Toy Cars and Mountain Bikes

Moving my blog, you'll get the memo on the new location.

That is all. 

What a lazy weekend - Went for a little MTB ride at Rockville (legs were toast from the training I did all week), came home and sat on my ass the rest of the weekend.  Grilled up a couple ribeyes on Saturday night, paired them up with a nice Cab and a backed potato.  Very yummy.

Spent yesterday hangin at the inlaws house, helped them put up a bookshelf and fixed their TiVo.  Mominlaw made us a healthy meal and then off to home it was.  Slept well for the first time in a week last night, that was good.

Busy week at work, they've announced my move, so now I'm working with both groups for the time being, hopefully it'll settle down around April 1st or so.

In other interesting news, I received an invite to the 2008 IFMAR Buggy World Championships, held in September in Charlotte, NC.  This is pretty much the biggest event in the RC hobby, for offroad buggy racing, so I'm pretty stoked to get in!

It's been a long time since I've  taken any physical training seriously, probably back to the cross-country running days.  One of the workouts that I absolutely HATED were speed work days.  Lots of hard, fast running with little recovery in the middle.  Maybe it was a lack of maturity, but at the time, I just didn't get it and didn't enjoy it.  Now that I'm pseudo-training to race my MTB, I knew I needed to add speed work back in, so today I started with a 52 minute intervals/speed run workout.  I am totally exhausted, but at the same time, I feel great about how hard I worked and I actually enjoyed it.  Weird, I know!  Anywhere, he's the workout, with accompanying playlist:

1.    (3:54) Warmup
a.    The Struggle Within, Metallica

2.    (4:43) Getting up to speed, resistance to match cadence and music. 80 RPM
a.    Kickstart My Heart, Motley Crue

3.    (6:54) Intervals, two songs.  Increase pace to 100 RPM, then sprint during chorus for each of the songs.
a.    Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting, Nickleback
b.    Rock is Dead, Marilyn Manson

Recovery/Water

4.    (4:18) Maintain medium cadence (80 RPM) with low resistance, get the heart rate down a bit. 
a.    Bark at the Moon, Ozzy Osbourne

Recovery/Water

5.    (7:54) Sustained high cadence, over 100 RPM.  Resistance at your preference, maintaining high cadence is important – Don’t cheat yourself, work HARD here.  Seated for the first 5 mins, standing for two minutes then take the last minute or so as recovery.
a.    Electric Blue, Astral Projection

Recovery/Water

6.    (9:08) Intervals, two songs.  Pyramid Intervals, 1minute recovery, 10 second sprint, 1 minute recovery, 15 second sprint, 1 minute recovery, 20 second sprint, 1 minute recovery, 30 second sprint, then back down to 10 second sprint
a.    Hot For Teacher, Motley Crue
b.    Reload, Rob Zombie

Recovery/Water

7.    (4:10) Maintain medium/high cadence (100 RPM) with low resistance, get the heart rate down
a.    Eat The Rich, Aerosmith

Recovery/Water

8.    (7:45) Intervals.  45 second sprint, 1 minute recovery x 4.  Crank up the resistance during the intervals to really work hard
a.    The Hand That Feeds (Photek Straight Remix), Nine Inch Nails

Recovery/Water

9.    Cool down
a.    Rock and Roll, Led Zeppelin


Total Time, 52.3 Minutes

Ok, since I need to be working out more than just two spin classes a week, I've added one day a week of my own spin type workout.  I'm going to try and post the playlist and routine every week, we'll see how long that lasts...

Here is this week's workout (did it yesterday, very good one!)

1.  (4:12) Warmup
Music:  Hip Hop Police, Chamillionaire featuring Slick Rick

2. (9:05) Climb, medium resistance, medium cadence (80 rpm).  Start standing, then switch to seated while maintaining cadence.  Move in and out of the saddle as desired.  Increase resistance while maintaining cadence
Music:  The Nobodies (Burn 69 Mix) (German Mix), Marilyn Manson; Toxic, Britney Spears

Recovery/Water

4. (8:31) Climb, heavy resistance, low cadence (60 RPM).  Vary seated and unseated to maintain cadence.  Pile on resistance as desired to work on climbing strength
Music:  Jump Around, House of Pain; Without Me, Eminem

Recovery/Water

5.  (8:30) Speed work, light to medium resistance, high cadence (100 RPM)
Music:  Madonna, Hung Up; American Idiot, Green Day

6.  (3:39) Short Intervals, medium resistance, varied cadence.  Start by maintaining cadence from 5 (100 RPM) and then sprint during chorus of the song.
Music:  The Beautiful People, Marilyn Manson

Recovery/Water

7.  (8:41) Climb.  Two songs, increase resistance at each song.  Seated or out of the saddle or varied, whatever works for you.  Match cadence to the song:
Music:  What I've Done, Linkin Park; Stronger, Kanye West

Recovery/Water

8.  (4:21) Sprint to the finish. 100+ RPM Cadence, light resistance.
Music:  Son of Detroit, Kid Rock

9.  (3:25) Cool Down
Music: Numb/Encore, Linkin Park/Jay-Z

Total Time, 50.3 mins.

Alright - So I swore I wouldn't do it, made insinuations at the sexuality of those that do, but damnit if I can't keep myself from going MTB racing.

So a little about me - On October 21st, 2007, I weighed in at 215lbs. I'm 6'1" and currently weighing in at 193 lbs after about 3 months of focusing on weight loss. I made the choice to use MTB'ing as my exercise regimen to lose weight and that really was my only goal. I wasn't counting on having as much fun as I'm having on my bike...

I've been riding once or twice a week since early October and doing spin classes 2-3 days a week since late October. My riding has steadily improved over the last 4 months or so and I find myself looking to target my training and workouts as well as use racing as a motivation to get better/faster/stronger. I harbor no delusions of grandeur, given my size and relatively new training regimen.

I have in the past been a relatively fast middle distance runner and understand the training methodology for running - Pile on mileage early and sprinkle in speed work at an increasing frequency as you get closer to a race, and taper training the week before a race. What I don't know if this applies to cycling as well, so I'm looking for a little advice there.

My ultimate goal here is to A) be able to have a training goal to shoot for (races) and B) to have fun doing it. I figure with more targeted training, I'm going to get healthier and lose weight even faster than before. I've already found that I am more motivated to work out harder and with more purpose now that I've made the decision to race, so even before my first race, I have some early benefit.

In other news, last weekend's RC racing was a disaster - I lead the B for a while, then broke out of a bump up spot with something I should have fixed months ago.  Disappointing for sure.  I'm starting to get my mojo back with RC, the B main, even with some poor decisions by me, went pretty well - I just need to get my head screwed on right and remember how to go faster.

It's been raining for like 4 days straight here, I'm starting to get irritated with that mess. 

Had a fun short ride last weekend at JMP, bike is working really well and my riding is doing ok.  I still need a little more leg strength and obviously I need way more cardio.  I had ordered a new frameset/shock, but the dealer ended up being out of it (it was a closeout 07 model bike), so I'm going to keep riding the Stumpy - It's a great bike and I'm having a great time riding it!

This weekend, it's back to the RC track to run round 4 of the Delta winter series, I made the A last time out, hoping to get in on qualifying instead of having to bump this weekend.  Buggy setup is pretty dialed, so it should be a good time.  New layout, I'm hoping that we'll all have equal tracktime and I can get up to speed on the track faster than usual...

Home today with JT, was up sick most of the night.  Hopefully he'll get some sleep soon, so I can do the same!

I took a bunch of time off work for the Christmas break and frankly, had little desire to blog, hence the delay...

So, 2007 was an interesting year - JT turned 1, Jen and I celebrated 6 years of wedded bliss (pshaw!), Jackson started Kindergarten and a whole lot of other things happened.  Overall, it was a great year.

Over the holidays, I did quite a bit - Rode my bike some, including a pretty grueling (for me) climb up Morgan Territory, which proved to me that all I've got to do is keep pedaling.  We spent a few days up at the Cabin, the boys played in the snow, Tom and I drank, we went skiing, it was a blast!  Came home to some honeydo work, but nothing that I couldn't handle!

2008 is shaping up pretty interesting - As of today, I've lost 20 lbs (I celebrated by having McDonalds for breakfast, LOL!) since October 22nd and having loads of fun both on and off the bike with MTB stuff.  My winter RC racing season started off pretty shitty, when I couldn't make the A main at a local club race.  Round 3 (skipped round 2) was better, but I still had to bump to make the A.  I find my interest in RC waning quite a bit and I can't figure out if I'm bored with it, or if MTB being the new, fun thing on the block has me focused elsewhere.

In addition to all this fun stuff, I'm making a pretty significant move at work - For the last 8 years or so, I've been involved in Client Infrastructure type work, servers, project management of servers, etc...  Starting April 1st (ha ha), I will be moving over to the Networking and Datacom side of the house as a Sr. Network Engineer/Project Manager.  Way out of my comfort zone, as it's been at least 9 years since I've touched much in the way of network equipment.  This is a move that long term will be huge for my resume and career, as it builds an even larger base of skills and areas of expertise.  I'm looking forward to, yet scared, of the challenge!

Now that they don't have anything to play for (except pride, blahblahblahblah), the Niners finally get their shit together and start playing better - Sure, the last couple weeks have been easier, since they played Cincy (shit D) and Tampa Bay (only played their starters for one half), but still...

I don't think that the easy answer that most are taking, that the 3rd string QB was the answer, but it has been nice to see a QB who can make reads and check down to the hot receiver when he gets in trouble...

Yesterday's game was fun, Jackson went with me, and since the stadium was barely half full, we moved down low and had great seats.  Pics later, after I pull them off Jen's camera.

http://perezhilton.com/?p=10768

It's official, the Spears parents are complete fucking morons.  I thought maybe Britney was just stupid on her own, but two idiots makes it a family problem...

Thank god I have two boys!