It's the time of the season...

Too much work to do... too little time... all I want to do is ride...

Jake's bi-weekly MegaUpdate! (condensed form...)

So since I can only seem to find time to update my blag every other week or so I'm going to take time out of my sleep tonight to tell you what has or has not been going on in my life for the last n number of weeks since I have updated...

1. I went into Philly and took an LT Test at Cadence the weekend after the first Team camp.  My LT power is something just under 200 W (I would tell you but it might reveal my secret of sexiness...)
2. I felt crappy and was generally pretty sick for the two weeks after the first training camp.  It hampered the first part of my training cycle... boo...
3. The weekend after my LT Test was Team training camp #2 (full recap on the Team Blag).  It was awesome.  Friday night featured the Middle Run Snowy Icey Death Ride, where the majority of riders experienced some form of rapidly decreased frictional coefficients between tires and ground causing gravitationally or centripitally accellerated motion in the generally negative direction.  Jacob got of easy with a simple slide in a corner, Jeff took a berm too high and ended up sitting in the snow looking confused and holding his bum, and Zach did a full on chest plant off a ~1 m high log when he tried to bail and drop off of it.  I got of scott free *brushes shoulder off*.  Should I chalk it up to the inherent balance in a rigid SS?  Who knows.  Saturday morning featured the Turkey Point road loop with some of the DCCofD crew including, but not limited to Rotten Rob (replete with borrowed pink helmet and lack of facial hair), Fatmarc, Monkey, LaLa, Brian, and fearless ride leader Jan and staring Tom as ride support/cookie delivery guy/ sag waggon.  Some 100 km for those of us who rode from home base at Jeff's house.  Jacob, Jeff, Zach, and I were in attendence from the team as Gunnar and Kyle had to play some normal people sport called basketball.  I know not what this is.  When Gunnar and Kyle arrived, they were made to do uphill TT's on powermeter equiped bikes to maybe wear their young legs our a little.  Saturday night featured a urban mtb attack on that place with the thing and the other thing.  Many stairs were descended.  Sunday morning was our semi-epic 3-state road ride with two intermediary hill climb races up some steep southeast PA roads.  Oh and it was warm enough out that the majority of us were riding in shorts, short sleeve jerseys, and no gloves.  Totally amazing for February 8th.  Good fun.  Good food.  Good times were had by all.
4. The next week brought more work, especialy in the field of structural geology, as well as some nice warm rides.  Tuesday was muscle tension day, which I did at Whiskey Springs on dirt on my SS.  A good rocky descent was ripped afterwards.  Wednesday was a double header.  Drive to the Brett's, get on road bike, ride for an hour-ish with 3 steady states, go back to Brett's, get on SS, ride with the usual (albeit larger than normal) crew for a famous Michaux nighter.  OPEN MESSAGE TO WHOEVER IS PRACTICING FOR A CHAINSAW COMPETITION ON OUR TRAILS: MANY CURSES TO YOU AND YOUR FAMILY, MAY YOUR CHAINSAW EXPLODE IN YOU GARAGE AND TAKE OUT THAT THING THAT MAY BE A BIKE BECAUSE YOU OBVIOUSLY DON'T NO HOW TO RIDE IT PROPERLY.  MAN UP AND LEARN HOW TO RIDE LOGS!!!  THEY WILL BE REPLACED JUST TO ANNOY YOU.  Thursday brought more muscle tension intervals, which were done at night on the roadie.  I got yelled at by some redneck kids from the window of their house.  I believe he said something to the extent of "Oh my Gawd is that an alien?  It is an alien!  Pa go get the shotgun!"  I will admitt that it is rather weird to see someone riding up and down your street, really slowly, with a light on his head, in the middle of the night.
5. Saturday was Valentines Day, and the first one in a while in which I was not "celebrating" National Singles Awareness Day.  The lady-friend and I, whom shal henceforth be known as Ms. Geologist, made peach pancakes in the morning.  They were really tastey.  Then I went out for a 3hr road ride.  Then we had dinner and listened to some good jazz at the Good Life Cafe, watched a movie and went to bed.  Today was another 3.5hr road ride with climb repeats up Doubling Gap.  They hurt my legs.

That's all for now.  Oh and the Amgen Tour of California started Saturday.  I leave you with my ode to one of my favorite riders in the peleton Fabian Cancellara:

Fabian hammering his World Campions jersey to a TdF Prologue win, 2007:

Photo Credit: AFP Photo

Fabian hammering his Swiss Champions hersey to a AToC Prologue win, 2009:

Photo Credit: Casey B. Gibson

It's weird seeing him on a bike other than a Cervelo and in a kit other than the rainbow stripes...