And this is no exception.
Although I just completely made up that statistic, I'm pretty sure that it's a percentage above 50%.
So, I'm sorry for not posting more often, so sue me! I've been busy with school and cyclocross racing lately and honestly I forgot I had this little gem until about 2 minutes ago.
I am currently procrastinating from studying for my STAT 217Q exam and I couldn't feel better (or worse? or confused about my opinion?) about it. Here's hoping it goes well.
I figure I'll do a little write up on what's happened all spring.
Moved down to school.
Proceeded to start a punch of 200/Intro level classes due to my transfering
Hate 200/Intro level classes
I'll update more later but I should probably get back to work. Next entry will probably be a summation of the '09 Cyclocross season.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it. - Russel Baker
The above quote isn't a perfect description of my weekend, but it will have to suffice as I need to go to sleep soon. With said sleep imminent the quality of this blog may suffer.
So you may be asking, how was your weekend Kris? Well it was pretty disappointing both on Saturday and Sunday.
Satuday involved a family reunion out at the old family farm. Now this was my first "big" family reunion where there were supposed to be something like 120-140 people, of which I would know maybe 40. Upon hearing this I had visions of interesting relatives from all over the place coming together in good ol' Saskatchewan. I had thoughts of meeting 3rd Cousin Martin from Nepal where he ascends peaks for atmospheric research on pollution, or distant relative Mary-Anne who is in Europe working on something decidedly European (I'm not sure what and neither is anyone else)
Turns out I don't have a 3rd Cousin Martin, or a distant relative Mary-Anne.
I have a lot of relatives who are farmers, and mechanics for farms equipment. Some relatives really reached out and worked in the oil fields in Alberta, or they're mechanics for oil field equipment.
They all wore trucker hats, and the vast majority smoked like chimneys. And boy are they far flung, some live 1-3 hours away from their place of birth! In total I saw two non-Saskatchewan license plates at the entire gathering. Turns out my far distant relatives all live a short drive away from me.
Now I know what you're going to say "You didn't even give them a chance, you just judged them on their appearance". But not so dear reader, oh not so indeed! I attempted to strike up conversations on 10 seperate occasions with said distant relatives. This is how I learned the similarity in most of their pursuits and the potent smell of their cigarettes. In the entire gathering I found a larger aura of "clique-i-ness" than a high school hallway. Each family subset just got into a comfortable corner and proceeded to treat the entire gathering as just another subset family get-togeher which I found disappointing.
Oh and the fireworks sucked compared to the Fourth of July.
But on we go, to Sunday!
Sunday was the day of the Provincial Road Race in Saskatoon, while my training has been sporadic at best these past few weeks I decided to venture up and try my luck on the course.
Saskatoon has had provincials the past 3 years and the course is a 15 km out and back loop. There are two "major" rises (if you can call them that in Saskatchewan, but I shouldn't talk as you'll soon find out) on either end of the loop. The finish is after a 1-2% grade that lasts 750 meters.
So I got up early, watched the first bit of the Tour's first crucial stage to the Alps, hurriedly packed up my stuff as I watched Alberto for far too long, and then drove off to Saskatoon for 2.5 hours. I arrived right on time for sign on and got in a nice moderate warm up, no hard efforts as I was sure it would be a reasonably paced race to start (what with 90 km of heavy cross winds at all)
Turns out no one got the memo about the moderate pace to start. 2 km into the race the lead nuetralizing car pulls off and bam Kevin goes on an attack off the front. Everyone's chasing, the crosswind is howling from the West (we're travelling North to start) and wheels are being fought for tooth and nail as guttering takes effect. We catch Kevin after only about a km, turns out he didn't like having just one break companion and decided to float back. We then proceed to get into the rhythm of a quick echelon set at a high pace, small attacks and surges happening but mainly a high pace of attrition.
My legs are not feeling great at this point, I recovered from the initial attack but just find that I'm really having to stamp on it to hold wheels in the echelon while avoiding getting caught out. We get to the end of the first half of the first lap and hit the service road hill. It's not too bad, maybe 4% for about 300 meters then flattening a bit, the worst part is a kicker near the top where it goes back up to around 6% right before the turn-around.
I enter the bottom of the hill near the end of the group, S#%*! I'm a bigger guy than the sprightly climbers, I know this so I know I need to be near the front so I can float back slowly. Instead I'm left to see-saw off the back of the group as we near the top of the climb.
I should mention now that the Senior men was a very low 10 man field. We had one Cat 1 (former not sure if he still has it, maybe he's a 2 now), and then two Cat 2's, two Cat 3's who could upgrade to 2's any time but don't want to, and 5 Cat 3's.
So back to the story, there's not many places to hide in a group of ten and so as we hit the final 5-6% ramp I pop off the back a bit and have to TT down the descent and for about 1 km afterwards to catch back on, shitty.
I then proceed to suffer on the way back along the loop. This is when I knew my legs were off, when my 145 lb friend was keeping pace easy with the tailwind while I couldn't rein a single one of the horses in my legs to do my bidding. We got up the finish hill and turned around for lap #2 of the sufferfest.
Again we push out into the headwind, I begin skipping turns in the rotation as I'm just beat after the group chases down another attack (the race is so blurry I forget who it was). We reach the midpoint climb and again it seems everyone is in front of me.
I pop.
Like a cheap balloon at a toddler's birthday.
A gap forms to the last wheel of the peloton and I struggle to latch on to it on the descent...nothing.
I set into suffer mode at the end of the descent and put in a few minutes of what I think are a high pace TT to get back on (looking back it was pitiful, 300 watts for about a minute to try to chase on and then I just faded off)
It was then that I settled into my pain cave. Chugging away at 200-240 watts for the next two hours I slogged through the remaining 60 km of the race. I went through a water bottle on my head and three into my body as the heat marked one of my first "hot" races this year (30 degrees Celsius).
Lap after lap I was stuck in no man's land ahead of an earlier dropee while behind a Stephen who dropped 4 laps in. Ben also dropped but he DNFed instead of suffering it out.
As I came into the finish on my 5th lap of 6 I was pulled by the commisaire with the peloton right on my heels 1 km back from the finish. The gave me a pro-rated time instead of a DNF but I'm still disappointed I've never truly finished provincials in two attempts.
So if anything this weekend showed me I need to put in a more solid work base to get back to the good results I was having in spring. Here's hoping this race is a good kick start to 2-3 weeks of solid training before Provincial Criterium/40 km ITT weekend.
Oh and this weekend also showed me that I watch way too many movies about what family reunions are supposed to be like.
So you may be asking, how was your weekend Kris? Well it was pretty disappointing both on Saturday and Sunday.
Satuday involved a family reunion out at the old family farm. Now this was my first "big" family reunion where there were supposed to be something like 120-140 people, of which I would know maybe 40. Upon hearing this I had visions of interesting relatives from all over the place coming together in good ol' Saskatchewan. I had thoughts of meeting 3rd Cousin Martin from Nepal where he ascends peaks for atmospheric research on pollution, or distant relative Mary-Anne who is in Europe working on something decidedly European (I'm not sure what and neither is anyone else)
Turns out I don't have a 3rd Cousin Martin, or a distant relative Mary-Anne.
I have a lot of relatives who are farmers, and mechanics for farms equipment. Some relatives really reached out and worked in the oil fields in Alberta, or they're mechanics for oil field equipment.
They all wore trucker hats, and the vast majority smoked like chimneys. And boy are they far flung, some live 1-3 hours away from their place of birth! In total I saw two non-Saskatchewan license plates at the entire gathering. Turns out my far distant relatives all live a short drive away from me.
Now I know what you're going to say "You didn't even give them a chance, you just judged them on their appearance". But not so dear reader, oh not so indeed! I attempted to strike up conversations on 10 seperate occasions with said distant relatives. This is how I learned the similarity in most of their pursuits and the potent smell of their cigarettes. In the entire gathering I found a larger aura of "clique-i-ness" than a high school hallway. Each family subset just got into a comfortable corner and proceeded to treat the entire gathering as just another subset family get-togeher which I found disappointing.
Oh and the fireworks sucked compared to the Fourth of July.
But on we go, to Sunday!
Sunday was the day of the Provincial Road Race in Saskatoon, while my training has been sporadic at best these past few weeks I decided to venture up and try my luck on the course.
Saskatoon has had provincials the past 3 years and the course is a 15 km out and back loop. There are two "major" rises (if you can call them that in Saskatchewan, but I shouldn't talk as you'll soon find out) on either end of the loop. The finish is after a 1-2% grade that lasts 750 meters.
So I got up early, watched the first bit of the Tour's first crucial stage to the Alps, hurriedly packed up my stuff as I watched Alberto for far too long, and then drove off to Saskatoon for 2.5 hours. I arrived right on time for sign on and got in a nice moderate warm up, no hard efforts as I was sure it would be a reasonably paced race to start (what with 90 km of heavy cross winds at all)
Turns out no one got the memo about the moderate pace to start. 2 km into the race the lead nuetralizing car pulls off and bam Kevin goes on an attack off the front. Everyone's chasing, the crosswind is howling from the West (we're travelling North to start) and wheels are being fought for tooth and nail as guttering takes effect. We catch Kevin after only about a km, turns out he didn't like having just one break companion and decided to float back. We then proceed to get into the rhythm of a quick echelon set at a high pace, small attacks and surges happening but mainly a high pace of attrition.
My legs are not feeling great at this point, I recovered from the initial attack but just find that I'm really having to stamp on it to hold wheels in the echelon while avoiding getting caught out. We get to the end of the first half of the first lap and hit the service road hill. It's not too bad, maybe 4% for about 300 meters then flattening a bit, the worst part is a kicker near the top where it goes back up to around 6% right before the turn-around.
I enter the bottom of the hill near the end of the group, S#%*! I'm a bigger guy than the sprightly climbers, I know this so I know I need to be near the front so I can float back slowly. Instead I'm left to see-saw off the back of the group as we near the top of the climb.
I should mention now that the Senior men was a very low 10 man field. We had one Cat 1 (former not sure if he still has it, maybe he's a 2 now), and then two Cat 2's, two Cat 3's who could upgrade to 2's any time but don't want to, and 5 Cat 3's.
So back to the story, there's not many places to hide in a group of ten and so as we hit the final 5-6% ramp I pop off the back a bit and have to TT down the descent and for about 1 km afterwards to catch back on, shitty.
I then proceed to suffer on the way back along the loop. This is when I knew my legs were off, when my 145 lb friend was keeping pace easy with the tailwind while I couldn't rein a single one of the horses in my legs to do my bidding. We got up the finish hill and turned around for lap #2 of the sufferfest.
Again we push out into the headwind, I begin skipping turns in the rotation as I'm just beat after the group chases down another attack (the race is so blurry I forget who it was). We reach the midpoint climb and again it seems everyone is in front of me.
I pop.
Like a cheap balloon at a toddler's birthday.
A gap forms to the last wheel of the peloton and I struggle to latch on to it on the descent...nothing.
I set into suffer mode at the end of the descent and put in a few minutes of what I think are a high pace TT to get back on (looking back it was pitiful, 300 watts for about a minute to try to chase on and then I just faded off)
It was then that I settled into my pain cave. Chugging away at 200-240 watts for the next two hours I slogged through the remaining 60 km of the race. I went through a water bottle on my head and three into my body as the heat marked one of my first "hot" races this year (30 degrees Celsius).
Lap after lap I was stuck in no man's land ahead of an earlier dropee while behind a Stephen who dropped 4 laps in. Ben also dropped but he DNFed instead of suffering it out.
As I came into the finish on my 5th lap of 6 I was pulled by the commisaire with the peloton right on my heels 1 km back from the finish. The gave me a pro-rated time instead of a DNF but I'm still disappointed I've never truly finished provincials in two attempts.
So if anything this weekend showed me I need to put in a more solid work base to get back to the good results I was having in spring. Here's hoping this race is a good kick start to 2-3 weeks of solid training before Provincial Criterium/40 km ITT weekend.
Oh and this weekend also showed me that I watch way too many movies about what family reunions are supposed to be like.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Montana Success in CO and Menial Tasks in SK
Well this is my first entry so I'll try to be succinct and witty (well maybe just succinct).
I just read over on VeloNews that two of my fellow MSU Collegiate Cycling members have but in great performances at U23 Nationals. Stephen Ettinger took 3rd in the mens category while Lydia Tanner came close to getting 3rd in womens but had to settle for 4th after an untimely flat tire. Great performance by both to be sure!
As for me, I guess I'll do a preface on who I am. I'm a student down at Montana State University but currently I'm back in Saskatchewan, Canada for summer at my home. I'm an avid cyclist who's racing Cat 3 up here and I'm really looking forward to racing A's next season in Collegiate. I'm pursuing a degree in Finance with minors in History and (maybe?) Economics, I'm intensely nerdy and also enjoy skiing, hiking, fishing, fencing, debate and a plethora of other eclectic interests. I look forward to writing a semi-enjoyable blog on the inconsequential minutia of my everyday life.
I just read over on VeloNews that two of my fellow MSU Collegiate Cycling members have but in great performances at U23 Nationals. Stephen Ettinger took 3rd in the mens category while Lydia Tanner came close to getting 3rd in womens but had to settle for 4th after an untimely flat tire. Great performance by both to be sure!
As for me, I guess I'll do a preface on who I am. I'm a student down at Montana State University but currently I'm back in Saskatchewan, Canada for summer at my home. I'm an avid cyclist who's racing Cat 3 up here and I'm really looking forward to racing A's next season in Collegiate. I'm pursuing a degree in Finance with minors in History and (maybe?) Economics, I'm intensely nerdy and also enjoy skiing, hiking, fishing, fencing, debate and a plethora of other eclectic interests. I look forward to writing a semi-enjoyable blog on the inconsequential minutia of my everyday life.
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