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All these boys showing off their new bicycles makes me jealous. Simmons with his Poprad and Brian with his Madone. A new bike is not in the cards anytime soon for me. Maybe a second cross bike in 2007, and a new road bike in 2008. Who knows. I had grand plans of riding a century today, but the weather didn't cooperate as it rained off and on all day. I did manage 1.5 hours in the down pour. Hopefully the weather is nice on Wednesday and I'll give it a go then. Tomorrow I'm riding for a few hours with my wife. Mary spent all morning at a Total Immersion clinic. She said it was quite informative. We went and watched a high school track meet for a couple hours this afternoon, and Mary went back to the swim clinic in the late afternoon. Tonight I played with some sweet Zipp 404's. I'm gluing tires on them for one of Mary's tri friends. After that we went and ate some delicious Thai food. Criterium International on OLN tomorrow. It's Basso's race to lose.
Hi bloggers. Sampson and I went to the trails today and got in a pretty decent workout. I was on my cross bike and Sampson was on his gigantic dog paws. It was rainy and muddy, so we had a lot of fun. We got in about 25 miles at tempo. The workout was actually a thinly veiled attempt at tiring Sampson out for the vet later this afternoon. It was quite successful. He had his annual checkup, DHLPP and Lepto boosters. He weighed in at a solid 80 lbs.
Andy Bakke left a comment on my last post requesting a recap of the 2005 F1 season. Here is a much abridged summation.
Fernando Alonso and the Renault team won the driver's and constructor's championships. McLaren and Ferrari were 2 and 3 with Williams, Toyota, and Honda behind. The days of McLaren and Ferrari dominating are long gone. Williams never really made the jump to the next level, and now they're f'ed since BMW left and started their own team. Cars had to use the same tires throughout the entire race, with no tire changes during the pitstops. Last year was also the last year of the unrestricted 3 liter V12's.
Check out how heavily sculpted the cars are now, even compared to 3 or 4 years ago. Its amazing all the aerodynamic winglets and smooth, shaped bodywork. This McLaren-Mercedes is crazy. The really big auto makers, Renault, Honda, and Toyota, are the ones that will win races in 2006. Tire changes are allowed once again, and engines are now 2.4 liter V8's, or rev limited V12's. The new engine regulation means a drop from about 950 bhp to around 700 bhp.
I had to spend the night at a hotel last night due to our ambulance station catching fire. Yep. There is a dirtbag hotel next door that was fully engulfed in flames, and the flames jumped to the roof and wall of our station. I had just finished watching the Sopranos, and was in the bathroom going #1 when I heard a bunch of people yelling. I lifted the blinds and looked out the window and saw nothing but orange glowing hotness. No one was hurt, and the fire department had the fire out quickly. It was pretty awesome. So we're without an ambulance station for a few weeks due to some serious smoke damage, which sucks.
The training is going pretty well. I've started incorporating intervals into my rides, instead of just ticking away the miles. Today I was able to get in a few hours between rain storms. It feels awesome riding outside after spending like a week straight on the trainer.
Nothing too exciting happening around here lately. I've been working a ton, and my days off have been spent sitting. The weather has been crappy here, so most rides have been on the trainer. I loathe the trainer. I did manage to beat the storm and get outside for a few hours yesterday. Today I cleaned one of Mary's triathlon friend's bikes. Lately I've been degreasing the drivetrain using the "Euro" method of painting diesel fuel on the dirty bits. It only takes a few drops of diesel to clean the entire bike, instead of using like a half gallon of Simple Green. I know it's not very ecologically friendly, but it's not as bad as the Exxon Valdez, which happens to have happened 17 years ago a week from tomorrow.
Lots of great sports on this weekend. Unfortunately I have to work. Fortunately I sit on a couch staring at a TV 99% of the time at work.
Milan-San Remo is this Sunday. Boonen will manage to lug his massive carcass over the Cipressa and Poggio with the front group and easily win the sprint.
The Malaysian GP is this weekend. Look for Alonso to repeat his performance from Bahrain.
The Pacific Life Open from Indian Wells is also going on. Federer is playing very Federer-like and looks to 3-peat. Hingis is also playing quite well. Hingis-Sharapova showdown on Friday.
The World Baseball Classic is going on. Did anyone notice? I'm a big baseball fan, but this thing is terrible. Where are all the spectators?
I heard a rumor about a college basketball tournament or something happening this month. On NPR the other day I heard U.S. companies lost $4 billion in lost productivity from last years tourney. That's insane.
Hello to all in the blogosphere. Sampson and I did a mock cyclocross race yesterday on some trails near our house. He's as fast as I am for about 35 minutes, but then he pops. He needs to work on his tactics. It was ok since Mary went for a run on the trail and he just ran with her the rest of the time. I managed 90 minutes HARD. I don't think it messed up my training too bad going so hard this early in the season. I'm sore and stiff today though. It was fun anyways. It snowed here the other night. Crazy. There is still some snow around, mostly up in the hills. Today the swim team Mary coaches had a meet in Eureka, so we spent the day down there. Sampson spent the day recovering.
Greetings people of Blogger. February was a good trianing month. I rode just short of the 800 mile goal, and around 45 hours. not too shabby for winter. Last week killed me with about 225 miles and 13 hours. I took Monday and Tuesday off this week, and rode for only 30 miles on the trainer today.
Today is Ash Wednesday for all you heathens. I gave up pizza and tortilla/potato chips for lent. Its a win win since I'll lose some weight because pizza and chips are pretty much the only thing I eat. Thank God for burritos. 
