doping sucks

A co-worker of mine has a brother who competed in the Collegiate Mountain Bike National Championships this last weekend.  I've never ridden with or even met the brother, but I follow him on Strava and have seen his results, he's a strong kid.  The winner of the cross country race finished with a time of 1:45, 7 min ahead of 2nd, and over an hour ahead of the brother.

For the last couple of years, and perhaps especially now with the news from the last month or so, anytime a person has a spectacular athletic performance, there is always the rumbling of 'what is he/she on?'  Most people don't say it out loud or talk about it, but I bet most people think about it.  What's sad about this is that we don't give full credit to people that very well may have just had a brilliant day, a perfect 2 hours on the bike.

I still think that bike racing, of all kinds, is the most beautiful sport.  With all the news of late it would be easy to just say "Dopers Suck", throw them all under the bus, and move on.  That's kind of the attitude I used to have.  Over the last couple of years and quite a lot in the last months, I've changed that a bit.  I don't know all the details of why or how the riders that have come out recently and admitted to doping.  For these guys riding a bike was (is) their job.  Who knows what or how or why they decided that the best, or only course of action was to take something that they knew at the time, or likely soon knew, was banned.  

I don't know if pro cycling can be cleaned up or if other pro sports can start getting some attention for the doping that I believe goes on there as well.  What I would like to see is that some time in the future extraordinary athletes to be able to enjoy success or failure without the specter of doping hanging over them.  In the meantime, I'm not going to hate the dopers.  It will likely make for some interesting theater over the coming months or years though.  

photodump

A lifetime ago my passion was cars.  Maybe it still is one of my passions.  Perhaps a persons passion isn't manifest only in the day to day decisions and choices that you make, but what's in your heart.  So... even though I spend my money on other things, cars still hold a soft spot.

Photography is something that I used to be pretty passionate about as well.  I'm slowly trying to integrate some photography into my pretty full life.  The hope is to do more than just let the pixels live as zeros and ones on my hard drive, I want to share them, print them, hope that others might enjoy one or two.

Since I've got a pretty good commute each day, I keep an old point and shoot stuck beside the seat in my car, you never know when you might see something worth taking a picture of.  Just recently I've started using an iphone, and I'm pretty damn impressed by both the camera and the amount of in device power available for processing the images.  But, it can't be brought into play and operated with one hand anywhere as easily as a 10 year old point and shoot camera.

So... here is about 10 months of the pics that have been marinating on the card, nothing here that has already been pushed up to FB or Twitter, all this is new.  In the interest of speed, none of these have any post processing done.  Enjoy... or not.

The DC2 Integra's are great little cars.  This one was clean, not riced up.  Looks good with the 15" Spoons (or fake Spoons).

Big trucks are cool too.  Interesting that this one has no sleeper.  Too bad the old Olympus picked up focus on the windscreen...

GM A body.  Pretty sure this one is a '69, if it is the vent windows make it pretty rare, if it really is an SS.  Too bad about the chrome mudguards...

'69 Camaro's might be a little cliched, but this one looked the part.  Vinyl roof, old plate, nice patina.

2nd generation Camaro's are the one's to have in my book, this one was really clean.

You're starting to see more 240sx / Silvia's.  Plenty of these things around and it's easy to like RWD and potential for plenty of HP.  Like the color on this one too.

 

Late model Ford Escape with semi flat over EVERYTHING.... kind of interesting, don't know...

 Nicely turned out EK Civic.  White wheels are a plus.

Seen this one a couple of times on the drive home.  Don't know where the bottle caps on the body seam thing started, but I've seen it on a couple of Type 1's in the last year or so.

Early '80s Corolla wagon.  Don't know why but I love wagons, especially RWD Japanese wagons.  Focus on this one didn't snap in quite fast enough.

Everything that is new.. is old.  Like the mirrors on the barends.

Right hand drive 70 series Toyota Land Cruiser.  Don't see one of these everyday.

Proud

Last weekend was spent in Vegas.  Not the normal "The Hangover" debauchery, not for Interbike, and not for CrossVegas.  I joined 22 other people on the Georgia TNT team to ride in the Las Vegas Gran Fondo.  A total of 500 TNT participants at this event raised $1.5M for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.  This might be more dramatic - $1,500,000.

Some of these people are 'cyclist', some have done more than one TNT event, some many, many TNT events.  But many hadn't been on a bike since they were kids, some didn't even have bikes when the training started.  They did things that their friends and neighbors would never understand or appreciate.  They did things that they wouldn't believe they could do 4 months ago.  

The courage required by these people to undertake the training and fundraising is remarkable. Giving something back, being a positive influence in society, and doing something that makes a difference is rare.  I am proud and humbled by my teammates.

(PS.. if I go back next year, I'll schedule it so I can make it to CrossVegas...)

wind at our backs

As the Boeing 737 started it's descent into San Diego yesterday, the enormity of riding a bicycle across the country that had taken me all day to fly across started to become very real.  Even though I'll be sharing the load with 7 other strong athletes and a full support team, it's still a sobering challenge.

Over the last 6 months or so the team has been planning, training, and raising money for LLS.  We have met and reached out to hundreds of people that have graciously donated to our cause, given us thanks for what we're doing, and wished us godspeed on our ride.

I, and the rest of the Georgia Chain Gang, will do our best to honor those that have supported us.  Those that have donated to LLS to fight blood cancers, the families and loved ones that have gladly loaned husbands, wifes, fathers to this endeavor.  And to the people that didn't have a choice, those who have beaten cancer, those that are still fighting, and those who fought but lost.

The honor and accountability of all these people is not a burden but an elixir.  Continue to keep us in your thoughts, and spread the word.  We will ride strong.  We will have the wind at our backs.

T minus 6 days...

So it seems like my blog is going to be a once a month or so update... I had hoped I'd have more content but I just don't seem to have the time required to actually get good stuff pushed up.  It might be that I'm not quite as creative as I would like to think...

Almost a month ago we lost Warren Bruno after an 8 year battle with Lymphoma.  Warren was, and is, the honored hero for the Georgia Chain Gang.  He was a husband, a father, a business owner, a pillar in his community.  I knew Warren, didn't know him as well as I would have liked, but knew him well enough to realize I was lucky for every moment spent with him.  In the days following his death I thought a lot while out on the bike.  It seems like only the really decent, good people get diagnosed with a cancer or any other terminal disease.  I think what really happens is that a diagnoses makes life so much simpler, all the other crap that gets in the way of spending time with family and friends suddenly doesn't really matter.  Warren was already a great guy even before the diagnosis, we should all strive to be a little more like him.

RAAM starts in less than a week and I find myself completely ready for the race to get started.  For the last 4-6 months RAAM has been 'my thing'.  Between training, fundraising, and planning, RAAM has used up most of my free time.  I am in as good of physical condition as I believe I've ever been in.  Looking back over the last 6 months, I've been investing an average of about 8-10 hours per week on training.  At that level of commitment I don't think any more calendar time is really going to make much improvement.  This experience has really opened my eyes to the level of time commitment a major endurance event like RAAM or an Ironman take.  I know quite a few people that have trained and completed IM's, and I have a lot of respect for the effort it takes to do that.  Once the race starts, all the work and planning will be put to the test, but the day to day will be simple... ride bikes.

The Chain Gang's fundraising is at an impressive level, we're on track to be at or above $150,000 before the race starts.  I'm humbled and grateful for all that have donated to my page.  My personal network is not very big so one of my biggest concerns was being able to make enough of an impact to the total fundraising for the team, feel OK about my effort but... it's not too late to get a few more donations in...

This is likely going to be my last post before RAAM starts.  If you want to keep up with the Chain Gang, your best jumping off point for updates, pics, and videos is going to be the Facebook page.  You can follow me on twitter as well.  Thanks again to all that have donated and wished us luck, we'll do our absolute best to honor all that have contributed and, of course, Warren.

 

Tick tock

One month from today I'll be leaving for Oceanside California.  One one hand it seems like only yesterday that I found out I was going to be one of the 8 riders in the Georgia Chain Gang, on the other hand, I can't wait for RAAM to get started.

As I write this the Gang is over halfway to our goal of $200,000 raised for LLS.  I am humbled and grateful by everyone that has helped us with this fight against cancer.  Even with all the advancements in treatment and lives that have been saved over the years, people continue to die from blood cancers.  Don't forget the reason that we're doing what we're doing...

I feel like about 3 or 4 weeks ago I was in a really good spot with my training.  Then... work, life, etc.  The week of the silent auction I went 7 days without getting on the bike.  Wasn't by design, just the way it worked out.  For the last couple weeks I've been able to get some pretty decent training in.  I'm grateful for Garmin and Strava, because if it wasn't for the data logging and comparison to others and previous rides, I wouldn't be too sure about my current fitness.  But, the reality is that I'm pretty happy about where I am right now.  Glad I'm not going to be on a 4 person team though.

With only 4 weeks or so left before the A bike is going on a van, I've got a couple of things to button up.  Need to pull the BB out and give it a clean and grease, might do the same for the HS, basically just a good nut and bolt, top to bottom.  I picked up a Cane Creek/Zipp front wheel and an old Hed Deep rear off Ebay and have been doing a fair bit of riding on them over the last couple of months.  Pretty happy with them, I understand why deep wheels are getting so popular in the pro peloton.  But... the rear has an unknown number of miles on it and has straight gauge spokes, 32 of them.  Not too worried about the Dura Ace hub, but I'm probably going to respoke the wheel and rebuild the hub, just a little peace of mind.

Flirted with the idea of getting a compact crank for a month or so but I think I'm just going to put a 12-30 cassette on the deep wheel and go with it.  I've been running a 12-30 for well over a year now and have been pretty happy with it.  And it's already paid for...

Update.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to throw a larger net to help with fundraising for the Chain Gang's RAAM effort and to give a window into my training and fundraising efforts.  But... I haven't been doing a great job of keeping the blog up to date.  It's a bit of a cop out, but it seems that life always gets in the way.  Another part is that I've got this idealistic dream of trying to write really good stuff.  Kind of makes me procrastinate a bit when it comes to getting stuff pushed up to the cloud.  I should probably just accept that people probably don't really care if the content is clever or not, just get info out.

So.. I'm happy to say that as I type this the fundraising number is almost $54,000!  Pretty exciting stuff.  If you or some of your like minded friends are available on Mar 24th, sign up for the Race To Anyplace.  $450 will get your team a bike for the 6 hours, $400 if you're up to doing it solo.  All the riders in the Chain Gang will be doing it solo, come out and watch us suffer!

Training is going well.  I continue to surprise myself in the improvements (sometimes not huge, but improvements none the less) that continue month to month and year to year.  Coach Tony has done a good job of laying out a very robust training plan for us.  The training is different from what I'm used to doing.  An 8 person team has a different dynamic than the types of riding and training that I've historically done in the past.  Over the last year or two I've been aspiring to longer and longer rides, RAAM is going to require three, one hour efforts every 24 hours.  Easy right?  Yeah, except that each of these hour efforts need to be pretty much max effort.  After each one you get three hours off, so you can afford to empty the tank or come close.  A bit different from what I'm used to but I am getting my head wrapped around it.

Had a chance to get in a good hard ride last Saturday with about half the Chain Gang.  I feel good about my performance but also realize that I need to continue to work and improve.

No promises, but I'll try to get better about keeping the info moving.