April Fools

Sometimes the blogging gets slowed down by life, sometime it picks up when there is more free time. Right now there really isn’t a lot of free time so infrequent posts are the current state. Saturday’s soccer game for Seamus was cancelled because of the snow last Thursday. I think the game could have been played, as it was warm and dry by Saturday morning, but I’m not in charge.

Just wait till you see pictures of him though, I bought him some sweet bright blue soccer shoes. One thing is certain he’ll be easy to pick out on the field.

I did a road race on Sunday, up near Boulder. I raced with the old slow guys (Cat 4 35+) and had a good race. Not really sure if slow is a great term for the race though as we did 22 miles on a rolling course (with about ½ of it on dirt roads) in less than an hour. I don’t have a cyclo-computer any more but my calculations have us at about 23 miles an hour. There were really no breakaways in the race, just guys coming off the back because of the constant pressure. I was in the lead group until about a mile from the end when I couldn’t respond anymore. I ended up in 13th place and was the first finisher outside the lead group. The race gave me a good indication that my fitness is progressing well and that I really need to work on the anaerobic side of things (short efforts of less than 3 minutes). While I often think these efforts aren’t key in mountain biking I’ve learned that I’m probably wrong. The start of the race, hard pushes at the top of climbs, trying to catch other racers all require this effort. In the past few years I haven’t spent much time working in this area, but I’m going to start adding some of this work in over the next few weeks.

Looking at my schedule I think the first mountain bike race will be May 6 up near Buffalo Creek. This is a location fairly near Denver that hasn’t had many races held in it although there are a lot of trails. One of the main reasons is the fires and floods in the area of the past 10 years. It should be pretty cool to race and see what is happening after all the disasters.

My company of the week (not really weekly) is Fed Ex, for what they are doing to help the environment. As I was leaving work the other day I noticed a Fed Ex truck on the loading dock that mentioned it was Hybrid powered, then I saw a sticker for environmental defense. FedEx is working with the Environmental Defense organization to develop trucks that are “50 percent more fuel-efficient (yielding a 33-percent decrease in greenhouse gas emissions) and produces 90 percent less air emissions of soot and smog.”

FedEx has also worked to redesign packaging materials, reduce emissions from planes and use more environmentally friendly printing methods on packages etc. All these efforts combined show a company that seems to realize that they do have an impact on the environment and can help keep it healthy.