Okay, it's official I am following Hardwood (just like I will all year) to Wordpress. www.turbocycling.wordpress.com. I haven't had a chance to pretty it up yet, but check, check, check it out.
BTW, you gotta read the comments, that's where all the fun is.
As it looks like I am getting booted from the UCA site, I am going to set up camp elsewhere. I'll probably keep the title "Straight Outta Provo", but if someone can come up with something better, I'll give you something cool*. Answer in the comments section.
*Coolness being a personal judgement, it is not guaranteed. Offer not valid in all states. See box top for Official Rules. You must be over 18 or have a parents signature. Thousand may enter, few (like one) will win. All rights reserved. All wrongs revenged.
I was a little bummed first thing, because I had planned on doing the I-C-U-P (say it phonetically, please) in St. George and getting out of the arctic. However, after the water heater incident, I didn't have the nerve to ask my S.G. benefactor to stay there again so soon, plus I don't have a mtn. bike. Anyway, I wound up making an awesome day of it.
Took the girls out for a hike up South Fork in the morning. It was a balmy 13 degrees when we hit out, but it was sunny and not at all windy, so it felt fine. There was so much new snow. Haley hiked maybe half the time on the way up, intermingled with being pulled by Kelly on the sled. I had Morgan on my back, so I was getting my workout too.
Stopped for a cuppa Seattle's Worst at Border's on the way home.
Lunch with the girls.
I was pretty worked, but hopped on the Seven and went around West Mtn. really hard by myself. Felt really good for the first couple hours and then was dead for the last hour.
I think this is my new Saturday plan. Do something with the girls in the A.M. and then ride in the afternoon. They nap then, so it's easier for me to get out. The PROvo ride is still where it's at, but I just can't leave at 10 and get back at 3. When I do this, the girls are napping by the time I get home and when they get up, it's too close to dinner to do anything, so I might as well have just been gone all day. This doesn't do anyone any good.
Anyway, that night I went and got "Stage 4 Owned You" tatooed on the inside of my eyelids, and took a break dancing class at the malt shop.
Maybe all this stuff didn't really happen, but some of it did, I assure you.
It's looking like I mightn't race at all in March this year, which would be probably the first time since around '93. That 1993 for you, kids. I only have 5 vacay days this year, and to use 2 of them for San Dumass just doesn't add up at the moment. Still, I am feeling pretty good, and wish we had some local stuff going on sooner rather than later.
Back in the early 00's (??), March was the busiest racing month of the year for me. Merced, Visalia, Redlands, Another Dam Race. Yeah, we always skipped See Squatters and went to AZ for ADR, 'cause it was easier money, I guess. On that note, it looks like I'll See Squatters for the first time ever this year. Anyway, I guess that was only 12 racing days (Redlands was six days back when), but add in another 8 days of travel, plus training and working 20 hours a week and I was a pretty busy 12k dreamer back when.
All for now.
Aaaarrrrghhh!! Our fRedlands entry didn't make it by the deadline and we didn't make the cut. 100% my fault as I handled it. I was on the fence about going in the first place, but I really didn't mean to screw over my team. Maybe I am biting off more than I can chew at the moment.
Not literally because we all know I can chew a lot, but yeah, I think I am on the verge of cracking.
The Sandy lost the TT at Valley of the Scum by less than a second. To put it another way, he kicked the crap out of everyone but one guy, but I try to keep things in the most negative light possible. I haven't got the full scoop, but it sounds like things went a bit downhill from there. Still, a pretty schweet way to kick off the gaming season. I know I have said this, but I am still perplexed by the idea that Sandy never found a real (ie- paying) pro contract back when he was young and fully trying. Maybe that's a backhanded compliment, I don't know. I do know he is good. And I kinda wish I could've gone to support him because I have a sweet method of keeping G.C. guys from doing anything stupid like wasting energy. I pre-emptively do all the stupid things, that way they don't have a chance. Unfortunately, I only have 5 paid vacay days this year, so I have to use them pretty sparingly, and VotS is not a favorite of mine as evidenced by the fact that it's been 5 years since my last attendance.
Got my new bike. Holy crap!! In stereotypical style, I went out for a hard 4.5 hours for the first ride. Non-typically, I wasn't sore after because this bike actually fits. Go to Canyon Bikes up on the hill and get fit. Better yet buy a Seven and get fit.
I am probably the only dude who hooked a trailer up to his Seven for it's second ride. At least, I got one ride in before dragging the anchor!! It still felt good.
Oh yeah, for my out of state friends, it was 60 yesterday and we had 3" of snow on the ground when I woke up.
So yeah, we had our team camp down in St. George over the weekend. It's just like Curious George, according to Haley. For the record, this is the first time I've made it to St. George camp. For the record:
In '0-Fo, I just didn't want to go.
In '05, St. George was flooded out and we did altitude camp at Gardie's full service training center.
In '06, Kelly's great-grandma went on to her reward the same weekend.
So, I was pumped to finally be a part of things. Took the girls down with me and did some hiking on Friday before things go down to bidness on Saturday. Saturday we rode to Mesquite and went gambling and picked up all the retired hookers who quit Vegas. Or we hung out at Subway, while Gardie and Bryson enjoyed the No-Star-Buffet. Sunday we did the Gunlock Loop, which, wow, must've been a man's race, except when it was the women's race, of course. I wasn't sure how I'd fair as I was hawk-up-a-lung sick all week, but I got through okay. Oddly, I don't seem to be recovering from the plague, which I guess when you do more hours in a weekend than you usually do in week kinda makes sense. Anyway, it was a good time. Once I get some pics I'll do something a little more interesting (no guarantees, there).
We have an awesome team and I think this is going to be our best year yet. Personally I think I'm going better than I have at this point in the year since moving to Utah, which says absolutely nothing since I have always sucked at this point.
I was really lucky to be able to bring the girls along. Otherwise, I would've flaked again. What with travelling for work, I'm just not at a point where I'm willing to ditch them for bike crap too often.
One unfortunate incident occured whereby the water heater broke in the condo we were staying in, and I had to call the owner at 2:30 in the morning to tell him his carpet was getting wet. Yeah, that stung. Luckily, he is the nicest guy in the world, and realized it was probably not my fault.
Oh yeah, and Eki, and the J-Rad couldn't make it, which sucked.
Like I said, more when we have photographic proof.
RB
One of kind (I imagine), THE MOP jersey.
Support Utah Biking by supporting Utah bikers supporting Utah's finest:
http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=459732217&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=250082224263&lk=URL
Okay, Sandy (not my mom) wants to know the origin of the name Turbo. Honestly, there's not that much to tell. For years, I've been leaving it at, "it's not about the bike", and letting people draw their own conclusions. This will pretty much kill any fabrications anyone might have had, and it's not that exciting a story (at all). Basically as soon as I went to college, this fellow Karim started calling me "Turbo", and it stuck. I hadn't ridden with him at all, so it wasn't cycling related, and I don't know that it makes a lot sense since I am pretty much mello. But it stuck hard. At first, it was intermixed with "Nitro", but that died off after a couple months.
Anyway, it got to the point where people didn't know my real name. One guy on our collegiate team who I rode with, or ate with, or at least saw everyday came up to me at the end of his first semester and told me he didn't know my real name 'til we started racing and he saw it in the results. This caught on with other schools and pretty much the whole Mid-Western conference knew me as "Turbo".
Then, I moved to California and the name almost died. Occassionally, I'd hear someone shout it at a race, but for all intents and purposes (not intensive purposes, J-RAD) it was dead in the water, and I gained some new nickies like "The Stork" and "Crazy Legs". The exception being when we travelled to the Mid-West and everyone would refer to me as Turbo again. In particular, I recall Phil "Bilco" Stephens announcing the Pro-Crit (haha) champs and yelling "Ryan Turbo Barrett putting in a huge acceleration" as I struggled to hold mid-pack positioning. It gave me a little motivation there, and a few of the teammies picked up on it, but it never really held again until I moved back to Utah.
As we prepared to move to Utah, I called up my man Super Marc-io Yap to inquire about a team. I knew Marc from our collegiate days, so he pretty much called (and still calls) me nothing but Turbo. At the time, I was on the fence about continuing on with my D-3 Dreamer career, quitting all together, and finding a regional team to roll with. That's a story for another day, but Marc hooked me up with the Healthy Choice lads and that was the best route I could've chosen. Now, since Marc was always calling me "Turbo", it pretty much grew with the rest of the team, and then onto the other Utah teams. Travelling around a bit, I think the nicky has actually taken more in CA now than it did when I lived there. So the moral of the story is that "Turbo" has nothing to do with my biking skillz... although I do have mad skillz all the same.
More on college and nicknames. Yeah, that's pretty much what we were about and there was no holding back or worrying about feelings, so I was pretty lucky to get stuck with "Turbo". Some of the other names from back in the day included:
"The Egyptian Magician" (self-explanatory)
"The AntEater" (he was uncircumsized)
"Quasimodo" (talk about dopplegangers)
"Krispy" (as in Kreme- he had a penchant for eating, and was also known as "Jiggles"- pretty much describing his hind parts on a rough road)
"Ballswax" (his name rhymed with this, sort of)
I could keep going, but they only get worse, and the thing to remember is that when you start getting nicknames or when people start making fun of you, that usually means that you are being accepted, and whatever you do, don't try to fight it. Nothing will make a nicky stick faster than your attempts to reject it.
Hope this solves the riddle once and for all.
So yeah, went to Health Net camp for the sponsor weekend. It was fun. They do a couple hours really, really easy with sponsors and then go out again for a couple hours that are less easy, and sponsors can tag on for that too, but there's no follow car and it's not as easy. Each sponsor gave a presentation on Saturday lasting anywhere from 2-45 min. The riders faces during this sequence were priceless, esp. during the 45 min. one. Team presentation at a winery that night. Got to see various racers, writers, and industry folk. Proving just how small the world is, I ran into Colorado guy Teton out in the middle of nowhere one day, and also saw Dan Vinson, who rode ToFU with us last year... would've liked to have a chance to speak with him to dispell some rumors, but he was going the other way. Anyway, the team stuff was all cool, and I think they have some hitters for sure. It'll be interesting as the team is really different than past years, could take awhile to gel... or not. One thing I did notice is that the young guys are really young. They look like 12 years olds, seriously. Really fast 12 year olds.
Stayed at my brother's house for the weekend. He was gone skiing in Mammoth, but it was nice to have all the comforts of home, rather than a crappy motel. Also, got to see my in-laws before flying out of LBC International (world's smallest airport) that evening.
Flight was delayed and I got home at 1am. Up for work at 6 and that sucked, but, hey, all in days weekends work adventure.
Something else: On the forums, Sandy asked how I do all my stuff. Biking wise- I train one day/ week, but ride (almost) everyday and pray for residual fitness from doing this my whole life. Blogging- 4 minute rule and breaks/downtime at work. Family- that's what it's all about. The real time cruncher at the moment is coaching, but I probably only feel that way because it's the end of the month and programs gotta go out.
Alrighty then, 4 minutes up...
What with it being winter and all, I thought I'd tell some "back in the day" stories...
It was the spring semester of 1997. I was a sophmore at school in Indianapolis and I was the happiest I'd ever been as I'd just begun the ritual of courtship/dating with Kelly. She asked me out because I was too shy to make the moves on such an ultra-hotty, but that's pretty much irrelevant. Anyway, things were going good. I had trained more than I ever had over the winter and was hopeful for a big improvement in my collegiate bike gaming.
We started racing late February and I was going okay, but not great; you know top 10's, but not wins. A couple weeks later, we were at a road race in Ohio and we got poured on. Like Biblical style, roads getting washed out, and what-not. Not surprisingly I felt like ass the next day and couldn't race. Then, I just kinda didn't get better.
After probably a week, I went to the nurse and she got me checked out for mono. Affirmative. Spent a couple weeks in bed. Kelly was staying at school for spring break (pretty much a ghost town as 90% of the school lived in-state; basically everyone but the cycling team), so I pretty much laid around that whole week. One day the nurse called to tell me about a program whereby I could make some money off having mono. It was something like a grand a week for up to 3 weeks to let somebody run some tests on you. Sounded like a sweet deal, but by the time they come out and checked me I was "too close to healthy", and then, it was like "good, I'm getting better", but "man, I could've used the cash".
Anyhoo, I figured if I was too healthy for whatever, I was probably healthy enough for biking. In stereotypical (back when) Turbo (I'll have to do a blog on the origin of the name one day, but for now, it has nothing to do with cycling.) fashion, I hit it hard as soon as I felt like I had any strength. I did my first race back and got my junk handed to me on a silver platter. Not literally, but the collegiate crit felt about as good as last year's fRedlands crit and ummm, you know, it was a collegiate race, not fRedlands. The next week I was back up around the top 5, though and things were looking up.
Then, I got the flu. Not just any flu. A special kind whereby anything you've eaten, drank'd and any unneccessary organs exit the body with bullet like speed. Not fun. Another 3-5 days in bed and I lost like 15 pounds, literally. I hate to admit it, but I'm not really all that buff and stuff and I think this dropped my 6'4 frame to about 145lbs, so as soon as I could stomach anything I went on the donut and ice cream diet, whereby each breakfast begins with a donut and each dinner concludes with ice cream, and again started hitting the riding hard as hell. People thought I was crazy.
So, I went through the process of getting my stuff delivered again at the next race. The week after that however, was our conference championships. I came good, and rocked a top 5 in the road race, but my inclusion on the team for nationals was tenuous at best, so I needed something good in the crit. Kelly crashed warming up for her crit, which bummed me out. Then, our coach came up and told us "we wouldn't be allowed to travel together the following year" because it was disrupting the team or some b.s. He was pissed 'cause some other riders were dating and had drama. We were definitely of the non-dramatic, however.
Anyway, this pissed me off but good, and I won the crit out of an 8 man break. This was my ticket to nationals. I crashed and then got up and won a Pro 1-2 crit the next week, and then come 4th in a RR the week after that, so you know I had the form. Then, the night before the national crit, the coach sat me down and told me I wouldn't be one of the 3 who got to ride the crit. Right, makes sense. One guy was a senior and rather than ride the best team, the coach got sentimental and that was that. All our guys got popped on the high altitude course (forgot to mention the RR was SNOWED out on Memorial Weekend), and I got to watch them.
Kelly never got mono. Odd, 'cause believe me, I was not "getting around" back in the day. She didn't get the flu either.
The coach got canned the same summer, though it was totally unrelated.
Hopefully the deep freeze covering the wild west will end soon... This is the coldest it's been since I moved here a few years back. I am glad I am not worrying too much about putting in the big K's these days as that would really be Sucksville (Population: You).
Anyway, Chicago and Mill-a-wa-kay were downright balmy in comparison, but that's probably all changed now. So I guess we timed that right.
Oh yeah, what's the draw to cycling (and the biking industry) to people with OCC and ADHD? Have you ever met someone who drives slower on the freeway than on surface streets? I have.
All for now.
So, yeah, I am flying to (sweet home) Chicago tommorrow. Yeah, I'm sure my arms'll be tired. That one kills. Anyway, I've pretty well been dreading the trip since receiving my packing orders; assuming that Chicago in January would be worse weather than here. Lo and behold, it looks like it'll be in the 40's, and no snow. Yeah, I think that whole global warming thing is just a big conspiracy by those crazy democrats. Ask anyone who lived in Wisconsin 30 years ago if it was unusual to not have snow on the ground in January back then. And yes, I realize that Chicago is not in Wisconsin, but yeah, I'll be there too.
No bikey bikey, but that works well with my plan to peak for my first race of the year. While some people are hitting up the revamped Tour of Vegas Strip Clubs, and others (including almost all my teammates) are hitting the Valley of the Scum, I am aiming for the Frozen Hog mtn. bike race in beautiful Alpine, UT. This will be my first mtn. bike race in 10 years, and I don't think I've ever raced on snow, and I don't own a working mountain bike, but I am pretty sure that I am all over it.
Oh yeah, between Chitcago and the cold pig, I am going to spend a weekend at the HealthNet camp for work. I am thinking there'll be some good ride time in there as well.
And the week after the chilly porker is our (Sienna Dev't-Goble Knee Clinic International Amateur Bike Club) camp.
After that, we'll see if we can get into fRedlands again after our dismal showing last year. I am on the fence on whether it's worth me going even if we get in. I need to be going pretty good to make the trip worthwhile, better than the last couple years anyway. Not sure how realistic that is. We'll see. Hope springs eternal and all that crap.
I only have a minute as I am playing catch-up after my holiday in the Sun.
First off: Happy New Year. I mean it. Have your best year ever.
It occurred to me on my drive to CA (I avoided telephone poles) that I can race 30+ this year. That is freakin' sweetness. Not much of an issue around here, but if we make any trips to CA (which would probably not surprise anyone), I can do the double. Yeah, baby!! Let's hear it for getting old.
I gotta keep it short, but I had an awesome trip. Lots of group rides as per the doctors' orders. Did, in fact, go skiing at Big Bear. It was fun, but $62 lift ticket, plus 8 bazillion half-retarded snowcows, plus so cal location lead me to believe Utah skiing is more better. Christmas was the bees knees; it is way more fun since Haley is old enough to know what's going on. New Year's was sweet. I got totally wasted and don't remember any of it. Okay, that didn't happen. I hung out with the fam, which is exactly what I wanted to do. New Year's Day brought the infamous New Year's Day ride. This infamous rides hooks up several hundred of socal's finest for a trip along beautiful PCH with an inland diversion down in the UC. Starts and finishes in Long Beach. Pretty sketchy, but not so bad if you stay in the front. It was the sweetness and just the way to wreck my legs before the big drive.
Finally, The Mop is back. I think.
More later. Maybe.
Loading up the family wagon Griswald style and heading out for Wally World tommorrow A.M. Some people think we are crazy doing some much road trippin' with the young 'uns and they might be right, but I figure it just makes the kids more flexible. I may not be saying the same thing tommorrow at this time, but to me it is 100% worth any associated headaches to get out and visit la familia.
Plus, Christmas day is forecast at 70 degrees. I think we are going to crack freezing here for the first time all week today.
As per normal standard Turbo operating procedure, I'll be hitting up some huge miles and like last year, I'll probably have my best form of the year when I get back and then I won't race for two months or more. Yeah, that is how I roll.
Oh yeah, this just in. I think we're going skiing while we're out there. Yeah, we are leaving Utah to go to El Lay and ski. No, not waterski. That make sense, right?
Be sure to keep checking out the training tips at reynoldscycling.com... New tip every Friday. As I get more comfortable here, I am showing more personality and I'm sure you are not getting enough of that from the blog. We are also getting some women's specific tips from the ValueAct Capital Women's team (do not call them the Health Net Chix Team!!).
Have some good holy days, rock out, and I will try to holler at ya from the road.
Sincerely,
Clark W.