She's done

Sorry for the dearth of posting in the last couple weeks to the 1 1/2 readers out there. (James you are half man/half amazing) I've been in the Dolomites stealth training with Michael Rasmussen.


No, actually, I've been getting in some good miles despite the shit weather we've been continuing to have despite it being almost mid-April already. Last Sunday was probably the windiest day I've ever experienced on a bike and yes I felt like I was filling in for Sisyphus. I had this bright idea of mapping a route to Danbury from the house to watch Em's first half-marathon. The wind out of the West was merciless and naturally I had to ride, you guessed it, West. I explicitly remember riding down a -4-5% bias and pedaling into what had to be a 35 mph gust- just to maintain 17 mph. Needless to say, the f-bombs were flowing. The first 16 miles took me over an hour so I knew continuing to ride West was a lesson in futility (Ok Mother Nature you won again) so I modified the route on the fly. I headed due South and to be honest I don't think it was much better as I found that I had to almost ride into the wind to maintain my balance. I was starting to feel like shit warmed over after 3.5 hours of the boxing match and I was getting anxious that I wouldn't catch the finish of Em's race. I managed to hold it together though, and got there just in time to change and snap a couple pics of her finishing.



I thought she did awesome- 1:48 and change. I think that's a hair under 8:15/mile pace if my math is right. She accomplished her goal- she finished without it being a death march at her first crack at the distance. 13 miles is no joke. And to think that just a year ago she lacked the confidence to run 1/4 of that distance. Nice job, Em!




Other exciting news is that I finally picked up my road machine. It's really a thing of beauty. Kudos to Josh and his ridiculous mechanic skills. His attention to detail is second to none. Sorry, Lance, in this case it is completely about the bike. Stupidly, I probably should have taken a picture of the drive side to show off my K-force light Compact (yeah I ride a compact, so sue me) coupled with my Red drivetrain. Without pedals it is 13.75 lbs. which, given my meager Cat 4 riding ability, I shouldn't even be riding. Yeah, yeah, I know it's below the UCI weight limit. With my Look Keo Ti pedals and if I decide to cut some of the post down, it'll probably be right at the 14 mark. Although the Garmin with speed/cadence sensor will probably put me in the low 14s. It's still over 2 lbs. lighter than my Giant. Speaking of weight, I'm over 5 lbs. lighter than last year at this time, so I'm already netting 7 lbs. less. I still think I can very easily dump another 5 lbs. of body garbage and that coupled with the 1580 miles and 148,000 ft. of climbing I've already got in, hopefully will get me somewhere. Where? I never know.