The Tour De France, my retirement, & Team Radio Shack

First off, I have Directv & they no longer carry the channel Versus, which is what the Tour De France is going to be televised on this July. If they don't figure out a way to carry the Tour by mid June I'm going to have to cancel my contract with them & get a new cable/dish carrier.

I just got the word from the NM employees public retirement association that my paper work (and check) to buy 16 months of military time was accepted & has gone through without a hitch. My new aproximate date of retirement from the NM state pennitentiary is summer of 2015!!!

Speaking of the Tour, most of my favorite riders are going tp be riding for team RadioShack this year. Of course there's Lance Armstrong, there is also Levi Leipheimer and Chris Horner. As a matter of fact the only cyclists whom I would consider as a favorite of mine who isn't one the Shack team would be George Hincapie & thor hushovd. I am SO looking foreward to the Tour this year! I'm probably more excited about this years Tour than any other year!

Here is an article on Chris Horner that originally made me a fan of his:

Pro cyclists. Who needs 'em? Let's face it -- the sport has a reputation for taking itself too seriously.

A subculture populated by men with shaved legs, borderline eating disorders and spandex wardrobes is fertile ground for acts of overcompensation. Pro cyclists, specifically the roadies, can seem aggressive and dramatic.

What they do is extremely hard and seriously dangerous, so I'm willing to cut them some slack, but sometimes I just want to pat them on the back, hand them a box of Twinkies and tell them that everything is going to be OK.

And there's at least one guy in the pro peloton who probably wouldn't turn down the Twinkies: Bend's own Chris Horner.

Aside from his notoriously questionable nutritional habits, Horner is known for his good nature, easy manner and rock-solid work ethic. The man is a machine -- and he'll make you laugh while he's turning the screws.

During the course of his career, he's won the points standing for the National Racing Calendar three times and competed in three Tours de France, placing 15th overall in 2007. Most recently, Horner's been hard at work on the Astana team riding support for Levi Leipheimer, who many think is capable of winning the Tour in the next few years.

Unfortunately, because of the team's previous involvement with doping scandals, Astana wasn't invited to the big show in France this year. That's how Chris and Levi (who weren't with Astana at the time of the scandals) ended up racing the Cascade Cycling Classic stage race this July in Horner's hometown of Bend.

The town was abuzz with his name when I arrived.

I'll be honest. By the time I actually got a chance to meet the guy, I was already suffering from severe Horner-love burnout. What is it about this guy?, I thought to myself.

And then I found out in one of those rare moments where life lives up to legend.

During Stage 5, Billy Demong, a racer from another team, crashed hard with 2K to go, damaging his bike enough to render it useless. Scraped and bloodied, he began to run the remaining distance to the finish.

About this time, Horner, who had spent the past 80 miles busting legs for Levi, found him and loaded him up on the seat of his bike, elementary-school style. Climbing the remaining distance entirely out of the saddle with a podium-worthy grin on his face, he hauled Demong (and his broken bicycle!) to the finish.

As I watched the duo come rolling slowly up the crest of the hill, I couldn't help but laugh out loud.

It was quintessentially Chris Horner: impressive, selfless, fun and -- above all -- hilarious.

Even as we stood chuckling and shaking our heads at the absurdity of the whole thing, I have to believe that I was not the only one to find myself suddenly steeped in long-forgotten childhood memories of buddy rides and two-wheeled misadventures.

And suddenly the rabid Horner-love made perfect sense.

He is the people's pro. He is the neighborhood pal who rode us on the handlebars so we would make it home before the streetlights came on. And his injection of levity reminds us why we started riding bikes in the first place.

warning very very graphic pics, & more losses

This week has been an awesome week! My wife's B-day was celebrated this week. At the party I had to much cake & pizza. I was 1100 calories over to be exact. On dietpower, my new found dieting program, I am able to easily do a quick workout to earn extra calories. I got home, rode my indoor trainer trainer while watching the Tour De France. 1 hr 38 minutes & not only was I able to earn enough calories to negate my excess calories, but I had earned 200 calories more than I'd needed. Speaking of indoor training miles I've been logging a ton of indoor trainer miles on top of what my coach has assigned. Another successful day & successful week in the books! Current weight is 216. I'm down 11 & have 31 more pounds to go.

At work we call new employees fish. Partially they're called fish because they are wet behind the ears, but also because more often than not it's the rookies who either don't have the experience or common sense to avoid getting stabbed. So they are usually the ones flopping around the the floor like a fish out of water with holes poked in them from an inmate.

My oldest friend works at another facility & sent these pics to me, they are of a rookie who was a really big guy. He saw an inmate with a shank & rather than wait for proper back up or calling for the tower to open fire he decided his size, strength, & aggression would be able to overwhelm the skinny, yet armed inmate. Apparently that didn't work out so well for him.

One of the things I've learned from 14 years working in a prison is no matter how hot it is, bring a jacket with a liner, hoodie sweat shirts, and at least a few t-shirts, along with our mandatory uniforms. I wear all these into the pods, cell blocks, or dorms when I have my spidey sense tell me to be on my toes. There's been more than one time that this has saved me from earning extra holes to breath from, literally & figuratively, just like a fish.

Thanks for tuning in.

Continued weight loss!

A friend of mine named Sandra is an endurance athlete very similar to me- only she's a faster cyclist. She too struggles with her weight. it sucks having to struggle with weight when your an endurance athlete because low body weight is so very important to our speed and endurance. It has to do with our power to weight ratio on the bike & the height to power ratio on the run.

Sandra showed me a computer program called dietpower. It's AMAZING! I've been making great gains for the 2.5 weeks I've been on it & haven't fallen off the wagon once since starting the program. I was until recently doing weight watchers online. I found out that on WW I was hungry all the time. Like I've said a 100 times I'm an all or nothing kind of a guy. Once I fall off the wagon for one meal I may not gain control for days or even weeks. I believe the reason I was so hungry on WW was that I was only able to eat half the calories I earned from my workout. Being a long distance triathlete, it's fairly common for me to burn 4500 calories on a long day of training. Out of the 4500 I burned I'd only be able to eat 2250. In my opinion that left me at such a large deficit that not only was I STARVING, but even worse was that I wasn't getting enough calories or nutrients to recover from a hard days training.

Another thing than Sandra & I have in common is we've both turned to blogging to stay motivated, show our recent weight & athletic gains & losses, to share our battle, & perhaps to even help others who also have our issues with the battle of the bulge. Her blog isn't public or I'd share the sight with my peeps, but I'm very excited to watch her adventure.

I weighed in @ 218 this morning, down from 225 a little less than 3 weeks ago. I'm hoping to be approximately 205 by the Halfmax National Championships race on Sept 19th. I'm a fast triathlete at that weight. My long term goal is to be @ 185 pounds by Nov 10th. The lightest I've been since mid school was 188 pounds in May of last year. I think I'll be able to get to that weight using my new Diet Power. But more importantly I think I'll be able to maintain that weight this time.

On to the Tour De France!!! I'm a bit behind, stage 5 was today yet I just finished watching stage 4 on TiVo. Stage 4 was the team time trial. Stage 4 was the most exciting stage I've ever seen!!!!! & this Tour is turning out to be the most exciting Tour I've ever watched. I'm going to try to watch all of stage 5 today before I go into work. For those not watching YOU ARE MISSING OUT BIG TIME!

Peace peeps!

Good deed and the Tour

Today I celebrated the 4th of July with a 3 hr 20 minute brick workout with my best friend. We started at the Smiths @ Tramway & Central. We rode up into the mountains & after a 30 minute warm up we did 5X12 minutes in zone 3 with 3 minute rest intervals. We turned around 3 miles from Chilile. We ended up finishing 42.6 miles on the bike then completed off with a 20 minute run.

On the tail end of the ride I decided to ride past Smiths to get an extra 15 minutes of riding in. I didn't need to do this, but I made a last minute decision. 15 minutes past Smiths we turned our bikes around & we attempted to head back to our vehicles, but before we could we heard someone yelling in a near panicked voice "hey! Hey you on the bike! Help!"

I stopped my bike & looked around. I could still hear the voice yelling for me to help, but I couldn't see anyone. I approached some bushes on the side of a house & lying there on the ground was a little old lady who had fallen & was unable to get up on her own. When I reached down to help her up I realized just how old she was. Very elderly & frail. Apparently she'd been there awhile because her face was red & flushed from the heat & she had defecated herself. I told her I was going to call 911, but she got really mad & told me no! She gave me a number she wanted to call. Apparently it was the house we were outside of. After I told the person who answered what the situation was a 20 something year old kid came out of the house to help her in. I was pissed off because he left her there outside so long. He never checked on her or heard her yells. He should of been more aware.

The good deed having been done, we headed back to our vehicles to finish off the 3 hr bike ride with a quick 20 minute run.

Once we finished our days workout I headed to my in-laws house to catch the last 46 minutes of the Tour De France. I heard on Verses that Lance Armstrong is lighter at the beginning of this Tour than any of the 7 he had been victorious in. Sounds like a great start!!!

I wasn't sure- I don't think anyone outside of team Astana is sure who will be their team leader this year. At the end of the day Alberto Cantador took 2nd place, Andreas Kloden took 4th, Levi Leipheimer took 6th & Lance Armstrong took 10th place. I don't know if that means Lance will be a domastique for Contador or the other way around, but I know that if 4 of the top 10 riders of stage 1 are team Astana, that boads well for them. Either way I'll be watching EVERY day, each & every minute of the Tour this year to find out.

God bless.