Bourne Again

     Round two of snow came through just two days after my last post. We got a good six inches of snow with only a little bit of ice this time. It was a good snow for our area. In typical Tennessee fashion it was gone in just a few days. We had two days of sub-30 degree temps, then the sun popped out and we saw 65 degrees on the weekend.

     This snow event was full of work drama again. Both Shannon and I got to stay home the first day as both clinics closed for the day. It was our first ever snow day from work together. We had fun playing around the farm and even did a little sledding on the trash can lid. We really need to go buy a real sled.

Not a single track in the backyard this morning

The ice couldn't keep the geese out of the pond. They made swim tracks all through the ice.

View from the back of the farm

Creek in the woods

Shannon cruising on the trash can lid

Me doing a little sledding

     The snow was deep in a few places so we started piling it up to make berms for the sled. Next thing you know we have a slalom course going on the hill next to the house. It was very fun, but turned out to be quite a challenge. Every run we made packed the snow better and made us go faster. We kept having to add to the berms because we kept gaining speed and would shoot right over the berms.

Video: Sledding with the GoPro

     Last weekend, we took a quick road trip to Indianapolis. Shannon went up a day earlier than me, visiting with her family and going to a church convention. I came up to see the Monster Energy Supercross at Lucas Oil Stadium. The stadium is usually home to the Indianapolis Colts football team, but this week it was filled with dirt. I drove up Saturday with my parents. My Mom has really been into Supercross the past few years. It was past time for her to see one live. I find it funny that she is more hooked on Supercross than my Dad, considering he raced dirt bikes throughout the 80s and early-90s. That's what's wrong with me. I was at races before birth, breathing Turbo Blue exhaust in the womb.

Lucas Oil Stadium

    Lucas Oil Stadium is a monster building. I don't think there is a bad seat in that place. We had a good time watching the race. The course was a tough one with several tricky rhythm sections and some big whoops. Those sections provided plenty of spills and plenty of awe. It was amazing to see the lines the top riders were able to take. You really could see the skill difference between the top six or seven guys and the guys running 15th. My favorite riders are Eli Tomac and Ryan Dungey. Tomac won his heat race, then fell early in the main event. Dungey is the current series points leader and he did not disappoint, taking the win in the main by a large margin. Dungey lapped Tomac after his fall, but little Eli was able to keep up with Dungey all the way to the end. Tomac showed he is definitely one to watch in the future. I can't help but cheer for him. His father, John Tomac, is one of the nicest guys on the planet...and he happens to be one of the biggest legends in mountain biking history. He is one of the riders I look up to. John was one of the few riders ever who could win the Downhill events on Saturday, then ride away to the XC wins on Sunday. The guy had skills and legs.

View from our seats

Pre-race festivities

Video: Some clips from our point of view.

Video: Highlights of the 450 SX Main Event

     After the race, we drove back to Bloomington to stay the night, then got up early so we could drive back towards home to make it to Stake Conference for church. Shannon has been singing with the choir and they sang a few songs during Conference so we really wanted to be back so she could participate. It was a quick trip, but definitely worth the loss of sleep.

     Spring is here for sure. As soon as the last snow melted you could see the grass beginning to green up. Only the buttercups have bloomed, but the trees are covered with buds. Green woods will soon be upon us! We have been working hard to prepare for our garden. We have seedlings growing in our back room. Everything has been doing well with the exception of our peppers. We planted six different kinds of peppers and only one kind sprouted. I guess I will be planting more peppers soon. The goal is to get them into Dina's new greenhouse next week where they can beef up before time to put them in the ground. We dug up our carrots that have been growing all winter under the snow. They were much bigger than our previous crops and tasted much, much better.

Bigger, better carrots this year

     With warmer weather comes the race season. This is the first year the off-season has flown by for me. I guess the injury had me working hard and wanting more time. The Smashville Crit. got postponed, which was fine with me since I was going to skip it anyway. My season opener is just two days away now at Chickasaw. I am excited and scared at the same time. I've made some big gains over the past two weeks, but I am still only about 85% of being all the way over this gastroc injury. My speed is coming back nicely, and I think I have more power now than in the past, but my endurance is lacking. I think I will be able to put down some decent laps, but I don't think I have three fast laps of mountain bike racing in my legs yet. We shall see on Sunday.

     Last week, I did a big ride to test the leg. It was a 55-mile loop on the road that is very hilly. Most of the hills are steep, some topping 18% gradients. I did better than good on the ride. I crushed my personal best by almost 15 minutes and set new personal bests on two of the climbs during the loop. The next day, I did a long, slow day. The legs felt recovered, but the gastroc was feeling the day before. I had some pain before the end of the ride, which added to my misery. I rode all four hours in the cold rain. Sometimes it was a brutal downpour. I kept chugging out the miles with motivation from a road name. I passed by J. Bourne Rd. It could not be a coincidence that I passed by J. (think Jason) Bourne Rd, on an epic rain ride while doing secret ninja training. I kept an eye out for C. Norris road, but didn't see that one.

     Shannon did some massage when I got home and the pain in my leg went away quickly. Like the last time I had pain, I think it was more fatigue-related than muscle spasm due to injury. I did a similar set of rides this week with no pain on the second day. I'm seeing improvements almost daily, but I'm still on the leash a little more than I would like to be.

     My speed has been surprising to say the least. I set a new personal best on my favorite training climb this week. I was off by a single second last week when I tried it for the first time. I hit it again this week and was one second quicker than the record. That hill has always been my test to see if I'm race-ready. If I can climb it in under 2:35 and put my heart rate over 190, I'm in pretty good shape. I clocked a 2:29 this week and hit 191 heart rate. Maybe my form isn't as bad as I originally thought.

     I have two other concerns about Chickasaw. I have not been on any mountain bike since November. If I was ever going to get injured, this was the year to do it. The weather has just been terrible for mountain biking. Not to mention my bike has been broken. I finally got it fixed. The frame has been epoxied and looks good. I think now I have done about everything on a bike except fully build a wheel and service a rear shock. I'm hoping to get in a ride tomorrow to test the bike a bit before subjecting it to a race. It needs to be tested and I need to break the rust off my skills. I'm sure the weather has affected everyone so I'm likely to be one of many dusting off the cobwebs this weekend.

     My other concern is my weight. I reported in the last blog that I had gained some weight despite my efforts to maintain. I think some of it is from lifting weights regularly for the first time in my life, but I also know this new ice cream machine is a curse. I'm a bit above my goal for this point in the Spring, but I am confident I will drop these last few pounds in the coming weeks as I begin to log more miles outside and become more active off the bike. I still have some work to do to get my legs right. I'm hoping the weight will be where I want it when the legs are finally 100%. I'm aiming for good form in late-April and even better form by the end of May. It looks like most of my bigger races for this season will be later in the season so I'm not in too much of a hurry right now.

     Look for a report from the race sometime next week. The weather looks good now, but if it comes another monsoon like in recent years I will not be racing. My gastroc is definitely not ready for a long slog in the mud. And I'm not putting my brand new bearings through the slop just yet. Thanks for reading and pray for a dry race!

Pump You Up

     It's been two weeks now since our shot of snow here in Tennessee, but still some snow remains on the ground. This is probably the longest I ever remember snow staying on the ground here. The only other time we approached two weeks was way back in 1994 when we had a massive ice storm. The storm took down many trees and power lines, leaving us without power for two full weeks. As a kid, I thought it was so fun. I got to stay home from school, play in the snow and cut trees with my Dad. Our backyard had at least 10 trees down in it, so we were busy cutting for several days. In one of the trees, we found four baby squirrels that had been abandoned by their mother. We took them in for several weeks, feeding them first with an eyedropper full of milk, then later with corn and nuts. Later in the Spring, they were big enough to fend for themselves and we released them into the woods. They were fun, but very crazy. There is no playing with a squirrel. Even when raised with people from their earliest days they are still a bundle of nervous energy. They're too skittish to handle and won't think twice about biting you.

     With no electricity we had no refrigerator. But that was fine because it was cold enough to sit all your fridge items outside and they would keep just fine. My Dad brought home dry ice from work to help with the freezer items. We were building a bedroom onto the end of the house at that time. The bare floors were the perfect spot for our old kerosene heater to sit. It was like camping to me. I slept on the floor in front of the heater every night and my Mom made me Spaghetti-Os on top of the stove for lunch every day. It really was a fun time, though I hope to never see ice that bad again.

     Training continues to go well. I've had some weird sensations in the lateral gastroc at times with longer rides, but it never gets worse or becomes painful. I'm so aware of that area now that I feel every little thing. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish what is fatigue and what is the muscle attempting to spasm again. I finished up my block of base training this week and had no soreness whatsoever so I'm thinking all these sensations are just fatigue. The muscle is still weak with longer rides and intensity. I really expected length to be more of an issue than intensity, but now I am easily handling four hour rides. The only time I feel the leg any at all is when I start going harder. I kept everything limited to 80% effort until the last two workouts when I gave it 100% just to test the water. Everything felt good. Actually, I put up some of the best heart rate numbers I have ever seen on the trainer.

     This base period was 22 days long and it was the worst 22 days of weather I have seen in a long time. Still, I got in my ride time. Of the 19 rides I did during that period, 16 of them were spent on the trainer. Those three outside rides came in the first five days of the block. So, I've now been on the trainer 14 straight rides. I'm just now getting tired of it. I have found plenty of races and TV shows to watch to keep me entertained. I accepted that the trainer was my only option and it made things a lot easier. I actually like it because I can control all the variables and place the exact amount of stress on my leg muscles that I need right now. I knocked out many three hour rides and even two rides over four hours last week. That's a lot of inside ride time. If nothing else my bum will be ready for the season!

     It feels like I have not been training that much, but when looking back at the past two years, I actually put in more ride time this February. My training has been much more specific and I feel more complete now that I have addressed some of my muscular deficits with off-the-bike workouts. I'm not where I want to be yet, but I'm getting close. I've actually put on a little muscle in the past two months. I'm good with adding weight as long as that transitions into improved power on the bike. My goal this period was to drop four pounds, but I only managed to lose one. I know some of that is muscle, but it is hard to tell. Everybody wants to think that their weight gain is muscle, but it rarely is. Still, I am well ahead of last year's mark at this time.

     Even with the recent positive swings in training, I am delaying the start of my season until later in March. I was planning to begin with the Smashville Criterium in Nashville this Saturday, but I am nowhere near ready for that kind of intensity. I would rather skip it and prepare more so that my first race does not get my gastroc irritated again. Besides, I don't think I can afford the race. It has a $50 entry fee and no payout. While the entry fee does include a ticket to the Nashville Predators hockey game that night, it still does not help me out. I would want to take Shannon to the game and that means buying another ticket in the promotional section, which is an additional $60. I would love to support the Predators and race downtown around Bridgestone Arena, but we just can't afford to start our season off that way. Instead, I plan to kick of my season in Columbia, TN at the Chickasaw Trace Classic mountain bike race on March 22. I am excited to get back on the dirt.

     When my injury was at its worst, I was quite frustrated by my friends and colleagues. Nobody would take the time to help me narrow down the source of my pain. With lots of studying, diligent observation of my symptoms and plenty of prayers, Shannon and I finally found the source. Now that I have things worked out and am rolling down the path to recovery, everybody wants to put in their two cents. It really is amazing how so many of my fellow therapists have no idea how to train an athlete, especially an endurance athlete. I'm not saying I am an expert, but some of the theories I hear from people with doctorate degrees have been frightening at times. Of course, I am doing things all wrong. I have found that when I start getting a lot of opposition from people around me then it means I'm doing something right and good things tend to follow when I stick to my guns.

     I have learned a lot from my self-rehab. For instance, it takes much less intensity, resistance and reps to improve strength and stability than I ever thought. I have always destroyed myself with weights. I give it 100% effort all the time and go until I'm exhausted. That's the way we are taught. If you don't lift heavy weight, you won't make gains. I took a different approach this time due to the injury. It forced me to start light and gradually increase both resistance and volume. While I feel like I am doing 25% of the work I did before, I am seeing better results and am more motivated. No longer am I so fatigued after weights that I don't want to ride. No longer am I overly sore. Yet I continue to see huge gains in the strength of every muscle I am working. I feel consistency has made the difference. I have been dedicated and not missed a single workout. I listen to my body more and have recovered better between workouts to maximize gains. I have found the sweet spot with my volume and can see a big difference in the efficiency of my workouts. I am accomplishing more with less time and less effort.

     In therapy, we see so many injuries from CrossFit and Boot Camp. I don't think there is anything wrong with their workouts. The problem is with the people doing the workout. Basic exercises have totally kicked my butt and I am a Pro-level athlete. Take some Joe off the couch and put him in CrossFit doing power cleans, jump lunges and push ups in rings and you can see how he is setting himself up for an injury. You have to build yourself up to those more difficult exercises and it takes time. You body has to adapt and you have to learn proper form. But most people will never take that time because flipping heavy tires and swinging thick ropes is "cool." I'll see the "cool" people in therapy very soon.

     Besides the intensity issue, I want to discuss the biggest criticism that has been around my whole life. If you are an endurance athlete, I'm sure you have heard this too. "You need to put on muscle mass." Why? What good is hauling extra pounds up a mountain if it is doing nothing to help you pedal faster? Every single one of my colleagues still treats every athlete like a football player. You don't have to be a big gargantuan to be a Pro athlete, but that stereotype is still going strong. I have one friend that will argue with me on this issue until he is blue in the face. Mass is only good if it serves a purpose. For football, size can be a good thing because you get hit all day. You can use it as sort of a cushion. We don't tackle in cycling...at least not on purpose. Neither do runners or swimmers. Strength is good for football, but only if it comes with speed. A huge offensive lineman that can bench 600 pounds is useless if he can't produce that strength quickly. That is called power. A defensive back half his size who can only bench 300 pounds, but can produce his 300 pounds of force in half the time, will run the big lineman over every time. Strength does not always translate to power. You have to produce your strength quickly, especially in a sport with quick bursts like football. So, size and strength are not automatically an advantage.

     I always ask those people that say I need bigger muscles if they have ever watched any endurance event on TV. Do you ever see giant runners, cyclists or triathletes at the Olympics? No. We all look the same. And there is a reason for this. Aerobic endurance events stress Type I muscle fibers more than Type II. Type I do not hypertrophy as much as Type II, so the muscle fibers have less cross-sectional area. Serious weightlifting stresses more of the Type II fibers, which respond with greater size gains. It's two different kinds of training. You will only see gains in your sport if you train specifically for your sport. For some reason, the bench press remains a "gold standard" for how strong someone is. There are many coaches and trainers out there that believe the bench press helps every athlete. But the bench press is only specific to pushing with you arms. If your sport does not require pushing with your arms, then you are wasting your training time.

     Endurance athletes also tend to burn more fat for fuel, leading to lower body fat percentages. People get caught up in the notion that a skinny person has no muscle. That is not true. Often the skinny endurance athletes have plenty of muscle, just not much fat around those muscles to give the perception of size. Pound for pound, many endurance athletes probably have more muscle on their body than a lot of non-endurance athletes.

     In endurance events, it all boils down to your power:weight ratio. Basically, how strong are you compared to how much mass you are carrying. Therefore, adding muscle is slowing you down unless that added muscle increases your power output in your sport. It doesn't seem like rocket science to me, but everyone around me seems to struggle with this. I think that if bigger muscles were better, we would see big muscleheads winning the Tour de France...and we don't. Most of my colleagues think little of my CSCS certification, especially when compared to their doctorate, but at least I learned that there is a difference between training for football and cycling. You can't use a cookie-cutter approach to train every type of athlete.

Snow Stories

     Winter is making itself known right now. The majority of the country is in the same mess. I have enjoyed the snow so far. Tennessee snow rarely lasts more than a day, but this snow has been on the ground all week and has shown no signs of leaving anytime soon. We got around five inches of sleet and ice to start things off, followed a few days later by three inches of powdery snow. When the snow fell, it was as close to a blizzard as we will ever see here. The snow came down hard and fast, and brought along 30+ mph winds. It was awesome!

     I really love snow days. It brings beauty and peacefulness to the dull winter landscape. But better than that is the snow day antics of others, mainly coworkers, that never fails to entertain us. I love the anticipation of a bad forecast. There's always a that person who calls and talks smack the night before the storm. "Are you coming in tomorrow? Because I am coming no matter what!!" Then the morning comes and they call again, this time talking fast and using the words "dangerous" and "Hell" often. It always entertains me. It's annoying, but entertaining. The only kind of story that can be more extravagant than a fish story is a snow story. Snow is like a magic fairy-dust that makes adults revert back to children. A little snow falling suddenly looks like a great reason not to go to work.

     Our roads were covered with deep snow, but it was drive-able and far from what I would call "too dangerous to go to work." Still, most patients decided to forego therapy, which caused me to get called off for most of my work. I took advantage of the extra time to ride and work out more. Only the main roads are clear. Monday was President's Day and I think that the road workers took the day off as well. Only the interstate got cleaned the first day. Most of the week has been a write-off as far as work goes. Shannon can count on both hands the number of people she has treated this whole week.

We don't get to see snow plows here very often

Snowset on the farm

     My riding continues to improve. I'm logging those slow base miles and finally riding some hills. I'm not much of a believer in the long, slow miles unless you really need them. I had a poor base last season and after my break for the injury, I do need the base miles. I've been spending most of my time on the trainer since the weather has been terrible. It has been boring, but not as bad as in the past. I'm still just happy to be able to ride and I'm very motivated. The early-season bike races have started in the warmer parts of the world so I have used the Tour Down Under and the various tours across the deserts to keep me interested while I build my aerobic base. I've knocked out two three-hour rides on the trainer this week. If nothing else, my bum will be ready for road miles come Spring.

     I've been trying to do more rides before breakfast for what is referred to as "anti-bonk" training. When done at a low intensity, it teaches the body to become more efficient at using it's glycogen stores and also in using fat as a fuel. You have 90 minutes worth of glycogen stored up. After you use that, you should eat to keep`from breaking down muscle for fuel. These kind of workouts have allowed me to have breakfast on the bike a few days. And they are great at getting the metabolism cranked up.

     The leg is doing well. I've had one problem since my last post and that came yesterday with a slight "pinching" feeling in the original problem area. It's not consistent and doesn't happen on the bike, so I'm not too worried about it. We have stopped massaging so often and I think maybe I still need it during this build-up cycle. The gastroc is still a little weak and the training does stress it quite a bit. In addition to riding, I'm still doing my therapy-type strength workout and even doing a few light weights now. I had a slight cold last week, which snapped my streak of almost one full year since my last illness. The streak is over, but the severity of the cold was not as bad as usual, so I lost no training time because of it.

     With some of my spare time, I have been working on a few projects. I built a set of hurdles out of PVC for me to train with during my therapy to help my return to running. I also hope to use them for training other athletes in the future.

     I also built a kicker ramp. I needed a new challenge and a new spark for the freeride trails at home. I built it light so I can move it to different areas. Maybe in the summer I will use it for the pond jump I have wanted to construct since the day I moved onto the Clark Farm.

It's a 4 ft. tall kicker that can attach to my flat ladder for a proper run-in

I got to use my new drill set plenty on this project

My car was a bit full when I bought my supplies. I somehow managed to get seven pieces of 10-foot PVC and eight 8-foot 2x4s into my car. Man, I need a truck.

     Here's a few random pictures from the last few weeks. We had an explosion across the street one morning. There was a fire in an RV that was being stored. The fire ignited a few propane tanks and made some nice fireworks. Nobody was hurt thankfully. Also, there's a few pictures of some nice fish I caught out of the pond. I pulled out a decent bass and the biggest shellcracker I have ever seen in this pond. He was as big as my boot!

Smoke that black is never good...

Bass

Shellcracker

     That last house-buying opportunity I wrote about in the last post started much better than I expected. We were presented with a reasonable price and the house looked much better than both of us expected. It was across the street from my parents. Having them close can be good and bad. It would be nice to see them often, but it is scary to think how much time my Dad would spend at my house if we were within walking distance. Though it would be nice to have them close when we have kids. Convenient babysitters!

     One positive to this house was that our backyard trail runs through the property. I could finally own part of my trail! The owners offered to pay the taxes for this year as the house would not be available until May. They inherited the house from a parent. The house was fully paid off so they were able to present us with a payment plan to where we could just pay them every month. They even offered us a low interest rate. The price was just outside of what I wanted us to give for a home, but with their payment plan it would work. Everything was falling into place and it seemed this was meant to be. 

     Then it wasn't. At our next meeting, the owners presented us with a horrible five-year balloon plan with an astronomically high interest rate. It was a complete 180 from the previous meeting. Then they started talking about prorating the taxes. At this point, I was over it. One thing house hunting has taught me is patience. I am one to just say "forget it" when people try to weasel around. But I know with a house that sometimes you have to play the game. So, instead of telling them to shove it like I wanted to, we made a low offer down to the point where I felt we needed to be with conventional financing. They didn't take it, but at least we tried. The whole process has just been irritating so far. Multiple people have treated us like ignorant children just because we have not bought a house before. We may be first-time home buyers, but we are not dumb. I can inspect a house well enough to see what things need to be fixed and I know my budget. It doesn't take a genius to see that a house with a 17-year-old roof will need a new roof soon. And that new roofs aren't free.

     The only other interesting thing going on in life right now is that we are surrounded by baby-crazy individuals. It seems everyone we know is pregnant or just had a baby. By the way, congratulations to Jeremy and Joy Chambers on the birth of their new baby boy. Shannon has to hear about babies at work all day, I hear about them most of my days at work and now we hear about them at church. We are now nursery workers at church. I was NOT excited to be going to nursery when we were first asked, but now I actually like it. I can communicate better with the slobbering one-year-olds than I ever could with the teenage boys when I taught that class. And they cry about the same amount as the boys. Everybody thinks this is some sort of "sign" that we need to have kids. While it is good for preparation, we are not having any yet. It's not time, so don't ask.

     I will end with a quick story about some baby-crazy family members of ours. Shannon recently had a birthday and I bought her an ice cream maker. It was one of those we-all-win gifts. I gave her hints two weeks before her birthday. My hints were that we would both like it, it would make her fat and everyone would love the product. Leave it to Eber and Renee to come up with baby as an answer to my hints. I guess that does fit, but that was not what I planned for Shannon's birthday. Maybe in a few years...

Snow White

     My self-rehab is going well. I believe the root of my injury has finally showed itself. Part of the fun with conducting physical therapy is that the therapist is like a detective. You are often presented with many clues and many different suspects. You have to narrow down which one is the actual culprit and then why it happened. Take for instance, medial knee pain. On the medial side of the knee, there is a meniscus which separates the femur from the tibia. There are also numerous tendons of adductor muscles that attach to the medial side of the tibia. And there is a bursa, which separates all those tendons from the tibia prior to the attachment site. Even once you figure out which one is causing the pain, then you have to narrow down why. Is the muscle tight and pulling on the attachment site causing inflammation? Is the meniscus damaged? If so, why is it damaged? Did they have a fall during a soccer game? Was the fall due to poor muscular strength or endurance causing faulty body mechanics? The list is literally endless.

     As areas of my leg have calmed down, only one culprit remains: the gastroc. More specifically, the lateral head of the gastroc. The gastroc is the main muscle of your calf. The one that bulges out when you point your toes down. There is a lateral head and a medial head. The lateral head attaches to the femur just above the knee joint, underneath the lateral hamstring. Once Shannon massaged that attachment area, my pain went away and has not returned. Further down the lateral gastroc I still have a lot of muscle spasm and tension. Running tends to stress the gastroc more than cycling. I also tend to evert my foot when running, which stresses my lateral muscles more than the medial muscles. Running hills puts even more stress on the gastroc due to the change in running style and angle at the ankle. Rewind back to last year when my problem first appeared and it all makes sense now. I was increasing my running mileage much too fast and also added in hills for the first time ever. My runs went from 3-4 miles to 8-10 miles and included many steep hills on the road and trail. No wonder my gastroc was unhappy. The location of the pain disguised the true culprit. It felt like it was my hamstring, but it was actually deep to the hamstring where the gastroc attachment is. I believe cycling did not aggravate the injury, but also did not let it heal all the way, so when I started running again this year (doing hills again) the problem was reignited. I wish I had figured this all out earlier!

     I have returned to training very slowly and have built up beyond two hour rides now. I knocked off two 2:30 rides last week, one indoors and one outside. I completed a three hour ride today with no problems. Three hours was my goal time to make before moving myself out of my rehab phase and back into more of a traditional base-building period. So far things have been super slow and super easy. When I say slow, I mean slow. Some of my rides have been at 13 mph average speed. So, I have not had any intensity, ridden a hill, or touched the big ring a single time since before Christmas.

     We got a nice little treat last weekend with some snow on Friday night. Shannon and I were watching a movie and did not even realize it was snowing outside. When I looked out the window, the ground was covered and the flakes were still falling. We went outside about 11pm and built a snowman on the dock. The ground was still melting the snow so the wood of the dock was the coldest place and helped our snowman stay around a bit longer. One thing I like about snow is how it reflects light enough that you can see fairly well outside even without a moon. We had fun walking around the pond and building the snowman with no flashlight needed.

     The next morning, I got up and took a few pictures of the snow and our snowman. You have to be quick here in Tennessee. Snow rarely hangs around for more than a few hours. This snow was no exception and it was completely gone before noon. The temperature reached 48 degrees that afternoon and we were able to get in a great road ride in the sunshine.

Snow on the farm

Snowman on the dock

It was a a very moist snow and stuck well to the trees. Snow is usually very dry here in Tennessee when it does come.

Kale surviving under the snow

     I am happy to report that First Endurance is back with me for 2015, joining Maxxis as my sponsors for the season. I cannot speak highly enough about First Endurance. They are committed to quality products and make sure there is never any kind of contamination to their products that might get you flagged on a pee test. I love all their products, but MultiV is now my favorite. I've been on it about a year now and have not been sick one single time since starting it. It is good stuff!

     With the bike down time, I have been working more to save money for racing and other life things. I've been doing all therapy for the past two months. The cookie dough business does not do many deliveries from mid-December through early February due to all the school holidays. I'm saving as much money as I can for the season in case I do finally get myself fully healed and back into race shape, so I can travel and do the bigger races. Hopefully, one of these days, I'll get the attention of a team or sponsor that will help with costs. We are still saving for a house as well. House hunting has been disappointing so far. We have seen two houses that we liked, but both owners wanted way more than the house and land were worth. Both seemed to think they were on a gold mine because they had some acreage. Just because you have land does not mean it is good, usable land. A ravine is not worth the same amount as a piece of flat land. I am interested in another one now that is near my parents and our trail, but I'm not getting my hopes up. I'm expecting another outrageous price tag from what I have seen so far.

     I've been playing with my new drill kit. I built us a firewood rack for the den so now we don't have to go down to the basement every two hours to get wood when we have a fire. My next project is making more ladders like the one I rode in the barrel ride last year. The pond is just screaming for me to jump into it on a bike. I will need a bigger ramp though...

Fire wood rack

     Now comes my first "getting old" moment. I have begun to experience the white hairs. Hey, I'm just 28. Those things aren't supposed to come around for another 15-20 years! I don't know how it started for you (if you even have any white hairs), but here's how it went down for me. One day, I think I see some fuzz in my hair. I try to brush it out, but it doesn't move. Upon closer inspection, I see it is a white hair. Oh well, it's just one. I've heard the old tale about if you pull out a white hair, two grow back in it's place. The little hair didn't look like a head of Hydra, so I plucked it.
   
     A few weeks later, it was back! And it brought friends. I continued to pull them out, hoping nobody would notice, but Shannon is starting to notice them regularly and gets a good chuckle every time she sees one. I bug her about being the old one because she is older than me by a few months. It makes her day to see I'm showing the signs of aging first. The hairs are amassing in numbers now. You know it's getting bad when you try to pluck one and you get a white hair, but it's not the one you were trying to pull out. Doh!

Refresh

    It has been a slow time since my last post. My leg injury has dictated my life for the most part. I took a few days off after the Crossfire Cyclocross to allow for some healing. In the past, a few days of complete rest totally resolved the problem. But this time I pushed myself into the hurt zone a little too much. Three days of rest did little to get rid of the ailment. I did a few two hour rides and had pain near the end. Then it progressively got worse, to the point to where 15 minutes on the trainer Christmas Day was more than I could stand.

     It was time to kick in my physical therapy brain and actually do something about the problem. I started with a full week off from all activity beginning the day after Christmas. For the first time in a very long time, I went on a trip without my bike or running shoes. I was not happy about it, but mentally it was nice to take a break. I also let loose the bands of eating right and let myself have some fun while we visited the Toneys in Indiana.

     Christmas was really great despite my bike frustrations. We had Christmas with my family, then went to Indiana to be with Shannon's family. At my family's dinner, I played a prank on Grandma. She is queen of the envelope gifts. And she has an envelope for everyone. Envelopes for people I haven't even seen in 10 years. A few years ago, she forgot to make an envelope for my uncle Tommy, who we tease her about being her favorite son (he's the oldest). The story gets brought up every year and we laugh about it. It still really bothers her that she forgot him. It was mentioned this year that it would be funny if she forgot someone else. Why yes it would be. I took it upon myself to remove my sister's envelope from the stack while Grandma was not looking. I hid it in Grandma's purse.

     Dina was the perfect victim. She was arriving to dinner late because she had to work, so she was not there when the envelopes were handed out. Being left out would also bother Dina very much, but she is the quite type and would never say anything. Grandma did not realize that it was missing until Dina arrived. She went to get Dina's envelope and there was a long silence. She had no idea where it was, but she was adamant that she had made one for everyone. She kept saying she checked them at least three times. She said she checked her purse to make sure she had not left one behind when she picked them up. Perfect! I didn't know she had brought them in her purse when I placed the envelope into her purse. This was getting better!

     We poked fun at Dina about how she had been left out. She maintained that it was fine, but I could see the frustration on her face. I am her brother after all, and I have provoked that look many times in my day. Finally, after twenty minutes of Grandma thinking she had lost her mind, she checked her purse and found Dina's envelope. Both were relieved, but Grandma remained suspicious. She may be getting on the higher end of the scale in age, but she knows when she did or did not do something. She never figured out who did it, but she did have her suspects, which included me, my Dad and Grandpa Bill. She seemed the most sure that it was Bill, which is hilarious to me because he was least likely to do something like that out of anyone at the dinner. He has major hearing difficulties. When Grandma asked him about the situation, he kept asking her to repeat it or would just smile like old people do when they get tired of asking you to say it again. Grandma took this as him messing with her and made him the prime suspect. Ahh, the joys of a good Christmas dinner prank to liven up the evening!

     The only other highlight of the evening was again realizing that nobody really knows anything about anybody. One of my aunts still cannot spell Dina's name right. If she couldn't get Dina's name down in 25 years then it should not have been a surprise when she gave us our gift and it was labeled "To: Sharon & Dustin."

     Indiana was really fun this year. It was the first time I could relax while there. Last year was the first year I have ever gone and not been sick with some nasty cold. Between being sick and trying to log winter miles, I am usually not up for a lot of other things. I push the mileage so much to counteract the loads of food that Shannon's Mom always makes me. She tests my control every time I go. I'm not complaining though. There are far worse things a mother-in-law could do to you!

     This was the first time we got to see Joel and Evie in a while. They are our nephew and niece. They are getting bigger now and fun to talk to. Evie is in a creative stage, making up crazy stories and naming everything around her. I did my best to keep her talking as much as possible for my entertainment. The first day we were there, she had a toy horse that she was carryong around with her everywhere she went. I asked her what it's name was and she told me Lucifer. Ahh, such a nice name for a horse. Then she said, "Her full name is Princess Donny Lucifer." Immediately, I sent her to tell Aunt Shannon the horse's name. This priceless moment could not be kept between just Evie and I. Princess Donny Lucifer is kind of a good horse name. I can see the Kentucky Derby results now: 1st-Man o' War, 2nd-Spectacular Bid, 3rd-Princess Donny Lucifer. Some day in the future we just might have to get a dog and name it Princess Donny Lucifer.

     We went bowling one day which was a lot of fun. I have not been bowling in about four years. I am not great at it, but have fun doing it. Joel was hilarious to watch. He was not strong enough to pick up the ball, so he sat it at the line and gave it a push down the lane. It rolled soooo slow. It took the ball about 30 seconds to get to the pins. His technique may have been odd, but the kid was racking up the score. Apparently, a slow rolling ball can be a very good thing. Rather than knocking the pins back from the force of impact, the pins just fell over in place, knocking down the others like dominoes. He had several strikes with this technique and beat me in every game. Turd.

     Shannon's brother, Jake, and his wife, Brooke, recently moved to Michigan so Jake can go to school. We traveled up to Galesburg, just outside of Kalamazoo, to see their new place. It was an awesome buy. The house was a farm house built in the 1940s with a cool layout and a big basement. It sat on 20+ acres of rolling pasture with some woods around the edge and a pond. It also had two plots of Christmas trees on it. It looked like a great place to have a little farm and perfect for cyclocross. I would love to have some land like that here in Tennessee. I walked the property while we were there and it was just awesome. We also helped Jake with some of his home-improvement projects that he has been working on since the move-in. We insulated the attic, which really saved Jake a lot of time. It would have taken forever for him to do that by himself. With three of us, we knocked it out in just a few hours. I got in a great upper body workout too with lifting the bundles of insulation. At least I burned a few calories during the week.

     It was a really fun trip. I think it went well considering I gained just three pounds in two weeks with minimal exercise and no restraints on eating. I got some great gifts as well, like a new drill set for building bridges and ladders on the trail, and a sweet reclining chair to take to the races next season.

     We got home on New Year's Eve, just in time to do the pond jump on New Year's Day. For the third year running, we started off our year with a polar plunge jump into the pond behind our house. It was much colder this year, as the temperature has stayed low, especially at night. The pond had ice on it in the shallower areas, but was clean near the dock.

Some thin ice at the shallow end of the pond

     Five people said they would do the jump, but when the time came, only Dina showed up. She and I did the jump together, both going in twice. I let her jump first so I could see her reaction. It was a good one! She was in complete shock when she came up. You could see the fear in her eyes when she realized that she had jumped pretty far out from the dock. I gave her some peer pressure and got her to jump a second time. I would say this was the coldest one yet. The water was colder and the outside air was colder as well. It was only 34 degrees when we jumped. My skin was numb by the time I walked back to the house, but inside I was warm. It was actually quite refreshing. I wouldn't mind doing that a little more often.

Walking to the pond. My Dad was with us, but decided not to jump. Weenie!

Getting ready

Getting psyched up!

Dina goes

I gave her a good fist pump when she came out of the water and started working on persuading her to jump again.

The splash of both of us going into the water.

Getting out

My second jump

Flopping out like a fish

     Here is a video of our jump, filmed by Shannon from the shore and also from my head as I wore the GoPro.

2015 Polar Plunge Video

     The injury forced me to miss the first Snake Creek Gap TT race on January 3. The entry fee is high, but it counts for all three races which turns into a reasonable amount. But when you miss one race, it just isn't worth it to still the pay the high dollars for only two races, so I won't be at any of the Snake races this year. My bikes were not ready anyway. I finally got a seat for my hardtail and fixed the brakes on it, but the other bikes are out of commission right now. I decided to replace all the bearings and bushings on both my Racer-X and Remedy. The Remedy had a lot of wear on it, but the bearings were fairly smooth. Not so for the Racer-X. I really don't know how the main pivot was even working. The bearings are completely seized up. I have gotten all the bearings now, but have not had a chance to press them in yet. Taking apart the Racer-X revealed yet another area of the frame that is broken. The cross-member that stabilizes the seat stays has come loose, again due to failure of the bonding adhesive. The frame itself is not damaged, but this piece fits much tighter than the cable stop I put on last month. And this piece is held on purely by adhesive. There are no rivets. It will be a little tricky to get enough adhesive into the joint, but I am going to try it.

     I took my return to the bike very serious. I made a plan to ease myself back onto the bike and also begin some therapy-type training to strengthen the weaker areas in my legs. I have several spots that needed attention, both with strengthening and stretching. This seemed like a good time to address all those spots at once. I started with just 30-minute rides, then built myself up slowly. All rides were on the trainer so I could keep things controlled. My goal was to work up to riding three hours without pain before I tried any intensity. After a week, and having no pain, I felt that the rest had fixed my issue. I started to feel like I was holding back too much, but I stuck to the plan anyway as I wanted to do this right. Then my confidence got destroyed last week when I had pain at the end of my first two hour ride. The pain came during the last five minutes of the ride. It was devastating to my morale. I really thought I had beaten this thing.

     With my free time I have really studied hard on my anatomy as I still am not sure the exact cause of the pain. I was able to narrow it down to a smaller area. I no longer think it is a posterior compartment issue. That would likely cause pain early in a ride, not after two hours. Shannon has been doing massage work to my hamstring and calf area and located several nasty trigger points deep in my calf. She had worked most of them out, but yet the pain still came on. Finally, I was poking around on myself last weekend and found a new spot that reproduced the pain. It was the first time I have ever been able to reproduce the pain exactly. The spot is actually on my femur where the short head of the lateral hamstring, the gastroc and the plantaris muscles all attach. I am not sure which muscle is the culprit, but I think we finally found the right area to work on. Shannon tore that area up and so far I have not had any further pain.

     All of those muscles participate in plantar flexing the ankle and flexing the knee, both of which are prime movements in cycling and running. The therapy exercises have pointed out that I am very weak in my tibialis muscles on the anterior side of my leg. My theory now is that I put too much stress on the posterior muscles due to a being so weak in the anterior muscles. The pain is my body's way of telling me that there is an imbalance. Cycling does not work the anterior side of the lower leg, but running does. I guess 15 years of bike riding without training less-used muscles has finally caused me some issues. It took running to point out the imbalances Still, this is just my theory. I have been very disappointed by my therapy friends. They have shown little interest in looking at my issue, which really pisses me off because I have helped every one of them with their issues over the years.

     I have reduced my ride lengths, not attempting two hours again just yet. I am riding outside now, which does give me more resistance on the leg and so far it has held up. All the time off the bike and the ride time on the trainer has not been that hard for me mentally. I feel refreshed and focused now after the break. The weather has been terrible prior to the past few days so staying inside has been easy to do. The worst thing about this is that I want to go harder. The leg feels fine early on and it makes me want to hammer. Even when it does hurt, it does not feel like a muscle injury. But I know I must stick to the plan and keep things light. I am already way behind in my training. My goal now is just to be over this thing by March. Then I can start to focus on getting my base back and then adding intensity. I am really unsure of my status right now so I do not know when my season will start. The first scheduled race is March 7 at the new Smashville Criterium in Nashville promoted by the Nashville Predators hockey team. I would love to do that event, but right now it is looking like I won't be ready by then.

    Ok, time to go for a ride and then serve some kitchen time. I was determined to keep from getting more time in my calorie-counting game with Shannon, but being off the bike for the better part of a month does not help a brother out at all. Needless to say, I will be in the kitchen quite a bit over the next few months to pay off my debts. Until next time, thanks for reading!