It feels like I’ve
been gone for awhile, but I guess I have been…Thursday to Sunday. The team
camp was cool, not very cool for riding because I was still weak and mostly
sick the whole time. It took me awhile to get over the fact that I couldn’t
do what I wanted to do, but that’s just the way the stale bread crumbles. Other
than the being not healthy part, I had a good time. Hekman’s place just north
of Winston-Salem was incredible. It looks like he’s having a pretty rough time
of it up there.

There was a race
in W-S on Sunday, which I was a no go for until I saw that with less than an
hour to go there were 6 people signed up and the money went 10 deep. Then it
was kind of mandatory to race, free money baby. Turns out that when the race
actually started there were about 30 people, which meant it wasn’t free money
anymore, but whatever. I raced, I felt ok, Hekman raged and won, I tried to
rage and got punched out a couple of times. I wasn’t supposed to ride hard,
but I did, and I wasn’t really ready at that point, so I got dropped on a few
very spectacular occasions. It wasn’t the most confidence-inducing feeling.
It was especially fun getting ridden off of Hamblen’s wheel. I didn’t include
that in my ‘race report’ before, but Jacob told me I was giving a ‘VeloNews’
version, so there you have it, I was painfully, slowly, drrrrrropped.

It still worked
out alright, cuz Mark won, I was 8th, and Re-Re took 10th. The 30 people, all
came in close to solo – Hekman was all by his lonesome riding really fast, then
it was basically groups of 1’s, 2’s, 3’s, and my group of 8? It was tight, it
must have looked like some kind of loco track race out there. Either way, money
was made, I didn’t really get dropped, and we looked pretty. Tim Jackson, the
Masi Guy, was there to enjoy the frigid and windy spectacle, and he wasn’t too
upset about the result…so he took us out to dinner afterwards. Such a cool
deal – race yer bike, win some money, and THEN get free dinner, and then get
to enjoy 101 Hekmanisms. It just makes me all warm and tingly in side.

My SRM went on
the complete fritz in the race. It started ok, but by the 10th minute, I was
pulling through at about 650 watts. I mean, I know I’m diesel and all, but…no…the
battery is almost dead, so when it gets cold, it’s nearly worthless. I still
got heart rate though, and I came to the conclusion that my heart does indeed
work. It beats fast.

So I’m back at
home now, feeling better day by day, and hoping to ride my bike fast this weekend
and throw some punches. I prefer that to getting punched in the throat repeatedly.

Things are getting
better. At least when I cough now something comes up, and even better, it’s
not green or brown or any other nasty color. That’s probably a good thing. I
don’t much like waking up in the middle of the night wheezing though. That’s
why I have an inhaler provided by my trusty sidekick in medicine…Jamila.

I had an anonymous
writer…write…to me with a link to this site about how you get colds/flu
and how to fix it. What I took from it? Take a shit ton of Vitamin A for five
days, Echinacea, Flaxseed Oil, Garlic Oil, Vitamin C, no sugar, no milk. I’m
on quite the regimen of pills at the moment. I don’t know if it’s helping. I
think it is, but that just might be me convincing myself that it is. I don’t
know. I feel ok, definitely weak though.

I got some really
good work done yesterday – I painted a whole bunch of wall – and I didn’t ruin
anything in the process. Seriously, I did it all by myself. I was so scared
that I would screw up and do something awful. I almost did the one time when
I just about knocked a gallon of paint down the stairs – that would have been
sweet. Other than that, it was a quality day because I got to listen to NASCAR
the whole time. I was finished as the race was winding down, but lucky me, my
new MP3 player has fm radio capabilities, so I tuned it to my Racin Station
and went for a little ride. It was pretty suspenseful, but apparently cheaters
do end up winning sometimes. Jimmie Johnson’s car was found to be of the cheating
type earlier in the week, but only his crew chief was sent home. That’s cool,
let the driver stay, he probably had nothing to do with it. Hell, they should
do that in cycling! Oh man, it was the doctor, wasn’t me. Suspend the doc, let
the rider ride. That would be super fair.

I’m going to get
back to resting and researching anything that might make me feel better quicker.

I think the only
thing holding me back at this point is my health. I can practice really hard
for a good period of time, and when it’s about time to be done, my legs are
still ticking (barely), but I get sick and that officially ends whatever block
I was in. I think it’s a good thing to start testing the borders. I figure if
I ride till I’m sick, then that’s probably the outermost limit of where I can
go at this point, especially considering that I don’t really have anything else
to blame for getting sick. I don’t go out, don’t work late, don’t really do
anything else except eat, sleep, ride, and eat. I think I could do better with
my rest though, I’ll try and improve that and see what happens.

As it stands now
though, I’ve got a wicked cough. I don’t feel too bad, the legs are still ok,
but I’ll be heading down the path to the holding pattern of recovery rides until
I feel better. It works out, I was heading into a recovery period anyways. So
screw you sickness, I was going to rest anyway.

Nuff bike talk.
Now that everyone knows I’m sick again. I never thought of myself as sickly
until this year, but then again, I don’t think I ever really worked hard until
this year, so it seems like the two go hand in hand.

The house is absolutely
silent right now. It’s freaking me out. Jacob is gone, Samantha is gone, and
I’m here all by my lonesome.

So on this whole
sick thing…I still rode yesterday. It was the last day of whatever you call
a bike practice period, and I didn’t feel too bad, so went out for some more
fun. Towards the end I was coming apart in a bad way, and we roll up to the
now infamous creek crossing. Jacob goes, I have a bad feeling about this today.
So he gets off his bike and walks right on through to the other side, didn’t
even miss a beat. It was cool.

Of course I’m sitting
there thinking, holy crap, I’m going to go down again today, and then I see
him go splash splash through, and it was like the light of heaven shining down
showing the way. Indeed, I hopped off my bike and walked right on through. It
didn’t hurt that it was 70 degrees yesterday, but whatever, minor details.

I figure I’ve got
a solid week to get better at this point. That’ll hopefully be enough, if not,
that sucks, just as long as I don’t come down with ebola or anything, I’ll probably
be ok in the end. That’s at least what I keep telling myself. If all goes well,
I’ll finally be racing again next Sunday. After that, it’s race race race race
race race race till October, hopefully. I can actually say I’m a bike racer
again and not a bike practicer.

It’s kinda funny
looking back now versus last winter about this time. Well, at this time I was
in Cuba. That was a fantastic experience, and by fantastic experience, I mean
shitty. Actually, I don’t feel like comparing myself to myself, blaaaaa! I could
do blaaaa watts for 27.34 minutes now I can do BLAAAAA watts for BLAAAAA minutes
at BLAAAAAA heart rate! Fantastic, absolutely fantastic.

Jamila got me the
new Bode Miller book for Valentine’s Day. Bode Miller is bad ass. He’s straight
ice cold, he could never do another thing on a ski slope, and he’d still be
a bad bad man. I feel like my brain might stop atrophying for a few minutes
if I can read a whole book to completion. I haven’t read much of late…not
counting words on my computer screen.

So I’m tired now.
It took three days and a lot of energies, but I’m tired. Real tired.

I’ve got a lot
to do. I just finished my PEZ stuff, but I’ve got a gym and some windows to
clean. I’m kinda bummin about that right now. I just want to collapse off of
my chair and into bed. I ain’t scared though, I’m going to ride my creaking
bike into town and I’m going to like it, and I’m going to stop at the gas station
and get a quart of Mountain Dew. If that won’t make me feel spry, nothing will.

My bike is making
scary noises at the moment and the free hub body on my rear wheel just up and
died, it probably has nothing to do with me taking my bike swimming the other
day
. That was an awesome experience. I knew I was going to eat it in that damn
creek at some point. I just knew it. To be honest, I figured I would have already
taken care of that honor by now, but no, had to wait till the other day. The
water was really warm.

And by warm, I
mean cold.

It was all gravy
though.

I haven’t done
any intervals lately, but Mike Zagorski has. Rats.

I think I’d like
to try some hour intervals…sleeping.

Is it bad if I
like the new Pussycat Dolls single? I’m sorry, I mean, PCD. I heard that on
the radio, they’re changing their name.

I can’t keep any
thought of more than a one sentence paragraph going at the moment.

Man, I have to
shave today. If I don’t shave today, I’m going to look even worse than I normally
do. Maybe I’ll get a haircut too, not like it matters or anything, I just wear
my Charlotte Fetty edition hats all the time anyways.

I got really stressed
out last night playing NFL 2K3 on the GameCube. I haven’t been that worked up
about anything in a long time. I tied it up with 19 seconds remaining, and had
to decide whether to go for the win – go for 2, or settle for the extra point
and take care of business in OT. I wasn’t too confident in my goalline offense,
so I settled for the extra point, and then Keyshawn took care of biznass for
the win in OT. Adam says I talk like the game was actually real. It was. I saw
it, I controlled it.

It’s supposed to
rain tomorrow morning, so my recovery might continue till tomorrow afternoon.
I ain’t complaining, you know what though, I don’t really care, just as long
as I get to eat a whole bunch of food today, drink some highly caffeinated beverages,
complain that I’m tired, and sleep a whole bunch, I really don’t care.

I think that’s
my new favorite song of all-time. I don’t know why, but I love it. I think I’ve
listened to it at least 147 times today.

Speaking of music.
There’s this cool site, Pandora that is
part of the Music Genome Project, and basically you go this site, register for
free and just type in a band, group, whatever that you like, and it plays other
songs and artists that are similar that you might like. It’s cool. Anyways,
so I typed in Postal Service, and sure enough my new all-time favorite song
for the next four days popped up.

You know what,
now would be a good time to just head on over to TheBikeGame
Dot Com, because anything written over there is 100 times more worthy of
reading than whatever I have to mumble about. TheBikeGame makes me happy, even
if I haven’t done much with it of late.

I think I’ve gotten
a good chunk of work done today. It rained like hell all day, so I did my best
to get as far ahead as possible with my PEZ work. I have a good seven or eight
pics that I hunted down on the internet for use as PeloPics this week. I got
a whole bunch of other little things done as well for PEZ, so hopefully I can
just pop on quickly in the morning and be done, come home and not have too much
to do. I have a really hard time keeping even moderately afloat when I do lots
of bike practice, and I think it pisses a lot of people off besides just me.
I’ll try and do it right. I can do it. I just want to start getting more control
over what I’m doing, take more responsibility I guess, and not just be the bumbling
retard who forgets everything and can only be depended on for being forgetful.
It was funny for awhile, but I don’t think it’s the best of things.

I cleaned my room
today. That was a huge accomplishment for me. It rocked my world, too much bustle.

We went to Espresso
Royale Caffe (yes, with two f’s) this morning to do work. It was kind of a funny
sight I suspect. Three dudes with knitted toboggans on at three separate tables,
staring at laptops. I almost had my EuroTrash done when my battery died. Yeah,
I definitely had forgotten my battery at home.

Back to the good
life tomorrow, bike practice. I can’t believe how much better I’ve started feeling
of late. I don’t know what the difference is, but I almost feel like I’ve been
recovering better day to day, I hate to say this even more – but I almost felt
better on the last day of last week’s training week than I did at the beginning
or middle. I guess that’s not a problem, but I’m scared to admit it, because
I have absolutely never ever felt better after a hard week of training. Ever.
I have nothing other than my own opinion to base that off of, but I guess that’s
a fairly big deal when you assess how you feel. I’ll probably feel like absolute
crap tomorrow now that I’ve said that. Whatever.

I’m tired again. I think
that’s a good thing. It’s good to be healthy and able to get down with some
bike practice.

I broke my mp3 player earlier
this week. I was pretty bummed about that. Somehow, I managed to dislodge the
volume thing on it. So I figured I’d go MacGyver and fix it. I seriously don’t
know where I got the idea from. I can’t fix a broken shoelace by tying the two
ends together. I was sure I could get the better of this 21st Century contraption.

I was wrong. I just ended
up completely mutilating the thing and doing a thorough dissection, and nearly
started a fire when I stabbed the battery unit with a screwdriver. It was awesome.

About five minutes after
that, while I was realizing that I had completely destroyed my beloved mp3 player,
and wasn’t really all that upset about it, the wind of winds hit. I swear, I
thought a tornado was hitting the house. It was insane. It blew a shingle or
two off into the wild blue yonder and generally just caused a big ol ruckus.

I think that’s all of the
good stories I have for the moment.

I did the WBL
today. That was fun. I forgot how much fun it can be. I went kinda hard in the
attack zone and that was cool. I rode like a complete idiot, but I didn’t really
care. There was this long, downhill-ish section that was really fast, so I attacked
on it and went vrrrooooom. I looked back and Hoyt was chasing me and behind
him was the field. Logic told me that Hoyt would help in the endeavour, but
I didn’t feel like waiting and I wanted to see how long it would take for him
to bridge the 50 meters or so to me. It took about 8 minutes I think. It was
cool. I felt like a jackass, but I wanted to go hard, and I didn’t want to go
hard with anyone ‘cept for me, myself, and I. He ended up catching me and attacking
me, and I didn’t follow, we were caught and I had had my fun and been an obstinate
mule, and cuz I just wanted to go one speed. Well, that’s what I keep telling
myself. Truth is, I didn’t feel like it. Maybe that’s cuz I was shot to shit,
or maybe I really just didn’t feel like it.

I can’t believe
I just wrote a whole paragraph on me being obstinate, especially in the context
of bike practice.

Adam Myerson is staying
at our house right now. He’s alright, I like him. Being the cross bad ass that
he is, he managed to flip over his handlebars and do a beautiful Greg Louganis
impression when we rode some trails this afternoon, it was the highlight of
my week. Thanks Adam.

I’m going to bed now. I
like The Postal Service at the moment. The music is good.