Well dang, so much for once a week. Oh well.

So the last couple weeks have been pretty uneventful. Last week was a big week on the bike, almost 18 hours in 6 days. It was a big boost to the fitness but I'm enjoying my few days of rest and easy riding this week before I get back after it towards the weekend.

I've been toiling over the job and biking situation the last couple weeks. The "problem" is that my absolute dream job (Flight for Life) has had a ton of openings for the mountain based helicopter. However, this would be a rough time to start a new job because the next 2-3 months are pretty crucial for me to get some good riding in so that I can (try to) be competitive in the big races that I want to do.

Is it stupid that I'm choosing sport over my career at this point in my life? I'm hoping not, because I think I'm going to stay where I'm at right now, which is really something of a dream job anyway, and let things play out for another year or so. If it isn't broke, don't fix it right?

The thing I'm worried about is being able to maintain a solid training schedule while working on the helicopter. It would be less hours per week, but spread over more days, so I would essentially lose a day a week to train. I would probably be able to ride the trainer, but there's still a lot up in the air on that. The other thought is that I'm still young, very young by Flights' standards so I feel like that job will be available to me for a long time, but I only have so much time to compete at a high level of cycling. So based on that logic (which may be flawed..) I'm going to keep things the way they are.

We'll see what happens. If the opening at flights comes up again 6 months or more from now, I'll apply for sure.

No, really...

Ok, for realz, I'll try and be better at this. "Better" might not be the best word, for that implies that I was already doing something.

Overall things have pretty much remained the same in the last several months, no huge earth shattering events. Everything is going pretty damn well all things considered and hopefully things consider as such.

I'm getting more and more excited for skiing this year, which has been a struggle the last couple seasons. I've decided that I'm generally only going to go if 1) good friends are going and they want me to come, or 2) if the snow is actually worth it. No more skiing just to say I went x amount of times this year - who cares.

Biking is coming along swimmingly as well, got my cat 1 license a couple months ago so I'm looking forward to that next year and going to some bigger races with the big kids. Our team has a few new bigger sponsors and we're actually finalizing a really solid roster of guys to throw D this year, it should be really good.

All is well on the "home front" as well I suppose. We had a feast of a pre-Thanksgiving/Lindsay's B-day party on saturday, and I think I'm still full from it 48 hours later but it was a blast.

That's all I have for now, but I PROMISE I'll get to this at least once a week for a while - not like I don't have time, right?

fresh beginnings

So after a 7 month hiatus from this blogging business, I think I'll give it another go. Nothing fancy, pretty much just like before... I'll try and be brief and only write when I have stuff to say, and I'll keep the ranting to a minimum. I figure, I have tons of time, why not use it once in a while for this...?

currently I'm sitting at chipotle in Boulder killing time befor Jenny gets done with work and can go get coffee with me. I just got done with a 3 hour TT bike ride, by far the longest I've been on that bike this season so far. 3 hours is really about as long as I can "comfortably" be on that bike due to my aggressive aero position, which due to the wind and me being sick the last week I have still yet to test out. I gained a pretty good grasp on how powerful I can be in that position doing a few hard intervals up one of the canyons north of town today - let's just say I'm happy with the results. I'll have to wait for a couple more hours until I can look at the power file but every time I looked at it during a hard effort, I was actually pushing more watts than on my regular bike! (that's good for a lot of reasons...). Time trialing is all about the fastest balance of power and aerodynamics and trade offs have to be made, but I think I've found a pretty good balance already.

It was such a nice day up here, temps in the upper 50's, no wind hardly, sunny... Lindsay is skiing at Vail today with friends and I was pretty torn. It would have been a great day for both. I probably should have just gone up from work this morning and met up with them for a couple hours... I need to ski more, and I think the way me schedule will work out this month will allow me at lest 1 or 2 days per week to get up, it's been like 3 weeks since I've gone now.

I got my training plan for next month last night from Eric and it's going to be a sweet, but busy, hard month. Instead of a normal 3 week training block I'll be doing 4, and I'm starting to do a lot of higher end threshold type work along with hard, long climbing days, I'm psyched. Hopefully the weather cooperates for at lest the long days; it sucks bad to do a hard 4-5 hours sitting inside on a trainer. Part of what I really enjoy about cycling is doing long hard rides in the mountains. I love suffering and pushing myself to the limit in beautiful places!

Sent wirelessly via a small black fruit.

We just barely made it back on tuesday and caught the swearing in JUST in time, it was way cool. It was pretty sweet watching the whole country come together at a common moment in time to watch that, most with such optimism... If only it can continue.

It was only a matter of time that I get sick, everyone I knew had it. I've been fighting it at work, at home, most all of my friends had something at some point over the last 3 months, ah well. I seem to have gotten off pretty easy compared to most, I only have a slight cough and really don't feel all that shitty, so, this being my rest week anyway, I've taken a couple days completely off any form of training. Who knew that I'd have such a hard time not doing an hour long easy spin on the trainer...

I'm sitting here in the county offices at the moment while my partner is in a meeting, which sucks because I can't get our laptop from the ambulance to connect to the internet, so here I am on the crackberry - which I have a not-so-secret love affair with. It's true what they say about these things, once you get one, you're not sure how you lived without it. Anyway, only like 20 more minutes until Obama is swarn in, this better be over in time for me to watch or I'm going to be peaved!

I ended up being almost 45 min late for work today because I either slept right thru my alarm or it just didn't go off - both of which are distinct but equally rare occuring possibilities. Either way, I HATE being late, this is maybe the 4th time in my 10 year working life that this has happened. Lameness.

This is my second day completely free of any training, which is good, I need it. Generally I'll build for 3 weeks or so, then have a "rest" week to chill and cut back on the volume of training so I can be ready to go hard for another 3 weeks. Last week in particular was a crusher with almost 13 hours of solid training just in the last 3 days alone. I'm getting more fit for sure as the weight drops and the power goes up, it's a 2 fold benefit. Next cycle will see an increase in intensity with some race pace training as the racing is already right around the corner.

Hopefully the wind continues to cooperate tomorrow because I plan on doing a time trial type test to test my position on my TT bike. Since I don't have money to go to a wind tunnel, I have to roll it poor man's style out in the streets. Haha, yea, I just said that.

Ah! Still not over! Looks like I'll have to catch the replays on you tube, F this.

Sent wirelessly via a small black fruit.

Damn today was a busy day at work. We didn't even see the station until 4pm this afternoon - which is also when I finally got to sit down and eat my lunch that I so painstakingly prepared last night, but it was worth it. I pretty much have baller spaghetti, rice, and chicken skills (no, not all in the same meal...).

Everyone I know is sick, again. I really, REALLY hope that if I have to get sick, it's not for another 5 days or so when my rest weeks starts. I know that in theory, being sick while trying to rest sort of defeats the purpose, but this is a really big week of training with a big block at the end that I really shouldn't miss out on. That and the weather is supposed to be amazing! So I've pretty much been pounding the emergen-c which has fended off many a bug all winter, let's hope it keeps up!

Training has been going really well. I've been losing weight and gaining power, which together exponentially increases my all important power to weight ratio. It's a good thing.

Alright, I'm off to bed. At the suggestion of some media loving teammates, I've started a twitter account - yea, I'm not super sure yet exactly what the finer points are either, but it's pretty much just a page of status updates, I'll try and hit that up once a day or so with a quick quip.

www.twitter.com/carrcac