still haven't found what I'm looking for."

Grace and Peace.

Quick Thoughts on the Presidential Address

2008-09-24T21:22:00.003-04:00

OK, so the Prez is concerned enough about the "public who elected him"'s reaction to the huge bailout plan he and his appointees at the Fed and Treasury have put together that he decided to address that same public on national TV. Here are a few of my thoughts about his statement:

(1) We've seen this song and dance before. I can't speak for anyone else but I know I'm dubious. Is this just another theatrical exercise of political spin? I can't help feeling that our President is about as clueless as a guy can be. His speech was not reassuring but seemed broken and halting.

(2) No new regulation for financial institutions who got us into this in the bailout legislation? Are you kidding me? We're expected to pull these guys' asses out of the fire and we don't get to tell them how they're going to use our money? Incredible.

(3) Did he blame this on foreign financial institutions? Somehow I don't think those foreign institutions wrote all those mortgages after our government deregulated the lending market. As far as I can tell, Countrywide was an American company. Another sign that our government is no longer capable of taking responsibility for it's failings. What was a campaign strategy has now become policy.

(4) I don't feel better and I don't feel like our leaders have a handle on this thing. Bernanke and Paulson have told us too many times that the latest government intervention will work. Why should I believe them now? These are guys are supposed to be smart guys but I don't see it. I can't help but think that they're just anther bunch of dupes that really work for the huge financial companies and not the American people. It's kind of like Cheney cutting the energy deal with the oil companies a few years back or the intelligence industry who were supposed to warn us about terrorism and weapons of mass destruction but who convinced the President to lose focus on the war in Afghanistan in order to get bogged in Iraq.

I know we have to intervene in order to avoid a depression (not a "long, painful recession" like Bush suggested; yet another sign of denial) but if it's my money then I want strong regulation now that can be reworked later. I want independent oversight from a body that has no vested interest in the success of the institutions and no political hay to made made. I want the executives who made the investment decisions removed from their positions of power (with no "golden parachutes") and I want the boards of directors of the companies dissolved for one year as they are brought under independent, non-partisan oversight. In one year the boards will be reconstituted after new regulations have been crafted and then CEO's can be hired.

That's what it'll take to restore confidence in the system for me and I think that's what it will take to restore the confidence of those who are going to have to buy the Treasury bonds to make the $700 billion rescue package happen. I certainly don't have confidence in the all the President's men.

Commercial Thoughts

2008-09-21T19:30:00.002-04:00

So...here's some random thoughts from commercials I've seen...

When a car commercial says their new model is the "roomiest ever" does that mean the car has three rooms now? What would the new rooms be? I mean, there's obviously a driving room but what are the others? Maybe there's a TV room where the DVD player and iPod ports are. What else? Perhaps a powder room for those nights out on the town. What about a kitchen for a little snack on a long trip? Hmmm...what rooms you you like to come as standard equipment on your next car?

Are all creepy hotel desk clerks required to have Northeastern accents? Maybe they're the New England version of a redneck but with an Oxford shirt and sweater instead of a stained "wifebeater" shirt like we have down here in the South.

Is StubHub legalized scalping? And the kid who gets the Viking helmet...is he really a man now? I mean, the ability to control the DirecTV remote is a skill that does separate us from the primates but are we really expected to believe that this kid could heft a broadsword and a round shield and take his place aboard the clan's longship bound for parts here-to-fore unpillaged just because dad gives him a hat with horns? I don't think so.

Did Dan Patrick just say that the kid in the stands on the highlights would need a dose of laxatives after consuming too many Twizzlers during the game? And they pay this guy?

I'm stunned that the banks/brokerage houses are still running commercials. Do they still have any money left? I mean, didn't the US government and we the taxpayers just buy them? If we did I'd like to see less cliche commercials. I mean, honestly, wouldn't you like to see some guy like Sam Waterson get up on you're High-Def and say, "Our core values are greed and rampant stupidity. Our investment advisors thought it would be a good idea to buy a bunch of low grade securities built on mortgages for houses they'd never seen written by guys who attended a one afternoon seminar with an open bar. Our solution...we're flogging those guys in a back room right now and if you open an account with us we'll give you online trading tools and the right to come down to the local office and get a couple of good lashes in. Cruelty, that's our policy."

Once again Microsoft has stolen stuff from Apple. "I'm a PC"? Seriously? First the company thinks we'd be swayed by having Jerry Sienfeld hang out with that laugh a minute comedian Bill Gates and now we get this amazingly creative and original ad campaign that tells us that Gates both uses PC's and wears glasses. And obviously the famous TV pop psychologist isn't a "human thinking". He's using a PC. First Vista, then the Seinfeld commercials and now this. Someone needs an intervention I think.

And that thought I'll bid you good night. Remember to tip your wait staff.

Cycling Update

2008-09-14T22:13:00.002-04:00

Yes, I am still riding and training and even racing (sort of). I haven't written about this in a while simply because I figured most of my readers either know what I'm up to or are bored by my spinning my wheels. Never-the-less, I thought I'd update those who might be curious as to my goings on in the two-wheeled world.

The racing and training season is definitely winding down. I find the motivation to get out and really put in a hard effort harder and harder to come by, especially when fall seems to be delayed and the weather remains not only warm but almost unbearably humid. My two hard time trial training rides this week were carried out in muggy morning conditions which conspired to play havoc with my power data gathering equipment. Tuesday's ride I managed to get a good data set but Thursday was a loss. I was hoping to do a long ride this weekend but my body was pretty clear with me that sleeping was a good thing and shorter rides were better than longer ones. I managed to get in two good indoor rides but neither was as long as I had planned and there was much napping to be had.

I was supposed to race in Augusta last weekend but the threat of a hurricane and the resulting low registration led to the event's cancellation. That was going to be my last competitive event of the year which would have allowed me to switch over to long tempo rides for the month of September along with a few charity rides and centuries to enjoy the fine fall weather we usually have. The problem is that the state time trial championship got moved to October 18th. That was one of my BIG goals when the season started and so I'm loathe to give up on it. That means I'm still training and will be for another month. I managed to find another time trial at the 40 k length to race on Oct. 4th that's going to give me some intermediate motivation but this is going to be hard.

To be honest, I've never raced this many races in a year and the toll is beginning to show up. As I mentioned before, I don't have the motivation I did and my body is demanding more rest and recovery time. I'm worried I'll either overtrain or I'll do something else stupid that'll put my season next year at risk. Still, I can't give up on this goal. The one thing I wanted to do this year when I decided to come back and race was to get to the state championship and race really hard.

On the positive side, I've switched about 50% of my hard training rides completely over to the the TT bike (up from 20-25%) and I can really tell the difference it's making on my position. I'm a bunch more aerodynamic and I can feel the muscles in my hips getting stronger. The rides are mentally very challenging because the intervals basically consist of going at my threshold power for between 15 minutes and 1 hour depending on what I'm doing. That means there are only a few routes I can do that'll let me maintain that effort uninterrupted for that length of time and that don't have overly steep climbs or descents. That means the routes get boring quickly. The other thing is that there's little variety in the workout itself which makes getting on the bike difficult. Hard to get excited about putting your head down for an hour and suffering when what you'd really like to do is crawl back into bed or sit on the porch with a cold Harvest Moon.

During the next four weeks or so I'll be looking at coaches and doing a few interviews to see about hiring the right coach to work with me to take me to a few new goals next season. I'm tired of being a Cat 4 racer. I'm know that I can be better and stronger than that but I seem to have plateaued. I know that with the proper training regime I can make that step up but I don't have the experience or mental energy to figure out all the training based on power to get there. I decided that I'd rather hire someone who knows how this works and who can teach me and include me in the decision making process. Who knows, maybe I can find someone who wouldn't mind taking me under their wing after I get one racing in a few years and teach me how to coach. I know I'd be a good coach, I just need the experience of being coached. If you know of someone who I might contact (Gary, send me the name and email of that coach you've worked with) let me know and I'll include them in the interview process. I figure that with something like this, they'll want to interview me as an athlete and I'll want to know more about their coaching process and skills.

Well, another week is about to begin. Have a good one and I'll be back soon.

Thanks for Reading.

Tired of Politics-I Don't Want to Vote for Anyone

2008-09-13T17:13:00.002-04:00

At this point in the process I am utterly sick of politics in this country. Both campaigns and the parties that run them have devolved to the point of merely uttering babble. The mainstream media takes positions and passes them off as news and these positions basically have nothing to do with what's really important. What are the issues that really matter?

Restraint of Government Spending and Debt Creation
The Future of Energy Production and Use in America
Regulation of the Financial Industry
Avoidance of Economic Stagnation
The Role of America in World Democratic Expansion

Right now there are really only two of these issues that the campaigns need to be focused on and that's the first two. The problem is that both campaigns have dropped any pretense towards balancing the budget or tax reform at any level. American businesses are taxed at the highest rate in the industrialized world. Republicans have overseen the greatest expansion of government spending in modern American history. The discussion, according to various groups independent of both campaigns, is not whether we will deficit spend but by how much over the next 10 years. Neither candidate is willing to tell the American people that it's time to tighten their belts and that the government is going to do the same. Neither will take on some entrenched group and say, "I know your cause is important but, you know, it's not as important as getting our debt problem under control." Especially senior citizens. Conservatives are ready, willing and able to rail against anything that looks like socialized health care or welfare assistance until it comes to seniors (or veterans). What to you think medicare and medicaid are? Why do we do a better job of providing government benefits for people who can still work to provide for themselves than we do for children who can't? Because kids don't vote and seniors no longer care about anybody, and I mean ANYBODY, but themselves.

I wanted to believe in Obama. I liked his message of hope, at least when that was the focus of his campaign. That's really what won Reagan the election in '80. Both men painted a picture of an America that could be believed in. But Obama's campaign has lost that message and is now involved in a snipe fight with McCain over who will change Washington more. Without some sort of major shift in the legislative branch, neither will do much changing at all practicing a politics of division as they are doing now. I'm not voting for or against McCain because I believe that he's in cahoots with the banks and financial institutions that have caused the mortgage and credit meltdowns and that cancels any "maverick" status he might have had. Besides, he won't survive eight years in the White House. If you look at what those eight years did physically to Reagan, Clinton and Bush I can't vote for McCain because I honesty believe he has less than a 50% chance of surviving to his 80th birthday. With Palin I see a complete continuation of the Republican politics of the last eight years. Sketchy insider deals, abuse of power at the edges, lack of oversight in the middle. I'm a Republican but I believe my party has lost it's way in the last 10 years. There is no longer any restraint amongst those in power in the GOP but rather a sheer lust for power and it's continuation. I honestly wonder what Reagan would have thought about the expansion of government under the Bush administration.

There are times when the only way to affect political change is to throw out the people in charge and make everyone step back and think things through. With as bad as things are in the the GOP, I'm considering the possibility that now is that time. Yes the Republicans say they support my views against abortion but are we any closer to restricting abortions that we were when Clinton took the White House? No. It's an issue that's used to scare and rally the party faithful and then forgotten for four years until such a time that it's taken out and dusted off to get a Supreme Court justice some support or to tar another election opponent as a baby killer. Each time I see it I feel used and dirty. The Republican Party will no longer pay the political price for standing what it claims to believe in because it exists now only to perpetuate itself.

On the issue of energy, it's really quite sad that the only reasonable energy policy is coming from an oil tycoon who sees the dependence this country has on foreign interests and doesn't have to depend on campaign contributions from those who stand to benefit the most from the status quo and the slow, inexorable bleeding of our country. As this price spike we've seen due to hurricane Ike has shown, we are not just at the mercy of oil producing countries but also from the companies that process the sludge for our use. These companies are multinational in nature and stand to benefit from weak governments fighting over non-issues or who's electoral system can be bought. Over the last three or four elections, our systems shows evidence of becoming both. The only issue between the Democrats and Republicans no is how much drilling they're going to let the oil companies do and how much more they'll try to delay the inevitable while the mantle of world economic leadership shifts to governments foresighted enough to realize that the age of petroleum is over.

And where's the fourth branch in all of this? Obsessing over teenage pregnancies and "lipstick on a pig." It is truly sad that the most credible journalistic voice in this election season seems to be the host of a comedy program. But we're too selfish and too self-centered to see past the crap. Americans still cling to the idea that they can drive their gas-guzzling cars hundreds of miles per week and not suffer the economic fallout from it. We still think that it's always someone else's representative to the Statehouse or Congress whose causing the problem and not our guy (or gal). It's too inconvenient to ride our bikes, walk our own streets, learn to get along with our own neighbors and cook our own meals and so we turn to a government that's for sale to solve those issues for us.

I believe in the values and promise of America but I'm not sure I believe in us anymore.

Thoughts on Lance

2008-09-10T10:03:00.002-04:00

So, you've probably heard the news that Lance is coming out of retirement to race in 2009. While his program is still up in the air, he's been very clear about wanting to race in year's edition of the Tour de France. This blog is a collection of a few of my thoughts about this turn of events.

On the comeback itself, I think Lance can still be pretty competitive as a stage racer as long as he keeps his number of racing days to a minimum. From all reports, it sounds like that's the intention with him lining up to do most of his training races here in the States at high caliber events such as the Tour of California and the Tour of Georgia (if it happens) or in France with Paris-Nice and the Duaphine. There are a few reports that he might race the Giro but I really don't see that happening for this year. (Though one more year where he goes for the Giro/Vuelta double would be awesome...especially if he were to race the World Championships and find a way to win at the end of 2009.)

On the motivation side of things, it's clear that Lance has got a lot of things that are contributing to this decision. He's been very clear about this being about cancer awareness on an international scale but like all things Lance, this is a lot more complex. The first thing is that Lance is a huge competitor. When he was a part owner of the Discovery team he could get his fix by riding in the team car but once that ended the path basically had to lead back to the bike. I think also there's a desire to fix what is an increasingly tarnished legacy. Lance always claimed to have never doped but that's getting harder to believe. By coming back and living under the new regimens of transparency for blood work, he's got to be hoping to show that he can win clean. Finally, I think he'd really like to tell David Walsh to shut up and this is probably the best way to do it and to help rescue the reputation of American cycling in international eyes.

Where's he going to ride. Odds on favorite would normally to reunite with his old director who's now with the Astana team. The problem with this is that Astana already has a Tour champion who I don't think will take kindly to riding for another champion. I don't see Johann mortgaging the future of his team so that Lance can ride one or two more years to have a shot at an eighth Tour victory when he could get three of four more with Alberto Contador. Still, the ties that bind make tyhis a 20% possibility in my eyes. Lance has said that this will be an international initiative so I think he'd like to be on a team with that sort of scope. If he wants to remain with an American owned team, that suggests Team Columbia where his good friend George Hincapie is riding. Hincapie has been coy about this whole story so I think this is the best option, especially after Columbia' phenomenal Tour outing in '08. I give this the highest possibility of about 25%. I don't really see Lance signing with Garmin-Chipotle as his relationship with Vaughters is rumored to be tense and Vaughters has said some pretty uncomplimentary things about Postal/Discovery in the past. One interesting but very unlikely option would be for Lance to race for Michael Ball's Rock Racing team. This would definitely make for great marketing and have huge international appeal but there's very little chance Rock Racing with it's questionable riders would get a Tour invite. Oversees options include Lance riding for CSC who will be looking for a Tour contender and who has a team director, Bjarne Riis, that Lance admires. I think this has the highest probability for a Euro team and I place it at 20%. One final option is for Lance to put together his own team with his own money. There are a bunch of riders who need jobs with the Gerolsteiner and Sanuer Duval-Scott teams folding and Lance could probably make something happen out of that. I give that a 15% chance of being the solution. Some of the comments coming from the Armstrong camp sound like their doing all planning themselves and I could see them wanting the team to be about the "LiveStrong" brand. The biggest problem would be for such a team to get an invite to the Tour and, maybe, for them to get the staff to run a racing operation.

Which solution do I like? To be honest, I've always wanted to see Lance race for Bjarne Riis and I think the team has the same kind of work ethic and single pointed focus and training style that Lance is known for. For a lot of reasons I see Columbia as the most likely option in a traditional sense. I'm most intrigued, however, about the idea of Lance forming his own team that serves to promote the cause of cancer awareness and agitate for more funding on a global scale. To me, this would be the most compelling reason to come back even if the logistical issues are the most insurmountable.

We'll know more by September 24th.

Thanks for Reading.

Thoughts on the Clayton Mess

2008-08-29T10:57:00.003-04:00

I'm not sure if you've read the big education news from these parts but the Clayton County public schools became the first school district in nearly 40 years to lose their accreditation. Reading the news reports and some of the citizen reaction at various media outlets has been pretty interesting. In short, most of the problem stems from the long term behavior of the school board elected by the citizens of Clayton County. The board has shown over and over again that it has no ability to act in a way that is legal, ethical or proper; even when appropriately advised by its own legal counsel. This has led the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) to revoke the accreditation of the entire district which, depending on who you talk to, will have various impacts on the students and staff of the district. I guess what I'd like to do is give my two or three cents worth about the crisis in response to what I've read and from my understanding of and experience in education.

One of the protests that we're hearing a lot from people who I think are probably in denial about a lot of this is why someone is punishing the kids for something the adults (there's debate on whether that's the board or the voters or the "evil" SACS people or the Governor) have or have not done. My answer to that is that the kids have already been punished and continue to be punished by the dysfunctional school system in which they reside. What SACS has done is to wield about the only club they have left to get the adults to do something that will make things better for those who have no power. The truth is that on objective measures such as the SAT (and our own internal testing here at Gordon) the students from Clayton county perform worse as a group than the students from any other county in the state. Given that Clayton County is a suburban district outside of Atlanta with significantly greater resources both in terms of personnel and finances than most rural south Georgia counties, this says a lot about the culture of learning (or lack thereof) that exists in the schools. Because of the actions of the board, the schools don't do a good job of teaching their students (on average) and the removal of accreditation is basically an acknowledgment of that fact and a way to get the self-absorbed adults to change what they are doing. I hate it for the kids but, to be honest, they and their parents should know what the quality of their education is worth.

One of the questions I hear a lot from students at the College here is how the board's behavior affects the quality of education in the district. That's a complicated thing but the way I explain it is that a local board of education's job is to review and set policy, establish priorities and evaluate the administrators they have hired to implement those things. The board in Clayton vastly overstepped their role by going into specific schools to influence hiring and firing decisions (often in such a way to bring personal benefit to themselves or members of their families), to enforce or, more often, circumvent policy and to steer purchasing contracts in ways that didn't benefit the district but did line their pockets (or, again, the pockets of their family members or political supporters). All of these actions undermines the authority and morale within the upper and middle level management of the district. Principals and assistant principals become afraid of taking a stand on issues because they fear losing their jobs if a board member decides to take a personal interest in their decision making. The strategic priority at that level of school management goes from what's best for the school at large to "cover your ass". One of the biggest results of this (which I've culled from conversations with numerous teachers in the Clayton schools) is that administrators are no longer willing to stand up for teachers in disciplinary decisions and in areas of academic rigor. All it takes is for one angry parent to know one board member in some way for the administrator (or in some cases, the individual educator) to be called up on the carpet and be told to ignore some policy or overlook some infraction or find another place to work. Once that happens, everyone is looking over their shoulder, avoiding risk and confrontation and taking the easiest road possible. In education here in Georgia, that means giving everyone B's so they get their HOPE scholarship and trying not to make the students angry. The results of this are obvious.

So where does Clayton go from here? That's the $64,000 question (now there's a dated reference). The Governor, on recommendation of a state judge, has removed the last four members of the board that brought on the sanctions that haven't either resigned or been forced out. A couple of the seats have been filled through a special election a couple of months ago but the Clayton County school board basically consists of two or three people right now who have had almost no training on what it means to act in an ethical or proper manner. The other seats won't be filled until the November elections and the new members of the board may not be seated for a few weeks after that. In it's latest report explaining it's decision, SACS said that one of the biggest issues the district faces is that it hired it's interim superintendent improperly and that it gave him more power to run the district than is ethical or allowed by state law. In other words, they have said that the district will not regain its accreditation until this superintendent is either removed from his office or his contract is significantly rewritten to bring it within the bounds of the law. This is something only a legally constituted board can do and that doesn't really exist at the moment. So for the next two months, Clayton County's schools will be run by a super whose job description is illegal and whose power to run the district is illegitimate.

I think I understand what happened here. The guy wanted to have the power that Paul Vallis in the New Orleans recovery district and Michelle Rhee in the Washington DC schools have in order to move quickly to reform the Clayton County schools. In each of those cases, the voters chose to cede their local authority to the respective state boards of education in order to remove conflict of interest. Both Vallis and Rhee still have to report to duly elected governmental authority. Clayton's voters have not elected to do that and the board wrote a contract with the super that gave him all their power to set policy and priorities. That's not going to work and it's got to get fixed if SACS is going to reaccredit the schools. To his small credit, the super has suggested that he would be open to revisiting his contract (very big of him I think-given that he negotiated the original contract that has gotten the district into this bind in the first place).

All of this assumes, of course, that once elected, the new board will be able to get along and move quickly to address the issues SACS has cited; eight of the original nine of which still remain. Given the history of elected school official in Clayton County this isn't nearly as obvious as it might seem. There's a really good chance that the members of the board will spend as much time pointing fingers and laying blame rather than getting the training they need in ethics and how to be a proper board with proper boundaries. This will especially true if voters elect individuals that have ties to previous members of the board or their actions. Clayton basically has until May, about 5-6 months after the full board is elected, to make a fairly significant amount of progress. If that doesn't happen then SACS will close the window on the short process of regaining accreditation and the school district will have to start from scratch; a process that will take between 2 and 3 years assuming a functional institution.

As of now, the exodus of students out of the county and district that was a slow but meaningful flow is beginning to become a flood. Reports from yesterday told of stories of parents taking their kids out of school in the middle of the day in order to find a solution in an accredited school as soon as possible. I expect that you'll see the teachers begin to do the same as soon as they are able since they no longer accrue years towards retirement in the state's teacher retirement system and any professional development credit they might have gotten from within their own district is no longer valid. As these teachers go to other sites to earn those credits they'll see their colleagues going about their business without the stress of having your life controlled by the specific actions of nine or ten people far removed from them. Other districts will move quickly to hire the best master teachers from Clayton to replace their own retirement or attrition losses; a process made easier as classes are eliminated in Clayton due to declining student numbers. Any missteps by the new board or any waffling or further equivocating on the part of the superintendent will only serve to speed up the process. From this point forward, the district has to be transparent in everything that it does. There is no more trust and no more grace on the part of teachers and parents towards the district at this point as so everything now happens in a low trust environment. One of my biggest concerns right now is that the first statements by the superintendent following SACS' announcement do not show that he understands this. He wants the parents and teachers to wait out the storm but, as of right now, they don't trust that the boat is seaworthy enough to survive it.

I think if the voters were smart and objective they'd introduce a ballot measure to cede the authority of their locally elected board to the state board until such a time as the district can get itself righted and reaccredited. Such objectivity is rare in local politics however (which is why it took Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans to achieve that sort of change), especially when there are racial overtones as is the case here.

I'm torn as to whether this is for the better or the worse. If the loss of accreditation leads the citizens of Clayton County to do better by their students then I think people will look back on yesterday as the first step towards a solution. If county devolves further into backbiting and despair, then this is just another step on a long downward spiral such as those experienced in New Orleans and DC. I hope it's the former but only the citizens of Clayton County can really decide.

Thanks for Reading.

Grace and Peace.

Tropical Weekend

2008-08-24T22:12:00.003-04:00

For two days now we've been dealing with the remnants and effects of Tropical Storm Fay. While areas of Florida have experienced rains of over two inches and places less far to our south are coping with 6 or more inches of rain, we've been laboring under gusty winds, frequent rain showers and an occasional thunderstorm or two. I think our rainfall totals may end up being in the neighborhood of two inches once tomorrow morning comes and, if the meteorologists are correct, we'll spend the next two or so days dealing with muggy/thundery conditions. While a bit of nuisance, the weather has done little more than force me inside on my rollers and trainer.

School's off to a seemingly slower start. I'm not doing Senate this year and I'm into the first year of our new course reduction schedule which means I only teach three classes and fifteen contact hours this semester (instead of four classes and 21 contact hours). Things just seem a lot more humane at this point. I have time to think and plan my classes. I can make adjustments to my curriculum that I've been wanting to make for the last two or three years. I may even have a chance of truly assessing whether or not they work. THe biggest change is going to be teaching the new Physical Science of Elementary Education. Part of me is really stressing out over the curriculum but another part of me feels like I'm finally making a real difference. All of the students in this class are studying to be K-5 educators and I get a chance to talk not only about content but how to teach it. I can't tell you how excited that makes me. For the first time, I actually have a community in the classroom that shares my desire to help people learn. I don't know if that will translate into learning for them but it makes the conversation so much more interesting. Don't get me wrong, I still love my engineers and I still want to help them grow into students we can be proud to send to Georgia Tech but this is a different thing.

I'm not an engineer by calling. I can understand them because of a shared love to understand how things work. I'm an educator by calling. I knew that in grad school when I realized that I enjoyed teaching those who wanted to learn more than I enjoyed modeling galaxies in a computer. What I didn't know at the time was how complicated a thing it was to teach someone something you already knew. I appreciate that a little better now and I know that I can teach that to others.

So next week is week two and I'll have a better sense of who my classes are by the end of it. I'll have my first assessments in and I'll know a bit more about them through their writing and their performance on their quizzes. Then I'll know where we'll go and how much work it'll take to get there.

Thanks for Reading

Thoughts on the Long, Dark Knight of the Soul

2008-08-09T21:31:00.002-04:00

So, this weekend, as part of my birthday package, my wife took me to see the Dark Knight. A series of events (most of them not unfortunate) have conspired to keep us away from the film but today we decided to take the plunge. I was interested to see the film because a few Christians (and film critics) I've read have expressed their misgivings about the film and I wanted to see for myself.

Now, before I go any further with this blog, I want to warn anyone who hasn't seen the movie that I'l be discussing some of the specifics of the plot. If you don't want to know about those things you can think to yourself, "Well, at least he didn't write about that boring cycling stuff again..." and click off to some other, more entertaining and enlightening place and come back in a few days when this blog has been bumped down by something else I've written that is probably a lot more cycling related and a lot less interesting.

So, OK, back to the Dark Knight. Some of the critiques I've read (not just Christian by the way) have been troubled by the moral ambiguity of the film. To be honest, I'm a bit stunned by this. Come on, this is Batman. Batman has been from the beginning, in part, a study in the ambiguity of vigilanteism. If you don't think we as a society aren't just a bit uneasy about people taking the law into their own hands you need only look at the case of Bernie Goetz, called by some, "The Subway Vigilante". For those too young to remember Mr. Geotz, he was a middle aged man riding the subway during a more crime filled time in New York City's history (under the leadership of Mayor David Dinkins if I remember correctly). Mr. Goetz was surrounded by four young men on the subway and told to produce $5. He responded by shooting all for of the young men with an illegal handgun he had purchased after being mugged three years prior to the incident. At first, Goetz was acquitted by a grand jury as acting in self-defense during a time when the crime rate was over 70% higher than the national average and many New Yorkers felt like the city was out of control. A short while later, when new witnesses came forward about the events in the subway car, a second grand jury, indicted Mr. Goetz on charges of attempted murder and assault. The charges were then dropped due to subsequent criminal activity by two of the young men when threatened Mr. Goetz. The charges were reinstated by the New York Court of Appeals. The criminal trial only convicted Goetz in illegal handgun possession. However, in a civil suit, argued in a time when crimes rates in New York were dropping due to the newly instituted "broken window theory" measures (under the leadership of Rudy Guillini and his police chief), a jury found that Goetz had acted recklessly and dangerously and held him liable for damages in the sum of $43 million. The short of all of this is to point out that the movie is about a vigilante and his actions and what those actions mean to a group of people who feel as if they have little or no hope. As such, for the story to be told faithfully, there's got to be more than a little moral ambiguity and we, as an audience, as to leave the film with significant unease.

In addition, this narrative isn't going to have a nice, neat, tidy, happy ending. Batman is a postmodern fable. He's not Superman which is exactly what Bob Kane wanted when he dreamt up Bruce Wayne as a tortured soul who hunted other human beings to bring them to his form of justice. It's not going to be "Truth, Justice and the American Way". Batman is Kane's Noir Superman. While he has his principles (or maybe just one principle) he's also human and flawed and twisted by what he is and what he becomes. He's a fallen hero in a fallen city just like all those in Gotham City who want to stop crime but he desperately, and I emphasize desperately, has hope in something better.

So this brings us to this movie and to it's end (and if you're still reading and haven't seen the movie this is your last chance to not have it spoiled. After this, I take no responsibility for ruining anything for you). Bruce Wayne wants to be a normal guy. He wants to stop being the one who lives behind the mask so Gotham can have hope and courage. In the movie, he sees the new District Attorney, Harvey Dent, as the one guy who can offer that hope out in the open. But when Dent is scarred and split and becomes Two-Face, Batman realizes that Harvey can no longer be that for the people of Gotham. Not if they know what Dent has done and what Dent has become and what corruption still infests the Gotham City police department. So he tells the new Police Commissioner to tell the people a lie. His justification is something along the lines of "Sometimes the truth isn't enough. Sometimes people need more than the truth." This sentiment has gotten some people up in arms, which I can understand. Especially if you're a Christian fully schooled in hyper-rationalistic ways of thinking.

You see, in that way of thinking, there is only One Truth. And that's correct in a sense. The problem is that we can never approach that Truth so a lot of us invent our own version of it. We invent versions of it where it votes for our political candidates and espouses our causes and, most often of all, hates the same people we hate. But the Truth isn't that. And the truth is that we do need more than the truth, our version of the truth, sometimes. Let me give you an example that is germane here.

Let's take justice. Human justice is about right and wrong, guilty or innocent, determining who is good and who is bad. Our justice is about assigning blame and guilt and determining punishment. Sometimes, when we rise above our baser natures, we accept blame and guilt and not only accept punishment but seek reconciliation. But Truth's idea of justice is very different than that I think. Truth's idea of justice is about bringing all creation back to it in love. Truth's idea of justice is about bringing and giving hope to the afflicted and fallen and broken of this world. Truth's idea of justice is redeeming all of the two-faced hypocrites out there by bringing them to Him. Even if it means having to die to conquer death. even if it means being branded a criminal and an outcast so that all those who wander and are lost find Him. Too often I hear good intentioned but poorly informed people talk about a justice of truth that is really just a more powerful version of our human kind of justice; a justice of truth that punishes more perfectly, that assignes blame more accurately and that knows true goodness from sincere self-interest when evaluating motive. When I hear that presented as truth, I think that "truth isn't enough, I need more than truth." The truth is that I'm fallen and guilty and broken. The truth is that I'm every bit as fallen as Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin and so many others. The truth is that like Paul, I am "first among sinners." And if I look at justice from the eyes of men, I have no hope. In the movie, Batman tells Gordon to lie so that the people of Gotham can have hope that it is possible for a person to rise above the chaos and crime without having to resort to vigilanteism. His example for this hope is in the fact that people on two ferries don't blow each other up but choose to accept that they might die over killing a group of unknown others. It is similar with us. To have hope we must look beyond what we see everyday and beyond what our own minds can conceive. In truth, I have no hope. But in Truth, who seeks me and all those like me above all things, I have hope. And while the postmodern fable of Batman breaks down here in hiding the Truth in lies, it reveals that the Truth might lie beyond what we can "know" or "rationalize".

Grace and Peace.

Moving Forward

2008-08-08T08:37:00.002-04:00

For this blog I decided to hi-jack the term the Packers and Favre have been using all week. I have to say that I'm really glad that the situation there is resolved so that I can here about something, anything else on SportsCenter. So, moving forward, here's what's going on here:

Cycling: Last weekend was the Elberton race and it was a tough weekend for me. For the second time in a row, I flatted during the TTT. This time it seems like my tube just failed. I've decided that for my 20 mm tires, I'm going to go with heavier duty tubes to see if I can lower the incidence rate on flats. Still the team ended up winning the state championship on the work of Bill and Ron so I can be proud to be a part of that. I died in the crit and then worked for the team in the road race. My teammate Robert "DHo" Jordan got away in a break to Ron and I sat on the front and kept tempo. An unexpected benefit of racing with my power meter was that I knew Robert could hold 300 watts for about an hour so I rode at 250. It allowed the break to get four minutes and stay away. More interesting to me was the number of people just riding at that level put into trouble. We killed about half the field just riding tempo on the front and only once did anyone try to force the pace. We just sat on their wheels until they cracked (which wasn't very long) and then got back on the front. For all my work, I got dropped from the main field about 4 miles from the end of the race and ended up finishing about 15th. Not the weekend I have hoped for but it is what it is.

School: We start back on Monday for faculty back week. I can't really decide where I'm at with things attitudewise. I want to be fired up and I have a lower work load this semester but I'm just not quite feeling it. Still, this week I've managed to get some extra work done to get ready for classes including setting up to try a news teaching strategy to hopefully get students to look more closely at some of the misconceptions inherent in the physics they do. I'm kind of excited about that and I'm hoping it goes really well. I'd like to give a paper on the practice at a Georgia Academy of Sciences meeting early next year if it seems to work.

Weather: God it's been hot. That's part of what made this last weekend's racing so hard. Heat levels well over 100 degrees on both Saturday's crit and at the end of Sunday's road race. That combined with a Tuesday Night Word's ride that was over 100 degrees and I've been wrung out all week. That's probably part of the reason I'm feeling ambivalent about school starting I'm sure but I've done almost no good training this week due to my legs feeling so empty. Hopefully it'll break this weekend and I'll be able to do some riding in the morning.

More Later. Thanks for Reading.

Grace and Peace.

Random Notes

2008-07-30T18:01:00.002-04:00

Here are a few random thoughts running through my addled mind:

The Brett Farve thing...would everyone just SHUT UP! The dude needs to just chill. If he really loves the game he'll take a trade to Tampa Bay, play hard there and take the Bucs to the NFC Championship. But he doesn't really love the game...he loves the fame and in doing so he's just like Jacko and Britney and all the other sucking up the oxygen I breathe wanna-be's out there.

Team Time Trialing...what an awesome thing to do. Practiced with the fellas last night and we were smooth and fast. It was a good...no, great...practice and we have got to be in the mix this weekend for the state TTT championships. I'm really looking forward to the race weekend. Now if I can just find a dogsitter.

Blue Moon...there may be no better summer beer. After a hard ride with an orange slice...about as close to heaven as a guy can get. As a side note, I had my Blue Moon today in what has to be about the best registration shwag I've ever gotten at a bike race. A few years ago, OMBA-SORBA gave out pint glasses instead of tee-shirts in the registration package for a MTB race. More events should think like this. Maybe Georgia Cup should give out pint glasses with the logo instead of clothing. I know it would get a lot more use in my house. Medal would be nice too...at least for the categories that they don't give money out...like ours.

Southern Heat...I think I need to work out something where my wife and I go to Salt Lake for about two weeks during the worst of the Georgia heat. It was funny to hear about everyone talk about how hot and humid it was as we sat outside and enjoyed a few cold ones at my brother's place. Had we tried to have the BBQ in my backyard we all would have melted. I don't mind a little heat and the dry air in the intermountain west is just great. More than that, I would really enjoy a two week training around Lamoille. I'd probably need to take a mountain to deal withe all the dirt roads and really rough pavement but riding in the morning and hiking in the afternoon would be about as perfect a vacation as I could imagine.

Two weeks off...I have about two weeks off before I have to go back to work. Thank God. I need a break to catch up on sleep, read and just not think about all the crap I have to do. Contrary to what a lot of people believe, education is a hard thing to do. Everything has to do with people and the really hard problem of how they learn. I can't speak for everyone but it's takes a lot of energy out of me to work with students and to think about designing curriculum that helps them learn, especially when the high schools no longer teach anything vaguely related to critical thinking anymore. I love the process of learning and the rush of seeing a student understand things for the first time but the process still takes a lot of energy.

Anyways, thanks for reading.

Final Rest

2008-07-25T19:33:00.002-04:00

One of the reasons for this trip out to Salt Lake is to place my mother's ashes in their final resting place. To that purpose, we've gathered as much of my mom's immediate family as we could together and we took a trip out to the place where she spent much of her time, Lamoille, Nevada. Lamoille is a small ranching community nestled at the base of the Ruby Mountains about 15 miles from Elko. My grandparents bought a house there many years ago and then built a cabin in the canyon about the house and both of my parents spent much of their childhoods in the area. For all of us, the cabin was an especially beautiful and restful place where we spent time on vacations fishing, hiking and playing games. Much of the inspiration for my mom's painting came from the Lamoille Canyon and the wildflowers that filled it.

So, along with my brother, my dad and his wife and my grandmother, Kathy and I traveled out to Lamoille to bury her ashes not far off the trail that she hiked often where one can rest and see the cabin. The picture you see here is the tree under which we buried her ashes. As you might imagine it was a bittersweet trip in some ways and a wonderful one as well.

It's always great to go to the canyon. Many people who have visited have said that the Ruby Mountains and Lamoille Canyon remind then of the Swiss Alps with their souring pinnacles, glacier carved valleys, crystal clear streams and grassy, wildflower meadows. I love the sounds and smells of the canyon and it was wonderful to spend an afternoon with my family enjoying its beauty.

The somewhat sad part was that for my dad and grandmother there were lots of memories but few remaining connections. They both knew all of these people who have died or left. They helped write some of the history of the region and they knew everyone. Most of those people have died or moved on now and so there was a lot of the rest of us having to hear my tell relive memories in sort of a sad way. When added to the difficult task of place my mom's ashes, it made things a little hard.

Still, it was a good trip and it help close a chapter of my life. Each year I'll be able to travel to a place I love and spend some time in remembrance of my mom. I'll smell the pine and sage and "quakies" and hear the whisper of the wind and the rush of the streams and remember the times when my mom took my brother and I hiking up to the glacier along that trail. In time we'll place the ashes of my dad and my grandmother in the same place and their ashes will fertilize the mountain cedar and wildflowers and give back to the place that has given so much to us.

Technical Difficulties

2008-07-21T19:58:00.003-04:00

Sorry it's been a few days since I've posted but our DSL modem decided that this life was too great a burden and so departed for the great technological waste bin in the sky (or some such other metaphor as might come to mind). The break from the computer was good I think as I got a lot of reading done on topics as diverse as the negative perceptions of Christianity found in the last two generations of Americans, the confluence of epidemic disease pools in the years between 200 BCE and 1200 CE and the culture of fear modern advertisers, politicians and religious leaders have generated in order to manipulate others into following their agendas. You can check out my reviews of some of these things out at Amazon under the name Chad "Downhill" Davies.

The Tour has been interesting since I last wrote with the race tightening up with the last mountain stage. I have to wonder what might have happened if CSC had decided to lay down the hammer on the first climb up the Col Angel. I really think they could have cracked Evans like they had Valverde up the Tourmalet and he would have been out of the Tour right there. Of course, had they done that then Menchov may have had the strength to ride away from the worn out Schlek and Sastre on the final climb. Still, I think it was a risk I might have taken had I been Riis since my two climbers still don't have anywhere near enough time with only two hard stages to go before the final TT where Evans will get three minutes back (and Vande Velde and Menchov will get 2:30). Nevertheless, it's really exciting to have the race still have six riders all within a minute of the lead.

Tomorrow's going to be interesting as there's a huge risk/reward ratio here. If someone's willing to take big risks they could crack the race wide open. There are two HUGE climbs but the finish is 24 km after the last one. If one of the GC contenders can get away on the last climb and then take some risks on the descent, he could do some real damage. Of course, he could also pull an Ullrich and ride off the side of the road and into a ditch and end his chances of making it to Paris. More interesting is the possibility that one fo the guys who is lurking a little further back could launch an attack over the first climb and then race down the first descent and hold onto a lead going over climb number two. If I'm Valverde, that's what I'm doing. Go for broke.

"Alejandro, Senor, everyone knows you can finish top ten; doing so again doesn't really prove much. But if you can get away and win with panache then you'll be remembered and maybe you'll get back into this thing."

The same goes for Kirchen and the two Euskatel riders who are placed just at the top ten level. But what I really see happening here is that CSC sends Andy Schlek out for a suicide ride to make the other teams chase hard and do the work (with any luck, Cunego or Lang will go with him). That'll destroy Rabobank, Garmin-Chipotle and Silence-Lotto and leave their GCF riders isolated for the 1-2 punch of Sastre and Frank Schlek. The last thing the other teams want is to allow CSC to set up their crushing series of strong men of Cancellara, Voigt and O'Grady to get into one of those grinding rhythms that end up pulverizing the legs and egos of the men around them. You have to attack and shell those guys off early if you're going to have any chance.

I rode the final climb with the guys again yesterday on my trainer. It was a great ride and I got a wonderful workout but it killed me for the rest of the day. It's gotten really, really hot here in Georgia and the temperature out on the road has been 105+ so riding outside isn't really all that good of an idea right now. After riding I made the mistake of going out to run errands and ended up sick for most of the day due to heat and dehydration. This week is a recovery week so I'll take the better part of valor and do most of my riding indoors on the rollers.

Tomorrow, my wife and I head out to Salt Lake to visit family and take care of a few things. For me, that means recovery rides at altitude; a tricky proposition to say the least. But I figure if I keep my power output and heart rate down, my body will adapt well and I may even come back with a little more oxygen carrying capacity for the races in Elberton in a couple of weeks. I'll try to keep you updated from there as I have internet access.

Until then, Ciao and Allez!

Ricco...You Can Not Be in The Show

2008-07-17T19:20:00.002-04:00

You'd think they'd learn but no one ever accused professional bike racers of being particularly smart, especially the Europeans. This is the sport that once called Laurent Fignon "The Professor" because he had actually gone to college for a year. Now granted, that's a bit more difficult to do in France than here in the States but please.

Anyways, Ricardo Ricco, who thrilled everyone including your erstwhile commentator here with his daring victory, turns out to be just another cheater. And a stupid one at that. I guess someone told him that if you take this new type of EPO that stays in your body longer, you'll be able to avoid detection. Too bad the World Anti-Doping Agency has been working with the drug's manufacturer to make sure they have a test to detect it (and probably the manufacturer has engineered the compound to be easy to detect in a simple blood test). For what I've read, all three doping positives in this year's Tour were for the same thing. Like I said, no one ever said these guys were smart.

So Ricco's out of the sport for a minimum of two years (assuming that the UCI's doping code isn't thrown out with the rest of the organization now that the ASO has decided to form a new cycling league). My personal opinion, as I've stated on the blog before, is that he should be banned for life unless he does some sort of penance. I'm not Catholic but there are times when I think that the church has the right idea that it's not enough to apologize and serve some sort of sentence but that you've got to actively work to fix what you've done and make things better.

Here's what I think. Ricco should have to come to the US and work amateur races as a volunteer course marshall. If he does that for two years, he gets to ride his bike again with the slate wiped clean. Until then his jobs include standing at a corner on some forgotten country road here in the deep south and holding the cars while packs of men and women who really love this sport go careening past him every so often. He can sit on the side of a hill and hand out water bottles to those struggling up the climb at the back because they believe that there's something more to bike racing than winning. He can see the pride and joy in the fathers' eyes when their kids line up for their short little race and everyone cheers for them harder than they've cheered for all the other racers that day.

I have to say that one of the things I respect about Nathan O'Neil is that after his suspension he's worked at the local races here in Georgia to make them more interesting. He's great about interacting with us pack fodder racers and bringing a little star power to the events. He could have just gotten sullen and frustrated when he got popped but instead he decided to give back to the community with his time. All of these pros should have to do that to get their licenses back...kind of like community service.

For the doctors and other enablers who prescribe this crap and help the racers find it or pressure them into using it, they should be run out of the sport period unless they can show that can make their mistakes right in some way. Penance.

So, if you're sick of the Tour and the doping scandals, go out and find a local race in your area and cheer for the guys who are racing for the love of the sport and little else. It's like going to see a Babe Ruth League or American Legion or local softball league game after getting sick of the high salaries and prima donna behavior of steroid using major-leaguers. There are a lot of great crits being run and everyone should get to stand in the center of their city square and see cyclists contest the finishing sprint in front of their city hall. Go out and support that...it's as "American and Apple Pie" as almost anything I can think of.

Thanks for Reading.

Rest Day...For Some

2008-07-15T21:42:00.003-04:00

Well, it's a rest day for the Tour riders which is good after yesterday's brutal stage over the Toumalet and up Huatacam. After watching the stage, I'm beginning to wonder if anyone really wants to win this race. The main GC guys all sort of spend the last climb marking each other and not really doing much else which means that the guys a ways back on the GC keep winning the stages. I can understand Evans doing this as he's going to put about two minutes into everyone else on the final time trial so he doesn't have to win anything.

The big loser was Valverde. As I wrote earlier in the week I thought he'd run out of gas before the Tour was over but I honestly didn't expect it to be this week. Maybe he can recover a bit and go for a stage win now that he won't be marked but I think it's all downhill from here on out for him. He takes one more big packet on a climb and I'm thinking he may pull a Moreau and fake an injury or illness to leave the race.

For me today it was another trip on the Pain Train at Tuesday Night Worlds but this time I gave as well as received. The team divided into two groups to do some race tactics work. I'm not sure how much we actually did but my team did some attacking and I put in three hard attacks to see what I could do. My third attack was a great move and I got a really nice gap and it looked like the group might just let me go when our resident former pro, Chad M., decided to bridge up to me and see if we could make something stick. While the group might give me some rope, they weren't going to let him get too much room off the front and they made short work out of our break. Still it was a good effort and I got some practice at giving it a really hard surge and then settling into TT pace. What I need to get to the point of being able to do is being able to put another surge in about two minutes after the first to see if I can't break the elastic. I got dropped on the big climb in the last part of the course but that's not too unusual. I have the power but I'm carrying too much weight to climb well. One of my goals for the coming off-season is to lose a pound a week of weight until I'm down below 150 lbs. That should give me some more punch on the climbs as long as I don't give up any power.

Tomorrow's a medium mountain stage on teh Tour with a big Cat 1 climb so I see a break getting away on the climb and staying away to the end. Cunego is definitely one of the guys who might try something to get away on the climb and Millar might try to form a break early though I think Garmin-Chipotle might start riding to protect VdV's place in the GC. Another person I could see doing something now is Sebastian Lang from the Columbia team. Finally, there are a couple of teams that don't have a lot to show for the Tour so maybe the Basque boys from Euskatel will try to put a guy in the break like Zubeldia. I could see CSC-Saxo send Andy Schlek out as well. So, a group of climbers gets away on the lower slopes and gets a two to three minute advantage over a select group of about 40 riders who don't bring them back.

We'll see what happens.

Thanks for Reading.

Time to Throw Down

2008-07-13T20:22:00.003-04:00

The first "high mountain" stage is done and nothing much was gained and maybe some things were lost. Actually, that's not completely true. For Ricardo Ricco there was a lot gained: stage win and a new bit of life in the overall competition. Ricco rode brilliantly. I watched his blistering attack up the Aspin and I found myself thinking, "This is what watching Pantani must have been like..." I never did get to see Pantani race much until late in his career and life but this is what must have gotten everyone so excited about his riding. RIcco's attack had panache. It was bold and reckless and audacious and everything we want in our cycling heroes. This wasn't a "just another day at the office" kind of win and no one in the peloton had an answer for the attack. Chapeau to Ricco.

The downside to the stage was the crash Cadel Evans had coming down the first big climb. It looked like it was a serious crash and it once again shows that there is much luck that comes into play in the sport of bike racing. Early word is that something from a spectator got into his front wheel just after a feed zone and threw him over the handlebars and onto his back. That can't be really good, especially since he seemed to be protecting his left shoulder at the end of the stage. That, combined with the newly resurgent Ricco, means that Evans is looking pretty vulnerable as is Alejandro Valverde. It seems to me that if the peloton doesn't have an answer to Ricco's attacking style they'll either have to hope that he tires and blows up on either Huatacam tomorrow or the Alpe d'Huez later in the race or that they can limit their loses and get the time back in the final time trial-something Valverde won't do.

Speaking of Valverde, he looked solid today though he may be fighting a case of tendonitis. He may be playing a psychological ploy but he was back at the doctor's car getting treatment on his leg again today. Interestingly enough, his teammates look at lot more energetic than he does, though this may have a lot to do with tactics.

We'll know a whole lot more tomorrow. It's probably the hardest stage with the monster that is the Tourmalet and then the epic climb up Huatacam. This is the stage that will absolutely blow the race apart. Unlike today, there won't be a group of thirty riders who make it to the end together and I wonder if there will be some huge attack. If there is it'll likely come from Sastre who has flown under the radar until now but who has the ability to jump away at the right time.

So here's what I see happening. There will be a break of riders that goes away before the Tourmalet. At least one of those riders will be in the hunt for King of the Mountain points so de la Fuente, Chavanel, Sanchez and Ricco are all possibilities (though I don't see the GC teams letting Ricco get much of a gap unless he has the legs to force the issue). The GC teams will make things hard enough up the Tourmalet that the break will be held to under five minutes at the top and that the field will be under fifty riders. The fireworks will happen in Huatacam and I see Kirchen losing the jersey here though I expect he'll fight hard to hang on out of pride. If Evans isn't in too bad off, he'll stay in contact until the last few kms and limit his losses. I see see Menchov doing the same though he may hang on longer due to being one of the few who hasn't crashed. The leaves Valverde, Sastre, Cunego and, maybe, Ricco at the end. Of that group, I see Sastre finally emerging to lay his claim in this race with an effort that master tactician Bjarne Riis has been telling him to hold in his legs until it'll really, really count. After this first group and Evans and Menchov will come the Schlek brothers, Pereiro, Popovitch and Vande Velde.

For my part, I plan to ride the trainer with the race. I'll but my front wheel way up on a block and ride big gear intervals during the climbs and spin a small gear on the one descent. I may even try some surges "on" the Hautacam to develop an ability to jump away from a group. It should be fun to suffer along with the riders.

Wish me luck.

Hard Days

2008-07-12T09:08:00.002-04:00

The last two stages of the Tour have been a bit harder than a lot of people predicted. Yesterday came down to a group of 30-40 but with excellent tactics two riders were able to achieve their goals for the day. De Le Fuente was able, with the help of a teammate in the break, wrest the Polka Dot Jersey from the shoulders of Chavennel and Sanchez was able to hold on for a really beautiful win. Sanchez did a great job getting into a break with three other riders who posed not GC threat and then his team basically rode tempo to allow him a chance to stay away. With the other teams basically relying on Caisse d'Eparnge to do the hard work as the strongest team in the race, they were free to send a rider out and then not chase him to allow him a good chance at the stage victory. For Sanchez, since he's riding for a serious GC contender, everyone recognized that he was in the break to make sure things didn't get too out of hand. They pull him and he does less work so he's fresher at the end. Good tactics all around.

Bjarne Riis' squad showed a little muscle for the day in trying to split the field on a tough section. They almost did it too. If the Caisse d'Eparnge team had joined in pushing the lead group that split off, it would have been a massacre. With all the major contenders in that front group though, there wasn't much to be gained by expending all the energy. Had Kirchen or Evans been unlucky enough to be behind the split, I'm sure the boys in black would have been more than happy to put the pedal down.

Basically, today's another sprint stage. A break may get away but I don't expect it to stick at this point. The usual suspects will contend and I see McEwen getting today's win. He's been unlucky to date and I think he's tired of not finishing first so there will be a little extra motivation. However, any of the rest could win today before the road goes up, up, up into the Pyrenees. That's when we'll see of Valverde has something for Evans and Kirchen or if he's doomed to another mediocre Tour finish (at least for him).

Thanks for Reading.

Back to the Tour

2008-07-11T08:42:00.002-04:00

OK...so after my little rant, let's get back to talking about the Tour.

The race has hit the middle mountain stages in France's Massif Central region. Yesterday was a summit finish and had I been making predictions I would have selected Ricco (no, really, I would have) as the finished really, really suited his riding style. Today is a very different stage even though the number of climbs and amount of climbing is about the same. The climbs come earlier and there's no really chance for the GC guys to put time into their rivals without expending way too much energy. The climbs are hard enough to crack the sprinters (or at least most of them) so I don't see them playing too much of a role. So that leaves the rolleurs to fight out a win. Jens Voigt is the typical rider of this sort and he's been talking like he wants to go off on a big break. George Hincapie would be another good choice here except that his team has the yellow jersey so he'll be protecting that. The Garmin-Chipotle team has been pretty aggressive in the race to date, though they don't have a big result to show for it. That means that Millar might try something. The trouble is that he's still close enough to Kirchen's GC time to really be allowed to get away. Really a hard race to predict today but I foresee a group of 30-40 coming to the line together and the best sprinter of the group getting the win. That could be Hincapie if he's allowed to ride. Another person might be Fillippo Pelazatto. Finally, Valverde might be a good enough sprinter to take this out.

The one thing I would say is that yesterday showed that if the main contenders can't do something really quick to put Cadel Evans in some real difficulty the Tour is already over. Evans was right with the three best finishers yesterday and he put another small amount of time into Menchov and Sastre. Cunego cracked a bit and Dessel was nowhere to be seen (so much for my dark horse). None of these guys are going to ride the final time trial at a pace that'll rival Evans so they have to get time on the mountains and they aren't really showing that they can do that early on here. Evans' biggest rival might turn out to be present yellow jersey wearer Kim Kirchen who put in a great time trial and who held his own on the climbs yesterday (even though he lost a bit of time). The next big stages are going to take place Sunday and Monday and we'll have a much better feel then as to how this race will shake out.

Thanks for reading.

Tellin' it like it is

2008-07-10T00:12:00.001-04:00

Okay…so I see a lot of people’s facebook and MySpace pages. I like to check out profiles because I love to see the diversity of human expression and experience. But there’s one thing I have to rant about. On a lot of people’s pages, when they list their religious views, there is some statement like, “Christ Follower” or “Follower of Christ” or some such. I have to say something about that.

I have no problem if someone is a Christ Follower. Not a bad guy to follow if you ask me. Talked a lot of about love and peace and sacrifice and living in community. Inspired a bunch of people to think about life very differently. Ghandi once said that Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” was the greatest piece of wisdom literature human beings have ever produced (except human beings didn’t produce it…but more on that in a bit). Following that can’t be a bad thing. Not at all. The problem I have is that for most of these people are either more or less than Jesus followers. What do I mean?

A lot people who call themselves Jesus Followers actually hold views that make them Christians. What makes a person a Christian? Well, more than just “following” Jesus and His teachings. Actually, I personally know that most of these people hold to the following beliefs (along with a few others):

That Jesus is the second Person of the Trinity, eternally and equally coexisting with God the Father and God the Son.

The Jesus is fully divine and, in some mysterious way, became fully human at certain points in history.

That Jesus was born of a virgin, was fully human and lived a life that was still in full communion, without rebellion or sin, with the rest of the Trinity.

That Jesus was crucified outside of Jerusalem, died, was buried in a tomb of a rich man and then rose again on the third day from death.

That through this death, burial and resurrection Jesus conquered sin and death to allow for the possibility of the world to be restored to a full and right relationship with God.

That all humans have access to the hope of this redemption through a life offered in faith and submission to the will of the Father as found in the teachings of Christ.

That Christ will return in glory to call those who have made this choice to live in an eternal communion of love with the Trinity.

This is a lot more than being a “Christ-Follower”. This means that you’re a Christian. You see, Thomas Jefferson and Isaac Newton both called themselves “Christ-Followers” and yet rejected several of the articles of faith described above. Jefferson even altered the Bible to fit his definition of being a “Christ-Follower” much like Marcion did in the 2nd century. The Arians and countless other groups called themselves Christ followers and rejected elements of the above statements. May, many people around the world (I mentioned Ghandi above) read, appreciate and try to follow the instruction of Jesus as if were merely some sort of wisdom guru without believing He was or did any of the things above.

So why do so many young people today not want to be called Christians? They’re embarrassed by it…by the religion. They view it as hypocritical or as having a negative stigma in today’s culture. Well, guess what? Calling yourself a Christ-Follower and then still living judgmentally and exclusively still means you’re a hypocrite and people see that. “Rebranding” your version of the faith isn’t going to change that. Beyond that, I think most college students are savvy enough to see through your semantical slight-of-hand and just view it as another cynical attempt to market another crap ideaology that excludes some group outside the clan in order to make those inside the clan feel superior or “holy”.

Have the integrity to accept the label that comes with your beliefs, the things you put your faith in. Accept that a lot of people have done bad things in the name of your faith and feel sorrow for that. Remember that the term Christian was given to those who chose to express their faith in first century Antioch as a term of ridicule and derision. It was a term that would be used in that way throughout the Roman Empire for three centuries while the church was growing and serving and sacrificing to redeem the world. Understand that the name of Christ won’t be redeemed through rebranding but through actually living the way He asked us to and that when we do, the tem Christian becomes one of affection for us and glory for Christ.

If you want to use the term Christ Follower or whatever, fine but don’t lie. If you’re a Christian, stand up and be counted.

Accept the burden.

And yeah, I’m talking to you.

I See Dead People

2008-07-08T22:22:00.003-04:00

Tuesday Night Worlds down in TarMac tonight...the "Pain Train"...and I signed up for an "A Class" ticket. I don't know if I'm just still coming off the week off or if things were really hard tonight but I feel like I just got taken out back, put in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds (bonus Gold Star to the first person who gets the movie reference). At one point I was going so hard I'm sure I saw dead people (and they weren't the other guys suffering when my Security Bank teammates decided to make everything hard). Michael Barry, pro cyclist and NEw York Times columnist wrote recently that he had a team manager that told him to ride "until he saw Jesus." I spoke with the Lord tonight and He told me that suffering was good for me. Then I spent the next hour trying to convince my body not to void the contents of my stomach and simultaneously to chase down the paceline that had just gapped me. At one point I thought I had sort of gotten back on top of my body and then Jake went hard and I was blown to smithereens. After that I rode hard tempo until my front tire mercifully decided to die a slow, hissing death and I was able to soft pedal that last few mies in. Since the ride, I've just a little nauseated and light headed. I hope I do better next week.

The Tour today continued it's somewhat unpredictable ways with two surprises in first and second place with Stephan Schumacher taking out the win and Kim Kirchen just beating David Millar for second. The biggest surprise was Alejandro Valverde losing a over a minute to Cadel Evans. I'm not sure if this is the beginning of the end for Valverde or if he'll get to recover a bit tomorrow, make a showing in the medium hilly stages later in the week and then blow up. Either way, Evans now has about a minute on all of his pre-race rivals but it seems that he now has a few more wild card/dark horse candidates to contend with. Kirchen shouldn't be a huge surprise given that he rode well for much of the Tour de Swiss before blowing up in the race's mountain time trial. He could well be a thorn in Evans' side for the rest of the race and right now he has a twelve second lead over the race favorite. American Christian Vandevelde also rode well today and if he can do well in the mountains is positioned for a top ten finish in this year's Tour and a huge statement from the Garmin-Chipotle team.

Tomorrow is a regular sprint stage and I don't expect the sprinters to make the same mistake twice. Expect Credit Agricole, Quick-Step and the other sprint teams to keep the break close until the finale. If Cavendish can get in the right place he'll take the day and Team Columbia (of which he is a part) seems to be the best team in terms of organization right now so I expect they'll do everything they can in the last 20 km to keep Kirchen up near the front out of trouble and to set Cavendish up for the win.

More to Come. I'm off to see if I can't get to feeling better.

Breakaway

2008-07-08T08:06:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was a perfect example of what make the Tour the most compelling sporting event in the world. Beyond the doping and the interorganizational politics and strife you have the riders and the race and they took center stage yesterday. Four riders, including American Will Frisckorn, took off at the gun and the main bunch never saw them again. It almost never works; the long flyer, but yester day it did. I spent the last hour of the race urging the four riders to push through the pain and they did. It was wonderful.

We also saw the capricious nature of the Tour as a rider crashed on the run-in to Nantes and split the field. Behind the split was GC contender Denis Menchov who ended up losing 40 seconds to Evans and Valverde on the stage. That could be the race for him. He wasn't paying attention and ended up, along with Ricardo Ricco, being in the wrong place at the wrong time and his team couldn't pull him back into the fold. So now it looks like it's a four man race between the two already mentioned and Sastre and Cunego.

Today is the first individual time trial with the yellow jersey on the line (assuming yesterday's yellow jersey winner doesn't become superhuman). I see this being between Valverde, Evans, Cancellara and David Miller. If Valverde's form holds, he should win this today but MIller's been targeting this all year and Cancellara is the master of this discipline. They'll all be in the top ten but I'm going with Cacellara on this one. I don't think he'll take the jersey back (he'd have to beat the present yellow jersey winner by over two minutes) but he'll get the win. For the GC guys (Cancellara can't climb) it'll be Valverde, Evans, Menchov, Cunego and Sastre in that order. Two other riders to look for will be George Hincapie and Christian Vandevelde who may end up in the top three today with an inspired ride.

It should be fun but not as fun as yesterday was.

Thanks for Reading

Thunder

2008-07-06T21:56:00.002-04:00

Well, I was wrong about the winner of stage 2 of the Tour as Norwegian Thor Husshovd won his first stage of this year's Tour and his sixth stage in the eight years he's been coming to the event. What is interesting is that my reasoning was good in that I thought that the dynamics of yesterday's race would repeat themselves to some degree. Cancellara took a big flyer that might have succeeded had there been a bit less wind and the stronger sprinters did do better than the pure sprinters as both Zabel and Freire were both near the front at the end. The surprising thing to me was that Kim Kirchen was once again in the top five of the stage. It makes me wonder if he's planning to try and win the Green Jersey that he took over today. He's good enough to do well on the medium mountain stages that'll come up a little later in the week. I'll be the first time that someone who wasn't a sprinter has won the Maillot Vert since Laurent Jalabert did back in the late nineties. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

For tomorrow we have a much more typical sprinter's stage with a flat finish and no climbs along the route. That means that the pure sprinters will come forward to contest things along with the power sprinters. This is the stage for the likes of Mark Cavendish and Robbie McEwen and, if things work out well for him, my boy Oscar Freire. For my money, the interesting clash here will be between the big egos of McEwen and Cavendish. For sporting reasons I want to see a clean finish between these two but there's a part of me that'd like to see these guys throw a few elbows in the sprint just to read the copy that'll get generated. In terms of real analysis, Cavendish has the better lead out train with American George Hincapie and German rider Gerald Ciolek there to deliver him to the line but McEwen has shown time and time again that he doesn't really need a train as he can get on others' wheels to get him close to the finish line. McEwen won a bunch of stages at the Tour of Switzerland so he's definitely ready to go but Cavendish is rumored to be leaving the race when it hits the mountains so he's motivated to get his wins now. I see Cavendish winning this but if he and McEwen spend too much time looking at each other I see Freire stealing this win.

On a personal note, today was my first day back from my week-long break. I did fifty miles for mostly flat terrain with a few hard efforts to see how the legs felt. I was good for the first 90 minutes and then things sort of fell off after that which was to be expected. The nice thing is that I've had good energy for the rest of the day and I've gotten a lot done around the house. Tomorrow will be a combination of time on the TT bike and then some recovery on the road bike. My goal is to do 50-60 miles per day for the next two weeks before I head out to Salt Lake City for some family time and a recovery week. I think this'll deliver me in the best condition to the Elberton Georgia Cup weekend in early August.

Got to get to bed so I'll sign off now but we'll see who has the legs tomorrow.

Thanks for Reading.

Quick Pick

2008-07-06T07:30:00.003-04:00

For the second stage of ths year's Tour, we get more of the first stage but not quite as much. More rollers and another uphill finish but this time the last km is mainly flat after a climb so I see this being more for the sprinters who can stay with the hard men of the Tour. Yesterday, Oscar Freire was in the top ten and I see him pulling out the win today. Valverde will hang with the group he's in and remain in the leader's jersey for one more day.

More to Come.

Wow...I Got One Right!

2008-07-05T11:10:00.002-04:00

Valverde is the happiest man on the planet today. He gets the win with a final 200 m sprint to pass Kim Kirchen (who ended up fourth). This is basically what I expected though I didn't foresee Kirchen being up front to contest things. Also, the Tour has claimed it's first big name victim with Mauricio Soler crashing within the last 20 km and losing 3:10 to Valverde. That's most likely the end of his GC chances though the podium might not be out of the question. My guess is that he now shifts over to trying to win the Spotty Jersey full time as a consolation prize assuming that he didn't hurt anything too badly. Ricco took fifth right ahead of Evans and Frank Schlek with Cunego, Sastre and Menchov outside of the top ten. With no time bonuses for stage placings this year, Valverde didn't get any extra time on his rivals but we'll have to see if the ASO assigns time gaps. Now the Caisse d'Epargne boys have to protect the jersey. It'll be interesting to see if they decide to protect the jersey tomorrow and up through the time trial on stage four. To me this shows that Valverde is definitely on form right now which means that Alpe d'Huez may be his Waterloo in about two and a half weeks. For today however, "Chapeau!" to Valverde's great finish.

More to Come.

Another TdF-More Completely Inaccurate Predictions

2008-07-04T20:13:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow begins the 95th Tour de France and for about the fourth or fifth time I offer up my predictions as to who will win what. Before I go too far, there are a few things that should be noted.

First, I stink at predicting this sort of thing in general. Some of that is due to the unpredictable nature of bike racing and some is due to the fact that I never seem to have that important fact that'll change the race. Last year I had Levi on the podium but not Contador (of course, no one else did either).

Second, since bike racing in general and the Tour specifically is full of uncontrollable factors, chances are that some of my predictions will be wrong simply because someone gets taken out in a crash or a freak break succeeds and moves someone up in the standings. Add to that the freak things that happen like sprinters getting hit by big green hands and such and predicting can be pretty dodgy.

Finally, there's always a big contender who gets to the race and then disappoints due to bad form caused by overtraining or a bit of illness or something else. One year is was Christophe Moreau, another it was Casegrande. Will one of the big names have a bad race under the intense scrutiny of the media circus that is the Tour? Probably.

OK, enough hedging of the bets. Here's what I think:

Best Young Rider: This may be the most interesting competition of the entire race. None of these guys will win but they are the future of the race and I think the riders under 26 are particularly interesting. Tour winner Alberto Contador won this along with the Maillot Jaune last year. This year I like Giro de Italia runner-up Riccardo Ricco to win this competition though Trent Lowe with Garmin-Chipotle is who I'm rooting for.

Polka-Dot Jersey: The best climber competition is a bit of wild-card this year. The last several years this competition has been won by a rider who has specifically targeted it. Last year was a bit different as Mauricio Soler won it while riding for the GC on a wild breakaway. This year seems like it'll be more of the same. Most commentators are predicting the jersey will remain on Soler's back but I wonder if Bjarne Riis won't play the game of sending one of the triumverate of good riders, i.e.-one of the Schlek brothers, out on a flyer to shake up the GC and that rider gets an early advantage in the jersey. I really see this jersey going to a GC guy who gets lucky. Here again, Lowe may have a chance if he decides not to worry too much about the young rider competition. The guy who I think would be the best rider to work for this thing would be Moreau who is riding in what has to be one of his final Tours. He's never finished better than fourth and he's not going to do that well this year so I think retiring with having won a jersey would be a good way for him to go out. If I have to pick a person I'm going to with Andy Schlek due to a long breakaway in one of the early mountain stages.

Best Sprinter: for the green jersey, I see this being a race between three guys: Thor Husshovd, Robbie McEwen and Oscar Freire. Oscar's the best sprinter of the three but he has durability problems. I'd like to see him win the jersey to go with his multiple world championship jerseys but I don't see him making it to the end fo the race. That leaves a epic battle between Husshovd and McEwen. If Robbie can race clean and not get relegated for head-butting someone during a sprint, he's going to be a factor. Still, there are fewer true sprinter stages early in the race as the first two flat stages have ugly little climbs at the end that will be to Thor's advantage. I'm picking Husshovd to win the whole thing but it'll be dicey early on. I don't see Zabel doing much though he'll finish in the top five as will GC contender Alejandro Valverde.

For all the marbles the big contenders are Cadel Evans, Alejandro Valverde and Carlos Sastre with Damiano Cunego and Denis Menchov being the outside contenders. I see Evans being the favorite though he won't set the race on fire. He'll ride very conservatively, hang on in the mountains and take time out of the real climbers in the time trial. The other guy who can do that is Denis Menchov but Menchov climbs better though he's not as good a rider against the clock. The guy who seems to have the whole package is Valverde but I think he's peaked too early. Valverde is coming off a victory in the Dauphine and his national championship but that means he may have peaked too early. Maybe he can dial it back for the first week but after reading some comments, I think he has it in mind to win the first stage and to take the yellow jersey which is a bad call in my mind. He does have one of the strongest teams as does the always reliable Sastre. So what's the top five? I've got the following:

Evans
Menchov
Sastre
Cunego
Dessel

No Valverde? Nope. I think he's a huge deal in the first week and then the wheels come off the train and he fades to a finish somewhere between 8 and 10. I also like Cyril Dessel a lot. He rode a great race back in 2006 and I think he's back after a bad year. He'll be the best placed French rider and he'll have the morale of an entire nation pushing him forward. THe French haven't had much to cheer for in terms of GC since 1999 and I think this will be a good year for them.

Finally, who's going to win stage one? For the first time in a long, long time there's no prologue to start the Tour. I think it's a bad thing but it does make the early race more unpredictable. The stage is somewhat flat but there are some rolling hills and four catagorized climbs. The biggest factor is a steep climb right at the end. For the sprinters this favors Husshovd and Freire over McEwen and newcomer Mark Cavendish. However, I think that one of the GC guys is going to come away with this and a few seconds to boot. Valverde has made noise that he wants to win the first stage and he's not bad at a sprint. Neither is Riccardo Ricco who is at the Tour for the first time. Finally, Fabian Cancellara won two stages like this at the end of the Dauphine so he's been practicing. Here's how the stage plays out. You'll have a break made up of a couple of French riders from the Breton region who will be seeking a little local glory. I know that if the Tour went through my home region and I had even a chance of taking the jersey on a wild flyer I'd do it and the Breton guys all grew up wanting to the be just like Brenton's most famous rider, "The Badger", Bernard Hinualt (who incidentally is the person who presents the Yellow Jersey at the end of every stage). The sprinter's teams, especially Credit Agricole, won't want to let a stage victory get away so the Thor boys will bring it back together hoping their man can pull a rabbit out of the hat. Unfortunately, he won't have it at the very end and Valverde will pull it out to take the jersey.

One caveat. This is a more wide open Tour than we've seen in the last few years. I believe that it's entirely possible that we'll have a break in the first couple of days and everybody will be looking at everyone else to do the work and the break might get 10 or 15 minutes and then things will get really interesting as one of these Breton guys will be strong enough to hang on through the first several stages, the early, short time trial and the medium mountain stages of the Massif Central. Then we'll see if all of the sudden everyone gets really nervous. Don't be too surprised of either Jens Voigt or Stuart O'Grady isn't the early instigator of this break.

We find out the first part of the puzzle tomorrow.

Allez!

A Beautiful Day

2008-07-01T12:16:00.002-04:00

Doesn't it just figure. I decide that it's time to take a week off the bike and Mother Nature decides to give us here in Georgia what may be the prettiest week in late June/early July we've had in a number of years. Right now the temperature at noon on the back porch of my home (where I'm writing this from) is a lovely 76 degrees with a nice little breeze stirring the trees. It's about as perfect a day for a bike ride as you can imagine and I'm off the bike for the week. Maybe that's the point. With the weather so perfect, I can enjoy the day a bit and not rush from thing to thing on a schedule compressed by the need to get a training ride in.

Lunch was some homemade bruschetta and a glass of pinot gris with my wife and some Spanish flavored guitar via the iPod and our little Atlec speakers. This after some morning gardening and reading. I need a day like this. Nothing pressing weighing on me and a few minutes to just enjoy breathing and thinking and good food. The book I'm reading, "Faust in Copenhagen," continues to be excellent and makes me think that perhaps I should try and get a copy of Goethe's play. I'm not much on fiction any longer. I find that narratives involving real people's lives and real historical events are generally much more interesting and compelling than much of what is found in fiction but I do know that Goethe was among the greatest of all European thinkers and was, perhaps, the last of the renaissance men who I aspire to be somewhat like so perhaps reading some of his work is in order.

Of course, the difficulty is how do I fit him into all of the other things I want and need to read? It's a good problem to have...more reading than time but I still get frustrated at times.

Anyways, enough writing on such a perfect day. Summer will soon return here in Georgia and with it the heat and humidity so I'll sign off and move to things better suited to this day. More to come.

Thanks for Reading.

Cycling is a Fickle Mistress

2008-06-30T08:21:00.002-04:00

So this weekend was the Georgia Cup series' Rome Weekend. The format of the weekend was a bit different with it being a Omnium (based on points earned with each stage placing a rider earns rather than being based on time as a stage race is) and having a team time trial instead of an individual time trial. Followed by a crit with a BIG climb (at least for a crit) and then a road race with the biggest climb we've done all year. While the event was generally well organized you could tell that both the peloton and the promoters are beginning to suffer fatigue. The field sizes were smaller in all the classes except cat 2/3 and things were a bit more shoestring than they have been.

For me it was a very disappointing weekend in several different ways. Probably the most frustrating thing was that I flatted about 2 miles into the team time trial after hitting a small but deep pothole while riding third in line. I kept from crashing and from crashing any teammates by not swerving to miss the obstacle but....argh... I was just getting the diesel that is my body up to speed after a good first pull and was about to be on the front to push us down the road at the high speed. We had our two minute team just in sight and I was looking forward to using them as a carrot to chase down. Then...bam! and pssssttt... and my race was over.

The thing that was worse though I didn't know it at the time was that after the race and when I cooled down, I felt terrible. I was exhausted and just a bit nauseated. I figured it was a product of a bad night's sleep so after eating, which didn't make me feel much better, I took a nap and headed out to the crit. I was a warm day and the course was as hard a crit course as I had done. I went out for a few warm-up laps and when I got done my legs were shaking and I wanted to be ill. I knew what was going on. The tank was empty. I was overtrained and in a bad way. The crit, as you might expect, went poorly.

For the road race, I decided to play a team role. I knew I wasn't going to make it over the climb with the lead group like my two teammates Robert and Bill so I decided to work hard to keep things together. Surprisingly, I didn't feel totally crappy once we got rolling (the warm-up was another matter) and so I went to the front of the group, blocked wind for my team mates and chased down the two or three breaks that tried to get off the front that looked dangerous. Once I got to the climb, my bad form and terrible gearing choice (don't take a 42/23 up a steep climb-what a rookie mistake) had me go off the back first. My ability to set a pace and hold it and high FTP (functional threshold power) had me pass about a third of the field on the way up. I'm pretty sure that if I'd had a 39/25 on the bike (I was riding the equivalent of a 39/21) and if I'd had the form I had had at the beginning of my two-a-days weeks I would have made it over the climb with the front group and finished top 15 on the second round, even as a fat guy.

So, a disappointing weekend for both me and the team but that happens in bike racing. It's like the song, "That's Life". One month you're on top of the peloton and cruising and the next you're suffering on the back. My mistake was not taking a full week completely off the bike after Union City. I should have known I was done. Instead, I took a recovery week and then did those two-a-days and dug myself a deep hole. So this week is off the bike week. I won't touch the thing except maybe to do a group ride in Macon either Tuesday or Thursday (I'm leaning towards the later). Then it'll be on to the last part of the season. The interesting thing is that most of my goals are finished and met. There's the state team time trial championship which I may or may not race depending on team decisions (we have more riders in our group than the competition allows so I'm the team's associate member so I can understand getting left home) and there may or may not be a individual time trial championship (there's not one on the schedule yet). Those are my last two goals for the season and I'll work hard to do well on those.

Long term I have a series of goals I have to work towards to get set up for next year. I really need to add to my ability to attack and respond to attacks explosively. I'll never cat up if I can't get some top five placings in mass start races and that'll never happen if I don't develop about 200 more watts of power for short efforts. Second is to lose weight. If I can get down to 155 lbs I think I'll be a real force to reckon with on climbs and rolling TTs. I feel like I'm in the place I was the year before I went to Nationals. If I was racing Cat V I would be winning but I need to move into the fours. My power numbers tell me I'm a five when it comes to explosive power and a three when it comes to time trialing. I need to step up a notch and get better. I have the support system finally with a good team that I can race for and who will race for me so now I need to work out my six month goals. One thing I'm pretty sure will happen is that I'll get a coach for next season. I'm gathering names and soon I'll start some kind of interview/evaluation process to determine what's going to work best.

For this week it's gardening, working on my on-line course, resting and a few other projects I have in mind. One big thing I plan on doing it reading a bunch. Right now I'm going through a book titled, "Faust in Copenhagen" about the 1932 conference at the Bohr Institute that'll decide the future of physics and it's relationship with the mostly finished work on Quantum Mechanics. I'm only 70 pages in but it's a wonderfully written story. What gives the narrative much of it's power is the understanding that the conference is taking place only months before Hitler will become Chancellor in Germany. I'll try to blog a couple more times and maybe even some of what I write will be about topics other than cycling.

Have a great week and thanks for reading.

Analysis

2008-06-23T04:49:00.002-04:00

As I finish a two week training block, I thought I'd make a few observations about what I learned:

First, I hate two-a-days. Near the end of the block I felt like I was tired and dragging the entire time. I think a lot of that has to do with the intensity of the rides. Since I was going a shorter time, I could go a lot harder but that meant I accumulated more training stress in a shorter period of time.

Second, the TT training I did really, really helped. Each ride I dropped my average watts per mile per hour meaning it took less power to go a certain speed. I attribute this to two things. One is that my body started to adapt to the TT position and did a better job of utilizing the muscles used in the position; namely my hip flexors. Another is that I started to really get my position good and low. The interesting bit is that it seems to take me about 30 minutes of warm up before I can get down that low so that may mean I need to rethink my warm-up for races. Still, at the Thursday night TTT practice I seemed to be able to get down lower than anyone else aerowise, at least looking at our shadows during a couple of the really smooth efforts.

Third, I have absolutely no high end right now. I can really motor for 10-20 minute efforts but ask me to go for 20 seconds and I get dropped every time. This is why I can't win anything other than a TT right now and it's not something I'll fix soon. It's an area I need to work on specifically for the next six months through the end of this season and into the beginning of the next. What that means for riding with the team is that I need to offer myself up as the team diesel to pull for long periods of time as a guy who can work in breaks or as a guy who can pull them back. It also means that I'm the ideal team mate for the TTT.

Fourth, doing the two-a-days really killed my ability to go longer by the end of the block. Sunday, after returning from my Alabama trip this weekend, I tried to go out and do a 50 mile ride. The interesting thing is that I did great for the first hour and then sort of sucked after that. It tells me that I need those longer rides.

So, what's up next? This week I taper into the Rome Georgia Cup event. Easyish rides and lots of rest. My long days of teaching have come to an end so if I can get my body to let me sleep, I should be able to rest up and be ready. We've got a TTT and a road race with a long climb that might actually suit me a little bit. I'm looking forward to racing when I'm not tired and worn out. After that there's a 40 k TT in Alabama I'd like to do in a couple of weeks as a fitness test to get ready for the state championship TTT and a possible state championship TT a little bit later down the road.

Tomorrow is the final for my astro class and a team photo op and then Tuesday's the set up for my second session on-line course. I'm busier than I'd like to be but that'll pass soon I think.

Thanks for reading.

No Money Shot

2008-06-15T20:38:00.006-04:00

This weekend was a ride-fest. On Saturday I rode out and met with my mates from the Security Bank team for what turned out to be a one hundred mile training ride. I got to ride a couple of roads that I hadn't ever seen due to thinking they were dirt when in fact they were paved. I also got to tear my legs up for what ended up being a ride filled with harder than expected interval efforts since the cat 3 guys went up the hills faster than us cat 4 guys were used to. Hard on the legs but good for improvement.

For me, the ride ended up down in Macon where I met my wife. As is our custom we went to the most excellent Ingleside Village Pizza. I think there is something inside of me that believes that I'm not really worthy of IVP's wonderful pie because the only time I ever seem to eat it is after I've suffered for four or five hours on the bike. And you know what? It's so worth every mile of hanging on to Stoney's rear wheel while he exorcizes his inner demons by crushing them beneath his thundering pedal strokes (all I know is that Doug said that we were going to do a paceline where we were all going to take minute or so pulls and pretty soon Stoney's hammering along at 31 mph for four minutes at a time...I figure it's gotta be demons...).

Today was something between a tempo ride and a tour. I had set out to take some pictures of a couple of local warm springs near a route I usually due for harder efforts with some climbing intervals. I was hoping to get a shot of an old polio resort from the 40's or 50's. Back then, before there was a vaccine found for the scourge of polio, victims believed that soaking in mineral warm springs had a recuperative effect on arms and legs withered by the disease. FDR picked the appropriately named Warm Springs, GA as the place for his therapy and soon there were little places through the area. One place that I knew of was a small resort north of Thomaston in a place called either Lifsey or Lifsey Springs depending on the year of map you look at. I knew there had been something of a resort at one time that had tried to transition into a place to take your family for a day of picnicking and fun at the pool after the vaccine made polio something of a thing of the past . I was hoping to get a shot of an old sign or something cool near the now empty public swimming pool or at least a look at the spring itself.

My first stop was at a different spring a map had mentioned called Wellingham Springs along a ridgeline connected to Hagan's Mountain (or King's Mountain or Indian Grave Mountain). I found the spring and while it has a pleasant natural pool, there was no old buildings or the like mainly due to the fact that the water temp couldn't have been more than 70 degrees. Not a warm spring and not a cold spring. Still, it was a lovely place whose pool looked like it had been formed when the spring's channel had been dammed by a rail cut. After taking a couple of shots, I headed over to Lifsey by taking an old shake and bake road that I've always avoided (I was feeling adventurous). I got to the old resort and was shocked by how much of it had completely fallen apart since I had last looked it over about six or seven years ago. The public pool was still there but all of the bath houses and such were fallen down and almost completely overgrown. Hard to get a good shot. What was even more odd was that I couldn't get a good sense of where the spring actually was. My research had indicated that it was supposed to have a temperature of around 78 degrees and a higher mineral content and I was hoping that I might be able to stick my hand in the water. After some searching around and following some trails (in my cycling shoes...that's a lot of fun) I found both another pool sort of thing that had water in it that was covered with algae and a large and long trench or channel of some sort that I was unable to find either end of. The pool was surrounded by a rusting chest-high chain link fence so I didn't really want to try to negotiate it. While I'm not sure what either of these were, I have an idea that the algae covered pool is the old warm spring pool that was probably either built on or near the spring. It wasn't like your normal public pool with a poured concrete side and bottom but was formed instead with several concrete slabs that looked like they'd been placed in the hole to form something more palatable to sit on that the dirt basin the spring had carved out. It was hard to tell for sure and I wasn't in a good position to do much exploring in my duck shoes and spandex and lycra (and the aforementioned fence). My plan is to head back when I have some time in late June or early July with good, solid boots and long legged pants to do some trudging around to see what I can discover. If anyone has any info on the town of Lifsey or the spring, feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you know.

On the way home, I did get the picture with the old ladies' bike that you see here. I sort of stopped on a whim in front of a house along the route on the way home and took the shot and I just liked the way it turned out. I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for Reading.

Two-A-Days

2008-06-13T17:45:00.002-04:00

This week has been the first of two weeks of two-a-days on the bike. I do this about once every year as a way to deal with the scheduling issues of teaching a summer class that goes into the afternoon and to practice for three race stage races that take place over the course of a single weekend. I'm doing hour long time trial rides in the mornings and then some sort of interval workout in the afternoon or evening. The big thing is that since I'm only riding an hour at a time, I tend to ask my body to go harder during that time with less warm-up. It's pretty intense but it also will mean that I'll bounce back better after a morning TT at a Georgia Cup race in terms of recovering for the criterium that usually happens a little later in the afternoon.

The most interesting part of this has been looking at my power numbers over the course of the week during my time trial workouts. I haven't been as diligent as I'd like working on my new TT position due to trying to get fitness back on the regular road bike. As I've ridden the TT bike I've noticed that I'm feeling more and more comfortable in the new position which is lower and more aggressive than what I was riding at the beginning of the year. This perception seems to be borne out by my watts per MPH numbers. As the week has progressed I've seen the number of watts to go a certain speed drop by about 2.8%. Next week will let me know if the trend continues but 3% translates into about 10 more watts which means a difference of about 1 mph at a pace of 22.5 mph or probably 0.5 mph at a race pace of around 27 mph. That's about 4 seconds per mile or a minute and a half over a 40 km effort. That's a lot and I don't know if the numbers will scale quite that way. Still, I feel a lot more comfortable in the position right now and I'm really hoping that I can realize a 5% improvement once I settle into the position as it now. That's as much as a deep section front wheel or a good skinsuit so it's definitely worth spending time on for the upcoming team time trials and the state championship down the road.

In time, I'd like to get a bit more aggressive with my position by making it lower. At this point that'll take a new bar. There are also some other tricks I've learned about that'll get me a little more speed but the thing I'll need to focus on is what always wins time trails everything else being equal: producing more power for 30-60 minutes. I don't know what my numbers used to be but I feel like I don't produce the power I used to. I'm getting close but I'm not quite there. One more season of training and real focus and I'm confident I can get back.

This weekend will be a team ride on Saturday and a ride out to an old warm springs resort to see if I can get some good pictures of a by-gone era when little resorts dotted the Central Georgia countryside catering to local vacationers and Polio victims. Hopefully there's enough left of the old Lifsey and Wellingham Springs sites to get some cool shots.

Thanks for Reading.

A Week in the Life

2008-06-08T07:22:00.003-04:00

Well, it's been a week since I last posted and life has sort of returned to something more normal. There's been no racing, no pinning on numbers, no loading and unloading the car with the odds and ends that go with warming up and providing shelter and all the rest. Instead, this week has been filled with school, rest and chores. That's not to say that there's been no riding. I've done my planned recovery rides and yesterday I participated in the Jordon's annual BBQ and Bass ride. Robert's one of my teammates and he and his wife have a nice route out near their home in Monticello that they invite everyone to ride once a year. There's a rest stop at about 32 miles for beer (hence the Bass) and another at 65 for some BBQ and some more Bass. We finish at 75 miles miles with a final Bass or two for a day's worth of good riding and conversation and goofing off. There were a couple of hard efforts, especially when 50+ year old Bill and Ron decided to make things hard for former pro rider Chad Madan and our Team Director, Eddie after a water stop. The real enemy though was the heat. The temps were in the upper nineties by the end of the ride and that made the ride pretty hard, especially after the BBQ. Still, I had a great time and kind of wish we had a few more rides like that over the course of the year. Training is great but I think doing something like this is really good for the head and the morale.

We're back at it for summer school. I usually teach the System's Solar System Astronomy course first session and this week has been the week we start with having both lecture and lab days. That means that on Monday, Wednesday and Friday we go for five hours. Makes for some long days, especially if your body wants nothing more than a nap and a chance to recover. Still, it's fun to teach some of the naked eye astronomy stuff and my class is only 17 students which makes it a little more manageable to handle the grading load for the course.

This weekend's big project is to deal with the growing bat problem we have. Our house's eaves aren't completely sealed up and so as the neighbors have been driving the bats out of their homes, they've taken up residence here. We should have done more last year but with all of the stuff I had going on it was one of those things that slipped through the cracks. This year, as the smell has gotten worse, I've recommitted myself to doing something. Now that racing is over for a while, I started to make progress this weekend towards driving them out. Hopefully the smell of mothballs will be offensive enough to convince them to look for other haunts. I've placed them in places that will allow the fumes to go right into where they are nesting and I'm hoping today's 97+ temps will accelerate the process. We'll see because I'm not sure what to do beyond that.

The other thing that's wrapping up is my teaching at the local technical college. I decided two quarters ago that I really needed a break from the course and the students. I like the extra money but I'm getting tired of the attitude many of the students have that they should be told what to memorize, regurgitate and forget in order to be successful. It takes a toll on an instructor in a general core course when students only care about their grades. Well, the Tech College needed the course taught this semester for students trying to get into the very popular respiratory therapy program so I agreed to do it but I'm ready to be done. This Tuesday will be the final for that course and then I'll get about three months off. I'll miss the bump to my bank account but I'll appreciate having the one night a week back and the break from the attitudes of some of the students.

So, it's off to do some chores and to stock up the pantry for the coming week. Have a great week yourself and I'll check back in soon.

Thanks for Reading.

Union City Mayor's Race-3rd Place Overall

2008-06-01T18:17:00.003-04:00

This weekend was the Union City Mayor's Race. The municipality of Union City is one the southwest corner of Atlanta and has, for the last several years, hosted a two day, three stage race as a way to show off the area and support the sport of cycling. This event has historically been pretty good to me so even though I had just finished a hard long weekend racing the Tour of Atlanta, I decided to do the entire thing.

The stages consisted of a rolling 10 mile individual time trial, a long criterium and this year's edition of the Georgia State Road Race Championship. This combination made for an interesting group of racers at the event. The three stages were scored as a stage race as well as individual events based on overall time. Since many racers in the area opted to focus on the road race at a mostly vain chance at the state championship jersey, there were only about 35 of us vying for the overall stage race victoy as you have to do all three stages to qualify.

I did OK on the opening TT with a five place finish which, once the one stage guys were removed, placed me fifth in the overall. My lead over the fourth place rider was huge so all I had to do was finish with the pack and I couldn't lose any places. The guy who won the TT didn't race the ToA so he was fresh and thus he crushed the rest of us in the TT so there was no way for me to catch him. So the other two stages where protecting a place but also trying to see if I could ride aggressively.

The crit was at 5 pm in the afternoon on the same day as the TT as the weather was super hot and windy. IT made for a sufferfest riding around the access roads of the local mall there in Union City. I had decided to ride hard to see if I could get a break together and had talked with a couple of other guys about joining me to see if we could do something. The problem I have in these races is that no one will let me get a big gap because they know that I'm a pretty good time trialist. What I was hoping is that if I got a couple of other teams' riders with me, maybe they wouldn't chase. When I went, I got a great jump but no one came with me so after a lap and a half, I was reabsorbed into the group and spend the rest of the race riding around at the back of the group for a pack finish.

For today's road race we had a full 75 rider field. Almost none of the guys racing had a chance at the jersey and it was pretty obvious that several of them had no idea what they were in for. The race was a 70 mile course over a moderately rolling course that wasn't very selective. My team had worked out a deal with a couple of other large teams to each put a rider in a breakaway and then not work any more to bring them back. The plan actually worked pretty well except that the leader of the overall wanted a shot at the jersey. He almost single-handedly brought the break back after it was away for 45 minutes. My team mate Bill C. was in the break and did a huge amount of work but it was pretty much for nothing in the end. Still, he raced to win instead of racing not to lose as did my teammate Robert (who won the ToA) in attacking the field six times. Everyone was happy to pull them back but no one was willing to risk going with them. In the end, the race came down to the expected sprint which left it to just a few guys who are genetically gifted with a lot of fast twitch muscles. The biggest stress for me was the crash early in the race that had the rear wheel of a bike bounce off my right shoulder. I stayed upright but it was a bit unnerving.

A couple of notes are in order here at the conclusion of this racing block. I can't begin to express how great it is to actually race with a team that cares how I do and remembers to include me in discussions. I've been racing for six years and this is the first time I felt like I had something to contribute to the team. I didn't do much this weekend but I received a call from a teammate after the crit to see if I had held onto third and telling me that the team would support my goal of finishing on the podium. Hanging around the Security Bank tent has been a great experience. Being included in the kidding around and teasing, getting the well-wishes of my team and congratulating my teammates when they have done well makes the racing so much sweeter. Related to that, a shout out to my teammate Trey who raced his first race back from a hip broken on a training ride and who hung with the first pack and motivated the race. Also, if I'm going to contend for anything this year, the races have to get harder. I don't have the top end to make an attack stick if the racing continues this way. I guess I'll focus on time trialing as best I can and starting training to create a 30 second and 1 minute burst that'll give me a way to separate from the pack on an attack and hang with the strongest riders when they go.

As for me, the racing schedule of the last eleven days finally caught up and I had no high end. I could motor at time trial pace for the whole race but I couldn't go with the really fast moves. I finished 30 seconds back from the main group but managed to hold my spot in the general classification and take 3rd in the race overall. So in the last eleven days I've stood on the podium twice in stage races, once for a TT and once for a Team TT. Not a bad couple of weeks. Now I get 4 weeks off to first recover and then train for the Rome Georgia Cup event. There's a team time trial there and hopefully we can go out and dominate that again and put in a good team performance in the races. Rome is hillier than almost any place we've been so maybe the racing will get a bit harder and the sprinters will be taken out of the equation.

For the next week, recovery rides. I'll download all of my favorite podcasts and spin around the area listening and maybe snapping a few more shots for you all.

Thanks for Reading.

Tour of Atlanta Redux

2008-05-30T13:53:00.002-04:00

Just a few final thoughts and impression from the Tour of Atlanta.

First, I'm surprised at how tired I feel during this week after the race has ended. I didn't ride on Tuesday and expected to feel OK on Wednesday. Not so much. I tried to do a TT interval workout and was good for about 75 minutes before my body and legs said no more. Tuesday night I couldn't sleep which was a sure sign of overtraining. I've never had that happen before. Every other time I've taken a day completely off, I've been able to come back and train pretty hard without becoming overtrained. Just goes to show you how deep we all went just to finish up the Tour. Last night I just did about 50 minutes of easy spinning and tonight will be about the same. Hopefully that'll get me back to a better equilibrium.

Second, I found out how important it is to sleep and take my vitamins while racing. I didn't do either very well before Saturday's two stage extravaganza and while I pulled my weight in the team time trial, I was cooked halfway through the road race. I spent the last 20 miles clinging to the back end of the race hoping none of my close rivals would launch a big attack or have their teams make the race hard. That night I went home, took a set of vitamins later in the evening and again in the morning and got about 9 hours of sleep in between. It made a world of difference.

Third, TTs and road races on the same day are really, really hard if you decide to drill the TT. I definitely prefer doing the TT and the crit on the same day. The crit's much shorter, and while it's more intense, I can do just about anything for 30 minutes if I need to.

Fourth, given my riding style and lack of explosive power, I need to roll the outside line in a crit. I can't afford to scrub a lot of speed taking a tighter inside line that I then have to power out of. Even though I have to cover a lot more ground going wide, I can hold speed and pick up pedaling again earlier. I also need to focus on being in a smaller gear as I come out of the corner and then shifting up quickly. Too many times I was in a big gear and lost a lot of ground getting up to speed. Given this, I now have to figure out how to move up on the outside after the turn.

Finally, I see why it's so important for pro teams to have helpers around for the riders. As I got more and more tired, it became more common to lose things and forget things. It would have been really nice to have had a team mechanic to give my bike the once over before each stage and a couple of folks to help with the set up and take down of tents and keeping thing straight. We race for a small amateur team so that'll never happen but it would have been cool.

So tomorrow and Sunday I race in the Union City Georgia Cup event. A much more manageable three stages in two days. I'm going to try to do well in the opening TT and then help teammates achieve their goals in the crit and road race. It's the State Championship so it'd be nice to pay back one of the guys who helped me out so much by giving him a nice new jersey to wear for the next year. This race will mean that I've done nine races in eleven days. It's a good thing I'll get about a three week break until the next races to recover and refocus my training. My big goals are coming up in late July and August and I want to be ready.

Thanks for Reading.

Tour of Atlanta-Part 2

2008-05-28T22:05:00.004-04:00

As you can tell from the image, I managed to hang onto my place in the overall classification in the Tour of Atlanta. My teammate Robert J. finished first giving us a 1-2 on the final podium after a final day that was marked by the hardest crit stage we had done combined with two crashes right in front of both of us both times. Even with those obstacles, we managed to hold our places and finish on the top two steps. It's a real accomplishment for both of us and I think we spend the next couple of hour reveling in the feeling and celebrating with, of all things, ice cream (because all the places that might sell beer were closed on a Memorial Day). I think that the food that racing cyclists love more than any other is ice cream. In part, that's because of the high water content but the main reason is because we deny ourselves ice cream all through our training season as we try to lose weight.

There are a few observations I would make about the race. First, you do get to know the riders who are racing against you and you feel for them when things go against them. Ben O. spent most of the race in 3rd place and lost in on the last day (like I did in Gainesville). He raced well but didn't quite have it for the power climb on the last stage's crit. The fourth place rider crashed out on the last stage and ended the race with road rash over most of his right hip and a detached rear derailleur. Bike racing is cruel sport. It giveth and it taketh away and that's a hard thing to watch and experience. For Robert this is a season making result and for Ben it's a bitter taste in the mouth and a sour feeling in the belly that either leads to the consumption of too much sour mash or stokes the fire that makes him more hungry and angry and driven to train and inflict his rage on those of us who are both fortunate and unfortunate enough to race with and against him in future races.

I like the guys I race with right now. to race with the Security bank team is a real honor. Todd W., Bill C. and Ronnie H all did a huge amount of work for Robert and I to make our effort in the first time trial stick. We would have been pack fodder without there work on our behalf. I won't speak for Robert but my 2nd place finish is as much there's as it is mine. I rode harder in the two crits because I didn't want to let them down. Todd came back in the last crit to shepherd me through a bad patch in the middle of the race. While I didn't run my power meter for any of the races, Robert told me that he held a higher average power through the last crit than in any of the other stages expect the TTs.

It wasn't just the guys on our team. A shout out to Isaac, Ronnie and Jeff on the Aaron's team, Ben and his crew on HDR/Cycleworks and Roland from the Antares Team out of Huntsville, AL who finished third in four different stages but didn't have a team for the TTT. We all finished all the stages and all managed to stay upright though the whole thing. While they didn't finish on the podium, they did finish the biggest amateur stage race in the United States and there's something to be said for that. I'm honored to have raced with all these guys and I remember their efforts for a long time. I'll post a wrap-up post on what it was like to race in something that big and that long soon but let's just say that on the last day we were all pretty tired and I can say that I was super nervous until the very last lap.

Thanks for Reading.

Tour of Atlanta-Part 1

2008-05-25T07:30:00.002-04:00

It's the Sunday morning of Memorial Day weekend and I have to say that I'm just about as exhausted as I can be. Since Thursday I've been racing in something called the Tour of Atlanta: seven stages in five days. So far we've done five races in the last three days and, depending on whether there was a timing error with one rider, I'm either in second or third overall. I'd really like to end up on the podium for this but we'll see how it goes. Right now, I'm just trying to hang on. I targeted the two stages I knew I'd do best at; the time trial and the team time trial. I took second to my teammate Robert on the TT by four seconds and our team won the TTT yesterday which has put us into a really good place. That was a big deal because it gives us some bragging rights here in the state. It was a shorter effort (only about 22 km) but we put a minute into the closest team and 90 seconds and 2 minutes into two of the big Atlanta teams that make a lot of noise at these races. Mixed in with those two stages have been a "sprint" stage which I did poorly in, a criterium where I lost a couple of seconds on the last lap and a 50 mile road race where I finished with the pack protecting my place in the overall classification.

While it's only been three days of racing, I already feel like my life is this little routine of travel, set-up, put on cycling clothes, warm-up up, race, warm down, eat and drink for recovery, take off cycling clothes, put stuff away, travel, sleep, get up, laundry, travel... You get the picture. For five days there will be no life outside of cycling. I have to say that while it's interesting it's not something I want to do at this age and stage in my life. When I was 25 and if I had someone to take care of all the non-cycling specific stuff and I had someone to massage my legs after each race I might be a lot happier but not now. I'm really ready to be done at this point. I feel like I need an entire day just to nap and eat and another day to get caught up on my household chores.

Today and tomorrow consist of crit races which I really hate. My goal is to stay out of trouble, keep the rubber side down and finish with the lead pack in each race. I'm hoping I can stay up with my teammates and use their physical presence to help me be more confident in my cornering so that I don't lose so many places every time we make a turn. When that happens I end up getting shuffled tot he back of the pack and I have to yo-yo on and off which is a lot harder way to race. The good thing is that the races will each only be about 35 minutes long and there is only one each day. Yesterday was by far the hardest day I've had racing in that I killed myself on the TTT with heavy legs, had about 90 minutes to rest and then had to go out and do a 50 mile road race. When we finished, I made the mistake of sitting down and almost couldn't get back up again. Somewhere along the line I've managed to strain a couple of intercostal muscles and so breathing is a little painful and twisting the wrong way can be difficult.

Anyways, enough complaining. I'm in the hunt for a podium spot as is my teammate in the biggest amateur stage race in Georgia so that's pretty cool. If we can just hang on we'll be standing on the biggest podium of our lives tomorrow in Buford. Wish us luck and pray that I keep the rubber side down. I'm off to start the process of getting things ready to travel up to Gainesville. The cycling continues...

Thanks for reading.

Big Climb

2008-05-16T21:37:00.002-04:00

Today was the climb up Mt. Pisgah on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I had decided that rain or shine I would do it today because I didn't want to deal with weekend traffic and I wanted to enjoy our last Saturday here with my wife without the stress of dealing with a route I'd never done and that might blow up my body. So I traveled out to the US 74-A access point and rode south to climb the mountain. After a 5 mile warm-up I hit the climb and for the next 75 minutes I pretty much sat at my FTP and pedaled. It was about the most perfect climb I've ever done. But first, let me give you my impressions of the Parkway.

While I certainly can't speak of the whole thing given I've only ridden about 30 miles of the 400+ miles of the limited access scenic route, I can say that it was about as close to cycling nirvana as something can get while still having to share the road with automobiles. The BRP is a scenic motorway which is sort of a cross between an interstate and a national park. It's two lane with no marked shoulder but speed limits are 45 mph or less. There is only limited access and the drivers, at least around here, seem to understand that it's was build for enjoyment and not fast, convenient transportation. No commercial traffic is allowed on the Parkway and it seems that every effort was made to preserve the natural environment through which the Parkway was built. I would love to come back and do a tour that did a lot more of the route sometime in the future.

So, why was the climb perfect? Well, there were four or five distinct parts to it; each separated with a short flat to downhill section that lasted about a minute or so. What that meant was that I would set my power output at 300 or so and go at whatever speed that allowed for about 15-20 minutes and then get a short break. Some of the sections were steeper and I averaged around 9 mph while others were a little shallower and I could average 11-12. Every mile or so I come around a corner or curve and get a look out over a vista of the valleys surrounding the Pisgah ridgeline as I ascended to give me something to look at. The steepest parts of the climb were at the beginning and near the end but I never felt like anything I did was as hard as the two climbs I did earlier in the week. While those climbs were a lot shorter (3-4 miles instead of 15 and 1000 ft of vertical climb instead of 3000) they required more power output. It was definitely a Rhythm climb which works really well for me. I think if I lived here in Asheville, I might be real inclined to do the climb once per week during training weeks when I wanted to focus on increasing my FTP or my time trialing ability. I certainly understand why US Master TT Champion Andy Applegate chooses to live here.

So, it was an epic ride for me as the climb was the longest I've ever done (double the length of Hogpen though not much different in terms of the vertical gain) but as I wrote last time, it's hard to translate my experience into words. I think the biggest thing that characterized the ride was perseverance. The climb wasn't brutal most of the time but it did require a solid, hard effort for a long time. Come to think of it, it was a bit like getting my Ph.D. Most of that effort didn't require brutal hours and crushing effort but I had to work pretty hard day in and day out to do my research and write my dissertation. I think a lot of life is like that: to accomplish something lasting there needs to be a pretty hard, pretty constant effort with a few breaks to rest during the work. If you go too hard, you get a lot done but you blow up too soon. If you look too much at the mountain of work to be done, you'll get overwhelmed. If you focus too much on the risks and obstacles, you'll get fearful. If you don't ration your energy, you won't have enough when the going gets really steep and you need to go harder for a short time. If you don't take a break every so often, you'll just plain run out of gas.

The thing is that this analogy seems to work really well when you have a simple life with a small set of tasks like climbing a mountain or doing your Ph.D. work but I'm not sure how it goes when applied to a richer or more complicated life. It's a lot harder to go steady when there are 10 or 15 things clamoring for your attention. The saying goes that it's better to do a few things really well than to do a lot of things so-so but that can be hard to do. I'm reading a biography of Richard Carrington. Carrington was a "gentleman scientist" in 19th century England who did astronomy with a focus on solar observing. His work was fantastic when that was about all he did, but once his father died and left him a business that he had to run to provide for his extended family the wheels sort of came off the train. Maybe he had a mid-life crisis, maybe he tried to climb to hard and blew up but his career and his contributions were cut short by factors both within his control and without. It makes me consider what it is I really need to be doing and maybe simplify a lot.

Thanks for reading.

The Weather Conspires Against Me

2008-05-14T20:13:00.003-04:00

Well, I may have to do some serious work to get this ride in. Rain today, rain tomorrow and wind Friday and Saturday. I want to go climb Mt. Pisgah. I want the epic and the story that goes with it. I want the scenery and the vistas and all the memories. David Wilcox writes a song, "No Telling Where" from the Airstream album that goes:

On the map it shows the mountain, but I’d never seen a glimpse
Of the hundred miles of vista represented by an inch
That was just a trail of bread crumbs, all their words set out so clear
But there’s nothing they could tell me that could ever take me here

To this view - this height - that the heart remembers
It’s proof - It’s life - It’s the burning ember
My words - go cold - and there’s nothing to explain
There is just no telling where I’ve been

When this sunrise sees me
The first light burns brand new
Seems so easy
To tell what I’ve been through
But my little camera can’t keep up with panoramas all around
There’s just too much view to capture when we stand on sacred ground
Though my mind cannot explain it, my heart’s filled up to the sky
I know words could not contain it, but I’m fool enough to try

In a way that perfectly describes both why I want to ride to places I've never been and what that blog is to some degree. I show you my pictures but unless you've ridden the roads it's hard to understand, at a really deep level, what I'm writing about. I can tell you how much the climb over Hooker's Gap yesterday pushed my body and made me wonder why I decided to climb an road with way too many things I wasn't sure about. Would the pavement run out? Would a dog come out and chase me while I was riding a 7 mph up a steep section of the hill? Would my legs give out before the mountain did? Would I make a wrong turn and get lost with no sense of how to get back? Did the pioneers and trappers think these same thoughts as they were pushing west using the sketchy maps of those who had gone before them? Did they fight the little voice in their head that told them to turn around and return to the roads they knew? Did they fight the doubt and fear by focusing on the sense of excitement and anticipation that came with the unknown and a belief in their abilities?

No matter what I write, I don't think I can really tell the story the way it needs to be told so that you can get it. I can just leave metaphors and pictures of "panoramas all around" and hope that maybe you can follow where I've gone in whatever way has validity in your life.

The picture comes from the valley between Hooker's Gap and Newfound on Newfound Road on yesterday's ride. I almost rode right past it but then I realized that the sign had my wife's maiden name on it and that the barn was really cool so I decided to stop an take a shot of it. The sun wasn't in the best position but those are the breaks.

Thanks for Reading.

Climbing in Asheville

2008-05-13T20:13:00.005-04:00

This week I'm on vacation in Asheville, NC with my lovely wife. We drove up from home Sunday afternoon after the ugly weather and checked into our hotel. The room, or should I say suite, is much larger than I expected and the hotel has all the amenities including both a hot tub and dry sauna, both of which are very important considering one of the purposes of this trip.

The idea was first and foremost to get out of town on our first vacation just for the two of us in years. We decided on Asheville because I'd heard is was a cool, groovy town with lots of culture and great scenery. I also wanted to do a climbing camp. My wife was initially dubious until she found that Asheville may have more yarn and knitting shops per capita than any town in the Southeast (except, maybe, Savannah). So we had a great destination and I had to get my climbing legs back from the cleaners after Cheaha and get ready to go.

The post-Cheaha legs weren't so good. It was fortunate I had planned a recovery week after the century as my legs ached until Thursday after tackling the steep, steep middle climbs of the ride. So after leading the line at graduation and seeing the Weiss' with their new son, Elliott, and hiding out from the tornado warning we finally left the homestead and immediately hit high winds and cold weather. So, Sunday evening was lost as was Monday, at least in terms of riding. We did get to see part of funky Asheville and enjoy Barley's Pizzeria (and the very excellent French Broad Brewing Alt-Bier on draft and their incredible Pepperoni and Andoulee Sausage calzone).

So Sunday and Monday were given over to testing rides on the trainer. The one good thing I learned is that over the last month my FTP has gone up by about 10 watts. I've definitely felt like I was able to ride at a higher level at Cheaha than the 300 watt level I had tested at previously and the 20 minute TT test showed that I was able to ride in a hot, unventilated environment at about 315.

Finally, this morning I was able to ride out west of Asheville up something called Hooker's Gap (the first climb in the picture) and then up to Newfound (the second climb) and then out in the country west of there until returning to Asheville. The ride was hard but the scenery was really beautiful. In some ways it reminded me of growing up in Oregon with the mountain meadows and narrow, winding back roads. What was different was the number of small settlements scattered throughout the countryside and the lack of evergreens replaced by hardwood trees. The descent down Hooker's Gap was absolutely unbelievable and I definitely need to learn how to go downhill on a road bike. Of course, if I knew the roads it would have gone better.

The plan for tomorrow is to recover and then I want to try and do some sort of ride on the Blue Ridge Parkway. If I go south I have to climb Mt. Pisgah and if I go north I have to climb Mt. Mitchell. What a choice. Still, I did come down to climb I I'm thinking that the Parkways won't have killer grades so it may be a long, slow TT effort to climb up Mt. Pisgah. The question is whether the weather will let me. Anyways, between now and then it's some recovery and more enjoying the atmosphere of Asheville. I took a couple of good pictures on the ride and I'll try to post them here tomorrow.

Thanks for Reading.

Gratuitous Bike Pic

2008-05-06T13:33:00.003-04:00

Here's a shot from this weekend's trip at the 50's era general store/post office in Mountville, GA. I'm not sure if the store is still open but I decided to try wrapping the fuel hose around the bike to suggest some sort of entrapment theme. I'm not sure the effect worked but the store takes me back to the times when we'd travel through rural Oregon, northern California and Nevada. Most of the filling stations out in the rural parts were of this sort where you could get everything from bread to bait. Around here the few of these that still survive have to add things to compete with the more modern stores such as a little restaurant or video gambling machines. An interesting but little known fact was that my family once held the only postal commission for all of northeast Nevada in a tiny little place known as Fort Hallick. The fort was built to protect the soon to come transcontinental railroad from possible raids from the local Native American tribes. My great grandfather and his brother brought the first stallions to the calvary fort and used the money they earned selling the horses to the Army to buy the land for the ranch that my family owned in the area for a couple of generations. The ranch and fort were outside the present day village of Lamoille, NV and I'm told you can still see the row of trees my great grandfather planted at the entrance to the ranch property nearest the house they built. Anyway, Enjoy!

Cheaha Challenge Century

2008-05-05T22:27:00.003-04:00

So yesterday I went to Piedmont, Alabama to ride the self-titled, "Toughest Ride in the South". The Challenge was a ride from Piedmont south into the Talledega National Forest and up and over the highest point in Alabama, Cheaha Mountain. The ride was really well organized and the rest stops were great with wonderful volunteer support. The only real drawback was the condition of the scenic byway we rode through the forest and up the mountain. Most of it was little better than chip and seal.

The ride follows an out and back route that I was initially pretty skeptical about. I've done out and back centuries before and the last half of the route is usually drudgery as you've already seen everything. This, however, was a bit different. On the way out, every time I went down something fast a thought would pop into my head, "You have to climb this on the way back." In the middle of the course, this was somewhat daunting. On the way back, every time I descended something, I would marvel at having climbed it. This was especially true for the four mile descent down the return side of Cheaha Mountain. As the summit came at the 43 mile mark and again at the 59 mile mark, I was descending as others were climbing. The looks on their faces was, well, disturbing. I saw several people walking and a couple sitting at the side of the road with their heads in the their hands looking pretty ill. That's a lot to take in while screaming down a mountain you don't know that well at 40 mph. The thought that I had climbed that rise that the others were suffering on was really weird in the middle of a hard ride.

So, was it the "toughest ride in the south"? It's hard to say I think. The other contender (aside from the Assault on Mt. Mitchell" is the Six Gap Century in North Georgia. I've done that one as well. Six Gap has more climbing, about 3000-4000 feet more. The thing is that the climbing is different. At Cheaha theirs a lot more really steep climbing in shorter bursts. There were several sections before the actual climb up Cheaha (on both sides) that were in excess of 10%, each one between 0.6 and 1.1 miles long. On a couple of these sections I was reduced to climbing at about 6 mph with huge torque outputs (my power wasn't as high as my pedal revs were really low). The climb up the mountain was actually easier in many ways because the grade wasn't as steep. The climb was longer (15-20 minutes) but the grade was only 5-6% and I was able to keep my revs up and my power steady. Six Gap's climbs are almost all of this second sort with the one notable section of Hogpen Gap which is unbelievable. My time for the ride was about 5:15 which is comparable to what I did at Six Gap a few years back but I was in better shape then. Road conditions were worse at Cheaha so that contributed as did missing the front group (most of whom I would pass later but who would have been nice to draft with for the first 25 miles or so).

All in all, it was good ride though my left leg cramped for like four hours afterwards. I got to meet Frankie Andreau and talk with him a bit at lunch after the ride. I climbed surprisingly well and passed a lot of people going uphill. I descended terribly, getting passed by a lot of people going downhill. The great thing was that I found that I could climb continuously at a power of 300-315 watts for as long as I needed to. I'm not sure I could have done this for more than an hour but on the climbs where I could keep my power in this range, I had no problem keeping my rhythm and pace for as long as the climb went on.

This week is recovery week with some testing at the end. Time to enjoy rides with little purpose other than to enjoy the scenery.

Thanks for Reading.

The End of Some Things

2008-05-02T08:15:00.002-04:00

It's the end of the semester, the end of the year, the end of a training block and the temporary end of my last New Year's resolution.

Classes are wrapping up for the semester today. As I write this, my PHYS1111 students are taking their final exam. I can say that student/classwise, it's been a pretty good semester. My engineers struggled a bit at the end of this semester but none so badly that they won't get to pursue their dreams and maybe they'll learn to work just a little bit harder in the future. Wednesday night I took them all out for wings at a local restaurant and we played the trivia game and chatted. An alumnus that has gone on to Georgia Tech even stopped by. It was really a great time to celebrate the class' achievements and enjoy the students and their success. It's times like those that make all of the frustrating moments worthwhile. As I drove home from the gathering I just felt an enormous sense of pride in my students and hope for their futures.

Today will be the last Faculty Senate meeting wherein I will act as the Senate's Chair. It's been a very busy year with lots of things passed. To be honest, while I've been honored to serve, I'm more than happy to pass on the institutional mace to next year's Chair. For me, the most important thing I think I learned is that I don't think I really ever want to become an administrator of any sort. My "first, best destiny" (a gold star for anyone who can identify the movie quote) is to teach and mentor students. I have appreciated the respect and praise of my colleagues as I have carried out my duties but I honestly derive much more satisfaction from meeting with a student, as I did this morning, and finding out that my interaction with them, either in the classroom, as an academic adviser or in a more informal way, moved them towards their dreams and goals.

Also, I'm at the end of a three week training block. My body is ready for a rest week. I'll do a couple more days of training level rides and a hard century on Sunday and then I'll give my body a rest for a week before going on vacation to the North Carolina mountains and a sort of "training camp". My power numbers showed improvement throughout the first two weeks and my even show some more improvement this week. I'll start doing a significantly deeper analysis once I start the next cycle because I'll be able to start doing cycle comparisons. My next set of racing looks like it'll be the Tour of Atlanta over Memorial Day weekend. Lots of crits (I hate crits) but there's also an ITT and, more interestingly, a team time trial. Now that I'm officially an "associate member" of the Security Bank Cycling Team I'll ride with those guys. The team is shifting some of it's over 35 riders into the category I'm riding in which will make racing a lot nicer because I seem to handle pack dynamics a lot better when I've got friendly faces to ride with. It also helps me mentally when I know that I have a job to do in a race and that the success can be measured by more than what I do individually.

So at a time of endings I hope to find a chance to rest and recover a bit before setting out on new adventures.

Thanks For Reading.

The Texaco Star

2008-04-24T19:50:00.003-04:00

When I was a kid, I remember that there were lots of different type of gas stations where I grew up and where we traveled as a family. I remember Texaco, Phillips 66 (so named because the first station was on Route 66), Amoco, Standard, Union 76, ARCO and Husky along with the companies we have now like Shell and Exxon (though Exxon seemed pretty new fangled at the time for some reason). I honestly can't say I remember BP (where I tend to buy most of my gas now), Conoco (which in now part of a huge multinational that is ConocoPhillips that owns Chevron and Union 76 among other things) or Citgo. I loved the interesting signs like the old orange 76 ball and the Chevron sign. For some reason, where I grew up these were markers of the great wild open for me. Not too surprising given that we didn't have a road as celebrated as Route 66 was in song and lore. Of all the signs, my favorites were the Texaco Star and the Mobil Pegasus. An interesting note, in Oregon it used to be that it was illegal to pump your own gas (it probably still is). I remember the first time I drove outside the state, I stopped at the station and waited for the attendant to come out for quite some time before I figured out that I would have to pump my own gas. Fortunately, it's not a particularly difficult operation to master as I hadn't ever done that before. I'm sure the guy at the station looked at me like I was in idiot while I fumbled around for things. After I went to grad school and started my first teaching gig, I returned to the state and nearly knocked the attendant at a station over getting out of my car to fill up. I didn't expect him to be there and we both met as I was standing up getting out of my car. I just laughed as I realized how things had changed.

Anyways, back to the present. While racing up near Gainesville, GA a few weeks back we passed a restored (though no longer functional) Texaco station. Having my bikes and a camera, I decided to snap a few pics which I thought I'd share. Enjoy the trip down memory lane and thanks for reading.

Things That Blow My Mind

2008-04-21T10:33:00.003-04:00

I thought I'd give you a little bit of a break from the almost daily litany of bike geek stuff on this fine Monday. In place of that, I thought I'd write down a few of the things that I find just really amazing. This is not a "Top Ten" list but just some things that have occurred to me that are really cool.

Glass: I think that's it's so amazing that we figured out how to turn sand into glass using heat. What's just as amazing is what we've done with that technology. I mean windows are cool but I'm thinking of all of the artistic expression that comes out of working with glass. The one I was particularly taken with this weekend was stemware. Simple in function but supremely varied in form (unless you look at stemware from the point of view of topology and then it's all the same). Everyone has their favorite type of stemware. My tastes tend towards slim, elegant curves that fit comfortably into the hand and do little more than show off the color of the beverage inside.

Guns: I think it's rather amazing that our main weapon systems basically are little more than fancy ways of either throwing spears and shooting arrows. While I know that much warfare is now conducted with explosives, which are a pretty radical departure from the spear/arrow thing, it just seems like we'd have done better than this now. Maybe if we did better, we wouldn't need them. I wonder what would be so bad about going back to spears and arrows.

Spectral Analysis: I am continually blown away by the fact that we can learn so much about light and then learn about something that produces it. To me it is one of the crowning triumphs of the human intellect that we can understand the size, mass, temperature, rotation, composition and structure of a huge ball of self-luminescent hydrogen that is farther away than we can imagine just by looking at the light that object gives off.

Arches: As old as humans have been building things (well, almost) and still so cool. Strong, stable, beautiful, elegant, functional. Why don't we build on a human scale with these things anymore? Arches remind us of tree branches over our heads, reconnecting us from the natural world from whence we came. They remain modern and yet timeless. The Romans built with them and so do engineers when the project is big enough. There should be more arches in more places (well, fewer Golden Arches maybe).

There are more. I'll write them up when I think of them. Enjoy a Monday of wonder.

Thanks for Reading.

A Bit More on the Data

2008-04-18T07:43:00.003-04:00

A few more thoughts on the data I've collected so far. I've gotten through the first 6 chapters of the Training and Racing with Power book and I'm coming across all sorts of interesting tidbits. One of those is looking at my average power over various time intervals in the form of Watts/kg or how much power I produce for my weight. When I look at the data for intervals longer than 10-20 minutes I find that I am a strong Cat 3 rider. When I look at my averages for a 5 second and 1 minute sprint, I barely show up on the chart. Now I expect that some of that is coming from the fact that I did the sprint parts of my test at the end when my legs were a little fried so I need to go back and do a test that's a little more friendly to figuring out what my sprint power is, but this does confirm my thesis that I have a complete total of about 4 fast twitch muscles in my entire body.

With some focused training I will probably be able to improve those numbers to some degree over the course of the next year but I won't be winning any flat races soon and I probably need to resign myself to either only racing time trials and road races with longer climbs or working as a super-domestique for some powerful sprinter or explosive climber on a team somewhere (Are you listening Security Bank guys? I can pull like a diesel for miles and miles if you need me to...be happy to do it...have bike, will travel...).

So, time to get to class. Have a great weekend and I'll try to post an update sometime over the weekend (this could be the kiss of death and I won't write for another three months).

Thanks for Reading.

Interesting Data

2008-04-17T09:21:00.002-04:00

Well, the results are back from the first real training ride outside with the PowerTap and the data is interesting. The first thing is that I was definitely right about the data being a lot noisier. I'm not really sure how to interpret it beyond looking at the averages right now because there are lots and lots of spikes due to variations in terrain. The second thing I learned during the ride was that I tend to go too hard early on climbs and then blow up near the end. Several times on the hills yesterday I would really punch it at the bottom of a hill and push my power up over 450-500 watts. I could hold that for a minute or so but I would tend end up having to back off and only being able to ride at 250 watts at the top. Once I figured this out, I would hit hill and try to stay between 300 and 350 watts and I would do a lot better. I knew this for long hills but I was surprised to see how true it was for shorter ones as well. The third thing I learned was that I seem to go a lot harder outside than inside on the trainer, at least in terms of the power I put out. The ride yesterday was the best ride I've done in terms of the averages and was better by about 5% than my indoor trainer test. I'm not sure why that is. It could be that I get pretty hot riding inside and so maybe my heartrate is a lot higher for a given power output. I could be that with the trainer I don't get the little mini-rests you get out on the road. That I had higher higher average power for all the different time intervals was a big surprise because I don't really feel like I rode all that hard in terms of riding at my LT heart rate. The cool thing was that my energy burned for the ride was nearly 2000 Calories. I was tired near the end but not wiped out.

So, I guess I have a lot to learn about this training with power thing. Fortunately, the book I ordered, "Training and Racing with Power" by Allen and Coggan came in yesterday. I've looked at the first couple of chapters and they are definitely well-written. In skimming the third chapter I realized that there will be lots of numbers to keep track of. Last night at 10:30, it seemed a little overwhelming but I imagine it'll be like the first time I read Friel's book. At first there was so much information that I had a hard time keeping track of it all. After a couple of times through the material in bite sized chunks, I got a pretty good handle in things.

This leads me to another topic having to do with riding and racing. Some guys I know are complete geeks about the data and numbers and all of that. They measure everything they can measure and evaluate their performance based on that. Other guys couldn't care less about the data. They just want to ride and base their training on perceived effort and how it feels. They have a certain elan or passion when they race. I tend to be somewhere in the middle. I understand that without the data, an objective measurement of performance and improvement is next to impossible and in this sense, the more data one gets, the better. On the other hand, I ride because I love how it feels in so many different ways. When I think of going fast, I love how it feels to have my muscles and lungs and heart all working together to create power (which is part of why I love time trialing...you go fast and you're solitary-just feeling your body and it's response to the command of "go faster"). In a way, I want the data but I don't want to be overwhelmed by it or controlled by it. I can understand why guys hire coaches to do this sort of thing for them. They just want to ride and if the coach can look over the data and say, "Next week you need to do this and that and we'll look it over from there." then that's the way to go.

Since I can't afford a coach at the moment (but soon I think) I'll have to do it myself. I hope the book will teach me what I need to know and I'm guessing I'll have to subscribe to the WKO+ software out at TrainingPeaks at some point in the near future since it seems to have all the tools to track everything I need it to (and it goes well with the book).

Today is a recovery day after three hard days of training. I'm tired and my muscles hurt a bit today so that's a good sign I need a day of easy spinning. The only bad thing is that I'm going to be on campus for most of the day so I'll have to spin on an exercise bike in the gym on a beautiful day which seems like a waste. I will get a little light lifting in so that's a silver lining I suppose. One nice thing is that I felt like I got stronger each day during the mini-block so that bodes well. Friday, Saturday and Sunday will be another three day block before I settle back into my more normal rhythm of Monday and Friday being recovery days. I'm not totally sure what I'll be doing but I think Saturday will be a two-a-day since I have a wedding to be at in the middle of the day. Maybe two 25 mile TT efforts. Sunday will be a long ride, maybe a century, in order to work on the endurance side of things and maybe to see some roads I don't see as often as I'd like.

Thanks for Reading.

Training Wrap-Up

2008-04-16T09:16:00.003-04:00

So, here's an update on my training rides from Monday and Tuesday.

Monday's ride stunk. I'm not sure exactly why it stuck but it did. Maybe I didn't eat well enough that day, maybe my legs were blocked from the recovery week or maybe I just felt bad but whatever the reason I did OK for about the first 35 minutes and then just sort of faded away. I was able to hold the 325 pace only in the first hill interval and then everything after that was downhill, so to speak. When I looked at my power data (I'm becoming a data geek) I lost about 20 watts in each interval at the same basic heart rate. What was worse is how bad I felt through the whole hill repeats part of the workout. I managed to do two sets of jump intervals and actually felt OK for those. It was a disappointing day to say the least.

Tuesday morning's ride, fortunately, went a whole lot better. I did 4 fifteen minute intervals with five minutes of recovery between each on the TT bike. The first interval was in an easier gear with a higher cadence and then I dropped the cadence and increased the gear on each successive interval. Intervals 1 and 3 were steady state and I averaged right at 300 watts for each which was good. Interval 2 was an over under interval where I would spend a minute at 275 watts and then a minute at 335 watts. Interval 4 was the same thing but at 250 and 300 watts. I finished off with some one legged pedaling drills. The whole ride felt a zillion times better and I have a feeling that Monday was an isolated thing.

Today's ride will be rollers/hill intervals again but out on the road this time. The weather's supposed to be great so I'm going to do a ride out to a place where I know that there are some good short climbs (we don't have anything really long around here). I'll add jumps at a variety of different road markers (county line signs, city limit signs, etc.) where I'll go off with everything for 20 seconds and then back down to hard tempo for 40 more. The idea is to begin developing the power needed to get away from a group and then hold that. Over the next couple of weeks I'll move to 30/30 and then 1 minute hard and 1 minute tempo.

Today will be the first time I take the PowerTap out on the actually open road for a hard training ride. Up until now I've either done recovery rides on the road or the two hard rides on the trainer. I'll be interested to see how well I'll be able to look at the data to determine anything. Things on the trainer I easy because every thing's controlled. On the road, the hill is as long as it is and not necessarily as long as I'd like it to be. However steep the hills is is however steep the hill is. I can change my pace to meet the power output level I'd like but I wonder how well that'll happen.

Anyways, the weather's going to be perfect (lower 70's, no wind) so I'll see you out on the road.

Thanks for Reading.

Today's Training-Short Climbing Practice

2008-04-14T11:51:00.002-04:00

With the weather forecast calling for wind and rain today, I'm forced inside onto the training for the first hard ride of the new training block.

My goals are threefold for the next two three week blocks in preparation for the Union City, LAgrage and Rome Georgia Cup weekends. First, I want to develop more climbing power. Second, I want to increasing my TTing ability so that I don't lose power as the ride progresses. Finally, I want to develop an ability to jump out of the group and build a gap over a field in the first 3-5 minutes, i.e.-create or get into a break and then make it stick.

Today, I'll work on the first of the three goals with some hill intervals/hill repeats. The goals will be do do a set of 5-6 hill repeats that build in effort. The first part of each repeat will be done at a somewhat lower sustainable power for between 3 and 7 minutes and then the last minute will be a hard effort at my one minute max power. So here's the workout:

20 minute standard warm up
10 minute tempo exercise at 250 watts
4 minute hill interval @ 325/400 watts
6 minute recovery at 225-250 watts
5 minute hill interval @ 325/400 watts
6 minute recovery at 225-250 watts
6 minute hill interval @ 325/400 watts
6 minute recovery at 225-250 watts
7 minute hill interval @ 310/385 watts
6 minute recovery at 225-250 watts
8 minute hill interval @ 310/385 watts
if able to complete last interval then I'll add:
6 minute recovery @ 225-250 watts
8 minute hill interval @ 310/385 watts
6 minutes of recovery at 225-250 watts
5 sets of "jumps" 20 seconds all out, 40 tempo at 225-25- watts
5 minute recovery @ 200-225 watts
5 sets of "jumps"
5 minutes of recovery at 200-225 watts
5 sets of "jumps"
10 minutes of cool down at 175-200 watts

I have to say that it's a whole lot easier to plan training sessions inside on the trainer but boy will it be boring. Tomorrow's supposed to be cold and windy so my morning ride will likely be inside as well. I'll probably to TT intervals at around 300 watts for 15 minutes followed by a recovery time of about 5 minutes at a power of 200 watts. Add the typical warm-up and cool down and that should be about 2 hours there as well.

I'll let you know how the workouts go but it's back into the fire. There was a Nike ad during the Sweet Sixteen/Elite Eight weekend. It said that there are no Cinderellas. I like that idea. No Cinderellas, just those who work hard and put in the training time and sweat and suffer and all the rest. I won't just win in May and June because I want to.

No Cinderellas.

Testing

2008-04-13T09:32:00.002-04:00

As I hang out here and "watch" the CyclingNews on-line coverage of Paris-Roubaix, I thought I'd post a brief update on the power tests I did on Friday. The protocol was pretty simple: a 20 minute warm up, a ladder up the gears until failure to see where my LT heart rate and power were, a 30 minute TT test to get at the same things (kudos to Robert J. for pointing out that this was a better measure than two 10 minute TT efforts like Carmichael recommends), various sprints at different time intervals up to 1 minute and a final 4 minute all out effort. Of course, interspersed in these were various recovery periods.

So what are the numbers? My lactate threshold heart rate is 171 this week. My 1 minute max power at this HR is 385 watts, my ten minute power is 310 watts and my 30 minute power is 290 watts. On my four minute effort I was able to have an average power of 325 watts. My 5 second sprint power is an anemic 638 watts and my 30 second average is 438 watts.

I'm not exactly sure what these numbers mean, but I've ordered a book that should help me interpret them and put together a training plan. The one thing that concerns me though is that the software that came with the PowerTap creates two different sets of training zones based on my heart rate and one my power. The biggest difference is in the recovery zone where I can go up to about 145 bpm on my heart rate but that creates over 200 watts of power which takes me way out of the recovery zone based on my threshold power. Hopefully the literature will help to clear this up.

One more day of recovery rides (if, in fact, that's what I've been doing...hmmm) and then it's back to build training.

Thanks for Reading.

Turning Green

2008-04-11T08:06:00.002-04:00

If you've been watching ESPN's coverage of the Masters, you will undoubtedly have noticed one very obvious thing; Spring has arrived here in Georgia. Just as one sees avalanches of azalea blooms cascading down the hills Augusta while being shadowed by the blooming dogwoods and other flowering trees, the rest of the region has burst forth in color. I was overwhelmed with this fact on the last two days of riding that I've done.

Over the last couple of weeks I've either been forced to ride indoors due to bad weather or have been riding too hard to notice that things have been moving towards this point but this week has been a recovery week. That, along with the arrival of spring like weather finally, has given me the chance to get out and ride at a more human pace. In the middle of my Wednesday afternoon ride I sort of came out of my shell long enough to look around and go, "Wow! When did everything get so green?" Once I did this I sort of realized that stuff was blooming all around me and that the scenery wasn't the mix of grays and browns I've been traveling through the last few months.

So, spring is here; at least until Sunday when it's supposed to get cold again (winter has to have one last gasp). We'll have some ugly weather tonight if the worst of the weather predictions are true but that's OK as I'll be doing my power tests and stuck inside on a trainer. Tomorrow will be a long ride with the wind at my back and pizza at the end of the route. Early April in Georgia seems to be what mid-February in Florida was when I lived there...wonderfully glorious. I'm not sure it makes up for August but I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

Thanks for Reading.

Power Tap

2008-04-08T12:56:00.002-04:00

As I ramp up for the next round of training I thought I'd discuss the tools I hope to use to get better in the next go 'round. Up until now I've based my training on looking at how my heart rate responds to whatever I do. I have a pretty good sense of what my heart rate is when my body is producing and using up/cleaning out the lactic acid my muscles produce (right now that's at about 166 bpm). This is good because it allows me to gauge my training efforts and plan training workouts to teach my body to more efficiently utilize certain energy production systems in certain types of situations (anaerobic for sprinting and short interval efforts, aerobic for longer steady effort time trials). This has served me well but it's only part of the picture; the part that tells me how hard my cardiovascular system is working. What my heart rate isn't telling me is how much work my muscles are able to do with what the cardio system is providing.

The way to determine that is to look at the amount of power your body (which is mostly legs with some core muscles) produces when you ride. When I first started training for real, this was a very expensive type of data to access. Usually it was only available to pros and labs. Over the last few years, the costs of these measurement tools have come down along with their weight and the accuracy of their measurements has increased. These various power meters measure how much energy you produce per unit of time (usually in joules per second or watts) by measuring the torque of some rotating part of the bike and the rate or speed at which that part is rotating. This allows you to look both at how hard your cardiovascular system is working and at how much energy you produce to get a more complete picture of how your body is responding to immediate efforts as well as how well it adapts to repeated demands in terms of training "loads" over time.

The power meter I ended up getting (mostly due to cost and portability) is called a Power Tap (the SL model to be precise). This measures power by using a specially built rear wheel hub that has a couple of strain gauges in it to measure the torque the chain exerts on the cassette while also measuring how fast the rear wheel is turning. The nice thing is that I can move the wheel that the hub is built into back and forth between my road bike and my TT bike which allows me to train with power on both.

My last two rides have been used to get the thing and all of it's ancillary electronics working on the road bike. Everything has gone pretty well and the timing was perfect as this is a full recovery week where I do little but spin at low heart rates. This allows me time to play with the position and getting everything to work without feeling like I'm wasting valuable training time. The only problem with the system is that the display unit that sits on my handlebars only had three lines and I want to see a more data than that so for the time being I left my old Polar cyclometer on the bike to give me a little more data.

Today a did a 100 minute ride on my rollers to get a sense of what my average recovery power was and I averaged right at 200 watts which would propel me along the road at around 18 mph (which is about 8 m/s for those who like base metric units). For those who wonder how efficient cycling is, the amount of power used by three average light bulbs can push 185 lbs of weight (80 kg of mass) down the road at a pretty respectable speed. The next two days I'll take the bike out on the road to make sure everything will stand up to the wear and tear of some road rides and get some more base data. On Friday I'll do a set of trainer tests designed to help me set my training levels in terms of my power. These will consist of a ladder exercise where I shift up a gear every minute and keep track of my average power and average heart rate in each step. This will allow me to find my personal power curve, get one estimate of my lactate threshold power and my time to failure after I cross my LT. I'll then do a pair of TT tests where I'll go as hard as I can for ten minutes and find my average HR and power a another estimate of my LT. These will allow me to set my training zones for when I'm out riding ont eh road and I want to do a set of hill intervals or whatnot. Finally, I'll so a series of hard sprint efforts to find my maximum anaerobic power over 5, 10 and 30 second intervals as well as a 1 minute effort. For a data freak like me, it should be cool.

Once I've done that, I'll be able to set my efforts in my next three week training block and then repeat to determine what improvements have occurred. I'm also hoping to pick up a book or two that will help me with this process. I understand Joe Freil has a new version of the Cyclist's Training Bible with info on power and there's another book that's supposed to be the standard for this sort of thing. More to come soon.

Thanks for reading.

Epic Weekend

2008-04-06T20:49:00.002-04:00

In cycling there are events that, for a variety of reasons, are known by the descriptor, "Epic". My wife and I were discussing that on our way up to Gainesville, GA this weekend and we came to the conclusion that, in cycling, "Epic" is a euphemism for "Miserable". If that is true, then this weekend's racing was definitely "Epic", at least on Saturday.

The Gainesville Georgia Cup event started the same way they always do and that's with a time trial. This one was 9 miles long and involved a good bit of low grade (2-4%) climbing in the first half. What made it hard, however, was the rain.

We knew that the rain was going to be there but the forecasters were divided on how much and when. Some said that we were going to be deluged with enormous amounts of it along with thunder, lightning and possibly severe weather while others said that it would blow through by early Saturday morning. What happened landed somewhere in the middle. We had a bunch of ugly weather Friday night but by Saturday most of that had blown through. What was left was a steady rain that varied from little more than drizzle to downpour over the course of the day. With the rain came early fog dew to the atmosphere trying to cool off and things were dreary.

My TT went pretty well. I didn't feel as good as I had in Perry (maybe about 90%) of that but I felt a lot better than I had at Tundra or Albany. I could tell from the beginning of my warm-up. The rain was both a mental barrier (you didn't want to ride hard with rain pelting you in the face and obstructing your vision) and, to some degree, a physical one (it was hard to get your muscles warm and keep them warm). Still I rode a strong race and my new position seemed to be pretty fast. I ended up finishing third which gave me some confidence that I might do well for the weekend's overall general classification.

The afternoon stage was different than usual. Usually we do the TT and a short criterium or circuit race on the first day and a long road race on the second. Due to scheduling issues, we did the road race on the same day as the TT. This means that you do the two hardest stages of the race on the same day (if the TT is a longer one) which is tough. The course was a 27 mile loop with several short, steep climbs and one mile long "wall" that we'd travel around twice. Add to that the rain and some wind that came up and we had an "Epic" ride. Racing in the rain is about the most physically exhausting thing a rider can do. Because you're wet, the road's wet and your bike's brakes and rims are wet, you lose the ability to maneuver well and stop in any kind of reasonable time. Now put yourself in a pack of 75 guys riding on one side of a narrow, two-lane country road with no shoulder and you can understand why the race was so hard. For two hours and thirty minutes your mind is constantly looking and listening for that telltale sign that a crash is about to happen. And even if you do hear or see it coming, there's a good chance you won't be able to avoid it. Add to that the fact that you're fighting cold conditions in little more than a lyrca body suit and what is a hard race becomes something you're often trying to merely survive. For me, the worst part of this kind of race physically is the cold. I have a really hard time staying warm in these types of conditions and the combo of the wet and the wind made for a long day. The best description for the day was "Flanderian" after the type of racing that one usually sees in Belgium this time of year (and that happened today by all accounts).

I rode well in the road race but once again the race was marked by defensive racing rather than something more aggressive. Both times coming over the top of the wall, there was a lead group of riders that got a gap on the field. Both times, riders on the front of the group choose to sit up and rest and not press their advantage and not let anyone else onto the front to push the pace. What should have been something that was a deciding factor in the race became little more than a selector to eliminate the weakest of the field. Given that I finished with the pack, I remained third overall.

Today we did the crit and after seeing a couple of ugly crashes due to the course design I decided not to really mix it up in the middle of the field. I couldn't finish lower than 5th on the overall as long as I finished with the main field and I knew I wasn't going to contest the sprints so I sat on the back of the race and turned it into interval training. The rider in 4th overall ended up jumping me in time due to a bonus sprint but that was OK with me as the race wasn't something I was targeting to do well in.

All in all it was a good weekend resultswise, even if Saturday was miserable. I finished 4th in the General Classification (the sum of the overall times for all three races) which is a really good result. Had I done just a bit better in the TT I would have lifted that quite a bit. I now go into a week's rest and recovery and then start the buildup for some racing in late May and early June. During that block, which I think will be two hard weeks followed by a week of rest and then two more hard weeks, I'll be looking to lift my fitness to a super high level.

There are some state championships on the line early in the summer and I want to be ready for those. I'm planning to do a blog series on my next big block of training to let you, my faithful readers, know what it's like for a serious (but probably stupid) amateur athlete to get ready to race. I've invested in some new tools that I'm hoping will help me train better so I'll be keeping you informed on how it goes.

Thanks for Reading.

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals

2008-04-01T13:44:00.005-04:00

I have to give a shout out to The Geek (aka The Science Fiction Twin) for pointing me to my latest musical obsession: Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. If you like gospel and southern roots rock then you've got to listen to this woman and her band. She sounds like a cross between Ray Charles, the Allman Brothers and Janis Joplin with a deep soul connection to the Hammond B3 Organ. Her song, "Nothing but the Water" may be the very best song I've heard all year long. It makes me think I'm at a revival and makes me want to raise my hands...expect you don't hear the amazingly sultry sounds of a Hammond B3 at most southern revivals I know of.

We're talking about songs and prayers of lament in the Bible study I lead this week and I have every intention of talking about Negro spirituals and the blues as recent expressions of lament in American culture. I think that some of her music fits within this tradition. For much of the modern American evangelical church, lament is a lost practice. This is one of the things that has led to a faith that is flat and shallow and doesn't speak to any of the real issues in people's lives anymore. I think that's why music like this is so important. Unlike the tripe for Jessica Simpson and Fergie and so many other pop bands these days, this kind of music reconnects us with our need to cry out when we hurt or grieve or feel disconnected from the God that sustains us all in this life. It gives voice to the sense of brokenness we all feel and our need to get right.

Anyways, enough of the sermon. Give this music a serious listening to. You won't regret it.

Thanks for Reading.

The Fit

2008-03-31T10:07:00.002-04:00

So, over the weekend, I had a chance to attend a TT clinic and a fitting session with 8 time Australian National Time Trial champion Nathan O'Neil. The clinic was about what I expected it to be with only a little information I didn't already know but the fit session was really interesting.

The idea was to get me into the best position I could be in on my time trial bike. Since I'm a pretty compact rider who is also pretty thick, I have a hard time getting down into a super aero postion so I needed some help to figure out how to squeeze more time out of the bike. In the discipline of time trialing, aerodynamics are really important as the biggest limiter to going fast is drag or air resistance. As body position is the biggest contributor to this, fit to the bike is a big deal.

So, for about an hour and a half, I worked with Mr. O'Neil to tune this up. We first looked at my cleat position and my leg length. Both of these were pretty good with the only adjustment being to shift my left cleat position back by about 3 mm. Once we finished that, we went to work on my position on the bike. I have, let us say, an unorthodox TT position. My saddle is shoved about as far forward as I can get it (and actually in violation of UCI rules) which puts me in a position where it's almost like I'm running on the bike. This tends to force my body upwards but it also allows me to produce huge amounts of power. We decided not to mess with this too much as it seems to be working for me right now.

So instead, we dropped the height of my handlebars by about an inch. Later on, I'll flip my stem over and lower it a bit more. The other thing we decided was something I tried about two years ago and abandoned because it was hard on my body. I tilted by aerobars up so I moved to a similar position as Levi and Floyd have been riding in. I'm not in quite as aggressive a position as they are but the idea is the same. Over the next two weeks, I'll work on trying to drop my head and tuck it in behind my hands. If I can do this (lots of stretching, exercises and on the bike time) I think I can really improve the aerodynamics of my body which means more of my power goes into going fast instead of pushing the air out of the way. Add to this the fact that I think I finally got a real aerodynamic front wheel and I might just be moving back towards scaryfast on my TT bike. The two time trials over the next couple of weeks will give me a much better indication.

As a final note, Nathan is really a nice guy. He was very respectful of the fact that I'm basically a cycling spud who has somehow found a way to go a little bit fast on a bike. I never felt like an idiot even though I'm sure he probably shook his head inside and wondered where guys like me come from (i.e.-guys who are fat and have totally goofy positions on their bikes). At the end of the session we ended up talking about our Golden Retrievers and agreed to meet up at the Gainesville Georgia Cup race this weekend to see how things are going with the new position. I have to say that if he was available as a coach, I'd definitely be interested. My guess, however, is that he's already booked up in that capacity and even if he wasn't, he'd be way too expensive for me.

Anyway, it was a good Saturday even though we stuck in death traffic coming back from the session and ended up missing a wedding reception we really wanted to make it to. It could have been worse. The traffic on I-75 north was so bad that it was stop and go all the way from exit 238 on the south side of Atlanta down to at least exit 201. I'm thinking that driving north on 75 has got to be the most insane thing ever.

Thanks for Reading.

Why I ride the Pain Train

2008-03-25T13:58:00.003-04:00

Last Saturday I went down to Tarmac and once again I chose to inflict upon myself the suffering that comes with riding the Pain Train. I'll skip a description of the specific ride to instead focus on why I do this to myself.

Just six weeks ago I was raging about getting dropped on yet another edition of the Peach Peleton training ride. I was cranky not just that I got dropped but that the pace was just plain unwarranted and in obvious violation of at least a half a dozen statutes of the United Nations' Code on the Humane Treatment of Test Subjects. More than that, I was tired of being fat and slow and all of that. So why, when the group got together for a ride between race weekends, did I cheerfully sign on for a 80 mile spin through the back country of Georgia at a pace that would surely bring an investigation by Amnesty International? Do I like pain (well, yes, sort of...at least pain on the bike)? Do I enjoy groveling behind the Cat I and II riders who eat guys like me for breakfast and then pick their teeth with the spokes left over from our crushed and burned wheels (that bit...not so much)?

Actually, as I told the ride leader, I hate getting my ass kicked but I like the results. We trained a lot harder on Saturday than any of the races I've done this year and I suffered more than I did bridging back to the group at Perry in the road race. Lance said that the key to winning was to train harder than you race and the Peach peleton rides make me do that. The rotating paceline intervals pushed me over my lactate threshold for short bursts over 50 times in the first 40 miles of the ride. That'll make my time trials faster, allow me to surge with the group and help me to sustain breaks when I get better creating them. Pushing up the climbs on Pleasant Grove Church Road will help me to ride the climbs in Gainesville and Chattanooga harder and fast and I'll recover from the efforts more quickly.

In hindsight, I didn't do too badly compared to the other Cat IV guys in the group as I was pretty midpack (especially given that the Friday before the ride was Good Friday and I fasted to some extent)-faster than some and slower than others. More importantly, I pulled my weight through all of my interval sessions at the pace the Cat I/II guys wanted until the bigger hills so I guess I can't be too disappointed. I still hate getting dropped and I'm still too fat but there is hope. I'm not as slow and I'm not as fat and soon I won't grovel. Soon I'll be svelte and handsome and supermodels will be calling me wondering when I'm going to race so they can come and be amazed at my bicycling manliness...OK, well, maybe not the last two but I can see the chance of getting into good enough shape that I can go to Lexington in July and race Masters' Nationals.

I think that the next step is to get specific and to get technical. I need a PowerTap and CyclingPeaks and, eventually, a coach (maybe Letterman from the Electric Company can come to my house and change my couch to a coach with his super letter changing powers and save me a bundle). Anyone have a PowerTap they feel like giving me? One positive thing is that I have an opportunity to have a fit session with Olympian Nathan O'Neil and Spinblade to refine my position and my pedaling mechanics.

Thanks for Reading.

More on the "Hell of the Middle"

2008-03-18T13:31:00.002-04:00

Well, Middle Georgia that is.

There have been some results updates. It turns out that I took 19th in the crit/circuit race on Saturday so I did better than I thought. Any time I finish in the top 20 of a crit like thing, that's good for me.

OK, on to Sunday. I've written about this race before but let's have a brief recap. The race name gives you a little bit of a clue about the race in that it is supposed to have some vague similarities to the French race with almost the same name. The route is a 12.5 mile loop that we did four times. On each loop there is a reasonably stiff double climb in the first few miles and then a 2 mile dirt road section (that is interrupted for a couple hundred meters by a paved overpass over I-75). Some years the dirt section is really firm, some years it's dry and powdery (which is really hard to corner in) and this year it was wet but a little loose. We had to scrub a lot of speed to make the corner onto the dirt section but the harder bit was the section itself. Unlike hardpack there was about a quarter of an inch of wet, loose dirt/sand stuff that wasn't slippery but that took a lot of extra effort to sort of plow through.

The climbs combined with the difficult dirt sections made the race one of attrition more than one of attacks. We also had a cross wind on two of the paved sections that meant that if you were popped off the group by an acceleration, it would be hard to get back on. Almost of the race fields (Pros, Masters, etc.) finished the race is groups of 10-15 rather than in one big pack. Our group was an exception for reasons I'll get to in a minute.

For me the race was a really interesting one. The double climb came about 2 miles into the first lap and I had positioned myself about midway through the pack for the first climb which I expected the pack to do piano. No sense in going off on a break 2 miles into the race with another 48 to go with a stiff wind on about 2/3rds of the course. I was wrong about that. A couple of first time racers decided to go pretty hard and so the pack went up the climb a bit harder than I expected. This wasn't really a problem for me but several other riders were caught of guard and stayed in their big rings too long. About a third of the way up the climb they started shifting into their little rings under load and the predictable thing happened: one guy threw his chain. Rather than try to deal with it, he put his foot down and came to a stop right in the middle of the pack. The sea parted with guys trying to dodge out of his way and I got pushed into the soft dirt on the side of the road and had to completely get off my bike. By the time I got back on the road and back on the bike and going in a way that was courteous and safe for the other riders, I was 200 meters behind the group and all by myself. I thought some really choice things in that moment and considered climbing off the bike and packing it in for the day. No way was I going to catch 60 guys pulling a group along all by myself. When I saw that several other riders had been gapped, I decided to see if I could catch a few and we could work together to get up to the lead group. I caught and dropped each one as it turned out they weren't really to race at this level yet and so I turned into the crosswinds and then headwinds chasing the group all by myself. I kept telling myself that even if my race was over, I was going to use this as a hard training ride and I was certainly doing that. There would be times I would get the gap down to 100 meters but after the dirt road it was almost a quarter of mile and I would wonder if I had lost my mind. I made up some group as the group went across the start/finish line at the end of lap one and a good bit more on the second ascent up the climb. That surprised me quite a bit so I decided to try to gut it out a bit more. I have been chasing for nearly forty minutes but I knew that I had about 15 more minutes left in me at that pace and I thought that maybe I could close things up. About 2 miles later I did. Wow! A 15 mile chase and I was back with the lead group. That was good. What was bad was that I had trashed my legs doing it. My leg hamstring was trying to cramp and everything else had that borderline lactic acid burn that comes from a long time trial. My strategy of putting in a few attacks to try and create a break wasn't in really good shape. I decided to sit in on the back, hope not to get caught out on a gap and recover. I did that for all of the rest lap two and a lot of lap three.

When we hit the dirt on lap three I could tell that some of the guys were suffering and I began to move up in the field. Not far enough to stick my nose in the wind but enough to make sure that I could bridge any gaps that opened up. That turned out to be a good move as gaps opened several times int he two miles and I was able to get across without too much trouble. It was during this time that I realized that the things I had seen in the crit on Saturday were happening here too. No one wanted to lose the race so no one was really willing to take the risks to win it. Had my legs felt better, I think I might have really had a chance to attack here and make it stick. When we came of the dirt we were all together for a 4-5 mile run into the wind before a turn and a short segment to the start/finish line. About a mile out from the turn, a group of about 5 guys got off the front and opened up a 200 meter or so gap. I was sort of stuck back behind some guys and I thought to myself, "Damn, there goes the break...perfect time too." The main group of about 30 guys I was with just sort of sat up and started to give these guys some lease which I thought was a really bad idea. Negative racing I figured with a couple of guys blocking for the group ahead. Then a gap opened I didn't need a second invitation to join the party. I decided that I wasn't going to do well just sitting in so I surged off the front of the group, hamstring be darned, and started to bridge across. Here again my TT skills served me well. Halfway across, when I looked back, the group still looked like it has sitting up noodling around. I figured that if I could make contact, I would be in the break and we could ease up once over the climbs.

I made contact just before the base and told the guys that the field had split and we had a pretty substantial gap. Everyone looked kind of surprised. They had going for some spring points at the line and weren't really thinking of making anything stick. I was sort of stunned and encouraged them to ride hard and smart. They didn't so much. To make matters worse, my legs weren't in great shape and the pack seemed to have woken up. We were swallowed up by a smaller field of 25 or so at the top of the climb and we were all together again. I was sort of stunned. Why wouldn't anyone races aggressively. I found out later that in all the other races similar moments had occurred and aggressive riders had used them to split up their races but not us.

As we rode through the dirt section again, we had several more field split but no one on the front would press the advantage. Twice the front 10 riders (myself included) opened up 50 meter gaps but then let the person on the front would let off the pressure and the gap would close. Had we held the gap off the dirt and into the headwind, we would have shredded the more tired riders. So, end the end, the race came down to a reduced field sprint. The bad thing was, as I've already mentioned, I'm not the best sprinter. The good thing was that all the good printers had been shelled out of the field by the process of attrition over the climbs and in the dirt. My hammy was cramping badly but I decided to go for it and if I got hurt or pulled something, I'd have a few weeks to heal up before the next race. My sprint was actually pretty good but a couple of guys either mishandled their bikes or pulled right in front of me to I had let up some. Still, I managed to finish eleventh which was a great result considering what I had gone through in the race.

Overall, I took 8th in the omnium (a summation of all the points) which is excellent at this point of the season. I have to say that the high point of the weekend was killing the time trial but not far behind that was that on Sunday morning two of the race officials sought me out to tell me how impressed they were about how I raced the crit on Saturday. That meant a lot to me. I guess that there's a lot of frustration about the negative racing that's been happening over the first two big race weekends as a lot of riders are racing not to lose and that there's been a lot of blocking when breaks get up the road. Having both John and Bill come over to tell me how impressed they were about my attacking style tells me that I need to keep training hard and getting better and that sooner or later I'll start winning road races.

Well, this has gotten really long and I'm sure you are bored with my stories. I'll post a final wrap up in the next couple of days.

Thanks for reading.

Back on the Top Step

2008-03-16T17:14:00.003-04:00

It's been two years since I've been on the podium of a bike race but that ended this weekend in a big way. This weekend was the annual Perry-Roubaix omnium with a time trial Saturday morning, a long criterium/circuit race Saturday afternoon and a 50 mile road race with a twist this morning.

The time trial at the race is the perfect type of course for me. Flat to low rollers for the most part (there was a nasty climb about 4 miles in a the turn around), the route plays to my strength of being able to produce a lot of power at lactate threshold and to hold it there for about as long as I need to (at least up to the end of the first hour and then everything blows up). The TT was 10 miles long and even though I had a really bad start due to clip in problems, I was soon on top of a big gear and turning it over. About three miles in I realized I was holding a 25+ mph pace and that I still had some LT ceiling. When I hit the climb I clenched my teeth, bore down, stayed aero and powered up the hill. I had passed two guys on the way out and when I passed four guys on the mile long 4% climb I really began to believe it was going to be a good day. I passed the last two guys who had started ahead of me just as we started the descent and stayed up on the rivet all the way back home for a 23:16 time which is about 25.7 mph. I also won the race.

The last time I was on the podium of a race was the P-R TT two years ago and the last win was at Tundra just over two years ago. I'm not sure what has changed since I got kicked around up at Tundra but today my time compared really well with the Cat III and Master's 40+ riders so I guess I've added a bunch of power in the last month (as well as lost about 10 lbs). The series has a set of really cool podiums and it was so cool to stand up on the top step to have my picture taken.

That afternoon I participated in the most hated of bicycle racing forms; the criterium. I don't sprint, I don't corner well and I don't do surges; all of which are important for this type of racing. The race started and, like usual, my legs were rubbish for the first third of the race. About the time my legs started to round into form, the group decided to sort of sit up and take it easy and to leave a lne open for an attack. Since I have basically no chance to win in a final field sprint I decided to take a flyer to and see if anyone would come with me and maybe pick up a few primes. When I looked back, no one had come with me but they group had given me a lot of room. I decided to try and go a lap or two to see if I could entice someone to come across. Surprisingly to me, no one did but the group kept giving me room to ride and after about a quarter of a lap/30 second lead. About then, someone pointed out to the rest of the somewhat disinterested group that I had won the TT and that I could make this stick if someone didn't start working hard to pull me back I think it was probably the guy who took second in the TT). I lasted about two more laps. I took one more shot on the last lap to try and get away but that didn't stick either and I ended up finishing about 29th but I was ok with that. I had animated the race and made it interesting and I hadn't been content to sit in on other's wheels.

I'll report on the road race tomorrow, as that'll take another long entry but it went pretty well also. All in all, it was a great weekend of bike racing.

Thanks for Reading

Albany Georgia Cup Race

2008-03-03T08:58:00.002-05:00

This past weekend was the first full on race weekend of the year. Here in Georgia we have a series of races known as the Georgia Cup. The series is an attempt to bring racing to a level that meets the needs of what is often referred to in cycling as "elite-level" teams. These are teams who have lots of really good riders who aren't quite able to race for a pro team for some reason or another but who are really good riders. They get some good sponsorship dollars that pay for things like race clothing, bike frames, wheels, hotel and race entry fees and the like but they don't actually get paid a salary. The Georgia Cup series is an attempt to make high quality racing available to this level of team. Add on to that the various lowest level profession teams (known as Continental) such as the Jittery Joe's team that are based in the area that are looking for race events to help prepare for the Pro level National Racing Calendar events and the solid area teams that have good category 1 and 2 racers and you have the target audience for the series. However, since the Georgia Cup can't break even with just these racers (and still pay out prize purses) they also put on races at the same venues for the lower categories in the sport. That's where guys like me come in.

So this weekend was the first race of this year's series. For the last three years, the series has started down in Albany in south Georgia with the hope that the weather will be better than if we raced up near Hotlanta. In the first two years, that wasn't the case (torrentail rain one year and cold and windy the next) but this year turned out to be great weather-wise. Before I get to my experience in the racing, let me just say that the event was really first rate. I've raced at some pretty crappy races (a couple put on by an earlier iteration of the Georgia Cup) but this was not that kind of event. Registration went well (pre-registering really helped as did showing up the Friday night before the Saturday races to get my registration packet), the courses were really great, things seemed to run pretty smoothly and the results were up pretty quickly. Timing was done by computer transponder which was really cool in a lot of ways and worked better than I had been lead to believe. While there were a few glitches, the Georgia Cup folks did a really nice job of putting this together. The only complaint that I might have is the lack of payouts in the lower classes but if that's what it takes to get good events put on for guys like me who aren't in the upper echelons of the amateur part of the sport-so be it.

My goals for the weekend were pretty modest. The time trial was really a prologue with lots of short straights, lots more turns, no climbs and only 3.2 km long. This is the worst type of TT for me so I just wanted to stay upright and place in the top half of my field. I did that but just barely.

The next event was the criterium. This is the "NASCAR" event of bike racing. You ride a short loop, usually less than a mile and a half in size, several times. There's lots of cornering in big packs of riders and lots of crashes. This crit loop was a little longer (1.6 miles) and was in a peanut shape with about eight turns per lap going both ways (right and left). It was run on the totally closed down downtown streets of Albany so we had wide roads to ride on and lot of room to maneuver. The course was about the second best crit course I've ever raced. I'm not a very good crit rider because I don't have a lot of confidence cornering in large packs of riders and I have a hard time sprinting out of turns. The race is a hard-easy-hard-easy- type of racing with lots and lots of short intervals. Not too good for a guy with very few fast twitch muscles. My goals here were to stay upright (no crashing), finish with the front group and just try to sprint to the finish. I achieved all of those things and even managed a top 25 finish in a pack of 60 riders which was bit of a surprise. I even managed to pass a few guys in the final sprint and I felt like my cornering improved through the race.

On Sunday, we had a fairly short road race of about 35 miles. Again, my goals were modest: stay upright, move through the pack and take a few digs off the front. Again, I accomplished all three. The hardest of the three for me is to move through the pack. I tend to give up position a little too easily and end up getting shuffled to the back. I also tend to play a little cautious sometimes and let small gaps open up which other riders take. I fought through those and found that I could make my way to the front when I needed to and I could get shuffled back into the middle of the pack and recover. I managed to do a couple of hard intervals off the front and even finished 21st in the field sprint at the end, passing guys in the last 100 meters.

I haven't seen the overall results, but I think I may have finished in the top 25 for the weekend and maybe even the top twenty which was a lot better than I expected on a flat course with lots of sprinters. I still have a lot of work to do but it was really encouraging not to get dropped by the fast group after having my butt kicked all winter long. It's frustrating to ride with teh local Cat 1 and 2 guys but I have to admit that it's been good for me. I still need to lose a lot of weight but that'll keep coming. I race again in two weeks on a course I really have liked in the past down in Perry. The TT there will be a longer one on a rolling course and so I expect to do better there than I did this week. In addition, there's some climbing and the road race is longer so that might play to my strengths a little more.

One final shout out. Over the winter I trained with a group of guys in Macon that were putting together a team for this season. I was hoping to be on the team but after a few auditions, it was pretty clear that I wasn't going to be much help to them (to be honest, I wouldn't have invited me to race on my own team if I had had one). This weekend was a really coming out event for them and they really did well. They won the road race they were in and took second in the crit. I'm thinking they'll win the overall and place two or three more riders in the top ten. So to the the Security Bank team with Doug and Jake and Robert and Drew and Bill and all the others: Good Job and Congrats on an outstanding weekend!

Thanks for Reading.

Good Weekend

2008-02-25T09:12:00.002-05:00

This is the first weekend in a while that I've had where my ride schedule has been entirely determined by me. It was also the first weekend where we actually had reasonably good weather both days. Given this, I feel like it's been about the most fun of any weekend I've had on the bike in a while.

Saturday the wind was up at a pretty good clip so I rode into it for the first half of the ride and then got to turn around. I sort of slogged through the first part of the ride but managed to keep my average above 20 mph and when I made the turn I was Lance Armstrong all of the sudden; riding at 25+ mph. I did a little climbing on the route but mostly it was good tempo work.

On Sunday the wind had subsided and we needed to head down to Tarmac to get a few things so I plotted out a metric century route and headed out about noon. Despite not feeling great at first, I sort of yelled at myself for being a weenie for a bit and got my legs going by about mile 10 and then really got on top of a big gear. I kept telling myself that I wanted to meet this goal or that at a certain speed and managed to talk my way through the entire ride. At the end I had done 64 miles at a 22 mph average which was phenomenal.

The only negative for the whole weekend is that I hit a sharp piece of gravel in the road and cut down one of my new Maxxis tires. It's one of the hazards down here when it rains. On the country roads the drainage is usually bad enough that when we get a lot of rain, as we've done over the last week or so, the runoff pushes a lot of stuff out into the roads where the cars tend to scatter it through intersections. I managed to use the old dollar bill fix to get myself home but the tire was a loss which is a bit of a bummer

On a random note, I've kind of decided that on real training rides I'm not going to listen to podcasts anymore. I dig listening but I think that my mind wanders from the task at hand and I end up not pushing myself as hard. I'll still listen on recovery days but when I want to train I'll keep it music only. This likely means I'll have to cut back on the number of podcasts I download. I get way too many now and my listening time will diminish now.

On another note, the Bicycling magazine "Buyer's Guide" came to my home this week. For the first time I felt no pangs of bike lust. While I admired the Pinerello Prince in an ad I didn't really feel this desire to own it. I guess I'm pretty happy with what I've got and the only thing that really gets me excited is the Specialized Tarmac SL frame in Candy Apple red. Boy is that a sweet looking frame. I've also been digging the Stumpjumper FSR frame this year. I really like the lines...very swoopy, which is cool for a mountain bike.

This week is all recovery rides. I woke up last night and my whole body was stiff from the metric. I could feel all of my body's power channels from my shoulders down to my legs because they were all complaining. Not badly enough to have to take anything but enough to remind me that I'm not 35 anymore. So I'll spin around in the nice weather today and ride inside for the rain and wind we're supposed to get for tomorrow and Wednesday. This coming weekend is the Albany Georgia Cup race and so I want to be set for that.

Anyways, thanks for reading and have a great week.

First Race

2008-02-18T10:07:00.003-05:00

Well, it was Tundra Time Trial time again and I went up to see how my body was doing. We had great weather for the race and I was curious to see where my fitness was. I got up there early (which was nice) and did a good warm up. It was weird to dust off all of the time trial gear after not using it since last year's TTT. I feel a lot better this year and I'm looking forward to doing a lot more racing.

I got to the start line and took off with an excellent start. Almost immediately I caught my 30 second, 1 minute, 1:30 and 2 minute rabbits and was feeling good. As I rode though, I noticed that I couldn't get my heart rate up over 162. Now normally I ride at around 170 for my lactate threshold and I was ten beats below that. I was concerned but I also seemed to be riding fast. I told myself that my body was only going to do what it would do and that I had to do the best with what it gave me. Then I went over a bridge on the course and a huge bump flatted my back tire. Race over. As I turned around and rolled back to the start, it occurred to me to ask for a new start time to see if I could get he tube replaced and try again. Fortunately, the official for the day, John, was really generous and gave me a new start.

So I changed the tube, got back to the start line and John slotted me in pretty quickly after that. This time I screwed up my start. Iw as in way too big a gear and it took 10-15 seconds to sort that out. I was rolling but not accelerating up to speed the way I should have. Once again I had the heart rate limit but this time I was chasing some faster guys so I decided to really see if I could push up over the 160 limit my body was imposing. After trying that for about 5 minutes and then throwing up on myself (yes, I puked on the bike) I decided that my body had it right and to ride with what it gave me. I caught two guys by the turnaround and at the turnaround I had a really good turn. As I powered out I realized that something had switched over in my body and I was able to go about 4 bpm harder. As I motored back to the finish line I really felt good and fast. My legs felt like they had a lot of power. At one point though, I lost focus because of thinking about this stuff and then looked down to see my HR down to 157. Refocusing, I was able to push myself back up to my limit.

I finished the course in 22:06 (9 miles) which was a personal record for me but I still finished fifth. The weather made everyone faster and the level of competition for this thing keeps going up. Still, even with finishing off the podium, I felt pretty good about my ride. I'm still getting over a cold and I didn't specifically taper for the event like I've done in years past so I'm pretty good with this as a fitness test. I'll race the Georgia Cup race down in Albany in a couple of weeks as another fitness test/training race and then Perry-Roubaix two weeks after that. The Albany course is pan flat so I don't expect to do much other than hang with the pack but it'll be good practice for that. the Perry course has a couple of really good hills in it so that'll be a better indication. It also has a really good TT course they've used in past years and I'm hoping they'll do the same thing this year so I can use that as a fitness check.

Hopefully, I'll have lost 10 more pounds by the end of March and I'll be at a good race weight by then for what I consider the heart of my season; May-September.

Thanks for Reading.

Double Metric

2008-02-02T20:54:00.000-05:00

Ouch. Ouch, Ouch, Ouch. No really, Ouch!

That's what my body is saying to my brain right now. Why? Because I, on Groundhog Day, decided to join the Pain Train's annual Double Metric Century. Actually, it was 127 miles that included the Pine Mountain Hwy with lots and lots of climbing.

It was billed as a LSD ride. It was for about the first 40 miles or so I guess. We were averaging about 22 mph but lots of the route was downhill. When we hit the climbing I sort of expected we'd ease off. Not so much. I don't know why the group felt like it had to do a double metric in February at that kind of pace but it did. We hit the 70 mile mark averaging over 21.5 and that was after a lot of the really hard climbing. I got dropped about 65 miles in when a couple of guys decided to push the pace for no other reason than they felt like it. Did I mention that there were no stops planned up to that point. We had a SAG vehicle but there was no real chance to get a new bottle so I did 70 miles on two bottles. At the 70 mile mark the SAG vehicle stopped to allow us to get new bottles (whoo-whoo...two more for the last 58 miles!!!) and shed some clothes and eat a little.

I was only a few minutes behind the main group but by the time I got there I was pissed. I don't mind the better riders going hard but don't advertise it as an easy pace LSD ride if you're going to decide to hammer at mile 40. There were guys with powermeters reporting numbers in the 700+ plus wattage range for some of these parts of the ride. Why? What's the point? We don't EVER race 125 miles.

I was also pissed 'cause I got dropped. I hate that I'm fat and slow right now. Used to be that I never got dropped by anyone but the last 18 months and all the stuff I'm doing at school has conspired with my own appetite to put on the pounds. I'll lose the weight (I've already started) but I hate getting dropped. I hate feeling weak.

So, when we left I decided to ride at my own pace. I knew that someone would have to go hard and I'd get dropped anyways so I just rode. For the next twenty miles I was off the front as the ride leader tried to make up for the previous behavior by saying that we'd go slow and then push it a bit later on. Great I thought. No one said anything about pushing anything in the ride post. In fact it specifically said we wouldn't be doing that. Screw it, I decided. Why ride with these guys when they were going to be so capricious? Why try to work with them when they were going to chew me up and spit me out once they decided to stop playing nice.

I rode the rest of the ride by myself. Calling people names on a group ride is considered bad form so I just stayed away and kept my mouth shut. I'm pretty sure I won't be invited back. I'm also pretty sure I don't really give a damn. I'm fat and slow and I'm sick of getting dropped.

But I won't always be fat and slow and I won't forget. They ride every Tuesday and Thursday evening in the summer and I'll go back and I'll remember. When someone suggests going easier I'll turn the screw and make their eyes bleed. I won't wait when some guy gets dropped. I won't have mercy. I'll abandon them to ride back to the car alone feeling frustrated and weak. I will make them fear. And when they ask why I'm such an SOB I'll tell them I learned how the group rides when I did LSD rides over the winter.

Until then I will train and suffer and make myself hurt. I'll save it all up and use it to kindle my rage. Then there will come a day when one of them is a little weak and I'll remember...

I Want to Believe...

2008-01-22T12:03:00.000-05:00

This is the blog where I get to sound like some sort of cycling Fox Mulder. Maybe you caught the big piece that ESPN did on the Slipstream-Chipotle Professional Cycling Team last week. I thought the article was a great discussion of the Jonathan Vaughter's ethic in running a team in a way where doping is going to be a thing of the past. I liked that a major sports media outlet ran a story about cycling that was positive. I want to believe in this team, I really do.

As I've chronicled here in the past, I lost my faith in professional sports. Not just cycling but all the big money sports who, with fan and media complicity, foster and live by a winner takes all mentality that now infects and pervades out entire American culture. While I think that cycling has become the poster child of the insidious use of performance enhancing drugs that grows out of that mentality, one only has to look at the Mitchell Report to see that the problem is in no way limited to cycling or the broader world of endurance sports.

That's what I like about this team. It's going to be ok to lose. One doesn't have to win everything all the time and be the biggest, bestest, whateverest team around. The team's goal is to compete in an honest way that honors the races, the other riders and the fans. Sometimes the team will win, sometimes the team will lose, sometimes that loss will be spectacular but that will be ok. I want to believe that the team really will ride that way. I want to believe that the riders will buy into the system. I want to believe that sponsors will want an authentic model of how a team will be run. I want to believe that the fans will cheer for a team that doesn't dominate.

Only time will tell. If the team runs its program the way it intends and can't find sponsors or fans in two years, that'll say a lot about our culture and the culture of sport. I hope that's not the case.

I want to believe...

Movie Help Needed

2007-12-16T19:53:00.000-05:00

As you may have seen, the Director's Cut of Blade Runner is coming out soon and watching the ads got me thinking. I want to create two sets of DVDs, both of which would have as part of the set Blade Runner. One set would be a man vs. machine themed set. On one end might be the Terminator movies and the Matrix Trilogy would be on the other end. In the middle might be Blade Runner and I, Robot. The other set would be a sort of Dark Visions of the Future sort of thing with Soylent Green, Blade Runner and that sort of thing. I'm looking for suggestions for either of these two series. If you know of anything, leave me a comment. I'm looking for mostly mainstream American movies but I'll consider looking into getting good foreign films or Anime films.

Thanks for your help.

I Can't Stand It

2007-12-14T10:50:00.000-05:00

The Mitchell Report is out. I was amazed during the run up to it's release that most of the major media outlets were poo-pooing the report saying that it wouldn't name any real names, that it would amount to a slap on the wrist, that it wouldn't make any real recommendations, etc., etc., etc.

Well.

It looks like the former senator, with a little help from federal prosecutors and good fortune, wrecked the image of baseball in a way that is so definitive that even the "bury-my-head-in-the-sand" deniers have had to take notice. He laid the blame on everyone and was specific about it; players, clubhouse personnel, management, the players union, you name it. He exposed the culture of doping and cheating. He made tough recommendations that really sounded good coming from a guy who is known to love the game as to how to clean the sport up.

I have to wonder though if he didn't learn just a little bit from how badly cycling has handled it's doping problem. Would the report have been as strong in terms of laying out blame and recommending recourse had we not had to watch cycling try to slowly kill itself over the last 20 years? If you look at it, the problems are basically the same with the exception of EPO. There's an organized sort of underground network of distributors and enablers (Belgian mafia anyone???). The athletes are all vigorously denying involvement by saying they've never tested positive. The owners/sponsors are acting like victims when it's known that they supplied both the pressure to perform and the financial resources to obtain the products. Even the fans share some blame by expecting virtuosio performances and near athletic invincibility on a regular basis.

Baseball is corrupt. Just like cycling is. Just like American football and European futbol (the latest cycling scandal also found evidence on over 100 soccer players in Europe but that information has been repressed for the sake of national interest...their time is coming). Big money sports whether it be the fake amateur levels like college football and the Olympics or the professional leagues like the NFL, the NBA and MLB on this side of the pond and World Cup soccer and basketball as well as international cycling are rotten to the very core.

In my mind, however, only cycling is trying to find a way out of the morass. Of all the big money sports, only cycling has unannounced blood testing and mandatory two-year suspensions. Donald Fehr in his press conference yesterday basically said that the MLB Players Union would fight any attempt at blood testing. His COO routinely let players know when they were going to be tested. The NFL bans players for only a month for a performance enhancing substance positive test and the team forfeits nothing. Some teams in cycling have been so visionary as to see that even this sort of program will not stop the cheaters and the pressures to cheat. Slipstream, CSC and High Road (formerly T-Mobile) have all gone to a stronger system designed to catch abnormalities in blood and urine markers over the course of the entire year with regular testing. This serves to insulate the riders from pressure and lab error. The Grand Tours are going to require "blood passports" of all riders. No one, and I mean no one, is doing as much as cycling is to deal with doping. I don't know if it will work but I do think that several teams are on the right track.

Now if the other leagues will follow suit with allowing blood testing by outside independent agencies, requiring long-term blood marker tracking and having harsh penalties for cheaters and the teams that enable them then maybe we'll get somewhere.

For now, I hope that baseball gets the crap knocked out of it in the court of public opinion. That's the only thing that'll get the culture to change. It's the only thing that is forcing cycling out of the darkness. However, if baseball is going to be following cycling's lead, it'll take another huge scandal about ten years from now and the loss of some major network broadcasting contracts (leaving MLB on VS maybe???) to really force some change.

Thanks for Reading.

Really Pleased

2007-12-07T09:28:00.000-05:00

Here at Gordon we're in finals week and I've given and graded my final exams for my two introductory physics classes. One of the big things that a lot of people don't realize about education is how important it is to assess every aspect of you students' learning but also how hard it can be to do. When I took physics as an undergrad, the emphasis was on assessing whether a student could solve a variety of problems with the assumption that to solve those problems a student had to have a good grasp of the conceptual material the the problem was related to. In the twenty or so years between my first physics class and now, that has been found to be a woefully inaccurate assumption. Work by Hestenes at Arizona State, Mazur at Harvard and Hake at Indiana have shown that just because a student can solve a problem, it doesn't mean the student knows much about the physics. In fact, in the physics courses that cater to the pre-med and other allied health students what a problem solving exam might show is only that the student is able to pattern match the test questions to previously worked examples. I know that when I taught these courses at the University of Florida as a graduate student, it was pretty apparent that the pre-med students focused on memorizing solutions and didn't have much conceptual understanding.

For that reason, not long after I started teaching as a career I began to test my students' conceptual understanding. Not only do I test the final understanding but I test the students' "previous knowledge state"; which is a fancy way of saying how much to they know walking in the door about the conceptual framework of Newtonian physics. A lot of really, really good research has been done on this by groups at the University of Washington, Dickinson College, Tufts University and the University of Oregon. (There are many others who are doing good work as well.) What they have shown is that students come into a physics class with a very robust picture of how the physical world works that is almost entirely wrong (Aristotelian actually). A lot of my class is built around getting the students to change how they think about the world as well as teaching them a structured problem-solving methodology.

All of this is to get the point that my physics students did great this semester. One why to measure performance is to compare how a student does on an assessment instrument (in my case a conceptual test) that is given both at the beginning and at the end of the class. The most common way to analyze the data is to calculate a "gain value" by looking at how much their score on the exam improved divided by the maximum it could have improved. Hake's research at Indiana of over 10,000 students showed that students taught in a standard lecture/lab format course had average learning gains of around 22% (how much did you pay for that course?). His data showed that students who were taught in some form of non-traditional format that emphasized interactive engagement in some way had average learning gains of around 60%. Interestingly enough, hake's research showed that there seemed to be a ceiling for the gain scores of about 70-72%.

Well, my engineering physics course (calculus-based introductory physics) showed an average learning gain of 79% and my allied health related course (algebra-based intro physics) had learning gains of 67%. Needless to say, I am really, really pleased with these numbers. Additionally, all but one of the students who started the calc-based course finished and two-thirds of the algebra-based students finished; both numbers being well above the national average much less the average for two-year colleges. I feel really good about the numbers and the classes.

I really can't take too much credit for the success as I'm using curricula developed by folks a hell of a lot smarter than me and I have had outstanding, hardworking, deeply engaged students this semester. For the methods I use to work, the students not only have to buy into the unconventional methods I use but they also have to put a lot of energy into the methods as they are pretty time intensive. Not all students do that but these ones sure did. I can certainly go into the Christmas break with a good feeling of a job well done by all involved.

Thanks for reading.

Time to Get Serious

2007-12-02T19:14:00.000-05:00

Well, December is upon us and in cycling terms that means it's time to move from 10-12 hour training weeks and the like to something more serious. So far, pretty much everything has been base miles and adaptation workouts in the gym. With the exception of the weekly "pain train" rides, my ride intensities have been very much in the base mile zone. I rode a pedestrian 1000 miles with almost no real intensity. The progression has been good though. As I've written before, I feel like I've got some power on the flats. At yesterday's 77 mile ride I really felt like I had what I wanted for the rotating double paceline intervals we did being able to help sustain the 27-29 mph pace. It was really cool to be rotating through with five other guys at that speed. Once we got to the big climbs, I got popped off the back and sat up as I didn't have the climbing power I needed to hang on. What that means is that I need to lose about 10 lbs and develop a little more leg strength and I think I'll be able to hang with the strongest of the non-Cat I/II riders.

So, there are a couple a changes to the training. First, I move to actual strength training in the gym. This is going to suck because it means that I get to be sore for the next two weeks. The second thing is to start to really put in some solid intervals efforts on the TT bike. Finally, my training times have got to increase by 10% per week until I'm at about 20 hours per week. Fortunately, finals week is here and I should be able to get a goodly amount of training time into my schedule. I have to head out to Salt Lake for the holidays but I think I can get a bunch of training in out there with a gym that's right up the road from my Dad's place. The nice thing is that there will be a little altitude training involved there as I'll be at about 5000 ft. That'll really help my January training quite a bit. The only problem is that there won't be any group rides but maybe I can get a good hard hour in every couple of days with some spin training.

Finally, my last goal (beyond the obvious ones) for this month is to return to a disciplined reading routine. I'd like to do at least an hour a day each day. I have about 10 books I'd really like to get read by the end of the year ranging from a book on spiritual theology and a discussion of the 24-7 prayer movement to a biography of Thomas Young and the "Darwin on Trial" book that a colleague wants me to read and give an opinion on. Add to that the new lectures on Ben Franklin and by N.T. Wright I've recently downloaded from iTunesU and I have a lot of intellectual work to do. Fortunately it'll be mentally stimulating, spiritually challenging and, occasionally, emotionally nurturing. It's not that the work I do at the College isn't many of those things but it's also a lot more draining. The reading and considering the ideas of others allows me to rest while remaining active and keeping my thinking fresh.

Well, with all that I have on my plate, I'd better get to it.

Thanks for reading.