So as a gift to myself, I decided to really crush myself in training today. I even had to break out the "My Chemical Romance" track list. Usually I try not to put the music too loud in the morning, but as it is my special day I blasted it as loud as possible. Good thing I have a rib cage cause I seriously think my heart would have ripped through the skin of my chest wall today.
I know I always say that I train hard and that I wanted to throw up and even my elbows had Lactic acid in them. But today was pretty special. Ken told me yestaerday"...every minute, every second, every watt counts...that's what seperates the good from the great". So I thought about that today before I crushed myself into a high cadence oblivion. I used the noise to drown the pain and it worked better than a bottle of JD.
So as I was recovering from my tortous session, I found some rather down beat music for my cool down. I stumbled upon Jack Johnson's new album and track #3 "Angel". While I was listening to this song something occured to me. I don't really understand why it happened, but it did. I listened to each word, to find that it was if he wrote this song for me. I feel like I could have written this song. Because it is what Natasha is to me...my angel.
Because of her I am who I am today. Without her this journey, our journey, would not be the same. We share our dreams and we are there to push each other towards achieving them. Some people use New Years to think about the changes they will make or take stock of what is important to them, well we were kind of busy so I guess my thinking was done in the last few minutes of my spin today. Anyways I'm not sure what point I am trying to make and I'm not even trying to be funny today, I just want everyone to know that she is my inspiration and I am lucky to be marrying her. Thank you for everything you do.
Derrick
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
March Madness
So it seems like we haven't really been posting a lot, mainly because as much as I love training, it's just not that exciting to write about. I think the last thing people ever want to hear is how much power I was using, it was insanely hard, blah blah blah.
We went to see the Sens game the other night, it was one of the best games I've seen, honestly it was pretty impressive. Hopefully the boys are on a little momentum wave and their game last night look really great, well the first two periods looked great. As I love most things from Ottawa, go Sens go! Don't ever count them out.
SRM. Hummm. Ok, so I still have my soul, but I had to sell pretty much everything in my basement to get it. Let me just say a couple things.
1- First rule of technology. The cost of a device is directly proportional to the difficulty of installation.
2-When ever you read instructions that say you will be up and running quickly, do not believe it.
3-Instructions which are translated from German to English will not be accurate.
Long story, I'll make it short. Anytime I get a new toy, like a new bike, new SRM, or anything, I have this consuming desire to assemble it right away. I just can't wait, I get too excited and just go to town as soon as I get it. For example, Pete Morse sent my new Louis Garneau Sonix 6.4 road bike to the Cyclery and Natasha was nice enough to pick it up straight away about an hour after it got off the truck. So as soon as super was done, like about 3minutes. We are riding LG's, full carbon, the bikes are really nice. We are really lucky to have OCCTO Professional Grade components, carbon bars, stem, seat post. This stuff is so nice! It's so incredibly light.
Back to the story. So the SRM, the only reason I didn't install it the night I got is because my birthday gift was the above mentioned Sens game. So woke up at 5 am to install it. Long story, the instructions say not to mount the power sensor a certain way. Turns out it really the only way it could be installed on this particular frame. So 4 no make that 5 hours later, I was almost about to throw a wrench through the wall, I had to take a deep breath , swallow my pride and have Steve P take a quick look at it. He spent about 3 maybe 4 minutes on it to figure out that it was the placement of the sensor (height) not the medial , lateral placement which was the problem. What is the moral of the story. Well most of the time when you are trying to solve a problem, the problem really is you are not fixing the right thing. Hmmmm...Think about that for a second before you want to start throwing wrenches at walls that really don't deserve it, they didn't write the instructions.
Good thing I can get use to staring at numbers on the SRM inside. Natasha said I would have probably already smucked myself into a parked car while looking at all the numbers. What is more confusing is that it has 3 buttons vs Power tap which has 2. That is a 50% increase. But as all great German engineering there are about 1 billion different measurements available at your finger tips. It still boggles my mind.
My life is so different now that I have an SRM. I am so much stronger! Haha no not really. But I can now tell you how hot it is in my basement cause some crazy German built in a thermostat in this teeny tiny device. It is 17 degrees in my basement...well it was 15 degrees then 2 hours later it was 17 degrees. If that is most interesting thing you read today I won't feel so bad about being such a loser. Can you tell there is no racing for me, no good stories, no huge intersections on the meaning of life, just boring tales of my new equipment and my caffeinated rantings of how I lose my mind when I can't figure something out.
Some of the Jet Fuel boys are in Taiwan doing The Tour de Taiwan. Daniele got 4th in the pack sprint in the first stage and Pete has been consistently placing top 20. A good sign of things to come.
First scheduled race is April 6th, Mosport in near Peterborough. I'm excited. Things are coming together nicely.
DSJ
We went to see the Sens game the other night, it was one of the best games I've seen, honestly it was pretty impressive. Hopefully the boys are on a little momentum wave and their game last night look really great, well the first two periods looked great. As I love most things from Ottawa, go Sens go! Don't ever count them out.
SRM. Hummm. Ok, so I still have my soul, but I had to sell pretty much everything in my basement to get it. Let me just say a couple things.
1- First rule of technology. The cost of a device is directly proportional to the difficulty of installation.
2-When ever you read instructions that say you will be up and running quickly, do not believe it.
3-Instructions which are translated from German to English will not be accurate.
Long story, I'll make it short. Anytime I get a new toy, like a new bike, new SRM, or anything, I have this consuming desire to assemble it right away. I just can't wait, I get too excited and just go to town as soon as I get it. For example, Pete Morse sent my new Louis Garneau Sonix 6.4 road bike to the Cyclery and Natasha was nice enough to pick it up straight away about an hour after it got off the truck. So as soon as super was done, like about 3minutes. We are riding LG's, full carbon, the bikes are really nice. We are really lucky to have OCCTO Professional Grade components, carbon bars, stem, seat post. This stuff is so nice! It's so incredibly light.
Back to the story. So the SRM, the only reason I didn't install it the night I got is because my birthday gift was the above mentioned Sens game. So woke up at 5 am to install it. Long story, the instructions say not to mount the power sensor a certain way. Turns out it really the only way it could be installed on this particular frame. So 4 no make that 5 hours later, I was almost about to throw a wrench through the wall, I had to take a deep breath , swallow my pride and have Steve P take a quick look at it. He spent about 3 maybe 4 minutes on it to figure out that it was the placement of the sensor (height) not the medial , lateral placement which was the problem. What is the moral of the story. Well most of the time when you are trying to solve a problem, the problem really is you are not fixing the right thing. Hmmmm...Think about that for a second before you want to start throwing wrenches at walls that really don't deserve it, they didn't write the instructions.
Good thing I can get use to staring at numbers on the SRM inside. Natasha said I would have probably already smucked myself into a parked car while looking at all the numbers. What is more confusing is that it has 3 buttons vs Power tap which has 2. That is a 50% increase. But as all great German engineering there are about 1 billion different measurements available at your finger tips. It still boggles my mind.
My life is so different now that I have an SRM. I am so much stronger! Haha no not really. But I can now tell you how hot it is in my basement cause some crazy German built in a thermostat in this teeny tiny device. It is 17 degrees in my basement...well it was 15 degrees then 2 hours later it was 17 degrees. If that is most interesting thing you read today I won't feel so bad about being such a loser. Can you tell there is no racing for me, no good stories, no huge intersections on the meaning of life, just boring tales of my new equipment and my caffeinated rantings of how I lose my mind when I can't figure something out.
Some of the Jet Fuel boys are in Taiwan doing The Tour de Taiwan. Daniele got 4th in the pack sprint in the first stage and Pete has been consistently placing top 20. A good sign of things to come.
First scheduled race is April 6th, Mosport in near Peterborough. I'm excited. Things are coming together nicely.
DSJ
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