Life Lessons Learned from Intervals

It seems like everyday I find myself saying, "This is going to hurt." Pain often presents its self clearly. If you know something is going to hurt then why would you do it? It seems to be a clear contradiction of the hedonic principle (from what I've heard). 

 Lately I've been thinking a lot on my lonely 4-5 hour rides and in between the suffering of my shorter more specific rides. It occurred to me that possibly one can ignore pain when in search of pleasure. It seems like a reasonable conclusion to me. Why would anyone torture themselves with 1.5 hr big gear interval. It really hurts... The answer is that scene you play through in your head a thousand times; your hand lifted in victory. It hurts so good. 

In life in general why would you ever take a chance?  Once again, its clear that sometime down the line its going to hurt. Still, the answer is the same as before. These risks taken are the things that tend to define a person and a life. Just a thought or a few.

No Spurs No!

Pretty sweet race weekend. Not too much personal success but knowing that all of my hard work was productive is great for the time being. For now I am looking towards the rr next weekend out in Manda. 

On a lighter note I am dropping out of School. It's time for me to tend to the farm. The cows need me. I am all they have got. 

Also its that time of year where people suddenly become basketball fans. This makes me especially glad to be in Austin since a wave of Spurs fever has overtaken San Antonio. As of now they can win so I won't have to talk to my parents at night but they had better lose before the end of this semester...

A Sweet Day and a Ride in the Rain

I woke up today super rested. I managed to get to sleep around 1 after watching a program about how the great lakes were formed. On my way to class I ate a blueberry muffin which was obviously good. What's weird about blueberry muffins is I don't like blueberries. I guess the lesson behind this kids is that whatever you put in a muffin will always taste better than what it would taste like outside of a muffin. Anyways, after I ate the muffin and got to class I found out that I got an A on my exam from before spring break. Then I went to 2 other classes which didn't have much of an impact on my day except that my government professor explained that questions about homosexuality are part of a state department security clearance ( in the 1960's). So my day kept going and my dad emailed me saying that shimano had sent the not so local bike shop which I bought my bike at a brand new set of wheels to replace the old ones. To make a long story short about the old wheels I will just say they sucked. Apparently shimano even sent a wheelset that was a step up from the old ones. Hopefully this means they aren't trash. Seriously though, I am thankful. With this good news I went off on a recovery ride. Lucky for me my day stayed pretty good and I didn't see anybody with world champion striped specialized helmets. I knew the Euro Gods were looking after me especially when it started raining. 

Roughin it at The Driveway

Today was the first driveway crit of the season. I had never actually been out there. Josh told me to meet him at gregory because we would be riding out with some guys. Apparently he read an email wrong but all is well when you have good sense of direction and a cell phone. On the way out there it seemed like he was guessing. It turns out he was making educated guesses that yielded proper results. When we registered I whipped out my can of spaghetti-o's and got $10 off the race fee. Pretty sweet! While we were warming up Josh crashed pretty bad(ask him how he crashed) but he managed to get up pretty much unscathed. Once the race started I found that my legs felt pretty good coming off a good rest but I couldn't find a proper line. The finish wasn't too exciting but I am happy that I got to open up my legs. Since the race was only 30 minutes I figured I would top the ride off with a good hard ride back to campus. On the way back the roads were wet which seemed strange since it wasn't raining. Anyways, when I turned off of 6th street (we ended up there by following some wooly mammoth guys back, sort of) on to trinity I slid out on the wet cobblestones. Now I know I shouldn't do this but based on the circumstances I am awarding myself 3 euro points. I'm kidding except it was pretty sweet. All in all decent ride, cold, but its fun to rough it sometimes. 

Recovery Week

Well... Sort of.  I took it pretty easy last thursday, friday was a sub one hour opener ride, saturday consisted of a warm up, a half mile race, and then some spinning to get ready for the crit the next day, and then sunday was a 26 minute effort. The last two days have been super easy and the only effort has been restraining myself from intensity. I was hoping to take it easy tomorrow and then try out the driveway on thursday but chances are it will rain. Thats my pseudo-recovery week. 

Hair shorts

To all the people who are concerned with my rare and severe condition of hair shorts I would just like to say that the bathtub at my parents house will cure me.

Thanks for all the support.

A&M Weekend

"Well I want to die"

-Raleigh St. Clair ( The Royal Tenenbaums)

My Day... Sort Of

Today while my roommate was sleeping sometime in the afternoon I asked him "are you gay?" He said "no." When he woke up I told him that while he was sleeping I asked him if he was gay and he said "yeah." I told him that this was a sign of how he subconsciously feels. He was confused.

Later on in the day I got to do something that I have wanted to do for so long; Retire my old black cycling bibs.

How can we reuse these cardboard boxes?

Republicans are like kids from your high school!

It's true, Republicans are like kids from your high school. Let me explain. Republicans are like that kid you went off campus to lunch with who always said no to your restaurant suggestions, but didn't offer up his own ideas. How is this so? It's simple, they have become the party of no. "Spending?" "no!" "what should we do?" " I don't know, I'm not your friend guy!" You get the idea. Republicans are also like that kid who would copy your shoes, clothes, haircut etc. If you got a Hillary Clinton for your birthday they would get a Sarah Palin with the money they got for getting straight B's. If you worked hard and got yourself a Barack Obama they would get their parents to by them a Michael Steele. 

My advice to the Republicans is... be yourselves... except a lot more moderate. It would also help to bring some fresh ideas to the "no" table. 

One year ago

One year ago at this moment I would have just finished watching Conan. Now I won't even experiment with Jimmy Fallon and I don't even know what time Conando is on. But in a more general sense, one year ago I would have been in baseball season. I would have been in high school. I would have been living with my parents. I would have been a social smoker including tobacco and marijuana. I would have been coming around to the idea of Barack Obama and moving away from the idea of Hillary Clinton. On the weekends I would be the angry drunk kid that would rant on religion and politics. Ha! Things change, a lot. My life now revolves around two things that were not important to me a year ago; School and cycling!