Halloween Pics

So I'm a little late posting pics, but I think they're worth it.  The first half of the pics are from the neighborhood hay ride.  The kids went around on a trailer with hay, and ended up at one of our neighbor's houses where he had his firepit blazing for smores and a professional story-teller.  It was a fun evening.



I am racing at the Veteran's Cup tomorrow, and I'm really looking forward to it.  The 70-degree temps we're having are only bolstering my excitement.  Sure, cyclocross is supposed to be muddy, cold, and miserable, but if you can race in warm temps, why wouldn't you!?!

My Coffee didn't come early enough today.

On Mondays, Coffee is in a special place of honour, so it gets capitalized. Three cheers for Coffee! Unfortunately, I got in and the fan was already spinning with the remnants of barnyard animal crap on the blade, so I didn't get to indulge in my little ritualistic caffeine-infusion until I was already grumpy. But now all signs point up, and I'm doing better.

I've been reading my e-buddy Greg's blog "Mud and Cowbells" this morning and he had some great write-ups of the CX action in Boulder this weekend. Definitely not something for the masses, but he is mighty with the pen/keyboard and sometimes has some really nice non-bike blog entries (is there a sexier term for a singular blog entry? blogette?)

We had a pretty nice Halloween here, and I'll try and get the pics up soon. AB was a Jedi (imagine that, I know!) and Kieran was an Ewok. Now since I'm apparently related to all 24 people that haven't seen Star Wars, I've posted up what an Ewok looks like.  They are in Return of the Jedi, and help the Rebels (good guys) take down the shield generator that is protecting the Death Star. Obviously they succeed, otherwise we wouldn't be here with me typing and you reading this blog, because we would have been smashed to bits by the Death Star.

Something worth chewing on for a bit

It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows great enthusiasms, great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
- Theodore Roosevelt

1st Cyclocross Video

I got a little carried away with the text animations, but I'm just figuring out the software. Thanks to Charlie, the best brother-in-law/camera guy/off-screen commentator a guy could hope for.

Hope you enjoy the video!

2009 Boulevard Cup CX Race from Chris Smith on Vimeo.

trees, and the rest

We got some new trees planted on Friday, which I'm quite excited about. I enjoy a lot of aspects of living in a new house, but I hate getting back to the newer section of the subdivision and all the houses are taller than the trees. I had a nice sized Autumn Flame Maple planted in the front, and a Greenspire Linden planted in the back. I'm looking forward to seeing these guys leaf out in the spring. I've already hit them with root stimulator, so I hope to see great things this upcoming year.

I must be getting old to be talking about trees.

I've been training a fair amount for my next cross race. It'll be on one of the middle weekends in November, I'm just not sure when since Penny is having a CD release party for her CD, Reveal. http://www.reverbnation.com/awakenus

I've been focusing mainly on performing Tabata intervals, and seeing decent results. I've lost a few pounds, and hope to keep that trend going. I think the important thing is to work towards a goal (placing stronger in CX) than to try and just "lose weight". That's a boring goal...it should be a reward!

I've also found out that my dad's dad that I never met passed away before I had a chance to meet him. It's an odd situation for me. On one hand, that's a pretty close genetic tie, but on the other hand, I knew nothing about him until I read his obit. It's not that I'd want to start a relationship or anything of the sort, but it would be interesting to see what he was like. It's a lot to digest, and one of those unknowns I'll have to live with, although it isn't THAT big of a deal to me. I don't even really know what I would have said. I mean, how do you start that conversation?

I'd imagine my dad would have quite a bit of emotions to deal with. I can't even begin to wrap my head around being in his situation (thankfully). I guess we all just have to make do with what we have in front of us, live with no regrets, and take care of those around us.

Pics from my race

Here are some pics from Sunday. As you can see, I didn't really smile until the end. ;-)

Pain and glory

I can't possibly do justice to describing Penny's race. She ran awesome, and narrowly missed beating the 2 hour mark. She finished at 2:00:42, placing 120th out of 528 runners in her class. I know she is disappointed at not beating 2 hours, but she was awfully close and set a personal record by some 6 minutes. That's like taking 30 seconds off of ever mile, pretty crazy. I honestly wasn't sure how she was going to do this race, because it was so cold, and we hit rain on the way up to the race. But when she was almost 20 seconds ahead of the 2:00 pacer at mile 7 when we saw her, I was very impressed. And I'm not easily impressed. Go Penny go! We are all very proud of her.

Now, I can more aptly describe the suffering that went into my cross race having firsthand knowledge. But I would be terribly in remiss if I didn't warmly thank my supporters and family that came out to see a fat old man suck wind around a grass track. My deepest thanks to Megan, Charlie, Marlee, Ryan, Himani, Penny, AB and little K-man. It really meant a lot to have you guys out there, and wish I could have hung out more and visited, but Sunday was a day for suffering.

So I rode around the course a bit, and only saw two dismount opportunities per 2 mile lap. First was a set of barriers, and then a set of stairs. What made them tricky was that the section where you would typically remount were off-camber, and your bike would be a lot higher than what you would normally practice with. So instead of futzing with a wild remount, I just switched the bike to my other side and remounted with the bike below me. Seemed to work well, at least until I become a cross pro.

So let's get on to the race. There were 55 guys in my class, probably the largest class of the day. We all lined up on a 400-yard section of pavement, and then the whistle blew. A mass sprint ensued, and at the end of the pavement you dove off into the grass. There were lots of power hills (short steep pitches), off-camber sections, and lots of playing around in the gullies. There were a few crashes, and I managed to stay clear of those. I had my heart rate monitor on, and it instantaneously exploded. I finally shut it off after about eight minutes, and it showed an average of 185, max 196. Which is about 8 beats higher than what it should be (220 - your age). Cool.

I just kept chugging along, although my seat post broke about 10 minutes into the race, causing the nose of my saddle to go sky ward. I had my nose down about one degree, but it was a solid ten degrees up plus it had fallen way out of position. Not only was it uncomfortable, but it forced by back into a way sharper "C" position than I was used to, so I'll be visiting the Chiro today. I tried to pound the saddle back into position, but it just didn't work.

All in all, I consider the race a success. I didn't take last place, and I learned a lot. Once I get some more training in, I'll anxious to do another, maybe in a month or so. I sure didn't enjoy the race while I was doing it, but once I was done, I had that notion that I could do better and I think I should go for it. I'll post some videos once I get them from Megan.