Lucky Break

Yesterday, after wasting the morning making nodcast3 and surfing the web, I hurried out on the mountain bike to get in a quick ride as the snow began to fall. About a mile from the house, I headed down the trail that goes into the town forest. Less than a minute later, I cut across the trail to hop a small root (there you go heywood) and suddenly found out just how quickly you crash when your fork ends snap and the front wheel falls off. I heard the unmistakeable "twang" of breaking metal, and fell straight into the ground, taking the handlebars right up in the ribs under my left armpit. WTF? I picked up the bike, surveyed the situation, and realized what had just happened.

I picked up the dropouts, hung the front wheel onto what was left of the fork, and walked my new unicycle home. Along the way, the snow turned to sleet, and then to rain. As I trudged along, at first I thought to myself "this just ain't my day." About a quarter mile from the house, a samaratin came along in a pickup truck with North Carolina plates, and seeing my plight, offered me a ride. I told the guy no thanks, I may as well walk the rest of the way to get a bit of exercise.

When I got home, I dumped the broken bike up onto the storage rack, realized that I'd only ridden for about five minutes, and so I grabbed the cross bike and headed back out. Rolling down the street on the way to the cross field, I discovered my ribs, back, and shoulder were not feeling too good. When I tried to do some fast efforts around the field, my whole side hurt from breathing hard. Still though, glad to be out, I kept riding laps around the field in the rain. What the hell. Along the way I started thinking about how much worse this little incident could have been. I was only going around ten miles an hour when I "ate the root" and crashed onto the pine needles. My ribs took a hit, but other than that I was fine. Considering this was catastrophic failure of the front end of the bike, this could have been WAY worse. I shudder to think about the possibilities.

Truth be told, I should have seen this coming. Both dropouts do not snap simultaneously. It just wouldn't happen. About two weeks ago, I noticed my front brakes were always rubbing. I didn't think much of it, attributing the issue to stiction in the cables, which had always been cut too long, and weak return springs in the tired old V-brakes. In hindsight, obviously one dropout has been cracked for a while. I'm really glad the other one didn't decide to let go on some 40 mph banzai trip down Mountain Road, on some boneyard singletrack, or out on the road in traffic. Maybe this really was my day. Thanks for reading.

Nodcast 3 - Post number 200!

That's right folks, 200 posts on solobreak. Thanks for your inspiration. Here is yet another nodcast to commemorate the occasion. Still having audio problems with static from the cheap microphone, and having five computers running in the same room with fans blaring probably doesn't help. After this I think we'll go back to writing and keep the nodcasts to once a week or so to save the world's bandwidth. Hope you enjoy, please keep the comments flowing, and thanks for reading/watching.

Which way to Roswell?

I'm only kidding. In real life, Mandy is actually really hot. But now that I have your attention, if you're working this week, check out this post of on John Hirsch's blog. That's all for now.

nodcast2

The first nodcast was a partial success. Yesterday it got over 100 views, and that was after filtering out my work and home domains, as well as those of my closest associates. These are being created as avis with an obsolete codec, but google video is converting them to swf files, so they should play in any browser with a Flash/Shockwave plugin. I'm not sure why some of you are having trouble. You can also try going to the Google video player download and installing it, and then try accessing the file directly from google video at this link.

My training this week has not gone so great. Sunday we did our "long" run, but since I skipped my tempo run last week, the two were combined and we kept it to 9.6 miles while trying to maintain the target pace for a change. It ended up being 7:40 miles, and my average HR was 154, right in the middle of zone 4. This isn't too far off of the target pace set on my FIRST training plan, but at this point the target half-marathon pace of 6:57/mile that this plan derives from my 10K PR of 40:26 seems totally unrealistic.

Monday and Tuesday were workout free. Wednesday I headed to the high school track with six 800 meter repeats on tap. It was cold and windy, and I didn't even get close to my target of 2:57. I was only making it around in 3:12-3:15, and I cut it short after five efforts. I may have been closer to my goal pace than I thought at first, because my Timex GPS was actually sensitive enough to record the laps I did in the second lane as .53 miles, as opposed to the one effort I stayed on the inside, which came to .48 miles and was my quickest at 3:08. Funny how running a longer distance results in a slower time... This is a pretty crappy track and the inside lane is a little chewed up behind the football benches and in the turns, which is why I ran in the longer second lane.

This morning will be a tempo run. I've been off the bike this week, save for twenty minutes on the trainer last night. Since Blue Hills is closed to mountain bikes from Jan 1 to April 15, I might head over there tomorrow for the last legal blast of the season. Thanks for reading.

Test of the Emergency Nodcast System

Let me know if this plays and how it looks.

I feel good

James must have been a Milton fan, because he's got a Swingline, although it's not the red one.

Sorry about not delivering on the nodcast over Christmas. I was too busy with work, but now that suckfest is finally over. I made a test nodcast this morning, but it's 18 MB and so I have to do some testing from the client side, as well as check on my bandwidth quota to see if this POS is going to be viable. I'll try to come up with some real content later. I know it's a slow week on the blog scene. Most of you only post from work, and where I'm at 35% of the staff is out this week, so I guess that explains it. For the one or two of you who are starved for content, come back later for an extended boredom session. Thanks for reading.

Ho - liday Spirit

Why Yankee Swaps are not such a good idea...


Woo-hoo, the holidays! Truth be known, I'm one of the millions who suffer from a touch of holiday depression. I'm an extremely lucky person, but many of those close to me live very troubled lives and the holidays bring us together and I share their despair more than usual. Despair is something you may not understand. Most of us have known poverty in some form or another. Some people think that running out of their parent's money and living off Ramen noodles back when they were living in a college dorm means they know what it's like to be poor. Well, that sort of thing might teach you a little about poverty, but it teaches you nothing about despair. Temporary poverty is nothing, it just means doing without for a while. Despair is much different; despair is a loss of hope. At the holidays, it is very easy to give someone money, temporarily relieving their poverty, but it is much more difficult to give them hope and relieve them of despair. Those of you who can relate to this know what it really means to be one of the downtrodden. For the rest of you, I hope you can understand without ever experiencing it.

This year, I even have something extra to be depressed about -- I'm on call for 24 hours Christmas Day! Yeah baby. Maybe it won't be so bad. Do me a favor and stay safe this holiday. No emergency room patients = no emergency room software problems = peace on my little place on Earth on Christmas.

We're also wrapping up 2006 this week. The shortest day passed yesterday. While the Rockies are buried in powder, El Nino seems to be bringing the northeast more mild weather. I'm hoping it continues. This week we are deep in the off season. Here is my training tip: push your mind ahead six months from today. You're in the heart of the racing season (well, maybe, if you're a bike racer anyway. If not, you can still follow along). What will you be wishing that you did back in December? Maybe it is unsticking that seatpost, like RyanK. Going over that entire cross bike and lubing it up might be a good idea. You don't want to be like me last year the night before D2R2 with a chain that looks like a '52 Studebaker rusting in the field. There's training and preparation stuff you could be doing. Maybe you'll be suffering from back pain on long rides and you'll be wishing you'd done some weight work or yoga back during winter. Or maybe you'll be totally burned out on riding and wishing you'd taken some time off the bike. The possiblities are only limited by your situation. You will end up wherever you go, and your journey is already underway. Ok, I'll leave you alone now...

Keep smiling. If you need help, this week thesuperficial.com was especially hilarious, at least for me. Comment number 53 was one of my favorites. For everyone who is lucky enough to be away from the friggin' LCD this week, have a great holiday and I'll miss your blogging nonsense. Try not to make God kill too many kittens. Me, I'll be confined to quarters with my oncall, so stayed tuned for an extremely low-tech solobreak "nodcast" sure to put you to sleep. I've only got the world's crappiest webcam, so it will be a shitty windows only .avi, but it's not the quality of the gift, it's the thought that counts. Thanks for reading!

Another one just for Gewilli

As advocate for the downtrodden, I need to help a brother out in his time of need. (I wonder if he bakes bread? Then it would be his time of knead). Maybe I should have left up the "take it lightly and keep smiling" so he wouldn't forget.

Anyway, I can't believe you haven't commented on this one yet. I'm almost ashamed to admit that not only did I see Sabbath live, I remember the date, August 3rd, 1975, at the Providence Civic Center. We had seats in the nosebleed section (row T, for top), and Kiss was the warmup band, and that was the full pyrotechnics tour during which they recorded the Alive album. Needless to say, Ozzy and Sabbath were a little stiff and underwhelming after that. But somehow they've endured... Thanks for reading mofo!

My friend _______ was blogger of the month...

...at Pussyfelt Middle School. Is that the kind of positive reinforcement you need? How about "Solobreak Tests Positive for Happy Drugs!" Positively uplifting. Everyone gets an "A" for participation, as well as a star on their forehead. We can't do anything to hurt their fragile young egos or otherwise endanger their self-esteem. Even if they flunked Interpretive Sarcasm 101. Thanks for reading.

What evil old monster demons do on their lunch hour

Man I guess I'm old and out of touch. Amongst all the gloom and doom of off season blogs spreading their good word of depression, I had an idea for a post. I was going to do "GeWilli's Top Ten Training Songs." Or something like that. I was thinking of "No Woman, No Cry" and Tears for Fears and stuff like that. Of course, I can't think of ten off the top of my head, so I put "cry lyrics" into google. I get Mandy Moore and Faith Hill and James Blunt. Who are these people? The only two artists I knew in the first fifty hits were Guns n Roses and Johnny Cash, and both were songs that I'm not familiar with. I give up. Too out of touch. Too old. Thanks for reading.

This could be...

...one of my better entries, but then again, maybe not, as time is flying by this morning and I'd really like to get to work on time for a change. Let's try a little tempo blogging, shall we? The first theme for today is post-purchase product research. I've got a habit for buying things on impulse, then once the dollars are already spent, digging up some info and finding out more about what I should have bought, or more appropriately, trying to justify the uninformed purchase I made in order to feel good about it.

The first occurrence of this that I can recall was way back when I decided to start cycling. I'd ridden a lot as a twelve year old on my trusty LaPierre (that's right, the same LaPierre that supplied bikes to FDJ for the Tour last year). At age 23, gaining a bit of weight from gym workouts and deciding I needed an aerobic outlet, getting a bike was the logical choice. Without any research, I bought a $169 Motobecane Nomade. Why a Motobecane? Because my high school business teacher used to commute the twenty miles each way from Cambridge to Easton on one. Yes, that's right, even though my career in high school was the worst two years of my life, I took business class. After all, it was the voke. They taught us stuff like how to do our taxes, because we were supposed to be out in the real world fixing cars and plumbing toilets the day after graduation (a day that never came for me...). Speaking of which, if you like reading IRS forms, check this out, especially if you gave any money to the Tyler Hamilton Foundation. Maybe the CPA's in the audience can tell me I'm wrong, but it looks like this organization raised about $400,000 in the name of MS research, paid $85,000 to the director of the foundation (what fucking CEO makes 20% of the total take? How can I get this job?) and spent the rest on "event expenses" thus donating a grand sum of $0 to any actual MS cause. The fine print looks like they justify their existence by claiming to somehow promote the MS cause through their events and therefore provide some kind of boost to the legitimate MS fundraising efforts of others. Alrighty then...

Where were we? Oh yeah, so I bought my Motobecane, started riding, bought some cycling magazines, found out what a piece of shit it was, got a real bike the next year, started racing, and here we are. The buy now, research later pattern continued over the next few decades, with computers, cameras and other stuff like that. So what did I buy this time? Nothing. No purchase, but now that I've started run training, and been at it for a few weeks, I'm interested enough to start looking around and reading about it. This time I did do a little checking around before stepping up my program, and found the FIRST plan that I'm sort of following. This weekend I started looking around some more, and found several good articles on coolrunning.com, including one that chronicles a runner's preparation for a marathon using a three day per week training plan. Of course, with millions of runners out in the wild, this plan I found is nothing new and it and others like it have been discussed and debated by many in the running community. If I'd done more than ten minutes research I might have known this already.

The guy was a lot more experienced than I am, but his findings were still similar. Most notably, he says how the pace specified for the long runs is pretty damn fast, more of a long tempo run actually. So far, I have still not been able to hold it. This week we worked our way up to 11.2 miles in 1:30, an 8:08 average, same as last week. This is over 20 seconds/mile slower than my target. It's not so bad though, as we were doing much better until we encountered a monster hill that climbed over 300 feet in 3/4 mile. Yeah, that's right, a 10% grade. It sucked and that mile took 9:45. You can read all about it over on KL's blog. So, right now I'm thinking that the program's target half mary pace of 20 seconds/mile slower than my 10K best might be a bit too aggressive. There are several other training plans on coolrunning.com, and all of them show example runners with far higher weekly mileage than I've ever run going for target paces much slower than mine. With my lengthy cycling background, I'm a special case. Can you say that? Special. Sure you can. I've still got a few months.

OK, we're out of time. Congratulations to all the mofos who raced CX Nationals this weekend. That course must have been cool without the snow from last year. I'm sure it was a real power course, which means you had to be really fit, ideally peaking for this weekend in order to do well -- a good reason why I wasn't there. I did do a ride on Saturday, covering an astounding 20 miles in just 1:55 (WTF?), but that's a story for another morning. Thanks for reading.

Whoever said...

...that the only bad press was no press was not a member of Team BOB this week. good.fucking.grief...

Good luck to the Cronoman and my other mates who are brave enough to race in cross nats this weekend. I just checked my old training logs. I met Stevens twenty years ago this month at the old BRC cross training series. This weekend marks the sixth time the 'nats have visited New England since that time. This will be the first time I'm not attending, yet I've only raced it twice. Even that is a stretch, because in '95 I only last 3/4 lap before leaving the course injured. Last year I got lapped in the 45+ and only ended up completing four laps in the snow. Not much of a record.

After this it's all over. Don't let the end of the weekend travel be a let down. Regroup, rest, recover, reflect, and look forward. Thanks for reading.

The first sign on pain

Actually, those were not Joe's exact words, but basically his caution was to be careful of injury when running, and don't push it when trouble develops. Good advice. That's one of the great things about the three day per week plan. When something starts to tweak or twinge, you get an extra day to see how it feels. In fact, since even numbers-challenged geniuses like Gewilli can calculate that seven minus three equals four, we can see that on the three day per week plan, we get two consecutive "off" days each and every week. Very handy.

When I first started upping the mileage on my bike, all sorts of aches and pains reared their ugly heads. Ancients and Honorables like Il Bruce will recall the days of non-floating pedals, nail on cleats, and wooden soled Duegis. The cycling rags and training books of the day (this was pre-internet for everyone except a handful of geeks at Berkeley and MIT) had their sportsmed type advice for cyclists, and I diagnosed myself with every malady known to medicine, from chrondomalacia to tendinitis and much more. Well, maybe I left off "dislocated patella." Think Meg's picture was gross? Try throwing that one into a google image search.

Anyway, of course I was wrong. Other than a lifetime's worth of abused cartilage, I had no real problem other than too much mileage too soon. I survived to train another day. Fast forward twenty years, and here I am ramping up my running mileage. Same situation, new little aches and pains, stuff I never had while cycling. The extra day between runs is a great way to evaluate these issues. Of course you'll be sore when you train hard, but after a day or two it shouldn't be so bad.

The three day approach works great for cycling too, especially in the winter. The first "program" I ever got from one of my informal coaches was the one hard day, one long day, and one fast day per week program of mandatory workouts. Everything else was optional. This is very similar to the FIRST running program, and it works. The three day program allows you a lot of flexibility too. You can always make up a missed workout on the weekend. This only leave one freakin' day during the week that you must find time for a workout. Hell, even if you bag out on a day, you can still make up 66% of your planned training on the weekend. Anyone can follow this!

Yesterday, I snuck out for a late lunch about an hour before it got dark. Rather than try to do "speedwork" on the horse track, I decided to substitute hills. I ran over to Houghton's Pond and did the short, steep paved hill in the woods. Then I ran back down and crossed the road in front of the State Police stables. Hill number two was the gravel fireroad that leads over toward Big Blue. Originally I planned to turn around at the crest and go back, but halfway up I realized I had enough daylight to try the access road. Passing two whitetails, I forged on. The trail comes out on the access road about a quarter of the way up. Just as I came out to the road, a guy on a mountain bike slogged by. I started running up the climb behind him. He wasn't going too fast and I stayed about twenty feet back, close enough to see the "Saturn of Dayton" jersey poking out the bottom of his jacket. I think I've seen this guy at Wompatuck before.

Running up the hill was not as hard as I expected. At the switchback, the rider caught a glimpse of me and started picking it up to avoid the embarrassment of being passed by a runner. I kept going until I got to where the ski slope joins the road, then turned onto the grass and tried to run down. Later I'd find from my spiffy new Timex GPS Ironman that I'd covered .6 miles on the 10% grade at a 9:44 pace. Not too shabby. I'll have to try a top to bottom sometime to see how it compares to my bike times. I think I could run a mid eight. Running down the ski slope was much slower. This was a mistake. It sucked. I traversed and stutterstepped my way to the bottom, then took the perimeter trail that leads around the front of the hill back to work. This was OK at first, but then it turns into a rocky hiking trail and I had to walk a few sections. I made it back to work 48 minutes after leaving, and the GPS said I covered 5.45 miles. So that is good to know; I can run Blue Hill on my lunch hour.

Today is telecommuting day, and it wasn't raining this morning, so I went over to Borderland on my MTB. I was tired so I rode pretty slow. Once again I tried the "new" Bob's trail, which is nice twisty single track, should be "cleanable" but so far not for me. There is a long, narrow, plank bridge that I keep wigging on. There are also a few stonewalls that I can clean in one direction, but not the other. All in all though, this is a cool little trail and lots of fun. Today I also saw two whitetailed does, but this time I didn't just see them, I got close enough to smell them, a first for me. Huh-huh, I finally sniffed some white tail. I was rolling along quietly and I guess they didn't know I was coming because they practically ran right into me, not leaving the trail until I was about fifteen feet from them.

That made for a great morning and an easy hour on the bike before sitting down to work. My right knee had been a touch sore, probably from bouncing down the ski slope, but the ride did me well and all is good right now. See how nicely that worked out? Thanks for reading.

Not a runner

I probably never will be either. I'm just someone who runs. Using the FIRST training program has identified my main weakness as a lack of running endurance. The training paces in this program are calculated from your best times in a 5K and/or a 10K. The half-marathon training plan calls for a planned half-marathon pace (PHMP) of your 10K race pace plus twenty seconds per mile. For me this comes out to just under 7 minutes/mile, based on my last two 10K race finishes at 40:26 and 40:27. The program then specifies you add 20-30 seconds/mile to your PHMP for most of your weekly "long" runs. At this stage of the program, this would have me running 9-10 miles at a pace of 7:30 or better. Herein lies the problem.

Sunday's 9.7 mile run was the longest I've ever done in my life. In fact, until three weeks ago, I'd only run more than eight miles or so in a session just a couple of times, ever. I'm thinking whoever wrote these programs kind of assumed anyone running decent 10K times probably had a few more running miles in their legs than I do. Because my cardiovascular performance and endurance has been trained by years of bike racing, that part is easy for me, and I can suck up the leg pain for a short race and put in an OK time. My running legs just don't have the muscualar endurance to keep it up for an hour and a half, not yet anyway.

The good news is that endurance is the easiest thing to train, at least in cycling. If you can put the time in without getting injured, your endurance will improve. Endurance is very trainable. Almost anybody can complete a 100 mile bike ride, even people who are very young, very old, very fat, or whatever. Very few people can ride a 53 minute 40K, ride a 1:16 kilo or a 5:00 4000m pursuit, or run a 29 minute 5 miler. Not everyone will be able to do these things, no matter how hard they train. Getting fast is a lot tougher than building endurance. Hopefully, the same holds true for running. I may not get much faster, but I think so long as I can avoid injury, building endurance should be pretty simple.

Therefore, my job over the next few months shouldn't be too hard. So long as we don't have persistent snow cover, I should be able to get the weekly long runs prescribed by the FIRST program and improve my running endurance. So far so good. My recovery is improving. Yesterday's 9.7 miles on the trails took me 1:19, an 8:08 pace. Twenty to thirty seconds/mile slower than my target, but this was in the woods, so I don't think that was too bad. My tempo runs and speedwork sessions have been pretty much on target with what the program specifies. I'm taking advice from this article on the MAPP pages and mixing in hill runs in place of track sessions some of the time.

What's this have to do with not "being a runner?" The three day per week approach. Pure runners train five to seven days a week, sometimes more than once a day. I'm not sure why. I guess that when you're an athlete it's natural to get obsessed and keep training. But I'm really worried about getting injured. This is one of the reasons I've never taken running this seriously before. I have always viewed running as a casual winter pursuit to keep a few pounds off. Both of my knees have already had cartilage removed, and so I'd like to keep what I have left. I think the three day a week program with cross training on the alternate days is the key. The long run is really the only place where I'm stepping it up. Credit the blogs of the multi-sporters for my inspiration. A lot of these people put in very respectable running times, and from what I see avoid injury despite training schedules that border on being excessive. I think running requires too much recovery to be undertaken every day, at least for me. Mixing it up works, and I can afford to take a hit on my cycling performance this time of year because I am not competing.

Not everyone has the physical durability to withstand the training the elite athletes perform. Regardless of what your sport is, train smart. This means different things to different athletes. You can judge what it means to you. Keep those training blogs coming. Thanks for reading.

Off Season

Not much to report. Still waiting for the official press release and announcement of our new Team BOB sponsorship. The proofs of the new kit came the other day, and it looks like I might need to buy some green shoe covers in order to avoid a major fashion faux pas, as the kit clashes with my red/blue Rocket 7's. There was also a bit in the local news about the Montreal-Boston stage race this summer, but I am still not sure if this event is going to be big like Georgia or California, or something smaller. I guess I could find out, but I'm lazy. Anyone know?

We are in the darkest period of the year. The United States Navy has a cool little web tool which can generate sunrise and twilight tables for any location. Everyone knows that December 21 is the shortest daylight, but did you know the earliest sunset is already upon us? At least it is here in Boston. In another week, all of you who train in the afternoon will start to pick up a minute or two of daylight each day. You'll have already gained nine minutes by the time the latest sunrise rolls around at the beginning of January, and the daylight finally starts to lengthen at both ends. So while meteorological winter is just beginning, astrological winter is already almost at the turnaround cone (that's a TT reference Zoo). See, I am not only kind and nurturing, I brighten your day like a ray of winter sunshine.

Gotta run now. Tempo session on tap, but I'm keeping it shortish, as Guinness was on tap last night with Pilldog, Super Sammy, and the indomitable Paullywog. Thanks for reading.

Well I'll be damned

After only posting my one line Batten Kill note because I felt guilty about having nothing at all, boy was I surprised to finally get some more comments. I can't figure you fuckers out... Not much to report today either. I bought some new technology (don't get too excited, because while I might have Boulder taste, I've got a Brockton budget. I'll do a write up after I get a chance to work with this stuff a bit.

Too fucking cold out there for me. Gewilli, Feltslave, and Zoo can say what they will about how much they love riding in this shit, but it's not for me. Not anymore. The wisdom that has come with the years has taught me to plan my off season, and save my fortitude for the early spring when I'm really going to need it. There are enough JNC's (that's January National Champions Zoo) already, you don't need me. I'm savoring the time away from the bike confident that I'll ramp up and build to a higher peak than all you "dedicated" young fools, and once again be stomping your sorry asses next summer. Thanks for reading.

130 days

Until the 2007 Battenkill-Roubaix.

Yet another boring training report

Today we're back to the mundane; you can't please all of the people all of the time. The November wrap up got overlooked, but there wasn't too much there, 15 hours or so on two wheels, bringing the annual up to 344, and another five or six running, which makes this year's total so far up to roughly double 2005's 25 hours. I'm taking a break from the bike right now, and did not touch one this weekend.

Saturday morning I headed over to the Hurtin for Certain Striders running club's H0-HO-HO 5K in nearby Norwood. I didn't see any hoes, but my man Pilldog, a Norwood resident, made a cameo appearance, his first race since his glory days on the track team back at Grosse Point High School in Michigan. There was a smallish field of 135 runners who took on the out and back course run over residential streets with a few shallow grades. I warmed up for about ten minutes, and when the gun went off I again made the rookie mistake of going out too hard. I probably used to be better off when I didn't warm up, because that caused me to pace myself. I stayed just behind the running club, real runner types, but I felt like I was suffering early on. My HR was only 166, so I stuck to my pace, but really it just hadn't had time to come up yet.

When I heard the first mile split of 5:43, my fears were confirmed, because there was no way I could hang on. I stayed with one guy for the entire race, but a half dozen others came past at various places. Even though my average HR from the one mile mark onward was a near-my-max 173, my time slipped to 6:10 for mile two, then 6:33 for mile 3. That last tenth must have been a real disaster (either that or long) because it took me 52 seconds (8:40 pace) for an official finish time of 19:21. I didn't leave much out there thought. The Pilldog trudged in about seven minutes later, after a 6:42 first mile left the untrained youngster in his own purgatory. He'll be back though!

Sunday KL and I ran from home over to Borderland for a big loop on the main trail. Coming back through the town forest brought the total to 9.3 miles in 1:19, for a pace of 8:32/mile. I was hurting, but this was the longest run I've ever done, and after Saturday's effort I think it went OK.

Wet, messy snow falling out there today, but hopefully that will all melt away quickly. I'll still be pretty light on the bike training the next week or so, but after that I'd like clear trails for some weekend MTB rides and other casual stuff to supplement the trainer and running. So that is that. Thanks for reading.

Stolen Photo

Fun loving cyclists with an actual sense of humor.

The women of Ocean State Job Lot

But first, a word from our sponsors:

Wiktionary

joke (plural jokes)

1. an amusing story
2. something said or done for amusement


drama queen

1. (idiomatic) an exaggeratedly dramatic person (not always a woman)


Urban Dictionary

1. Curt Schilling
49 up, 39 down

Loudmouth pitcher whose only half as good as people think he is. Cried during lose to New York Yankees, because of his delusional obsession of NY Yankees and its fans. Got shelled in game 1 of ALCS vs NY Yankees. Many Red Sox dismiss this fact and hand the honors to Schilling, when in fact it was Lowe who beat the Yankees.

Continues to talk shit to this day. Is a right winger and a religious nut.


2. Curt Schilling
27 up, 23 down

Media whore who doesn't realize that no one cares about what he has to say. Drama queen who pitches with a "bloody" sock so he can be the Red Sox savior.

Shut the fuck up, Curt Schilling.

3. Curt Schilling
28 up, 26 down

Pussy
Suffering from ADD

Curt Schilling licks butt cracks.

---

So last night I stumbled into Ocean State Job Lot. Not just any OSJL, but the Brockton location. Holy fucking shit. This place makes Building 19 look like Rodeo Drive. There is a calendar in the making here for sure (yes, I stole that from Paul and Al). I did manage to score a 30 box of trash bags for $2.39, a cheese slicer for $1.99, and two pair of reader glasses for $2 each. WTF solo? Give solobreak a break, ok? Thanks for reading.

King Biscuit Shower Hour

After the lashing we got on the lameness of blog entries that are nothing more than links to others, I was a bit ashamed to post a "Friday Links" entry today. Not as wigged out as Gewilli gets when showering with men, but just a little scared. But the G-man has handled that for us with today's post, so now I feel better. By the way Ge, showers ARE required at all UCI races, read the flyers. A few races seem to have squeaked by this reg, but at Noho, for instance, the availability was made quite clear, although they were not immediately adjacent to the venue. So should you get the urge to "rub asses" with Zoo and Treboner, you can knock yourself out at the RI races.

So here is my link:

Yet another cycling blogger with a sense of humor.

And even though I've probably posted this one before, expanding on Burt's post, we have the ghetto wines link.
Thanks for reading!