Alaskan Pack Fodder

I learned a valuable lesson about the importance of sleep this weekend.   I woke up around 9:00 AM Friday morning, got on the bike for my workout, and then took care of a few odds and ends before getting ready for work. I left early, because I needed to set the courses for the Alaska State 9 and Under Alpine Skiing Championships at Hillberg. So, I ran up and down the hill for a couple hours, then reported for a 12 hour night shift.   After work, I had just enough time to get home, eat something, and change into my ski clothes before I had to head out again to the hill to finish preparations. All day long I skied with my daughter and set courses. We finished awards late, giving me just enough time to shower and change for my next 12 hour shift. I was starting to wobble a bit.   By the time I dragged myself home on Sunday morning, I had been up for almost 48 hours. Needless to say, I decided to skip my day's workout and get the extra hour or so of sleep. Two days...

The last couple weeks I've been feeling little aches and pains. Nothing I'm worried about, though. Maybe it's from the workouts I've been doing. Maybe it's a signal that ski racing season is nearly over and the weather is changing. Maybe it's because my body has been feeding on itself for the last couple months (strange to think of weight loss that way). Maybe I'm getting old. Then again, maybe my enormous black Lab has been sleeping on me again. Could be any of those things, or a combination of them.   The weather is changing. It's getting warmer, the skies are blue more often and the sun is out longer. I'm debating adding another fan in the garage for my bike trainer. I'm holding out hope that we've seen the last serious snow of the year (not that we've had an excessive amount) and the roads will be clear enough by the end of March. I'd like to take the cross bike out and not have to dodge excessive amounts of ice or puddles.   ...

Friday I got on the scale when I woke up, as I normally do. I was half-asleep, but my eyes popped open when it read 178.0 lbs. I re-zeroed the scale and tried again, and got the same reading. I went out to the local gym and tried their scale. Same reading. I re-zeroed their scale… 178.0 lbs. It seems like an odd number to get so fixated on, but it’s pretty significant to me. What that number means is that my BMI is 24.82, which is in the “normal” range. I haven’t been classified as anything but overweight or obese since around 1998. That’s about 15 years for those of you keeping score at home. 15 years of lugging around a lot of excess weight that was slowly killing me. After peaking at around 240lbs and a BMI of 33.5, I started riding a bike and dropped to 200lbs (BMI 27.9). I went from obese to overweight just by riding around. Then I started racing, and over the next few years my weight hovered around 185-190lbs, depending on the season. Still overweight, but I was feel...

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...