Tired

Long time, no post. I've been busy and, honestly, a little tired. I'm starting to pay the price for burning the candle at both ends lately.

The weekend before last I teamed up with Jason Seaver, a teammate of mine from Peachtree Bikes less than 48 hours before the 12 Hours of Conyers mountain bike race. Jason hasn't ridden a mountain bike in about 5 years, and I've just recently gotten back on the bike. We borrowed a bike for Jason and headed to Conyers, site of the 1996 Olympic mountain bike course. Long story short, we pretty much cleaned the floor with the other 12 teams.

We were told we were obviously "roadies" because of our white shoes

We covered 136 miles between the two of us. Our strategy was almost flawless. I took it out fast on the first lap, then let Jason go for two laps of the 8.5 mile course. I then took a two lap session, but for some reason was cramping, so we went to 1 lap stints until it got dark, when we decided that I would ride the first two hours with lights since Jason had no experience riding at night. We were up a lap when Jason got on for his first night lap, but his light didn't hold a charge and he had to follow another (slower) rider for half the course. We lost our lead, so in order to secure the win I had to go out for another lap about 9:30.

Looking fairly fresh after over 12 hours in the saddle

We ended up winning by 38 minutes and were ecstatic. The course was rough and I wasn't walking upright for a couple of days, but it was a lot of fun. The announcer kept asking the other teams if they were going to let a couple of "roadies" kick their asses. Jason really rode well and I'm amazed that I can spend that much time riding when I only train a couple of times a week.

We've been moving the bike shop the last week into a new space. It has meant a few long days and a lot of time on my feet. Today Olivia was off from school. We went fishing and didn't catch anything, then went to watch Wall-E at the dollar theater.

The job market blows chunks right now, but I'm still plugging away. I'm going to start looking at more blue collar stuff - I need regular hours and benefits right now. I can't assume that a job that fits my degree or skills is going to come along right now.