Cycling
So it has been awhile since I last wrote but I was having fun visiting family, watching Michael graduate, enjoying Christmas and taking time off from school and work. It was all quite entertaining.
However, after two weeks off my bike, I decided that I should not try to race the 500 mile portion of the Heart of the South. Fortunately I found a replacement race that will accomplish the same goal but it occurs in a much more reasonable time frame.
The Race Across Oregon occurs at the end of June. It is approximately 540 miles, 40,000 feet of climbing and it has a 48 hour time limit. Michael said he will crew for me, as will Dawn-Marie and likely my dad. The race will cost at least $1500. Anyone want to sponsor me?
I am looking to find a coach but I doubt I will be able to afford to hire a coach, but who knows? It doesn't hurt to look. My website has my training mileage goals and achieved mileage on the training page.
Perhaps Michael and I will join Gold's Gym in the near future and I will add weight training and swimming to my routine. Currently, since I don't like riding in the cold, I have been doing the last week or so of mileage indoors on my rollers. I usually watch a movie while I ride. Action movies are best, but not those that have really fast camera work. That makes it hard to stay balanced in the middle of my rollers. And I hate falling off my rollers.
For Christmas I obtained a book called Bicycling Medicine. It was really great. I enjoyed reading it greatly. It had a lot of good information about nutrition and injury prevention and diagnosis. During the Adirondack 540 one of my knees started to hurt. This book gives good information on how I can change my bike's set up to prevent that occurring in the RAO.
Another book I recently enjoyed reading was Slow Fat Triathlete. The author's writing style is really quite funny and down to earth. Even though I feel no need what so ever to try triathlons, I very much enjoyed the book and it is a great resource for any beginner in any endurance sport. In my opinion at least.
Research
I have recently re-read the A. Branner 2004 paper. It is quite interesting and I encourage you to read it. Meanwhile, research continues in the lab and I continue to learn new things and how to use the programs and equipment necessary to work in my lab. I have started to create a database to hold some of the data that we obtain from our experiments so that we will better be able to manipulate and view the data we obtain.
