Know when to quit. You're not fooling anyone.

The winter freeze of 2008 in Boise has collapsed any hope in scheduling a winter training plan for the upcoming 2009 season.  I've tried running, but became blisteringly cold.  Biking was out of the question.  Indoor gyms were too far away.  

It's official.  I've fell into the rut.  

I am no longer in fighting form nor have I resolved to try.  I've become lazy.  Damn this winter.  

Financial attachments from moving in have halted some of my plans.  

There's  a new plan in effect and thankfully was just started a couple of days ago.  Did a 10k fun run which was more a hill assault up Camel Back.  Finished about 58 minutes which wasn't too bad considering the amount of the crowd, the slush on the ground and the elevation and grade the route imposed.  Not too far off the diminished fitness. 

Bought some new rollers from Nashbar and upgraded to two day air so I can have something to do for the big Christmas and New Years break.  I might even modify the rollers with a DIY mod that emulates the E-motion stuff but at a fraction of the price.  

It's tough to be motivated especially at Mountain Home where your co-workers are fearful of sweating and ridicule a cyclist lifestyle.  I'm kind of glad i'm living in Boise and not down there (Mountain Home).   

I hope my rollers come in tomorrow, because I didn't run today and i'm not sure how long this motivation is going to last because it's supposed to be single digit temps tomorrow and I can't stand waking up at 4am just to run in the same single digit temp range.  As I said before with the moving in and tying up the finances .. no money for running pants.  Just shorts.  Painfully cold.  No leg warmers for the bike, either.  

I have about four months for the Avia Wildflower in May and I hope I didn't slide off the saddle too far back or otherwise it's going to be another long day in the water.  

2008, huh?

Forget 2008.  I'm too lazy to blog about what happened after I had left Korea.  I'll just sum it up from what I can remember in a nice list of bullets!

• Left Korea 
• Crossed four or five time zones just to make it to Texas
• Switched planes to get to Chicago where I stayed for two weeks
• Went to Jersey for two weeks
• Went to Spec Ops school back in Texas.  Had a blast, ripped my arm. 
• Went back to Jersey 
• Took the Amtrak to Chicago
• Fought a massive headcold and lost my voice. 
• Flew to Boise, settled in.  
• Now living in Boise 
• Bought a new Specialized Tarmac Expert. 
• Snowed. 
• Still 0 miles on the Specialized.  
• Ran a 10k Christmas Run on Saturday morning.  Got a sweet t-shirt out of it.  
• Still snowing and the bikes are still racked and hanging.  Waiting on a set of rollers. 

New place. New plan. Same old pace.

It's been quite some time since i started this blog and quite a lot has happened since then.  Where should I even begin?  

Well, I left South Korea somewhere on the 12th of September I believe and headed home to New Jersey with the intention of stopping over in Chicago (for the record, this is my second home. I freaking love this place.) for a visit.  Turns out returning back to the USA from an overseas location isn't exactly a party in of itself.  

"We can only fly you to your next duty location or whatever is cheaper for Uncle Sam.  Thanks for serving across the Atlantic/Pacific/Suck places in the middle east for X number of years and being away from family and friends for X number of years and missing X number holidays, birthdays, weddings, deaths, etc.  We cannot fly you to your place of preference for Leave.  Only to another place to be away from said people above. Again." 

Anyway, after crossing some time zones and landing in Atlanta for a layover and then to Texas for another plane to Chicago, I finally made it!  2 weeks here and I came away with some real good "memories".  I even managed to bike Lake Shore Drive and the magnificent mile and other places of interest.  I left here in a daze.... 

Off to NJ and straight into the Jerseyman Half-Distance Tri.  First of many US based races here.  I cut my teeth into these things in Korea and considered everyone from BeerBelly bike club to be some incredibly fast riders.  How would one fare here?  

I'd say that race alone was the most punishing race I've ever endured.  It rained from the morning swim with rumors of swim cancellation murmuring in the crowd through 95% of the bike leg.  And it rained HARD.  Like it was raining upside down with the force and amount of it hitting the ground.  This was much more brutal than Ironman Korea where the temps and conditions were ideal.  

Transitions at Jerseyman were held in the middle of a grass field and grass + rain + people = mud fest! 

It was basically a mud pit coming in from the swim.  Mud made its way through every component on my bike, but at that point it didn't matter.  I had some trouble with my shoes having much in them and had some even more trouble clipping with the mud all over the cleats.  I even lost my computer coming out of T1.  Sucks.  I pedaled for 56 or so miles without any idea of how fast and how long.  Nutrition was out the window.  I relegated to counting seconds in my head.  

Running with mud in our shoes let alone wet shoes gave me some really nasty blisters with scars to this day.  12 miles of rolling hills and wet equipment made it seem like 12 miles with a backpack.  

I didn't make my sub 6 hour time.  over 30 minutes pass goal time.  

Am I disappointed?  Not in the very least.  Factor in the environment and I think I did pretty well for what it's worth.  

Ill post the rest of my vacation later ... too tired.  

The End of Days

Yesterday's Time Trial was another PR and also a welcome change in format.  

Col. Becker suggested a Team TT today and seeing that we had six, I got to choose teams since it was my last ride.  The I got the idea of enlisted vs. officer.  Me, Brad and Tim on the enlisted side and Becker, Harris and Ryan on the officer side.  We had a 20 second interval between teams and we were last to go.  It might have been better to actually have a plan, but we kind of just took off in a cluster with Tim mashing down to the front right off the start.  I pulled in behind him with Brad in tow and we started to get moving at about 24mph.   Unfortunately, Tim let off  to let me pull right after about a 100 yards and I kind of just took off - at about 28mph.  I looked back after another 100 yards and no one behind me in the draft.  They were still about a 100 yards away so I stopped pedaling for them to catch up all the while seeing the officer team pedaling away about a 1/4 mile away.  Pretty smooth I'd say.  Maybe they had a plan?  

They catch up and Brad pulls this around the bend and we finally get to the straights and start rolling pretty well.  We were pulling for about 24 - 24 mph and about the mile and half mark, I look back and Tim is no longer in sight.  We must have dropped him in the beginning of the straights.  Oh well, we had to leave him if we were to have a chance.  Besides we only need two people to cross the finish for the time to count.  So there we are rolling along taking about 20 - 30 second pull times.  The headwind wasn't too bad.  I changed my position on my bike slightly earlier that morning to compensate so the changes might have helped.  The turns were the parts I worried about as I pulled.  Loose gravel and some nugget sized rocks could do some hurt at the speeds we were going.  I slowed considerably during these when I pulled, but somehow got lucky when Brad is pulling.  I'm oblivious to the danger and maybe he was too.  We get to about 50 yards to the turnaround point and see the officer crew passing us.  We made up about 10 seconds and we're doing pretty good on closing in on them.  So getting back to second stretch, we see Tim rolling by on the way to the turnaround point.  It kind of sucks to be pushing by yourself in a wind.  So now we're getting a but faster maintaining about 26 - 27 on the second half.  There was slight tailwind this time, but feeling good on the hammer nonetheless.  We decrease the pull times to about maybe 20 seconds apart but still hammering strong for the both of us.  Back out the straights, I sight Harris' back, but it looked like he was dropped by Becker and Ryan.  Or maybe he didn't.  So I picked up the pace to about 27 - 28 and really start hammering.  This could be our chance.  I could really see Harris now and realize he has been dropped from his group and that's when I went into overdrive and started hammering to overtake.  I glanced down to see we were rolling in at 29.6 mph and I decide to keep pulling the last few bends and turns. Unfortunately, when I looked back, Brad wasn't behind me anymore and I had just gotten to the final stretch.  So I kept pressing.  I flicked my wrist to see the time and it showed 00:19:41.  I might actually make it under 20 minutes.  I hammered it down, but I was still in a relatively high gear  so my sprint suffered.  I crossed the line at exactly 00:20:04 and Brad came behind me with our team time of 00:20:24.  

For my final event here, I rather enjoyed.  I just wished we did the team TT thing before.  

Genesis

Today was a very long, but a very productive day.  It looks like I can finally say I'm coming home.  I can never be so sure about these things.   It's one of the many sacrifices, I believe, that come with the territory.  Still, it does look like I will be home in the next couple of days.  I definitely cannot stay here over the weekend since it's some sort of Korean holiday and that pretty much means I would lose much more time.   

I'm still debating about wether I'm going to do the Time Trials tomorrow.  I really do, but I really want my bike packed up and my tools shipped home ASAP!!  It takes about a week anyway to get there, so the earlier the better.  It is my last TT and I definitely can't let Brad think so highly of himself.  I'll see how things go in the morning.  

It's basically laundry and I should be done here.  Hahm needs to pack my fixie, but I seriously wanted to sell it.  Maybe I'll post it for sale next year.  I may still want it after all.