The Meridian Ride and other stuff

well kids, four official days left in my contract for the '08-'09 school year (i'm renewed). today's a work day without kids. we have graduation to contend with today. finished creating and running off my final exams for both of my class; two versions each if they're dumb enough to copy and completely biff a test worth 40% of their grade. the sense of finality is coming to a head y'all. cleaned up a bit; i'll save the serious stuff for when my kids come in the rest of the week. got a keep a decent-looking academic area workable and clean. got home and mason wanted to ride. here he is doing uphill intervals. he's getting ready y'all.

haven't been writing as much due to time shizzle, but here's what i've done for racing (which ain't a whole hell of a lot). did a quasi-mountain biking marathon event called the front range 50. got a whole zero hours in training the week before for it (hence the cycling dad reiteration). i figured i could do a sub-five hour, 50 mile off-road excursion. won't be purty but definitely doable. my roommate from college whose a pretty hardcore guy did it too. i show up late to get my number plate and i just get to start the race with my event (there were several that day, this being the marquee event). so off we go with the front range's best 200 or so riders in my event. the start's absolutely nutty. we climb a hill first and you should see these two hundred riders fight for first dibs to the single-track section. mayhem baby. mayhem. fast forward 4h 35 mins later. i finish. ego somewhat illed but an ever so slight release of endorphins. 50 miles on a mountain bike for the second time in 2009 felt like my worst enemy taking a jack hammer to my body's contact points on the saddle. the joy could not be expressed in words kids...

thursday did the meridian training ride. musta been going slow because i was able to hang in. my first hour ride for the week. finished top fifteen, started to cramp during the uphill sprint. talked to one of the elite guys when we started the ride. nice guy. real down to earth and his legs can crush most competitors. talked about how we have the same vacation spot-lake tahoe; and how some of the elite members are doing the tour of some name near lake tahoe. pretty intense competition for that stage race. i attempted a xc mt bike race last year there and it was canceled to due hazardous breathing conditions due the wildfires. they're lucky, when i show everyone's fighting for second place (to last).

Friday. since the grown-up things in life i used to take for granted are difficult to come by nowadays (i.e. movies, hanging out in restaurants, just melissa and i hiking..etc.), i purchase the next best thing: delicious, small batch, hand-crafted (as opposed to spleen-crafted) beers. to celebrate friday, i purchased Russian River's Blind Pig IPA (floral hoppiness and happiness too i suppose);

Brewery Ommegang's chocolate indulgence (kinda tastes like Sammy Smith's Oatmeal Stout);

and Left-Hand Brewery's Imperial Stout (a wee-bit pruney).

of the three, the Russian River's batch was a new flavor I haven't encountered and boy was it freshy-fresh! I recommend this one, the others are simply ite though.

saturday rolls around and maura has a soccer tourney. three games. they didn't make it to the final though because they lost one game out of three. speaking of three, maura scored three goals that day. i witnessed it jackson! oh man, her third goal she wound the kick up and planted it just inside of the top edge of the goal. it was impressive. this was after i dropped off maricel to her choir concert about 70 miles away round trip. then! after this! we all head off to elitches (an amusement park) to watch the choir competition results in which maricel's school won first place with a superior performance (top notch, better than excellent). i witnessed her choir sing too. very tight sound from the choir director who's a task-master to boot. ever since my thirties, i get real nauseous from most amusement park rides. so, all the adventurous souls (the rest of my family plus melissa's brother and mom) do the hard-core rides while i hangout with my son at the little kids rides. he absolutely loves the little kids' rides which in turn makes me have some vicarious fun. so all day at the park we do this. i'm having fun without even riding one ride! it was almost like a tailor made father-son outing. great day/evening hanging out with the family.

sunday rolls and today's maricel's last soccer game and picnic. i watch them play, drop-off the cooler, and i get my ride in. i get a 3.5 h ride in but i wanted a 4h one just to get my endurance up for doing 80 mile road races here in colorado usually involving inordinate climbing of some painful sort. i roll from my house. since we live on a ridge, all my rides are downhill. this means i'm hurting going back to my house especially if there's any wind to contend with. if i can help it all my rides will be fairly local so i'll always climb. kinda did a figure-eight looopy-loop today. i shouldn'a gone too hard for the first climb but i couldn't hep myself. once i saw another rider, the testosterone poisoning began and the burn crept into my legs as i finished the first climb. the second climb wasn't sustained and it's pretty mellow. it also circles some of the prettiest real estate where i live. all rolling horse properties with nothing but blue skies and a pesky northwest wind keeping me honest. my legs were hurting on this half of the figure-eight but once i settled into a slower rhythm i was able to sustain a cadence for the last, long climb without dropping off. at the gas station i sit down on a bench next to a group of harley riders taking a break. i volunteered if they wanted to switch bikes i'd be pretty amenable to it. she laughed and said they're from the springs. i asked if they're going to deckers on their way back and she said they were. on my way back mercifully there's a tail wind and effort back to my house is actually fun instead of the grind i always expect.

we grill out for dinner, wash it down with some fat tire ale, and prepare for monday. the kids are all full, washed, and before mr. sandman arrives we read 'em some books. speaking of which, nighty-night.