PIE

Pie - 3.14 or Chicago Deep Dish?

Day One of the bike fit seminar was pretty cool. Lots of anatomy education and tooling education. Today will be more hands on bike fitting. I'm pumped.

More to follow after the weekend. Breakfast ride or ski race?

Quest 4 Knowledge

I am getting pretty pumped to head down to Chicago this Thursday & Fri for a Michael Sylvester Bike Fit Seminar. I will be heading down Wednesday night and staying with a friend from MI. It looks like plenty of the Trek yahoos will be in attendance and I'm sure fun will be had by all. Yoga and bike fitting! Nothing like getting paid to stretch and learn to fit people so they can ride faster! I have never put faith in bike fitting in the past and many of you know I am the kind of guy who will raise my seat 2 cm before the start of a race and let 'er rip...but I'm getting old and anything to help me go faster will do. I am also pumped to be able to start offering fit services here.

This past weekend I did some serious training. I ended up skipping on the breakfast ride for my own version of the Birkie. Tristan, Drankus, and I loaded up the new Sonata and cruised out to Greenbush for 2:30 hours of pain. We met up with the Schwallers and had a blast. The skiing was perfect and was almost as exhilerating as ripping that perfect piece of singletrack. Check out my form in the photo below!

Sunday was my first ride outside in quite some time. Andrea, Elicia, Dano, Street, Josh, and I went for a not so bad ride. It was still below freezing, but the sun was shining and the roads were pretty dry. The legs didn't really respond after Saturdays ski.

This is becoming more of a scary reality!

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

This did become of reality...for my dad!

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

It's even Steelers colors!

The Title?

It's bad when you can't think of a title for your blog post. I guess the only title I am really thinking about is this one. Yes that's right my first race of the season is approximately one month away. I guess that's bad considering I have not been on a bike since my California vacation. Even worse considering I don't even have a mtb bike yet this year! I hope the skiing is enough to stay in shape. I have also been getting crazy with some self hypnotism. We'll see how that pays off down the road....I'm always afraid I'm gong to fall asleep and never wake up?

I have been busy at the shop blowing out all of our winter inventory and preparing for the upcoming bike season. We have been pretty busy with ski rentals so the prep for spring is going slow. I have also been trying to get pedals, wheels, helmets, etc ready for the upcoming race season.

My big decision this year is going to be stick with the tried and true Bontrager Race X Lite wheelset or maybe try the Shimano tubeless road system. I have been doing a little research and the fact that Hutchinson is also making tubeless cross tires excites me. I guess in the end it comes down to $$$.

I think I am gong to be riding a Madone 5.2 Pro, a Top Fuel 9.9 (hopefully a 2009 prototype), and a Superfly! Riding a bike called Superfly means no more Blades and no more mullets.....because that stuff is not fly at all.

Maybe a breakfast ride tomorrow to start logging some miles on the bike?

what to do?

Yesterday was a long day being stuck in the house for 24 hours. I didn't venture outside a single time except to pull the car into the garage so it wasn't a Sonata Popsicle this morning. I did manage an hour on the rollers down in the basement. It wasn't quite as fun as the 1.5 hour ski I did Saturday night with perfect snow conditions and a good group of guys. I had some time yesterday to look up plane tickets to Tucson and they are reasonable! Andrea and I are waiting to here back on the house after we put in a second offer. Back to work today and hoping for more snow to keep up the skiing. It seems I'm finally getting it after 5 years, but I'd reather be in AZ!

Watched Tour of California yesterday. Pretty standard results....I was impressed with Garrett Peltonen and surpised Tommy D was so far down. Maybe he is focusing on the Giro with his new team. Another impressive ride was thrown down by Cippo...can't wait for him to beat Boonen in a sprint at 41 years old. I'm pumped to start riding myself, but being patient is key for myself this time of year.

The Motherland

This past weekend I made the trip back home to Pinckney MI for some quality time with old friends and a 30th B-Day Party. It's always great to drive through the old neighborhood were we terrorized all for 18 years growing up. It was back in the day where kids actually played outside and were not glued to cell phones texting and what not. It was quite sad to not see a single kid outside in the old hood. Not a single kid on the old sledding hill. Not a single kid building a snow fort. Not a single snowball flung from a tree at a passing car.

Dinner on the way home....Baby Ruth, MVP Meijer Brand Sports Drink, Motor City w/ Attitude coffee, and a couple Jack Links beef jerky! Bring on the 2008 season!

The best/worst part of the trip was the drive. Only a seasoned veteran could have made the epic trip. On the way to MI I picked up a friend in Chicago. I navigated the ghetto's and fridays rush hour traffic to arrive MI at 1:00am. Saturday we partied with some Detroit dance moves and with 5 hours sleep started the epic home. Lake effect weather was in full effect as we approached Jackson, MI and traveled at about 5mph for the next 4 hours. It was the absolute worst driving conditions I have ever season. I could have traveled faster on ice skates. White out conditions with gusty winds on a 1/2" sheet of ice had 29 cars in the ditch on a 60 mile stretch of I-94. Hockeytown had spread to I-94 as semi trucks were cross checking sedans and lots of off sides calls had multiple people in the penalty box. The new team car (Hyundai Sonata) was solid.

Maybe if they weren't driving on the wrong side of the road!

PBR ME

You know its bad when -

1. The local skis shop closes early.

2. Every other block has a car stuck on at least 2 corners.

3. There are absolutely no PBR signs illuminated along all of Michigan Ave and Business Dr in
Sheboygan at 5:30 pm.

4. Your back hurts more from shoveling snow than from the Smokin Spoke Marathon '07

5. The dog won't go outside to take a leak!

Hmmmmm?

Well the big question is on my mind. It's been 2 months since my last race and the end of the 2007 season. The process is starting up again. The sponsorship is lined up, the bikes are on the way, and now it's time to get the training and racing schedules going. I'm shooting for a month of occasional riding, yoga, and some weight lifting. Then its go time. March 1 looks to be the beginning of the training season for me and lots of base miles are in my future. Tucson plans are in the making, but I'm not sure if they will go through....I guess it depends on this.

This past weekend I did end up on my bike for my first breakfast ride of the year. I also took my first spill of the year as the snow was covering lots of ice on the frozen beach. Lots of guys went down and I'm happy to get the first crash of the year over with. After the 10th crash we headed for pavement. I ended up with about 2.5 hours. Not too shabby for 2 months of sitting on my butt.

Sunday was a day set aside for the Superbowl. A relaxing morning of checking e-mail and warming up for the big game with lots of Tecmo Bowl. I made a pretty good double batch of Southwest White Chicken Chili w/ some homegrown mushrooms added in for good measure. Batch number 2 was made with chicken satan for Andrea.

Before the game Tristan and I went out for a ski. I think its time to wax my skis as my avg hr was above 160 for the 1 hour....it felt like someone had installed a brake system on my fischers. Not fun. The game was great for all football fans, the commercials were avg, and I finished the night asleep on the couch with a post game show lullabye.

The Red Kool Aid

The Red Kool Aid goes big.....goes Super green.

Trek Teams up with AMP to Help Power Super Bowl XLII
(Waterloo, WI) – Trek Bicycle today announced it has teamed up with Mountain Dew AMP Energy to power the AMP Human Energy Event at Super Bowl XLII in Glendale, AZ. Using 42 Trek 7200 hybrid bikes connected to rear wheel generators, AMP athletes will turn pedal power into electrical power, generating enough electricity to power the entire promotional booth. The Trek-powered generators will also return enough electricity to the Phoenix power grid to offset all of the energy used during the first half hour of Fox’s official Super Bowl XLII broadcast, making it the first energy-neutral broadcast in Super Bowl history.