Poland

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?

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

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...

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...

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?

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

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!!!