a long week...

here i am at work, on my lunch break of course. i've got the milan-san remo race on the laptop in the background and just thinking.......this is going to be a long week at work. i only got two days off this week and spent my last day at work for 20 hours trying to get an airplane fixed. one of my best mechanics had a massive brain dump and over a tug with the airplane. it wasn't a pretty sight and i feel so bad for him since it may cost him his job.

anyways, as it stands, i'm on day two of seven in a row. it's going to be a long week leading up to dogwood. i did get two good training days in on my days off and denny kicked my ass on one ride. i definetly felt the pain. the most riding i'll be able to get in the next week may be a couple one hour rides or maybe just on the trainer. this may actually help since i tend to ride a little too much leading up to races.

my garmin 305 is pissing me off. this is the second time it's takin' a crap. i haven't even had it a year and it just died again when i tried to plug it into my laptop. it won't power up at all!!! hopefully they'll warranty it for a second time

Forest Park Crit...

This was the first race of the 2009 season and I'd have to say I was happy with my performance. I basically ended up around the top 15, although I wasn't scored. In fact my number wasn't even on the results anywhere. I didn't get a chance to protest it because I knew I wasn't top 10 and plus I wanted to put in some more miles before I had to go in to work tonight which is where I'm at now, on break of course. It kind of sucks, but, as they say, I guess only the top ten matter.

As for the race itself it seemed fast at the start with a few surges, but then settled down. My best position I could maintain was about mid pack, which is about where I wanted to be anyways. I made one attempt to bridge a gap of a group of about 10 pulling away. I shut off the gas when I realized the effort I would have had to put in and seeing the group behind coming up pretty fast. I sat in the rest of the race before putting myself in a good spot for the finish. I was about top 15 coming around the last corner to the final straight, but with no one in front of me I had no one to draft off of and pretty much finished in the same position. Next up is Dogwood.

ready for days....

i'm on my lunchbreak right now, it's 1:30am, it still seems odd saying that after all these years working this shift. the good news is i just found out that I will go to days. i was able to maintain my supervisors position. i'm so ready to get back on that shift. i've been eating like crap lately, but what's new. wednesday i go in to see another doctor. i did go last week to a neurologist and he showed me my mri. it turns out i do have damage and a herniated disk that is poking into my windpipe. he said it's not bad, but in 15-20 years i may need surgery if it gets any worse. he just gave me exercises to strengthen my neck and lower back. my lower back is causing my hamstring problem, so he says. i liked that doctor. he was up there in years, but seemed old school and was matter of fact. when i asked him about trigger point therapy he said "bullshit, that crap doesn't work, do these exercises and that will solve your problem." after just thinking about it, it really didn't solve my problem. i still have this tightness in my throat, i guess he's saying i better just live with it. i go to see an orthopedic spine doctor this week and we'll see what they have to say about all this stuff. i just can't believe there is nothing they can do.

on another note, after not riding for almost four months i've finally gotten in over 500 miles. just in time to get them ready for some spring races. i still haven't had anything high intensity. i've been playing hockey for that that, and speaking of hockey, several more weeks left, maybe this week i'll make both my games.

Lucky I have a job.....

This was written last week, better now then never to post it. Well, for the last two and a half years I've been working the midnight shift at our hangar here in St. Louis. I was just notified last week that we will be shutting down our maintenance facility here and maintenance will be performed at other bases around our system. Our lease on our hangar was up in April and there was no other suitable hangars to move into. Actually, there were hangars available, just not what our company was willing to spend. It now looks like we will go back to a line maintenance station, meaning we will fix and put band aids on anything that breaks here, just like we did before. We will be laying off roughly 30 employees, although many were offered employment elsewhere. I feel for many of the guys that worked for me. They worked hard and we went through a lot of growing pains opening up this new maintenance facility. Now that we are like a well oiled machine it's going to be dimantled. It also sucks for the guys being offered jobs elsewhere. They were basically given one week to make a career decision to move to another city or take the layoff. I'm sure it's going to be tough on them and their family. I, on the other hand should be safe here considering my seniority and position, although nothing is set in stone. On the bright side I will go back to a more "liveable" shift, either a dayshift or nightshift postition. It won't be the graveyard shift. In fact, that was one of the main reasons I moved back here almost three years ago, to get off the graveyard shift until I was offered my new position. Anyways, just getting off graveyards should help me physically and mentally throughout the race season. It's bittersweet.



As for my health, I go to the doc today, a neurosurgeon. Amongst my groin and ankle pains, I have neck pain resulting from several whiplash injuries. I should've been doing all this during the offseason, but never did go in until today. I will find out if the bulging disks are what is causing some of my aches and pains in my neck. I'm pretty sure they are so the question will be, what do I do now? Surgery, therapy, rehab? I'll find out some information today and then next week when I see another doctor for another opinion.