how's it possible that time off from work can be this hectic?

I've been on the go since I landed in Rochester last Wednesday night. It's all been good stuff, but a lot of driving and a relatively strict agenda. Had an awesome ski at Harriet Spencer today, and tomorrow should be even better as we're expecting some more snow tonight. Looking forward to the rest of the week!

Race #3

Today was our last race out here in Minnesota, shooting didn't improve much (5 penalties), but I was definitely skiing faster, and am looking forward to some xc races coming up back in NY. I think my rifle and I need a little time apart! I feel good about where my fitness level is and I think this week will really pay dividends come January.

Overall, these races were a great experience. We were able to ski and shoot every day for a week and compete in three races against the best competition in the US. There's no better measuring stick. I've always told the baseball players I've coached that they should seize every opportunity to play with and against players that are better than they are, and that being a big fish in a small pond won't make them any better. So, I guess I took my own advice, some of the guys out here are skiing on a different planet, shooting well, and shooting fast...

I'll try to write-up a list of takeaways from the week at some point. Fly home tomorrow. Here's a picture of Jason slapping some travel wax onto our skis for the trip home. Please note the use of the hotel dresser - these are the little bootleg waxing tips you learn when you hang out with HFL nordic alumni...hopefully no one from the Comfort Inn stumbles across this blog!

Off day

Today was an "official training" day here in Minnesota. Other than not racing, everything else was exactly the same as any other day we've been here. We got up, ate breakfast, loaded up the car, went to Mt. Itasca, warm-up, zero, skied/shot, cooldown, waxed skis, coffee, back to hotel. I could get used to this! I shot much better in training, which was encouraging. Tomorrow, we have another Sprint format race, then drive down to Minneapolis, and fly home Wednesday.

The good news is that it's not quite time to go back to the real world for me. I'm working a half-day Christmas Eve, then my company shuts down for the rest of the year. Other than checking e-mail a couple times a day, it should be a very relaxing week back home in Rochester with plenty of skiing and probably a few beers with family and some old friends!

Final note of the day - While the athletes not currently on the World Cup team are all here in Minnesota competing for a crack at that team, the December World Cup races finished up yesterday with a historic day for a US biathlete. Tim Burke took over the World Cup yellow jersey yesterday, worn by the overall world cup leader, which makes him the #1 biathlete in the world (this is the first time a North American has ever had that honor). There was a banquet here in MN last night for everyone competing in the trials, and the race director gave a very nice speech mentioning how huge of an accomplishment this is for Tim, and the progress that US Biathlon has made to get to this point. To top that off, he'll wear that yellow jersey at the next world cup in Oberhof, Germany, which is basically the Yankee Stadium of biathlon, there will be over a hundred thousand beer-slugging, biathlon-crazy Germans there watching an American race as the best biathlete in the world.

Race #2 - skiing better, shooting not so much

Today was a pursuit format race. Once again, my shooting was subpar. Today I felt better skiing, especially as the race went on. I'm not sure what's going on with my shooting, especially prone, the shots feel pretty good, the targets just aren't going down. If I were to guess, I would say that trying to keep up with the world class skiers that are out here is putting me a little closer to the red zone than I can reasonably recover from and I'm not relaxed enough when shooting. Or maybe I'm thinking too much, ironic that a former catcher who spent the better part of his baseball career telling idiot pitchers to stop thinking and just pitch, would suggest that, but it's a significant possibility. Either that, or I'm just not shooting straight (one of those things).

Oh yeah, and both Jason and I skied an extra penalty loop today. I remember thinking that I may have done that on my last shooting stage. I just started cranking out laps and trying to figure out how I missed so many, and wasn't sure if I'd done 2 or 3, apparently it was 3, instead I skied an extra just for good measure, so that didn't help at all. In total I skied about 2km more than the race winner today (who had 1 penalty).

Tomorrow is an off day with an official training session in the morning, then the final race is Tuesday. Hopefully I can hit some targets and put a good race together before flying home on Wednesday.

On a different note, our RNR teammates back in upstate NY had a really good weekend. Yesterday was the Osceola Christmas race (or the "pie" race) - Chad won the open division for the third year in a row and Frenchy won his class as well, both took home pies and pottery. Today, apparently Frenchy beat everyone in all classes for the overall win in a sprint biathlon race (also in Osceola), so it looks as though he's carried some of that triathlon fitness over to the winter despite disappearing from weekend training sessions for the entire fall. He must have been doing some stealth training!

Race #1 - there's always tomorrow...

So, our first race out in Minnesota could have gone better. I didn't shoot well, and felt a little out of whack skiing, although I felt relatively good aerobically. The course here is never flat and has a lot of turns and transitions, where you can really lose a lot of time if you don't ski those efficiently. Today, I did not ski these sections well at all, probably a combination of it being the first race of the season and having only skied the course a couple times the day before. Everyone other than Jason and I have been here for the last 10 days and could probably ski this blindfolded by now. I also had another racer step on my pole from behind during a steep uphill and somehow I spun around backwards and ended up sliding part of the way back down the hill, so that cost me some time...but, like we used to say in baseball, the good part about a bad day is that you get to show up tomorrow and give it another go. That's not always the case in biathlon, but it is in this case as we race again tomorrow morning, pursuit format (4 shooting stages), so shooting better will be critical tomorrow.

Here are a few pictures from the youth mens race (17-18 years old), who raced after us.

Grand Rapids, MN

Yesterday was a 15 hour journey to get from Rochester to Grand Rapids, Minnesota. I left my house at 430am. As soon as we got to the airport, we were informed that our flight was cancelled and we were rebooked on a flight that didn't leave Rochester until 7pm, getting to Minneapolis at 11pm, which would have gotten us into Grand Rapids around 230am. After some minor begging and pleading, they found a different route for us through Hartford, CT. We ended up landing in Minneapolis around 2pm (as opposed to our planned arrival of 11am), so not too bad. We then got all of our luggage and loaded up the rental car for the drive up to Grand Rapids. About 30 miles outside of GR, I got pulled over for speeding. Thankfully, the Minnesota State Trooper took mercy on us and let me off with a written warning. Following that, we were back on our way and got to the hotel around 630pm local time. Remarkably, everything made it out in one piece, and the only thing we missed out on was getting on snow yesterday.

We were able to get in a light run around town last night. The town of GR reminds me of Watertown, NY. Apparently the Mississippi River cuts right through town as well. It didn't look quite as mighty as I'd imagined, so it must be a tributary or something. Either that or Mark Twain was full of cr*p!

Today was "official training", which is basically an opportunity to ski and shoot on the range. We skied the course a few times, did some shooting and tried to work some of the kinks out from the long travel day yesterday. The course is a roller coaster - lots of short ups and downs and hardly any flat sections. The manmade snow on the course is in very good shape, and should be fun to race on. It's also warmed up to the mid-teens (they had highs in the low single digits earlier in the week), so the next few days should be ideal for racing.

Tomorrow, the races kick off with a 10km sprint. The only remaining logistical item that Jason and I have to figure out is the USBA "same wax" protocol. Which is a new on on me at a ski race, but it's supposed to make things easier on the athletes. I think that also assumes that athletes have coaches at these trials to pay attention to stuff like this though, which we do not. So, that might be an adventure.

Don't sleep on Byrncliff

Typically the first day on snow in western new york is on rock skis, skiing on thin-at-best snow. We drove out to Byrncliff today, which is a golf course about an hour west of Rochester. Byrncliff seems to always be forgotten among Rochester nordic folks (I even received an e-mail late Friday night that people were going to drive to Tug Hill in the middle of a blizzard, instead of the easy 1 hr drive to Byrncliff). However, they have a piston pully groomer, which knocked down the foot of lake effect snow they've gotten over the past two days. Conditions were awesome, 27F, sun and no wind, absolutely awesome day! The trails were in pretty good shape and they had almost all of their trail system groomed. Jason, Chad, Frenchy and I were out there at 845am (first cars in the parking lot). We skate skied for about an hour and forty minutes, then chad and frenchy had to leave, but jason and I got in another hour and twenty minutes classic skiing. I'm not much of a classic skier (though trying to improve), but anytime you can unequivocally guarantee that swix extra blue will be the kick wax of the day without even bringing a backup wax from the car, is definitely a good day to get some classic work in. By the time we left, the parking lot was full, and we saw a wide range of skiers out there enjoying the day.

Tomorrow we're headed back there for more of the same. Then, Jason and I have to pack up a whole bunch of stuff and get ready to join a whole mess of other US biathletes out in Minnesota for what should be a super-competitive series of races.

Creative workouts

The roads are currently too messy to roller ski (due to a nice mixture of rain, ice, snow, sleet, and a whole lot of wind) and there still isn't enough snow to ski. However, my gym has a machine that simulates running up stairs. Not exactly the same as hill bounding or as specific as roller skiing, but you play the cards your dealt. Today, I was able to do 6 x 3 minute intervals with the machine totally max-ed out, all on my lunch break. I was pretty cooked at the end. Incidentally, the rest of my department went to Sticky Lips BBQ for lunch (right next door to my gym).

Now I'm planning to do a couple light workouts the rest of the week and hopefully ski this weekend - it sounds like there's some sort of gnarly winter storm coming our way over the next few days, which might also produce some lake effect snow. With any luck, the roller skis might go away for good!

Andy's back!

The upcoming week is our annual mid-year sales conference. It's one of two times a year that all of our sales folks (who live all over the world) are in Rochester. It's a great chance for me to catch up with the sales people I work with on a daily basis but don't get a lot of face to face time with. The headline this year is that our direct account manager (Andrzej "Andy" Mazur) for Poland was able to make the trip. Andy's a retired Lt. Colonel from the Polish Air Force. He and I have developed a great relationship over the last few years and has really taught me a lot about the Polish culture and has given me insight into how to build solid business relationships in Central and Eastern Europe.

19 months ago I was in Warsaw for work. Andy picked me up on a Monday morning to go to a meeting and (as I understood later) Andy was suffering the beginning stages of a stroke throughout the morning. Andy's English has always been a little rough around the edges, but this particular day, he wasn't speaking at all and as we were driving from the meeting back to the Warsaw office he kept pointing at his throat. Being naive and unaware of what the warning signs of a stroke were (a mistake I will never make again), I figured he had laryngitis or had simply drank too much vodka over the weekend, I was wrong. When we got back to the office, I asked our engineer in Poland (Sylwek) to speak with him in Polish, and Sylwek immediately realized that Andy wasn't processing anything and something was wrong. To make matters worse, Andy (being a proud and stubborn dude) would get frustrated and go out an smoke cigarettes during this whole ordeal. Sylwek and I finally convinced Andy to go to the doctor and it turned out he suffered a stroke. After some really tough therapy he is almost 100% recovered. After 12 months he was back working and he was just recently cleared to travel, so he's in Rochester for the meeting.

I could care less if he ever sells a radio in Poland again, it's great to have my friend rocking and rolling! One of the blessings in disguise was that throughout the recovery process, Andy had to re-learn almost everything - one of the things he didn't relearn was how to smoke. Even though he couldn't partake, we did a "crazy dog" (shot of vodka with raspberry syrup and Tabasco, which layers like the Polish Flag) to celebrate his recovery this afternoon!

Andy's the one on the right below (Sylwek's on the left).

Apparently I did something terrible to Mother Nature in a previous lifetime

It took until my junior year of playing college baseball in the Northeast in snow, sleet and rain, before I finally realized that it doesn't do any good to worry about what mother nature's going to throw your way. It's much better just to adapt to whatever the weather is and move on. We still don't have any snow here, but today we made the best of it. Chad, Jason and I hammered out a time trial on roller skis this morning. It was good to get a full-gas 25 minute effort in some cold temps (I've been hacking up a lung all afternoon, but that's what I usually do driving home from the first race of the season, so that's out of my system now!). We did 1.5 laps of the GVCC Rush road course, which is one of the hillier bike courses we do during the Thursday night GVCC race series in the summer. It has two gradual climbs and one steep climb - I felt pretty good on the uphills, but didn't feel superfast on the flats and gradual downhills, overall though, it was tough and exactly what I needed, too bad it wasn't on snow, but still a good day. I think all three of us were pretty happy with the workout as a whole, and hopefully all three of us are getting faster!

crunch time...

The last few days were an absolute blur. Between hunting, training and hanging out with some high school buddies that were in from out of town, it was non-stop action. It was a great weekend, but I'm now looking forward to getting back into my routine for the next couple weeks and hopefully catching up on some sleep and laundry.

I went to the Bills game yesterday - we had about 30 people at our tailgate from several different friend groups, so it was great to catch up with some old friends I hadn't seen in a while. The best part about Bills games are the tailgate, the worst part about Bills games are Monday morning. I was not feeling 100% when I woke up this morning due to a few too many blue lights yesterday, apparently I'm getting too old for a serious tailgate these days!

We are leaving for Minnesota two weeks from Thursday, and it seems like there are a million things that need to happen between now and then, and there's still no snow in Rochester (or anywhere in NYS), but I've been training consistently am getting anxious more than anything else. Especially after seeing all the pictures online of the races in West Yellowstone and Canmore, in what look like awesome conditions.

Colin Robert Maynard

My sister-in-law gave birth to my first nephew yesterday. Here are a few pics of Colin (He looks like a catcher if you ask me!). 9 lbs, 21.5 inches.

He was sound asleep while we were visiting.
There's the proud parents!
If it seems like I'm really focussed in this picture, it's because very few things make me as nervous as holding an 18-hour-old baby...I've given sales pitches to Minister's of Defense and not thought twice about it, but let me tell you, I was pretty nervous when this picture was taken...

some days are long and some days are really loooong.

Timeline of my day thus far:

- woke up at 430am to go hunting

- success! got deer at 8am

- left parents at 1030am

- arrived at mendon ponds at 1105, put myself through tough interval workout and finished at 1pm

- ate pre-packed lunch, then met nancy at verizon store at 130, got new cell phone and combined our plans. For the first time in 8 months, I have a cell phone I can talk on for more than 3 minutes before the battery dies.

- drove to medved to get new pair of running shoes, sat in traffic for 30 min. afterwards on monroe ave due to people driving like idiots

- got home and showered

- drove to Doug The Barber and got a haircut

- sat in traffic again due to people driving like idiots, eventually got home

- waxed 4 pairs of skis and cleaned biathlon rifle (long overdue)

Now I'm watching meaningless tv and enjoying a beer...

Throughout the entire timeline above my sister-in-law has been in labor and my buddy kevin left tbilisi, georgia 7 hours before I got up and still isn't home (on supposedly the worst travel day of the year)...point being - no matter how long of a day you think you've had or how tired you may be or how much you think you've accomplished, someone out there has done more, so stop complaining!

Nothing better than time spent in the woods!

The last week was really hectic - two days in the office to catch up from being out of the office the previous week, then a three day offsite for the MDP program at work.

The offsite was very interesting - we did a 3-day seminar where we essentially ran a simulated company over a two year time period in competition with our fellow MDP classmates. My team did not do very well, but it was a great learning experience.

This was also a great week for training, even with the offsite meeting eliminating my lunchtime workout for three days, I managed to get my arse out of bed and workout in the morning and after work every day. Ultimately did three interval workouts and an TT on roller skis Saturday along with some easy runs and a nice long classic roller ski this morning.

This weekend was also opening day of deer season. I was up at 430am yesterday to drive out to my parents for the traditional opening day. I sat until about 11am (saw nothing but a lot of squirrels), then did the aforementioned TT (which went pretty well), then headed back out. While I came up empty in the deer category, it was a great day to be in the woods and (as it always is) a great escape from all the nonsense that corporate America can bring.

Also, my younger brother was in town from Philly with his girlfriend, so my parents cooked Thanskgiving dinner today. My dad cooked up an awesome deep fried turkey cajun style, which was great. My older brother, his wife (who's 5 days overdue with their 2nd child), and my niece Lauren came over as well. Here are a few pictures of the family get-together today.

My niece Lauren with her proud Grandpa.
Nancy and I
From right to left is my little brother Johnny and his girlfriend Theresa, my mom and dad, and nance. My parents used to live in Green Bay and my dad loves the Packers (as is obvious from his sweatshirt), but I think in his heart of hearts, he'd like to see the Brett Farve bring one home for the Vikings this year. I wonder how many Pack fans are in this conundrum (I'd be willing to bet more than ESPN will allow you to know).

This week coming up looks pretty hectic as well, but it's all good stuff - two days of work, some more hunting and training, then the Ogborne brothers are coming into town from Pheonix to hang out, and go to the Bills/Dolphins game next weekend, should be great!

Great teammates and friends

Andy's dinner was great last night. There was a nice mixture of his former teammates and family and friends. The picture below was the "couple's table" From right to left - Nancy (fiance), Sarah and Knodel (one of my roommates from college, left handed pitcher and an all-around goof-ball), Allison and Drew (same class as me, a great shortstop in his own right, and a great companion for 3 bonnoaroo's and countless other concerts), Crissy and Colin (was a freshman my senior year, ended up becoming an awesome catcher and lived with me for a few years after college - his parents also live in central vermont and have opened up their home on several occasions to both jason and I when we are in new england for ski races), and danny (played shortstop at RIT after drew graduated, and now works in alumni relations).

The picture below from right to left is George (works with me and has been brought into the "inner circle"), Brendan (same year as Andy, played left field for us and did a good bit of mashing as a hitter, he and I also split a basement at RIT for three months and worked together for a short period of time in a meat shipping warehouse on a night shift - definitely a living situation and a job that kept both of us motivated to stay in school!), Joe (he's basically the godfather of RIT baseball, two years older than me and used to pitch), Tim (senior my freshman year, really took me under his wing when I was acclimating to play at the college level, also was inducted into the hall of fame last year, had an error free senior season and hit .398 playing 2nd base), dan (from fairport and played baseball and football, played corner opposite andy on that 97 state championship team), kurt (also a fairport football/baseball guy and played baseball at RIT, threw a no-hitter in his final collegiate game, which was the only no-hitter I called, and that all happened 8 months after he tore his rotator cuff), kevin (works at Harris, is the sales guy for Georgia and originally from fairport) and berger (from fairport, played hockey at brockport and now lives in the Rochester area).
I didn't get any pictures of Andy's family, but they were there in full force, including his younger brother Jamie who also played baseball at RIT and was a freshman my senior year (Jamie, who lives in seattle and was a former state champion alpine skier, and I decided last night after several shots of jack daniels to win the "pole, paddle run" 2-man relay event in Bend, OR next April, I think we have a good chance). There were a few other people inducted last night, but over half the dinner was people there in support of Andy.

That got me thinking that I really am very lucky as I know a lot of former college athletes who aren't anywhere near as close with their former teammates as I am with mine. Not even pictured here are three of my other former classmates who couldn't make the trek back to rochester (although I know they wanted too), but will be integral parts of my wedding.

Pictures of big vehicles and an RIT HOF'er

Wouldn't a nice new tactical radio look great in these vehicles? I think they would, and we're hoping our customers agree...I took these at the Expomil trade show earlier today in Bucharest.

I fly home tomorrow and the weekend is shaping up to be a pseudo college reunion. One of my former teammates and a good friend named Andy Schild is being inducted in to the RIT athletics hall of fame Saturday night, and a bunch of former teammates are coming in to town to attend the ceremony, should be a fun one.

Andy was our shortstop and batted leadoff most of his 4-year career, and a big part of the reason I went there. He was a year older and I knew him as the shortstop from our rival high school team. When I was still undecided in June of my senior year of high school, he met up with me, at our coaches request, and convinced me that RIT would be a good fit for academics and baseball (nowadays he has a career in sales, so that might have been his first one!). By the time his career wrapped up, he had (and still holds) career records for hits, runs, stolen bases, and assists (among probably a few others). Incidentally, he was a 3-sport star in high school winning a state title in football (which he still talks about at length whenever the opportunity arrises) and skiing in the Alpine Junior Olympics. Since he, like many engineering students at RIT, was in a 5-year program, he was able to ski his fifth year, after running out of baseball eligibility. Having not raced in 5 years, he still managed to qualify for NCAA championships for skiing. So in summary, he was a pretty good athlete - I still give him a hard time about going bald at 23, but you have to give your friends crap from time to time just to keep them honest!

Offset

I made it to Bucharest this afternoon as planned.

Tomorrow morning I'm meeting with the Romanian Offset Agency (a department in the ministry of finance). Offset is one of the more unique responsibilities I have as a program manager. I could write a book on the complexities of offset, but the basic gyst of it is that since a country (in this case Romania) is giving contracts to foreign companies (in my case a US company), the foreign company is responsible for investing a certain amount in the Romanian economy to "offset" the money being given to the foreign company. The concept is great, however, the implementation is loaded with so much bureaucracy in some places that I question the actual economic impact of some of these programs. The rules vary from country to country and I've heard that The Netherlands and the UK have laws which are conducive to investments that would actually benefit the economy, but in Poland and Romania, you have to negotiate very specific projects and associated values of those projects. In most cases, we do things like open a maintenance center with a local company, or transfer cable manufacturing to a local company. In Poland, we actually outsource a product from a local engineering firm, but if a project doesn't fit into a very specific "bucket" the government isn't interested in it, even if it would create jobs, etc.

I think everyone who does business internationally should negotiate an offset contract for the experience of it. You basically have no leverage in the negotiation and you have to convince these offset agencies (who are independent from our end user groups) that a project is worth a given value or will create a specific tangible economic benefit, without much data to actually back up some of those claims. They are not incentivized to agree to anything because they're an independent agency, not a customer. You are almost 100% dependent on your relationship with these people to get them to agree to approve the projects that your company wants to do - which is why I always stop in and see these folks whenever I'm in town, even if it's just to say hi and update them on the status of our offset execution. I've found that meeting face to face with these people goes a long way toward building trust with them.

Dear France, here I come

So, I'm leaving for Romania tomorrow and apparently my deposits in the karma bank have not been sufficient recently because tomorrow I am flying through JFK (known to be awful) and Charles De Gaullie in Paris (presumed to be awful). I've never flown through Paris (and this will be my first time on French soil) before but I've also never heard anyone who's had a good experience in that airport, and I've heard of a lot of people who have had nightmare experiences there...but, maybe I should just be thankful I've been able to avoid that airport thus far.

My extremely biased opinion of France is that they're much worse than Alabama and even further worse than Massachusetts in my list of "cultural places I hate." So, we'll see how it goes...

The good news is that Bucharest is a great city (except for the traffic) and I am looking forward to seeing some of the friends I've met over the last couple years over there.

Winter around the corner

I saw a few snow flakes this morning, which was a welcome sight considering it had been about 40 and cold rain all week. Although, it did feel good to rollerski in winter gear this week, and get that first super hard workout in cold weather out of the way. Also, with daylight savings ending, it's completely dark when I leave work, so headlamp season is officially upon us. We're also starting to get into that gray area where the roads are sometimes too messy to roller ski, but there still isn't snow yet, so we have to get creative occasionally.

The last three weeks have been really good training. I'll be in Romania next week so it will be a lighter week on the workout front, but that's a good thing, since I'm starting to feel a little drained, and it should give me a chance to recover. It's also a good thing for business reasons, or at least we hope so! Six weeks until we leave for Minnesota, and the snow can't get here fast enough!

The future of US Biathlon

Jason, Frenchy and I ran an air rifle clinic today for the local Bill Koch Youth skiing group. About 20 kids came out and had a blast. We had all the kids shoot at the air rifle targets (everyone hit at least one target), then we did a relay race.

sometimes it doesn't come free

I was not feeling super-motivated this morning when my alarm clock went off - the weather was crappy, I had a long week at work and was feeling pretty drained, and all of my regular training partners had other stuff going on, so I was flying solo. Nonetheless, I ended up getting in a pretty decent interval workout on roller skis. I resorted to my 4th favorite training partner - my iPod Nano with the Yonder Mountain String band on shuffle repeat.

I don't care who you are, some days are just difficult to muster the motivation to get in quality training, and I've found that occasionally allowing myself to use a mental crutch like listening to music can be the difference between getting a full workout in or not.

Getting after IT

Sometimes you need to watch a replay of the Miracle on Ice for inspiration, sometimes you just need to see what I saw last night.

Last night I did a hill-bounding workout at Cobbs Hill. It was a good workout, but nothing noteworthy except for one thing. There was a guy who looked to be 70 years old running hill repeats from Highland Ave all the way up to the Reservoir! They weren't the fastest or the most graceful, but it was obvious he was giving everything he had.

While at work earlier in the day, I heard the quote "The only difference between a dream and a goal is a due date." I'm not sure what this guy was working towards, but he was working towards a GOAL, and he was making it happen. It doesn't matter that his goal would seem inconsequential to most people, it doesn't even matter what his goal is - he was out there in crappy weather with no one watching, no coach screaming at him, and conceivably every excuse in the world to throw in the towel, but kept pushing. I think they should cancel "The Biggest Loser" and follow around people like this guy instead.

So you have to run downhill fast also?

This weekend was a classic fall weekend in Rochester - great foliage and poor weather reports. However, this time the weather folks got it wrong in our favor. The weather Saturday was supposed to be cold, raining and windy, instead it was about 60 with no rain and occasional wind. So, Jason, Chad and I took advantage of the good weather and did a 3.5 hour skate roller ski. I felt pretty rocked afterwards but also pumped that not only was I able to get through it, I was feeling great almost the entire ski.

Today, I did a XC running race at Ithaca College. Going to IC brought back some great memories from my baseball-playing days as the RIT/Ithaca weekend was always one that was circled on my calendar, and some of my best memories in a baseball uniform happened on their field. As anyone that's been to Ithaca, NY can attest, there's no shortage of hills in that neck of the woods, and the course today included some of them. Overall, it was an ok race, I pushed hard on the uphills, but really didn't run the downhills well at all, it seemed like a lot of guys were running the downhills very aggressively, where I was running the downhills trying to not break any ankles. These races are really just a piece of my training regiment for the winter (obviously, since I did a marathon roller ski yesterday), so I'm not really that worried that I didn't set any PR's, but it was a little frustrating to pass several people on every uphill only to see them fly past me on the downhills. No big deal though, I was happy with the race effort (avg hr 181 bpm) and am in general happy with where my fitness level is, especially since my focus recently has been on getting ready for ski season and not on running fast.

I'm looking forward to getting back into a normal routine this week. This will be the first week in the last month and a half where I will be in the office and won't have any customers in town. Now, I'm going to hopefully watch the Bills get their season back on track (not holding my breath though). Final note - Nancy and I picked a date and location for the wedding - 11 June 2010 at Bristol Harbor!

"Get the Moose on the Table"

I am currently in a Management Development Program at work. Essentially the gyst of the program is that we meet roughly once a week and there is a guest speaker who is or has been a successful leader in the business world. The program just started two weeks ago but I'm very excited about listening to advice from different executives and getting their take on leadership and being successful in the business world. I have my own opinions on the best way to be a leader, but most of those come from my athletic background, so I'm always interested to hear people from different backgrounds explain their path to success and the lessons they learned along the way.

Today was our second speaker. His background was in engineering and he had a lot of experience bringing new products to market. He told a very interesting story about going to the Xerox tech park (a place legendary for innovation) in 1978 and seeing a drawing of what looked almost exactly like the Dell Latitude laptop that seems to be standard issue in corporate America right now. The point of his story is that sometimes great visions can't happen overnight. He explained that this is referred to as "The Colorado Principle" which he explained to mean "don't mistake a clear vision as a short vision." The Colorado reference makes sense when you picture driving near the Rockies - the mountains always look very clear, but you can never tell how close they really are.

He also had a saying that will likely enter my list of commonly used phrases. He was explaining how to deal with issues with external partnerships (i.e. joint ventures, jointly developed products, etc.), when he threw in this classic "It's always best to 'get the moose on the table' right up front". The moose being whatever the root cause or issue is between the two parties - basically, don't dance around the heart of the problem, get the cards on the table. He also recommended several books on management and leadership. Overall, very interesting presentation.

"Toughness training"

I've read on a few fasterskier blogs recently the term "toughness training" in reference to training in bad weather. I believe the meaning of the term is that training in less than ideal conditions can help with mental toughness, which absolutely is a huge ally to a competitive nordic skier, because it's very rare that the weather and snow conditions on race day are exactly what you were hoping for. I was thinking about this today while doing a 2.5 hour classic roller ski with Jason in 38 degrees/raining weather, and decided that I'd much rather be doing a long workout in those conditions than trying to pound out a decent distance workout running on the treadmill below, which was my nemisis earlier this week in Georgia. I'm sure everyone has a different opinion on this, but personally, there is no workout that I struggle for motivation with more than cranking out an hour+ on a treadmill by myself. It could also have to do with my less than stellar opinion of mother nature after having played baseball in the Northeast for the first 22 years of my life, there aren't many things she can throw at me that's going to surprise me much!

On another note, still no word on where my bag is and I can't even get anyone at Turkish Air to speak to me. I'm also much more jet-lagged than usual. You'd think I'd have this dialed in by now, but to tell you the truth, I pretty much follow the same process every time for re-adjusting to the 7-8 hour time difference and sometimes I adjust quickly and sometimes I don't, and can't really explain it. Maybe it's like a bad hangover - you can try a bunch of different things, but time is the only thing that's really going to help you. Who knows...

Georgia

I landed in Georgia this past Sunday afternoon and have been on the go ever since I landed. The typical working hours here are 10am until around 7pm. Each night this week, we've also been to dinner with customers and our local partners here in Tbilisi. A typical Georgian dinner involves a lot of great food (pesticides are illegal here, so everything is organic) and a lot of vodka. For each dinner a "Tamada" is appointed, and he's responsible for all the toasts for the night, and all proper toasts end with a shot of vodka, so depending on the tamada, it can turn into a rough night in a hurry.

There are a few places that we always seem to end up going to dinner - among them is what Kevin and I have nicknamed the "Winfield - Tbilisi". The Winfield is our local neighborhood bar back in Rochester and the Winfield - Tbilisi is our friend and local partner Ivane's local bar (he lives 30 feet from the door) and is a regular. Ivane is an extremely successful business owner and is involved in a lot of different industries in Tbilisi. He's also an an absolute party animal - this is extremely difficult to explain to people that haven't met him, but the best analogy I can make is that Lebron James was born to play basketball, Wayne Gretzky was born to play hockey, Lance Armstrong was born to ride a bike and Ivane was born to party like a rock star and wake up the next day on 2 hours sleep and function like a kick-ass business man (which he is as well). Pictured below is Temuri, Irakli Kevin and Alex after a dinner at the Winfield - Tbilisi.

We did have a little down time on Wednesday and Lasha (who works for our dealer) took us to a cave city outside of Tbilisi that was built in the 7th century BC. It was quite a unique place. Here's a picture of Kevin Lasha and I standing outside of the royal palace of the cave city.

I also managed to get in some decent workouts in the morning, usually between 45min to an hour on the treadmill. Not exactly the type of volume that is ideal, but better than nothing. Running on a treadmill for an hour is also a test of mental toughness, as it's probably the most mind-numbing workout I can think of.

This was a very productive trip for work, but also pretty exhausting. Right now, I'm back home, it took 28 hours to get home yesterday and my luggage is still in Istanbul (supposedly). I'm pretty beat, but the temperatures here in Rochester are cold and it's pumping me up for some quality training this weekend! We may even see a few flakes of snow later on today.

Travel Checklist

I leave for Tbilisi, Georgia in the morning. To avoid confusion, that's not the state of Georgia, that's a small country in Central Asia that used to be part of the Soviet Union, but has since done everything in their power to separate themselves from their neighbors to the north (Russia). I could go on a political rant about how our current president is hanging them (and Poland) out to dry by being wishy-washy, but I will spare the interweb with my "howlings at the moon".

This will be my 17th overseas trip for work to either Eastern Europe or Central Asia, and over my previous trips I've picked up some routines that make long-haul travelling a little more manageable both physically and mentally. As I was packing tonight, I started to realize that I do pack a few things that most people wouldn't consider, or at least that I wouldn't have thought about a few years ago, but are now necessities in my book (sometimes from lessons learned the hard way!). Among my rules/procedures that I consider unbreakable include:

- Take two multivitamins on travel days and one for each day you are gone - you never really know what you're eating on the road, and anything you can do to keep some consistency with your immune system and your vitamin intake is crucial to avoid getting sick. Nothing will rock your immune system like a 12 hour plane ride followed by eastern european moonshine and food that you're not used too, so give yourself the best chance to come out healthy.

- Wear Smartwool socks and comfortable shoes on travel days. It will take me 28 hours to get from my house tomorrow to my hotel in Tbilisi on Sunday (if everything is on time), every little bit helps, and don't underestimate how much comfortable feet can contribute to your overall mentality after travelling for 28 hours! Same deal on the way home.

- For every day I'm gone, I bring 2 clif bars or odwalla bars. For breakfast everyday, I have one of these (usually after my morning run). It's also always a possibility that I might be in meetings all day and miss lunch, so these lightweight, high calorie bars can serve as good meal substitutes. Additionally, in many cases, I'm not in control of what or when I'm eating next, and both of these products are things that I'm used to, and I know I get adequate nutrients out of.

- Never, ever travel without some basic pharmaceutical products (tylonol, advil, imodium, etc). Previously, I've only had one instance where I felt I was seriously sick from something I ate, and I've been lucky in that respect compared to some of the horror stories I've heard from co-workers. But still, the lesson learned during that instance (which was in Macedonia), was that there are not too many things that leave you with a more helpless feeling than being sick, dehydrated and unable to eat anything in a foreign country where no one speaks the same language and you don't know how to get help. The tylonol or advil can also come in handy when your customers like vodka as much as mine do!

- Bring an empty water bottle - it's a good idea to bring as much water with you as possible for a long plane ride, but also, when working-out on the road, many hotels have water coolers in their gyms, and not anywhere else, and when you're trying to keep up some type of workout regiment and all of your other time is spent on a roller coaster ride between alcohol and caffeine, it's important to stay as hydrated as possible.

- Don't be bashful about listening to songs that remind you of home repeatedly. Especially when on the road alone, where you're completely dependent on others who barely speak your language, it's easy to get frustrated and/or homesick (and there's nothing wrong with that), but it's very important to remember things that are familiar to you occasionally. For me, I usually throw on a little Yonder Mountain String Band or Phish, and I'm mentally back in the saddle!

That's all for now, I'll hopefully post with pictures from Tbilisi next week.

Search for a wedding location and some shooting practice

For the last few days Nancy and I have been checking out a few places in an attempt to try to pick a location for our wedding next year. We haven't made any decisions yet, but Bristol Harbor is the current front runner, mainly because of the view below.

I have been down in this neck of the woods often over the years cycling, but usually I don't enjoy this awesome view of Canandaigua Lake because when you see this view when cycling, it means that you'll be climbing bopple hill within a few minutes, and anyone who's done that on a bike (or in a car) understands that bopple hill is about as steep as it's possible to pave a road.

Today, did a classic roller ski followed by a running and shooting workout at my parents place. They've graciously allowed us to set up a couple targets on their property, so Jason, Frenchy, Chad and I got in some good shooting practice today. Here's a picture of Jason and Chad doing some 1-shot drills.

This week will be filled with some really tough intensity workouts. I'm leaving for Tbilisi, Georgia on Saturday for a week, and will be relegated to the hotel treadmill while on the road, and I realized on my last trip to Georgia that they don't have any treadmills that go faster than a 6 min/mile pace, but it does have an incline though!

Hectic week

After the crash, I took a couple days easy on the training, but since Wednesday have been able to string together a few really quality days of volume training, mostly on roller skis. This week was also especially hectic at work with Thursday taking the cake - went in to work at 7, ran 5 miles on the treadmill at lunch, went back to work until about 430pm, met chad and jason at Mendon Ponds to roller ski, then took three guys from our dealer in Bulgaria to dinner at the Dinosaur BBQ (picture below).

Pictured above are are Scott (who works with me), Yonko, me, Nasko and Nasko. The thing I enjoy most about the opportunity to travel that my job provides is the people I've met along the way. I met Yonko and Nasko #2 the first time I went to Bulgaria three years ago and they are awesome guys and good friends.

On a different topic, the weather in Rochester has been as sporadic as ever, but I'm getting the feeling that winter is just around the corner because we're starting to see folks outside of my core training group out on roller skis!!

Altamont Circuit Race - Sometimes it's just not your day

The last bike race of the season was Sunday in Altamont, NY. I drove out to the race with Rick, Phil and Chad, who will all be teammates of mine next season on the new Solo Break Racing team. I decided to do this race to get to know Rick and Phil a little better and thought it would be a fun way to wrap up biking season for the winter, and switch gears to roller skiing more to gear up for ski season. When we showed up to the race, I had a broken rear spoke, so my rear wheel was a little wobbly to begin with. Great way to start the day.

The race course was 7 laps of a fast, flat 3.8 mile circuit. The race was going fairly well as the field seemed to be thinning down, and all of the SBR guys were still in the main field. I was feeling pretty good, I tried a few attacks, but didn't have much in the way of acceleration. There were a few small breaks, but overall, it wasn't a super aggressive race. On lap 5, a guy to my right veered into me and right after that, a guy on my left moved to his right...anyways, I ended up locking handlebars with one of the two and went down hard. I ended up very lucky that I only had some bad road rash, a broken helmet, and a broken front wheel. A few other riders went down as well including Chad, who's seat broke, and also had some cuts and bruises. Thankfully, everyone escaped major injury. I wish someone had a video of this, because I ended up on the opposite side of the road from my bike. Not sure exactly what happened, but Rick and Phil both said it was ugly looking. One guy that went down broke his front fork and his wheel got catapulted about 20 yards into the woods. The first responders were on the scene of the crash within minutes and did a great job patching us up. Rick and Phil both finished the race with Phil taking 9th and Rick taking 12th after a long solo attack that got caught right before the line.

So, not the best way to put the bike away for the winter, but, all things considered, I feel like I dodged a bullet. Now, I'm looking forward to the snow falling! Lots of roller skiing and running to do over the next two months.

On a different note, Chad and I were out roller skiing on Saturday in Mendon and saw an actual Moped rally...literally 40 mopeds all riding together. I was speechless...It's not often that one is out roller skiing, and not the strangest looking spectacle on the road!

First Post

Hello...Is this on??

Well, I have resisted facebook thus far, so this may seem a little strange that I would start a blog. I am pretty sure no one is going to read this, but I've been thinking about doing this for a few months to keep track of my travels (both business and personal) as well as my extracurricular activities - mainly skiing, cycling, running, general fitness, beer drinking, etc. I figure if nothing else, I'll have an electronic diary of the chaotic lifestyle I've been leading, and maybe I'll use my digital camera a little more.