So, even though I'm not on CyclingNews.com's published USPRO road race start list, I will be racing! So will Christoph. It's gonna be faaaaaast.

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In less than a week, the USPRO road race will be history, and 2skinnypros will be kickin' back with a nice cold one, thinking about what to do this fall.


Perhaps we'll host another dance party. Perhaps we'll start a business. Perhaps we'll write poems. Or, perhaps we'll pimp out our vehicles with 22's and tint the windows. The possibilities are endless.

Christoph will be racing Bermuda after USPRO. I'd love to go but Colavita isn't going. Perhaps we will buy scooters upon his return. Scooters are so fun.

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So what do you do in training? Kill it for 2 days. By this time of year, what's done is done. Today, I'm going to do a bunch of 20-second hard jumps followed by 40 seconds of high-cadence anaerobic pace. Tomorrow, I'm going to do 4 5-minute VO2 max intervals. That oughta tune-up what is left in these skinny legs.

I started teaching spin classes at UVA this fall again. It's good to keep in touch with the U or else I start to feel like a C'Ville townie and an old man. Not that there's anything wrong with being a townie- this town is like a playground of happiness.

Off to work at the Blue Wheel. Christoph is on vacation in the Outer Banks, NC... prepping for Greenville.

Cheerio!

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Check out the latest CAT 3 Corner posting.

You can't make this stuff up.

Nothing much goin' on for us. Yeah right... huuuuuuge stuff is in the works. No one is prepared for it.

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Mt. Washington, in 2000, was the first race of my modern cycling obscession. Back then, it was just a fun trip up to our favourite White Mountains in New Hampshire... I rode a 1:30:48. We did a big backpacking trip after, and then I started college a week later.

Mt. Washington is an annual Ayers family tradition. This year was no exception. Last Wednesday, three generations of Ayers' hopped in the car to disappear for a long weekend in New Hampshire. There just happens to be a bike race every year when we head up to the mountains. My Dad couldn't race this year because his leg surgery ordeal is not over yet. It was the first time in many, many years he didn't race. It totally sucked. But, to get 3rd with Pop & Dad at the top was pretty great.



The race went pretty simply... ride steadily hard for an hour. Last year I started too fast and tried to keep with Tyler Hamilton for a while. A large nuclear detonation resulted. This year I kept it nice & steady and found that I had a lot of juice at the end. Maybe next year I will stay with 51 year-old Ned Overend.

I was smiling like the goon I am when I crossed the line. There was quite a crowd up there in the cloud. Woohooooo!!!

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(posted by Christoph)

I just talked to Ian, who had a killer ride in New Hampshire to take 3rd out of 600 riders at the Mount Washington Hill Climb. Tyler Hamilton took the win (while still serving a doping suspension from sanctioned races) and the amazing dinosaur superhuman Ned Overend took 2nd place.

I'd say Ian was in pretty impressive company on the podium at the top of this behemoth:

To celebrate Ian kicking ass, I rode up Afton Mountain with a heart rate in the 200's, pretending I was taller and from New Jersey and had really prominent cheek bones. Wheeee!

I've been back to solid training for awhile now, and I'm looking to have good enough form to have some fun in September at the USPRO road nationals and the Grand Prix of Bermuda.

In other news, we've limited our blog comments to registered users. We've gotten a bit tired of spending our money and time on a website to enable insecure anonymous users to post rude commentary about a couple of young aspiring bike racers. Either get a username, or get a life.

Click here to sign up.

cheers!

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"When I see a skinnypro on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race."
- H.G. Wells

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It's no surprise that I'm mister crankyPUSS. Today's Tour of Utah-induced irritability earned the following people scowls, or a discrete flipping of the bird:

The people who won't stand on the right of the Jetsons-style walkways in the airport terminals.

The flight attendant who insisted that me taking 9 trips to the galley to get individual cups of water was better than giving me the bottle in the first place.

The 230 pound lady talking on her cell phone at the back of the checkout line at the Rite Aid who thinks that when a new cashier opens up and says "i can take the next person in line" that she's referring to a LIFO queue.

The person who actually drives 5 mph through the EZ-Pass.

The person who picked the food court vendors at George Bush International Airdump in Houston. (i hope you've died since)

The Gate attendant who wouldn't allow me the board the plane slurping my Strawberry X-Treme Smoothie, but was fine with a Nalgene bottle full of nitroglycerine dangling from an overweight sorority sister's North Face backpack.

The Dulles Airport Economy Parking Lot attendant who insisted on explaining to me for 5 minutes in broken English that the reason my parking ticket was unreadable by the automated tellers was because I bent it. Thank you.

The foreigner in the rental car with the 'diplomat' license plate who just left DC who hasn't yet realized that, generally, we "keep right, pass left" in America, after cars honk at and flash him for 20 miles.

New Jersey for smelling like a trash dump.

Our website patrons who never learned the rule "if you don't have something nice to say, don't say it at all..."

...and, Myself, for being a jackass.

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I was hoping to do well on first big climbing stage. But, the fast legs I had in May for Gila & Tri-Peaks are gone. But, that's OK- still having good times with KJZZ composite squadra. A solid bunch of fellers.
2 more stages, and a lot more pain on the way. Our squad is now eagerly awaiting whatever is going to go down on Saturday night. KJZZZZZZZ sleep time.

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Whoooooooweeeeee! Sure been awhile since I've posted a blogaroo, hasn't it?

Last time I posted, I was doing a lot of fishing. I fished everyday for awhile. Yeah that was a fun phase, but I cracked. I can't fish anymore. I don't care about fish.


My fishing phase arose because I was really sucking at biking. Let's look at my 2006 season in review:

January, the preparation phase: rode lots of cold winter miles with Ian
February, the pre-season phase: rode more miles, travelled to the Dominican Republic to race the Vuelta Independencia, had a damn good time
March, the tuning phase: Rite Aid team training camp, started getting fast
April, the bad-ass phase: raced in China, got some solid fitness, raced the Tour of Shenandoah, won the KOM jersey.
May, the stupid phase: raced the NRC races in Arkansas, sucked, trained harder
June, the whoops! phase: trained more, raced Fitchburg, got dropped like a bad habit
July, the revelation phase: barely survived the local Cobblestone Crit, realized something was seriously wrong, hung up the bike in favor of a $12 fishing pole

Something wierd was going on. I found myself getting light headed. I had low energy. I couldn't focus long enough to spread an even layer of butter on my toast. An 11-inch bass nearly pulled me into Ragged Mountain reservoir. This was wierd stuff. I knew that something was different about my body.

Finally, I saught a real answer. I went to see Dr. James Clark, an awesome sports doc here in Charlottesville. I had a whole bunch of blood vials drawn.

When I got the results, everything looked normal.

Shit!

All I wanted was an explanation. "Oh Wow, Christoph. Your blood is all buggered up. No wonder you suck at bike racing. Let me tell you how to fix it, and you'll be back to health in a jiffy!"

No news was bad news. So I decided to try something new. I got a job doing stone masonry. Woah. That's one tough business. Pounding on rocks is not for pansies. I had the good fortune of working for Lithic Construction, a company that builds eco-friendly houses out of sustainable materials. Stone masonry is awesome cross-training.

I dug big holes,

I shaped some rocks with a hammer and chisel,


and I made myself real construction-style lunches.


Each night, my body hurt. Everywhere. It was awesome. I found a little zen in the manual labor.

But I still felt wierd. And I like bikes better than boulders. So I went back to Dr. Clark, and we drew more blood and orderred more tests.

This time, we figured something out. My blood serum ferritin is really low. Strangely low. Too low for a pro bike racer. I'm no doctor, but from what I understand, ferratin is an iron-storage protein that enables your blood to carry oxygen. Lots of people talk about haematocrit, which is the percentage of red blood cells you have. You can have a healthy haematocrit but still have low iron if your blood cells lack these bad boys:

So, this is terrific news. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay low iron! Schwing!

Now it's time to take some serious iron supplements and I'm resuming training to gradually ramp back into form. I told Lithic Construction thanks for the experience, but I'm trading the Carrhardts for spandex.

I may not be able to get back into super form in time for pro road nationals in September, but hopefully I'll be able to do a few more races and have some fun. I've missed my teammates.

In retrospect, it's not suprising that my iron got seriously low. I eat a healthy veggie-heavy diet, but I don't eat a whole lot of red meat that's loaded with iron. Endurance sports require the regeneration of lots of new red blood cells, and that requires the right combination of nutrients. We all know... if you don't have the correct Legos, you can't build the medieval castle with the awesome moat and drawbridge.


So now that I've been loading with super bioavailable iron supplements I can already feel tangible improvement. I'm coming back in a jiffy!

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I had a paralyzing quad cramp today with 20 miles left in stage 2.

I was hydrated before the stage, hydrated plenty during the stage, had plenty of electrolyte drinks, supplemented plenty of electrolytes before the race...

With my knowledge, I did everything right in terms of hydration/electrolytes.

The cramp came at a time when it was hard, sure... but I wasn't getting dropped and I was well within my physical ability to ride hard.

I honestly think that something nutritionally is out of balance... maybe I'm taking too much of a certain something, or something I'm doing or eating is causing me to cramp so easily in hot/dry conditions. Since I have been doing athletic things, I've always cramped when no one else did.

It's a problem that I have *thought* I'd solved a bunch of times. But when I look at my history, I am a cramper. Some people never cramp... they have no idea what it's like to get a massive charlie horse in their quad. Why don't they? There's gotta be something chemically different about them. I don't think there's a simple solution to my cramping problem, I think I need to talk to some good doctor who can analyze my chemistry and help me figure out this chronic problem.

Anyway, this really really pissed me off today. I'm super pissed.

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It's bedtime, but I thought I'd treat you all to a special little update.

Stage 1 was 105 miles of relatively flat around Utah Lake. It started for me pretty sloppy, but the last half was enjoyable. Just a handful of miles into the race, I went with a little spit off the front... but then the moto official came over on us, and I locked up the ol' brakes on a slippery wet road, but stayed upright. I was sideways.

Then about 30 minutes into the race, an incredible storm decended upon us. There wasn't much rain, but there was INCREDIBLE wind and lightning and thunder. I haven't felt wind like it except for on the top of Mt. Washington. (which is in 2 weeks, by the way!) Same ol' story for me... could have had better position, I was about halfway back in the group, and a huge gust of wind knocked some of us off the road, which caused a long period of 180+ heartrate chasing and rolodex flipping. The wind was creating billowing dust and completely white-out conditions in some cases. Fortunately, we passed through the storm, and it was smooth sailing to the finish. Well, except for our car running out of bev halfway through. But that wasn't a huge deal.

Mexican, optimism, F-350, Snowbird, Internet, sleep.

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Tour of Utah starts today! I'll be riding for the KJZZ composite team. KJZZ is a local CBS network station. Last night our all-star squad and Toyota-United got a 5-minute interview on the big screen. This is the biggest sporting event to come to Salt Lake since the Olympics. The KJZZ squad: Andy Bajadali (Jelly Belly), Zak Grabowski (Colavita), Neil Shirley (Jittery Joes), Chris Jones (Champion System), and Matt Cooke (LSV/Kelly), and thisSkinnyPro (the planet Krypton).




Only $2.

A picture of my sink from home, leftover on my camera.

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Since today's forecast called for a 100+ degree heat index, I decided to get up early to train. Today's workout was three threshold-pace climbs up Mt. Vesuvius, in the quaint little town of Vesuvius, Virginia (a one-hour drive from Charlottesville). Mt. Vesuvius is a famous local climb, and was just the inspiration I needed to giddyup.

With the road tar already gooifying at 10:15 am, I set out up Vesuvius:


Onlookers stared at me in disbelief as I conquered the enormously steep 20-minute climb not ONCE, not TWICE, but THREE times!!! It was difficult to avoid the liquid hot magma while I was pushing 370+ wizzies. But, my masterfulness saw me through the danger- all the way to the Blue Ridge Parkway, 3 times.



So, I'm exhausted. The workouts put me in a computer-screen-staring mode and so hence the photoshopping and unusually GREAT blog.

Oh yea, web stats. July saw a total of 228830 hits, with, on average, 211 unique visitors per day. (note that a hit is when any since page element is requested, so a hit ain't a good measure of our web traffic in our case) Moving on, 3pm is the most active hour, when I assume most of you office-loungers are getting totally bored of your mid-afternoon nonsense. Our first singular biggest personal referrer is The Cool Honey, followed by Google, with third place as the Team Colavita website.

For your entertainment, the following is a July chart of search engine search strings that ACTUAL PEOPLE typed, then FOLLOWED the search result to 2skinnypros.com. This list it the only reason I go and check the website stats... always entertaining.

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