2010-2011

Since my writing has been uninspired lately, I've resisted trying to post unless I had a photo or two to share. Almost five years ago I started this thing as a place to write, and I used to put a fair amount of effort into creating daily essays with decent form, structure, and themes. Over time I've allowed that to slip, more often than not just shooting from the hip with a hurried piece, or falling back into a diaryesque note, with or without photographic support. Through it all readership has remained steady (near as I bother to estimate), but I'm not sure if held up recently. It's no secret that daily blogs have lost participants due to the popularity of Facebook (a crowded road I've chosen not to ride on) and Twitter. Maybe the former is an easier way for people to share hastily posted photos and daily musings, but for more journalistic content I hope blogs don't die. The real power of blogs is EVERYONE has the opportunity to be their own publisher, to share their voice with others. This is a really big deal. For sure the sheer volume of stuff out their diminishes the impact of each voice (compared to when each major city had one or two news outlets, and cycling had one monthly gazette), but if you've really got something to say, people will find you and take interest. Publishing for the masses.

Microblogging (since I'm not a Facebooker, I'm talking about Twitter here) has a different sort of potential to spread timely information quickly. Here in the New England cycling world though, the circle I'm in uses it more like a big unruly group ride, sort of an unmoderated chatroom. Not particularly useful, but fun most of the time, and very difficult to ignore once you get sucked in. The fact that about half my blogroll participates doesn't help. So while it fills the void left by the lack of blogging somewhat, as Dougie laments in a recent post, you don't find any "stories" there.

I wish I had a good story for you today, but unfortunately this one is just a diary entry. Having never done any recap of the 2010 season, beginning there makes sense. This was a good year for me competitively. I won a weekend USCF race for the first time in 14 years with a flukey last lap solo against a small but stacked 45+ masters field at Ninigret in April. The rest of the year was decent too, with podiums at the WMSR TT and the 35+ Concord Criterium, which was probably my strongest day on the bike in this millenium. I had lots of fun training rides, including of course D2R2.

Running went OK too, after a tough start with a mysterious hip ailment cutting my winter campaign short back at the Boston Prep 16 in January. After that I ran decent at Paddy Kelly in Brockton, but the pain just wouldn't go away, and my times were all slower than 2008 when I was at my best. So I gave up on running and just rode, which is probably one reason why I had a good year on the bike. In May, a chance to work with Patty from CPSC physical therapy while we both helped out at Goodale's super sale let to me sorting out the cause of my hip problem in just ten minutes. Not completely, but she helped me understand my body's asymmetry and other dysfunction, and what I could do about it, better than anyone ever had before. This put me on a path to a more productive structural maintenance program, which not only got me back running, but has helped my overall fitness as well. This winter I've been able to run a few races without issue, and though I'm not as fast as I was two years ago, at least everything has been going predictably.

The other weird thing that happened was I ended up racing almost as many days of cyclocross as on the road this year. I think it ended up being 25 and 20 respectively, or something like that. Plus 8 running races for a total of 53 competitions. I don't remember whether in total that is more or less than last year. My training hours are down, exactly 400 on the bike and just 63 running. I don't track gym time, but there was more of it for sure, most of it being stretching, bodyweight exercise, and stuff like that rather than traditional gym-ratting. I did not DNF any race all year until the 1/2/3 at Ice Weasels, which was my second race of the day, so that one shouldn't count. And I only dropped out because I was having trouble getting beer feeds. Not to mention doing back to backs helped me realize how poorly my cx bike rides for me. In the singlespeed race I road my P.O.S. Scattante and even that handled better. Combined with coming off of two weekends racing in SoCal on the Fisher I keep out there helped hammer home how the geometry and fit of my ancient Hot Tubes bike simply does not work on tight courses. On faster stuff like Noho it's ok. So I really need to get a new cx bike, and have had one on order since... September. That saga continues. Maybe next year. But for now I have imposed a moratorium on bike-related spending. There's simply too much crap in here now, and I've got to learn to consume less.

Leading all to this month. Last winter I never really took a break from the bike. I think maybe five days at one point. Made for a good season, but by August my enthusiasm waned significantly. Training during CX season proved to be a real struggle. When December finally arrived and the CX season ended, I rode once or twice just to enjoy the road bikes, then hung them up on December 21, not touching them again until yesterday. Thirty-one days has to be a record for me, at least when there was no surgery involved. The weather totally sucking made the whole thing pretty easy. I was ready to ride again a week or so ago, but not in this shit. However, I'm not sure if it's just because the Twitter crowd is younger and more dedicated or what, but I can't recall ever hearing about so much hard-core training going on in the first half of January. It's nuts. People doing five hours, hard intervals, etc. Is there a secret stage race in February that I don't know about? Makes it easier to understand why no promoter can fill a field in the summertime. Does it really take fifteen weeks to get ready for Battenkill when you're coming off a twenty race CX season? Good for them I guess, though I harbor doubts about whether doing group rides between the snowbanks is a smart idea, never mind that it doesn't generate much good will for us. Yeah I know, you have a right to the road, blah, blah, blah. I'll stay hopeful that driving on the clogged arteries with snowbanks taking two feet off of each shoulder will make drivers realize there's plenty of room to share with a bike or two in the summertime. Personally I'll be confined to the trainer for a bit, or at least be down the Cape or something.

Not that I've been totally idle during my break though. I've been running 3x/week, although even some of that has been indoors on a treadmill, something I normally avoid. On New Year's day I got a chance to race at the Millenium Mile again, even managing to squeak in under five minutes, equaling last time's 4:58. And I'm signed up for the Boston Prep 16 again on Sunday... Not sure about this one. Getting in long runs has been a real struggle, but the past three weekends I've pulled it off. Field's Park in Brockton is sort of plowed, but not open to cars some of the time, and has a lane dedicated to runners anyway, so I've gone over there. Last weekend was 15 miles on packed snow, wearing YakTraks. Monday I followed that up with the 3.5 hour snowshoe in the Blue Hills. But I've hardly run any hills, and my overall mileage has been pretty light, with just short sessions on the hamster belt during the week. In total it significantly diminishes the appeal of heading into the slop on Sunday when the forecast high temp is 12 degrees F. Seriously, I know we all hear the HTFU stuff (mostly from people who have never ridden past five hours in their lives, not exactly Jens's if you know what I mean), but this might be a good day to exercise reasonable judgment instead and just bag out. We'll see. Stay tuned. Watch this space. And thanks for reading. This took too long to write, and would take way too long to proofread, so in the unlikely event that you carefully read the entire thing, feel free to suggest edits in the comments. I'll fix them but not publish so you don't look like a nit picker. Speaking of which, I heard there is a lice outbreak in the toney schools of the metrowest region. Good luck with that... Or play it safe and go with the Stuey haircut. Thanks again.