When will the cold end?!

Today my Dad and I were planning on meeting Shawn and others up at the Brecksville Reservation to get in a long ride. When we were at the breakfast table this morning, we looked outside and it was snowing pretty hard. After about 30 minutes to an hour, it was still snowing! So we decided to stay home and ride the local nursery roads. We put on all 5 layers of clothes, including some toe and hand warmers and took off for our ride. My Dad rode his cyclocross bike and I rode my Dad's mountain bike because my cyclocross bike is currently my training machine. Though the ride was very cold and windy, the sun poked out a little while, which was great. We finished our ride in 1 hr 45 min and we ran afterwards too, which put us over the 2 hour mark. Great day and tomorrow we are planning on taking the TT bikes out and riding our 40k course and jumping off the bike again and running either a 5k or 4 miles. Weather depending that is. If the weather doesn't want to cooperate we will just have to be forced to ride the trainers once again. Also, I got a new pair of crankbrother's candies in exchange for my broken eggbeaters today. I have a feeling the springs won't break on these babies!

Out.

What's wrong with this picture?

I think the person who painted these markers, don't really like folks on bikes..........

Rock and Roll your ankle.

When I woke up this morning, I looked outside and couldn't even see the tree that was 20 feet away from my bedroom window. It was snowing so hard this morning and we were planning on doing a trail run for an hour plus. We ended up braving the weather and picked up my cousin Scott. We rolled up to Girdled Road Reservation and started our run. During the run, I had to roll my ankles 10 times. I was getting so frustrated because it was so hard to see what was on the ground because the snow covered the trails. My Dad had himself a really good fall also. He slipped in a little ditch on the side of one of the trails and launched himself foward, because he couldn't catch his balance. He launched himself forward and landed right on his back and slid like 10 feet down the trail. That was awesome and it was a perfect fall. Scott was the only one that didn't fall.

We ended up running for 1hr 32 min. The great thing was about half-way through the run, the snow stopped and it was sunny for quit a while. Great run today and now I'm going to sit on butt for the rest of the day and watch the TOC and the Cavs.

C ya!

More Snow....

The past couple of days, I should say the last week has been great. The sun was out, it was fairly warm; which led to riding outside. Today when I came home from school, I rode the trainer for the first time in a week or so. It sucked. It was snowing so hard today and the wind just made it worse. I'm really sick of the snow and just those couple of days of nice weather made me want to actually take out my racing bike out for rides! That's how nice some days were. It doesn't look like I will be getting outside to ride for another couple of days now. So far training wise, I feel great. Since Chippewa Creek is on this year, I have been climbing a lot on my rides and doing some climbing intervals on the trainer. But really nothing too exciting going on this week. Just looking forward to this weekend to get in some more good training.

Later

Sunday.

Today Dad and I met up with Matt Weeks and Scott Carter at Squire's Castle to do a training ride. When Dad and I got there, it was snowing pretty hard and we were actually thinking that no one would show. Then a couple of minutes later, Matt and Scott rolled up. When we started riding, it was cold and snowing pretty good. As the ride went on, the sun came out and it quit snowing. We rode for about 36 miles and did mucho amount of climbing. It was a great ride and I'm really happy that we are able to get out and ride today. Tomorrow is looking like it is going to be a nice day so Dad, my cousin Scott, and I are most likely going for another ride and jumping off the bikes and running for about 2 or 3 miles. My Dad and I were talking today saying, only two more months until RATL. Also, Chippewa Creek is on this year too!! So the hills are calling our names.

I'm out.

Chemistry.

Man chemistry at Lakeland has been impossibly difficult. We have been talking about conversions and conversion factors for the last week or two. This has been the hardest thing for me to ever learn. I have a quiz on Monday on conversion factors and conversions and a good grade isn't really looking good for me. I do really good in the labs but not the lectures. I just like to do more hands on projects and mixing different chemicals together to find different kinds of chemicals or compounds. Sitting in class and copying notes from the chalkboard into my notebook isn't really my style in that class. So for the rest of the week and this weekend I am going to be sitting a lot in front of my little desk in my room and studying my chemistry. It is really hard for me to get what my professor is talking about. I went from high school Biology last year to College Chemistry this year. That is a really big jump in one year for me. I was talking to my professor I had last semester and he said that I will do fine on my quiz and I will do fine in this Chemistry course. So that gets me more motivated to study even harder.

Training wise, I took a day off today. Tomorrow I'm going to ride when I get home from school and same with Friday. Saturday, Dad and I are going to meet up with Shawn at the Brecksville Reservation to get in a good and long Tempo ride.

Later days.

It's about time.

Today was the third day in a row that I was able to ride outside. I rode on Saturday, riding for about 35 miles. Sunday Dad, Robert, Rudy, Matt, Mike, Todd, and I all met up at the Brecksville Reservation and got in a 32 mile ride. Then today, Dad, my cuz Scott, and I rode for almost 2.5 hrs. riding around 42 miles. We rode a lot of hills today and this is Scott's true first year riding his bike. I tell you what, if Dad, Scott and I ride together more often, Scott is going to be rockin out this Triathlon season. He is a great runner, he is swimming 2-3 days a week and he is riding awesome! Awesome job to Scott today. He was with us on all the climbs and did some great pulling. I can't ride tomorrow because in our ride today, my right pedal broke for a SECOND TIME!!! I was so mad! I was calling that pedal every name in the book. It was a good thing that it broke with only a few more miles to go in the ride. I have those Crankbrothers Eggbeaters on my bike, since it is my cyclocross bike and this is the second time my pedal broke. The first time was the day before the first BA cyclocross race at Whiskey Island. I replaced them that same day with another pair then raced with the new pair the next day. Now today the pair that I received during cyclocross season broke and now I will have to go purchase another pair or I'll have them replace the broken pedal with a new pair again.

But other than my pedal breaking, it was a great day and I don't know, I might go for a run tomorrow. I would like to go out on the bike for a bit but yeah........

Wet and Windy.

Today my Dad and I took off for a ride around 9:00. We are finally riding outside!!! It's about time! My Dad rode yesterday with my cousin Scott for about 1hr and a half and they said the roads were wet, but not too bad. Today's ride was the wet one. Since the temperature here at my place is like 55 degrees, all the snow is melting and the roads are like flooded. There is so much water on the roads which meant a lot of clean up afterwards. It's funny too, the one day when it is nice and warm, and perfect to ride outside, the winds were 25-30 mph. The gusts were around 35-40 mph!! We ended up finishing with 32.5 miles in just under 2 hrs. We got in some good climbing and some good fast pace work, since we had a tail wind. Average watts:159. Tomorrow Dad and I are heading to Brecksville to meet up with Rudy and Robert, and maybe some other folks to get in a good group ride.

I'm outie.

One day at Westlake.

This picture was taken by my Dad right after the race at Westlake. I love this picture because no one is making a good face, except Rudy and Austin. Check out Matt....... I can't stop laughing. Funny pic Dad. I don't think me or Mike had a good race. Can you tell??

Finally

Finally there is good weather coming our way. I think it the weather folks are saying that it is going to be in the 40's this weekend and sunny. So you know what we are going to be doing this weekend. Last month, I might have ridden outside once or twice. That was just a horrible month, horrible for everyone. I really hope that this month is going to have some days that we can ride outside because the trainer is killing me. So I'm excited for this weekend because I'll finally get some good riding outside.

I really want legs like this lady. I wonder what kind of bike she's got back there?

Georges St.-Pierre

I wasn't able to watch the fights last night because I don't think we can purchase pay per view. But I checked UFC.com this morining and saw that GSP stopped B.J. Penn in the fourth round. Penn was talking so much crap about St-Pierre before their fight, saying that it was going to be a quick fight and St-Pierre was a quiter. Now that St-Pierre beat him, B.J. Penn just made himself sound very unproffessional after saying all that. But, if you want to read the story here is the site.http://www.ufc.com/index.cfm?fa=news.detail&gid=17593

GSP! GSP!