Finished Up The Floor

All the beveled edges were delivered yesterday. This morning I put them all down. I insisted on keeping the sample orange corner pieces, though. My special touch. :)

Data, Data, Data

Since the skies still insist on dropping the white stuff on it (Yay! - for riding on boards, Boo! - for riding on bikes), I've been doing my training on the Rollers For Idiots in the basement. I'm seriously starting to love those things. I've also set the Garmin Edge 305 up and have been using it with the GPS off for the inside rides. The graphs and numbers are interesting but I should really be training with a plan. Right now it's more like, "I guess I should go do an hour." but no specific stuff in mind. You can kind of see that in the graph above. 60 min ride. Got on and bored myself for the first 30 min (actually, I was mesmerized by a DVD of Madonna's Confession Tour ;-) ) Once I finally came to my senses, I thought, "Hey, why not throw in a few intervals." Kind of cool to see that reflected in the graph.

First Ride On The New Board

Headed up to Sunapee yesterday to try out the new board and bindings. OMG! What a huge difference! The new board is an Arbor Push and I picked up a pair of Salomon eLite bindings on sale at REI. Sweet! Absolutely perfect conditions - sunny, warm (40-ish), perfect snow and no lift lines. Only complaint is that today I sound like Cartman, "Ow! My ass!" due to moron skier who rode up the chair with me and then turned right in front of me as we got off. Clueless.

My initial impression came on the first chair ride up the mountain - it's significantly lighter. My left leg wasn't getting that "huge piece of gear hanging off my foot" sensation. Second impression, a fresh coat of wax makes a board VERY slippery (duh). Now I know why I had a bit of trouble keeping up with Frank and The Columbian on some of the flat traverses in Tahoe. I was slightly worried about doing tight turns with the board since it's 5cm longer than my old one. After I slid a few feet further than I expected off the chair (due to the new wax), I had a narrow trail to take ride to connect up to the runs I wanted to do. The board handled great. Hit one of the wider trails and pointed it straight down the mountain - way smoother than my other board at speed. Nice! My turns seemed better, the board tracked better and even on the steeps, held a great edge. No, I did not go into the terrain park. I am starting to think about building a small jump in the park near my house to work on getting some air and landings. I had a blast the few times I inadvertently went flying off a few small bumps. Would love to get better at it. Another foot expected in NH today. Hmmmm....throw the Treo in my pocket and head up again later in the week? Tempted.

Winter Riding - Inside

I couldn't take it anymore - the trainer was killing me with boredom. Generally, I can keep myself occupied for 1.5 - 2 hrs. I can even tolerate Coach Troy. But given that I have trouble focusing in general, I would really space out on a trainer. Looking for a bit more excitement, I decided to switch to rollers. I didn't think S would appreciate me throwing a set of rollers in one of the upstairs hallways so decided to go for the new e-motion rollers from insideride.com (a.k.a. rollers for idiots). These rollers float inside a frame on giant elastics so the bike is allowed more movement and really does feel like riding on the road. It's also way easier to stand out of the saddle and sprint (I would definitely biff it big time doing that on normal rollers.) I'm really enjoying the challenge of learning something new. I've done about 50 miles or so on them so far and it's making my inside training way more fun.

The new rollers also inspired us to clean up the basement a bit and put down a new workout floor in the area we've been using as our mini gym. Almost finished - just waiting for the bevel edges pieces of the flooring to be delivered.

More Winter Riding

Hard to believe, but I haven't boarded with TCB (a.k.a. "Frank") in over three years. We kept talking about it but never got it together. Finally, the stars aligned and due to business travel to the west coast, we made plans to head to
Tahoe for the weekend.

Gotta love packing a snowboard bag for a business trip. No, Gracie didn't managed to get stuffed in there. Fortunately, United hadn't instituted their new policy of having to pay to check a second bag.

Wanting to avoid the crowds, we decided we'd play hooky on Friday and left San Jose Thursday evening. The Sports Wagon was stuffed with both of our snowboard gear, my 10 days worth of luggage, Frank's suitcase and spin stuff (she had to teach spin class before we headed out.)

We drove as far as Auburn that night. Well, Frank drove, I slept. Spent the night at the local Best Western which had make-your-own-waffles (including regular and individual mini waffles) for breakfast. Yum.

After breakfast we headed to Sugar Bowl. It felt SO good to be out of those long days of meetings followed by dinner/events with coworkers. It was a perfect day - sunny, blue skies, warm and little wind. This was my first time at boarding there. The snow was decent snow (yes, I'm getting spoiled by all the snow on the east coast this year) and it was great to try out some new trails. We kept it easy and I managed to not let Frank into talking me into hurling myself down some of the black diamond cliffs - we'd save that for later in the weekend. ;-)

The Columbian joined us on Saturday since he was also out west for our work meetings. We decided to board Homewood because we'd had a previous epic day there and plus the views of the lake from the are just incredible. I'd forgotten just how incredible when on my first run down High Grade I caught a glimpse of the lake out of my peripheral vision, felt like I was going to fall right off the slope and into the lake and almost biffed it. IMHO, that is the most spectacular view from any ski slope I've ever encountered.

Awesome day of riding. Got my own chicken sandwich for lunch (usually split one with Frank - it's tradition) but we were both too hungry. And it seems that all the leg work in the gym is paying off. My legs lasted through most of both days of boarding without a problem. :) Followed up the day with some pinot and great Italian food at a small place called Fiamma's in Tahoe City. Yum.

Winter Riding - Part Deux

Ok, winter riding - THAT'S what I'm talking about! Valentine's Day brought me something extremely fun. My new Arbor Push. I've been lusting over this board for a few months. And despite what the Columbian says, I don't just buy myself whatever toy I want. In fact, I blew my snowboard dispensable income on new rollers (post on that coming soon) instead thinking I'd get more use out of them.

Thanks, Sweetie! Let's ride! :-*

Winter Riding

Being an East Coaster, I'm pretty much used to working out during winter months. I've slogged hundreds of miles through snow and slush and over ice while training for the Boston Marathon. I like playing in the snow - snowshoeing, XC skiing, and snowboarding. But typically, when it comes to riding, I call it quits when the roads have been made slick and narrow by our winter storms. Add to that the ouch factor of a 20mph headwind and fuggetaboutit - I'd rather go to Abusive Spin Class (I REALLY need to write a post on that.)

But - riding in the woods - totally different game. No headwind (I can't ride fast enough to generate one and the trees block the natural wind) and with the snow and ice, it's so damn hard I'm generating more than enough heat to keep me and any squirrels close by nice and toasty.

In order to facilitate some of this off-road, crazy idea of riding on snow and ice covered trails, I sprung for a new set of Nokian Extreme 294 studded tires. My bike looks totally buff with them (even with its girly pink new derailleur cables I put on this fall.)

Of course, after I finally mounted them I had to fly off to the 70 degree weather of the Bay Area and saw people riding in shorts. I wondered yet again why we subject ourselves to living here. It's gotta make us tougher and better riders, right? ;-)