262 Lost in Park City

I have no idea how but I managed to get lost about 4 times today. I rode for 3 hours and saw everything from the highway 40 to I15 to Downtown Park City. I started out trying to preride the Round Valley race course. I ended up following someone and they led me to some single track so I went ahead and rode from Round Valley to Park City's Main street. I think I was on the Prospector trail. After riding back I decided to look for the Round Valley Race course which from what I can tell is not marked. I rode all over that place. At the end I took a right turn when I should have turned left. I ended up by exit 2 on Highway 40. Thinking there would be a road that would allow me to connect back I headed again the wrong way before finally figuring out that I would have to double back go on the other side of 40 and ride back up. Oh and I almost got hit by some bozo who made a right hand turn in front of me going into the Home Depot parking lot. It was their fault but I had my head down and was just pedaling when they turned in front of me so I should have been paying attention. I just missed the back side of the pickup. I would have been madder and probably done something stupid but I was too tired. Probably a good thing.

262 lbs and holding

I really wanted to be in the 240's by now. It is time to focus on my diet again. I need to figure out how to drop another 20 lbs and still be able to ride. My thoughts are that I will have to start writing down everything I eat and keeping my calories at or under 2000 per day. That probably seems like quite a bit of food but for a guy who is 6 3 and weighs 262 lbs it is a deficit of about 1000 to 1500 calories per day. Depending on my activity level.

Last night I rode the Draper Race course with Mark. Since Mark owns the Clark's Time Trial page I donated my slowness to his blog. 23:10 which is the slowest time ever recorded. This will give me some good motivation to knock the time into the acceptable sub 20 minute area in the next month. The weight really kills me going up hill. No surprise there. I held my heart rate between165 and 170 the whole way up.

Erich did Clark's and I am not completely convinced but he said he had a time of 13:23. I think he really was about 14 min plus because he and I are showing about a one tenth difference in mileage. Either way it was much faster for him and not bad for a 14 year old kid. He still swears the fastest he has ever done Clark's was chasing my dog Mookie up the trail. Maybe we will have to have a challenge. Who can beat Mookie? My money is on the dog. He is nuts. 70lbs of muscle, heart and not much in the brains department. I still do not think he feels any pain. He has to be the world's most simple creature. Plus if he felt like he were going to lose I bet he would just jump in your lap, knock you over, lick your face and run up the trail. And then wonder why you would have the audacity to yell at him.

262. Group Ride of the Draper course.

Last night I went out with the Revolution group and rode the Draper course. Ed has it very well marked ( it was marked earlier in the week but some bozo's had taken down the pink flags) and I have to say the course is a blast. I suffered quite a bit trying to keep up with the group but even though I could not breath at all I loved it. This course is Fun. I had no idea that a bunch of the trails were even there. I do not know how it will race and I suspect it will be very difficult to pass. Some of the switch backs are loose and one of the switch backs on Ghost Falls it is sloped down hill so be careful or there may be a fair number of up close and personal meetings with the terra firma. If you are racing you will want to pre-ride. I will probably do the ride again Thursday night if anyone wants to go with me shoot me an e-mail. Just remember I am the ClydeSnail.

264 Ghost Falls.

I skipped the race today. Not that I really belong there anyhow. Mostly I am afraid of slowing down the other racers and that is not fair to them. I am getting faster but I am just plain slow. I am a bit bummed about the changes to the Draper race next week.I had planned on racing but I think I will skip the race. I love the course, however there is almost nowhere to pass and I am not going to hold everyone up. The Solitude/Round Valley series starts in a bit more than a week and I am going to sign up for the entire series. Erich will miss the first race and another one in June when we all go to the Schlitterbaun water park in Texas. Other than those two events we will be at all the races.

Today I rode up BST north down Ghost Falls then up Clark's and down Corner Canyon Road. Fun ride. I would have gone down Ghost Falls again but I ran out of day light. Pretty good day of climbing. My legs are Toast.

262 Kids

So this is where Susan is today. Seems nice. She said she wishes I was there. I think she is enjoying the time away. Susan is at a conference in Orlando and because she has a bunch of points she gets to stay at the spa and have treatments meals whatever. I on the other hand am at home with the kids. I also have a fairly nice list of Honey do's. Starting with installing a back flow valve on the sprinklers. Draper is requiring a valve which was $175 plus parts. So far I am up to about $250 for this valve plus I get to pay $50 per year to have it tested. I am so excited. Yesterday I spent half the day fighting with the thing and broke a pipe. The pipe that I broke as luck would have it is giving me trouble and leaking. So tonight I get to see if I can do some more damage and break the thing further.

After several hours I gave up and made Dinner(Chicken covered in cheese on top of pasta). As I was making dinner Erich gives me this line. I bet I can eat my dinner and still beat you to the top of Clark's. Game on. I am slow and Fat but you know what I would have killed myself to beat him. So he says you ride BST and Corner Canyon road up to the top of Clark's. He will ride straight up Clark's when he finishes his dinner and says he can still beat me. Oh ya and he will ride the single speed. Kid is getting cocky. I left immediately. So anyhow I turned myself inside out. I went up BST fast (for me) and then hit Corner Canyon road and really turned the screws to it. I did not puke but only because I skipped dinner. So I pushed through the top of the road and kept waiting to see him but I never did. When I started going down Clark's I made it past the fence at the top and down a couple of turns and there he was. He said he puked a couple of turns earlier.

Made me feel much better about my wife hanging out at the spa. I would not have missed this for all the pampering in the world. Ralph... I mean Erich is a bit more humble but not much.

262 HRM is fixed.

Looks like the HRM is fixed. Now the user error at the start of Clark's is another issue. I hit the stop button and missed the lap button. You can see this at about 3 miles.

I tagged along with the Revolution shop group last night. Fun ride but I am beat. Rode up Clark's then up Jacobs Ladder a mile or so and then down Ghost Falls. Fun ride. I had never been down Ghost falls. That will become a regular part of my ride. I am not so sure about riding up Jacobs Ladder though. Too many tight switch backs. My heart rate has dropped quite a bit. This may have something to do with my recent hours riding. My schedule looks something like Monday rest day, Tuesday 1 hour ride, Wednesday 1.5 hours, Thursday 1 hour, Friday Rest day, Saturday 1.5 hours and Sunday 2 hours. All of this with a couple of intervals and a sprint or two thrown in for good measure. So far I feel like I am getting in better shape but I am still slow. Hopefully I can take off a few lbs and I will gain some speed. At least that is the plan. Right now I am trying to decide if I just ride and eat right or if I go back on the diet. I know if I diet I can drop 20 lbs in about a month. The problem with the hard core diet is that riding is very difficult. I guess this is something I have to think about. Right now I am leaning toward not dieting.

262 Heart Rate Monitor problems

My hrm has gone off the deep end. After wussing out on 5 mile pass yesterday I went for a ride. I spent over half of the ride in zone5 at about 180 or so BPM. At least that is what it is showing. Knowing this was incorrect because some of the highest rates were coasting down hill and even doing some easy pedaling it would not go down I went home and borrowed Susan's chest strap and now it works fine. Guess I will have to buy a new chest strap. Check out the graph. If only I had the heart and legs to run like this.

262 Where is everyone?

Yesterday at 2:30 I looked out the window behind my cubicle and this is what I saw. Where is everyone and why does my desk look like everyone dumped their work on it? Seeing the combination of my desk and the parking lot I did what any rational guy would do I delegated the piles on my desk and went home.