Four is the magic number (20070225)

Today I officially became a partner in Tacit Knowledge!

There are now three founding partners (Chris Andrasick, Scott Askew,
Manish Bardolia) and me - the first partner joining in from the ranks of
employees.

I can't tell you much effort has gone in to making this happen, because
it's entirely too boring, but I will say that it took a lot of those
three guys' time to make it happen, and I appreciate it.

Ian mentioned that it would have been cool if there was some notion of
what I'll be doing, so I'll write it up real quick. My immediate plans
and duties are basically "more of the same"

* I still need to be as billable as possible (Joann and Kodak for
now) to fulfill my employee responsibilities

* I'll still do TKIS-related things (operator@ helpdesk work, all
the infrastructure)

Going forward, I see one major new thing on the horizon which is that
David Martinez, Scott Askew and I have been working on opening a Western
Hemisphere delivery office, and if I can work out the details and it
makes sense, I might live there for a while to get the office started.

Other than that, as Chris said, I think one of the most valuable things
I have to offer the other partners is that nearly every way I relate to
the company is still strictly on an employee basis. So if something is
annoying in that regard, I really feel it too . You really should feel
free to bring things up with me if you want since I'll probably agree
with you, and we can try to come up with a good solution. I'll then do
my best to carry things to the rest of the guys to try to make things right.

Finally, I'll say I'm really excited about Tacit. I've been here a long
time, and I really like the way we're slowly, steadily growing both in
size, clients and skills. We're not perfect, but I think this is a great
place to work and I look forward to trying to make it even better as we
keep growing.

The Dirt on Cherry Pie (20060225)

Alright, so this wasn't the post I had hoped for.

I race the Cherry Pie crit on February 11, 2007, and even had family in
attendance.

After bunches of early season training, and an early season campaign
that has so far seen me win a race, then crash out, then get 4th place,
I had really hoped I would do well at this race.

The pre-game plan was to bet that the race would end in a sprint, and
work with that. My teammates (thank you Jason James, Jesse Freese and
Michael Claudio, so much) would keep things together, I'd get a wheel up
to the last corner, go around it around 5th wheel, then they would go as
hard as they could on the final straight, where I would throw down with
about 150 meters to go.

Unfortunately, after the Martinez criterium, which was impossible to
move up in, the day before, I had a lot of confidence in my strength,
but not much confidence in pack mobility. So I spent a lot of time near
the front of the Cherry Pie which despite my strength this year did wear
me down a bit.

Consequently, when the time came to be in the right position at the end
of the race, it was a little harder than I thought, and I wasn't able to
jump on wheels as they went by, the way you have to if you're going to win.

Just for those reasons alone, I was not going to win this race.

Finally, to add insult to injury, a Squadra Ovest guy hit the deck just
in front of me in the sprint, sprawled out across the path I chose to
avoid him, we collided, my left leg clipped out, and I dove for the dirt
in full superman pose.

No damage to man or bike, but that sucks.

The funny part (to me) is that despite a crash, and me walking across
the finish line, I still got 34th out of 86 starters. So the race was
hard enough to tear the pack up quite a bit at least, and I didn't have
that problem.

One of my goals this year is to win a race, and Cherry Pie was the first
opportunity I really focused on. I guess I'll have to pick a new race
now, but in the meantime I am going to do some hilly road races to test
my climbing fitness versus the pack.

Here's the pic of the crash - see the black tights just behind the
fallen guy? That's me - not too many options to get by him.

* it was a training race, I know I know, but still, there were a
lot of people there and they were all motivated as well...

Getting close to the goal... (20070210)

So, last year, I did this bike racing thing reasonably seriously, but I
just wasn't getting the results I wanted. I saw a couple guys that I
raced with quickly start kicking ass and move up into the category above
mine, and I saw myself dropped repeatedly (as in, at 6 different races)
on on a hill when a good deal of the pack was moving along together, up
and over. That gets pretty old.

The combination of those two things is important though - it showed me
something I knew already but had to relearn: hard work pays off. I know
it sounds silly, but those guys trained a lot, and they got results.

So this winter I trained a lot. And I mean, really, a lot. I was doing
15 hours a week on the bike on average for nearly 3 months, and there
was some intensity in there as well. I can ride a hundred miles in a day
on 5 clif bars and 3 bottles of water, no sweat. Two days in a row.

Why would anyone want to do that? I mean, that's a lot of training - too
much for someone in my category (4) even. But here's the thing - you'll
laugh if you know me - once I realized hard work would pay off I thought
to myself, well, given an arbitrary amount of hard work what's the best
I could hope for?

To win, of course. To win a race.

All that you have to do is train waaaay more than other people. So I've
given that a shot.

The funny thing is that bike racers are almost superstitious about
wanting to win a race. They'll all say that they want to do well, or
that they want to be in the top 5 or something, but they'll almost never
say "I want to win", much less "I want to win race XYZ". Usually because
it's nearly impossible to actually win a bike race, and it's not always
in your control anyway.

But I still want to win a race.

So, which race? Well, I'll have family at the Cherry Pie crit in Napa,
why not that one? I mean, that's as good a reason as any to pick a race.

So that's my goal. And if it doesn't happen there, then I'll have to
pick another one, but I'm still going to win a race (dammit!)

So far this year I have actually won a "race" (it was a training race,
so I can't take the quotes off, sorry), I was crashed out of the first
real race (not my fault), and now I've gotten 4th place at the second
race of the year. Cherry Pie is the next race. Maybe it's time?

We'll see tomorrow...

In the meantime, check the prize for 4th place at the Martinez crit
today. I guess I can't quit my day job yet

The Hardest Thing Ever, Part II (20060925)

Wow. One day of the Everest Challenge is pretty hard, but today was an
enormous battle just to finish. It is amazing how many little
semi-motivational mind games you can think up to play on yourself given
around 6 hours of effort.

The last mountain pass today - into an "Ancient Bristlecone Forest" -
was just tremendously difficult. Nearly all of the other climbs were a
pretty steady effort - a smooth grade. The last climb today was
incredibly lumpy. What that means is that when they say the last few
miles are an average 10-12%, which I had an appropriate gear for, the
climb is actually bouncing between 5-6% (not so bad) and 15-20%. At the
end of two days like this, I just didn't have the gears for that. It was
really a struggle.

The main thing that kept me going was that every once in a while I would
pass one of the non-racer's doing this ride (there is a "public /
touring" category), and these guys and gals were just really suffering.
But to a person, you could tell they were going to make it. They were
determined. And if they could do it, I could do it, so on I went.

Interestingly, this was my last bike race of the year, and they stopped
the clock at the top of the mountain. So I'm done bike racing for the
year, and would you believe I made it through the whole season without a
crash?

So naturally, I'm roaring down this last mountain, happy I made it and
looking forward to getting back to the car when I come flying around a
corner and have a huuuge rear wheel slide. If you guys have seen
dirt-track motorcycles, it looked like that. Very "exciting". I manage
to save it (whew!) and look back at the rear tire - sure enough it's flat.

So I'm on the side of the road, changing the tire, still bundled up for
the 40 degree temperatures at the top, but now I'm down where it's 80.
So I take off my two jackets, finish changing the tire and get going
again. Only problem is, it's roasting hot now, and I have nowhere to put
one of my jackets. Like an idiot, I just tie it around my waist and
point down the hill again.

Sure enough, just a couple miles later, one of the sleeves on the jacket
tied around my waist gets pulled into the rear wheel, jams up between
the brake and the wheel and locks the rear wheel up completely while I'm
doing around 35-40mph. Luckily the road is reasonably straight where I
was, so I had a chance to scrub most of my speed before the road curved.
The rear tire and tube shredded and exploded, the road eventually curved
away and I pitched into the gravel for a nice 5mph crash+roll.

Well, that was really exciting. This is clearly not my descent! The
first race support that came by didn't have room to give me a ride, but
they did have spare wheels, so I handed them the troublesome jacket,
took a spare wheel, and finished the damn ride

If that's the only wreck all season, I'll take it. An interesting finish
to an interesting day...

Total stats ended with me being on the bike around 16 hours. By far the
most I've ever ridden in two days, since I usually average around 8
hours a week. I'm writing this the morning after, and from this
distance, I'll answer the question in my last post by saying it was
worth it. I'll probably do it again next year, though only time will tell.

The Hardest Thing Ever, Part I (20060923)

Okay, so I've talking about (but not doing) this thing called "The
Everest Challenge" for around 3 years.

See, it's this bike race, where you climb the equivalent of Mt.Everest
(29,035 feet) over the course of two days. It's held in the Eastern
Sierras - Bishop, California to be exact - and is just mind-boggling.
The climbs themselves are supposed to be gorgeous (you can see a glacier
on one, even) and it's the closest thing we have in the United States to
the Pyrenees or the Alps.

Actually, one of the climbs is longer even than the famous climbs in
those mountains. This is the real deal. Okay, the real deal without the
nifty European culture, but hey, Bishopians (if they call themselves
that) are fantastically nice.

I know this because I'm doing the Challenge this year.

And oh my, is it the hardest thing I've ever done on a bike. Bar none.
Ever. The first day was today, and it was 120 miles, with three huge
mountain climbs in it, for a total of around 15,000 feet of climbing.
Folks, that's serious. I was on the bike with 225 of my closest friends
for 8 hours and 50 minutes. Riding, hard mostly. My average heart rate
for nearly 9 hours was 158 beats per minute. Ow!

Was it worth it? Well, it certainly is beautiful, the other riders are
fantastic, and the support is top-notch. The local ultra-marathon club
(kindred spirits) was at the top of the last climb cooking fresh hot
burritos and chicken soup! It was 40 degrees up there, so they had
blankets too, and one of them even lent me their long-fingered gloves
for the descent. Unbelievably nice.

A little more perspective (in the form of a week or so of rest,
probably) will be required to determine if it is worth it or not though
. For now, I leave with the graph of the suffrage, and I'm preparing all
the cycling gear for check out tomorrow before Day 2 (80 miles, 14,000
feet of climbing...)

Cheers

Rain rain rain, and no results (20060406)

Well, there's not much cycling going on when it's raining.

Just a whole lot of watching some professional European races that I
downloaded while I spin away on the trainer. The races are nice, but
this isn't why I like cycling .

Hopefully things will get better soon.

I did a race last weekend where I got roundly spanked as well. Blew up
on the last climb in the race on Saturday, and ignominiously flatted out
of the Sunday race after about 5 minutes of a 50 minute race. Major suckage.

My IT band is fritzing out on my left leg, and my legs aren't recovering
well in general so I think I might have trained too hard after the
Monterey Circuit Race and gotten myself overtrained a bit in my enthusiasm.

Sea Otter is Friday and Saturday, and the last week or two don't bode
well, so I'm just hoping to survive while it rains on me.

I am happy to be finally handing the APL torch off to someone while I
get going on Joann.com though. Working on something different full-time
will be a nice change of pace after two and a half years.

Moving from tacitknowledge.com/blogs to blogger

Change of scenery. Very exciting...

I'm going to batch-post my old posts here for historic purposes here