Friday, October 16, 2009

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

wow

it took about 2 months to get my blog back!

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Rhetts Run

The first mountain bike race is in the book (Syllamo's does not count) and it was a great one! I highly recommend peeps put this as a must do race next year. Columbia is a short drive for KC area, St Louis and even the Iowa folks showed some color today.

Rain lightly hit the trails early in the morning so the first racers got a little muddy and the trails were slick. I did a test lap and found most of the trail was fairly dry, but the parts that weren't were brutally slick. The start was very fast, down hill and into a muddy corner. Most of the expert field seemed to navigate it fairly well, but i heard some other fields bit the dust or mud we will say.

I got an average start, the expert field was fast off the line. One clown jumped the start and got the hole shot, but missed a turn. His yin and yang were not in balance! The field strung out fairly quickly and I was about 7th out of 15ish when we finally found our grove. Unfortunately, my grove was much slower then the rest and i pushed myself into anaerobic. Luckily i soon wrecked and found myself in my own pace, but feeling like poop.

The next 10-30 minutes i was trying to recover and never really did. After that I showed some signs of life and road like I could compete with these guys. the other times I was just a guy on a bike trying to finish with some sort of dignity.

The course is great, nice combination of SM Parks speed and flow with a little bit of open road/field for recovery or passing. The tempo would have been nice with a little more experience there. After the first two laps I was familiar enough with the climbs, descents and traverses that I could hammer it up or through the turns.

At the end I finished 3 laps in 88 minutes, enough time to do another lap had i not been a sissy. Just did not feel like it. Glad i did not, 6 hours later I still feel like poop. A short soak in the hot tub to stretch the muscles, some really bad food, one Guinness (yep one) and i am pert near ready for bed!

Joe

Ps Syllamos did not count as a race due to the poor production and condition of the course. One hour in to the ride I knew I was there to survive. Did finish 67th out of 260ish?

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Wow! Long time no Type 2009 off to a fast start


A quick close to 2008:
Christmas was wonderful, we set up a train set for Reece on Christmas eve. Drank wine and listened to music, Christy bought a marble tower run type thing that was a nightmare to set up (maybe it was the wine)
The expression on Reece's face coming down to see his gifts was classic:


New Years eve featured a scallop dinner with friends and some dominoes!

2009
Had two races to start the year, finished 4th in one and 7th in the other and 3rd place for the series.

About two weeks in to the year rates dropped to an all time low and work flowed in. It was so fast I was forced to clean my office and start a new approach for doing appraisal work.

The biggest accomplishment so far has been successful weight loss. My friend Liz recommended a web site called:
www.sparkpeople.com
they can help you track the calories you are eating. I used it for about 3-4 weeks starting late December with no results, but hey its December what can you expect? My goal was to get down to 200, but now that is only a few pounds away and I still have a nice beer belly left. I ended up losing 11 pounds in 8 weeks by counting calories and exercising. Luckily there was never a need to give up BEER Not sure where the bottom will be, but I will continue to exercise and eat a reasonable portion with modest amounts of cheating.

The Babe got a promotion and is now the office manager. Taylor is crawling and cut two teeth, Reece is about ready for potty training (no arguments on what "about ready" really means!). Reece also started swim lessons, so far so good.

I have had 4 epic mountain bike rides with fellow team mates and friends. The winter season did not offer up any night rides, but got 3-5 good snow rides in.

So far 2009 has shown some promise in the appraisal biz and maybe finish the house?

War out,

joe