Stronger, Fitter, Faster

Stronger

Twelve years behind a desk does things to your body. For the first time in ten years I've started hitting a gym 3x a week but that doesn't mean I can muster too many pushups just yet.

Fitter

Lose a serious amount of weight. This is definitely key to making everything else work, so I'll be focusing on dropping pounds to get not only into a healthy range of BMI, but to also increase my endurance and fitness.

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Tour of California

Floyd Landis, originally uploaded by Neal's photo.

A few thoughts about the Tour of California:

• I'm amazed that the weather in Oregon is better than the weather in Northern California. I did a three hour ride on Sunday and got a bit of road spray on me, but no rain, while the ToC racers were drenched all day on the way to Santa Rosa. I rode yesterday under cloudy skies while the racers got drenched. I think it's about the same temp today where I live as where they are racing.
• The OUCH team pictured above is sponsored by tire maker Maxxis, but they don't make tubular tires, so the entire team runs clinchers with Maxxis treads (note the aluminum rims on both riders). Clincher rims are usually a couple hundred grams heavier than their tubular equivalents and in a sport where every ounce and advantage matters, I'm kind of surprised they don't run a competitor's tubular tires rebranded as Maxxis.
• The Versus TV coverage has been pretty bad. Given that the network is sort of a catch-all for oddball sports, cycling is pretty far down the list of important sports to the station. Monday's slower rainy stage was only about 2/3 done when my TiVo'd time slot was up (had to read the results online instead of watching them), so I adjusted recordings to add an extra hour to the Versus time slot for a stage. Yesterday they cut off the last 30-40minutes of racing (including an exciting bunch sprint ending) to show a hockey game, which my TiVo dutifully recorded an hour of. The online live coverage is really good, so that makes it better, but it sucks that they can't bring an exciting race to the airwaves properly.

Posted on February 18, 2009 in racing

Comments

Tour of California

Floyd Landis, originally uploaded by Neal's photo.

A few thoughts about the Tour of California:

• I'm amazed that the weather in Oregon is better than the weather in Northern California. I did a three hour ride on Sunday and got a bit of road spray on me, but no rain, while the ToC racers were drenched all day on the way to Santa Rosa. I rode yesterday under cloudy skies while the racers got drenched. I think it's about the same temp today where I live as where they are racing.
• The OUCH team pictured above is sponsored by tire maker Maxxis, but they don't make tubular tires, so the entire team runs clinchers with Maxxis treads (note the aluminum rims on both riders). Clincher rims are usually a couple hundred grams heavier than their tubular equivalents and in a sport where every ounce and advantage matters, I'm kind of surprised they don't run a competitor's tubular tires rebranded as Maxxis.
• The Versus TV coverage has been pretty bad. Given that the network is sort of a catch-all for oddball sports, cycling is pretty far down the list of important sports to the station. Monday's slower rainy stage was only about 2/3 done when my TiVo'd time slot was up (had to read the results online instead of watching them), so I adjusted recordings to add an extra hour to the Versus time slot for a stage. Yesterday they cut off the last 30-40minutes of racing (including an exciting bunch sprint ending) to show a hockey game, which my TiVo dutifully recorded an hour of. The online live coverage is really good, so that makes it better, but it sucks that they can't bring an exciting race to the airwaves properly.