Marty Maynard

Home, happy and thankful

2011-12-24T03:40:00.001-08:00

I just got back from another trip to Netherlands and Georgia. It was a relatively uneventful trip overall, busy with work almost constantly, but I guess this is what I signed up for. I will say that it did feel different being away from home so close to the holidays. Thankfully, the airlines all came through for me and I got through the 25 hour trip back from Tbilisi smoothly.

I have the next week off from work and am really looking forward to staying home and in one place for a little bit. I have a feeling that 2012 might be crazier than 2011 if that's possible, but for the next 9 days, I'm not going to worry about that. I'm going to enjoy being in Rochester and hopefully get some skiing in, although there's still nothing on the ground here. I'm also looking forward to the next few days of seeing some of the friends and family in the area. Overall, I just wanted to quickly say that I'm back in Rochester, happy to be here and thankful.

Happy Holidays!

West Yellowstone recap

2011-11-29T09:37:00.000-08:00

As I said, his post would come in rapid succession following my previous post.

After getting back from Philly on Sunday, I headed to West Yellowstone, MT on a plane leaving at 6am Monday morning. Every year there is a massive ski festival that takes place in West Yellowstone the week of Thanksgiving. It's a common gathering point for passionate XC skiers of all ages and abilities to start the season and this would be my first time participating in the festival. I am relatively certain that I saw more XC skiers last week than I will see the rest of the year combined.

The trails were in mid-winter conditions and the weather was pretty good throughout the week. Basically every day I was there was pretty much the same - get up, eat breakfast, classic ski for 2ish hours, shower, eat lunch, relax for about two hours, skate ski for 2ish hours, eat dinner and go to sleep early. It was definitely the type of groundhog day I could get used to! Also on the trip was my buddy Jason and several of the RNR juniors as well as Duncan and two of his kids (who are high school skiers for HF-L), so there was a decent contingent from the Rochester area.

This week is also the first SuperTour races of the year, which is essentially the highest level of racing in the North America, the top skiers in the US and Canada are on the World Cup in Europe, so the SuperTour is basically the Triple-A series for nordic ski racing. For the top skiers in the US that aren't on the USST, these races were huge as the winner of the overall series for the first two weekends, gets an automatic starting spot in the next World Cup series, so there were a lot of people specifically trying to peak for these races. There were also a lot of other skiers like me that were there mainly for training, but jumped into the races to get a hard workout in and get the first races of the year out of the way. There were 3 race options throughout the week, however, I only opted to race once as the main thing I wanted to get out of the week was a maximum amount of training volume. The race I opted for was a 15km skate race on the 2nd to last day of the trip. As far as the actual race it was pretty much what I expected - painful - it was the first race of the year, which always hurts; it was at 7,000 feet altitude; and I was doing the race after skiing about 4 hours each of the preceding 4 days, so I didn't put a lot of stock in the result of the race. It went ok, and I felt like I skied pretty well, but was definitely feeling the effects of the week. Nonetheless, it was good to put a race bib on and go for it. It was also a really cool atmosphere with so many people out on course watching the race and cheering for everyone. The course seemed pretty brutal, there were two big hills and the rest of it was constantly rolling, so not a lot of rest, but definitely a good course to put in a hard effort on.

Overall, the week was a success as I skied over 18 hours, hopefully made some technique improvements and competed in super-competitive race on tough course. In addition to that, it was also great to be in the same place as so many people that are as passionate about skiing as I am and to remember why skiing is so awesome and why we spend so much time roller skiing, hill bounding, trail running and, for me at least, so much time on treadmills the other 7 months of the year!

Ok, enough of my banter, here are some pictures from the week:
Jason, Stefan (former RNR junior, now a sophomore at the Air Force Academy) and Gavin (junior at Pittsford).

This is the full Rochester group shot except for Jason (who took the picture).

Jason trailside after the race on Friday. The sun was out almost every day and I don't think I've ever seen a sky so blue. I guess there's a reason they call it Big Sky country.

Jason in the 15km race. All of the race pictures were taken on "Telemark Hill" (coutesy of Mike Wojick). The hill was really steep near the top.

Me on the hill. Notice the dude with the Middlebury ski jacket and purple scarf. Not sure what that face is all about.

I know what that face is all about, this part of the course really hurt!

Gavin was the only junior from Rochester to race. It was his first 15km, and he couldn't have picked a tougher course to make his debut on, but he hung in there and fought hard.

Here's the trailhead.

A picture from the parking lot outside the trailhead.

The day after the race (Saturday) I was set to fly home around 1:30pm and wanted to squeeze in one last distance ski. So, I convinced Stefan to head out for a skate overdistance ski with me starting at 6am. As you can see, it was a little cold (that's not a typo and it's not in Celsius). Once we got going, it was an awesome ski and we saw the sunrise, which was pretty impressive. One of those skis that reminded me of why I love to ski so much (generally speaking though, almost every time I skied all week I was reminded of that). After the ski, Stefan gave me a ride up to Bozeman and I flew home without incident. When I arrived home however, it was 55 degrees out - that's 75 degrees warmer than it was in the picture above. Think about that - I flew to Rochester, NY (not exactly a place known for it's balmy temperatures this time of year) and it was 75 degrees warmer than where I started my day. Not sure if that'll ever happen again.

I feel really lucky to have been able to go on this trip and am very excited for the winter to come. Now, we just need mother nature to cooperate a little in the Northeast and get us some snow!

Wedding season finale

2011-11-24T12:10:00.000-08:00

Ok, these next two posts will come in rapid succession because I've been very busy being very busy and haven't had time to post here.

Two weekends ago was my brother John's wedding in Philly. Nancy and I went down to Philly on Wednesday night and stayed with our close friends the Schneider's for a couple days before the wedding festivities kicked off. In addition to frightening a few dogs in the Schwenksville, PA area that saw me roller skiing around Scott's neighborhood, we also spent some great time with them and went to a Bela Fleck and the Flecktones show. We also drove an hour each way to go to a beer store in Allentown, PA, which may sound like a long way to go for beer, but it was like Beers of the World on steroids, defintely worth the drive. It was a great time all around.

Moving on to Friday night, we had the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner.

Saturday was the big show - the ceremony was at 2pm at a church in Media, PA and the reception was at a very nice country club in West Chester, PA. If was a very nice day and we're very happy to welcome Theresa into the family.

Here are some pictures:
This is a picture of all the Maynard family in attendance, except for John and Theresea who were off doing other bride and groom activities during the cocktail hour.

Keith and his youngest daughter Megan.

Sueann, Keith, Nancy and I.

My parents with John and Theresea.

Here's all the groomsmem before the ceremony - left to right - Harry (Theresea's brother), Matt, Keith, John, Tommie (best man), me, Jason (nicknamed Veggie) and Kyle (nicknamed Zorro).

John and Theresea just sitting down for dinner.

The day after the wedding we drove back to Rochester, I spent about 12 hours at home before heading to the airport to leave for West Yellowstone, Montana...

Long sleeve shirts in Rotterdam

2011-11-13T15:17:00.000-08:00

I got home last Wednesday from a 10 day trip to Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Germany again. It was pretty hectic and I was moving hotels almost every night, but I was able to pack a lot in to the trip. I'm also slowly becoming a little more familiar with the different areas of these countires. As with most countries, there are regional disagreements. In Belgium, this is a pretty serious situation between the Flemish speaking region and the French speaking region. The disagreements have essentially brough the political process there to a standstill for the past couple years.

In Holland, they also have some differences, but from what I've gathered, there are less serious. They seem to be NY-Boston type of rivalry between Rotterdam and Amsterdam. The way it was explained to me is the following - people from Rotterdam think people from Amsterdam are stuck up, over educated and all talk, conversely people from Amsterdam think people from Rotterdam are ignorant and have no culture. Anyways, our local partner there is a "Rotterdamer" and proud of it, and he had a great one-liner - "If you buy a long sleeve shirt in Rotterdam, the sleeves come rolled up, so you're ready to go to work right away."

I had one free day on this trip and was able to see some of downtown Brussels. I also visited the Delerium Cafe on the recommendation of my buddy Scott. It was quite a journey finding the place, but I eventually made it, only to find it closed...after I'd been walking around for most of the afternoon. Anyways, I found a place around the corner which had some type of affiliation with the Cafe and sampled some of the Abbey beers there. Here are some pictures from the trip:

Old looking cathedral in Brussels.

City street in Brussels.

Massive cathedral in center city area of Brussels. This was only one section, my camera didn't have a wide enough lens to get the whole thing.

Here's the place that was closed.

Here's a shot of the place I found inside. The barrels served as tables.

They had like 300 beers available. It's a good thing Scott had given me a recomended list before I went to this place because I'd never heard of any of these.

This is a church in a small town in Northern Germany near Kempen.

Center city of that city.

Definitely a cool area, there was some type of festival going as well when we were there.

I'm headed to Philly for my brother's wedding and on to West Yellowstone on Monday, where the skiing looks to be shaping up to be amazing.

Penultimate wedding of 2011

2011-11-05T01:22:00.001-07:00

I'm a few blog posts behind, so I'll try to catch up over the next few days. Last weekend was our 2nd to last wedding of the year. It's been a pretty hectic year with a lot of weddings of all types (in-town, out-of-town, traditional, non-traditional, etc). Nancy's college roomate Sarah (also one of the bridesmaids in our wedding) got married to a very close friend of Nancy's brother Doug, who's also from Penfield. Needless to say, there was a lot of "wow, it's a pretty small world" going on. They did everything for the wedding themselves and all of the food was locally grown or raised, which was a very cool concept. In addition to it being a cool concept, I'm more than certain it took an incredible amount of work and planning, but everything went off without a hitch and was excellent. Overall, it was a very unique wedding, but I think it was exactly what they wanted it to be. I hope that Sarah and Sky will be documenting everything that they did to pull this off, as I'm sure it would be a great case study in project management. Anyways, here are some pictures.

Sarah and Sky.

There were a lot of Colgate Alum there. Nancy's 2nd from the left and her brother Doug is in the back with the beard. One other item of note - Sky went to Dartmouth, so there were also a lot of his college friends there - apparently they have a dance that they teach to all incoming freshman. In the middle of the dancing portion of the night, they cleared the dancefloor and all the Dartmouth alum did this syncronized dance, which was one of the more impressive things I've seen recently.

Nancy and I contemplating whether to go to the snack setup or go hit up the lawn games during cocktail hour. The beer for the wedding was from Custom Brewcrafters (sticking with the locally produced theme) and everyone was issued a mason jar to drink out of for the night.

The guitarist (Ben) on the left also happened to be a teammate of mine in little league, high school and college baseball and we coached for several years together after college. He is also a great guitarist and Sky's brother-in-law, hence his involvement in the wedding. It was great to catch up with Ben and hopefully I'l be doing some coaching with him again soon.

As I mentioned, this was out 2nd to last wedding of 2011. The last one is a big one - my brother John is getting married down in Philly two weeks from today, so I'm definitely looking forward to that. I'm currently in Belgium and have been bouncing around a lot the last week. I'll be in Germany early next week then get home Wednesday night.

Lots to say, not a lot of time to say it....

2011-10-22T16:51:00.000-07:00

just a very quick post to say the following:
- I went to Georgia, had a very productive trip.
- had a really long trip home.
- enjoyed a great weekend with the Ogbornes celebrating the life of their wonderful mother and wish I could have spent more time with both Ron and Rob and their great families.
- follwing that, I received an Ali-style knockout punch for 4ish days. I was boomerang-ing between a temperature of 103 and about 95, going back and forth between shivering and exploding with heat. I was easily the sickest I've been in at least 10 years, couldn't get off the couch for anything. Went to the doctor, they were useless...and I say "they" because I never actually saw my doctor (although I did speak to two others), even though this is the first time I've tried to see him in like 5 years. In fact, couldn't even get him on the phone over the course of 4 days. F-ing useless, anyone know a good general physician?
- things seem to have turned around, but I'm pretty exhausted.
- had to skip the trip to Texas with Nance. I spend so much time travelling alone, not that fun that I had to drop my wife off at an airport for a plane I was supposed to be on with her, also had to cancel dinner plans with my Uncle in Houston who I rarely get to see, bummer all around...
-I will say one thing though - Delta refunded the full price of my ticket - as much as people slam the airlines, that was cool...I didn't expect that at all, and they upgraded Nance to first class on the way there, so pretty sweet...

So, as much as this post might sound negative, I always try to be a half-full sort of person...I'm looking forward and not back...but I will say one thing looking back
- Here's to you Mrs. O: You were too amazing of a person for me to describe here, and you left the world a better place than you found it!!

Knodel's wedding

2011-10-09T10:39:00.001-07:00

I tried to come up with a witty or creative title for this post, but it's actually pretty straight-forward. My good buddy from college Matt got married last weekend in Buffalo and I was extremely honored to be apart of it. Matt and I were teammates and roomates in college and for another year after college. Since then, he's settled in Buffalo where I've hung out with him quite a bit over the years. For a while after college, Nancy lived in Buffalo and it seemed like I was there every weekend hanging with that crew.

There were a lot of other RIT baseball alum at the wedding including my other college roomates. Since I missed alumni weekend this year, it was the first time I'd seen many of those guys in over a year if not longer. I'm always amazed that we all came together at the same school at the same time and became such close friends and although we don't see eachother that often, as soon as we come together, it's like we've seen eachother everyday for the past ten years.

The weekend kicked off on Thursday night, when I made it to Matt's house after getting lost in Buffalo (my GPS led me awry again). I stayed Thursday and Friday at the house of another college buddy, Doogie (pics below) and helped Matt with wedding prep stuff and met up with a bunch of other Buffalo friends. The rehearsal dinner was Saturday at Pearl St and the wedding was Sunday in Delaware Park. The whole weekend was a blur and went by too fast, but it was great to see everyone and great to see Matt and Sarah so happy on their big day. Oh, and we also made sure to act like college-age guys as much as possible. Here are some pictures:

Sarah and Matt right after the ceremony.

This is us waiting for Sarah to come down the aisle.
Matt and Sarah's lovely daughter Julia, also the flower girl.

Three sharply dressed gentleman, if I do say so myself.
Here's the RIT baseball alumni picture. As always Joe B in the orange tie (future mayor of Rochester) is front and center.
Two outfielders, a pitcher and a catcher walk into a bar...Left to right - Brendan, Doogie, Joe and I.
Erin and Jeff, Ski and Courtney. Interestingly enough, I have a friend that we all call "Ski" that doesn't ski at all.

...and for two random pictures from the weekend:

The day before the wedding we had some time to kill before the rehearsal, so logically enough, a few of us found ourselves in a bar. The people in the picture are (L-R) George, Allison, Drew and Jeff (also a groomsmen). Two things that are unexplainable in this picture - 1) what is Jeff doing with his phone? 2) it appears that he's drinking his beer with a straw. This might be ok for some people, but Jeff sells beer for a living...here's to hoping Sam Adams never gets a hold of this pic.

On the way walking to that bar, I saw this sign. I am very happy to know that in the event of a nuclear attack, I know that I can go to this church to avoid any danger.

All in all, it was a great weekend, although it did take a few days to recover from (getting too old to act like I'm in college, if you get my drift), but it's always great to see everyone and worth every second of the time we get to see each other.

I'm currently writing this from the JFK airport on my way to Georgia. I get home on Friday and the Ogborne's are in town this weekend. I'm looking forward to seeing their ever-expanding family. Although I do wish the circumstances were better, it will be great to see them nonetheless. Hopefully I will have time to update again in the next few days.

13.1 miles, take 2

2011-09-29T10:32:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I ran my 2nd half marathon. I ran my first one earlier this year on very little specific running training. With all the travel I've had over the past couple months, I'm not in town all that much on the weekends so I wanted to pick a race that I knew I would be in town for, focus on it and train pretty specifically for it and also try a few different things in the week leading up to the race. The idea being to finetune my rest and nutrition in the 3-5 days before a big event (of which, I have several this winter).

I found this race a couple months ago that seemingly no one I knew had heard. It was called the Niagara Hospice Dash in Niagara Falls. This was the first year they had a half-marathon option (previously it was only a 5k). I knew I would be in town and with the proximity, it also gave me an opportunity to visit my Grandfather, who lives in Lewiston. The race course started in Artpark in Lewiston, which incidentally is about 3/4 mile away from the house that my Grandparents used to live and my mom grew up in. The course went through Lewiston, north along the Lower Niagara, through Fort Niagara (literally through the Fort) and continued north to the finish line in Youngstown. It was an extremely well run event and also included a lot of water stations and live music at several points on the course, which was very cool.

The race itself went pretty well, I finished in 1:25:41 (6:33/mile pace), which is about the pace I was expecting and was 4 minutes faster than I ran in Buffalo earlier this year. Additionally, the 2nd half of the race was as fast as the first half, which is probably the first time that's ever happened for me in a running race. I usually start way too fast and slow down big time. So, I took that as a positive sign for both my pacing and my fitness level. Also, I think my nutritional strategy worked well as I never felt out of gas and was even able to pick up the pace pretty well in the last mile.

The visit with my grandpa was also a nice added benefit as I don't get enough opportunities to visit him with my travel schedule.

Tonight, I'm headed to Buffalo for my good friend Matt Knodel's wedding. There's sure to be a story or two to come out of the next 4 days...stay tuned for the blog recap of that one!

Three countries and two states later...

2011-09-20T13:30:00.001-07:00

It's been far too long since I've updated this. Since my last post, I spent another week and a half in Germany and Holland, then flew home, spent one night at home and drove to Vermont for our good friends Rick and Shannon's wedding. Germany and Holland were relatively uneventful all things considered, although there were a few decent stories from the Germany leg of the trip, hopefully I'll post about those in a separate post.

We left for Stowe, Vermont last Wednesday, with the bikes loaded up - the wedding was on Friday and we decided to make a long weekend out of it and stay until Sunday. The first day we were there it rained heavily, so our planned bike ride was cancelled. Instead, Jason and I took the groom-to-be on a nice trail run on the ski trails at Trapp Family Lodge. Rick bikes and bike races a lot, but isn't much of a runner, and the 7ish mile run we went on ended up being the longest of his life. He was able to make it down the aisle just fine the next day though. In fact, we went for a bike ride the morning of his wedding up to the top of smuggler's notch, which was a pretty fun ride and had some beautiful views all around.

Here are some pictures of the main event:

Here's a picture of the program. Skiing is a big part of Shannon and Rick's life and, given that we were in an area of the Northeast known for skiing, it was definitely a strong theme throughout the weekend.

Here's a shot of the ceremony - it was a huge honor for me to be able to perform the ceremony for two close friends. It was also a pretty amazing scene with the mountains in the background.
Libby, Nancy and Anne - these three hung out a lot over the weekend while Chad, Jason and I were biking and running. I think the shoe stores in Stowe may have been a primary beneficiary of this dynamic.

Here are the groomsmen (Rick in the middle) - coincidentally the best man (2nd from the left) and the guy all the way to the right both work at Harris and the guy 2nd from the right used to work at Galyan's with me...oh and that guy all the way to the left was a groomsmen in my wedding as well...so yea, pretty small world I guess.
This was taken right before the ceremony, I had to have my game-face on!
This was Rick and I while we were waiting for the ceremony to kick off.
Here's our table for the reception. They named all of the tables after famous ski runs from different resorts in Vermont.
There's the happy couple.
I don't know who these idiots are, but it looks like they found out where the Vienna Lager was being served.

All in all, the ceremony and reception were great. I think we were all also relieved that we had a free day after the wedding before having to make the long drive back to Rochester.

On Saturday, Nancy and I sampled the Trapp Brewery's new Oktoberfest seasonal beer and had lunch outside overlooking the mountains. Not a bad view.

After lunch, we all went up to Williston, Vermont and watched a pro cyclocross race, which was pretty exciting and involved a lot of heckling from some of the spectators. Not going to lie, Cyclo-cross looks really fun!

After one final dinner Saturday night and one last trail run Sunday morning, we hit the road and headed back for Rochester. After doing about 3 weeks worth of laundry and mowing the lawn, I was back in my office today for the first time in a few weeks. I seem to have picked up some type of a head cold, which I don't really have time for as I'm running a half marathon this Saturday in Niagara Falls. Hopefully I can shake it off quickly. I'm also looking forward to being home for a little bit here and hopefully get back into some type of normal routine for the next few weeks.

Bachelor parties, Supras and long runs

2011-09-04T03:38:00.000-07:00

I've been too busy to update this is in a while. I'm pretty much been on the road since my last update. Last weekend, my dad and I drove down to Philly for my brother John's bachelor party. Unfortunately Hurricane Irene didn't want us to execute our original plan for the weekend, but we still ended up making it to a Phillies game before having to head home. Coincidentally, Nancy's brother Doug was also at the game for a different bachelor party for a different guy from Penfield High School, so it was also great to catch up with him a little. So, it wasn't great to drive down to Philly on Friday and come right back Saturday, but after seeing the devastation that storm brought to some areas of Vermont and Northern New York, it seems pretty silly to complain that we had to cut a party short because of it, so we're not complaining. It was great to catch up with some of John's friends and to meet John's future brother-in-law and father in-law.

The upside of weekend getting cut short was that I got an extra night at home. Incidentally, I would get an additional night at home due to cancelled flights from the storm. I finally got on a plane headed for Georgia on Tuesday. It was pretty smooth sailing once I finally got going. We ended up getting two solid days of meetings in and getting everything we needed to get accomplished. My friends there also threw an early birthday "Supra" for me, which involved a large Georgian feast, a cake and a healthy (or unhealthy?) amount of vodka. Birthday's are a much bigger deal in Georgia than they are in the US, which I wrote about previously while I was there for Ivane's birthday. Everytime someone that works with Ivane has a birthday, they shut down the office at about 3pm and have a large celebration in the kitchen. All in all it was a good trip.

Now, I am currently in Weiden, Germany. I had originally planned to be in Oberhof to ski in the ski tunnel there then drive to Weiden tonight, where I will be for work this week. However, I was delayed getting to Munich and didn't land until 7pm yesterday, so it didn't make sense to drive 3 hours in the wrong direction to get to Oberhof, only to turn around and drive 4 hours again today. So, that was a little disappointing, but I did manage to get a long run in this morning and will catch up on some work this afternoon before the rest of the team arrives this evening. I had my first driving experience in Germany yesterday and they drive really fast here, do not get in the fast lane unless you know what you're doing! My hotel is pretty small, one of those deals where the hotel manager is also the waiter, bar tender, chef and lives in the hotel. I'm also relatively sure that my TV is much older than me. It's about 10-inches and there is one English TV station. I am currently watching the Track world championships in German. I have to get a slingbox set up or something.

About that run this morning...that's a good story - I intended to go for a ~2 hour run. There are bike paths that go everywhere in this town, so I figured I would run for an hour in one direction, turn around and come back, perfect, right? How could I screw that up? Well, I'm not sure how it happened, but I managed to get very lost and my "2 hour run" started to remind me of this story from Duncan. After asking for directions from several people who didn't have any idea where my hotel was. I finally found another runner who knew where it was and pointed me in the right direction. Or at least I thought it was the right direction, I somehow ended up running in a circle from there and ran into the same runner about 40 minutes later. Thankfully, he saw me asking someone else for help, ran over, patted me on the back and ran with me all the way back to the hotel. That guy gets massive training karma points for that because I'm not sure how long it would've taken me to find someone else who knew where this hotel is. I wasn't too worried as I don't have a real agenda for today, but still not the greatest feeling to be lost in a foreign country, especially when you know about 3 words of their language, and you've already ran about 18 miles without water, not my brightest moment, but huge thank you to that guy whoever you are! So, my run ended up being a little longer than anticipated, but I felt pretty good.

I'll be in Weiden for a NATO exercise this week and will head to Amsterdam a week from today for meetings on Monday, then fly home Tuesday, drive to Vermont Wednesday and stay there for a few days for a wedding after which I'm going to take a long nap...like a 3-day nap...

12 year olds throwing curveballs and oven doors...

2011-08-21T12:51:00.001-07:00

I honestly think that ESPN is being irresponsible by not addressing the simple fact that kids should NOT be throwing curveballs until they are finished growing. I cannot overstate this. I don't know much about much, but I do have some experience in baseball, and I can tell you unequivocally that the most irresponsible thing that parents can do for their "future derek jeter" is allow him to throw a curveball before he can drive. When I was coaching modified baseball (13 and 14 year-olds), breaking balls were outlawed. I had several arguments with parents about this. I basically had to break it down for them...I actually drew a picture for one parent... Until your done growing, trying to throw them leads to shoulder problems, plain and simple...If you want to do your son a favor, teach him to throw a change-up, it's much more effective pitch to begin with, even at the big-league level.

Ok, now that I got that rant out of my system - I made my debut at the oven door run yesterday. I've heard for years about the "door" from one of my co-workers Dave (who I run with frequently on our lunch break), but had never shown up for it. It's basically the runner's version of the latte ride, essentially an unofficial race/group hammerfest. The run meets at 630am every saturday and does one of a few different loops every week. Yesterday we did the "classic linear park" loop. It was a relatively tame pace for about 3 minutes, then someone decided it shouldn't be, that someone happened to be a guy I know well from skiing...and after about the 3rd half mile clip, that the aforementioned Dave, threw in at a 5 minute/mile pace, I realized this was going to be a tough one, I managed to hang one for the bronze medal in the oven-door-lympics, but it was super tough...it was a great workout and given that I'm doing a half marathon next month, and want to have a good one there, this is the type of workout I needed.

This was my last weekend in Rochester until late September, but I will say, it was such an amazing weekend. I am definitely looking forward to some of the adventures to come, but I will miss home.

7 days - 1 baby, 1 wedding, 1 weekend-long going away party...

2011-08-07T13:52:00.000-07:00

The items listed in the subject of this post have all happened since my last post...and some work a lot of training and an awful lot of humidity, but other than that, it was a pretty normal week...all of these events are worthy of their own entry, but since they all happened in such rapid succession, they'll have to be combined...

First, two weekends ago was a going away party/30th birthday party for my buddy Kevin. He's moving to the UAE later this month and turns 30 in September (about 3 weeks after I do). There were several events all day on Friday and Saturday, of which I participated in most. I think this was my 4th or 5th 30th birthday part that I've been to and all of them were pretty heavy weekends all around. This one was no different, especially when you factor in that Kevin is also moving to the Middle East for a couple years. I'm lucky in that I'll still be able to see him pretty frequently because of work, however, many of his close friends and family won't see him much more than once a year for the next couple years. I will say that I think everyone gave him a great send-off.

On to last Thursday. My sister-in-law Sueann gave birth to their 3rd child (2nd daughter), Megan Elizabeth. Here are a couple pictures.

Aunt Nancy

Keith and Megan

The day after visiting Megan in the hospital, we went to Kate's wedding. Kate was one of Nancy's bridesmaids in our wedding and one of her closest friends. She's also really into biking and a lot of other outdoor activities. Below are some pictures of the wedding.

Kate and JT.
Kate and her father. Not going to lie, the kilt was a pretty cool touch.
Kate and Nancy.

Since I got back from Georgia, I've managed to string together a few solid weeks of volume training doing all types of stuff - lots of running and roller skiing, but also some mountain biking (still a trainwreck) and road biking, so I'm feeling pretty good about that. I've got nothing going on this weekend coming up which will be really strange. I am planning on doing a 5k running race on Saturday and get in some other training through the weekend. I'm also trying to put some plans in place to ski (that's right, ski, on snow) on my 30th birthday in a few weeks, we'll see how that materializes. So, plenty of good stuff coming up.

Pictures from Georgia

2011-07-28T13:11:00.000-07:00

I haven't had much of a chance to update this site recently. Literally been on the go since July 2nd. I've been all over the place recently, but all things considered, things have gone very well. I was in Georgia last week and arrived home late Saturday.

My role at work has changed, so I took the replacement for my old role in Georgia (Jim) with me to introduce him to everyone. Since I took over Kevin's role in Georgia, every customer meeting started with Temuri saying the following - "Marty is the new Kevin, Kevin is the new Marty". Ok, now we can begin. This was Jim's first time in Tbilisi, and I have to say, he fit right in. Below are some pictures.

That's Jim standing up and digging into a traditional Georgian feast.
...and you can't come to Georgia and not give Cha-Cha a try, first shot documented here.
This is the old church on top of the hill over looking Mskete (the old capital). This church was build around 600 AD.
View from the church.
View from the other side of the church. There are mountains everywhere.
This is the major river that flows from the Black Sea to all the way to the Caspian Sea. It goes through downtown Tbilisi.
Another shot of the church.
Our old friend Bata opened a new pub near the hotel where we ate twice during our stay, here's a shot of Jim and Irakli in front of "Gold Time". Nice place, I have a feeling we'll be back there soon.

I'm in town for the next few weeks, but things are still pretty hectic...hopefully I'll be able to update again soon, more big stuff coming up later this summer and fall...

still a terrible golfer, still have awesome friends

2011-07-10T12:58:00.000-07:00

This weekend was Knodel's bachelor party. We ended up renting a house down in Ellicottville, NY, played some golf and had a more than a few beers in the woods. It was pretty awesome to catch up with so many old friends. It's amazing how, even though most of us don't see each other nearly enough, there's nothing but big hugs and serious hi-fives everytime we do see each other. Here are a few pics.

Here's the man of the hour. So pumped for Matt and very honored to be involved in the wedding!

Drew and Doogie showed up late, but we still decided to fire up the grill for them once they arrived.
Doogie on the left, John on the right. Pretty psyched that Doogie moved back from LA to Buffalo, not that psyched that John's pretty much naturalizing in Canada, but, it also doesn't suck to have a place to crash in Toronto if needed.
left to right - Knodel, Colin, Jamie, and Jim P...other than the Mets hat, that's a great pic.
This was a shot of our "neighbor" for the weekend. The confederate flag was the tip of the iceberg on the sketchiness of this set up, but there weren't any encounters. George actually sprinted through this cornfield in 1 minute 20 seconds...which cost a few of us a few bucks, but was worth it in my opinion...

I also hit up England and Holland and went to a wedding in the last week. I ran into a bunch of old teammates (high school) at the wedding and everyone I ran into fell into the "I wish I kept in contact with (insert name here)" category, so that was really great. Overall life is more hectic than usual but so much to be thankful and excited about.

Buckle up and hang on tight

2011-07-02T03:49:00.000-07:00

Here's my itinerary for the next 3 weeks - London, UK (1 day), Amersfoort, Netherlands (2 days), Rochester (15 hours), Ellicotville (2 days), Rochester (1 day), Verona, NY (2 days), Rochester (1 day), Poconos (2 days), Rochester (15 hours), Tbilisi, Georgia (4 days)....

This might seem like a pretty random list of places to go. It's a combination of work and personal travel. I also started a new job at work and will be responsible for a slightly different list of countries from what I'd been handling. I will still be headed to Georgia (more frequently than before), but will now have responsibility for a few other countries in Europe that I haven't traveled much too including Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

I'll try to update frequently as I'm sure this will be an adventure.

Looking for focus

2011-06-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted about anything specific to training and racing, so here goes an update on that front. My intent is not to come across as negative, I'm having fun still, but as the first sentence of the next paragraph might imply, I'm not exactly tearing it up on my road bike, and as any competitive person knows, it's always more fun when you're winning...

The past two weekends I've had bike races with relatively underwhelming results. One was a long time trial and one was a circuit race on the Watkins Glen race track. Both races were fun unique and something new, but I walked away still not sure what to make of my own performance.

I don't really have a good explanation, I just wasn't great in either race and I'm not sure why. I feel like I'm training a lot of hours and having productive training sessions, but I'm just not going that fast. At the finish line Saturday a former teammate of mine, who noticed that I was absent from the front group for the last several laps of the race, asked "what happened?" I really had no response other than to just shrug my shoulders and say something to the effect of "you guys were just too fast for me today"...not really something that's too fun to admit.

I think part of it is that I've still been running, lifting and roller skiing and not focusing just on biking. That's sort of a catch-22 that I'm in right now. When I'm on the road for work, I have to run to stay in shape because I can't exactly carry my Felt road bike on a trans-atlantic flight, but running shoes, shorts and a singlet fit very nicely into my "never check a bag on a business trip" policy. The puzzling part however, is that I don't think this has changed drastically since last year. One of the great parts about having a training log is that it's really easy to look back on last year and see what you were doing, etc. Compared to 2010, I'm doing almost everything the same, slightly less biking, slightly more running, but overall hours and intensity is pretty similar, a little higher this year, but not drastically higher. Maybe I'm reading too much into a few races where things didn't go great for me, but between the crash and a general lack of continuity, it is getting frustrating. In the winter, it's always really cut and dry - GO SKI, and the only thing I might be guilty of is skiing too hard or too much.

So, I'm not really sure where this leaves my training goals right now. I'll be on the road a lot over the summer, which means I'll be running more. Maybe I shouldn't fight it and just try to do some focused running training. It's not like I dislike running (like most of the guys I bike with do), I enjoy it. Who knows...For the next few weeks though, I'm not going to stress about any specific racing, just train to have fun and be fit and take some time to figure out what I can realistically focus on given my current career choice.

I am looking forward to all the travel coming up as well as all of the great weddings that Nancy and I will be invited to and involved in.

Ever Better

2011-06-18T12:19:00.001-07:00

Given that I graduated from the U of R over four years ago, it's somewhat embarrassing that I just learned what the school motto (Meloria) means - "Ever Better".

I could blame that on being a part-time commuter student, but that's just as much of an excuse as the co-worker of mine that told me he's been too busy to work out for the last 7 years. Hmmm, seven years? That's a cop-out dude. The truth is, I really didn't care. I'm a lot different than I was four years ago, and even more different than when I graduated from RIT eight years ago. I never cared about school motto's or what they might mean or what significance they might have. When I finished my last final, I was more interested in getting down to the St. Patty's Day parade to meet up with my friends and have far too much to drink, than I was about digging deep into how I could be more successful in business or in life or any type of tradition from the school I just graduated from.

Anyways, last weekend was Nancy's official graduation from the Simon School and since I did not attend mine (for some of the reasons mentioned above), I was pretty curious to see what it would be like. It was a great ceremony (although it was not short). The three main speakers were all excellent. They did all speak of the typical cliche advice to graduating students like "Dream big" and "The future's ahead of you" and "Don't be afraid to fail" that I've heard in every commencement type address I've been to.

They all did provide a unique perspective however. One speaker was a Simon School alum who's now a very successful wall-street executive. He spoke of the importance of risk taking, but also of the progress that comes from failure and to take things step by step (I hope my Georgian friend Ivane reads this, he's been telling Kevin and I that for years now), success doesn't happen overnight unless you win the lotto. Another of the speakers was an entrepreneur from India that inherited a real-estate business and led it to grow 125x (not a typo) over a ten year period. He didn't go into much detail about how he drove that growth, but his underlying dream is homeownership for every Indian and that seemed to be the major thing driving him, which was pretty inspirational - his goal wasn't to make a ton of money (although I'm sure he's not complaining), his goal is to make home ownership a reality for as many of his compatriots as possible and make money as a bi-product of that over-arching goal - which seemed like a unique concept.

The headline speaker for me was Louis Zamperini (pictured in the middle above), the subject of the book Unbroken, which I just recently read. If you don't know about his story, I highly suggest that you read this book. Trust me, it will make tomorrow morning's alarm clock going off seem like a blessing. His presence alone was a jaw-dropping testiment to what will-power and perserverence can accomplish. He didn't really need to say much, his life story did all the talking for him. He did tell a few stories and crack a few jokes, which was very inspirational. I hope I'm that active and sharp when I'm 94. While introducing him, Dean Zupan (pictured on the left above) mentioned that he just quit skiing four years ago at the age of 90!

All of the speakers had clearly overcome a lot of adversity in different ways, but none of them were all that interested in talking about their past accomplishments, they were truly looking forward to the challenges that lay ahead and how they would react to them, grow through them and become more successful and better people through them. That was compelling to me. So what I took out of it was Meloria - Ever Better (not just a clever latin word to print on the scotch glasses in the bookstore I guess).

Alright, enough of my nonsensical diatribe, here are some pictures of the real stars of the day:

Nancy getting "Hooded". Another thing I did not know is that each Master's discipline (Arts, Science, Business Admin, etc) has a different color hood associated with it. The other ones are all very colorful, Business is "Drab". Yup, welcome to Corporate America graduates, here's your drab hood, don't worry, it'll match the light gray cubicle and the dark gray Dell Laptop you'll be assigned your first day on the job....

Nancy showing off her new degree!

Left to Right - Meghan, Nancy and Laura. These three took almost every class together going part time while all working full time. Not a small achievement by any stretch of the imagination. The day before the ceremony, we had a joint graduation party for these three. Great time for sure. Congrats again ladies!

0 for 2 at FMV, Roller coasters and NELLIE KANE!!

2011-06-09T14:49:00.000-07:00

The last week has been sort of an up and down week, much like a roller coaster, literally and figuratively.

First, last weekend's bike race series ended the same way that the Full Moon Vista Grand Prix weekend did for me last year - with me on the pavement wondering WTF just happened. Friday's race went ok, it was a criterium in Genessee Valley Park. Crits are great for spectators and it was so cool that friends and family were able to come out and watch me race right here in town, which is pretty rare for any of the stuff that I compete in. I'm not a great sprinter and don't really have any desire to be a better one, so crits are tough for me to really do well in. I did stay with the front group which ended up lapping the majority of the field. The race was hard, but I felt pretty good. The last few laps were really fast and it was really tough to move up and fight for position, so I ended up finishing near the back of the front group of about 15 riders. Overall though, I was feeling pretty good that I stayed upright and was looking forward to Saturday's hilly circuit race in Powder Mills Park. Saturday's race was going pretty well until about 2/3 of the way through the race I crashed on a downhill section. I'm still not sure exactly what happened or what I could have done differently, so I'm trying not to dwell on it. I avoided any serious injuries and my bike is fine, really frustrating nonetheless but could have been a lot worse I guess. So, I sat out Sunday's race. I have been able to ride a few times since then and generally speaking, I'm back on track.

Tuesday night my buddy Scott drove up from Philly to go to yesterday's Phish show at Darien Lake. Nancy and I both took the day off and went to the 6 flags resort which was open only to phish ticket holders. I don't think I'd been on a roller coaster in like 15 years, but it was a good time. After a couple hours in the amusement park, we got a good tailgate going in the parking lot with Kevin, Brandi, Scott and two of Scott's buddies from Philly. It was great to hang out with all of them. I've been to a lot of shows with Kevin and Scott, but unfortunately, I don't get to see either of them nearly enough these days, so it was really cool to just hang out and catch up with them both. It's pretty wild to think that the three of us became friends working in the Outdoor Apparel department at Galyan's 10 years ago. We went to Bonnaroo together 8 years ago this week, wow, I feel really old. Kevin is (among many things) a freelance photo journalist, and was shooting the show for a magazine, so he was in front of the front row for the first 3 songs. The first set was amazing all around - in fact, I'm not sure I could have picked a better setlist based on my favorite phish songs, but the highlight was that they opened with Nellie Kane. Nellie Kane is a bluegrass song which they rarely play, but I have always joked with Scott and Kevin during every tailgate that they would open with Nellie Kane. It became a running joke between the three of us, especially in recent years since I listen to a lot of bluegrass and "twangier" music all around. Kevin played guitar during the cocktail hour at our wedding last year and learned how to play Nellie Kane specifically for our wedding because of that. Needless to say, when they opened with that, Scott and I had one of the strongest hi-fives we've ever executed. Kevin was still up front at that point shooting, but claimed that he could hardly hold his camera steady with excitement. Overall, it was a great day all around and great to take a step back and just chill out for a change (although I did get scolded twice for reading work e-mails at the tailgate).

Left to right, Nancy, Scott's buddy (also named Scott) and Scott at our tailgate.
Nancy and Brandi are sitting down, then left to right is Kevin, Kevin's buddy Luke, Rick and Scott.

Scott at the show.

Looking ahead, Nancy and I are celebrating out 1st anniversary Saturday. She's also graduating from the U of R on Sunday, so some serious milestones this weekend for sure. Difficult to believe that we've already been married a year, time is going really fast. I will say, it was a really eventful 12 months and a lot happened, it's just difficult to take the time to step back and realize all of the stuff that's gone on and the places we've been lucky enough to see. I guess that's why I started a blog in the first place though.

Fire alarms, Babies, Half marathon, Sam Adams, Bike Racing, and Phish

2011-06-01T11:39:00.000-07:00

I think the title of this post is pretty self-explanatory, however I will go into further detail.

Fire Alarms - Last week I went down to DC for some meetings and stayed overnight in the capital region. This is the 2nd year in a row that I was down there the week leading up to Memorial Day. This is basically for the same reason, there was a large delegation from the Georgian government in town to celebrate Georgian independence day and have some bi-lateral discussions with the USG about the two governments cooperation. This is also the height of tourism season and a time of year when many schools in the east do a school trip to see the sights. For the 2nd year in a row, some punk 8th grader yanked the fire alarm in my hotel. What are you gonna do...for all I know, he was probably from Penfield.

Babies - Last Friday, my buddy Andy was in town from Charlotte with his wife Erin and baby Jack. This was Jack's first visit to Rochester, so Andy's parents threw a party for all of their friends and family. This was also an opportunity to meet my other buddy Dan's 6-week old son Grady. There were a bunch of other babies running around, but Jack and Grady were the headliners. It was great to see everyone and also a little alarming that I'm to the point where there are a minimum of 3 children at almost every social event I go to...

Half marathon - last weekend I ran my first half marathon in Buffalo. My good friend Jeff was in town visiting some family and the race happened to coincide with his visit, so I figured why not give it a shot. I've been running a decent amount since I've been on the road a lot recently, but this was the first running race I'd done in almost a year and the first one longer than 3.5 miles in almost 2 years, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. I arbitrarily set a goal time of 1:25 (~6:30/mile pace). This was based largely on some of the treadmill workouts I'd done on my last work trip - basically, that pace felt comfortably hard for longer intervals. So, anyways, I started out pretty solid at that pace, at 10km in, I was almost dead on that pace, at 15km I had slowed a little, but was still just over an hour, then I sort of hit the wall a little. My legs got really heavy and I'd say I ran the last 5km or so at a 7:30/mile pace and ended up with a 1:29. So, not the best way to finish a race, but aerobically I felt really good and now I have a time to beat at that distance. I think the next time I do a half marathon, I'll pick a time of the year when I'm not also juggling bike racing and really focus on getting some more mileage in leading up to the race.

Sam Adams - After the half marathon, Nancy and I stayed up in Buffalo to hang out the rest of the day. Jeff and his girlfriend both work for Sam Adams, so needless to say, the BBQ hosted at Jeff's brother's house was basically sponsored by Sam Adams. It was a lot of fun and great to see a lot of really close friends from the Buffalo area that I hadn't seen in far too long.

Bike Racing - oh yeah, it's still bike racing season. This weekend is the Full Moon Vista Grand Prix, which is 3 races in 3 days, all local. I'm really looking forward to getting out there and racing these courses (even the crit), and I'm looking for a little redemption after last year's debacle.

Phish - a week from today, I'm going to a Phish concert with Nancy and a bunch of other friends, including Scott and Kevin, who I've been to a lot of shows over the years with. So, I'm really looking forward to that as well.

So, that should clarify the randomness of the title and provide a small snapshot as to how all over the map my life has been.

Oh, and on top of that, I'm switching jobs at work and am pretty psyched...possibly more on that later...or maybe I'll just write about biking, running, ski racing and general adventure, that's more interesting anyways, right?

Please let us know if this works...

2011-05-17T14:08:00.000-07:00

A week ago Saturday, I left for Georgia for a few days of meetings. It was the usual type of stuff there - long, drawn-out meetings that are as organized and coherent as a herd of cats, followed by long dinners with many, surprisingly concise, coherent toasts, followed by not nearly enough sleep, hopefully a workout, then rinse and repeat. It was a good few days though and we got a lot accomplished.

Thursday morning, bright and early, I headed to the airport and flew to Vienna, rented a car (my first time driving in continental Europe) and drove to a trade show in Brno, Czech Republic. As this was my first time driving in Europe, and the signs aren't in English in either Czech of Austria, I made sure the rental car company gave me a GPS. Upon receiving the GPS device, the rental car representative said the following to me (believe me, not making this up) - "You're the first person to rent this model, so we're really interested to know if it works." Hmmm....well, if I end up lost in rural Slovakia, I'll be sure to give you some good constructive feedback. More on that later...

I made it to Brno without a hitch. Driving across the border was a total non-event, it's more of a production to drive across the New York, Pennsylvania border. The "Welcome to Czech" sign was smaller than the "Welcome To Osceola" sign in the Tug Hill. Overall, it was pretty underwhelming. Brno was a cool looking city, even though I was only there for a day and spent most of it working. Our local partner there, took us to dinner Thursday night at a touristy, medieval restaurant where we had some good Czech beer and ate some BBQ ribs. The ribs weren't much to write home about, I'll stick to Dinosaur, but the beer was all Czech beer is cracked up to be.

Back to the GPS...the following day after spending all day at the trade show, then breaking down the booth and packing up our equipment to ship back, I drove back to Vienna. I was supposed to stay at a hotel near the airport (our travel department told me it was within a mile or two of the airport), then fly home the next day. My GPS couldn't find the hotel name, but did find the street address, so I plugged it in and started the 1.5 hour drive back to Vienna. Once I got into Vienna, Mr. GPS started taking me through downtown Vienna, lots of traffic, strange traffic patterns and a stop light every 35 feet or so. Having never been to Vienna, I didn't really have much of a choice. Anyways, after about 45 minutes of stop and go traffic, I arrive at my destination...only it's a random house, not a hotel and I'm in a residential neighborhood, no hotels even close. So, I type in the airport in as my new destination, it's gotta be close, right?...recalculating...estimated 40 minute drive away, WTF??? I'VE HAVEN'T GOTTEN A DECENT NIGHT OF SLEEP IN 7 DAYS, FEEL LIKE CRAP, HAVE ALREADY BEEN DRIVING FOR 2.5 HOURS, AND I HAVE TO DRIVE 40 MINUTES BACK THROUGH ALL THAT STOP AND GO BS!! I'm not sure if I actually said that out loud or not, but I was pretty close to a total meltdown...anyways, I drove back to the airport and couldn't find my hotel after a lap around the airport. I do a "Close Hotel" search on my trusty GPS, find a hotel by the same name as mine 5 miles away, not too bad, not 1 mile, but whatever, I just need to get some food and sleep and everything will be ok...drive to hotel, which takes about 20 minutes with traffic, park in ramp garage, lug all my stuff up to the front desk...Sir, you're at the wrong hotel, you're hotel is by the airport....AHHHHHHHHHHH...lug all my stuff back to the car, drive back to the airport and finally find my hotel. It turns out, it's not only on the airport's complex, it's the very first thing you see when you exit the arrivals hall in Vienna, the walk from the rental car drop-off to the terminal was longer than the walk from the hotel. All in all, the GPS and my own stupidity turned a 1.5 hour drive into a 4 hour drive...morale was not high at this point...

Adding to my morale issues is that I picked up some type of bug somewhere along the way that hit me pretty hard Friday, which also made the trans-atlantic flight home the next day not exactly one to remember, but I made it home and the worst seems to be over. I'm already to the point where I can look back on this trip and remember a lot of really positive experiences and not the lovely Hertz agent that asked me how the GPS worked out for me.

New stuff...

2011-05-06T11:48:00.000-07:00

I finally broke down and added a mountain bike to my collection of training tools (they're actually toys, but "training tools" sounds more legit). For several years now, friends of mine have been telling me that I would love mountain biking and couldn't believe that I didn't have one. So, I finally pulled the trigger and ordered this bad boy through our bike shop sponsor Towpath Bike.

Based on my first two rides, that's the last time in this bike's life that it'll look that clean, but that's the point. My second ride was quite the trial by fire, I went with three other experienced riders, two of them (Jason and Duncan) I've skied and road biked quite a bit with and they assured me that the ride we were set to do was tough, but wasn't super-technical, meaning, you'll be going up and down a lot of really big hills, but you won't be riding over logs, through creeks and through narrow single track with big trees on both sides of you. That might have been the original plan, but Duncan's friend Andy came as well and called an audible. Instead of the previously planned route, we ended up going to Stid Hill. The first thing we did after entering park was ride through a creek, which I got about halfway through, panicked, stopped pedaling and promptly fell over. After about an hour of trying to keep up with these guys, but also continuously falling off, coming unclipped, or having to run with my bike because there were too many "obstacles" in the way, Jason finally came clean that this particular route was as technically hard as any single track area around here. So, that made me feel a little better, because up until that point, I was struggling to stay on the bike at all! All three of the guys were extremely patient and helpful and by the end of the 3+ hour ride, I feel like I was monumentally better than when we started and had a blast. I still have a ways to go to really improve, but it was a great time and I am very excited to now have this option for days when the weather might be suspect or when I just don't feel like eating the constant wind that you're exposed to road-riding in this area. Additionally, it seems to be a killer tough workout almost all the time, especially on trails like we rode on Sunday, you are constantly working your entire body just to keep the thing upright.

On a different note, I'm headed to Georgia tomorrow and may end up going to Czech Republic as well during this trip, which will be a first for me in that country. Should be an interesting adventure...

This is absurd

2011-04-22T06:11:00.000-07:00

Last night I helped out at a little league practice (9-10 year olds) for a team that a friend of mine coaches. I worked with the pitchers and catchers and overall it was a lot of fun and great to be around kids playing baseball. Sometimes, it's easy to forget how huge a portion of my life baseball was for so long. Anyways, we were forced to practice in a parking lot because the fields are still too wet to play on. They're too wet to play on because every day the temperature has gotten above 45 (about 3 days so far) it's been pouring rain with 35mph winds. Last night's practice was 40 degrees and very windy and the ridiculous part - that's the best weather that team has had to practice in so far this year, and that's April 21st (theoretically a month into Spring). It's difficult to teach 9 and 10 year olds how to catch when you have to spend 10 minutes re-adjusting the chest protector to fit over their SNOW SUIT. My former college baseball team has had 9 out of the last 10 games cancelled and basically will have to play 4-5 doubleheaders a week whenever the weather breaks (hopefully by June?).

I had a bike race on Sunday and Tuesday. Sunday's race didn't go great and Tuesday's race went really well, but in both cases, I finished the race colder than any ski race I've done in the last few years (other than maybe the Fischer Loppet 3 years ago when I made some unfortunate apparel choices). The 10 day forecast looks pretty dismal and I have still yet to go for a bike ride without 3 layers on top and bottom, and this is supposed to be my "summer sport". Tomorrow I'm racing in the Binghamton Circuit races and according to the weather forecast, I might be better off bringing a snorkel than my bike.

So, Mother Nature, you've shown us once again, you're the boss, now knock it off...April showers can't bring May flowers when if I'm still wearing a down jacket everywhere.

I would say this blog post could be filed among the "howling at the moon" category.

Let's do this!!

2011-04-13T14:07:00.001-07:00

Last weekend, two things happened - I rode about 130 miles and spent about 8 hours cleaning, waxing and re-waxing my skis to put away for summer storage. I also cleaned up the make-shift wax room, which takes over about half of our attic for 5 months a year (the latter task was substantially worse than the former by the way).

The last few years I've noticed that there's usually about a 3-4 week period after my last ski race, where I am in denial about ski season being over and find it difficult to really get going biking or putting any type of structure into training for anything. I work out a lot, but typically don't put any thought or plan into what I'm doing. After spending all winter outside, all of a sudden, the thought of going for a bike ride in 30 degrees and windy weather, and dealing with numb fingers and the rush to get a dry shirt on after working out in the cold (do avoid getting sick) and everything else that goes along with the cold, seems like the worst idea ever.

Then after a few casual bike rides, and typically one or two with reasonably warm temperatures, it seems like a flip switches. I think that happened this past weekend. Saturday, I joined a bunch of my teammates on a 90 mile ride, including, for the first time this year, trying to go hard on a bike and really crank it up. My legs were thrashed, but the next morning, I had absolutely no hesitation in jumping on my bike and getting some more miles in. Mentally, ski season is finally over. That doesn't mean that I can't wait for November, but at the same time, I can look back on a great season for a variety of reasons, and be happy with it, and also look forward to the summer and biking.

Last night was the first GVCC Tuesday night race of the year and it took me about 5 minutes to try to attack off the front. It wasn't the best race, but I felt pretty good and it was good to get back in the action. This Sunday is the GVCC Bloomfield Classic, which is a tough course that also overlaps with my roller ski TT course. We'll see how it goes, but I'm definitely looking forward to pinning a race number back on and getting out there. The next couple months should make for some exciting races (and hopefully some decent results for my teammates and I).

Airplane food

2011-04-03T05:34:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, when flying on foreign airlines, this type of thing is put in front of you...

Or this...
What is that thing in the bottom left? The menu said that this was a "Tapas plate". I think there may have been something lost in translation because I've never seen Tapas that look like this.

Sometimes I'm feeling adventurous and try everything...however this is also why I always carry Clif bars with me when I travel...

This isn't going to slow down, is it?

2011-03-26T02:29:00.001-07:00

I think over the last two years I've been waiting for life to slow down, but I've come to the conclusion over the past few months, that maybe it's only going to get more hectic. The change in my mindset recently however, is that I'm not apprehensive or anxious about it, I'm looking forward to it.

I've learned a lot about myself over the last few years on many levels, but one of the more important things I've realized is that I can handle juggling a lot of seemingly unrelated things all at the same time. Even looking back on my college years when I was working, going to school and playing baseball, living life at 1000 miles an hour is something I'm good at and can excel at.

I'm currently typing this blog post from the business lounge in the Warsaw airport and have been on six flights in the last 7 days and have two to go today. I've been in Bucharest, Romania and Wroclaw and Warsaw, Poland, and the last five days have absolutely been like sipping water out of a fire hose. Downtime has been non-existent, but it was a successful trip. I accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish on this trip and only had a few moments trip where I was struggling to keep my eyes open.

I am relatively sure that I've spent more nights living out of a suitcase than at home since I left for Vermont back in December. Although, there are still times that I have to remind myself that I signed up for all of this - both work and personal travel - and that I am very lucky to have all of the opportunities that I have, it seems more so recently, I have to do that reminding (or have Nancy remind me) less frequently. I am less anxious about what the next few months may bring and am focussed on making the most of wherever I am and whatever I'm doing...so, I guess, here's to living life like a headfirst slide into first base!!

More Utah Pictures

2011-03-19T05:21:00.001-07:00

Here are some more pictures from my trip to Utah. Following the two days of Alpine skiing, I put my nordic skis back on for a couple days and actually went snowshoeing the last day we were there. Needless to say, I was physically exhausted when we got on the plane to come home, but it was an awesome trip and an awesome place in the world.

I skied at Alta one day, whose "nordic center" is sort of a joke, but they let me ski anywhere I wanted around the downhill skiers and didn't charge me anything. They basically just told me not to get on any lifts. Despite the trail system being non-existent, the surrounding mountains were pretty epic. It certainly beat doing laps around the north meadow at Mendon Ponds that's for sure.

Here's a picture of me with Solitude in the background. I dropped Jamie off for work (at Solitude) and headed up to Alta, which is about 2 miles further up the Little Cottonwood Canyon.

The following day, I went skiing at Soldier Hollow, which is where all the nordic events were held at the 2002 Olympics. The trails were great and it was about 50F out, so I was skiing in a t-shirt.

This is from the highest point on the course. The area is so wide open that you can almost always see the XC and biathlon stadiums. It was sort of like skiing in a huge bowl.
The last day we were in Utah, I went snow shoeing. We had initially planned on downhill skiing, but ran out of time. My legs were still thrashed from downhill skiing earlier in the week, so I wasn't heart broken. This picture was taken at Solitude.

Pretty awesome scenery, no doubt about that.

Left to right - Jamie, Kevin and I at a pub in downtown SLC.

I'm headed to Romania and Poland this week and am headed out for my first bike ride of the season in a few minutes, so I'm sure there will be plenty of new adventures to come soon enough.

First powder skiing experience

2011-03-09T16:36:00.001-08:00

Since getting back into Salt Lake City on Saturday night, I've done two days of alpine skiing and two days of nordic. The first day downhill skiing was up at Deer Valley in Park City on Sunday night. It was relatively straightforward skiing, although it was snowing really hard and was difficult to see at times, but in general, we basically got off the lift and skied down, nothing crazy. Park City was a pretty cool town.

Monday however, was a different story. We went up to a resort called Solitude in the "Big Cottonwood" Canyon. They had gotten about 20 inches of new snow the previous night, so this turned into my first experience "powder skiing". We took three lifts to the top of Solitude and got off the lift and traversed across a ridge for about twenty minutes to the edge of the trail and then skied down through untouched knee-deep powder. It definitely took some getting used to, but Kevin and Jamie are both very experienced skiers and were able to coach me through the first few turns down a pretty steep pitch. We ended up doing three runs from top to bottom of this whole adventure. It was a lot of fun and quite a workout (both the traverse and the actual skiing). I'm pretty sure I used some muscles skiing through that stuff that had never been used before. Below are some pictures I snapped from the day.

This was the end of the traverse where we started skiing down.

Here's a shot of a couple skiers making their way towards us on the traverse.
Kevin (in red) and his uncle taking a little breather on the way out. It was pretty steep, not sure if these pictures really do it justice.
Kevin and Jamie getting ready to ski down through the chute to the right in between the trees. These apline skiers have all kinds of lingo for getting after it on a powder day, not sure if I understood half of what they said during the day. Kevin did give me some good advice though - "just always remember - if you fall, it's really soft everywhere. If you lose a ski though, you might be up here a while trying to find it and get it back on." I did fall a couple times, but managed to keep all my equipment attached to me, so I didn't have any of those issues.
Here's a shot from the end of the traverse. I took this right before I headed down. Not going to lie, I was a little nervous, it looked wicked steep.
Jamie and Kevin again.
Nice view out in the Honeycomb Canyon.

Here's a shot up the hill after I skied partway down.

Overall, it was a really fun day, and at the end of it, I was totally fried. It did give me a new appreciation for why people become ski bums though, I get it, skiing through this stuff is a lot of fun!

I took some really good pictures from nordic skiing days at Alta yesterday and Soldier Hollow today. I'll post those in a separate post.

West Yellowstone, MT

2011-03-06T09:40:00.000-08:00

I'm back in Salt Lake after heading up to West Yellowstone Friday to race the Rendezvous 50km race yesterday. The race itself was ok, I was hoping for a better result, but considering that I was in Rochester, NY on Thursday, flew to Utah, then drove to Montana, and screwed up the wax royally, it was all in all as good as I could have expected. I ended up 29th and 3rd in my age group, I'll write more about the race itself later, which was quite an experience in it's own right. The venue, and atmosphere however were absolutely awesome and I now understand why these marathons are such a big deal and people travel from all over to compete in them. It was a really cool experience and I'm really happy I went. Huge thanks to my buddy Jamie who not only drove up with me, but also helped me out in the feedzone and was cheering for everyone, the only thing he was missing was a legit cowbell.

Here are a few pictures that I took during my ski on Friday once we got into town.

Amazing tracks and scenery, I definitely can't wait to head back!

A new ski adventure on tap

2011-03-03T05:58:00.001-08:00

Anyone that reads this blog might be thinking that the months of December through March are one big ski adventure (and in some ways it is), however, the majority of my races are only at a handful of locations in the Northeast. For example, I've made the drive to Lake Placid three times this year for a total of five races. Other than last year's trials in Minnesota, I've never competed in a ski race that's further than an 6-7 hour car drive away. However, later today I'm flying out to Salt Lake City, where I'm going to meet up with my buddy Jamie, who I played baseball with in college, and tomorrow, we are driving up to West Yellowstone, MT where I will compete in the Rendezvous Ski Marathon on Saturday.

West Yellowstone is something of a mecca for US cross country skiers. Every November, there is a huge ski festival the week of Thanksgiving which also represents the first SuperTour races of the year for the elite XC skiers in the US and Canada. I've never been out there and am very much looking forward to skiing and racing on these famous trails. I'm not sure what to expect about the race itself. This will be the first year that I've done two 50km races in one winter. The LP Loppet was exactly a month ago and I'm sure that I'm recovered from that and feeling pretty good, but my race in the Loppet wasn't spectacular to begin with, so who knows. The other obstacle involved in this race will be the elevation. I've never raced at an elevation higher than 3-4 thousand feet before. WY will be about 7,000. I've gotten some good advice from some folks that have though, it includes:

- Don't worry, just stay hydrated, that's the biggest factor.

- You're going out there on Thursday and racing Saturday? That's the worst combination, good luck!

- You'll be fine, just don't do anything stupid, like you did in Lake Placid.

- There's nothing you can do except stay under control. At least it's not a sprint, that would hurt a lot more.

- You're screwed, just enjoy the trails.

The confusing part is that everyone of the people who gave me this advice has actually skied this exact race. So, given all of this sound, yet conflicting advice, I'm a little nervous. It'll be an experience though, and I'm looking forward to getting out there and getting the race going!

After the race, we're headed back to Salt Lake, where Kevin is skiing with his uncle (who lives in SLC) and father. I'll spend the five days after the race doing a combination of downhill skiing (maybe let gravity do the work for a change), back country skiing, and some nordic skiing. Basically, I don't have much of an agenda after the race other than to scope out what it's like to ski in Utah and the surrounding area and hang out with my buddies. Jamie's moving out of SLC after the winter, so I figured it was pretty much now or never to check out that neck of the woods.

I should be able to update throughout the trip as long as I can get on the Internet.

More pictures from Georgia

2011-02-27T14:46:00.001-08:00

Here are some of Nancy's pictures from our trip:

That's the view that Nancy had for the first several days of our trip - me working. Nice cheese platter though. This was taken at a restaurant in Munich where we grabbed an afternoon snack and beer.
We arrived in Tbilisi at 4am, and typically Kevin and/or I would just hop in a cab and head to the hotel. This is what Nancy and I were planning on, Irakli surprised us by picking us up at the airport and bringing this massive bouquet of flowers for Nancy. I was previously aware that everyone in Georgia was looking forward to meeting Nance, but this solidified it.
This is a very old church in Tbilisi.
This is an old-looking church, however it was build very recently and is in Tbilisi.
Left to right - Irakli, Sylwek, myself and Kevin - we're on way to a "heavy" dinner with some customers and their wives.
Sylwek, Nancy, myself and Kev.
This is a shot of the feast we were at. On the right is Ivane, Roini, Mikel (both really important customers and Mikel and Irakli's wives.
Nancy and Nana (Ivane's sister) in front of a very old church - there's a theme here, there are a lot of very old church's in Georgia.
Don (a co-worker) and Irakli in front of a massive plate of meat and cucumbers.
Nancy, Nana and a friend of Nana's.
Nancy and I.
Nancy, Ivane and I. As you can see, I'm also representing Nancy's Fathers' side of the family in this picture - I gotta figure that I was the only one sporting an Oregon Duck shirt in the Republic of Georgia that particular day!!

Georgia recap with pictures

2011-02-25T07:18:00.001-08:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, Nancy and I just got home from Georgia. I was there for work, and Nancy went along to do some sight seeing with the wife and sister of our local partner (who she had met when they visited Rochester last October). It was a very busy week, but there were the usual Georgian dinners and socializing, which are always enjoyable. On the way there, we had a 12 hour layover in Munich. If I was travelling alone (like usual), I would have alternated between doing work in a hotspot somewhere and walking laps around the airport. Since Nancy was with me, we decided to take a train into Munich, which was a city neither of us had been to. Below are some pictures from the trip.

This is from a tower in Munich which we had to take a long elevator to the top of.

A picture from the other side of the tower overlooking the City Center of Munich.

We signed the guestbook in the tower. This layover was the bulk of how we spent our first Valentine's day as a married couple. Not your average dinner and a movie, eh?

Nancy in the Center City Square.

My buddy Scott Schneider (from Philly) told us to check out his namesake's brewery in Munich. We found it, but it was closed until 5pm and we didn't have time to stop in to sample the local brew, as we had to head back to the airport to catch our flight to Tbilisi.

During all of the week days that we were there, I was tied up with work and Nancy was being shown the sights of Tbilisi and the surrounding areas.

Nancy was able to experience several traditional Georgian dinners as well. In addition to my good friend Kevin, who seems to live in Tbilisi these days, Sylwek (a Polish engineer who works for us) was also in town doing some work for us. Over the years, I've spent a lot of time with Sylwek in Poland and he's a good friend. It was great that Nancy was able to meet him as well for the first time. The next few pictures are from one of the Georgian dinners.

Left to right is Sylwek, myelf, Nancy, and Irakli (who works for our local partner and is always a gracious host).

Kevin and Bata (Ivane's friend). Bata has no business relationship with us, but Kevin and I have hung out with him socially a few times over the years and he's a great guy. It always amazes me how warm and welcoming Georgians are from the very first time you meet them. Bata is a great example of this as every time he sees Kevin or I, since the first time we met him two years ago, he always greets us with a big smile and a hug.
Mamuka (another of Ivane's friend's who we've run into at many a Georgian feast) and Ivane, who's apparently thinking very deep thoughts.

Temuri, Sylwek and I. Sylwek is very well respected by our customers here as well as in Poland. Usually one of the first questions I am asked when meeting with an end user is "when is Sylwek coming back? We have more questions for him."

Myself, Kevin and Sylwek. Sylwek convinced the bar tender this particular night to make Polish "Crazy Dogs" for everyone, which is a mixture of raspberry syrup and vodka and taken like a shot (it layers in the shot glass like the Polish flag). I've had many of these in Poland, but this was my first in Georgia, and Nancy's first ever. Sylwek officially certified Nancy as "tough enough to bring to Kielce." Kielce is a very small town in Poland which hosts a trade show that we attend every year - there are a lot of crazy dogs that happen there.

The Saturday that we were there, I finally had a break in the work side of things and Nancy and I were able to walk around Tbilisi, Georgia to see some of the sights. She had already been given the full tour of the major sights in Tbilisi by our hosts and most likely knows more about Tbilisi than I do at this point.

Nancy in front of a major traffic square.

Me in front of a massive statue. The statue is looking down on me and I have to admit, I was a little intimidated.

Later that night, Ivane and Bata took us to do some more sight seeing and then took us to dinner at an "Elvis Bar". The Elvis Bar served all of the following Georgian food, pizza, sushi (first time eating sushi outside the US for me), Chinese food and ice cream and had a live Beatles cover band playing. It was a pretty unique experience for sure! The picture below is Nancy, myself and Ivane in front of the theater in Tbilisi, outside the Elvis Bar.

I know Nancy has many more pictures on her camera, so maybe I'll be able to do another post with some of those. Overall it was a really good trip and Nancy had a great time seeing the sights and experiencing some excellent Georgian hospitality.

Still here...

2011-02-22T06:50:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I updated here. I was in Georgia last week and it was wall-to-wall action. Nancy was able to come on this trip, which was very nice. I have a lot of pictures and will post a much longer recap of the trip as soon as possible. Now, I'm currently in a jet-lag induced fog and am looking forward to getting back on snow for the next week, then I am headed out west on vacation for a ski race in Montana and some back country skiing with a couple buddies in Utah.

More to follow soon.

SLOW DOWN...50km as in 5-0km is a long way!!

2011-02-09T11:52:00.000-08:00

Ok, so my 2nd try at the Lake Placid Loppet didn't go quite as well as the first go-around last year. Jason did a nice job summarizing everything from our team's perspective on the RNR website, so I won't repeat everything here. I will say that Jason had an amazing day to finish 3rd, which is the first podium result in a American Ski Marathon race for any of us, so congrats to him.

For me, I think a combination of things derailed my race. The first and foremost was that Ithink I skied the first 5km (which is almost all uphill) as fast as any 5km I've skied this year, I just kept telling myself to push, push, push, things will slow down. Well, they did slow down, the only problem was that it was I, who slowed down and the leaders who skied away. The middle 25km or so, were pretty brutal. It felt like I was skiing in slow motion, just trying to recover and get back into some type of rythym. I did manage to ski the last 10km relatively strong (emphasis on relative) and was able to pick up a few spots near the end, which was a solid way to end the race. When all was said and done, I finished 13th. I'd be lying if I said I would have been happy with that at the beginning of the race, but by the end, I was just happy it was over. I guess that's the thing about doing these marathons, when a day doesn't go great, it's still an accomplishment to gut it out and drag yourself to the line, or at least that's the rationalization I'm using. I do know that I had to dig deeper and be much tougher mentally this year than last year. I guess it's possible that I was simply in better shape last year (which is a harsh realization considering the amount of training I've put in). I would like to think that the effort over the first 10km put me into the red zone for too long to recover from while trying to still ski fast and simply bonked (whoever invented the word "bonk" was a genius by the way).

Just like last year, we had the full A-Team in the feed zones to help us out. One of the other problems I had was that I didn't follow my nutrition strategy at all. Here's a picture of Libby's hand-written notes before the race on what each of us wanted at various points during the race:
Please note that Jason's final Gel is "Jacked up with Caffeine" (with 2 underlines)!!

Since this isn't completely legible online - My initial plan was:

- take 1/2 an Odwalla bar and a new water bottle with GU sports drink at 17km (I only took the bottle)

- take a Gu gel and my last GU drink bottle at 25km (I only took the gel)

- take a final gel with 8km to go (I didn't take anything).

So the only things I put into my body while skiing 50km up two big mountains was two sports drink bottles (about 200 calories total) and one gel (about 100 calories if I had managed to take the whole thing, which I didn't, because - honestly, it's not that easy to ski and operate a gel at the same time)...that's about 300 calories, while my heart rate monitor said I burned about 3000 during the race...not my most intelligent maneuver, but it's really easy to not always use your brain when your heart is beating through your eyeballs and it feels like your entire body is about to cramp up...

anyways, I love ski racing, have I said that recently?!?

Oddly enough, I think that going out too hard also led to me refusing so much of my initial nutrition plan, I'm not sure my stomach could have handled anything more than what I put into it, but my body needed it.

So, now that I've completed my 4th ski marathon I've experienced all of the following:

- screwed up kick wax and had to double pole for 40km of a 50km race (Tug Hill Tourathon - 2008)
- made mistake of relying on gels and a water bottle in sub-zero temps AND learned the harsh necessity of doubling up on wind briefs during marathons in cold temps - (Fishcher Loppet 2009)
- went out too hard, refused too much food/drink and was seeing stars for about 20km while trying to ski - your basic bonk - (Lake Placid Loppet 2011)

I'm told by the elder-statesmen from the Rochester area that have done a lot of these marathons that these are all pretty common mistakes and not to worry.

Ok, here's the more interesting portion of this blog post, the pictures:

Here's the start, the RNR crew and the Jacked Up old man are all on the right side of the front row.

That's me going out for my final 8km, skiing past Nancy's outstretched right hand, holding "bottle #3".

Much like last year, we had a few others come up including Jane, George and Jane's boyfriend Matt. We stayed at the High Peaks Cyclery Guidehouse in town. Following the race on Saturday, we went out for some festivities that included the Brewpub, Lisa G's and some fooseball at Wise Guys.

This is Derrick and Chad taking on Matt and Jane. Never, ever take on anyone that went to Clarkson in fooseball...they didn't have much else to do up there in Potsdam!

Jane and her boyfriend. After the race, Nancy and these two when on a snowshoe that somehow led to them snowshoeing down an abandoned bobsled track. I'm not sure how that's possible, but I'd like to see some pictures.

This is George watching some speed skaters cruise around the 1980 Olympic Oval.

Overall, it was a very fun weekend. I would have liked to have a better race, but it was definitely still a rewarding race and I feel like I gained some additional experience. I'm definitely going to tweak a few parts of my strategy before my next marathon, which will be the Rendezvous Yellowstone Ski Marathon in West Yellowstone, MT in three and a half weeks.

Quick update

2011-02-03T07:18:00.001-08:00

Last weekend's races went pretty well overall. Saturday's race would have been a pretty average race until I crashed on my last lap, got the wind knocked out of me, and limped home to the finish. I didn't feel great skiing, but ok, and my shooting was also frustratingly average. Thankfully, I escaped the crash with no injuries and no broken equipment, it was quite a face plant I'm told. After the race, the guy we were staying with for the weekend gave me a tour up to the Marcy Dam on back country skis. It was a fun little detour and got my mind off of crashing and missing targets, definitely recharged me mentally for the race the following day. Sunday's race went substantially better, my shooting improved, especially in prone (90%) and I felt much stronger skiing than the previous day. It felt as though I was skiing smooth and under control. Since that was most likely my last biathlon race of the winter, it was good to finish on a high note, as that was probably my strongest all-around race this year.

It's been a busy week after getting home, I've spent the week so far cramming in work and unpacking, repacking and re-waxing for this weekend and the week's already almost over.

This weekend is the Lake Placid Loppet 50km. They just got some new snow, which should slow things down a little, but it should be a good one. We've got a big group going up and should have some excellent race support in the feed zones. Hopefully I'll have more time to update next week. Lots of big things coming up and lots of different places I'll be visiting over the next 6 weeks!

Eventful training in Rochester

2011-01-24T13:02:00.000-08:00

I was able to get in a good solid weekend of training this past weekend in Rochester. One long, slow classic ski and one hard, threshold skate ski. I'll be gone the next several weekends, so it was nice to ski locally in the daylight, a pleasure that I don't often get to indulge in.

On Saturday, Chad, Jason and I went out to Harriet Hollister Spencer State Park for a three hour classic ski. It was pretty cold (single digits), which makes for great classic skiing. It also typically makes the kick-wax very straightforward. The wax of the day was Special Green. I think they call it "Special" because it lasts forever, seriously. Any cross country skier who sees the bottom of one of these guys is putting in some serious kilometers, I don't even think it's possible. I've had this since I was in high school, and sadly, that was a long time ago.
About two and a half hours in, while skiing down a trail called "Bear Trap" which used to be called "The Pit", Jason hit a bump and remodeled his ski's!

I don't think it's supposed to do that!

This trail has a long, storied history of causing stuff to break. When I was in high school, they used to put mats on trees at the bottom because they were worried about racers crashing into them (granted, the mats were very thin and when frozen, likely offered less padding than the actual tree bark) and nowadays, the high schoolers don't race down this trail. Anyways, Jason was ok and wasn't all that concerned about his 12 year-old ski finally going where all good skis go when their time is up. He did proclaim to have "Bomber kick" while skiing back to the parking lot with the broken ski.

This weekend, Jason and I are making the trip up to Lake Placid for two NorAm cup biathlon races. These are trial races for the Canadian national team and the US B team will be back from Europe, so it should be super competitive. I'm looking forward to it.

P.S. - according to blogger.com, this is my 100th blog post.

Lake Placid Super Tour weekend recap

2011-01-19T14:28:00.000-08:00

I will start by stating that last weekend was an absolute blast, and I truly love ski racing and training. I just wanted to make that clear, as the rest of the post may not give everyone the impression that I'm actually enjoying all of this. I am. Now on to the rest of the story...

Chad, Jason, Sam (Chad's college buddy) and I split the kitchenette unit at the Jack Rabbit (which apparently is now called "Tmax-n-Topo", but I refuse to call it anything other than the Jack Rabbit).

I went into it thinking that I would struggle in Friday's classic race and do better in the skate race. That's why you race I guess - my classic race ended up being pretty good (at least compared to other classic races I've done) and my skate race was kind of a disaster. The classic race was held at the ski jumps in Lake Placid and was essentially five laps of a 2km course that was uphill for 1km and downhill for 1km. I actually felt very strong on the striding sections of the course. I lost some time in the turnaround section at the bottom of the course and had a pretty weak final lap, but for the first time I felt like I skied strong in a classic race and felt spent at the end. So, that was a positive sign for sure, and somewhat of a relief that maybe I'm finally making some progress with my classic technique.

Picture couresty of FasterSkier.com - this was taken at the bottom of the course, we made a right at the end of the bleachers and started making our way back up to the top of the hill again.

On to the skate race - the race was 3 laps of a 5km loop on the biathlon side of Mt. Van Hovenberg. I didn't feel great warming up and it only seemed to get worse, not sure what was wrong, just didn't have any energy and felt like I was spinning my wheels a little, meaning I felt like I was working really hard, but not getting anywhere. I knew about 90 seconds into the race that I was in trouble and the tough part about XC skiing is that there is nowhere to hide when you're having a bad day, so I spent the next 47:30 thinking about being anywhere other than where I was. Not to get too statistical, but my average heart rate for the race was identical both days (178), but on Saturday, I basically only had one gear and couldn't recover at all. It seemed like I was pegged the whole time, but going nowhere. Definitely very frustrating as I'd had that race circled on my calendar since September. I left the race not knowing what to think, but it was definitely one of those days where I didn't need to see the results sheet to know that it wasn't a good one.

Hopefully this next part doesn't get too philosophical - I've had a couple similar races over the last couple years that just don't seem to make sense to me - one day I feel great, super strong and the next I just don't have anything in the tank - perhaps it's lack of recovery, or bad nutrition, or a flukey bad day, or not enough sleep, or maybe I just need to train harder or maybe I need to not train as hard or maybe I'm getting sick (more on that later)? So, based on all those possibilities, it could be anything, so what do I make of it? Anyways, this is one of the challenges that I think endurance athletes have that I never had playing baseball. In baseball, there are a lot less variables that you actually have control over (there are a LOT of variables, don't misunderstand me, but the amount that an individual baseball player actually controls are really pretty limited) and if you're struggling with one aspect, the solution is pretty simple - you need to work harder at it, more swings, more time in the weight room, more long toss, more groundballs, etc, it usually always boils down to MORE of something. With skiing (or biking) I've found that it could mean you need to train more, but it could just as easily mean that you need to rest more, or that you need to change something in your diet, or you just need more sleep....it's easy to see how this can mess with one's head...once again, I need to remind myself to stop thinking meat, it can only hurt the ballclub.

Given all these questions and frustrations running through my brain, I decided to chalk it up to the "flukey bad day" reason listed above and forget about it. So, with all the racing done, the four of us headed to the LP Brewpub for some dinner and UBU.

On Sunday we headed out for morning ski to do a little preview of the Porter Mtn Loop which we'll be racing on in two weeks at the Loppet. It was absolutely awesome out, any remnants of my bad race from the previous day were fully flushed from my brain following this morning ski.

Jason took this snapshot of Chad, Sam and I at the top of Hi-Notch, which is an extension of the Porter Mtn loop.

Once I got home, unpacked everything and pretty much went to sleep. Monday afternoon I got hit with some type of stomach bug and was out of commission until about 9am this morning and I mean totally out, couldn't get off couch for a full day, haven't been that sick since college. It's possible my body was trying to fight something during the race on Saturday and then finally lost that battle, or it's possible that pushing hard while having an off-day broke my immune system down to the point where I picked something up, or it's possible that I just had a bad race and it had nothing to do with me getting sick. But, taking the same approach that I explained above, analyzing all the possibilities may be a fruitless endeavor, so I'm just going to go with the old slogan "When it's your day to get sick, it's your day to get sick." Quite philosophical, isn't it?

No races this weekend coming up, so hopefully I can shake the rest of this bug and get out for some good skiing to prep for some NorAm Cup races and the LP Loppet.

Pictures from Stowe and some huge races this weekend

2011-01-11T09:30:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures from the few days that Nancy and I spent in Stowe after my races over the holidays.

Nancy and my buddy Lucas both came to my last race, after which, we headed for Stowe (about 45min from where I was racing). The following day, Nancy and I went up to the Trapp Family Lodge, which, according to Cross Country Skier Magazine, is the oldest nordic ski facility in the US. The trails were absolutely amazing. After 3 straight days of racing, going on a nice easy ski and enjoying the beautiful scenery was exactly what I needed.

Here's Nancy making her way up to "The Cabin."
Success, Nancy after reaching the Cabin, which is on top of a very large hill (we were skiing uphill for almost an hour to get there).
This was taken on the way back to the lodge, nice backdrop! Over my left shoulder is the downhill resort at Stowe, but it was tough to get a picture through the trees.

Erica and Joe made the trip up from New Jersey to hang out with us for New Years and do some alpine skiing. This was taken at the Shed restaurant and Brewery in Stowe, where we had dinner on New Years Eve.
Nancy and I at dinner.

On Thursday of this week, I'm headed to Lake Placid for the SuperTour races there. The SuperTour is the XC ski race series for elite domestic ski racers. Basically, there is the US Ski Team that competes on the World Cup, and then everyone else that's aspiring to be at that level races on the SuperTour. Since US XC Nationals were in Rumford, Maine last week, many of the top domestic pros will be racing in LP this weekend. The Northeast hasn't hosted a SuperTour weekend in two years, so it's a great opportunity to get a real measuring stick against the top skiers in the country. In addition to the SuperTour, the races also serve as a college carnival for the eastern Division 1 colleges and as a Junior Olympic Qualifier for New York and New England. They are expecting over 500 skiers, many of whom are currently training full time. There will be several former Olympians and National Champions in the field and I'm sure a whole bunch of very fast up-and-coming young skiers. These are surely the biggest XC ski races that I've competed in. Friday will be a 10km classic and Saturday will be a 15km skate. I'm not sure what to expect, so it's difficult to set goals as far as placement goes, but I am pumped to race, especially for the skate race. It'll be an experience in any event. Full race report to follow.

Vermont update

2011-01-03T07:23:00.000-08:00

I didn't have time to make any blog posts since before Christmas, so here's a very quick update. Nancy and I had a great Christmas in Rochester with our families. We managed to see almost everyone, and I managed to wax skis, pack and get in a couple final days of training before heading up to Vermont with Jason for three NorAm Cup biathlon races.

The race series also served as trials races for both the Canadian and US Junior national teams, so there were a lot of junior biathletes, including 9 from New York State. The races went very well all in all. My shooting was sporadic (1 good day, 1 average day and 1 total trainwreck), but considering how little time I spent preparing for the shooting aspect of these races, it wasn't too surprising. I felt pretty strong skiing, and seemed to ski faster as each race went on. This is a very encouraging sign as it shows that I'm able to recover well from racing several days in a row. I also felt so much more relaxed and confident in my own skiing and less concerned with others' skiing. I was able to go to a race with a pretty good field and be aggressive in following and passing fast skiers. Overall, it was a very positive series of races for me and I'm really pumped for the rest of my season.

(Photo courtesy of Sean Halligan)

I owe a huge thanks to the Bradley's, who once again opened up their home to Jason and I and made sure we were well fed. I also want to thank Sean Halligan, Art Stegen and Carl Klossner for the help zero-ing us on the range.

Following the races, Nancy and I met up with some other friends in Stowe, where we hung out until yesterday. I have some great pictures of this leg of the trip that I'll try to post later this week. We skied at the Trapp Family Lodge for a couple days and hung out and relaxed in Stowe. We got home last night and it's back to reality today. With the warm-up in the Northeast, it looks like my next races will be in Lake Placid next weekend for their SuperTour weekend, which will surely be the most competitive XC ski races that I've ever been in, so that will be exciting. Hopefully more pictures and a better recap of Stowe coming soon....

Still some work to do

2010-12-21T08:43:00.001-08:00

So, last weekend's race went so-so. I felt pretty good overall, but my classic technique was again a limiting factor. Not sure exactly what the issue is, but I just don't feel like I get anywhere near the power or speed when I'm classic skiing compared to skating. Anyways, it's still a work in progress, so I'll keep plugging away at it. I ended up 1:20 behind the winner (Chad again). It's a strange thing classic skiing, but I do enjoy it, even though I feel I should be better at it, so I'll keep trying to improve as I have a couple very big classic races later this winter. I'm not ashamed to say however, that I'm relieved that my next several races will all be on skate skis.

Up next, are three NorAm Cup biathlon races in Jericho, Vermont on 28-30 December. The timing of these races is good and bad. The good part is that I can race in three high-level races at a great venue without having to use any vacation time (we have a shutdown for the holiday week). The bad news is that I'll have to do my best to be disciplined over the next week when it comes to all the holiday meals, parties and other events we have upcoming. I'll have to continuously remind myself of the old adage "there's not much you can do to improve your fitness in a week, but there's a lot of things you can do to hurt it." It shouldn't be too bad though, and I'm definitely looking forward to these races. Following the races, Nancy and I are going to spend New Years up in Vermont with some other friends, so that should be a great opportunity to get in some additional training, while also having some relaxing fun with some close friends in an absolutely beautiful part of the world!

Fact Finding in the Tug Hill Plateau

2010-12-17T09:25:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is the annual "World Famous Osceola Christmas Race" in the Tug Hill Plateau north of Syracuse. I'm not sure that it's world famous, but it is a very well attended race in New York State and is typically the first JO Qualifier, so there are always a lot of high school racers out. The other reason that it might not actually be World Famous, is that no one actually calls the race the World Famous Osceola Christmas Classic, it's simply called the "pie race".

The race is always held the Saturday before Christmas, is 5km for all classes regardless of age, and the winner of each category receives a homemade pie. The top 3 in each age group also receive homemade pottery and the proceeds from the race benefit the Camden High School Ski team. Chad has won this race five years in a row or something, and swears by the homemade chocolate pie that he brings home to his wife every year. It's definitely a cool tradition and RNR is bringing a big squad up there tomorrow to hopefully come home with some pies, pottery and podiums!

I've done this race a couple times in the past, but this year will be a classic technique race, so it will add a different twist. Hopefully my race re-cap is more positive than that of my last classic ski race. The first race of the year is always a bit of a crapshoot to know what to expect, and when you factor in that it's my weaker technique historically and will likely be the shortest race I do all winter, I'm not sure what to expect. However, doing a low-key race like this is much more relaxing than, for example, having your first race of the year be in the Olympic Trials (as was the case last year). If I come away from the race and my technique allows me to push my aerobic capacity (i.e. if I'm able to get my heart rate up where it typically is in a skate race), then I think I'll get a decent indicator of the improvements in my classic skiing that I've been trying to make, and wherever that leaves me on the result sheet will also be a good indicator of my fitness level. So thats the goal for tomorrow - to get some feedback.

Speaking of goals, I'm going to try to approach every race this season with a specific goal for that race. For some races, this might be winning, or top ten, or good shooting, or skiing uphills strong, it depends on the race. The reason for this is pretty simple - I would like to get to the end of the year and not look back on 15 races and just see where I placed in each race and not be able to clearly see what I need to work on and what areas need more focus. Results can mean many different things, for example, I would say that last year the Lake Placid Loppet (7th place) or the NorAm Cup races in LP (8th and 9th place) were my best races of the year and the NYSSRA championships (5th place) may have been my worst. If I only look at the results sheet, I don't get an indicator that will help me improve as a skier.

I feel pretty good about the training I've put in through the fall and especially the past month, so it's time to see what's under the hood so to speak and stop speculating on this blog about where I'm at, time to do some fact-finding.

Does this make us a family of "Yellowjackets"?

2010-12-13T09:24:00.000-08:00

Nancy finished graduate school last weekend and is now the proud owner of an MBA from the University of Rochester. This is a great accomplishment and she's been working very hard towards finishing it.

Now that we both have MBA's from the Simon School, as does my Grandfather, I think that the U of R has overtaken all other schools in either of our families for combined degrees.

We had a very different name for their mascot during my baseball-playing days at RIT, which cannot be re-printed here. But now that we will both be receiving alumni newsletters and requests for donation from the U of R, maybe I should start embracing my Yellowjacket pride.

On second thought, I might not as well.

Full-on winter

2010-12-08T10:15:00.000-08:00

Winter has made it's way to Rochester. We've been receiving a few inches of snow each day for almost the last week. I skied at Mendon Ponds last night and the coverage was excellent, it was mid-winter trail conditions. My first ski was last Saturday at the Lima Country Club on some pretty thin snow. It was a lot better than roller skiing, but last night was the first real ski in good conditions on groomed trails and I was reminded in about the first 5 minutes (after I got used to the length of my real skis compared to my roller skis) why I am so passionate about cross country skiing.

Now that winter is here, it's time to get ready for all of the following idiosyncrasies associated with ski racing and training in the Rochester area:

- More miles will be put on my car in the next four months than the other 8 months of the year combined...by a lot.

- training in the daylight is limited to Saturday's and Sunday's only.

- eating dinner at 9pm on weeknights seems early.

- I will have a runny nose until at least March.

- My attic is fully converted into a waxing hut and already seems like a disaster and I've only waxed each set of skis once.

- The drying rack in our bathroom is always completely full and our boot dryer is the most valuable appliance that I own.

- I will mentally thank Gore at least 4 times a week for developing "Windstopper" technology. I think whoever named Chicago the "windy city" had never visited Rochester.

- The proportion of meals that involve peanut butter will be at least 50%. This is mainly out of convenience, but it has always been a staple in my diet...good thing I'm not allergic.

- My co-workers will ask me, at least weekly, if I do triathlon or if I have any recommendations on alpine skis for the children. Neither of which I have any clue about.

There are probably a lot of others, but that's a quick list anyways. I'm excited!

Getting antsy...

2010-12-02T11:48:00.000-08:00

This should come as no surprise, since most of my posts over the past month have at least mentioned skiing in one way or another, but I am getting pumped for ski racing to start. I haven't been in a competitive event for about two and a half months. Last fall, I competed in a serious of running races through the fall, but I intentionally did not do any of those this year. Over the spring and summer, I logged a good amount of training and racing (due to more consistent bike racing) and decided to take a break from competition and really try to focus on consistent training. It's been nice to take a break from having my weekly training plan revolve around some type of event. I am also hoping that doing more strength and specific-ski training in the fall will pay dividends this winter (I guess we'll see). For the most part, it has been consistent (with a few hiccups due to workload and travel), and as far as I can tell, things seem to be going well. It's tough to know until you get out there and race though.

This time of year is really tough. Mother Nature seems to be teasing us big time - the weather has went from - windy and cold, to sunny and 55, to pouring rain and 40, to wet snow all in the last week. We now have about an inch of snow sitting on top of semi-frozen ground, which is basically useless. It has, however, eliminated roller skiing as a viable training option, so it's been back to running, bounding, treadmill incline intervals and box-jumps until we get more snow. That routine is getting old, especially when your buddy in Buffalo sends you pictures like this (taken this morning):

Anyways, I'm trying to be patient and I know it's only a matter of days before I'm on skis, and it won't be long before I'll be pinning a race bib on and getting after it!

An interesting way of telling time

2010-11-25T17:21:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving! Can't believe it's actually Thanksgiving 2010 already. My nephew Colin is 1-year-old now, and it seems like he was born about 15 minutes ago...I have way too many things to be thankful for to list here....So, instead of that, I'm going to simply quote my buddy Kevin in describing his recent trip home from Tajikistan, which provides an interesting twist on the skewed reality that we both have with regard to telling time during international travel:

"Well, I left my hotel room during the 2nd quarter of the 4pm set of NFL games on Sunday and got home just in time for the 4th quarter of the Monday Night Football Game, so everything went pretty well." (that was all the same day)

That's what international travel can be like...

Anyways, big things coming up soon - ski season getting into gear (trips to Vermont, LP, and likely Utah on the agenda, hopefully some W's and maybe even some OK classic skiing), Nancy's finishes grad school in two weeks, holidays, big bucks, etc, we'll see, but many many things to look forward too...

A few pics and a new PR!!

2010-11-21T14:42:00.001-08:00

Here are some pics from the wine tour that Kevin and I took our Georgian friends on a couple weeks ago. Any time that Kevin and I are in Tbilisi, Temuri and Ivane not only make us feel at home, but also include us into whatever they have going on with their friends and/or family. These visits have really taught both of us a lot with regard to the importance of the time that you spend with your friends and family. With that in mind, we felt it was appropriate, during their visit to Rochester, to take them on a wine tour in the beautiful Finger Lakes Region with some of our close friends and family. Some pics:

Ivane, Kevin and I. One very successful businessman and two aspiring businessmen.

Nancy, Jason and Anne (Jason's girlfriend).
Ivane and I. For some reason, Georgians don't seem to smile too often in pictures, but believe me, Ivane was very happy on this particular day.

Kevin, Nana (Ivane's sister) and Kate (Kevin's sister).
Right to left - Anne, Temuri, Alice (Temuri's wife), Nana, Brendan, Alice's friend (She's a Georgian living in Toronto, so she came down for the weekend to visit), and Jason.
Nancy and I with Temuri and Alice.

Overall, it was a great day spent with friends and family. According to the famous Georgian philosophy, time spent with friends and family doesn't make you any older. I truly believe that none of us aged that day (although, I will say that my liver may have needed a little recovery).

In other news, the Romanians left yesterday, and that was also a great visit. I am continuously amazed by the great friendships that I've developed over the years and developed a few new friends over the past several days.

Final note, I have been very (cautiously) curious about my fitness level going into ski season given that the past month has been spent hosting customers and getting slammed with other work. My weekly training volume has been a little bit down and my weekly sleep hours have been very much down. I have been working out a lot, but also spending too much time in bars and restaurants with customers. Given that, I figured, for better or worse, I needed to get a baseline, so yesterday, I did a roller ski time trial on a course by my parents place (it was opening day of deer season, so I went hunting first thing). After reviewing my training log, my previous PR on this course was 22:57 (coincidentally on opening day of deer season in 2009). Yesterday, I was happily surprised to see 22:08 when I passed the "school bus stop ahead" sign that marks the finish. Not sure what that means, but it definitely gave me a nice mental pick-up going into the final weeks of training before the snow flies and it's time to break out the spandex!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

2010-11-16T14:15:00.000-08:00

Wow...I think in early October I wrote that things would calm down and return to a normal routine, that couldn't be farther from the truth unless this is my new "normal" routine, in which case, life will be one long endurance race....I do not remember a time in my life where I have had this little down time - it's been a never ending string of "leave the house at 730am and get home at 10pm, rinse, repeat" since I got home from the Ukraine a few weeks ago.

A couple notable events of the past few weeks are:

- I hosted a visit to Rochester from my friends Temuri and Ivane from Georgia. They were here on business, however, we did make time to do some wine tasting in the Finger Lakes region two Saturday's ago. I'm not sure they were impressed with the wine, but I'm positive they had fun and enjoyed our time together.

- Last weekend was my good friend Knodel's 30th birthday party. It was held in a bowling alley in Buffalo, NY. As such, I bowled for the first time in like 10 years. It was a good time, and I wasn't as embarrassing on the bowling alley as I thought I would be, although Nancy did beat me the first game.

- Following the 30th B-Day party, I met the Ogbornes (Ron is a good buddy from Penfield), at the Sabres game, which was a lot of fun. They live out in Arizona now, so we don't get too many opportunities to see them, so the timing of the game with the 30th B-Day party worked out perfect, and the Sabres won in OT to top off a great day with a variety of old friends.

- I'm now in the middle of hosting a delegation from Romania. They are many of the same guys that I spent a week with in Washington, DC last year, so it's been good to catch up with them, and to show them around the area a little.

Other than these events, it's been "sipping water from a firehose" at work and it doesn't seem like there's an end in sight.

One of the positive's from the past few weeks is that I've managed to re-institute a morning workout regiment. When I was in college, we had baseball practice at 6am for about 6 weeks each year during the winter. I absolutely hated "6am's" and swore I would never put myself through that again for any reason. This is a tactic I've used when on the road for work, but have never had to consistently implement while in Rochester, but the last few weeks, I have managed to get in some quality workouts in the pre-dawn hours. I'm still not sure that it would ever be sustainable for me as a long-term training regiment, but for short periods of time, it has been re-assuring to know that when things get hectic for a few weeks, I can manage to keep a training schedule and obey my alarm clock, even when it reads 545am and it's 35 and raining outside.

I have some good pictures from the events mentioned above, hopefully I'll have a chance to post them soon.

Mental training refresher

2010-10-31T12:39:00.000-07:00

This morning I met a few buddies out at Bristol Mountain for some "ski walking" intervals. Essentially, we start at the bottom of the steepest slope they have and hike to the top with ski poles. Today, we did four intervals, which pretty much thrashed my legs (which was the point). Additionally, it was about 38F at the bottom, so probably 32 or so and windy at the top. Towards the end of our workout, snow flurries started to fly, my hands were legitimately cold, and I couldn't wait to take a long hot shower when we got home, and I loved it. All excellent signs!

This might not apply to everyone, but the wind, cold and snow flying on top of Bristol was a great mental pick-up considering I've spent the better part of the last two weeks investigating different ways to utilize to incline function on treadmills from the Soviet era in order to simulate ski training as closely as possible. I'll take the wind and cold over the mind-numbing training methods I've managed to get myself through recently. There is something to be said for the mental toughness that can be gained from forcing yourself through treadmill training, but skiing is about being outside and going up real hills, not the ones that can be simulated by cranking up the incline on a treadmill. Great workout - beneficial from the waist down and possibly more beneficial from the shoulders up.

Back in Rochester

2010-10-30T02:25:00.001-07:00

As I type this, it's 6am and I've been awake for the last two hours, thanks jet lag.

I made it back to Rochester late Thursday night. It was a good trip to Kharkov, Ukraine, but it's good to be home. It took four flights (which I think is the first time I've had that many flights in one day) and 26 hours to make it home, but everything went relatively smooth all things considered.

I didn't get many pictures from the Ukraine, but here's one of myself, Denis and Voldemar. Denis is originally from the Ukraine, so it was nice to have someone with us with a little local knowledge. This was taken at a restaurant where I ate wild boar, which was very good.

We also had an absurd amount of perogies.

After a couple weeks overseas, where the only English TV channels are usually BBC and CNN worldnews, I'm usually looking forward to watching ESPN when I get home. However, one benefit from the lack of anglo-speaking TV channels is that I do read books when I'm on the road (shocking, I know). I finished an entire book on this trip, which is also a first for me. I read Where Men Win Glory, by John Krakauer. This was the 4th book I've read by Mr. Krakauer and it was an exceptional book about the life of Pat Tillman. Tillman made headlines earlier this decade by choosing to leave the NFL to join the military following the events of 9/11. In 2004, he was tragically killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan. The book traces Tillman's life, which was substantially more complicated than it would seem at first glance, then goes into the decision to leave a life of luxury and happiness, the events that led to his death and a well-researched account of the events following his death where the government attempted to turn his tragic death into positive PR (which is all the more disturbing considering that Tillman refused to give a single interview following his decision to leave the NFL, and by all accounts wanted no attention or special treatment). His journal entries during his time in the military were very interesting and revealing about Tillman's unique outlook on life. It was a very good read, that almost anyone would take something away from.

Anyways, the book report is over. Now it's time to get back into some type of normal routine. It's 38 degrees out right now and I can't wait for the sun to come up so I can go roller skiing. Winter seems to be right around the corner.

It turns out there's more to this city than traffic jams

2010-10-24T07:47:00.001-07:00

I've spent the past week in Bucharest, Romania. I've been here a few times now, but each previous trip had been very much in and out, with no down time. In past trips, my biggest takeaway from the city is that the traffic is AWFUL. There are way too many cars in this city. It literally can take you an hour to drive five miles. However, the last few days have given me a greater appreciation for the city's history and people. Since I'm going to the Ukraine next week, I was here over a weekend, which enabled me to actually experience a little bit of Bucharest's sights. Some of our local partners were gracious enough to show me around the city.

A few days ago we visited the House of Parliament, which is the second largest building in the world (volume-wise) following the Pentagon. It was originally built to be the home of the last communist dictator here. Obviously, he wasn't that popular of a leader considering he built this massive, extravagant building when there were many Romanians struggling to find enough food to survive. Due to this, many Romanians have mixed emotions towards the building. Following the revolution and overthrow in 1989, the government determined it would be cheaper to finish the building than demolish it, so they turned it into the House of Parliament.

Today, I also visited the Museum of Villages in Bucharest. The cultural center replicated authentic houses, art and music from different areas throughout Romania and put them all in one place in central Bucharest. It was very interesting and highlighted Romania's diverse cultures.

Below are some pictures.

This is one of the meeting rooms in the House of Parliament.

This is Bob (a co-worker) and I on one of the many massive hand-made carpets.

This is Alexandra, who works for our local partner, but also played tour guide for Bob and I on this occasion.

The second oldest church in Bucharest.
This picture is from the Museum of Villages. I think they're playing some Transylvanian bluegrass (it sounded like it anyways).

This contraption is what some regions in Romania use to make Palinca (the local moonshine made from plums or apples).

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Here's a close-up shot of the Tomb. They do a ceremonial changing of the guard as well.

Here's the oldest church in Bucharest.
This is Gelu and his family. He also works for our local partner and was my tour guide for the Museum of Villages. Gelu will be visiting Rochester with some customers in a few weeks and I'm looking forward to re-paying some of his hospitality.

Gelu insisted that I take a picture with this woman at the Museum of Villages. She's from Transylvania region. Notice that my hands are placed firmly on all my valuables. I've heard that these folks can be "light fingered".

This is the Revolution Memorial. It's in the middle of Revolution Square and is across the street from where the aforementioned dictator left Romania for the last time via helicopter which signaled the end of the communist times in Romania.

Tomorrow morning I'm flying to Kharkov, Ukraine for a few days, then home later this week. I've never been to Kharkov, so I'm sure it will be a new experience.

John's blog

2010-10-17T17:43:00.000-07:00

My younger brother Johnny just started a blog - http://johnmaynard.blogspot.com/

Quick intro, he's lives in Philly, also travels a lot, loves craft beers, and is getting married next fall. He has some very unique opinions on music, politics and sports. Check it out.

He's much smarter and more insightful than I am, so I have the utmost confidence that he will be dropping a lot of great things on the blogosphere world...

Natalie and Shaun's wedding

2010-10-17T16:59:00.000-07:00

Last weekend Nance and I went down to Norwalk, CT for Natalie (the maid of honor in our wedding) and Shaun's wedding. The wedding was absolutely perfect in almost every way. Great weather, great people, great food, etc.

With Nancy being in the wedding, I did have a decent amount of down time. I was able to go for two long roller skis and managed to hop a train into NYC for an afternoon of beer sampling with my buddy Jeff and his girlfriend Erin (both sales reps for Sam Adams). Shaun played football at Bowdin, and Nat played Field Hockey with Nancy at Colgate, so there were no shortage of former NCAA athletes there.

Here are some pictures:

There's the beautiful bride and her Dad. He's a huge Flyers fan. Other than that, he's a really great guy.

I was sitting on the aisle, so I had the perfect camera angle for the first kiss.

Nancy being escorted out by one of Shaun's teammates from Bowdin.

Natalie and I.
Two best friends.
Nancy and I.

I'm headed to Romania tomorrow and most likely Ukraine the following week. I have done some incredible workouts in the past couple weeks, so I hope to make a post about those at some point soon. Until the next time though, Nastrovia.

Bike season over...wedding season almost over

2010-10-04T13:55:00.000-07:00

I cleaned my bike yesterday and put it in the attic for what is likely to be the entire winter. Looking back on my bike season, it was a good one, even though I didn't have too many results to write home about. As really my first season racing with a team and attempting to focus a little more on biking over the summer, it certainly wasn't without frustration, however, it was a very good learning experience. I feel like I focussed enough on biking this year to realize that I'm not focussed enough in general on anything. In the past year, my training hours have been split almost exactly equal between running, biking and skiing (counting roller skiing hours). While the overall volume has left me relatively fit, the lack of focus might be holding me back, especially when it comes to bike racing. Another takeaway from my bike season is that I need to improve my explosiveness. While I may never be a great sprinter, I shouldn't be as much of a train-wreck sprinting either, and given that many of the races around here are going to come down to a sprint at some level, I need to improve this aspect of racing in order to really ever come up with good results. I think that improving my fast-twitch explosiveness would be beneficial to my skiing as well, so I'm putting a little more emphasis on strength training, especially between now and ski season.

Left to Right - Rick, my, Jason, Chad, Dylan, Phil and Michel (who came up with the sprint win on this particular night).

Being on a team was great, and it was awesome to see my teammates do so well over the course of the season. We managed to win the GVCC team prize for total wins throughout the season. We also had a few very notable performances in some big weekend races. It certainly adds an entirely new dimension to the sport compared to previous years.

So, while I am looking forward to ski season and the snow flying, I am also planning on ways to train a little differently to build on the bike season we just completed and look forward to a lot more racing next year with my Solo Break Racing teammates.

This weekend coming up is Natalie's (Nancy's maid of honor) wedding in Fairfield, CT. This will be the last wedding of 2010 for Nancy and I, and while it has been a fun summer, I'm looking forward to a little less chaotic October and November. I guess only time will tell if it will truly be less chaotic.

two week recap

2010-09-22T08:20:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it's fall already. It seems like 10 minutes ago that I was reluctantly taking the ski box off the top of my car and putting the bike racks on. Last night I left work and it was dark outside (granted I did stay late, but still, a sign that headlamp season is basically here).

Over the last two weeks I've had four bike races (none of which went particularly well), one 127 mile charity ride (which was great) and one RIT alumni baseball game (much better than expected)...mixed in around that was work (going a thousand miles an hour) and as much roller skiing and running as possible. Needless to say, I'm worn down right now, but getting worn down from doing too many great things isn't anything to complain about.

The charity ride mentioned above was the Highlander Cycle Tour. The event coordinator is a co-worker and also a lunch-time running partner of mine. This was the 11th year they've held this great event in the Southerntier south of Rochester. There are several options of routes that people choose based on ability, but the route I did was 127 miles with over 14,000 feet of climbing, which is comparable to a mountain stage of the Tour de France. Many people that live in Rochester forget that, just south of Rochester, the Finger Lakes region has some very steep hills and beautiful scenery. This years ride included going up and down the hills around Bristol, Canandaigua, Keuka and Naples. It was over eight hours of riding for me, and took some people over 12 hours to complete the ride. I had a good group of guys that I rode the majority of the time with. The weather couldn't have been better and, as always, the event was very well run and raised a lot of money for charity!

This past weekend was our annual RIT baseball alumni weekend. The weekend includes a golf outing, a baseball game at Frontier Field and a barbecue following the game. This year most of my college teammates were able to make it back, so it was great to see everyone. It does turn into a pretty exhausting weekend, but this year was a big success as usual. One highlight for me was catching for my good buddies Joey and Lucas. Lucas still throws really hard and has control issues, which made catching a little exciting, but it was fun to be out there with everyone again. I caught four innings total, which was ok at the time, but I was more sore the day after the game than I was the day after the 127 mile ride described above. I guess I'm not exactly built for catching these days!

The bike races mentioned above - let's just say I'm ready for ski season. Although it is great to see the team doing well and this has been a great summer on the biking front overall, and I'm already looking forward to next season.

Changing seasons...

2010-09-09T06:18:00.001-07:00

I can declare that fall has arrived for all of the following reasons:

- I had to grill using a headlamp this week.

- There have been three days in the last week where the sun hasn't come out and the temperature didn't get above 60F. There have also been two days in the last week where the temperature topped 90F...so, it's all over the map, which is pretty much how Spring and Fall go in Rochester.

- I had my first roller ski in long sleeves last weekend, and last night, I rollerskied in the cold rain and was excited about it.

- I've been receiving a massive amount of e-mails from my college buddies about alumni weekend (3rd weekend in September every year).

- Sam Adams Summer Ale has been replaced by Oktoberfest at most local bars by now.

- The NFL season starts tonight. Might be unrelated, but I also had a massive craving for chili yesterday.

So, I have bike races tonight and tomorrow night and then I'm riding the Highlander on Saturday, which is a great charity ride in the hills south of Rochester. After that, I'm not sure how often my bike will be coming out. I've already started mixing in a lot of roller skiing and some trail running. Within two weeks it'll be headlamp workouts-only on weeknights. So, I'm already looking forward to the snow flying, but I do love fall in this area.

Whirlwind

2010-08-29T13:38:00.000-07:00

Since my last post, it's been go, go, go, full gas. Everything in the last two weeks has been so unique and amazing that each deserves a specific blog post. The problem however, lies in the fact that I haven't quite cracked the code on the creation of a 27 hour day (although I've proposed this several times to the powers that be), and haven't had time to update.

I had a good week in Georgia. I'm always taken aback by the culture of the people in Georgia. Somehow, as very small country sandwiched geographically between so much awfullness (I think I just made that word up), the people of Georgia have sustained a culture that dates back to biblical times, including a unique language and alphabet. They've sustained this culture while being occupied by six different countries. The thing that has always struck me the most is the warmth of the people there. This was my 4th trip to Georgia and there are two very important cultural phenomenons I've picked up on. First, they believe that every minute you spend with family and friends doesn't extend your lifespan, which leads to a lot of long dinners, etc, but it is a great philosophy. I've never heard a Georgian speak of any stupid reality TV show, or TV at all, when you spend time with Georgian, they want to know about YOU and everything you have going on in your life. Which is an incredible breath of fresh air compared to some of the BS we have going on culturally. Second, they trust people until they've given a reason not to. I've read "Three Cups of Tea", of which, the premises is that in Islamic culture, once you have 3 cups of tea with someone, you become part of the family. In Georgia, if you participate in one proper Georgian toast, you are immediately a friend and they will do anything for you. It's very difficult to describe to people how close I've become with several friends in Georgia over the last year. I feel very fortunate to have been exposed to the Georgian culture and I am luckier to have met some of the people I've met there. Here are a couple photos while I was there.

This is Irakli, he's an awesome guy and I consider him a very close friend. In the background, the presidents house is lit up.
This is a shot of an area of Tbilisi that they're currently renovating and making into a commercial section of town.
Here's a closer shot of the old church, which was first opened 1800 years ago (not a typo, OLD), when the capital was moved to Tbilisi.

When I left Tbilisi, I flew direct to Philadelphia. Nancy was going there for a bridal shower for her close friend Natalie. Since, my younger brother John and one of my closest friends Scott both live in the Philly area, I flew there, so I could see them both, Nancy and keep her company on the drive back to Rochester. Friday night, John picked me up at the airport and I went out in Media, PA with him, his new fiancée Theresa and a couple of his buddies. It was a very fun night. Saturday, we got up and headed over to Scott's house for a BBQ with his family and a few of his friends.

Here's a shot of Scott with his 3 month old daughter Adalyn. Didn't get many pictures of Philly, but it was a great weekend.

Following a overly long drive back to Rochester last Sunday, I finally got home. I had a semi-normal, although busy, week at work.

Yesterday was Chad and Libby's wedding. Chad's one of my regular training partners and over the last 3 years, he's quickly become one of my closest friends. Chad and Libby have been dating since high school (and people think Nancy and I took it slow). That included Chad going to Clarkson and Libby going to BC, and yet they made it work and both ended up back in Rochester. Anyways, I couldn't be happier for them. I will say that there were a lot of fast skiers at the wedding. More importantly there was a lot of love all around! Here are some pics from what was an awesome night.

There's the happy couple!!
Here is all of the RNR and SBR attendee's with Chad and Libby. Left to right - Rick, Jason, Frenchy, Libby, Chad, me, Shannon.

Frenchy and his wife Susanna.
Nancy and I.
Rick and Shannon (getting married next fall).
This pic is me and three of Chad's buddies from College. I met Erik (left) at Chad's bachelor party. He's from Norway originally, great guy. These guys all brought their A-Games for Chad's big day, great hanging out with all of them. There was a notable absentee from the Clarkson crowd at the wedding, named Sam. He's a biathlete that we know well and Chad used to live with in college. He's currently serving the Vermont National Guard in Afghanistan. The best man (Chad's brother Derrick) did a great toast which included mentioning Sammy. We're all praying he get's home safe and is kicking our arses again on snow soon!

Overall, it's been an amazing whirlwind!

Cucumber Season in Warsaw

2010-08-14T07:40:00.001-07:00

I've been to Warsaw, Poland somewhere around a dozen times and truly love this city. However, this past week has been a new experience. This is my first time here during the summer months as typically most of my customers go on holiday for the better part of July and August. This long summer vacation is very common throughout the better part of Europe, but one of my Polish friends, Andy, informed me that these summer months are referred to as "Cucumber Season", and even used it in a sentence, by responding to this question from me, "Andy, when will we know the status of that order?" with (in a deep voice and thick Polish accent), "Most probably three or four weeks after cucumber season ends." In any event, I've gained a new appreciation for Warsaw in the summer, this city truly comes alive in full force during the summer months. People are everywhere enjoying the great weather and the historic beauty of the city. I got some time today to walk around a little and snap a few photos:

There's a statue on almost every street corner in downtown Warsaw, here's one of them.

Here's a church close to the hotel. There was a wedding going on there today.

This is the entrance to the University of Warsaw.
Another church.
Statue in front of Church.
This is a snapshot of the Warsaw Hotel, which was the only building in this section of town that wasn't completely destroyed during WWII. They are currently refurbishing and are planning to re-open it to guests in the next few months.
This is the presidents palace. There's a controversy currently going on right now centering around the wooden cross in the foreground. I'm not sure on all the details, but it's a tribute to the recently deceased former president and some Polish citizens want it moved to the church where his funeral took place and some want it to remain where it is. In any event, there were a lot of protesters and news cameras in front of the palace.

This is a shot of "Old Town" Warsaw, which is a big city square. Very vibrant atmosphere.
This is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Poland. It's also currently being refurbished, hence the fence around it.
Random fountain in a local park.
Cultural center donated in the 1940's by Stalin. I could question the irony behind the person donating it, but in any event, it's an immense building in the center of town.

All in all, it's been a very busy week (until today), but very productive. I'm looking forward to heading to Tbilisi tomorrow and also can't wait to get to Philly to see John and Scott next weekend. I also heard that Nancy and I may have a new couch, which I'm looking forward to seeing!

Poland

2010-08-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

Very quick update - I made it to Warsaw, Poland safe and sound yesterday and have already had two very productive days of negotiations. I'm here until Sunday, when I fly to Tbilisi, Georgia for a week.

What happened, did you go vegan?

2010-08-07T14:37:00.000-07:00

That's right everyone, it's a 2-post Saturday...

Funny thing happened on Thursday of this week...

I randomly ran into our trainer from RIT. I hadn't seen her since I graduated and as such, the Marty Maynard she knew was this guy. Nowadays, I where glasses, spend too much time in cubicle land, and when I'm not there, I am usually training for some type of endurance sport, so the version of me that she knew looked like a college baseball player and now I'm a little lighter to say the least.

In any event, she remembered me once she discovered who I was. Her first question upon realizing who I was - "Did you go Vegan?"...really? you think I went vegan? I'm the same person that you once told "don't drink too much whiskey tonight, I gave you a lot of painkillers today."...and now I went vegan? This question irritated me 10 times more than when I get the proverbial "Do you do triathlon?" (different story, but please, just because I do a sport called biathlon, does not make me a triathalete, the two don't even have any disciplines in common)...It did occur to me however, that people might wonder how I went from looking like this:

To this:
The truth is, it was a relatively slow process, and a long story. I always knew, even during college, that I wanted to get into competitive skiing and biathlon again. I never thought that cycling would play a role in that, but it did. Basically, about a year after college I started working out again consistently, and when I finished grad school I started training seriously and here I am going wherever this takes me, but I'm loving it, and am happy training and racing, much happier than I would if I had resigned myself to dominating the beer leagues. Maybe I need challenges...in any event, I didn't go vegan, in fact, I love eating meat.

Tomorrow, I'm heading to Poland, then Georgia. So, it'll be hectic the next couple weeks, but I'm looking forward to it!

Weekend recap - big hills, horses, dropped chains, yellow jersey and a wedding

2010-08-03T14:08:00.000-07:00

The title pretty much says it all, but I will elaborate further...before I get into my take on the tour of the catskills, Rick did a great write-up on the team site with some pics as well. Obviously the headline was that Jason dominated the race winning both major competition jerseys and the final stage!

Last Friday morning, my teammates and I loaded up a couple cars and headed downstate for the Tour of the Catskills, which consisted of an uphill time trial and two hilly 50+ mile road races (and when they say hilly, they meant it). I only raced the first two days so that I could make it back to Rochester for Erica and Joe's wedding, but my races were more than eventful to say the least.

The course for the TT on Friday was flat for about 15 yards, then took a right turn and went straight up hill for the next 2.2 miles. I had a good warmup and was feeling pretty good beforehand, but didn't have my best race. I might have made a mistake in that I tried to race in a bigger gear than I should have, which led to me fading towards the end (or at least it felt like I faded), but who knows. I ended up around 30th in the TT, which wasn't exactly what I was hoping for, but I definitely got to the finish feeling like I went as hard as I could. Jason ended up in 3rd on the day, which wasn't surprising to any of us. Knowing that the overall was going to come down to climbing and knowing that Jason is more than capable of riding very strong on steep climbs, the team did have a little extra motivation to try to do whatever was possible to help him take the overall win.

Following a great team dinner on Friday night (pic above), we went out the the start of Stage 2, which was a 52 mile road race. The course pretty much consisted of about 20 miles of flats and downhills, followed by one long climb followed by some relatively steep rolling hills, and then a flat 10 mile run-in to the finish. As stated previously on this blog, I'm not a huge fan of going down hills, especially in groups of 80 riders going downhill for 4-5 miles at a time (something I have to get over I guess), but at the tail end of the last decent before the climb, was easily the weirdest (and one of the more dangerous) occurrences I've encountered during a bike race. We are bombing down a hill, going maybe 40 mph, when we turn a corner and there are three horses in the middle of the road. All three horses are completely tweaking out (Rick's post at the team site has a video embedded in it of this) as 80 cyclists attempt to stop before plowing in to them. I ended up going in to a section of grass to avoid a couple guys that were having some trouble stopping, but everyone managed to safely stop (I think). We were at a standstill for a couple minutes while everyone just stared at the horses (still freaking out). Eventually the horses got off the road without further incident.

Then, the aforementioned long climb started, which was a really steep wall for about 200 meters followed by about 4.5 miles of a steady grinding climb. To be honest, I was hoping to climb better than I did and hang with the front group, but I was totally red-lined and just simply couldn't accelerate up to that group. I managed to find a pace I could sustain. Following the climb I was in a group of about 6-7 guys, which multiplied to about 20 by the time we got through all the hills, due to riders catching back up on the descent. Then with about 10 miles to go, my chain dropped off. Tangent - I've probably rode a bike a total of 10,000 miles since starting cycling after college and I never once had my chain fall off until 3 weeks ago. During the Tour De France this year, Andy Schleck famously dropped his chain and lost time to Alberto Contador, and I remember thinking, "how does that even happen?". It's never happened to me and I certainly don't have the best mechanics in the world making sure my bike is good to go EVERYDAY. 3 days after that stage in the Tour, by chain fell off while on a training ride, then it happened again during this race, so maybe I jynxed myself and was just lucky all those years, but anyways...tangent over....Not only did my chain fall off, but it got stuck behind my "chain catcher". So, not only did my chain catcher not catch my chain, but it also prevented me from putting the chain back on. Anyways, I eventually had to pull out an allen wrench and adjust it, which apparently also adjusted my front derailer because once I finally started riding again, I couldn't shift into the big ring. I eventually rode a frustrating 10 miles to the finish as hard as I could and ended up re-passing a few guys. Following the race, I scrambled to get back to my car and drive back to Rochester to make the wedding.

All in all, it was a fun time, although I wish things went differently during the races. It was great to hang out with the guys on the team and great to see Jason come up with the win. He really focussed on this race for the last month or so and made it clear that he was the strongest guy in the race. I am already looking forward to next year's Tour of the Catskills and have some ideas on how to train differently.

Life is going faster than a Hackensaw Boys song...

2010-07-27T06:26:00.001-07:00

Let's hope my skiing this winter continues with the trend of life in general these days, in that everything seems to be going faster and faster...somehow it's already the end of July and fall is right around the corner.

Typically, things are a little slower at work over the summer since most of my customers tend to take long vacations for 4-6 weeks. Not so this year, as this has easily been the busiest July I can remember from a work perspective. It's all been very good stuff for business purposes, but there's certainly hasn't been the usual "deep breath" that we typically get in July. I'm not sure if this is coincidence or a sign that the economic slow down in Europe is improving, let's hope for the latter, but I'll leave that speculation to the "experts".

Things outside of work seem to be just as hectic, but also great stuff. It seems like every weekend there has been some type of event to attend, but I've also been busy riding, roller-skiing and watching the Tour De France (if you've never given the TDF a chance as a follower, I highly recommend it, it's a lot more interesting than you'd think and the Versus commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Scherwin can add drama to almost anything). I managed to log more hours training in the last four weeks than any other 4-week block since I started keeping a training log, including several 4-5 hour rides, something I'd never previously done with any real consistency. So hopefully the extra volume will pay off down the road.

This weekend I'll be racing in the Tour of the Catskills, which is a 3-day stage race in the Catskills region (not just a clever nickname). It will feature a lot of climbing, with some long, sustained climbs, which is very different from the terrain found near the Finger Lakes region that we typically spend our time riding in. Although I'll be missing the final stage to come back for a wedding in Canandaigua which Nancy is involved in, I'm looking forward to the races in any event. Our field will be very big, but almost the whole team is racing and I think that we're all in pretty good shape right now, and should be able to be in the mix throughout the weekend. The wedding should be a lot of fun as well.

Following this weekend's activities, I'll be in Rochester for another week then I head to Poland and Georgia for a 2-week work trip, which will include a little bit of everything, including a race called the "Slave Run" over the weekend that I'm in Poland (that'll be a full blog post for sure). Following that, I'll be headed to Philadelphia for a weekend to see my younger brother (who just got engaged!) and Scott. So, it'll be Labor Day before I know it. So, life is moving pretty quickly, but the next few months should be pretty exciting!

Note - Just to explain the title - If you've never heard of the Hackensaw Boys, they play gnarly bluegrass really, really fast. If there is a world record for most notes played in a 90 second song, they must have the record.

Like a warm handshake from an old friend...

2010-07-17T15:38:00.000-07:00

Last weekend Nancy and I headed downstate for my buddy Dan Weglinski's (Ski) wedding. Ski was a teammate of mine in college. He was a right handed pitcher with a ridiculous 12-6 curveball. He also happened to graduate from the same program as I did (although he graduated with a 3.9 GPA, and mine was...well, not a 3.9). Anyways, the wedding was Sunday night on Long Island. Similar to our wedding, there was a strong presence from RIT Baseball alumni, so a bunch of us decided to make a weekend of it. Nance and I drove down to Fairfield, CT Friday afternoon. Nancy stayed there until Sunday with her friend Natalie. Lucas picked me up on his way into Manhattan (where his girlfriend Lindsay lives) Friday night, and we met up with Ware and Adam Gerantine (another teammate who lives in Hoboken, NJ) Friday night. Since the Yankees weren't in town, we decided to opt for a Mets game on Saturday afternoon.

Left to right - Lucas, Ware, Joe B, Knodel and I. Overall the game was a great time. Following the game we went to a restaurant where Jen's (Joe's wife) friend works at in Manhattan. We had some good food and drink to cap off an awesome day.
Joe and Jen B. Joe will be Mayor of Rochester some day, mark my words, you heard it here first. He's a huge Mets fan and this was his first trip to the new Citi Field as well. Other than the Mets losing, I think he had a good time. Oddly enough, Jen is a diehard Red Sox fan...the hats you'll wear through love I guess...

Upon waking up on Sunday, we headed straight out to Long Island to make sure we didn't get caught up in any traffic. The wedding was great - the ceremony was at the church that Courtney grew up in, the priest actually also married her parents. The reception was at an awesome location at a country club on Long Island. In general, the usual shenanigan's occurred that typically occur when you put the Lucas-Ware-Knodel-Colin-Joe-Marty combo together. Strangely enough (insert sarcasm), we were all seated together in the back corner, but also strategically located three feet from the bar (Thanks Ski). Everyone had an awesome time and I can't be happier for Ski and Courtney, they compliment eachother very well (meaning, she's normal and he's not)...but, he's been an overachiever his whole life and only continues that trend with Courtney.

That's Ware and his girlfriend Erin, who's also a Sam Adams rep. Needless to say, there were zero Sam Adams left in the entire country club by about 9pm with most of the damage being done by table 19.
Joe and Jen B at the cocktail hour.
Left to right - Nancy, Lindsay and Jen. They were clearly embarrassed to be associated with the rest of us.
Wedded Bliss - Ski and Courtney.
This is the RIT Baseball crew in attendance with the exception of Knodel and Sarah.

Overall, it was an awesome weekend and, as always, great to see all my college buddies. It was the first time hanging out with this crew since my wedding. It was, as they say, "like a warm handshake from an old friend..." (so was the glass of Jack Daniels that Lucas handed me after the country club ran out of Sam Adams).

Since getting back into town, we had our year-end sales meeting at work, which meant a lot of work functions every night this week. I've also been trying to ride a lot, I've managed to squeeze in 170 miles in the last 3 days. I believe things will normalize slightly and I can get back into a semi-normal routine for a few weeks anyways. Miraculously, I've been able to train a decent amount for the past few weeks and am really looking forward to the Tour of the Catskills in a couple weeks and the Green Mountain Stage Race later this summer.

The cure for jetlag?

2010-07-07T08:08:00.000-07:00

My least favorite part about travelling for work is jet lag. It seems that it's different for everyone, but for me, it usually involves being exhausted all day, then waking up at 3am wide awake only to be exhausted for another full day. This goes on for about 4 days before I finally adjust. During this adjustment period, I'm typically in a fog, not asleep, but not fully awake either.

I have heard various remedies from co-workers such as - sleep as soon as you get where you're going; don't sleep and try to stay awake; drink caffeine; drink alcohol; exercise; eat at the local meal time regardless of whether you're hungry...I've tried all of these with limited success. For me, the return trip always seems to affect me more than the trip to Europe. This is another point that people don't always agree on.

I don't want to jynx anything, but I may have finally cracked this mysterious code. I was in Poland last week for work and was there just long enough to adjust to the timezone before coming home.

My typcial M.O., when I come home from an overseas trip is to try to do an easy 2 hour workout the day after I get home. I don't typically push it because I'm always worried that my immune system is low and doing anything nutty might lead towards getting sick. However, the last four weeks (since my crash in the FMV Grand Prix), my training has been a little sporadic. Between the crash, wedding, honeymoon and a business trip to Europe, time was a limiting factor. That's not to say I didn't do any training, but it was difficult to get any serious volume in the past couple weeks due to time constraints. Given that I landed Friday night with a holiday weekend coming up, I was eager to get in some long workouts to prep for some races I have coming up later this summer. So, I decided to throw my typical easy workout plan out the window and jump right into a mini 4th of July weekend training camp.

Saturday morning Jason, Rick and Adam from my bike team we're planning on a 5+ hour ride in Canandaigua, Bristol and Naples with some long climbs, so I decided to tag along. I woke up at 3am wide awake (like usual), so it wasn't an issue making it to Honeoye Falls in time for the 8am start. We ended up getting in about 80 miles with almost 9000 feet of climbing. When we got back to Rick's place, I was totally cooked, as I think all of us were. I got home, stayed awake until about 830pm, and slept straight for 10 hours (a first for a return trip from Europe) and felt pretty good the next day. I woke up on Sunday and did a rollerski/bike combo in Mendon (4 hours total) and once again fell asleep around 9 and slept straight through the night. Monday morning went back to the hills for another long ride with Jason and felt 100% normal.

So, while I'm not ready quite yet to declare victory on jet-lag, I might be on to something - excessive exercise the morning I return. If it works following my next trip, it'll become part of the routine.

On a separate note, I'm headed to NYC this weekend for one of my college teammate's (Ski) wedding in Long Island. The wedding is on Sunday, so some of the other RIT baseball guys are going to hit up the Mets game on Saturday afternoon, should be a great weekend!

Honeymoon

2010-07-04T15:16:00.000-07:00

I'm not quite sure how to summarize the honeymoon into one blog post, but we did keep "trip notes" as things went on...so I figured pasting those into this blog would be a good way to start...I've supplemented with some pictures. Bottom line up front - it was amazing, and I would recommend Aruba to anyone.

Honeymoon trip notes:

Sunday - flew to ATL. Got first free drinks for being on honeymoon during flight. Got to hotel, went to amazing seafood rest on recommendation of woman checking us in at Fairfield - Alaskan king crab, cajun shrimp and 33oz beers, done!

Monday - took most crowded shuttle ever to airport, I think one woman was literally standing on her suitcase. Got to Aruba with no issues. At least half the people on our flight were also on honeymoon...Bus driver told us to use lots of sunscreen and drink lots of alcohol, great advice...While checking in to resort, we are served drinks, this place is great...went to beach, cocktails on beach...

Decide to investigate resort casino...bad decision...Got shallacked in blackjack, really tough to teach someone to play while playing yourself. Dealer Justo was a machine for 14's...ate at Carribean restaraunt at resort...

Tuesday - tried to run on treadmill, treadmill broke after 2 minutes, I've now broken treadmills in 4 foreign countries. Went for run outside instead, sweated immensely, great run though...Went to beach with Nancy, I was way more relaxed than she was, that's probably the last time that'll ever happen...Once at beach, I walked a half mile too far to get to duncan donuts, which was actually 50 yards from beach...We tried to book a sunset cruise for Friday night, so confusing...We think we did reserve one, but are unclear on what company it's with, but think it leaves between marriot and holiday inn...had a good sunset walk on beach...

Wednesday - went for run on beach, did a few pick-ups which led to uncontrollable sweating (worse than previous day)...went to beach, tried to swim for 50 yards and had alternating thoughts of fear of sharks and drowning, decided triathlons are not for me, but Nance didn't make it as far as I did, so I'm still declaring victory...nothing else noteworthy...went to pool, while they were serving pallaye to everyone, a couple goes up the the bar and orders shots ot tequilla - strong move at 1145am, way to bring it...we can only tell time by the events going on at resort, must be noon, aqua aerobics started...pallaye is amazing...scalp totally sunburnt, go to search for hat, get sidetracked by belgian beer...

but eventually find great hat, not quite bonnaroo material, but legit...

go to pizza restaurant for app, end up chatting with a family from North Carolina for 2 hrs, told them all about biathlon and didn't even get annoyed when they asked me if I did triathlon (that's rare)...

Thursday - went for beach run again, sweated more than previous day, which was the most ever, how do people do marathons in this stuff, IT IS TOO HOT...this exchange happened at 11am:

Marty: should we do the water aerobics thing?

Nancy: only if we start drinking now

M: done, let's get some vodka to throw in our V8

N: I think they can make bloody mary's

M: but with V8 we get a full serving of vegetables

N: let's do it...

went to downtown area of Aruba and visited Iguana Joe's upon my buddy Scott's recommendation, where all drinks are made with 151 Rum...

(Believe me, they are not kidding when you read the menu and it says "Potent Potions")

Go to dinner across street from resort, had great seafood dinner and then the waiter came out for dessert orders, he instead told us that dessert was "tequilla time", did 3 shots of tequilla (first 3 since college) including one with the waiter...just goes to show that when the waiter says "it's tequilla time", it's tequilla time...nancy and I have nightcap while playing slot machines in casino, would have walked away with some money until nancy realized you could put the coins in one at a time...both of us need to go to bed...

Friday - watched usa-slovenia world cup game in pool bar, ended in tie, first usa goal (via Landon Donovan) was 'top shelf where mama hides the cookies' wish someone from buffalo was there to hi-five (we would have been hi-fiving for Rick Jenerett, not USA Soccer), US scored a go-ahead goal that was called back - epic fail ref, its all your fault...bartender luis seems high all the time, forgets drink orders, but does have a sharp sense of humor, one woman orders a rum punch and he replies with "do you like your punch from the left or right" (while mimicking muhammad ali)...new woman bartender just starts giving drinks before your previous one is half empty, she obviously wants us to party...watched england algeria game...went to liquor store to buy a gift for jim (who is covering for me this week at work), woman at check-out tells me she mixes the aruba-ariba with whiskey, I immidiately feel like less of a man (aruba-ariba is their local moonshine, which is like 100 proof)...went on sunset cruise...

turns out sunset cruise is not next to the "pirate shop", it's a pirate ship (English is not everyones first language), both of us did rope swing, forgot that credit card and $10 were in back pocket, both survived...

(The thoughts going through my mind at this point were basically all about being eaten by a shark)

Saturday - went to airport, flying home...BOOO...awesome trip!!!

Wedding weekend recap

2010-06-29T10:03:00.001-07:00

So, I'm not even sure where to start, so I guess I'll start with Thursday. All of the groomsmen and a couple other guys that were in town kicked things off with a golf outing before the rehearsal. While there was nothing spectacular about my round, but it was an awesome way to get things going. From there we went to the rehearsal followed by a large get-together at McGregor's in Canandaigua. Various people were showing up throughout the night as they arrived in town, everything was under control until Byrne showed up and started rounds of various shots, which turned things a little sideways for everyone that was still in the bar, but it was a great time had by all. The late-night activities did lead to one of the guys, who shall remain nameless, to jump into a random boat and get kicked out of the hotel pool at about 3am. I have seen some excellent pics from that night, but haven't gotten a hold of many of them quite yet. I will post some more pictures as I get them.

Friday was an absolutely amazing day all around, especially once I managed to shake my hangover from Thursday night! The weather couldn't have been better. All of the groomsmen met at Lucas' (best man) room at Bristol Harbor at around 1pm. We had a good time hanging out and getting all tuxedo-ed up. We did the pictures, which I'm looking forward to seeing. Nancy looked amazing. Jeff performed a great ceremony, which was followed by cocktail hour, which was highlighted by my buddy Kevin playing acoustic guitar. Following that was an amazing reception and I think everyone had a great time. Everyone I talked to seemed to be having a great time. It certainly flew by, and it didn't seem like I talked to anyone more than 30 seconds. Some pics from the weekend are below.

Nancy and I during dinner (the chicken french was just as good as I remembered it).
There's the whole wedding party. Really good crew, I'm very lucky to have the friends I have and Nancy is as well.

Lucas during the best man toast. He was a huge help with everything all weekend.

Natalie during the maid of honor speech.

RIT baseball alumni in attendance. Some really great teammates in that shot.

I'm not positive where this picture was taken, but that's Nancy's brother, Kate and Megan (both bridesmaids) and Nancy's father in the background. They certainly look like they're having a good time!

The day after the wedding, my parents hosted a barbeque at their farm for people that were in the wedding and those that were in from out of town. This is Nancy's grandmother and my mom.

From left to right - Doogie, me, Colin and Jeff at the BBQ. Funny story about Doogie on Thursday night, but not really the arena for that...it's a family show everyone...

Nancy's Uncle Ed, Uncle Andy and her father Doug. Andy and Ed both live on the west coast, so these three brothers aren't in the same place too often.

Following the barbeque several of us went to the Winfield to close out the weekend, where I was exposed to "being iced", which might be the dumbest concept I've ever heard of, but it was pretty funny at the time, more on that some other time. Sunday night, we left for the honeymoon in Aruba.

The whole weekend was a blast, but went by so fast. There were several moments throughout the weekend where I wished I could have hit the pause button. It really meant a lot to us that so many people came from so far away to be there.

After the honeymoon, I had very possibly the busiest week of work in my professional career, followed by Chad's bachelor party Friday and Saturday, then I flew to Poland on Sunday, which is where I am until Friday. So, I'm looking forward to this weekend where I'll be in Rochester riding my bike, watching the Tour De France and maybe try to put some type of organizational structure in my life!

Breaking blogger silence

2010-06-22T08:14:00.000-07:00

Don't have a lot of time, but wanted to post a picture from the ceremony, the last 14 or so days have been the fastest that I can remember. The entire wedding weekend was awesome and the honeymoon in Aruba was amazing as well...the last two days at work have been less than amazing...but what are you gonna do. There were some great stories, some hilarious ones as well, everything from boats to partial groomsmen tuxedos found on the lawn to "tequilla time"...I will do a more in-depth recap with more pictures when I get a chance. Thanks to everyone who made this whole deal really special!

People are getting amped!

2010-06-08T04:53:00.000-07:00

We're now two days from the wedding. Over the last couple weeks, there have been a lot of e-mails flying around about the weekend festivities. Most of them are the typical, "Can't wait!" or "Going to be epic"...there have been some pretty unique ones though, so I thought I'd share (the appropriate ones anyways):

- "Hi Jeff, I just noticed your e-mail address and think we should be friends." - Jane after noticing that Jeff works for Sam Adams

- "Hi Jane. We can be friends. I'm friendly! Thursday can't get here fast enough!

Nancy. What do you guys want me to use? Binder? Trapper keeper? Let me know and ill get something.
Marty. Is there any point in the ceremony where you would like me to sing? I know you love my angel voice! Thoughts?" - Jeff

- "Here I am sitting here wondering why the hell all of you are still at work sending emails when its 4:30 my time....and then it dawned on me. I am sitting in NY, not LA. Wow, I need a drink." - Doogie, who just flew in from LA, apparently struggling with the time change

- "I might bring the man-purse filled with American Honey and pre-mixed Jack and Cokes." - D2

- "It's just about f'ing game time, b*tches. Bring your A-Game. The Miller-Maynard Wedding waits for no man." - D2

- "Fat bottom girls is always appropriate..." - anonymous

- "Hey guy, RSVP is in the mail. I want to say I went with the red meat. Gotta protein up to keep up with you on the dance floor." - college buddy Mark Sapienza

- "I get out of work at 7am on Thursday, so I can golf anytime after 10. Let me know, I don't think I'm going to sleep, just going to drink 5 hour energy until Sunday at 5pm, then sleep for 18 hours and go back to work." - Knodel, who just started a new job, where he's occasionally working a night shift. He also has a bridal shower the day after the wedding and a birthday party for his daughter on Sunday, so he might actually not sleep. I've seen him do crazier things.

- "I will be in the US for 72 hrs and 40 of those are dedicated to Maynard/Miller wedding festivities. The other 32 will be spent pulling my life together, doing about a week's worth of work, saying hello to my family, and hopefully getting an hour or 2 of sleep. Can't wait." - Kevin S., who's flying home from Tbilisi today, and flying back to Europe on Saturday night. He's been on the road for the better part of 3 months, and is pretty much a complete disaster physically and mentally at this point...being an international sales guy isn't always that glamorous, I know he'll bring his A-game this weekend though!

- "Just a reminder…as long as tuxedo junction didn’t eff up, my tux should be in Greece.. but it may be at eastview...Flyers should win Wednesday at home and I’m sorry but it looks like a game 7 on Friday." Scott...There are a couple pretty serious flyers fans as well as a couple blackhawks fans going to the wedding, so a game 7 Friday would definitely create some interest from some in the crowd.

- "I've been trying to get a press pass to Bonnaroo for years, and I finally got one this year. Too bad one of my friends decided to get married that weekend. It's sad irony that it's you. Thanks buddy." - Kevin, who I went to the first three bonnaroo's with, along with a bunch of other shows...it is sad irony...

And for a couple responses from the "English isn't my first language" category:

- "YESS! When you go on moonfull (translate honeymoon), make sure to eat and drink a lot and forget about everything else!" - One of my bike racing teammates, originally from Cuba

- "Congratulation my Friend! Wish you all the best on the new road! Many People says..."road to hell", but I can strongly disagree." - My buddy Sylwek from Poland

Can't wait, going to be Epic!

crazy week

2010-06-05T13:25:00.000-07:00

Don't mistake the lack of blog posts over the last week for a lack of activity. In fact, maybe too much activity.

My original plan was to spend the week prior to the wedding (by coincidence only) doing the following races:

- Tues, June 1 - GVCC Team Time Trial (TTT)

- Thurs, June 3 - JP Morgan Chase Corp. Challenge (3.5 mile running race)

- June 4-6 - Full Moon Vista Grand Prix - three race series consisting of a friday night crit, saturday road race and sunday crit.

As you might have guessed by the wording "my original plan", things did not go as planned.

My "5 races in 6 days" idea started out great with the TTT - I teamed up with Rick, Jason and Chad for the first ever GVCC team time trial. It was the first time I'd competed in this format and I have to say, it was one of the funnest races I've done that wasn't on skis. It was tough, and full gas for over 40 minutes. I'm sure it added to the fun that Jason, Chad and I have spent so many hours training together in various activities and Rick is quickly becoming a great riding partner and teammate. We ended up winning our category and beat some of the A teams, and were close to a few others, so we definitely came away happy, but also motivated to beat the benchmark we set, one month from now when we give the TTT another go.

The Corporate Challenge went ok, I haven't been running a ton, so I wasn't delusional about what my time might be, but I wanted to give the team a good chance to do well. It turns out the other guys one the Harris team all had great races, and I was pretty average, but the Fleet Feet team had 3 guys in the top 10 and another in the top 20, so it would have taken something really special to beat them. I think we may have ended up 2nd, which would be the best finish ever for Harris. So it was a good day, despite the fact that we were really hoping to come away with the "W".

Friday was when things started to go sideways (literally). Let me start by saying that the Full Moon Vista squad puts on some amazing events and this was no exception, extremely well run and very organized. Once you read the following paragraph, you may think I had a negative impression of the race, which couldn't be farther from the truth.

The first race of the Full Moon Vista grand prix was a criterium in Genessee Valley Park. As stated previously, crits aren't my favorite thing, but I'd like to improve, so I went into it feeling positive that I could have a good day. The race started out ok, things were fast but comfortable, then 3 or 4 laps in there was a crash, which took Chad out (he was ok), Jason and I braked to avoid it and were gapped by about 10 riders. I knew there were some strong riders (including Rick) in that group and immediately went into TT mode to try and catch on as did Jason (who was ahead of me when the crash happened). Chase, chase, chase, and 5 or 6 laps later I made the bridge, Jason had already bridged the gap along with a couple others, but for everyone else, it was game over at that point. Once I made it to the break, I immediately thought 'ok, chill out, sit on the wheels and recover, you're still in this'. I did that for another 5 or 6 laps. At this point there was 14 or 15 guys in the front group and we were riding hard, but nothing crazy, I was feeling pretty good. Now we're starting to get towards the end, and I started to think about how to move up - we had Rick, Jason and I in the front group, so we had good numbers for the team, we should be able to come up with something, right? Not so much, with 8 laps to go, I took one of the corners a little too aggressively and crashed pretty hard (or at least that's what everyone told me who either saw it or heard it). My back and helmet took most of the force of the fall (Uvex helmet is no-joke, not even a scratch!). I was a little dazed, but thankfully, a pair of volunteers (who happen to be xc skiers I know) were right on top of the crash to get me and my bike off the race course. Once I took inventory, I felt ok, pretty banged up, but nothing seemed serious, bike was also ok. The volunteers had just finished picking me up, when Jason went down in the same corner, literally into some hay-bails (note to race organizers - If you think it's a good idea to put hay-bails in a corner, it's probably a better idea to not put that corner in the race course in the first place, I digress). He was also ok. Then Rick got stuck in a tough spot, because the front group lapped the rest of the field with one lap to go, which cause some extreme confusion by everyone, so he never really had a chance in the final sprint, so the team went from being in a great position to being totally out of it in the matter of 6-7 minutes...that's bike racing I guess. I will say, it definitely meant a lot that there were so many riders who came up to me after the race and again this morning to make sure I was ok. The GVCC crew definitely has some good folk in it, no doubt about that.

Anyways, I got home last night still hoping to race today, but when I got up this morning I was really hurting. I tried warming up to give it a go, but couldn't get out of the saddle to climb without my tailbone really causing some pain, so I decided to pull the plug. Total bummer, I had been looking forward to this particular race because it was a tough, hilly course as opposed to the sprint finishes and criteriums that seem to have dominated my season so far. So, I ended up watching the race in street clothes, which is never ideal. It was however, a fun race to watch and my teammates were really strong, with 4 guys making the final group of 15, and 2 more in the second group on the road, on a very selective course. After the race, I got some x-rays done on my tailbone and everything came back negative, just a "contusion" which I think is doctor terminology for a "really bad bruise".

This morning I was definitely a little negative about my bike season thus far, which seems like a never-ending string of "what-ifs" but now I'm feeling more positive about things, I've gained a lot of experience, and I still have a lot of racing later in the summer. I am feeling fit and also having a great time riding with the guys on the team.

Now, it's time to focus on more important things like the wedding and then healing my "Coccyx Contusion" (I think that means tailbone bruise) by spending a week on the beach with my beautiful bride-to-be in Aruba!!

I'd like to thank 8th graders for being 8th graders

2010-05-28T06:44:00.000-07:00

Funny story happened to me yesterday.

So, Wednesday and Thursday of this week I was in Washington, DC for work. We flew out of Rochester at 6am Wednesday and were in meetings all day, then went to a reception held by the Georgian Embassy to celebrate Georgian Independence day, then met one of my college buddies (Kurt) for dinner, so needless to say it was a long day. Obviously, there was no time for working out on Wednesday, but I had planned this and needed a rest day anyways. With all of the racing I've been doing and a total of 5 races next week, I probably shouldn't be doing a lot of training, but I also shouldn't take two days off in a row with nothing at all, so I planned to get up and run Thursday morning. I finally got to bed around midnight Wednesday. After getting up at 4am, it goes without saying that I was running on fumes. My alarm clock went off at 545am, at which point I promptly made the decision to cancel the 6am run and get another 1.5 hours of sleep before our meetings that morning. My justification was that I had been racing and training a lot and maybe sleep would be more beneficial than training, but the truth is, that was a BS excuse and I just didn't want to get out of bed! Little did I know that one of the 8th grade classes staying in my hotel had a different plan for me...At 6:03 AM, the hotel fire alarm went off...sweet, I had just fallen back asleep...I contemplated my options:

- try to sleep through it, this seemed like a decent idea, except I couldn't be sure that it was one of those 8th graders yanking the alarm as part of some triple-dog-dare, and wasn't a real fire. Plus, the alarm was super loud, so actual sleep might be difficult.

- put on clothes and wait outside for the alarm to stop going off, however long that might take

- put on running shoes and execute my original plan

I opted for the run and got in an awesome 1 hour run by the Mall, Korean War Memorial, Lincoln Memorial and Jefferson Memorial. I then had an excellent day of meetings and flew home.

I've written on this blog a few times about finding motivation to train by whatever it takes to get you going, but I guess sometimes it also takes some 8th grade punk pulling the fire alarm in your hotel. So, here's to 8th graders acting like 8th graders!

Crit Racing - Are we having fun yet?

2010-05-24T13:59:00.001-07:00

This past weekend was the Tour De Syracuse which involved a criterium, time trial and road race. Overall, the races went ok, no great results, but good to get an additional 80 miles of racing in my legs, which will hopefully pay off down the road this season. I felt very good in the TT and road race yesterday, just couldn't quite put it together in the final sprint in the road race. It was a fun and eventful weekend for the team as well, which I'm going to try to write about in more detail on the team page in the next few days, once the organizers of the event publish accurate results.

I also competed in a GVCC criterium last week Tuesday. Criteriums (crit for short) are typically run on a course about 1 mile in length and the riders typically race for a given amount of time (typically an hour or so) and then are given a "laps to go" number and race to the finish. Typically riders who do well in crits are good sprinters, handle their bikes very well in and out of corners, and are good at fighting for position in the pack. Since I have none of these qualities as a bike rider currently, it's not exactly the type of race that's in my wheelhouse. However, I would like to improve on these items, and I figure that I'm not going to get better at crits by avoiding them. Below are some pics from the Tuesday crit courtesy of our friends at Twin Line Velo who were marshaling the race.

I'm on the right in the black Monroe Extinguisher's jersey. As you can see, I haven't quite mastered the "hat underneath the helmet" look as my helmet looks all cock-eyed.
But apparently I do have the ability to ride crits with my eyes closed. (me on the left, Rick driving the pace hard on the right).

These were my first two crits since the Rochester twilight crit two years ago, where I got completely shelled. The Tuesday night crit was probably 25 riders or so, so a very reasonably sized group to move around in. The Syracuse crit was 77 riders strong at the start and I had forgotten how chaotic crits of that size can get. You're constantly fighting for position and it's almost impossible to pass people other than by taking aggressive lines in corners or risks on downhills. The Syracuse course was especially challenging as there was only one small gradual hill, which might have been an opportunity for me to move up in the group, except every time we hit the hill, it was 7 riders wide, so I couldn't get around anyone. Then we'd crest the hill and bomb down this downhill with a decently sharp left-hand bend where you had to break for guys in front of you, then chase to stay with the lead group, then repeat all that over and over again (20 times to be exact).

Oh, and crashes, those happen a lot in crits. One of my teammates avoided a crash by bunny-hopping the curb and riding in the grass for a while (excellent bike-handling), but by the time he got back onto the pavement, the lead group was up the road, and he was off the back, race over. I managed to stay in the group and avoid two crashes, but never got anywhere near the front of the race. It was pretty frustrating and stressful 22 miles of racing. Maybe it's a mental thing, but I was racing to avoid crashes and to keep the rubber side down and not racing to win, which is how you end up riding at the back of the group the entire race and finishing 54th. Anyways, it was good to get through that, and hopefully I'll feel a little more comfortable the next time I toe the line in a crit. Riding towards the front of the group and paying attention to where I am in the pack are both things I need to work on in road races, so I think that more crit experience might help with that.

We'll see, in two weeks, I have a road race and two crits in Rochester, so it looks like I'll be getting plenty of experience in.

The peer pressure effect

2010-05-17T13:50:00.000-07:00

So, what happens when you put 65 competitive cyclists together on a saturday morning with no races that weekend?

Rochester is a much more active community than people may realize. There are organized group activities every Saturday or Sunday. Everything from people getting together to train for their first marathon, century ride or triathlon to people getting together to really push it. These are all great options for people depending on what their goals are. On the "really push it front" there are a couple of famous ones in the Rochester area. For runners, there is the oven door run which typically meets at 630am every saturday for long runs that usually involve a lot of hills and a lot of people running faster than they were planning on that day. It's typically a nice easy pace until someone decides it shouldn't be a "nice easy pace" anymore (after about 5 minutes) and everyone takes turns pushing the pace, for the next 10-12 miles.

For cyclists, the competitive group ride is called the "latte ride" and meets up every Saturday at 730am for a 45 mile group ride that turns into an all-out, full-gas hammer fest. It's the same concept, everyone rolls out together at an easy spin and then someone decides to put an end to the friendship festival, at which point competitiveness and what I like to call the "peer pressure effect" takes over. Street sign sprints, hilltop sprints, long strung-out single-file lines going 28mph are all common occurances. No one wants to get dropped from the group and everyone wants everyone else to get dropped. It doesn't take a degree in excercise physiology to realize that it's a tough workout.

Since there were no races close to Rochester this past weekend, most of the local teams were out for the latte ride in full force and it lived up to it's reputation. To put things in perspective, I had a bike race Thursday, 5k running race Friday, and did a 58 mile ride in bristol featuring several steep climbs on Sunday, and the latte ride was by far the hardest workout I did in that four-day stretch. Sometimes you don't need to have a race bib pinned on to push your limits, all it takes is the peer pressure effect. Everyone went harder than they would have on their own and ended up getting a killer workout in all before 10am. While it's always fun to race, sometimes it's also awesome to "not let racing get in the way of training" as a skier I know would say, and get out and mix it up a with your buddies with no agenda.

On a side note, the 5km run mentioned above (Apple Blossom Festival in Williamson, NY) was my first running race since the fall, and first event of any type that took less than an hour, since ski season, so that was sort of a shock to the system. The race went ok for me, I ran a 17:52, so nothing special, but felt ok and managed to finish 3rd overall. The big story of the race was the winner is a new guy that works here at Harris. He played soccer in college, so he's in pretty good shape, but he ran a 17:20 or something. So, he'll be a nice addition to the Harris Corp. Challenge team this year.

Bristol Mtn RR 3, Marty 0

2010-05-10T13:26:00.000-07:00

I had two bike races this past week. Last Thursday the GVCC G-Tour raced the Rush course. I hadn't been out to the Rush course since the 3-man roller ski race that Chad, Jason and I did last December. It's definitely one of the tougher courses we race during the Thursday night series and after a few weeks in a row with big pack finishes, I was looking forward to having a more selective race (read - no field sprint). I felt pretty good, so I tried to be aggressive with a few attacks early on that didn't stick, but the field was getting thinner with a few more guys dropped every time up the main hill. My teammate Phil was also one of the main aggressors and was looking pretty strong as well. Eventually a break of three got a pretty big gap, and both Phil and I missed the break. Phil tried to bridge with two laps to go and almost made it, but had to settle for 5th. Realizing that I didn't want it to come down to a sprint, I attacked the main group with a little under a lap to go and ended up making it to the line before they did, so I ended up 6th. So, not quite a win, but it was good to be able to make strong late attack like that stick. It was also good to finally get some points for the year, so I guess I'm no longer a non-contributing zero for the team this season!

The 2nd race of the week was the Bristol Mountain Road race on Saturday, which would be 3 laps of a 17 mile course (51 miles total) that includes a long climb up Egypt Road. The first bike race I ever competed in was this race three years ago. At that point I had no idea what to expect and ended up getting shelled out of the main group before we even got to Egypt. I also wasn't in great shape at that point as I was still in grad school and maybe working out 3-4 hours a week at the most. The following year I came back in better shape and with some more race experience and expected to do better, then three miles into the race I got a flat and that was all she wrote. This year (my first time racing in the cat 4 group), I went into the race confident that I could hang on to the final group and hopefully end up with a good finish, but it wasn't to be. The first time up Egypt, I started the climb pretty far back in the pack, but managed to move up to about 20th wheel about 2/3 of the way up, then was able to settle into a descent tempo. There was a pretty good acceleration put in by a couple of the riders near the top of the climb and I got little gapped by 15 or so riders at the very top. I managed to chase back onto that group, but then was subsequently dropped on the downhill (I was going over 50mph's and apparently that wasn't even close to fast enough, because the group just pulled away from me). I obviously haven't quite mastered the proper aerodynamics to descend quickly. That and there's a reason I'm a cross country skier and not a downhill skier, I'm not the biggest fan of high speeds, and in usual training rides, typically go downhill like a grandmother! Once I got gapped on the downhill I had to make up maybe 10 seconds on route 64 (which had about a 30mph headwind), I never mustered up enough to get back into the lead group and ended up riding the next 35 miles with a group of about 7 that was in the same predicament as me.

So, I ended up pretty much right in the middle of the results sheet, which I wasn't too happy with, but when I put things in perspective and look back on it, the fact is that I don't have much experience in weekend races at this level and made a few tactical blunders that wouldn't have made a difference in the Thursday night races or at the Cat 5 level where I was the last time I was doing these weekend races, but simple things like riding too far back in the pack at the beginning of a climb and never taking the time to work on descending were significant factors. So, while it wasn't the result I was hoping for, it's one more race that goes down as a learning experience (albeit a cold, windy one).

I got a nice e-mail yesterday from a fellow nordic skier who was in the race (and has more bike racing experience than I do) who gave me some very constructive advice including the following "you were thinking too hard, searching for something to do. You look like a skier trying to ski a bike race." When I read this I couldn't help but think of the classic line in Bull Durham - "Don't think, it can only hurt the ball club"! Once again, I need to remember some of the advice that I used to give all those idiot pitchers, don't overthink things meat!

It also wasn't the luckiest day for the other guys on the team as Rick was sick and Phil got flat tire at the end of the first lap after making that final selection on the climb. The good news is that we have plenty of chances to redeem ourselves over the next few weeks as there will be a lot more racing and hopefully we can put a few good ones together.

Quotes from weekend

2010-05-03T10:58:00.001-07:00

Here are some of the memorable quotes from the weekend (names removed):

- "As for the weekend, I talked to Lucas already, but my attendance is up in the air right now. I planned on being there but looks like I have to work on Saturday...If I can get outta here by noon, Ill be there by 5 to drink 100 beers.... but if not Im going to have to catch you in June. Go get em." - e-mail received on Friday morning

- "I can't believe you went for a run this morning. You are a sick f*ck."

- "I didn't know they made bottles of Gentleman Jack that big."

- "Is it possible to tear your rotator cuff playing wiffle ball? How would I know if that just happened?"

- "I'm going to jack that deer up if it gets any closer."

- "This is the first trash plate I've ever eaten while it's still daylight out."

Music related quotes:

- "I haven't listened to this much bluegrass ever, it must be Marty's iPod."

- "I feel like I'm at Bonnaroo."

- "I haven't heard any Tragically Hip or Guster songs since I lived with Marty."

- "We need to listen to someone else' iPod for a while, I'm all twang-ed out."

Skip and go naked (drink concoction) related quotes

- "It's almost noon, it's no longer appropriate to be drinking a bloody mary, better get the skip and go's mixed up."

- In response to a question that went something like "what's the big deal with these skip and go's?": "You know how there's a difference between a wine-drunk and a beer-drunk? Well, skip and go's are a their own category, totally different ballpark. Not even the same sport."

- "I've never drank these and not puked. They're awesome."

- "I've had three cups of that stuff and now I can't feel my teeth." (that was a quote from the biggest guy at the party)

- "My beer pong partner seems pretty hammered, I'm a little worried." - "don't worry, I've seen him much worse than this and still be a productive beer pong player."

Thanks guys!

2010-05-02T14:25:00.001-07:00

I just got home from my bachelor party and couldn't imagine a more perfect weekend. In total 18 guys descended on a "cabin" in Forsestport, NY (between Utica and Old Forge). This cabin was more like a frat house than a cabin and a great setup for the weekend. There was also a 9 hole golf course on the same complex. A good chunk of the guys that made the journey were teammates of mine from college, or I met through other RIT baseball teammates. This got me thinking about how I was initially disappointed to be going to RIT in the first place as a high school senior, but looking back on it, I couldn't imagine not knowing these guys and am extremely thankful that things went the way they did and I ended up at RIT with all of these guys as teammates. Ok, I'll stop sounding like an NCAA commercial now.

The attendees included Doogie and Feldman (flew in from LA), Super Rob (flew in from Phoenix), Lucas (drove up from Ct) and Kevin (who got back from a month long trip in Tbilisi, Georgia on Thursday night, and I would imagine going out of town for a weekend of more drinking probably wasn't what he had as #1 on his priority list).

The weekend basically involved some heavy boozing in the middle of the woods, golf and lawn games, I won't go into all the details, but I will say that it sounds like a couple of my buddies need some lessons in proper golf-cart driving!

Here are some pics.

Kevin standing in front of possibly the biggest rock either of us had seen. This stream was right behind the cabin we were staying in.
Farmen, Crandle and Kevin. What you can't see is Farmen's very inappropriate t-shirt commenting on certain preferences of Red Sox fans.
Knodel repping a little Colgate slice of live - Slices! Many of the buddies I have from college accompanied me for weekends here or there to Colgate, including Knodel (who I lived with for 4 years and is one of the goofier guys you'll ever meet, he's a left-handed pitcher though which explains a lot.).

Dear landowners - stop feeding deer, this is not normal behavior. Deer were basically walking up to us all weekend. At one point a couple of us decided to try and wrestle the next one that came up (not sure that was sound decision-making, but anyways), the deer must have heard us because they started harassing the other cabins and houses instead of ours after that.

Speaking of bad decision making, this was the damage done on Friday night only.

Can't even begin to express how much it meant to me that these guys were able to get out there. I know there were several other guys that had things come up and couldn't make it, and Kevin gave a Georgian-style toast last night to the guys that couldn't make it. The whole weekend made me so thankful for the group of friends that I have.

Flower City Challenge

2010-04-26T14:10:00.001-07:00

This past weekend, I competed in my first duathlon (5k run, 20 mile bike, 5k run). The race was part of the inaugural Flower City Challenge sponsored by Unity Health and Fleet Feet Rochester. The other events for the weekend included a run/bike/paddle triathlon, a half marathon and a 5k.

The duathlon went reasonably well, I felt pretty strong running and biking and ended up finishing 3rd overall. I came into the first transition zone right behind the leader and alongside one other guy, they were both faster getting out onto the bike course and I never saw either of them again, but also wasn't passed at any point during the rest of the race, so I guess it was ok. Here are my takeaways from the race:

- I showed up an hour before the race and the bike racks in the transition zone were already a total cluster. I saw Frenchy, who promptly asked me why I was late. Apparently, you have to show up really early for duathlon/triathlon races.

- In hindsight, I probably could have pushed harder on the first running section, but I wasn't quite sure what I was getting in to. I feel like I sort of talked myself out of taking the lead and pushing the pace.

- I was a complete fumble-fest in both transition zones. Maybe next time I should practice untying my running shoes with my HR jacked up, not the easiest task. Getting my bike shoes on and helmet strapped up also doesn't seem like it should take that long, until you actually try to do it fast.

- aero bars would have been a good idea for the bike section, especially for the 2nd half of the bike course which was mostly a gradual downhill.

- The first 5 minutes of the second running section (after the bike) was an interesting experience for my legs to say the least. I don't know what it looked like, but I would say it felt like a cross between running with full leg splints on and a duck-waddle. Couldn't have been pretty! I definitely gained a newfound respect for triathletes.

- After about 5 minutes of that, I eventually loosened up and got back into a rythym running and ended up with a reasonably respectable time for the 2nd 5k.

The event was extremely well organized (especially for it's first year), and I heard that there were over 2000 runners between the half-marathon and the 5k that was run on Sunday. This type of event is an excellent way to showcase the city and for people to get out and get some fresh air and exercise. I hope that the organizers make this an annual event and that it continues to grow.

Some other highlights - Frenchy won the paddle triathlon race despite complaining all week about how much his back hurt; Warren Hern (CFO of Unity Health and also the father of one of my former college baseball teammates) competed on the winning relay team for the paddle tri, and I'm sure was also an important part of the reason that Unity Health was the title sponsor for the event; Dave Bischoff, who works at Harris runs with me our lunch break a few times a week ran a 1:18 half marathon (that's a 6:01/mile pace for those doing the math at home), look out for that Harris Corporate Challenge team this year!!

Here are pics of Frenchy and I with our awards (flower pots).

His back looks fine to me, sandbagger!

The next few weeks are pretty hectic with a lot of bike races coming up. My immediate goals are to be in good shape and ready to go for the Bristol Road Race, Tour De Syracuse and the Corning Circuit race. After those, I'll be running the Corp. Challenge and doing a couple criteriums in Rochester. Then, it'll be wedding and honeymoon time!

Back in the saddle

2010-04-19T14:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I competed in the Bloomfield Classic bike race sponsored by GVCC. It was my first bike race of the year (and first race of any kind since ski season ended 6 weeks ago). The race consisted of four laps of the 11+ mile loop, so about 45 miles total, and covered many of the same roads that I roller ski on fairly regularly as the course was very close to my parents tree farm, where we set up a biathlon range last summer.

I just got home from two weeks on the road where I hadn't been riding anything other than a stationary bike for the last two weeks, so I didn't have high expectations...The race went about as expected as I was able to hang on to the lead pack for almost half the race, then rode the last 25 or so miles by myself to finish somewhere in the middle of the field, counting all the DNF's (why are there so many DNF's in bike racing?)...Not too memorable of a race, but it was good to pin a race number on again and compete. It was also good to get a good solid 2.5 hour race effort in to wake my body up for the races I have over the next several weeks.

Later this week, I'm planning on doing the Thursday night GVCC race and then a duathlon (5k run/20 mile bike/5k run) on Saturday here in downtown Rochester, which should be fun. On paper, I run more than most bikers and bike more than most runners, so you'd think I should be good at this duathlon thing, but I've never done a duathlon before, so who knows what it'll be like...we'll find out though!

What day is it?

2010-04-16T09:25:00.000-07:00

This trip started on Easter Sunday when Kevin and I left Rochester for Tbilisi, Georgia. The flight over was very smooth and uneventful. There were several activities going on for us here. The high point of the week were some high-level meetings with top government officials for which, some high-level people from Harris came over. For Kevin and I, this added some stress as we hadn't traveled much with some of these guys in the past and didn't know how they'd react to some of the cultural differences in Georgia (namely the amount of alcohol drank at a typical Georgian dinner). So, when the VP of sales arrived on Wednesday night, we had an internal strategy meeting to discuss the agenda for the following day, which included meetings with the Minister of Defence, Chief of Staff and head of the Georgian MOI Border Police, followed by a dinner hosted by the MOD. We also discussed that this dinner would consist of wine drinking and explained the Georgian customs for wine drinking - In Georgia, as best as I can tell, a "light dinner" includes beer and vodka, and a "heavy dinner" includes wine-only. Although it may seem that the wine drinking may be easier to handle, this is far from true. The custom when drinking wine is that when the "Tamada" (chief of table) gives a toast, everyone should drink more than half of the glass and the Tamada should drink the entire glass unless he passes the toast to someone else. So, it's easy to see how this can turn into a "heavy night". Anyways, based on this info, our VP responded with the following - "See, when I was a young sales guy, I used to sacrifice my body for the good of building relationships with customers. I'm done with that BS, that's why I have guys like you (pointing to Kevin and I). So, I'm counting on you to handle that for us." So, given clear instructions from our superiors, Kevin and I carried out these responsibilities well and had a great night with our customers followed by possibly the worst hangover of my life the next day. Some pics from that day.

The following day, all of our VIP's were gone, we had some more working-level meetings and Kevin and I could relax a little. The next day (Friday) was also Ivane's (owner of our dealer) birthday. Birthday's are well celebrated in Georgia and typically involve a gathering of as many people as possible and more wine (not enthusiastic about that following previous night), but we again enjoyed another heavy dinner with Ivane and about 55 other Georgians.

That's Irakli, Ivane and Kevin at Ivane's birthday dinner.

Ivane, Kevin, myself, Mike Reda and Anthony Full (both engineers from Harris in town for a demo the following week).

Saturday, we spent the morning walking up to a fortress that was built when the capital of Georgia was moved to Tbilisi (200 AD). Here are some pics of that.

It certainly looks like it could be 1900 years old. I climbed up on parts of it and it seemed pretty sturdy, so I'd imagine it'll be there for another couple thousand years as well.

We then spent the afternoon going to every electronics store in Tbilisi looking for an adapter we needed for a demo happening this week (unsuccessfully), followed by a "light dinner". .At this point, I'm ready to sign a sworn declaration that I'll never have another glass of wine, so I was relieved to see that Temuri had ordered us all beers. There were still a fair amount of toasts with the vodka (mostly to our friends in Poland). Ivane was the Tamada and also gave a few toasts to Nancy and I's future as a married couple.

On Monday at 2am, I left my hotel in Tbilisi, flew to Bucharest and had meetings all afternoon. Tuesday and Wednesday were spent at a defence trade show in Bucharest, capped off by a reception at the US Ambassador's house in Bucharest on Wednesday night. The ambassador and his wife seemed like very nice people and took the time to talk with us for a couple minutes about our interests as a US company in Romania.

Romania has been hit very hard by the global recession, so things are slow for everyone there. So, this trip was focussed on existing programs as well as some new opportunities that are probably a couples years away. I don't have any pictures of Romania as I had to leave my camera in Georgia for use on the demo mentioned above). I spent all day Thursday flying home and am now back in Rochester. It was a fast and tiring two weeks for sure and I'm happy to get back into my normal routine. I am also very excited to not be working out on stationary bikes and treadmills, that was getting very old!

Heavy stuff

2010-04-11T03:28:00.000-07:00

I was initially planning on writing a post this weekend about the whirlwind of customer meetings and wine-chugging that Kevin and I have been through the last week here in Tbilisi (and that post is coming, because there's been some crazy activities going on here!). However, in light of the tragic news from Poland yesterday, I decided to write about that instead. The president, first lady, chief of staff, several cabinet members, along with almost every general in the Polish military were killed in a plane crash in Western Russia. In total 88 government officials lost their lives.

The list of countries that have unconditionally supported the US since the fall of the former eastern bloc is very short, and Poland is on top of that list. People may or may not have a grasp for this, but there is still a tremendous amount of Russian influence in that region and in my opinion, Russia may not really consider the cold war to truly be over. In fact, many could consider the Russian/Georgian war in 2008 to be related directly to their feeling that the US/NATO was extending their influence too far into the former "eastern bloc". Poland was the first country in that region to put there hands up and say "we're done with this communist BS and we're not going back." Since that time, they've been a shining star with regards to developing economically and moving away from corruption that seems to hold down many other countries in that region. On top of that, they've also never hesitated to send their best troops wherever the US has asked them to go. They are truly a great friend to our country.

They have a simply awful history of atrocities. Between the German's and the Russians in WW2, over 6 million Polish people were killed. That's 17% of their population that was completely wiped out, think about that for more than a second. In a tragic twist of irony, the plane that crashed yesterday was flying to Katyn in Russia to honor 25,000 Polish soldiers that were executed and buried in a mass grave. 25,o00 troops were killed by a country that was supposedly fighting on their side in that war. This was a war crime that the Russians had never taken responsibility for. The plane crashed 10km from the site of the mass grave.

Despite their awful history, they have persevered as a nation and kept their unique culture and nationalistic pride alive. I have no doubt that they will overcome this awful situation as well.

So, this post is completely all over the map, but anyways...Nastrovia Polska!

Old trip notes

2010-04-06T08:43:00.000-07:00

I made it to Tbilisi, Georgia safe and sound and have been pretty busy the last two days. The next couple days will be even more hectic, but there's a lot going on for us business-wise, so there's a lot of excitement...On the plane ride over, I stumbled across these trip notes from a trip I took last Spring to Romania. I typically try to keep notes on the unique things that happen while travelling that aren't business related. Sometimes this helps me keep my sanity by realizing that, when you take a step back and look at it, a lot of funny stuff can happen when travelling and dealing with different cultures...so, I thought I'd post these...most of the people named below work for our dealer in Romania...

"Romania - May 2009 trip

Sunday, May 17 - Rick and Marty arrive...the "polly pocket" toy hand-carried from Rochester for Laurentiu's daughter has made it in one piece...

Played tennis and had BBQ with Laurentiu, Gelu, Radu, and commander of base where Citadel excercise will take place.

Marty and Gelu were teamed up - Gelu has nasty first serve, almost every point we scored was an ace, Laurentiu is pretty good, Rick was good once he shook the rust off, I was horrible.

Radu tells a story about a gypsy who tries to train her donkey to eat less (paraphrasing):

"Every day the gypsy would feed the donkey a little less, while continuing to push the donkey to do the same work. By the 29th day, the gypsy had finally trained the donkey to do all of its work without needing food. On the 30th day however, the donkey died of exhaustion. The moral of the story - don't let your business get to the 30th day."

Monday, May 18 - Met with Offset Agency, very good meeting. no noteworthy events otherwise.

Tuesday, May 19 - Citadel excercise - BGAN functionality went from working flawlessly in the dry run to getting first-demo-flu or something. Conversely, VHF radio performed flawlessly after having problems through several of the dry runs. Following the VHF achievement, Jay looked at me and said "They better turn it off quick and not look at it funny."

Wednesday, May 20 - MTA meeting with Marty, Gelu and Doru to discuss offset equipment donation. 15 representatives from MTA were sitting on one side of the table, the 3 of us on the other. Following very brief introductions, the commander of the MTA and Gelu got into a 30 min argument in Romanian while everyone else in the room stared at eachother....then Gelu turns to me and says, "Ok, please present"...he later briefed me on the situation and everything was ok, but at the time, it was comically awkward. Later met with ODC, then Rick, Marty, and both Laurentiu's went to Champions to watch the UEFA Cup finals. Bob Bolton from GD was also there and joined us for the 2nd half of the game. Laurentiu N. was sitting in between Rick and Bob. Bob was eager to discuss a few things with Rick, and instead of adjusting the seating arrangement, decided to essentially lean across Laurentiu's lap and have a discussion with Rick with both forearms squarely planted on Laurentiu's thighs...maybe that's normal in the UK, but I felt extremely awkward for Laurentiu, can't even imagine what was going through his mind as this 25 minute conversation was going on....this was like a scene out of "The Office"...

Thursday, May 21 - met with MOD at Romtehnica, then went to airport. My flight was late getting into Frankfurt with an already tight connection back to DC. I resorted to runnning through the airport to my gate which was close to a mile away. This was not a typical airport run (hurried speed walk), this was a full-on sprint, with backpack and dress shoes, I may not have set a personal best in the mile, but definitely was at a sub-5 minute/mile pace. Get to the gate and they are at the tail end of boarding, I board the plane to realize my seat has been double-booked...still sweating profusely, myself and the other gentleman approach the flight attendant who takes both our boarding tickets, comes back a couple minutes later and apoligizes to both of us and gives me my first trans-atlantic upgrade to first class, talk about a turn of events! I did feel extremely out of place, especially since we reached our cruising altitude before I stopped sweating...the rest of the trip was smooth sailing and made it home a little after midnight."

office work at race-pace

2010-04-02T05:07:00.000-07:00

I think all of my customer's woke up on Monday morning, called each other and said, let's throw everything we've got at Marty and make him do cheetah-flips all week! The last four days have (as my dad used to say) been like "sippin water from a firehose"...

I'm leaving for Tbilisi, Georgia on Sunday where I'll be for a week, then I'm going from there to Romania then home...In the next 48 hours I am planning/hoping to do all of these things:

- finish tying up some loose ends at work to try to have some form of organization before I leave.

- go to nancy's parents house for "Easter Dinner" tonight

- do 70 mile bike ride with the team tomorrow morning

- go to mall to pick up new suits from tailor (Nancy finally forced me to get some suits that fit)

- clean up this hot mess (which I call my wax room) and put my skis away for the summer

- laundry

- pack

- take my old bike into the shop to get it fixed/tuned so Nancy can ride it

- hopefully sleep?

- board plane to Tbilisi...