Rollers

I got some rollers tonight, they are effin' sweet, I even rode for the first half hour ever and didn't fall off! Good times to be had on the good ole rollers.

Work has been pretty crazy lately. I've been working on a pretty big project the sorta finished up last Friday and before that it was 10 - 11 hour days. I did get all of my work done though.

I also recently finished building the fully rigid single speed. An Orbea Lanza frame with a Niner carbon fork. I took it for a good ride last weekend and it work surprisingly well. I was anticipating a couple of adjustments that would need to be made but overall it's an awesome ride.

For Thanksgiving Lauren's parents came down. Lauren and I entertained them and had Thanksgiving at my mansion. I was debating just making a traditional turkey but then I came to my senses and decided a Turducken was in order. Let me just say the Turducken was absolutely delicious!!


Then we went to the fine arts museum so I thought I was at least attempt to look the part:

Lauren just finished her first semester of Vet school today!! Congrats!!

A delayed report about that

24 hour race is better than no report at all.

On October 23rd - 24th the annual 24 hours of Rocky Hill took place. I had decided about a month before to do the race since my racing travel buddy/support had a test and this race was much closer than Ruston, LA. The team consisted of three of us from last year (Steve, Simon and me) and a new racer, Vanessa. We raced 3 - 4 person Open Coed. Here is the tale:

Friday night before the race was filled with eager anticipation and last minute preparation. Slightly apprehensive about how I would do after racing the weekend before I just took it easy and relaxed most of the evening occasionally checking the weather report. I went to bed pretty early to try to get ahead on the sleep deficit that was inevitable.

Saturday morning I got up pretty early so I could eat a big breakfast, pack, get gas, and then get Starbucks on the way to the race. Looming dark gray clouds filled the sky as I drove west toward Smithville. Worries of muddy singletrack filled my mind as I passed through a pretty good rain storm but soon I was out of the rain to find relatively dry road. Finally, I pulled in to Rocky Hill and found the team. After the obligatory hellos and introductions I got the bike ready to go and then we convinced Vanessa to go first, Thank God! I really didn't want to do the Le Mans around the rocky drive way. The race started at noon and Vanessa threw down a pretty good lap. I was second and I had a little time to make up so I went after it. I pushed it pretty hard on the early climbs and felt it the rest of the lap. About 3/4 the way through the lap the ominous gray clouds decided it was time to pee on Brandon, and everyone else on the course, about the time I hit the only rocky/potentially slippery decent on the course. Since I was trying to haul ass I went down, pretty hard. No big injuries so I got back on and continued mashing pedals. The only victim of the crash was the buckle on my left shoe. Got back and had enough time to drink some water, refill the water bottles, duct-tape my shoe to my foot, and then go out again. The second lap felt pretty good and I set my fastest lap of the day, no crashes.

I got a good break while Simon and Steve took their turns on course. We had about a 1 lap lead when I started my third lap. I didn't go quite as hard on my third and fourth laps since we did have a lead but still had a couple of good night laps. I held under an hour both laps. After my fourth lap our lead continued to grow. I believe we were around 2 laps up when I got done. I was quite tired so I might be wrong. After some food and water I climbed into my car to get some much needed rest. In a blink of an eye it was time to get up again and get ready to ride. I wasn't planning on doing a third night lap so I hadn't charged my light and just prayed it had enough to make it an hour.

Our lead was pretty good so I decided to do and 'easy' lap, I even had time to stop on the course for a much needed bathroom break. Around my time mark I decided to try to beat an hour. Unfortunately, I hit 1:00:32, should've held the pee I guess. Oh well, the legs were starting to feel it a bit on the last lap so I was just focused on finishing without crashing. When I got in we were up around 4 laps so I said I was done no matter what the teammates said. Then I took the best feeling shower ever and just chilled while Simon and Steve finished the race. We were up 5 laps when Steve was out on his last lap so Simon decided to call it so we could pack up camp and get otta there in a reasonable time.

I decided to take off around 11:15 since the awards weren't going to be until 2 and I was struggling to not fall asleep sitting in my chair. A large mocha frappuccino did the trick to get me back to Houston where I could finally pass out.

The race was great, Terra Firma Promo did a great job organizing the race and the Redbarn Timing system worked great!

Results

Huntsville

or should I say Hurtsville. Last weekend was the race up at Huntsville State Park. The course is pretty non-technical and fast and there really is nowhere to recover at all. I felt a little sore going into the race after I participated in a charity softball tournament on Friday.

Softball Tournament, our team was decent but we did end up losing all three games we played. In the first game I hit a double and a home run. In the second game I had a single. In the last game I moved to play second base and participated in the only double play our team had all day. It was a lot of fun to participate in and I'll likely do it next year, as long as it's not before the Huntsville race.

I went up to pre-ride on Saturday and met up with Lauren there. We hung out for a bit after the ride and then headed back to College Station for the night and to watch the Texas/Nebraska and Wisconsin/Ohio State games. Both the Horns and the Badgers won so that was definitely a great college football weekend. Still perplexing though how Ohio State is ranked higher than the Badgers.

The race started at nine on Sunday so that meant an early morning for Lauren and me. My legs definitely felt a little sore Sunday morning so I warmed up quite thoroughly. The race started fast and just kept going fast. I was definitely struggling to hold speed. I ended up fifth which isn't too bad but I should have been more rested for the race. Then I got to hang out with Lauren for a while.

Now it's recover time before the 24 hours of Rocky Hill this weekend.

Ouch

That's kinda how my knee and shoulder feel right now after last night.

Last night I thought it would be a good idea to work on my night riding skills so I geared up and rode on down to Memorial Park. The ride down was good and the temperature was nice. The night was clear and I thought it was a great night for riding. The singletrack was good and I was feeling good until about 2 miles into the ride when I clipped a tree with my handlebars and bit it bad. Apparently when I clipped the tree my front wheel must have been off the ground and when I landed it must have been almost sideways. I heard the bead on the tire break as I was sailing over the handle bars and then the bike landed on top of me. I'm sure the crash was pretty awesome to watch. The I got up and realized I bent the wheel pretty good:

I picked myself up and walked my poor bike out to the entrance to Memorial Park and waited until my friend Josh arrived to pick me up. On my walk out I noticed my leg was a little sore and then I felt the large bump on my knee, from the handlebars? It was pretty sore by the time I got home so I just chilled and hung out with Josh for a bit.

This morning the knee was pretty sore but it feels considerably better now. The shoulder feels alright too. The wheel should be ok, the hub and spokes are all intact so hopefully I only need to replace the rim. Maybe a couple days off would be good too . . .

I had a great time

last weekend going up to visit Lauren after a good ride on Saturday morning. The ride was definitely good, I hadn't been to sure about how the power training was working but I set five new personal bests and still felt pretty good after the ride. Then I headed up to College Station to hit up Spoons, er I mean Lauren! Lauren was studying up for some tests she has this week. Then we headed out to her professor's house for some bitchin' fajitas and sweet tea. This was only after the Longhorns sucked it up against UCLA.

Sunday I travelled down to Rocky Hill to ride with Dave and Joshua. Joshua helped to get me started mountain biking and training and Dave is a crazy randonneur. Definitely some good and fast riding. The riding was good prep for the upcoming 24-hour race out there on the 23rd and 24th of October, I love that race. On the way home I found out that the Kolache place no serves some great bacon cheeseburgers. Apparently I dropped an onion in my car though because it smelled richly of cheeseburger Monday morning.

I'm not sure I approve of the earlier and earlier nights, makes for some interesting riding. Fun night mountain biking though.

Since then

then being Camp Eagle, I have been pretty busy. Work has been busy as I have been given more responsibility, I suppose that's a good thing. Outside of work has been pretty busy too. Two weekends ago I went up to Lauren's and hung out with her. I did some Paydirt, volunteer trail work for the Spring TMBRA series, and then went riding. I thought it would be good to ride the trail since there is a duathlon up there in a couple weeks that I am tentatively committed to. The ride was good until I got to the back part of the loop where I discovered my cleat was loose and I couldn't get my multi-tool into the screws. I kept riding and once I got into the wooded area I noticed a disgusting high density of spider webs spanning the trail. Not only were there webs but there were bunches of spiders too, including crab-looking spiders and orb spiders. Orb spiders eat finches, see below:



Just the sight of the spiders brought me back to an encounter I had another big spider, banana spider, during a past climbing trip, see below:

I was quite disturbed by the spiders everywhere to the point I crashed because I didn't want to go through the huge web engulfing the entire trail with a big spider in the middle. It was at that point that I got onto the open trail and avoided the uncleared single track for the rest of the day. Then I rode back into college station and got some yogurt with Lauren and went to the bike shop to fix my shoe. On Sunday Lauren and I went out to ride the horses and then got some frozen yogurt and I headed up to Austin to ride with a friend. We rode Walnut under nearly perfect trail conditions, good times. I miss Austin. I was in Austin for a recruiting event at UT Austin, had a good time, saw some friends, and recruited many. Then back to work.

Fast forward one weekend to last weekend, Lauren came down from CS. We didn't really do anything which was kinda nice and relaxing.

Camp Eagle 2010.2

The race morning was good. Some good brefackst then a nice morning ride and finally some warm up. Some a couple of old friends during the warm-up and the dude that crashed and got medflighted back to Kerrville. He turned out ok and apparently just had a concussion, sweet ride home from the race though, pricey too. The start of the race was good and fast. I hung with Patrick for a little while and then took off. I was in either fifth or sixth so I knew I had some people to catch. My first lap on the South loop was ugly, I climbed very poorly and definitely lost some time. The North loop was good, the second pass at the South loop was much better, the climb felt good and I passed one guy in my class. The Cat 2's were out on course so I was passing a bunch of them which made it somewhat tricky to tell who I was racing. I thought I had passed another guy in my race and when I got in I was placed third. The race felt good and the legs still felt pretty good after the race. Apparently someone in my class had come in and they had missed them so I ended up fourth. Oh well, still felt pretty good.

After the race I went down to a friend's cabin down in Leakey (pronounced Lakey) which was about 45 miles away or so. When I got there we had some food and then travelled on down to the creek to put our feet in the water. It felt pretty dang good. Later in the evening we took a tour of the community on the golf cart and we saw some pretty big deer. Since Ben, my buddy, and his wife were getting up super early and going to a run I decided to get up and head on back to Houston. I got back to Houston around 10:30 and got some things done around the house.

It was a good Labor Day weekend.