Alaskan Pack Fodder

This Saturday my 6 year old daughter raced in her 2nd-ever ski race. As we drove to the hill, she talked about how she was going to win one of those medals. I told her that as long as she did her best, I would be proud of her. I decided before she ever started racing that I wasn't going to push her to be competitive, but rather encourage her to be a good participant. I'm hoping she doesn't burn out on the sport by the time she's 15, and I'm left with a daughter with bum knees that doesn't want to ski anymore. I've seen it before. The night before I had set the slalom course at the hill, so the snow would have plenty of time to set up before the race. The firmer the snow, the less chance of ruts forming after over 100 kids plow their way through it. I set a fairly mild course, since there were going to be a variety of ages represented. As she made her way down the the course for the first run, I skied down behind her and slipped the course, knocking down ...

I just bought a pair of "blingy" wheels, that quite honestly I have no business owning- not that it matters. I picked them up off of Craigslist for cheap, and was barely in the door before they were mounted on the TT bike and posed for a photo. This neatly summarizes the frustrations of being a roadie in Alaska.   Now I have to do well in the TTs this year, because I'm the only guy in my class running a rear disc. They have a unique roar as they roll down the road, so hopefully I'll look and sound good even if my times are less than impressive. I have 2 months left before the first time trial of the season, so I guess I better stop goofing off and knuckle down.

I've started this post a dozen times over the past week, with what I considered a decent nugget of an idea, and then discarded every one. It seems to mirror how my fitness is going lately. I'm just beat up, and can't seem to finish anything. It's "that time" of year again. By "that time", I mean February, when the ski racing season is in high gear and my body starts to break down.   Instead of coaching with the Alyeska Masters , this year I'm coaching the team my 6 year old daughter joined. It's a small program at a hill on an Air Force Base, which is comprised of kids that have never skied before to kids that really should be at a bigger hill. Some kids race, some don't. It's been a pretty great experience skiing with my daughter. I don't expect her to be a great racer one day, and in fact I kinda hope she never gets super serious about it. I just want her to be outside and active when most kids are hibernating at home, glued t...

Samuel Beckett is an author that I never really got into. Despite the efforts of various well-intentioned teachers, his writing style never really spoke to me. In fact, my greatest hope while reading Waiting for Godot was that Godot would come up and double tap both of those morons in the head and put us all out of our misery.   That said, he did know how to turn a phrase. My mind seems more suited for trivia than actual useful information, and his quotes, taken completely out of context, serve as a pretty good guidebook for my life. " Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." This one pretty much explains my bike racing career. Each time I fail, I try to fail a little better. Sometimes my failures are successes, which is always a nice bonus.     "Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order." That quote sums up my life philosophy, for better or (mostly) worse. It led me to my Novara hybrid, which led me to my Mercier...

My life seems to be dictated by software these days.   Every day I wake up and plot my current flab state in the Livestrong weight-tracking application. Then I check Google Docs for what the day's workout will be. I fire up the Garmin bike computer, make the required adjustments to settings, zero the Quarq powermeter, and start spinning the pedals. When I get off, I download it into Garmin Connect, record my observations/impressions, transfer it into WKO+ for analysis, and make notations on the Google Docs file for Janice . Then I'm back on Livestrong to track the calories I've burned and consumed for that day so I can keep the diet on track.   Now I'm writing a blog entry about it.   The funny thing is, I'm not a numbers guy. I try not to geek out on the data too much, because I have a habit of overdoing it. Once the data is in there, I rarely go back and review it- that's Janice's job. I may check to see what my power t...