1/8/10: Happy New Year!

It's been a while. Life's been busy and, before I knew it, a couple months had passed!

Training has been going very well when tracked against my power goals. Testing has become problematic because the past 2 times I've wanted to test, Mother Nature decides to produce a big snow dump and frigid temps. I did test indoors the last time, which royally SUCKED! Still, the numbers were an improvement - 388w for the 5min test and 318w for the 20min, giving me an FTP of 302w. This time around, I'm postponing the testing I should have done today until next week or the week after, depending on the weather. Feels like I'll be taking another nice step forward, but the tests will show the improvement or lack thereof. They don't lie!

Riding with the team has been great! Our ranks have swelled to double our '09 numbers. We span more categories and have added 5 Young Guns (aka Juniors) to the ranks as well. Wouldn't surprise me if we are reading about one or two of them in the next 5-10 years. Hopefully they'll keep me young!

The 2010 kits are kick ass! More white and less black than last year, but the underlying design is the same. The slight change allows the sponsor logos to really pop. Always fun to don the new clothes when they come in.

Got an extra Christmas present this year. On Christmas day, my trainer blew apart. Literally. I was doing some 10sec out-of-saddle efforts to punctuate an easy spin when, all of a sudden, I heard a "Bang!" like a firecracker going off and got sprayed from behind by a bunch of little shards of plastic. I lost count at 50 as I picked up the pieces of the fragged inertial resistance piece. Now, I'd like to say this happened because my legs are so huge and powerful, but that's just not the case. Got the newer version of the same trainer, but ended up taking the flywheel off and putting it on the old trainer frame. I thought new releases of things were supposed to be improvements. The new trainer stand is lighter for sure, but it is also narrower and less stable. It never felt like my rear wheel was fully locked-in (even though it was). When I realized I was thinking more about the stand than about what I was doing, it was time to make the change.

Anyway . . . off to the mountains for the weekend for some laziness while the kids have fun snowboarding.

Ride safe,
Nate