Nice

70˚

3:15

60 miles

1800kj

A good group and the legs were feeling fine, I could have stayed on the front all day but didn't want to be That Guy.  Tomorrow's supposed to rain but the overnight lows will be in the 60's so it should be ok.  I need a big day.

I was looking at that photo of my bike and was like...damn, that nose of the saddle looks high.  I lowered it a bit and it was big time AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH's.

OT

Re:  Data backup

I've got a 500GB drive connected to my Airport Extreme that makes hourly backups of my Mac and Julie's MacBook (via Time Machine).  But this does me no good in the event of a fire or theft or lightening strike (you think that $29 surge protector is really gonna save your stuff?).

I've been researching off site backups and looked at Mozy and Amazon S3 but the best service by far is by a company called CrashPlan.  It's a one time fee of $25.  You make a backup to an external drive over your LAN then plug that drive into a computer off site (I'll use my parents Mac or put one in Julie's office).  

The CrashPlan software makes a nightly backup over the 'net.  It's all encrypted/verified/cross platform etc and in the event that you need to restore your data you can move that drive back to your computer (avoiding the slowness of restoring from the net).  It's all very "mac" cool.

Anyway...with over 10k photo's (mostly RAW), gigs and gigs of video, 12k mp3's, years of personal stuff, julie's work crap....it would really suck to lose it all.

round n' round

Another 60'

Did the first 30' a little harder...around 93% or so.  It felt harder.

My friggin Niterider HID died after last weeks rain ride...Grrrrrr.  That pretty much eliminates my longer rides during the week but I'm probably better off with what I've been doing intensity wise.

warm-ness

The weather's gonna kick ass this week...70˚ every day.  It was just shorts and jersey tonight...I can't believe how cold I was 2 days ago.  

I just got back from the crit course and my 60' of SST.  I mixed it up tonight by doing every other lap at FTP.  A lot harder riding but the legs were pretty good.  I'm slowly getting ready to start my 2x20's.  Probably next week.  Bring da pain.

5000' in December

Damn cold

This morning when I left the cabin it was 28 degrees. That would have been ok but I was planning on climbing upto over 5000'. The climb to newfound gap was over 14 miles, all up.

I've never been on a ride where I was damn cold in the sun on a climb. On the shaded slopes it was ridiculous. The descent was brutal. I had to stop at the visitors center to get to a point where I could feel my feet and hands.

But I gotta say...it was a great ride. Epic for sure. Lots of snow and icy roads and morbidly obese people having snowball fights.

Weekend

I'm off to Gatlinburg, TN this weekend for a family meet up.  If the weather is OK I plan to do some riding in and around the smokies.  It looks like some real good climbing real near where we're staying.

Twas a dark and rainy night...

The nut and I went out tonight and did 2.5 hours in the fort, basically 2 full loops.  Even with it being very dark and raining we still had a blast and rode hard.  Usually kindof epic conditions warrant hard riding.  It was 70˚ so that helped a lot.  The legs were good.

shorts & bare arms

Monday I was worthless after Sunday's ride and was pretty brain dead at work, I rested.  

Tonight was crazy warm...shorts and jersey and I did my usual crit course workout and the legs were really good.  I did 90% for 55' but threw in some laps at FTP.  I had a pretty wicked tailwind coming out of turn 3 and was hitting turn 4 at 30mph and holding that momentum up the finish, so that was fun.

Tomorrow if it's not raining I'm gonna try to get in a longer ride in the fort, if it's raining I'll repeat tonights workout.

Dean ride

Really nice mellow ride today out in the boonies.  I really had no idea were we were 90% of the time but the roads were nice and there was no traffic at all.  

It was bit chilly at the start but once it warmed up and the outer layers were shed it was perfect.  We had a good group for 5+ hrs of riding.  Pretty easy cruising but that's probably a good thing at this point with my sub-30 CTL and I think I'll be able to hit the crit course tomorrow for MOTS.

Saturday

Jules is in NYC giving a lecture so I thought I had some things lined up today to ride but it fell through.  Oh Well, I got some good kid time with the new kritters.  Tomorrow I'm gonna stay out as long as possible and we'll see how that goes.

My new favorite weather page:

NWS

ok

it's time for a big-TSS weekend...

SST

Did the same workout as yesterday...felt a bit better, maybe it was my iPod mix. 

Planning ahead:  I'm gonna take off every thursday afternoon starting on Jan. 15th for a 4-5 hour ride.  Will do this for 5-6 weeks.  Anyone else?

bu-bump

Did 55' at 90% at the crit course.  It was cold but I felt good.  A nice workout.

My CTL is very low right now....I'm gonna do the Jay C. method: 6 weeks of "base" and get my TSS/d up in Jan/Feb by taking some half days off during the week and getting those 4-5 hr rides in.

blah

This weekend was nasty....no riding.  Tomorrow it's back to the crit course for the usual.