2010 in Biking Review - less gears, more beers

How did 2010 fly by so quickly?  The older I get the quicker the time motors by and the more and more I realize I am no longer a spring chicken!  Harsh reality, but it is what it is.

2010 was a good year for us.  I hit the big 4-OHHH and insisted on believing I did not feel that old until the little nagging injuries woke me back up to reality when they just would not go away as quickly as in yesteryear....weaaahhhh

With the danger of getting too verbose in this entry, I am going to just look back on the 2 wheeled exploits for the year....

The main cycling objective was to enter the Cascade Cream Puff and do it on the singlespeed.  I somehow survived the 100 miles of dirt, the sweltering heat (in the 90's), the 17,000 + of elevation gain, the pain of singlespeeding, & the agony of riding a rigid bike with no suspension for 13+ hrs...but I finished!

The other 'events' of note were the Pierre's Hole and the 8 hrs of Boise.  All events were on the singlespeed and it gave me a whole new perspective of the big boys who are able to hammer their single geared bikes at almost the same pace as the gearies.

Towards the end of the year, I moved to the geared bike because my knee started to act up a little.  When I finally got back on the singlespeed later in the year again, I fell in love all over again - the simplicity, the beauty, the pain, the attitude...all GOOD!  less gears, more beers...

I was fortunate enough to also squeeze in some great training rides and some awesome recreation rides.  The two rides that come to mind are the Curly Lake ride in the Tobacco Roots and the Lionshead/W Yellowstone area rides.  Both were super enjoyable, unbelievably scenic high alpine rides.

The wifer also achieved her main athletic goal of the year which was to train and finish her first 1/2 iron man triathlon.  She survived the crazy headwinds on the bike and gutted it out to finish.  She also managed to include a X Terra tri and had a lot more fun doing that race than the ones she had survived prior.  She enjoyed so much she is talking about signing up for a few next year.

I am not sure what 2011 holds in store from a biking perpective but it will probably involve some form of suffering, training, and then forgetting just enough about the pain to look forward to the next event.

e-stim the Pinot way

I have slowly been forcing myself onto the indoor trainer 2 of every 3 days to try and maintain some fitness through the winter.  It is always a battle of wills and at times the bike wins, and at times laziness wins.  I have been trying to tweak my seat position slightly to see if I can find a state of mutual understanding between my right knee and the pedal.  My knee has been a little sore since last summer and I was hoping a little time off the bike was going to help calm it down.
The knee is been just slightly grumpy (but not enough to stop riding).  The indoor bike trainer and I have an agreement where I try to make sure it is kept happy by giving it company occasionally, and in return it makes sure I don't get too out of shape.

My last two trainer rides have been a little bit of an eye opener.  My heart rate has been getting a little higher than normal which must mean one of three things.
a) I rode a lot of last year 'tired' and over-trained and subsequently could not get the legs to fire up enough to crank up the heart rate.  or
b) I am slightly out of shape and am working harder (relative to heart rate) in the offseason. or
c) a little bit of both

After my indoor sesh, I fired up the e-stim unit and cranked away for about 45 mins of firing electricity through the quads.  A big chunk of the time was on the active recovery cycle on the unit but some of it was on what they call an 'endurance' setting where the muscles hurt as much as they would with traditional exercising.

It is pretty damn sweet to be able to drink a glass of Pinot while 'working out'

Lazily Confused

That phrase just seems to be stuck in my head this morning.  Those two simple words are so descriptive and they almost describe a state of acceptance of apathy...or maybe they just resonate with me because we all use the being confused as a cop-out at times.  Sometimes all it takes is a little motivation to figure out the unknown, but that little effort can be just enough to deter us.  As I type this there must be a reason for those two words being etched in my mind this morning?  The problem is I can't figure it out (or just maybe I am lazily confused) -and round and round we go.

It has been a relatively calm week.  We made it up to Discovery on Sunday to get a little snowboarding and tele action in.  The wifer has decided to punish herself by picking up telemark skiing.  I could make fun of her for this but this is coming from the mouth of a single speed biker so there is no margin for smacking my gums about her choice of ski style!  The mountain was in OK shape for this time of year.  They definitely need more snow to get better coverage but it was still good to get out and play a little.  We did a quickie 1/2 day.  We got up there a little late and wanted a relatively easy day given the ankle and my bruised tailbone.  Bruised tailbone + snowboarding can make for an ugly combo.  At the end of the day no further insult was added to the small collection of injuries (ankle, tailbone, and slightly grumpy knee) so I consider it a success.

The indoor trainer has been the bike of choice lately - mostly due to the weather (or maybe I am just lazily confused about where to ride right now?).  I have managed to get on the trainer a couple of times and have also fired up the stim unit.  Unfortunately the support guys for the stim unit are out until next week so my lazily confused state regarding the stim unit will have to remain that way until I can call support up and harass them with my gluttony of questions.

Until then the legs will just have to deal with more indoor trainer time and the occasional bombardment of electricity shocking them to wake up.

Holy SCHNIKE's

Wingsuit Basejumping - The Need 4 Speed: The Art of Flight from Phoenix Fly on Vimeo.

Fat Man treated us well

Thanks Santa - things were good in the Reis household and we appreciate you swinging by and dropping off the goods.  The missus got me a Globus Premium Fitness E-Stim unit which I had been eye-balling as a curiosity for the past year or so.  I was reluctant to spend money on a unit without fully understanding the benefits.

The wifer pulled the trigger and I look forward to finding out about how it can benefit training.  It seems like the biggest bennie is as a compliment to existing workouts as either an active recovery where the muscles are stimulated just enough to pump blood into them and flush out some of the gunk out (which would speed up recovery), or to hook it up and fire up the muscle group so more fibers are engaged than what you would usually engage via normal activity.

Unfortunately there is not a ton of information out there so it will be a learn and build as I go.  I had to see what it felt like though so I hooked up the sensors to engage the quads.  The first order of business was to shave the hair off the spots where the sensors would go...result: hairy legs with a few patches of skin.  I hooked up the sensors and felt a little bit like a science experiment.  There was a moment of anxiousness before turning it on as I wondered just what would happen and if it would take on a mind of its own and start shocking me without me being able to control it.  I probably should have figured out the off switch before firing it up, but nah....As it turns out, the stimulus starts out very very low and you adjust according to what levels you want to spasm your muscles with.  I slowly cranked up the stim unit until my legs were no longer twitching at their choice, but rather controlled by this unit.  It was bizarre at first.  Once I got used to it, up up up went the stim action...to the point where the contractions were powerful enough that it made my legs extend and straighten out.  After a re-adjustment so that I put my knees in a bent position and did not allow my legs to straighten, I realized that the muscles were actually getting fatigued!  It was as if lactic acid was building up just like a hard effort on the bike, or squatting, etc...it felt weird to feel the muscle burn from something that was not a true athletic endeavour.

I have barely scratched the surface on any of this and look forward to doing additional research and experimenting to see just how to incorporate it into training - although the 'training' has been put on the back burner as of late...speaking of, time to go sit on the trainer for a bit.

Happy Stimming....

Surprise...NOT

Santa has a busy couple of days ahead of him....and in case you are wondering, there is a Santa Tracker and NORAD is kind enough to share his whereabouts:
Tracking Fat Man in a Red Suit

As I write this, he appears to be somewhere in Russia dropping off gifts along his way.

As for the Reis household, the element of surprise was removed this past week for me.  The missus put a lot of thought into trying to get me something that would surprise me...but alas, there appear to be few surprises around here.  The sneaky cat somehow got out of the wet paper bag this past week when someone from the company 'X', that she bought the product from called the house and left a v-mail on our landline asking if she had any questions about her recent purchase of product 'X'...DOH.

I am somewhat confident that the wifer has not yet figured out her main gift yet...the element of surprise is hopefully still intact (unless of course she decided to lift the blankie in the downstairs bedroom and peak-a-boo).

Early Bird Gets The Worm

or in this case the early bird wakes up, goes to work out and wakes her husband up (who can't get back to sleep).  Between the missus getting up early and the dogs licking themselves this morning, it was an early rise day.  That is not always a bad thing considering early starts can lead to good productive days.  I am going with that for the day and thinking it will be good to check things off the to-do list.

After feeding the pups this morning, I looked out, saw a full moon and realized I missed the lunar eclipse last night.  It was on my mental notepad to check out but apparently the glue on the back of the sticky note must have lost its stickiness and floated away with the arctic breeze.

The ankle is starting to feel better and I am hoping it will be formidable enough to handle some light spinning with a day or so.  Until then I am going to be doing my biggest winner impression (just think of the opposite of the show 'the biggest loser') by sitting around, eating, and gaining some winter weight to keep me warm.

As it turns out, we are going to be local for the holidays and we are very content with that.  The last month has been really crazy and we will be more than happy to kick our feet up and have a more chill finish to the end of the year.  The wifer's gifts are wrapped and now we just have to see if her curiosity gets the better of her and she scopes out her unwrapped gifts before Santa's official visit.

Busy Week Unfolding

I am finally back home and it feels good to be back with the family and get back into a routine.  This week is going to be a busy one though - Work is going to be full of last minute administrative deadlines that will sneak out of nowhere and need to be completed ASAP before the fiscal year end finishes.  Suffice it to say that regular work will provide plenty of surprises and other pending projects are also going to kick off this week.  Those projects also include meeting with college department chair for Computer Science to see if there is a good fit to teach a class up there.  It depends a lot on the content of the classes, class size, etc...Since it would potentially be the first time going through all this for me, it would be a little overwhelming to have a huge class size, etc.  Wonder if I need to buy a tweed jacket?  or a cord jacket?  It reminds of me the classic Animal House (so many great scenes!!)....



I will also be meeting with the clinic in town today (the one where the missus works) to see how I can help with their Electronics Medical Records implementation that they are about to kick off.  It will be really interesting and am looking forward to see the process soup to nuts to see what the big challenges are for rolling something like this out.

As for Santa Claus...the shopping is mostly done at this point and the last step is going to be wrapping.

play hard...fall hard

The danger about playing hard is when you crash and burn, you do it in grand style.  Like most sports, the faster you go, the more in control you are (until you cross that line) - once that line is crossed then all bets are off and yard sales await.

Last night I went out with friends and did a little ice skating with their boy.  Bear in mind I have not laced up skates in decades so it was bound to be an interesting night.  I bit the ice a couple of times and I wish it was done in grand style at high speed but it was puttering on the ice and falling like a cartoon with arms waving in the air while my budonkadonk met the ice with a thud!  The worst part about  hitting the ice at slow speed is that it is always awkward and it always hurts.  As it turns out, the ice is hard...hmmmm

The first couple of laps were an adventure until I got my bearings and was able to get my balance a little.  I started to skate a little faster realizing it helped in keeping me upright...until of course I came up on people and had to try and navigate my way around them around a turn.  I over-estimated my new found skills and was able to save a few yard sales until of course the budonkadonk thudaroo.  All in all it was a great night and I have no delusions of being a good skater...or even an adequate skater.

Old Friends

There is nothing like hanging out with old friends and last night I was fortunate enough to do just that.  There is something so easy and comforting about enjoying the company of friends that have known you (and you them) for many years.  As I read somewhere recently, "it is not about the accomplishments you have achieved in your life, but it is about the relationships you have developed."

It really got me thinking about the clarity of that statement and how we easily get caught up in chasing accomplishments.  For some reason that statement resonated with me and has been swirling around in my head the last couple of days.  Those simple one liner statements are great because they are ummm well simple but yet we have a tendency to over-complicate and then soon enough we are off on a tangent chasing our tails in circles because we have lost sight of the forest for the trees.

and another keeper:
"Life is not a dress rehearsal" - We get one chance through all this craziness so we should make it count - no need to weight ourselves down with toxic people, etc...

OK OK, enough of the deep thoughts....for the time being, it is off to go chase some work accomplishments.....

On a Roll

And I don't mean dinner or tootsie rolllllllll....It has been a good past couple of weeks with some great productivity and prepping for 2011.    I am looking forward to getting back home and settling back into our usual rhythm with the dogs being silly and me having my creature comforts!

I was approached yesterday for a possible adjunct instructor opportunity with the local college.  The opportunity sounds like it could be a lot of fun but unfortunately my schedule has no wiggle room at all for another gig.  It is always interesting to me how things can unfold - seemingly meaningless encounters and meetings with people that are actually planting seeds for future germination.

The holiday season is getting closer and closer and it seems to be like things get more and more hectic (even if you don't let yourself get caught up in the hype).

in tribute to tootsie roll and don't believe the hype....here it is:

Lynskey Progress, Pugsleys and Mukluks

How did Tuesday sneak up so quickly?  Yesterday was a barn burner of a day and it somehow passed really fast.  It probably has something to do with being uber busy.  The upside though is that it was a day full of accomplishments and possibilities so I will take that.

The Lynskey frame has been sitting in the basement for the past month and although there is no rush to get the bike built yet, it still looks a little lonely sitting all by its lonesome down there.  The build is coming together in terms of parts.  I have been working with Great Divide in Helena to put it all together and help in determining parts.  As of right now, my preference is to go with a Niner fork in moondust (which should match the Titanium frame) and as for bottom bracket/crankset, the current preferred choice is the Truvative Stylo.  The fork is a fully rigid carbon fork and weighs in at 565 grams!

Since there is no rush at all on the bike build (after all, it is winter and we do live in Montana), the mind has wondered off to other options.  One of those daydreams took me to what the options are like for real winter riding.  There are two snow/sand specific bikes that have huge 4 1/2 inch wide tires.  The Surly Pugsley and the Salsa Mukluk are not the lightest bikes in the world, then again they are not supposed to be....They look like the Hummer tanks of bikes.  They just look like they would be a ton of fun!  Both bikes are apparently made by the same crew out of Minnesota.  It would be really fun to try and ride one sometime just to see how they handle in the white stuff or deep sand.

Backcountry day-dreaming

Monday is here and it is back to the work grind.  It should theoretically be a slower week considering people are either out of the office or more or less checked out for the holiday season.  There is still some work to get through this week from a planning perspective as we head into 2011 but I am hoping for a chill week as we progress through the holiday season.

All this work lately has made me yearn for the backcountry...until there is enough snow and enough time the memories of past trips will just have to suffice.  I am hoping that the splitboard will be the weapon of choice this year but that all depends on our snow and how it packs because last year was an avie nightmare!

Don't Call it a Comeback, I've Been Here For Years

Thanks LL....It has been several days since any posting on the blog and life has been speeding by for the past week.  Combine that lack of time with the lack of content and voila that equals blog neglect.

Too much work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy and in this case it rings true - no one wants to hear about how busy work has been or how life has you chasing your tail so I will refrain from trying to even blog about that and make it interesting...NEXT

I have been able to get to the climbing gym and even made it there on Tues and Thurs this past week.  It felt good to pull on plastic but it was very humbling to realize much of the go go juice was missing.  I was able to sneak a couple of good sends in there.  The funny part is that my hardest sends were my on-sights early on in the bouldering sesh's.  So as soon as my go go juice (which admittedly there was not much to start with) was gone, it was all was about trying to pick problems that looked interested and would help build some endurance.  It is difficult to build power endurance when you have neither!  So my theory is you have to be able to build some endurance before you start to push the power (the tendons appreciate the lower stress in the beginning too).

It was really good to have a gym to go to but it makes me realize how much I miss going in somewhat regularly to a place where you can grunt and groan your way up plastic.  During the grunting and groaning, I must have rolled an ankle on the gym mats because it has been killing me for the past few days since my last climbing session...load up on Vitamin I (Ibuprofen) and onwards we march.

no pix, no glory...just good old fashioned blah blah blah today....and now time to try and squeeze in a little fun before the work starts back up.

Cee-Lo

Not sure why but Cee-Lo tunes have been stuck in my mind the last day...so no pomp, no circumstance, gimme some FUNK brother man - he is just a straight up balla':



and some older school Cee-Lo, awesome tune!



and with Asher Roth???

Climbing Gym

The highlight of the day yesterday was hitting the climbing gym.  It was great to put on the tight shoes, hobble around and get spanked by plastic.

The only thing saving me from getting worked like a six yr old chinese laborer in a textile factory, was my technique...it saved me a little considering all the lack of climbing power and endurance!  Apparently not climbing regularly for a few years does not exactly help to maintain any semblance of what used to be quick ticks on problems.  Instead it was more about just getting on problems and climbing.

Hopefully the power will come back fast, but it would required a regular regimen and living in Montana does not allow a guy to get outside and climb regularly...so my ego will just have to be humbled each time I get on stone or plastic.  The interesting thing was that my power and endurance felt fine at the beginning (considering the time off), but there was a definite line of where my power stopped (or lack of power).  I could on-sight v3's all day long but as soon as I stepped into v4 realm, I lost the go-go juice to finish the problems and then could not really touch v5's.  It might have had a little something to do with not projecting problems either.  I was just trying to get volume to get the forearms worked and allow the tendons to ease into it...but still the ego wanted more - not to be for now.

Programus Interuptus

something about best laid plans...of mice and men...It turns out that being on the road is not super conducive to keeping a blog updated.  Go figure!  Being on the road also has a tendency to interrupt any regular sort of physical activity (unless of course the reason for the road is pleasure).

At this point, the body is healing (that is what I keep telling myself) and all those little nagging pains are getting a chance to recover.  It makes me feel better to think this but there is always that guilt associated with the body being idle.  However I do plan on changing that all up today.  The plans include hitting a local gym and maybe even getting in a climbing session at a climbing gym.  It could all get derailed based on time constraints, but yet again we will go with the intention for now.

This 'slow' time of year from a bike recreation perspective is a good time of year to start coming up with events for the upcoming year.  Everything is still in its infancy stages in terms of ideas but everything must have a genesis...for now the ideas rolling around in my head include the High Cascades hundie, maybe the Puff again,  maybe a 24 hr race or two (although I am sort of 'over' the 24 hour races - but never say never).  Looking at the list, it looks pretty meager so time to hit the research mode and see what else is out there - need some motivation to scare me into training through these short, cold days of old man winter.

It is crazy to think it is December already!  Although retailers will not let us forget that as the bombardment of advertisements are coming fast and furious.  It is amazing to me that some businesses really depend on this time period between Thanksgiving and Christmas to make or break their year.  What might be even more amazing is that we as consumers enable this to happen by buying, buying, buying, and buying.

It reminds me of that bumper sticker 'I owe, I owe, it's off to work I go'