Rode yesterday and the day before (sat 7/29 and sun 7/30).
Saturday was a short (1.25 hr) ride with my cousin at Forest Park. Absolutely fucking gorgeous... At the height of summer it was largely a covered ride in a lush green forest. There were areas that opened up a bit to get some sun. Rolling fire roads mostly with single track connecting a lot of the fire roads. Took my cross bike with some new Hutchinson cross tires. Worked great except was a bit sketchy on the steep, deeply rutted section at the end of the ride. I made it without taking a spill but went pretty slowly...
Yesterday I rode from home up Kennedy trail to where the super steep sections started right near the top. Was pretty tired by that time and didn't want to push my legs (joints actually) too hard until I'm back in decent shape.
It was fucking hot up there... Passed a few ladies on the trail on their mountain bikes. It's always great to see women out on the trails. There are more than enough guys on mountain bikes...
Going to try to ride in to the new job tomorrow. Have a 10 a.m. meeting so I'll have to be disciplined about getting out of the house.
Oh yeah, need to pick up my HH Racing Group frame from the shop. Had them chase and face and check the alignment after buying it on eBay. Bought it for a single speed but will probably put my road bike parts on there until I build the single speed rear wheel...
Monday, July 31, 2006
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
flew to Portland with my wife and three year old son for OSCON 2006 last Sunday. brought my bike with me and poked around on Monday morning. rode up burnside to skyline. ran out of time but still got out on the bike for a bit over an hour in the hottest part of the day.
felt like crap of course but it was cool to ride around portland and up into the hills...
got up today and made it a bit further. went up through the residentail area east of burnside below pittock (sp) mansion up to the top part of burnside. damn there are some gorgeous house up there... wonder how much over 1 million they are... :-)
took skyline north of burnside, found an old dude with a colnago getting set up to ride. he suggested i just go down cornelius pass road, turn around and come back. sounded reasonable but when i got to cornelius pass, i looked at my handy dandy portland bike map (coolest bike map i've ever seen btw) and decided i'd head east, look for st. helens and take the bike lane back to portland proper.
well, there was a bike lane but it was on a fucking freeway (very slight exaggeration). speeds up to 55, two lanes each way and about 50% big rigs in the right lane right next to me... the good part of all that is the tailwind those huge trucks create :-D
pretty nice. saw a lot of folks on bikes and pretty much all of them would wave back to me. that doesn't happen everywhere i ride...
got back to the room before my tutorial at OSCON and the wife had said she's ready to move to Portland! it is pretty nice...
felt like crap of course but it was cool to ride around portland and up into the hills...
got up today and made it a bit further. went up through the residentail area east of burnside below pittock (sp) mansion up to the top part of burnside. damn there are some gorgeous house up there... wonder how much over 1 million they are... :-)
took skyline north of burnside, found an old dude with a colnago getting set up to ride. he suggested i just go down cornelius pass road, turn around and come back. sounded reasonable but when i got to cornelius pass, i looked at my handy dandy portland bike map (coolest bike map i've ever seen btw) and decided i'd head east, look for st. helens and take the bike lane back to portland proper.
well, there was a bike lane but it was on a fucking freeway (very slight exaggeration). speeds up to 55, two lanes each way and about 50% big rigs in the right lane right next to me... the good part of all that is the tailwind those huge trucks create :-D
pretty nice. saw a lot of folks on bikes and pretty much all of them would wave back to me. that doesn't happen everywhere i ride...
got back to the room before my tutorial at OSCON and the wife had said she's ready to move to Portland! it is pretty nice...
Friday, July 21, 2006
nope, didn't ride to work today. but hell, i did stay up till all hours of the morning watching yesterday's tour de france stage where floyd landis had one of the most heroic comebacks in all the sprts i've ever seen.
what a heart!
everyone knew he had the potential. not quite sure why the peleton let him go so far knowing he'd been so strong in the rest of the tour (with one obvious exception). the other teams should have ended the Caisse d'Epargne pace-making much, much earlier. it was clear from where i sat that they just didn't have the firepower to close, or at the very least minimize the gap to mad-man floyd landis.
only another catastrophe like stage 16 could keep floyd from taking the GC in the individual time trial.
so no, didn't ride. we'll give it a whirl tomorrow when my only excuses should be family stuff to get ready for our trip to OSCON in portland next week :-)
what a heart!
everyone knew he had the potential. not quite sure why the peleton let him go so far knowing he'd been so strong in the rest of the tour (with one obvious exception). the other teams should have ended the Caisse d'Epargne pace-making much, much earlier. it was clear from where i sat that they just didn't have the firepower to close, or at the very least minimize the gap to mad-man floyd landis.only another catastrophe like stage 16 could keep floyd from taking the GC in the individual time trial.
so no, didn't ride. we'll give it a whirl tomorrow when my only excuses should be family stuff to get ready for our trip to OSCON in portland next week :-)
Thursday, July 20, 2006
should have ridden today... trying to ride every other day if at all humanly possible. went out last night with the wife and another couple to a concert at the mountain winery. got to sleep around 12:30 and the boy woke up around about 7 and i just didn't have it in me to get up and get out of the house in time to get to work for an interview...
bad, bad jeff... ;-)
resisted the strong urge to gorge myself on sweet and sour chicken at lunch today. work brings in the food and this stuff is actually quite tasty.
gonna try to ride in to work tomorrow moring. we'll see how that goes.
bad, bad jeff... ;-)
resisted the strong urge to gorge myself on sweet and sour chicken at lunch today. work brings in the food and this stuff is actually quite tasty.
gonna try to ride in to work tomorrow moring. we'll see how that goes.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
two days after my first ride back on the bike and i managed to get my ass out on my bike to ride to work. not much of a ride really but given my utter lack of form, even a 1:45 ride with a few rollers is worth something.
felt okay really... have no idea if i was riding well or not. was glad it was a morning ride on a day that wasn't TOO hot.
rode up on a woman riding with a team jersey with world champion stripes on her sleeves. asked if the stripes were real and she sort of chuckled and said no. it was a team jersey she got from Karren Kurreck who was a world champ in the time trial and a 2000 olympic rider. apparently this woman lisa had a house back in the day that was known as a place where riders could stay.
we chatted about cycling, parenthood, the wonder of children, injuries... cool woman. sounds like a good mom too.
good to be back on the bike.
may not be in any sort of shape but i was able to make a grey haired guy on his way to stanford suffer just trying to sit on. wasn't passed by anyone so it can't be that bad ;-)
felt okay really... have no idea if i was riding well or not. was glad it was a morning ride on a day that wasn't TOO hot.
rode up on a woman riding with a team jersey with world champion stripes on her sleeves. asked if the stripes were real and she sort of chuckled and said no. it was a team jersey she got from Karren Kurreck who was a world champ in the time trial and a 2000 olympic rider. apparently this woman lisa had a house back in the day that was known as a place where riders could stay.
we chatted about cycling, parenthood, the wonder of children, injuries... cool woman. sounds like a good mom too.
good to be back on the bike.
may not be in any sort of shape but i was able to make a grey haired guy on his way to stanford suffer just trying to sit on. wasn't passed by anyone so it can't be that bad ;-)
Sunday, July 16, 2006
short history first.
i started cycling at the end of high school. bought a cannondale road bike and upgraded it to pretty much full dura ace through my job at REI's bike shop in Cupertino. loved riding but pretty much stopped when i went to college. started riding mountain bikes probably 5 years later (around 1997) and it didn't take me more than 2-3 years to get back into road riding with a recent dabbling in cyclocross.
what has always been common in my riding is my tendency to get fully involved with the riding and wrenching. when it comes to physical activities, i don't really do anything a little bit.
what has also been common is my tendency to not be hyper rigorous about a training schedule. hell, i never really "trained" at all until a few years ago - even when i was riding 5+ days a week. this also means i would ride less or even take a couple week break on occasion.
three years ago i got married and had a kid and i'll tell you what - my tenedency to take breaks and ride less has only increased. there's some medical drama in the family that can contribute to but even without that, my life as a dad and husband simply pushes riding to a lower priority level.
ever since my very late 20s i realised i can't just eat whatever i want without putting on the pounds here and there. two or three years after this realization came the priority shift associated with family life - hence the title of this blog and one decidedly non-trivial aspect of my cycling: when i ride enough, i can eat what i want and not get fat.
fat is, of course, a relative term. in high school i was 165 and 6'2" forever. that went up to maybe 175-180 sometime after college and now, in the darkest times ;-) it goes to 195 and even 200.
present day: 195, no real rides in about 2 months and hairy legs. sorry mother fucking scene i tell ya...
well, the stars have aligned and i believe i'm back on the bike if today was any indication. just flew back from 9 days of traveling and though i was really assed out and the kid was going down for a nap, i decided to get my fat ass out on the bike mid-day on one of San Jose's hotter days.
hauled my sorry ass over to saratoga, up highway 9 (where i slammed a dr. pepper to try to steady my shaky legs) then dragged the breaks all the way back down because of the overly busy, sunday afternoon, grandma behind the wheel drivers that were robbing me of the ONE THING i could still do reasonably well with no fitness: descend down 9 where you really don't need to use your breaks. in fact that extra 20 pounds would have made me faster descending were it not for the damn cars...
how was the ride? fucking miserable - that's how. not only was i slow as the pavement melted around me, but apparently i hadn't eaten well enough (maybe it was the week long liquid-as-in-beer diet i was on during vacation) as my muscles were really shaky for the second half of the ascent.
the cliff bar on the climb and the dr. pepper at the top helped eventually - but not before i texto'ed the wife to come pick my sorry ass up. yes, it's true. i was worried about bonking on a 2+ hour ride on one of the mellower climbs in the valley. well, they did pick me up about 4 miles before i made it home, just after i got my second wind.
it was miserable, but once again, i'm back in the saddle and i can feel the fire in my belly to ride again - can feel it so much that i said to myself: "fuck the ill-defined legs, i'm shaving!". may the cycling gods (and critic riders i run into) be damned: i'm shaving BEFORE i have any fitness :-P
one thing i haven't figured out though: how will i make time to ride when i'm changing jobs and i'm still a dad and husband? only one way really: shift my priorities. we'll see how that goes..
i started cycling at the end of high school. bought a cannondale road bike and upgraded it to pretty much full dura ace through my job at REI's bike shop in Cupertino. loved riding but pretty much stopped when i went to college. started riding mountain bikes probably 5 years later (around 1997) and it didn't take me more than 2-3 years to get back into road riding with a recent dabbling in cyclocross.
what has always been common in my riding is my tendency to get fully involved with the riding and wrenching. when it comes to physical activities, i don't really do anything a little bit.
what has also been common is my tendency to not be hyper rigorous about a training schedule. hell, i never really "trained" at all until a few years ago - even when i was riding 5+ days a week. this also means i would ride less or even take a couple week break on occasion.
three years ago i got married and had a kid and i'll tell you what - my tenedency to take breaks and ride less has only increased. there's some medical drama in the family that can contribute to but even without that, my life as a dad and husband simply pushes riding to a lower priority level.
ever since my very late 20s i realised i can't just eat whatever i want without putting on the pounds here and there. two or three years after this realization came the priority shift associated with family life - hence the title of this blog and one decidedly non-trivial aspect of my cycling: when i ride enough, i can eat what i want and not get fat.
fat is, of course, a relative term. in high school i was 165 and 6'2" forever. that went up to maybe 175-180 sometime after college and now, in the darkest times ;-) it goes to 195 and even 200.
present day: 195, no real rides in about 2 months and hairy legs. sorry mother fucking scene i tell ya...
well, the stars have aligned and i believe i'm back on the bike if today was any indication. just flew back from 9 days of traveling and though i was really assed out and the kid was going down for a nap, i decided to get my fat ass out on the bike mid-day on one of San Jose's hotter days.
hauled my sorry ass over to saratoga, up highway 9 (where i slammed a dr. pepper to try to steady my shaky legs) then dragged the breaks all the way back down because of the overly busy, sunday afternoon, grandma behind the wheel drivers that were robbing me of the ONE THING i could still do reasonably well with no fitness: descend down 9 where you really don't need to use your breaks. in fact that extra 20 pounds would have made me faster descending were it not for the damn cars...
how was the ride? fucking miserable - that's how. not only was i slow as the pavement melted around me, but apparently i hadn't eaten well enough (maybe it was the week long liquid-as-in-beer diet i was on during vacation) as my muscles were really shaky for the second half of the ascent.
the cliff bar on the climb and the dr. pepper at the top helped eventually - but not before i texto'ed the wife to come pick my sorry ass up. yes, it's true. i was worried about bonking on a 2+ hour ride on one of the mellower climbs in the valley. well, they did pick me up about 4 miles before i made it home, just after i got my second wind.
it was miserable, but once again, i'm back in the saddle and i can feel the fire in my belly to ride again - can feel it so much that i said to myself: "fuck the ill-defined legs, i'm shaving!". may the cycling gods (and critic riders i run into) be damned: i'm shaving BEFORE i have any fitness :-P
one thing i haven't figured out though: how will i make time to ride when i'm changing jobs and i'm still a dad and husband? only one way really: shift my priorities. we'll see how that goes..
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