Yesterday was another recovery ride, but instead of the previous day being a monster workout, it was instead an epic party.

Friday night was ridiculous.  Irish car bombs, an entire flask of scotch, a little tequila, a few mojitos, a few beers and I was out (ask me sometime about the bum waking me up in the metro).  I don’t think I crawled out of bed until early afternoon.  Another couple hours later and I was on the bike feeling like ass, sweating out all the toxins.

I scooted down around Hains Point a few times and then up into DC.  I just kept going and going, logging more miles than I had planned, simply on account of all the massive guilt associated with hedonistic food and alcohol consumption the day before.  In the end, I only racked up about 35 miles, but it was 35 more than I felt like logging…thats for sure.

I did have some time to reflect back on some cycling related “goals” I had set for myself in 2008 (I don’t like “resolutions” so I set “goals”….but really its the same shit right?)  I kept these in my cycling ride log where I tracked things like miles and ride locations, etc.

I’ll spare you the work/education related goals, and just list the health/cycling items and how I’ve fared.

Log at least 200 days in the saddle - I blew this one away and am closing in on 250 for the year.  Thats not bad considering the month I spent abroad at peak season (all of July).

Drop below 150lbs and be at a “solid” riding weight - Nope.  I got below this once, but it was an unhealthy dehydrated 148.  I’d like to get down to 147 or so for spring 2009, but never did in 2008

Limit alcohol to weekends and social events - Not even close.  I routinely go back and forth between a carpe diem mentality and a: “I’m going to buckle down and get fast” mode of thought (in which case the alcohol should be kept to a bare minimum)…but thus far, the former has won out.

Benchmark myself in a handful of mtb races - Yes.  I didn’t do an all-out race calendar, but the handful of races I did do gave me enough data in terms of lap times and results to tell me that I can compete at the expert level if I train (something I did very little of in 2008…most just logging junk miles to and from work).

So anyway…I plan on refining my “goals” for 2009, and they will likely be a lot more aggressive, and disciplinary, since I’d like to give this season my all.

This was a stress relief ride if there ever was one.

So I’ve referenced the car registration situation a couple of times now, and on Wednesday morning, it came to a head.  I appeared in court with summons in hand, and instead of popping by the clerk’s window to pay the ticket, I was ushered into the actual court room with the judge, attorneys, and the rest of it.  I was kinda caught off guard by all this and immediately started to get kinda nervous when I realized I was going to have to stand up in front of the judge to try and explain my unexplainable/unjustifiable “operating and unlicensed vehicle” charge.  My thoughts after sitting there a few minutes realizing this: “what the hell were you thinking Dan, why didn’t you just pay this ahead of time”?

Yeah….so after sitting there for several hours waiting for my turn, watching the judge hand out jail time and big fines to drunk drivers, I left.

I got up and walked out and was later found “guilty in absentia” which basically means that I was going to contest the charges, but pussed out and didn’t show up - so I got the full fine plus court costs.  I was freaked out about the short time between a bench warrant and my guilty verdict, so I paid immediately the next morning.  Pretty coincidental that the only fine I’ve ever had to pay for ANYTHING related to breaking the law (yeah, I’ve never even had a speeding ticket) is the same day I find out I have to apply for a security clearance….c’est la vie I guess.

Anyway, I got out that night to just release all the pent up stress.  I hammered like crazy just to wear myself out so I’d fall asleep soundly that night.  It turns out that cycling can be pretty solid pre-bedtime therapy.

Ride #51 was less a “ride” than it was a workout…but since I logged some bike time, I’m going to call it a “ride”.

Last Tuesday, I basically spun around for 30 minutes to warm up for what would be a pretty intense leg session in the gym.  I’ve been told that the only way my knee issues will go away is to do some resistance training.  I had been doing some shit with rubber bands and ankle weights, but honestly…if you’ve ever done that kind of physical therapy for any length of time, you know that it can get really boring really fast.  So I started doing some lunges, leg extensions, lower back work, crunches and a mix of other miscellaneous cycling specific lifts.  This way I can think if it less as PT and more as off-season training.  The kickoff to this approach was a success, since the soreness that followed Tuesday’s workout didn’t last all that long at all, and an ever better bonus: no annoying knee twinges in the rides since.

So I’m pretty optimistic that the lifting is going to pay big dividends as the base mileage creeps up….

Wow….so lots of posting need here.  Gonna make some of these posts pretty brief just to get them out of the backlog.

It probably seems like I’ve been slacking big time, but I’ve actually been loving the new bike waaay too much to let laziness prevail.  I said before that I’d stop talking it up, but its just such a night and day improvement over my previous setup….its hard to ignore the bike and “just ride” since it feels so good pedaling the new setup.

Monday night I dragged myself out at 10:30pm to enjoy some relatively mild conditions.  It seems I’m kinda addicted to this ultra mundane Hains Point loop.  I find that just zoning out and spinning around and around the pancake flat 3 mile carless loop is pretty great late at night when the ride calls for lots of mellow miles.

I REALLY need to get out and hit some singletrack soon….just to spice things up a bit, but since I’ve pretty much resolved to wait until the Walt is built up, I could be in for another mtb-less month based on the current waitlist message….(patience is a virtue I guess).

I spent today’s ride dwelling on a brief run-in I had with a cop about 10 minutes in.

So be forewarned, this post is an extension of my ongoing “fighting the man” saga that many of you are aware of.

The ride was just my standard loop out to Hains point for some cruising with a few tempo reps mixed in.  Nothing special really.  What tainted the ride however, was the way it began.

I jumped on the Mt. Vernon trail to ride up to the 395 bridge, which is the most direct route over into DC for me to get down to HP.  Just past the airport I noticed a park police car in the distance, driving down the trail the same direction I was headed.  Now bear in mind the Mt. Vernon trail is exactly one car width.  So every time the cop would come up behind a trail user he’d slow down, beep the horn, and the jogger or whoever would just step off and he’d keep going.  I’d say he was maybe doing 12-15mph.  When someone was coming from the opposite direction, he’d slow down and pull about 2ft to the right of the trail and let them pass.  Then there was me.

Obviously with him going 12-15mph, and me maybe 18-20mph…I was catching him kinda quick.  I got to within 20ft of him and then just coasted behind him for maybe a 1/4-1/2 mile.  I’m not exaggerating when I say that I was absolutely NOT anywhere close to tailgating him or following him at an unsafe distance.  He pulled over to let some oncoming folks by, at which point I started to dart around him as well.  I’m on my merry way, when he flags me down and yells “hey buddy, hey buddy”!  I’m wondering what the hell the issue could be…and honestly after having been pulled over several times now (while driving) in the past month….all for a stupid registration issue (I’ve never had a moving violation in my life for the record…) I’ was pretty annoyed to even be hassled by this guy - for any reason.

Sure enough, he goes on about how I was following too close when it was “obvious he’d been looking for something” and he’d “hate to have me splattered on the rear of his car if he had to stop quickly when he found it”.

I’m thinking: OK, thanks for looking out for me dude.  As much as I wanted to give him a physics lesson, and tutor him as to the stopping performance of 150lb Dan on a 17lb race bike….I instead just sucked it up and “said…you gonna let me jump ahead of you now?” in as subtly snotty way as I could get away with.

What really annoyed me about this was the fact that it seemed so obvious that he was simply throwing around his authority, looking to dish out a safety lesson when it was 100% unnecessary.  Besides the condescension, he wasn’t a total douche bag in his delivery of the message, but there was honestly about .00001% chance that I was gonna crash into his car in the first place.  Had we been going 3x the speed we were going, I still would have been able to safely stop.  The situation just didn’t sit right with me.  Its an example of the guy with the 97 IQ telling the guy with the 137 IQ how to go about his life despite the fact that no laws or rules (so far as I can tell) were even involved - despite the immutable laws of physics (a course he probably failed or never took in the first place).

I’ve got a ton of cops in my family and have several friends that are cops, so I know that most cops are very cool people.  I think the handful of authority hungry cops that enjoy talking down to people at every opportunity - tend to reinforce negative stereotypes more than anything.  I could go on and on about this sh*t, so I’m just gonna cut myself and enjoy my lovely PT routine on the foam roller now…

Today was a great 30 mile spin on super smooth, low trafficked WO&D pavement with a good group of guys.

I had planned to take a few snapshots, but it seems that lately my camera is the most often forgotten piece of gear I have…

6 of us met up out in Reston Town Center, with most of us having to drive out - 2 of us (coincidentally the 2 most fond of ridiculous endurance rides) decided to ride out to the meeting point (Ian and Eric).  The funniest part about the ride today was the fact that Ian brought his son Lucas along.  I guess thats not that funny in and of itself, but the fact that he towed Lucas behind him in a trailer that weighed 60lbs while the rest of cruised along comfortably on our 16-18lb bikes…that was funny.  To Ian’s credit, he chugged right along with only a mild handicap being obvious…more like he was sporting a large seatpack instead of a 2 yrd old and a trailer.

Anyway, it was some desperately needed low intensity mileage - given my need for base miles right now.  In the coming weeks I plan to do some longer rides with more PT mixed in.

Chubby Dan needs to be relegated to 08 thats for sure.  As I write this, I’m taking my last few sips of alcohol for awhile (well, ok there’s a big party I have to attend next weekend, but besides that…).  The plan is to really buckle down and drop about 8-10lbs by March/April.  I plan to use a combination of dietpower.com and trainingpeaks.com to manage my training.  Hoping to have that chic sunken cheek look down pat by February…

More on that in the weeks ahead.

time to get back on the horse….for real this time.

I really underestimated how much of a struggle (or how little will power I’d have) riding would be once I started working longer hours during the worst stretch of weather all year.

I’m up to mid 200s on the year and will probably top out at 250 +/- 5 rides.  I have to reconcile my 2008 ride calendar to find out….but the point is, I didn’t ride much at all during this same period in 07, and so I’m confident that I can make up some serious time in the January-June time frame.

I got out for my first post headset saga last tonight.  Oksana was at her work holiday party (where most spouses do not attend), and so I felt it appropriate to escape out for a cruise around Hayne’s with my trusty Surly flask to help me assess my new bike’s ride qualities.

The folks at The Bike Lan in Burke Va helped me get the bike nearly 100% on Thursday night, with me simply adding Ian’s compression plug earlier this evening to finish it off.  Needless to say I’ve been licking my chops all week waiting for the opportunity to go out and spin around without worrying about the steerer failing or the sloppy headset damaging the head tube.

Anyway, it was a success….the bike is officially a stiff rocketship of a race tool.  It reaffirms my wanting to keep the Lemond around for the long wintery training rides that are coming up….because quite frankly….the Seven is like a ferrari (or since its American and not Italian, perhaps a Ford GT) - basically it begs to be ridden hard….in top gear….and rolling around in 1st through 3rd is almost a waste of time…it just doesn’t feel right.  Whereas on the Lemond….busting it in 5th gear…..felt laborious.  I could feel the bike straining and flexing beneath me….like when I’m winding out the 2.4L 4 in my Honda while diving into a sweeping turn on a backcountry road in upstate NY…..my intentions are legit….but somehow….its just not quite right.

On that note…I installed (or more accurately…Joe C at TBL installed) some killer new tape on my bars.  I have to confess that I absolutely blow at wrapping bars.  I understand that its not rocket science and that a smart chimp could probably do a decent job of it…but my paitience is just not quite there.  Check out the pics of this Fizik tape though…its simply killer.

It reminds me of a vintage sportscar (I know, enough with the car stuff huh? I’m not even a car guy…) steering wheel.  Like a Ferrari GTO with the leather wrapped around it (speaking of Ferrari GTOs…CJ and I did indeed spot one just like this….in oldtown Alexandria…not even kidding…totally legit too, not a kit car….the only reason I’m familiar with that car is on account of its role in the movie Vanilla Sky)…..anyway, this Fizik stuff is called “micro-tex” and as you can imagine…is synthetic…but it feels amazing.  I never thought I’d be getting a boner over a nice bar wrap…but this stuff just completes the bike.

Well thats it for talking up the Seven for awhile.  In the next few posts I’ll touch on the latest scotch sampling, talk about my diet like I’m a chick, and discuss my self-coaching experiment.

Later this month, cross country skiing in upstate NY, a review of my upcoming court appearance and the ongoing “stick it to the man” saga…and the Moldovan Surly flask encounter….

stay tuned

(this is a delayed post stuck in draft mode from earlier this week….oops)

So here’s the weather report that I read before heading out the door two hours ago:

“a Wind Advisory remains in effect until 8 PM this evening… Cold and blustery conditions will continue through the afternoon and early evening… Northwest winds will blow at 15 to 30 mph…with a few gusts to 45 to 50 mph. That will make temperatures in the upper 20s to lower 30s feel like its in the upper teens to lower 20s. If driving…watch for scattered debris or small branches which may be blown around by the wind.”

That pretty much says it all right there.  I managed to log about 20 miles despite the nasty wind.  I have to admit though, if I wasn’t so hyped up on riding the new setup, I probably wouldn’t have gone outside.  The one thing that made the ride tolerable was testing out the new setup….

first ride on the Seven was everything I hoped for.

to be fair, I only rolled around for 20 minutes on it….wearing jeans, no helmet….and mildly drunk.

Ok, lets rewind a little and try to bring some order to this post and recap the last blogless week before I delve on into my review of Ms. December:

Going into Thanksgiving week, I was hurting.  The IT band flare up annoyed me on my last mountain ride out on the Great Falls trails, and so mentally I’d been kinda bumming.  Add to that the fact that I had psychologically written off the Lemond as my now intolerably heavy Ultegra equipped slum bike.  As a sidenote, I have decided to keep it to spare the Seven any crap weather abuse….so it now has become my winter weather/errand bike.

Anyway….this post is titled 42-45 because I’ve logged 4 rides in the past week and none of them really need a lengthy description other than: “went out for an hour and pedaled softly in fear of bothering my knee”.  So hopefully I’ll get back on track soon here….

I had planned on 12/1 as my official kick-off of “base training”, but have since pushed back to 12/8.  So that will spell the end to my rapid accumulation of off-days (otherwise I’ll need to change the url to 200to30).  In my defense, I’m already mid 200s for 2008 anyway…

So onto the new ride.  The parts have trickled in and I’ve done my best to put the Seven together in a slow deliberate fashion in hopes of skipping my normal build f-ups (like the time I cross threaded my Commencal bb shell, or cut a steer tube too short, etc.).  Ian’s obsession with anti-seize has also worn off on me, as I’ve found myself coating all my parts with it pretty liberally.  Overall though, the build went well.

For those of you less familiar with my build…here is a quick rundown:

Frame: Seven ti (3/2.5v) Axiom w/ aero downtube
Fork: Easton EC90 aero
Wheels: Easton EA90 aero
Tires: Continental GP4000 w/ Michelin ultralight butyl tubes
Group: Shimano Dura Ace
Pedals: Shimano Dura Ace
Stem: Thompson X-2
Bars: Easton SLX
HS: Race Face Team SL (plans to replace with CK or CC 110)
Post: X-aero carbon
Saddle: Selle San Marco Aspide Ti
Cages: Tacx Tao ultralight alu

Below is the gallery of the finished setup:

For those of you wondering where all the gear fits in our little itty bitty Arlington apartment check out that last pic.

Anyway the initial ride was awesome.  As mentioned above….I didn’t get to put it through her paces on the first “ride” but will describe the performance qualities over the next few posts.

One thing thing I did notice though…..is that a stomp on the pedals makes me realize how incredibly noodle-like my Lemond is.  I’m reminded a bit of my first road ride on the Colnago Dream 6 years ago.  I remember airing up the tires and going for that initial test ride….and realizing: “wow, this is how a road bike should ride”.  It was one of those moments last night (well, actually Wednesday night).  Even though the 10spd cluster is proving to be a little bitch to tune properly, I can appreciate all the pro-level sweetness of the DA group matched with the top end frame.  I’m sure I’ll disect the specifics of the ride characteristics as I log more time….