Lovely Labor Day w'end, eh?

Made it over to OneGearDoug's for a little barbeeeeque this evening and to meet up with the MRC folk. Good times....most of the CX fanatics were in attendance....next week is pretty much NE 'cross gets going (no disrespect to the good people at Cyclonauts and the Tobacco Road Series, but 'cross in August and in 95 degree heat seems odd...), so it was great to see who's getting ready. For my bit, I'm feeling better after this past week of some intensity. Rode fairly hard 5 days this past week and will continue to build the LT intervals. Cross is crazy hard - the kind of hard when by the end of the race you should be spent and cross-eyed. So hard that in 20 degree weather you're hot as hell in nothing but a skinsuit and beanie under your helmet. So hard that puking is more likely than not. I, like most other fans, enjoy the perversion of pain and pleasure all wrapped into 45 minutes of sliding around in the mud on a knobby-tired road bike. Bring it.

Cheers to the wife for the outstanding idea of bringing the kiddos over to Marlboro HS for fireworks. Huge hit.

Additional reasons why I like bikes....

Yesterday while out on a 90 minute easy ride, I stumbled upon this. One of the coolest things about a bike is exploration....yep, I yammer on upon training, racing, crashing, getting muddy, whatevah...but finding a new road, trail, etc, is the original hook to a bicycle. It's mechanized transport - a new way to explore with some wind in your face. The only issue as I see it (with the above referenced place) is that some d-bags in Stow (and I live there, BTW...) apparently don't want this running thru their respective back yards. I get the NIMBY thing when one is talking about an interstate or an office building. But a bike trail?? Gimme a break! Here's hoping that things get worked out, as the plan is to have this thing go through Stow, into Maynard and over to Concord.
The other reason that I love bikes is that today I discovered how absolutely invaluable those threaded washers that come with inner tubes are. Mind you, they're useless when it comes to the intended purpose, but I was installing a new hallway light and the strapping that you mount the light to (you know, the one that bolts to the face of the electrical box) wasn't fitting. Chalk it up to insufficient manufacturing tolerances....insert one of said washers underneath the strapping and voila: perfect fit!

Summer updates

Summer has just flown by! Amazing how when I was a kid summer seemed to last forever. I generally looked forward to heading back to school come this time. Nowadays it seems like summer is over in a flash. I suppose having every weekend booked with some damn thing doesn't necessarily help. Friday shows up, I try to shut it down for a couple of days, then find out we have somewhere to be and before I know it, it's Monday again and the hamster wheel picks up speed.

Here's a quick update on things....

1. The master bathroom project has pretty much reached completion. We are waiting for the glass door to be installed, but my involvement for the most part is over. I am happy that it's done...while I have plenty of experience around the house on various projects, bathrooms are complicated and somewhat intimidating. My good buddy Brad is a wiz kid at most things with an especially good skill for laying tile. Brad is always willing and able to help out as well. We would hook up at 7ish on weeknights and work til midnight. I took him to the Sox game to say thanks. I'll post some photos when the glass is installed.

2. With the bathroom done, I can finally finish up the baseboard and closet work in our bedroom. I've decided to build a couple of closet units for wife and me to better utilize the storage available for us. That project is pretty much all finish carpentry - no big deal, just a matter of time. Hopefully my sister can help with closet "door" coverage, because I don't sew and due to the odd-sized opening, we're thinking of creating some kind of modern/cool looking drapery type door.

3. Once that's done, I will finish up the boy's room. I need to install french-style doors on his closet, build a storage unit, and then get the baseboard done there as well.

4. Ahhhhhhhhh, the garden. As a landscape architecture major in college I have pride in how my yard looks and functions. It shouldn't just be a pretty thing to look at, it should be a system of outdoor rooms that you actually use for different activities. I built a really cool deck two years ago that we use often, and I need to create some garden room extensions off of it (first step will be a sitting area with a firepit....the kids LOVE to have fires outside), and the next step will be to create a walking path that connects the side yard to the back yard. I also have this rocky area that has a ridiculous little stone wall that serves no purpose. That needs to come down. Buuuuut my issue with the garden in general is that it's been neglected this year due to the bathroom project. It looks like sh*t to be honest and I'm embarrassed by it. Fall cleanup will be intense and I'll get things prepped for next year. Next spring will be a hard-core gardening thing.

5. Bike stuff - well, road season was interesting to say the least...there is a very specific difference between riding a lot and racing a lot. Riding a lot has no real speed definition....one can ride as hard or as easy as s/he would like. Racing is full gas, all the time.

This is me deep inside the pain cave without a light...

To quote Armstrong, sometimes I was the hammer, other times the nail. What is interesting though is that cyclocross season is here and is generally when I'm really amped to ride....but to be honest, my motivation is pretty low right now. Hopefully that will change soon enough....oh and by the way, gluing tubulars is zero fun.

Well that's about it for now....

Holy Hilltowns!

How's this for a course profile??

This is considered by many in the NE cycling community to be the hardest one-day race in the region....which is interesting when you consider that Battenkill, Quabbin, and Purgatory are all pretty damn hilly as well! The illustrious JLC had the line of the day when asked how this compared to Quabbin: "Quabbin is a crit compared to Hilltowns".

Really not sure how I did as the results outside the top 10 haven't been posted yet, but I'm hoping top half. I started to cramp pretty badly about a third of the way up the East Hawley Rd climb which is bad. I was within site of the leaders and going at a pretty solid tempo but had to slow way down or risk DNFing. There was one hell of a rainstorm with about 20 miles left that provided some welcome respite from the humidity. I really need to start forcing myself to eat more in the morning before I head out for these longer races. I seem to cramp up pretty easily it seems, especially on hot and humid days and I have to believe it's really hard efforts combined with not enough fuel. I'm just not hungry when I get up though; problem but I need to rectify it. I don't have the same snap and acceleration as a lot of my team mates on the super steep climbs but I can maintain a good tempo that doesn't blow me off the back. If I can keep the leaders in site and then catch back on I should be able to improve my results. Considering that I am stepping up next year, that will be critical.

Well, road season is almost done....3, maybe 4 races left and then it's on to the fun part of the season - 'CROSS baby! Time to start gluin' up those knobby tubulars!

Gotta' stay positive...

Well, we're at mid-way point of the year and I can't say that I am terribly thrilled with how 2010 has been going. Career-wise, my new position hasn't been what I'd hoped so far. I'm behind on a number that was probably a dream shot for a first year rep as is, and I feel like I'm constantly behind. Every step forward = at least 3 steps backward. I'm learning something new everyday and that's a plus. The subject material is also very interesting as I didn't have much experience on the desktop prior to this one. Gotta' stay positive.
Home-wise, the family is terrific but I constantly feel like I'm missing things. I'm working a lot (but not getting anywhere) and because of that, it feels like life is speeding past me like I'm just a spectator. I can't believe how big my children are! I probably won't be able to go on vacation this summer with the family but am hopeful that I can send them someplace fun-beach camping, the Cape, or something like that. My bathroom project has also taken WAAAAAAAAY too long...in part because of the thumb injury. My hope of getting that done before July 4th is out of the window....if I can get it done before the end of July I'll now be happy.
Bike-wise it's been a mixed bag. I have lingering layer of belly fat that I can't seem to strip off, but to be honest, my discipline in terms of diet is crap. I really should be hitting the gym 3 x's per week and completely stripping carbs out of my diet. With even a bit of structure in this area I'm sure that I could turn the 5 lbs of fat into lean muscle that would help me pounce on the climbs....buuuut, IPA tastes really good. I know, loser attitude.

Well, enough of that diatribe. Time to go back to confusing motion with action....something that I am extremely adept at!

A new hobby?

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Happy Father's Day and B2B Report

Happy Father's Day everyone! I was given the wonderful opportunity to sleep in til 9 this morning - so nice! After yesterday's 90+ degree sufferfest aka the 10th Annual Harpoon B2B the extra couple hours was a blessing.

The ride was actually great and my legs feel pretty good today. I generally don't do well in extreme heat of any sort and with yesterday being pretty much the first pretty hot day of the year, I was concerned about cramping. I drank 12 water bottles, and the equivalent of two beer glasses of straight pickle juice....peed twice all day (which means I sweat the rest out....). I started to cramp a bit at the top of the long climb called "the Leviathan) but other than that I felt pretty good. It was great to see Larry, Kevin and Richey out there. Rich had to bail after about 100 miles due to extreme cramps. Kevin hasn't done much riding this year and smartly stuck to a slower and manageable pace. Larry is the consummate team guy and brought Kevin all the way in. I rode with Billy (per usual it seems) for the majority of the day. My climbing legs felt great and I pulled a big group of MRC'rs up the Willard State Park climb. On the Leviathan I was looking for another strong go, but Billy started to cramp up a bit so I worked with him and a better pace for us.

The only real suck section for me was after the 100 mile mark where I lost Billy and I was essentially solo TTing to try and catch him on windy roads. I hate riding in the wind. Thankfully, thankfully a couple of Team Psycho guys in full-on time trial rigs pulled up and offered a pull. In ten minutes of scootin' along at 26mph we reached him. I kindly thanked the boys for the train ride and sat up to catch a blow with Billy.

Not long after that, we hit a nice section of flat road with a bit of tail wind. I'm not sure where my second (or tenth?) wind came from, but all of a sudden I was ready to jam. We had picked up a group of about 10 or so folks and I hit the gas. Averaged about 25mph for about 10 miles, right up to the covered bridge that brings us into Windsor, VT where the ride ends. The last few miles Billy and I just spun in. I think we were out there for an hour later than last year (I haven't looked at actual ride time yet). Pretty sure we averaged about 19.5mph for the whole 150 which isn't too bad considering how damn hot is was!

Now it's time to get back to reality. The master bathroom project will catch a wave this week. I'm going to prime and paint today. I'm going to put up a second coat of paint tomorrow night and build the mortar bed for the shower, and hopefully get going on the tile install. I really would like to get this buttoned up before the Tour starts!

Summer's here!

So I always seem to have the best intentions of keeping this up to date, and then excrement happens....my software job has kept me super busy, but I am definitely still ramping into this job and company. While I possess no misinformation when it comes to the differentiation between motion and action, sadly I have been more the former thus far. It takes me no less time to create a quote for 50 seats of my product vs. 5,000 seats of my product. I am struggling with having to touch every opportunity that I have in my territory and staying focused on the larger ones. It's definitely a personality flaw, but I feel like I must be attentive to everything. I am confident that I will continue to improve and be efficient, but it is still a struggle.

On the family front, "the boy" recently turned 3! That's rather amazing to say the least - as with most parents I'm sure, it seemed like yesterday that he was born! We recently put him in a "big boy" bed, which is nothing more than his crib mattress on a little bed frame and he's doing well. Only fallen out of bed a few times, though those proved to be rather traumatic events! The girls are doing really well and are both enjoying sports: Cait is finishing up tee-ball and Meghan is loving softball. As a self-proclaimed baseball nut, this pleases me. I'm 0-2 in soccer so far-that's another story altogether-but baseball seems to be a family favorite so far. And "the boy" can already crush a wiffle ball. Penny maintains beauty, patience, and grace and keeps the engine moving forward. She's so very positive and keeps me centered on what's important. That's helpful as I can be a curmudgeon when things don't go my way.

On the sporting front, it's been a fun cycling season. Good friend JLC has taken to the road and so I have a new training and racing partner. We've had some solid results this year and are planning our collective strategy for moving up early next year to the next category for road racing. All that's left is for him to see the cyclocross light and the circle will be complete!

On the home front, the master bathroom project is coming along - after my tablesaw accident in which I practically bisected my thumb certainly delayed things, but it's getting going again. As I had never before built a shower pan, there was a fair amount of "how to" and "out of what" research to be done. After screwing the first one up, I figured out how to make the shower floor water tight. Per usual, I would have done this differently had I to do it over, but c'est la vie. As my Dad says, "you'll be an expert at this by the time you finish it, but then you'll never do it again." Sage advice.

Well, it's raining out, and I need to get an expense report done, then slap another coat of mud on the walls. Wanna' help?

Pressure!

I am often my own worst enemy.
I was just given my annual quota and it seems astronomical. The "power of positive thinking" needs to rain on my parade, big time! I hate looking at a goal with no concrete way of reaching it. It scares me. Pressure.
The yard looks like crap as well - with my back the way it's been the last year, my days of throwing a 12-hour landscaping marathon up are over. If I do those, then I'm screwed for a couple of days afterward, even if I stretch out for an hour afterward. But I hate it when my yard looks like crap. Pressure.
Yesterday I lined up with the C guys at Wells Av for my first race pace of the year and definitely had heavier legs until the last few laps. A guy in front of me fell off the pace of the lead group and before I knew it there was a 15 yard gap. That gap grew to 50 yards in just a few seconds and before I knew it I was trying to pull a group of about 5 guys or so back. I couldn't do it. Granted it's only the first race effort, and my training has really only been consistent now for a couple of weeks, but still. If my goal is to upgrade to Cat 4 by the end of summer, I need to get my sh*t together. The first "real race" of the season is this coming Sunday and I'm nervous. I can't get totally schooled. Pressure.
Need to get the master bathroom project started as well-it's half gutted and we've been waiting a bit so that we can just pay cash for the job and not pull money out of savings. I'll likely do most of the work myself (again) - at least the entire demo job. I can also install new fixtures, but my motivation to do all the tiling work with Brad is pretty low. Pressure.

Alone time.

Couldn't think of a better title....just back from a cold and wet 3 hour base ride. It's really my first full week of consistent effort on the bike. I probably rode 300 miles or so in January and February but to be honest, the workouts were not consistently linked and I maybe did one trainer workout/week. I just had no strong motivation which is interesting considering that I've registered for some early season road races. The legs haven't felt great. After a 3 hour slog last Saturday that saw me cramping up big time after about 2 hours, I had literally been shaken awake. Time to get going. So I licked my wounds from Saturday's debacle, got out for 2.5 hours solo on Sunday and felt a little better. Off on Monday with some solid core and stretching. Tuesday was a good 90 minutes outside with a couple of tempo intervals in. Wednesday was another 90 minutes, this time pretty all at or slightly below tempo pace. Thursday was 60 minutes with 2-10 minute threshold intervals. Friday off with Pilates and stretching, then today a solid 3 hour solo ride.

I like long solo rides on occasions. Pop in the left headphone and catch up on Podcasts or just listen to tunes and think. With 3 little ones occupying most of my "free time", I have a difficult time just thinking about stuff. Granted, my ADD has my thoughts zipping from this to that. This morning for instance I worked through a few design ideas for the master bathroom renovation project to what our family vacation plans will be to how I'll finish up this first quarter at my new job to whether or not I can afford to upgrade the fork on my 'cross bike this fall. Random and everywhere, sure. But nonetheless I find the alone time on the bike during longer base rides to be therapeutic. I think of creative gift ideas for my lovely wife, I wonder what specific lessons I'd like to teach my children, I think about less fortunate families around the world and what they're doing at that particular moment.

Alone time is precious for me...so I guess riding my bike in the wee hours of the morning and getting soaked doing it is the price of admission. It's worth it.

CATCHING UP!!!

Man, it's been a whirlwind few months! New job has been terrific and action packed. My manager is great and an old friend from big telecom. Working for a small software company is just awesome when compared to the daily internal fights that I was used to. Lots of collaboration with my team mates and a can do, go get 'em attitude. Plus I'm learning something completely new which I appreciate. Data security is so critical to today's environments and I feel like what I am doing is relevant and not so much a commodity. I feel refreshed and energized again.


Here is a photo from the New Hire trip to Israel:

This is just inside the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem. Amazing place! The company finds it important to bring new hires from around the world together for a week of exposure to the senior executives and the country itself. Being a bit of a travel fan, I was all in on this opportunity!! Putting my hands on stones that are 2,000 years old was a bit surreal. When we talk about history in the US, 200 years old is well, old. 200 years old in Israel in modernist in comparison!

On the bike front, I'm off to a lousy start. My back has been balky all winter despite diligent stretching and strengthening work on my part. When my back hurts there is simply not much motivation to get on the bike. Which is problematic, as I have a few races on the calendar that I need to get up for. Oh, and my road bike was broken and is being "fixed" by the good folks in Watertown. The dudes at the LBS are taking care of me cost-wise so I should be back out there soon enough. I feel like my base is just not where it was a year ago and I have a lot of homework to catch up on. Some years are better than others I suppose.....

New challenge!

Like so many others I was thrilled to usher out 2009. I had been laid off unexpectedly the week of Thanksgiving and had pretty much had a shite year overall financially speaking. Telecom has been suffering from a real lack of innovation the last few years in the enterprise space and pricing has followed suit. Products that were considered to have individual and compelling business value just a few years ago are commodities today. Add that to ever-rising sales quotas and product value:quota retirement and you get the picture. Bigger goals and extreme difficulty in reaching them. Those with accounts with business models requiring ever growing geographies continue to do ok (regional banks, service providers, etc), but if an account manager's deck didn't include accounts requiring more and more bandwidth achieving a goal that represents a 50% increase becomes difficult. All in all, my original intent in going to grad school in the first place was to move into another area of technology anyway.
My severance from big telecom as it turns out was the best thing that could have happened to me. I've never really worked networking tools like Facebook or LinkedIn as diligently as some folks I know, but I do pay attention. If nothing else, it's nice to keep in touch with people that I really like that I don't get to see as often as I once did. People move between companies fairly often now whether that's internal colleagues or customers. The internet makes keeping in touch pretty easy. I got extremely lucky when an old friend from big telecom (we were on the same sales team years ago) pinged me to discuss a role at his software company. Talk about serendipity! The interview process moved quickly and I was out of work for only 5 weeks total. I essentially look at it as a much needed vacation in which I got a TON of those stupid little home projects completed. While I didn't ride as much as I would have thought, the overall break was productive and I'm psyched to back at it, learning something completely new, and being part of a smaller (2,000 employees worldwide), flatter, and more nimble organization.
Here's to 2010: new opportunities, fresh outlook, the Winter Olympics, getting my braces OFF, continuing to pick off home re-modeling projects, etc.