well, for the past week since i visited Charlottesville VA to visit the crew, I have not ridden my bicycle. this was at the recommendation of several medical professionals and my father, and most of my riding constituents. in previous weeks, i was doing some easy 1 hour rides, with no luck at easing the tendonitis pain.

the picture above is my knee in a compression icing apparatus. you put ice and water in the cooler and it pumps it in surges into the compression sack and you get compressive iceness. this machine is on loan to me by my close friend and first-rate massus Suzanne. Suzanne, for years, was one of worlds few great horse massuses and trainers. she stole this icing apparatus from the Monmouth Park Racetrack, as it is usually used on horses with tendonitis and injuries. i hope it works. it's just like the GameReady machine that Todd had at training camp, which was similarly awesome.

so tonight is the night before the Tour of Somerville, one of the few races that I actually was scheduled to do with the team this year, aaaand of course, I will not be racing in it. If I do, I'll suck and probably hurt my knee more. If I don't, then maybe I stand a good chance of making a full recovery from this knee thing and be able to launch some firecracks lateron in this season while everyone else has raced their legs out.

just saw Star Wars with the parents tonight, as tradition goes. I really liked it. So much happened in the story and it must have been a real challenge to piece it all together like they did. How easy it is to give into evil and the dark side. With my lightsaber as my bike, I will take on the pro peloton like Yoda one day, but I will wear a Darth Vader helmet (for safety!!!!).

Go to sleep, I must.

ps yes i gota digital camera, hopefully more fun to come

---

HI can you believe it's MAY and it's WARM outside? no matter how you look at it, the winter really does make the spring that much better, even while i'm sneezing and producing volumes of snot that has to be greater than what i drink in a day. today i started my ride at about 4pm, planning on 4 hours. today was the first REAL day back in the saddle. i think i'm over the hump with the tendonitis. it still hurts, but less every ride. i am really out of shape. 167 lbs i am, which is about 8 lbs over my race weight from last year. i need a lot of good weather, no more injuries, and a miracle. ANYWAY, the ride went pretty well, until my rear derailleur cable broke in my shifter and i was riding the 39-12 home. naturally, i have to be griding a gear on my first day back from patellar tendonits. i break a lot of rear derailleur cables... does that happen to you? i know i probably shift more than most people, but i'll bust about 4 or 5 of those suckers a year.

you know when you're riding and the sun is directly behind you, and your shadow stretches long in front of you? i love that. it feels like the sun is pushing you from behind. you look down at your legs and all the little stubble is lit-up like the 4th of July. its like your legs are powered by that super-go-juice fuel that Yogurt gave Barf to put in the Winnebago on Spaceballs, and it friggin powered up her up to ludicrous spizzy.

i think i'm going to drive down to UVA for graduation this year. everyone is graduation-ing and hell i just wanna get outta NJ n' stufffff.

2 rides tomorrow, an hour and half in the AM, a good nap (or maybe slaving at the bike shop), and then in the afternoon another few hours with some tempo sections.

oh yea, I met BON JOVI on Monday. I was eating lunch at Basil T's (vic's resturaunt) and BJ was eating with some of his friends. on the way out i met him. i really don't remember what i said, because i was looking at his hair. no kidding, it looked just like it did when he's on stage. it must be like that ALL THE TIME. LOL

---

i got the new shoes that i ordered as my birthday gift today. my bday was may 4th. the shoes are DIESEL. the word diesel was first used to mean "frickin badass awesome" by my friend ryan curran in circa 1992. conincidently, today is ryan's 23rd birthday. happy bday.

today i hoped to do about 4 hours of endurance pace rollin', but instead i turned back home about 1:15 in writhing in pretty intense knee pain. i rode about 11 miles per hour, and a mexican on an old 10 speed passed me, aaaaand that pretty much sums up my general mental disposition right now.

i gotta go food shopping tonight. since i'm not riding much lately, it will be absolutely no fun at all because i won't be able to buy the usual volume and selection of assorted refined-sugar delicacies. instead my shopping cart (my trusty chrome steed) will be filled with the most wholesome of complex carbohydrates and whatever proteins are both on sale and aren't associated with Perdue. i hate Perdue because their commercials are so annoying. you remember that one where the Perdue spokesman/asshole is going around doing various time-saving activities, reporting that "at Perdue, we're obviously not obsessed with saving time" sarcastically? and then at the end, the dining room table folds down off the wall and it's all set up and the candle automatically lights itself? yea that really pisses me off. think of how much time it took to make that table flip down from the wall, all setup and stuff, and the candle to come on. sounds like a waste of money to me... and probably a testament to how Perdue spends its money--- wasted on a failed marketing campaign, probably designed by the bastard who is featured in the commercials.

the icepack on my knee is getting warm and i gotta take a wiz. laaaaaaaate

---

today was absolutely gorgeous outside. not a cloud in the sky 68 degrees. after about 4 hours in the shop this morning doing the usual Monday morning ordering spree, i slopped down a wonton soup and hit the road. i am trying to think of what i thought about on the ride today. actually, i am realizing that i usually don't think about anything while i'm riding. i can never hold a constant thought? do people actually think about stuff, and figure stuff out while on a ride? . vic rallo, the colourful owner of Basil T's Italian Brew Pub, a resturaunt i frequent, and also local cat 3 maniac time trial cyclist, saw me at a stoplight today. he yelled at me "hey sissy ass, yea sissy ass". at first i didn't know who it was, so i yelled, "yea come'ere asshole". i thought i could possibly beat the crap out of my unknown offender with the 7" plastic mini-pump in my back pocket. but then i turned my head and it was vic and then i think i yelled something like "hema whahow's vic salater". you know how sometimes you try to say something and just a bunch of random shit comes out? a frequent problem of mine. that's what happens when you don't talk for awhile and then try to.

so today my tendonitis knee started out not hurting too bad, i did about 45 minutes warming up before some intervals without going too much over 325 watts or so. today's plan was to do 5x6min at about 400 watts. then i did the first 6-minute interval. it didn't hurt too bad on the knee, but after the interval stopped it hurt way worse than during the interval. i did only 4x6 min, but at least i kept the power up so that made me glad. now i'm back home icing that knee before i head out to a birthday dinner with my grandpa. i loathe eating now because i put on some extra weight in the last month, and i gotta shed some pounds. it is especially difficult when the food is free.

i'd thank you for reading, but i don't think anyone reads this blog cuz' herby and i are awful at the consistency. LOL

---

So, here were are now in MAY. I have had the most AWFUL start to a year of racing. Well, maybe I shouldn't say that. I was at the most fit point in my life at the end of Training Camp in NAPA. After the crash at McLane on March 7th, I had a really deep gash in my left elbow. I should have gotten stiches out in California, but the team was on such a tight schedule to get us all on planes, that I did my best to clean and sterilize the wound and get home. The crash took a patch of skin off my elbow about the size of a nickel, and some dark maroon muscle tissue was hanging out. Anyway, when I got home, I cleaned and bandaged up the thing really well. It was too late to get stiches, so I couldn't get them. Anyway, later on in the week, I started getting a cold and a fever. Conincidently, my dad had these same symptoms from being sick. I thought I was just getting what he had. Noooot really. A week after I crashed, I saw the doctor again, and he determined that I had developed a staph infection through the deep wound, and it spread to my blood and I was getting pretty seriously sick. So, a quick trip to the ER landed my ass a huge injection of Ancef antibiotics, and a prescription of Zithromax and Omnicef to take for about 10 days. If you haven't gotten a huge shot of antibiotics in your ass, let me tell you what it feels like. It feels like someone kneed you in the ass, and then somehow placed a golf ball under your skin. It was painful to sit down for a while, in addition to the road rash and fever.
Anyway, i was incredibly fatigued with all those antibiotics fighting off that nasty bacterial crapola. It wasn't until about March 23rd until I started to feel like I had my energy back - a few weeksl ater. I rode my bike maybe 4 times in that course of 3 weeks after McLane. Of course, all that time I had nothing but the highest spirits and positive energy, naturally. When I started training again, I didn't have any depth or power. And, if I did 2 days sorta hard back to back, I'd end up with a sore throat and runny nose. It was like my immune system was dysfunctional. The overload of antibiotcs kills the bad stuff, but it kills a lot of good stuff too. So, even when I got back on the bike, it was 3 weeks of inconsistent and often shortened training. My first race back was Seaford in Delaware on April 13/14. I went down there with my buddy Pablo, a cat 3 on the 3D racing team. I didn't have a good race, as expected, but it was fun to finally race again, especially with Pablo, who is one awesome racing mate. We got friendly's ice cream and all was right in the world.

Next on the agenda was to get in shape for the Tour of Shenandoah. The rest of the team had a very fun Tour of Georgia. Originally, I was supposed to be joined by some teammates at Shenandoah, but I ended up going alone, which was pretty lame. I trained pretty hard going into it, probably coming into it overtrained. I desperately needed to put some serious stress on the legs over the 6-day stage race in the hills. Then, it would be a week of recovery and I'd be back on track. Luck didn't have it!

In the 4th stage, a 102 mile super-hilly road race in the cold steady rain, I should have had a good day. On the first major climb, my knee started to really hurt, a sharp pain under the knee cap. I backed it off, pedaled one-legged to the finsih line, and hit the ice & vitamin I. Thank goodness Team Snow Valley had enough room to drive me around for the race! Those guys are awesome. Anyway, on the next stage, my knee pretty much crapped out. I came into the Afton Mtn finish DFL. I skipped the crit and went home. When I needed some results and good training, I got the opposite and tendonitis.

So, here I am a week after the knee blew-up, typing the blog with an icepack on my knee. My buddy Scott Hodder hooked me up with some awesome nutrients to get the healing started: Glucosamine, Condroitin, gamma-linolenic acid, DHA, and SAM-e. I plan to train on the knee and hope that the inflammation decreases with good icing and care. It hurts.

I have some crits coming up, the Tour of Maplewood with Seba next weekend, and the Somerville weekend. Somehow I have to pull together some speed. I guess it's just bad luck. All of the wise men tell me that if I just stick with it and do my best to work around the obstacles, i'll be back on top soon. So, I'm going to put my faith in that and fight the good fight.

On a POSITIVE NOTE: My course record on the Wintergreen Mountain Ascent TT still stands after 2005's go around today. Close but no cigar, Herby! Sure, it was "the wind." Sometimes it blows!

---