It’s been pretty fast and furious since we got back from Houston Sunday morning, so i haven’t had time to blog.

The trip was, in a word, awesome. As usual, the time flew by and it felt too short. I got to see a ton of people i hadn’t seen in a while. We had a group of about 12 doing stuff together Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, which was cool. I felt like i didn’t get to spend as much time as i was hoping to catching up with everyone, but when you live thousands of miles away and try to get a year’s worth of hanging out with 12 people done in 3 days, you’re kind of destined for failure. But damn if we didn’t give it our best.

As with the people, we got to eat at a lot of places i’ve been wanting to try for going on a year now (Textile, Little Big’s), as well as places i’ve been missing (La Jalascience, Central Market), but i wish we could have hit some more places (Feast, Catalan, Ninfa’s on Navigation, Asian Market, etc.)

We didn’t sleep very much, so by the time Saturday afternoon rolled around and a lack of sleep, a little dehydration, the Texas heat, an outdoor 4th of July BBQ, and some beer all got together for a party, i hit a wall, my body shut down, and i had to call it an early night, missing the planned fireworks all together. Luckily, i didn’t feel too bad for the 4am wake up call the next morning and the 6 hours of traveling to get back home.

One aspect of the whole super early flight back that was pretty entertaining was that we arrived home at 9:30am, even after 6 hours of travel. But because we had been up for 7 hours, Rachel and i were hungry for lunch. We desperately searched for some place serving sandwiches, but all we could find was breakfast fare. We finally descended upon Quiznos within 2 minutes of them opening. It was delicious. I think we took a 3 hour nap that afternoon. We were so wiped out. When am i going to learn that i can’t revert to my college behavior when i get back together with my college friends?

It’s Tour time, have you been watching!?! Considering the first week of the Tour is usually boring flat stages where only the last 5km are interesting as the break away inevitably gets caught and the sprinters duke it out for the win, this has been an exceptionally exciting first week of the Tour. I can’t wait to see what happens when the race hits the mountains. I’ve gotten to the point where i really like most of the riders in the pro peloton and find it hard root for a single guy or team. I guess i’ll just keep watching a see who i feel myself pulling for. I think the only way i’d be unhappy was if Contador just smashes the field, or Cadel Evans finds a way to squeak out a victory. For the most part though, just give me a compelling story and some exciting stages and i’m a happy camper. Seeing Lance grab number 8 would be pretty sweet though.

I live a monk-like existence during the 3 weeks of the Tour: wake up, shower, eat breakfast, go to work, go for a ride, shower, cook dinner, watch the tour, sleep. That’s it, not much time for anything else.

This weekend should be a good one, but in a totally different way than last weekend. Saturday morning we’re going to a Tour watching party at 5am with some people from our softball team. It should be a good time. After that Rachel and i will be heading to the velodrome for a track racing clinic. This will be number 3 for me (after which, i can start racing on week nights!), and number 1 for Rachel. She’s a little reluctant to give it a try, but i think she’d really enjoy it if she just gave it a shot. Sunday morning, it’s looking like we’ll be heading out for a mellow bike ride with some riding buddies.

So are we doing anything this weekend that doesn’t involve bikes? Why yes, we are. Since moving into our apartment 2 years ago we’ve aquired quite a bit of new stuff without ever really getting rid of older stuff that we haven’t touched in two years. Our little back yard, once a bare 15′ X 15′ patch of dirt, is now starting to look a little ‘white trash’, over flowing with camping gear, bike stuff, grills, smokers, potted plants, gardening tools, etc.. The kitchen, which was already pretty starved for space is full of kitchen gadgets, dishes, cookware, and small appliances that we don’t use anymore and should probably get rid of. I think the thing to do is just go through every single item in every single room and decide if we really need it. Unpacking closets haphazardly stacked with stuff that just gets thrown in there, evaluating what we need and what we don’t, and repacking the closet could go a long way to getting us more storage space that is so precious for people like us that like to do a wide range of activities, but live in a place without a ton of storage place for all of our toys.

Just because: embrocation.

Embrocation is a liniment that European cyclists have been putting on their legs in cool temperatures to keep them warm for decades. It’s a staple of Euro cycling culture, especially for riders from places like Belgium where the weather in the winter is terrible, and remains pretty brutal for the spring classics races there. So what’s the tie in? I decided to order some this winter, just to see if i liked it. For the more mild NorCal winters where temperatures hoover around the mid 50’s, it’s incredible stuff. It keeps your legs warm and your muscles supple on long rides in the cold when your legs would otherwise be tight. So why mention this in the summer? I woke up at 5:30am last week so that i could get in a 90 minute ride that included a trip up Old La Honda before work. Temps when i left the apartment were in the mid 50’s so i threw a long sleeve base layer on top, but stuck with my shorts on the bottom and slathered up the legs with embrocation to keep me warm. I forgot how much i loved the stuff. The ritual of putting it on feels like shooting jump shots on the basketball court in that it just feels good and gets you excited for the ride you’re about to go on. The slow burn you feel (in a good way) out on the road. The ‘hot legs’ sensation you feel when you get back and for a few hours afterward. The way it makes your legs glisten and pick up little specs of dirt over the course of a ride. I just dig everything about the stuff. The company i got my mine from, Mad Alchemy Embrocation, is based out of Massachusetts and is a pretty small, mom and pop operation. I just got an email newsletter from them today. They have 2 new summer embrocations, one with eucalyptus and mint, the other with mango, as well as a new chamois cream. Not to mention a coffee embrocation making it’s return this fall. Damn, i might have to get an order together.

Oh crap, it’s getting late, i’ve got to get to bed. G’night y’all.

Man, celebrities have been dropping like flies lately. I’ve been neglecting the blog because everything else has been pretty wild and fast paced lately, but fear not, i’m still here.

There have been some new developments on the housing front (a deal on a house we thought was a sure bet seems to have fallen apart, and one we thought had fallen apart may have been resurrected).  The computer i got after graduating from high school to last me through college final died after 6 noble years of service (a hell of a run for a computer), so we’re the proud owners of a new iMac. It’s pretty sweet. We went Hellyer Velodrome last Friday night to watch their annual ‘American Velodrome Challenge’ racing series which draws riders from all over the West Coast and even a few guys from the Midwest and East Coast. Needless to say, they were a hell of a lot faster than me. Many of the races saw speeds rarely dipping under 28-30mph. That’s freaking flying! It’s the end of the month and the quarter so i’m swamped at work writing progress reports, not to mention all the other stuff on my plate. Anyone see the US-Brazil game on Sunday? Rachel caught the game at our favorite sports bar. When the US went up 2-0, the place was going totally insane, we were on cloud 9. The rest of the game was like a punch in the gut. We walked the 8 blocks home in silence because there was just nothing to say. The bike training is back on track after being off the bike for 2 whole weeks with the wedding in Denver and then my back problems. I did a long (4 miles) climb yesterday after work and for the first time ever i felt better at the end of the climb than i did at the beginning. I put on a few lbs in the last few weeks, but i’m setting myself up to make a final push for the rest of the season. I’m pretty excited about that. To top everything off, Rachel and i are leaving at 6:30am Thursday morning for an extended weekend in Houston. As much as i’d love to get a real blog entry posted before then, let’s be honest, it ain’t happening. It’s going to be a great weekend though. We’ve got several groups of friends coming from Austin and San Antonio that we’re looking forward to seeing, as well as family and friends in Houston. Three days isn’t much time, but we’re going to do our best to see everyone, spend some quality time, do some fun stuff, go back to some of my favorite places, eat some good food, and probably sleep as little as possible.

Have fun this weekend folks. Eat some good food, see friends and family, and catch some fireworks if you get the chance.

Wedding season is now in full swing. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending upon how you look at it) Rachel and i are officially done with weddings for the summer. Sure, seeing old friends and acting like we’re in college again is enough fun to be criminal, but plane tickets and hotels are expensive, not to mention the toll a weekend of hedonistic behavior takes on your body. Plus, i can only spend so much time in Crate and Barrel buying wedding gifts before my imminent yuppie future smacks me in the face.

That being said, weddings are still ridiculously fun. I’m not jaded or cynical enough at this point to question if the marriage will last, instead, i still get a kick out of seeing two people that i know love each other make a life long commitment. I’m still new enough to this whole thing that i haven’t had friends get married and then split up a few years later, so i continue to get all sappy and sentimental at weddings. Plus, who doesn’t love free food, drinks, and a few hours of getting down on the dance floor?

Corey and Beth’s wedding in Denver turned out to be a fantastic weekend. We flew in Wednesday night after work and stayed at Beth’s parents’ house with Beth, Corey, and Katie. Thursday was spent helping prep for the wedding. Thursday night were the bachelor/bachelorette parties, which stayed relatively tame. Friday was more wedding prep, rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. Corey’s parents chose an old mansion in Downtown Denver for the rehearsal dinner and invited a whopping 109 people. Open bar, great food from St. Louis and Denver, beautiful setting, great people, no complaints here.

Saturday was the big day. Both the ceremony and the reception were supposed to be outside, but when a light drizzle just before the ceremony was to start turned into pouring rain and hail, both events got moved inside. While it would have been nice outside, most people get married in a sanctuary, so it was certainly not the end of the world. I ushered, so unfortunately, i didn’t get to catch all of the ceremony (Beth, we’d like to buy a DVD), it seemed to go perfectly as planned. The party then moved to the Colorado History Museum in Downtown Denver for the reception. Once again, great people, great food, music, dancing, who can complain? Because there’s only one flight a day out of DFW to Cozumel, Corey and Beth had to be at DIA at something like 6:30 the next morning to leave on their honeymoon, so they took an early exit from the reception. The rest of the 20-somethings decided that it was too early to call in a night, so we hopped on a shuttle and took one Denver bar by storm. It’s been a very long time since i heard last call at a bar and then wondered around trying to find a cab afterward. It’s certainly not something i’d do very often, but every once in a while, with the right group of people, it can be fun.

Following the theme of acting like we’re in college again, a group of us decided that since we’d likely be getting in late Saturday night and checking out early Sunday morning, it would be a good idea to cram 7 people into a hotel room just a few blocks from the reception. After sleeping on the floor saturday night, sunday morning was a bit of a rude awakening. My back was totally screwed up, my throat was sore, and my voice was gone. Three nights in a row of staying out late and consuming much more alcohol than normal certainly took its toll.

The most amazing thing about the wedding were the people. Though Corey and Beth come from very different families, it was amazing to see how all of their 20-something friends, be they from childhood, high school, college, St. Louis, Texas, Denver, or California, just clicked. I fully expected to see fractured social circles only hanging out with people they already knew, but instead everyone made an effort to get to know everyone else. I was expecting to have a great time seeing people from Trinity that i hadn’t seen in a while, but was not expecting to make a whole bunch of new friends that i had heard about, but either never met before, or only met in passing. That we all went out together after the reception without the two people that brought us all together (though it would have been even more fun if they had been able to come) was the perfect end to a fantastic weekend.

Hopefully this weekend will happen at a much slower pace than last weekend. Rachel’s aunt and uncle, Mark and Pam, are at their house in Mexico for a while, so we’re keeping an eye on their house while they’re gone. I think this weekend we’re going to stay at their place, lounge around, read a little, maybe watch some College World Series, take naps (haven’t done that in a while), and fire up the smoker again to barbeque some ribs. I’ve also got to plan my training schedule for the rest of the bike racing season and figure out what races i’ll be doing from here on out. The big race i was planning to peak for, the San Francisco Twilight crit got canceled because of a lack of sponsorship, so i’m going to have to find another race to peak for. Hopfully, if all goes right, i’ll feel much better and more refreshed going into this Monday than i was last Monday.

The new iPhone came out today. How long until i decide i have to upgrade?

I’m finding new and different ways to rack up DNF’s (Did Not Finish). Today i actually felt really good, despite the fact that after checking in, my race number vanished into thin air and the hour i was planning on spending trying out a long warm up routine, was spent wondering around trying to get a new number. Actual warm up time was reduced to about 15 minutes, which was certainly not ideal.

The course was a very technical course without many straight aways and a number of s-turns and other strange turns that made the racing a little bit nervous. I got in one lap on the course before the race started, but still wasn’t comfortable with the course so i spent the first 2 laps sitting about mid pack waiting for the group to get comfortable on the course and allowing my legs to loosen up a bit. Around the 3rd lap we had set into a pace of around 28mph but my legs were feeling really good, so i started to make my way up to the front. By the end of the lap i was sitting top 5 in a 75 man field and feeling really good.

After about 2 laps of being up near the front we were going around an s-turn a few hundred meters before the start/finish area. I was sitting on the inside and the guy next to me suddenly cut in, bumped my shoulders and handlebars, and pinched me into the gutter. Having your wheel 4 inches from the curb at 30mph is no fun so i unclipped my left foot and was forced to come to a complete stop. By the time i got my foot back in the pedal the field had passed and i was sprinting to catch up with a 50 meter gap. I chased for a lap and was able to maintain that 50m gap most of the lap but just didn’t have enough to make a final push and jump back on the back. I pulled out on the next lap, and on that very same lap there was a crash in the exact same spot where i got pinched.

That i paid a decent amount of money in entry fees, got up at 6am, and drove an hour and a half to this race, only to have some jack ass who wasn’t paying attention end my day is maddening. That the last time i felt this good at a race was in January is just salt in the wound. At the same time, that i even felt okay during the race is a huge improvement from my last few races.

So what did i do differently? Conventional wisdom is that for a race on Sunday, you should take it easy the week before, probably not riding at all Thursday and Friday, then on Saturday you should go out on a short ride with a few short efforts, but for the most part keeping it pretty easy, leaving yourself fresh for the race. I have routinely found that for my last few races i have felt better the day after the race than the day of the race.

Saturday, i decided to go to a track workout at Hellyer Velodrome in San Jose. From 8:30 to 11:30, about 20 of us rode around on a track on fixed gear bikes following the instructions of the guys running the sessions. It was a blast. We did a drill where we rolled around the track in a paceline and then once every lap the front 3 people in the paceline break off and do a 200m sprint for the line, then jump back onto the back of the paceline. Next we split into 2 groups that rode in packs around the track opposite each other. Once a lap the front three riders would go off the front and work together to bridge up to the other group.

Finally were split up into 3 groups (A, B, C) by ability level for a scratch race. As this was my first time to the track, they put me in the B group (the A group was for guys who are regulars at the track). A scratch race is very simple. You decide on a number of laps (in our case 8), and the person that crosses the line first after that many laps wins. I led out the first lap and then dropped back to 3rd wheel where i stayed until the last lap. As soon as we crossed the line going into the last lap Ben (track regular who rode all three races as a bit of a facilitator) took off and i jumped on his wheel. I was still uncomfortable sprinting out of the saddle on the 20 degree banked turns, so i stayed seated and tried to spin it up and come around him, but couldn’t quite do it. Ben beat me by about half a bike length.

I’m definitely hooked on track cycling though. They usually do races on week nights, but i have to finish 2 more clinics before i can go race. This looks like it could be a lot of fun though. I wish i had discovered track cycling earlier.

I haven’t posted in a while because i’ve been busy and just haven’t gotten around to it. So here’s what’s been going on:

The weekend before last we spent the weekend with Rachel’s uncles up in Willits (Mendocino County) getting some work done on the acreage that the family owns and uses as their family camp ground. The property (known as ‘Willitswald’) lost a big tree over the winter right next to the kitchen, so breaking down the tree into fire wood with a chainsaw and a few bow saws, then re-organizing the leaning firewood pile took the better part of a day. The rest of the time was spent clearing trails, spraying for poison oak (P-O Patrol), fixing some plumbing that froze over the winter, building a bar, and cooking some really good food (10lbs of pork butt went by really quick), as both of Rachel’s uncles are also foodies.

We spent the weekend that just wrapped down in LA for a wedding of some of Rachel’s family friends (and now mine too). Rachel’s folks flew in from OK, and her brother, Tyler flew in from WY to be a groomsman, so it was great to have a little weekend family reunion and see people we wish we got to see a whole lot more of. The wedding wasn’t until Saturday night, so we got to spend Friday night (Rachel and i took half a day off work on friday so that we could drive down and arrive in time for dinner), and most of Saturday cruising around LA and doing whatever we wanted. The wedding was a nice ceremony in the back yard of the groom’s parents that was chalk full of little personal tweaks that represented the bride and groom. The ceremony was followed by great food, quite a bit of beer and red wine, and lots of dancing. Rachel and i realized that in our two and a half years of dating, it was the first time we’d had an opportunity to dance together. Weird, but we tried to make up for lost time and had one hell of a good night. Before we knew it, midnight had come and gone, and it was time to make our way back to the hotel. The next morning the bride and groom hosted a casual BBQ for all of the out of town guests. Everyone in attendance was much more subdued after the late night, but we did our best to finish off the desserts and booze from the previous night, as well as put a dent into the 150+ pounds of meat that had been grilled for the occasion.

Is that an elephant in the room?

For those of you who may be wondering, the question of us getting married is not an ‘if’ but a ‘when’. It’s something we talk about more and more often as we find ourselves at weddings of our friends. Basically, since we’re going to be paying for our wedding ourselves, we’d like to wait until we can afford to have the ceremony we want (small, casual, outside, great music) in the place we want (Texas Hill County) with the people we want (family and close friends). It won’t be next year, but it will be sometime in the next few years. Rachel doesn’t have a ring yet, believe me, you will know when she does. So just sit tight, relax, and worry about something else. We’ll get around to it eventually, and it will be awesome when we do.

Rachel and i officially withdrew our offer for the house we’ve been negotiating on since February. Basically, the guys at WaMu, who gave the woman who owned the house a loan for the down payment, found out that she had some money in a retirement account and refused to sell us the house until she coughed it up. At one point they were even trying to get her to put $10,000 on a credit card. Rachel and i finally got tired of dealing with them and decided that we’d rather not buy a house than do so in that fashion. And you wonder why those guys are in so much trouble. Screw them. So right now we’re back at square one, looking at places in the area, putting together a few offers, hoping something breaks. It’s stressful and i can’t wait until it’s over.

This Sunday i have my next bike race, a crit new Santa Rosa. In my last few races i’ve been noticing that i tend to feel better the day after a race than i do on race day. So this week i’ll be taking a different approach and going to the Velodrome in San Jose on Saturday morning for a track work out. I’ve never ridden on the track before, but i think i’d be pretty good at it, so i’m going to give it a shot at a beginner track work out. Hopefully it will open my legs up without making them too tired and help me do a little bit better in the race on Sunday. Maybe not, i guess we’ll see. Until then, have fun out there.

Rachel and i woke up today at 4:45 and hit the road for the 90 minute drive out to Modesto at 5:15. The race may start at 8:00am, but back up 10 minutes to roll to the starting line, 10 minutes waiting in line for a final pee, 5 minutes of last minute getting ready, 30-45 minutes for warm up, 15 minutes for getting dressed and set up, 10 minutes to check in / register, 90 minutes of driving, 5 minutes of getting gas, 5 minutes to pack the car, and 30 minutes to eat some breakfast, get dressed, put in contacts, make coffee, brush teeth, and you find yourself with a freakishly early start for a Sunday morning.

The race took place on a 9 mile squared off figure 8 type shape network of closed road through orchards outside of Modesto. My race was to complete seven laps of the nine mile course for a total of 63 miles. It was my first road race and i was excited at the prospect of not having to do a crit where the speed was super high and there was constant braking and then sprinting full gas out of corners every few hundred meters. However, because the roads were in a squared off figure 8 shape that covered only 9 miles, it was more of a crit/road race hybrid. Oh yeah, and the high temp for Modesto just happened to be 108 that day. Ouch.

I lined up close to the front with 6 other teammates. I love doing races where i have a significant number of teammates. It just makes the racing more fun. The gun went off and i was able to work my way up to the front 15 or so riders in the 70 person field. After about a half mile of everyone getting settled we hit the gas and took it right up to 28-29 mph. Though i got a pretty good warm up in, my body struggled with the shock of the high pace. I was in the hurt, but able to hang on and hold position. The corners, however, were a different story. The road surface was very rough, reminiscent of the nasty chip and seal i used to ride on in the Texas Hill Country in college. Fall down on this stuff at these speeds and you’re going to get roughed up pretty bad. The turns also had a fair amount of gravel which increased the sketchy-ness of the whole thing. Combine the rough roads, the high speeds, the gravel, and navigating these turns in a tight back going six across shoulder to shoulder and i lost the mental game, i was spooked. I started cautiously cutting too much speed going into turns, forcing me to sprint our of them to catch back up.

Once i let myself get into this mindset, it was just a  matter of time before my day was done. There was just no way i’d be able to sustain that kind of effort for 63 miles.

The first lap (9 miles) we averaged 28.5mph. About 2 miles into the second lap 2 guys went off the front at the pace settled down to 22-24mph, but was by no means steady. The field would randomly jump from 22 back up to 28mph for no apparent reason. Toward the end of the second lap, the pace had been mellow for a few minutes, so i decided to take a drink because if i was to survive the long day, drinking enough was going to be critical. We took a turn into a headwind and the field jumped up above 30mph. I got caught with a drink in my hand, got gapped, and was never able to catch back on. I got soooo close but was just unable to get myself into the slipstream of the pack and out of the wind.

Going through the feed zone i saw Rachel and a bunch of other volunteers offering neutral support by handing bottles of water to riders as they came by each lap. I pulled out, changed clothes in a cow pasture, and spent the next couple hours with the other volunteers handing water to the other guys racing. The feed zone was full of friends and family members who had come to see a loved one race and volunteered to stand in the heat and do some work, with no recognition, to help the race go smoothly and keep the racers safe by keeping them cool and hydrated. Putting on an amateur bike race is a huge production fueled by volunteers like these folks who give up a Saturday or Sunday so that a bunch of guys (and girls) can ride their bikes really fast in circles. They are truly the unsung heroes of amateur bike racing who don’t get the recognition they deserve. I guess Rachel and i could have packed up and gone home sulking as soon as i pulled out, but we really had a good time helping with the feeds.

Since it was 100 degrees when we got back to Palo Alto, and our apartment doesn’t have air conditioning, we spent most of the afternoon laying on floating air mattresses in the pool.

So this makes 4 consecutive bike races that i haven’t been able to finish. What gives?

Well, before it was a lack of fitness. I think right now my fitness is much better than it was. I still lack some of the high end speed, but that will come in the next month or so as i do more high intensity work. I think my main problem right now is the mental aspect. As my Dad said when i was talking to him after the race: getting a little spooked taking a turn littered with gravel at 28mph in a tightly bunched and chaotic group of 70 guys all fighting for position ‘while not good for your competitive advantage during the race, is a perfectly normal and healthy thing to have happen’. It’s not that i suck at cornering or anything. I’ve gotten quite good and going around corners on closed courses by myself (after getting dropped), taking them at speed and picking the right line. The problem is doing it with a group. I begin to question myself and the riders around me instead of just not thinking and doing. The only way to get better is do more races and large group rides at race speed (of which there are 4 per week in the area), treat them as races, and focus on staying up near the front, and getting comfortable taking corners in a big group. I need to get to the point where cornering with a big group becomes second nature.  So i’ll keep racing, keep taking my licks, and keep fighting until i can do this.

Even if i never win a bike race, i’m still having a blast. It sounds like a ton of work getting up before the sun comes up on the weekend to go out and ‘waste’ a whole day on some competitive event that i seem destined to fail at. But the truth is, i’m having a blast. I’m in better shape than i’ve ever been in, training gives me something to do and goals to work toward outside of work (not to mention that it keeps me focused on maintaining good health), and even when i fail, pushing myself to my limit is something that is painful at the time, but in a sick and twisted way, i really enjoy it and think most people would benefit from trying it every once in a while.

This is one of the first times in my life that i’ve faced a challenge that i really wanted to overcome and struggled to do so. That being said, i’m having a blast doing it, so i’m going to continue to take my lumps and keep fighting until i get this thing figured out. I’d love to be one of those older guys racing in the Masters 45+ category that’s been racing since he was in his 20’s and still tearing it up. At times bike racing has been really tough and discouraging, but it builds character, right Mom? This whole phase will just make that first win that much sweeter.

I had a disappointing but not all together awful race on Saturday. I started the race up near the front but in the first few laps the group was taking some really sketchy lines around turns, not using the whole road, and taking each corner differently each lap. My desire to not be stuck in the middle of things when it hit the fan (it came close, but never did) kept me out of the middle of the field. For some reason my heart rate was really high and i got dropped after 4 or 5 laps of doing 27mph. I was working with another guy to chase back on but the race official pulled us out and told us that we could rest a lap and jump in with the field the next time they came through on the condition that we took ourselves out of the race going into the final lap. Once i was able to rest for a lap and get back in for the rest of the race, i felt fine and had no problems staying with the group. It was really weird. But considering my main goal was to use the race to get me used to racing in a group at high speed and open the legs up a little for next week, i’d say it wasn’t a total loss.

I’m not sure what the reason behind yesterday’s struggles is. It could be that i’ve been sick this week and my body hasn’t recovered as much as i thought it had. It could be that i’ve been working on building endurance and haven’t started training the high end speed with much high intensity work yet. It could be that i just hadn’t raced in a while and it was a shock to the system. Or that i didn’t get a good enough warm up in. Realistically, it’s probably some combination of these factors.

During a race your adrenaline is going and you can push your body to do things it otherwise wouldn’t be able to do. Nobody, no matter how mentally tough they are can simulate race speed and effort in training. The first few laps my heart rate was sitting at about 175bpm, a heart rate that i can only hold in training for a minute or two, but somehow in the race managed to hold for 12-15 minutes. But for some reason, after i got back in, my heart rate settled down to 165bpm for the rest of the race. Weird.

Today Rachel and i went to a Giant bike demo in a park in the East Bay. We got to sign a waiver, hand over our driver’s licenses, and then take off on a demo ride with a pair of Giant TCR Advanced SL bikes (pretty much a pro quality bike). It was quite an eye opening experience.

The TCR is a carbon fiber bike. Since carbon fiber is an anisotropic material, they can make funny shaped frames with it (for aerodynamics) but can also control the stiffness with how the layups are done (multiple layers of fabric held together with a resin like fiberglass). This allows carbon bikes to be laterally stiff (for maximum pedaling efficiency, forcing all of the energy from the pedals into making the bike move forward) but vertically compliant (for a softer, more comfortable ride). My current bike is aluminum, an isotropic material, meaning that it is pretty stiff laterally and just as stiff vertically.

The demo was at the top of a big hill with a winding road so Rachel and i got to descend down the road and then climb back up. I was amazed at the difference between the TCR and my Specialized bike. My bike gets kind of twitchy on descents once the speed gets over 35mph. Once the speed picks up, you’ve got to be paying attention. The TCR got up to speed very quickly, and despite being freakishly lightweight felt nothing but solid at high speed. The biggest difference was in the climbing though. The TCR was certainly helped by being a few pounds lighter, but the accelerations are really where i noticed a difference. When you decide to get out of the saddle and really get on it, my Specialized creaks and moans as the aluminum flexes and you have to fight it up hill. The TCR makes no noise and just leaps forward. It was a dream to ride.

I had never ridden a carbon bike before and figured it couldn’t possibly be different enough to justify the gap in price, but i was most definitely wrong. While there are a large number of things higher on the list at this point in our lives, i’d like to hope that sometime in the next few years i’ll be investing in a carbon race bike. Giant sponsors my club and generously gives us great discounts on the bikes, so it may well end up being a Giant.

After we got back from the demo, i went out on a really good 50 mile training ride. I kept the pace pretty hard and hit some decent hills before making my way back home. Oddly enough, i felt much better today than yesterday. It was good to get a training ride with some distance in before the 63 mile road race out in Modesto next weekend. I’m really looking forward to it.

This week has been a little tough. My Dad had a really bad cold when he and my Mom came up to visit last weekend. Despite moderate efforts to avoid sharing wine glasses, food, utensils, close contact, etc, i still got sick. I worked from home Wednesday and Thursday to avoid getting other people at the office sick. Because all of my symptoms and discomfort was from the shoulders up i stuck to my plan of having a hard training week on the bike. With the bike race i’m doing tomorrow in Pleasanton, i really needed a tough week to get my legs ready for some high intensity racing. Today i’m going back to work and can’t begin to describe how happy i am that i won’t be sick for the crit.

For now, the plan is to use the crit as a warm up for next weekend’s road race in Modesto. I just need to sit in the group, up near the front, get comfortable racing in a big group at high speeds again, and not get hurt. A finish with the group is all i’m really looking for. If for some reason i jump in a break away in the second or third lap, i’m a total bonehead.

As i mentioned, next week is a 63 mile road race in Modesto. It’s really the race i’m concerned about as it will be my first road race and endurance is not really my thing. Luckily the course is supposed to be pretty flat, so i’m hoping it will be a nice introduction to road racing. The course is 7 laps of a 9 mile course, totaling 63 miles, meaning that the two water bottles i can carry on my bike will likely not be enough. To deal with that dilemma, Rachel will be acting as my soigneur, sitting in the feed zone with extra water bottles to hand me as we ride through the designated feed zone every lap. We’ll have to practice the hand off a little bit next week. Should be interesting.

Tonight we’ll be going to a new gastro-pub, Martin’s West that opened yesterday in Redwood City. It’s in a really cool old building that was supposedly the site of a bar that Wyatt Earp used to frequent. I’m pretty excited about it. Tomorrow there’s a huge pow-wow on the Stanford campus that we’ll be going to after the race (for those that didn’t know, Rachel is part Choctaw Indian). Then after that i think we’re going to see a screening on The Searchers at the old Stanford Theatre. The irony of those two events back to back is not lost on me. On Sunday we’re going to a Giant (that’s a brand) Bike demo in the East Bay where we’ll get to ride some pretty sweet bikes. Giant sponsors my cycling club, so we get pretty good discounts on them. I’ve never ridden one, so i’m pretty excited to get the opportunity.

Anyone else going nuts over the Rocket-Lakers series. Holy crap. Game 3 is tonight. Can’t wait.

That’s all for now. I’ll post a race update when i get a chance.

About a week ago Rachel and i experienced the bad-ass-ness of a pig party put on by Meatpaper at Camino in Oakland. I found out about it from one of the San Francisco food blogs that i follow, immediately emailed Rachel and bought tickets that day. I’d never been to anything like this, so i was pretty jazzed (enough to go into work early so that i could leave early and drive up to Oakland in hellacious traffic).

We showed up, stood in a short line, got our name checked off the guest list and then were admitted to my own personal heaven for a few hours. The restaurant had a huge open kitchen in the back with an enormous fireplace for grilling and roasting, showing the chef’s connections to Chez Panisse. Separating the kitchen from the restaurant was a huge butcher block work table, and sitting on top of that was a 180lb Prather Ranch pig ready for a show.

The restaurant had booths in the middle for seating and was flanked by two long tables on either side. On one table was the free booze: beer, wine, aguas frescas, and special cocktails. The other table had a spread of porky hors d’oeuvres that included:

• Chicharrones – spiced with just a touch of cayenne pepper that gave them just enough heat to make them interesting. These were ungodly good.
• Grilled crepinettes with Becker Lane Organic Pork.
• Pork Terrine – not really my thing, but this was pretty good.
• Assorted Charcuterie
• Bacon Marshmallows
• Mixed spring veggie salad – because you have to eat something other than pork.
• Crostini with fava bean paste or artichoke hearts and goat cheese
• Assorted Prather Ranch encased meats that were delicious
• Corn dogs – people were freaking out over these
• Pig tails

Rachel and i grabbed a beer and made a pass through the hors d’oeuvres table, filling up a plate each and grabbed a seat at a booth before things got too crowded. Pretty much everything was great.

But who are we kidding? We were there for the butchering demo. Honestly, i was half way expecting some goof ball with a microphone like the ShamWow guy doing a half assed and cheesy demo of how to break down a pig that we wouldn’t be able to see and wasn’t all that informative.

I underestimated this thing big time.

We saw the guys (Russell Moore of Camino, Chris Kronner of Open Restaurant, and Ryan Farr of 4505 Meats) sharpening knives and gathering around the pig. We took the cue that it was on, cleaned what was left on our plates and grabbed a front row spot for the demo, hands on the butcher block.

The guys broke down the pig and used everything. Though the trotters and belly ended up not being served because they take too long to cook. Most cuts got a sprinkle of salt and pepper and got thrown on the grill. A whole leg got tied up and hung above the fire to roast. The belly and everything else got put in an oven.

While it would have been easy for them to just break down the pig, it was obvious from the beginning that they too were having a blast. Russell happened to be working right in front of us and made it clear that he was happy to engage people and answer any questions people had. We took advantage of the opportunity and picked his brain quite a bit over the next few hours.

The original plan was to serve most of the pig on flat bread with a fennel/garlic/olive oil spread, but the pork was so good that it quickly devolved into taking the pork off the grill, cutting it into reasonably sized pieces, loading up a plate, and sending out into the crowd.

At first, when a plate of anything went out there was a frenzy. But as the night moved along and more and more people had had their fix, things calmed down considerably. Except for the corn dogs, that is. Once all the shoulder meat was gone it was mostly the hardcore pork-ophiles left. The guys behind the counter seemed to really have a good time after the crowd had been pared down. Tongue, kidney, head cheese, and pork skin chips drew outstretched hands and enthusiastic begging like a scene from Willy Wonka. Russell joked about how he never thought he’d see the day when people freaked out (in a good way) about eating such ofal cuts.

I was amazed how good the pork was using such a simple preparation: salt and pepper, throw in the grill. I was eating pieces of shoulder with my fingers. It was so blatantly carnivorous, but so awesome. The 4 people that comprised the two couples on either side of us were all foodies and we were all in heaven.

In retrospect, considering we stood there shoulder to shoulder with these people for upwards of three hours, we didn’t really do a whole lot of talking. It was more sharing looks of sheer joy with each other after popping yet another piece of meat in our mouths.

Three and a half hours, a handful of beers, and about 4 pounds of pork later Rachel and I just couldn’t go any longer. The last of the meat had come off of the grill, most of the crowd had filed out and gone home, and the staff started cleaning up. The belly and trotters hadn’t been served, but they were going to be another hour or two before they were ready. I was full, tired, and really content. This was definitely one of the coolest food experiences of my life.

Anyone want to go in on a 200lb pig with us?

And now, for some pictures!

Encased meats!

The guys get to work

Half way done!

One guy throws the belly across the other's shoulders.

Lots-o-pork

Helpers doing hors d'oeuvres

Ribs were delicious

Tongue and trotter

Everyone gets involved

The crowd

Fried pork skin chips

Honey graham crackers with lard

Head cheese

My parents were here this weekend visiting from Wednesday night through Sunday morning, and despite the crappy weather (it rained all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday), my Dad being sick the whole time, and a disappointing meal at Gary Danko, we still had one hell of a good time.

Thursday Rachel and i were busy at work and unable to take off work so my parents amused themselves on foot around Palo Alto.

Friday Rachel and i took the day off and we stayed South, leisurely making our way over to Santa Cruz and then working our way up the coast for lunch in Half Moon Bay. We were planning on a little hike to go see famed surf spot, Mavericks, but the rain thwarted those plans. We tracked back through the Santa Cruz mountains and made a stop at the Thomas Fogarty Winery for a little free wine tasting action, then got cleaned up for dinner at Gary Danko.

My Dad and i picked Gary Danko for our ‘nice dinner’ because it is not only one of the best restaurants in San Francisco, but widely regarded and the most consistent. And since we only get a few meals together per year, it’s important that we make them count. I’m not sure if we caught them on a bad night or if this was an ‘emperor has no clothes’ moment, but it just wasn’t that great. The service may have been stellar, but when flavors are dull and don’t pop, and beef tenderloin tastes more like ground chuck, something is seriously wrong. It was a massively disappointing meal, and though i know i shouldn’t, i still feel awful about it.

Saturday we hit the Ferry Building Farmer’s market, then cruised over to the North Bay to hang out in Mill Valley and hit our favorite pizza spot, Pizzeria Picco, which was easily the food highlight of the weekend. That place never ceases to disappoint. Following that we went back into San Francisco and spent the afternoon showing off the Castro, Delores Park, and Noe Valley before grabbing a delicious dinner at A16.

By Sunday morning the visit was quickly coming to a close so we grabbed some breakfast and then headed to the airport. They were here for 4 days, but it felt like no more than 2. C’est la vie, i guess. As soon as we got home from the airport Rachel hopped in bed, exhausted, for a 2 hour nap. Following that, it was the usual drill of grocery shopping, laundry, and a Target run that a Sunday would fee empty without.

It’s going to be a busy week so i think it might be a while before i get the Pig Party post up. I’ve got my first bike race since March 8 planned for this weekend. I wasn’t happy with my fitness so i decided to stop racing and go back to base training and build some endurance before starting to race again. At this point i don’t see myself getting a great result (by building endurance i haven’t been doing much high intensity work so my top end speed isn’t great right now), but what i’m really looking for is to brush off my pack skills and get comfortable in a race situation again. I’ve got my first road race next weekend and i didn’t want to go in cold, so i’ll be using this weekend’s crit as more of a warm up for next weekend’s road race. I’m hoping the weather clears up and that i don’t come down with whatever it was that my Dad had when he was up here visiting, so that i can get a good training week in.

We’re running with the lean and mean crew at the office today and tomorrow because some people are out at a conference. Hopefully i’ll be able to take advantage of a quiet office and finish up my monthly reports for April and maybe even get my desk organized (i’ve got 7 piles of loose paper going right now that are getting a little out of control).

Just an update on the house: WaMu is being really difficult. We’re still conident that we can hammer out a deal, but it’s going to take longer than we thought. No wonder these guys went bankrupt.