The Family Blog

Yesterday one of the Dynamic Trio asked what it would take for them to get a link from here. It's pretty simple really. Staying commercial free helps. Not that I'm anti commerce, and even though the underpinnings of blogging rely heavily on free and open software, I try not to get all righteous about it. The real reason to keep the marketing off your blog is that we are the real new media; blogging is a revolution that takes publishing out of the hands of the powerful and wealthy few and puts it into the capable and free thinking minds of the many. Stay free. When you start thinking like them, you become them. Don't do it.

I'm not that pure though, this is not religion to me, so if I find your content entertaining enough, I might let the occasional commercial blip slide. Of course, you still have to keep up the content, or your link will get pulled (huh-huh, he's pulling his link again).

Somehow this week I managed to incur The wrath of Meg. Evidently the Material Girl thought it was ok when I bashed her beloved Mid-Atlantic to smithereens, and she let that one go without comment. Like any blogging know it all though, any suggestion of missing a trick and the psycho-meter gets pinned in the red. It's OK Meg, missing the alleged humor is no big deal. Not everyone can be as cerebral as C Todd. I don't get "content" where everyone in the video is pushing 40 but still pretending to be an out of work messenger/wannabepro, standing around a cross race heating up falafel on a propane stove while combing their goatees and listening to Ministry, but maybe that's just me. Rock on Girl Wonder!

Training has been decent. Review of the past ten weeks revealed I was wrong about running only twice a week more often than not. Truth be told I've donned the sneaks 27 times in the past ten weeks. Saturday I went out in the cold on my cross bike, but the chill was worse than expected so I headed for the town forest to escape the biting winds (really, they bit). At first I was just going to head through to Borderland, but I decided to check out a few side trails. I know I've investigated these before and they went nowhere, you know the type, looks promising at the junction but quickly turn to grown over or terminate at some old campfire spot with a pile of broken bottles. Well, one of the trails looked much better than ever before, and in fact I was exploring this one the day my fork broke. It tried it again and found it was neat and rideable and went all the way out to the high school. I think the XC team has cleared some of it out over the past months.

Inspired by this success, I tried another trailhead a ways up. This one I knew would be grown over. However, since it's the dead of winter, the underbrush is totally bare anyway, and any muck is frozen as well. This trail turned out to be super fun. No rocks, just smooth, twisty frozen dirt. Some of it was pretty grown in and tight, and "rode through the bushes where a rabbit wouldn't go" popped into my head and stayed there (Wompatuck leadout for the first one to name the song/artist where that comes from). This trail was also not too long (the town forest is tiny) but it went in a big circle, no dead end, and formed a loop when it came back out into "the pines." Locals like Rightcoast will know what I'm talking about. So now I have a few new trails, and I stayed out of the wind for an hour and a half, bonus.

Sunday I was up at the KL north for the run you have already read about on her blog. Yeah, I got spanked, losing 8 minutes over the distance, which we think was closer to 13 miles than 12. I suffered most of the way, but in the end my pace was somewhere around 7:45/mile, and this makes ten Sundays in a row where I've completed a "long" run. Yesterday was more trainer time, both morning and evening sessions, and today I got out to run again, doing some hill repeats. It is supposed to snow tonight, so I figured it was best to get out there today. Massage tonight, and more trainer tomorrow, starting to ride a bit harder. Keeping my rpms up higher than Gewilli though...

The 3Bicoastals have got there link. You may have noticed I keep it clean around here though. This is a family blog. Hopefully we won't be finding any of Heywood's homoerotic fantasies in the comments. I have enough trouble sleeping without having to think of some dude in Auburn CA sitting in a puddle of hand lotion with a spindle up his butt watching the nodcasts over and over. Thanks for reading mofos!