Weekend rewind

Friday was an off day in more ways than one. I managed to chow a full sausage sandwich from the local tap over lunch. My co-workers were at least slightly impressed with my gastro-intestinal prowess. I have been known to put down a sandwich or two in the past though.

The monster sandwich on our Ouchita MTB trip last March:

Food won the round, but I put a hurtin' on it:

Unfortunately, lunch somewhat set the stage for some copious amounts of excessively over sized meals this weekend. We day tripped with the girls to the Henry Doorly zoo in Omaha on Saturday. The trip wouldn't have been complete without a stop by one of our favorite pizza joints in old town- Zio's for some slices:

Thai Chicken, Everything, and NYC 5

With all that eating, it was time to get back to work on some training. An hour spent on the trainer playing with my new Powercal was interesting. The HR strap on my Garmin shot craps, so since I needed to replace it anyway, I figure I might as well upgrade for a few bucks more and see if I can actually get some power data on the cheap. I'm really not too worried about absolute accuracy, but more basic feedback to be able to do training with power versus heart rate alone. The guys at Rasmussen's gave it a big thumbs up, but I want to formulate my own review on it. I'm hoping it works out for me.

I followed up with a pretty productive morning workout hammering a couple more hours of base miles on the trainer while the outside world was coated in a shiny 1/8" of icy death. It looks like its going to clear off pretty quickly though and maybe I'll get a run in tomorrow morning. I'm just starting to get back in the groove of training for the year. 5 active days this week for 7 hours is at least a start. I'm just trying to get a jump on my training over last year which didn't actually start until March 1.

I also added a Strava widget to the blog. I've been using it for about a year now and like the more competitive aspect of comparing ride data directly with friends over just straight number crunching and mileage tracking. There are definitely some people running hard already this year though as I think I lost 4 KOM's in the last 2 weeks. Guess I have some work cut out for me this year.

Little bit at a time

I'm starting to figure out that I'm delusional. I want to do all of this cool stuff and most often, I fail to even take the first step. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I make the first step seem like its a mountain. Take this blog for instance. I have probably a dozen plus posts/race reports that I could put down in journal form, but I love getting into so much detail with stats, pictures, and play by play that each post takes me an hour or longer to write on average.

I think I'd be much better served if I figure out how to take the big steps and break them down to smaller manageable pieces. So, here's my start to doing that.

For the year, I really don't have any clue what I'm going to actually do for racing. The training is going in fits and starts for the year. I've been lucky in avoiding too much trainer time, but I've been working on freezing my butt on some long outside rides in 0 and even below 0 windchill. I have some races I'd love to hit and lofty aspirations, but realistically, I need to go back and temper my wants to a few key selections and spend more time with what matters most- family.

I'm still racing for and leading the MTB team for Rasmussen Bike Shop. Greg, Sterling, and the guys there have been nothing short of spectacular and I look forward to being part of that family for years and years. I'll most likely still be on my weight weenie race rocket this year- Salsa Selma set up with a rigid Niner fork. Depending on the race, I may well strap a 9 speed cassette on the back and run it as a 1x9 to get the necessary top speed if I hit any expert class XC races this year. Most likely I will still run it as a singlespeed for any marathon class events just because I love the challenge and simplicity of it.

Hopefully, I'll get some pictures and stats up as the year goes on, but small steps.