Pictures

For some strange reason I have some pictures this week. The first couple are from my office, not normally a great place to take pictures but on Monday or Tuesday of this week (I can't remember the day) we had a huge thunderstorm roll across town. I work on the 22nd floor and our office takes the entire floor so you can see the storm as it moves across town. After the rain a cool rainbow came out that you could see from my desk.
Here are some pictures of Shay from last weekend when we had a b-day party at Snowmass with Ade's family...damn that kid likes sweets. Well it looks like these pictures won't load, I'll try another post.


I also tried to take some pictures this morning when I went for a ride. I left the house at about 5:20; well before sunrise so none really turned out...but here is a close-up of me. Even though I'm taking a few days off work the riding is still early in the morning. Ade still is going to work and someone needs to be around to watch Shay. I registered for the last Winter Park race today. It is on Saturday and will be my last race of the season. It is a great course and should be fun. Then it will be trying to stay motivated to train for a couple of weeks knowing there is no race around the corner. If I can ride through Labor Day and leaving to India I'll be set, after that I can start the off-season and not feel like it is starting too early. I'll probably be wanting to start training again in mid-October since I'll be done so early, but who knows maybe I'll really try to run the Denver Marathon (or 1/2 marathon) and won't have time to think about riding. I guess that will depend on if I actually start running prior to (0r even while in) India.

Harassment

So I'm at work this morning and getting harassed because my blog never talks about work, big deal right? At least that's the way I look at it, but I'm told since the name of the blog is "working racing and family" shouldn't I mention work, at least once in awhile. But really who cares about my job, I sit around and make sure people get projects done on time, talk with clients, and currently am working to ensure some software we are developing gets done on-time and correctly. That's about it, Readers Digest version.

Cruised up to Snowmass for the NCS finals over the weekend. Good racing and hanging out. Ade's family was all there so we had a birthday celebration for Seamus. He was pretty amped for presents and cake. On Saturday Eric raced and threw down a solid race in the pro finals. Finished the day 9th and the series in 18th (I think), not to bad on the series given he missed the east coast races.

I raced on Sunday and had another ass-kicking in Expert. The course was brutal after an all night rain much of the course was nearly unrideable. Lap times were 15-20 minutes slower than in the MSC race a few weeks ago on the same course. At one point there was a single-track climb that became about a 2km run. It sucked but I held on and finished 14th out of 19. I lost a lot of time on the upper technical section of the course, especially on the 1st lap. On the second lap I was getting chased by some people and managed to hold them off in the last 2-3km which was mostly downhill. I was pretty happy to maintain my position given how bad my dh skills suck at times.

Today is Seamus' last day of day-care. I'm taking the rest of the week off with him, then he starts kindergarten on Monday (also his real b-day). Should be a big adventure for him. It will be interesting to see how he handles the transition.

What do I have to do Yesterday?

That seems to be how things are going for me at work now, I'm constantly trying to get things done just as they are due, or a little later. I guess I can only blame myself as I accepted a couple of last minute, quick turn-around projects from clients. While I'm not directly working on the projects my staff is in more of a panic mode than normal and asking a lot of questions and needing additional help. This would all be fine, except for the fact that I've got stuff I need to get done too. Which begs the question, "why am I writing a blog update at work?" And of course the logic to answer that question is, because I want too.

The past week has been stressful outside of work as well. My grandma died last week, and while expected still sad. Add to that another round of trying to get pregant (Ade not me) that didn't work and it surely hasn't been easy street. Hell, I barely even rode last week because of everything going on.

I did go up to Winter Park to race on Saturday. Got my ass beat again pretty good. I was riding in a group of 4th-12th for most of the first climb then just ran out of gas. Wouldn't have been that bad, except for the fact that we had two laps. I ended up in 12th but lost a lot of time to the people who finished 4-11. That group was all within about a minute of each other, a few minutes down on 1-3. I finished about 10 minutes down on the group of 4-11. Unfortunatly it is a little late in the season to really improve repeatability at LT but I know that is what I need to build up on for next season.

It seems weird to be thinking of "next season" already, but the reality is I'll race three more times max this season, then take two weeks off the bike completly when I go to India in the beginning of September. Even though there are a few races after I get back I know the fitness level will be so low it won't even be worth trying to race so I'm shutting the season down after the last Winter Park race. If anybody needs a back of the pack Expert on their team for next season let me know.