4/3 wetsuit

Today rivals one of the coldest, wettest periods of sporting that I've ever experienced.

In high school my sophomore year, my friends and I got the bright idea to go surfing in January. The waves we not good but we felt like getting out and being bad asses. Needless to say, 1 hour after getting in we were shivering on the boardwalk, unsuccessful in our quest to get any kind of good wave catching in. The lobster gloves and booties designed to keep out extremities warm failed after about 15 minutes, or just as the water was beginning to soak through the lyrca. The wetsuits we had were 3/2, meaning 3cm on the chest, and 2cm thickness on the arms and legs. In January, you definitely would've needed a 4/3. The painful part of the whole experience was when you had to duck dive under the waves while paddling out so as to avoid getting reamed by the white wash from the previous wave. This involves dipping your board under water and following through as if you were swam diving under the wave. The frequent duck diving in January is usually followed by the famed "ice cream headache." This is where you eat ice cream too fast you and get a weird pain in the frontal lobe region of your brain. The pain subsides after a few minutes, but the initial shock really isn't pleasant. If you are lucky/smart you do in fact have gloves and perhaps a hood even; this happens to make surfing in the winter all the more enjoyable.

Riding bikes for 3 hrs in the rain while its 45 degrees is roughly the same kind of pain, only you can't just turn around when you're halfway through. The option of stopping at a gas station is also impossible when you decided to leave your apartment at 4:30 and it gets dark at 7:30. Throw in soaking wet gloves and inability to wear them longer than the first 45 minutes of the ride makes things a bit more interesting. Shifting when you can't feel your hands or feet and standing up to pedal for longer than 15 minutes at a time due to the inability to shift into an easier gear hurts the legs a bit more than normal.

Needless to say, the whole experience was probably as epic as they get and it brought me back to the good 'ol days of high school wave riding tomfoolery and ice cream headaches.

Thanks for reading,

-E

OFF and ON

Yesterday was an OFF day so I went and saw the New York Yankees beat up on our baseball team. I'm not going to mention the score but it was quite the butt-whooping. I think we might have gotten 2 hits off their pitcher during the 7 innings. The scoreboard changed immediately back to the default setting after the game, awhoops. And when I got home, I was greeted with a 20 lb box full of Nature's Path Organic Food!


Today however was an ON day. Back to training; I rode in the rain. I got really wet, really fast. I rode up Harding Ave (2.5 mi climb, avg 6%) in 10:32 after the 2 1/2 hrs. This is pretty solid considering my PR is 9:45 (near the end of April 2 years ago during a race ride.) I felt really good. I wish I could've measured the watts because they would've been up the wazoo, only while I was installing the mounting kit on the bike today, I accidentally cut the wire! I guess I could've gotten to this sooner; I would have liked to measure my TSS during the first 10 days in January. Did I really put in 46 hours on the bike then? It also rained tonight...really hard.

Here comes the sun

Hello loyal readers! My apologies for the lack of updates in the last few weeks. School, training, and racing have been keeping me busy. Here is a brief update on everything that has happened since I last posted (in reader friendly list form):


USNA
- VT riders get into the break to finish 1st and 3rd. (Steven and Owen Nielsen)
- JZ and I get into the chase break and finish 6th and 9th, respectively. The familia is present and have a good time.
- Day 2 is the TT (17 miles on a rolling course). My time is 29:35 (9th place, again. Coincidence?)


Spring Break '08 in Chapel Hill, NC at my man Eoin's casa
- Complete 13 hrs of solid riding in the first 3 days
- Complete 4 games of PIG in the last day
- Team has smashing good time downtown. Did I get a helicopter ride?


ECC/ACC joint conference weekend in Philadelphia, PA
- Soaking wet criterium where Bryan finishes 8th. Grouppo explodo in the Virginia Tech camp.
- TTT the next day, 8 miles. Due to the lack of draft I give off, I am not selected for the main TTT team (4 riders). I end up having a "better warmup" and pull my team (3 riders) around before dropping them, unwillingly. Individual time is 21:30, but clock stops at the last rider so 26:36... The TT practice was fun (despite it starting at 8:30 AM in 20 degrees F). The other TTT team finishes 4th overall (without any aero wheels and only 1 TT bike), booya!
- Circuit race of 30 miles in the afternoon: Esteban gets into the break, B Mac and Cheese leads out the field sprint. After looking back during the final 300m I lose his wheel and get passed on the line by 5 guys. Steven gets 6th, Bryan 11th, and myself 17th? - Virginia Tech finishes the weekend omnium as the best ACC school (Fist Pump!)


Community Service


- Owen and I ride with the youth of Blacksburg in an effort to educate, inspire, and give back to the community.
- 39x25 at 130 RPMS for last 30 minutes
- Owen gets dropped later in the ride by an 8th grade girl.