Feb. 23rd

This morning we made visit to Polar, one of Cycling Center's sponsors, headquarters. Their place was very cool and they have a ton on new technology coming out on the market. Cycling Center will be testing a prototype for them this year. I'm not sure what it is called but it is very James Bondish. This new system will allow the director to monitor every rider on the team during a race or training ride from his laptop in the team car. He'll be able to see what each rider's heartrate and power output is. This is a great idea and one I wish we'd had on past teams where teammates would say, "I'm blown" or "I just don't have it today" just because their lazy, fat sprinter butts don't want to work hard for a climber but expect us to kill ourselves for them (sorry I have a little pent up anger).

After the trip to Polar, a local dude met up with us to guide us on the days training ride. Today we split into two "teams" and switch off faking a flat and chasing back on. This was kind of fun and spiced up the usual riding in the cross wind all day. After a couple of hours of this game we hit the climb of the day. The local dude who was supposed to have local "knowledge" said the climb was 5 miles long. Bernard gave us the green light to attack each other and that was all we needed to start the festivities. About 3 miles into the climb our group was split in half. At the five mile mark I looked up and saw there was still plenty of climbing left, so gave it a dig and shed a couple more guys so we were down to about 5, two of which were altitude dudes from Bolder, CO, (translation - punks who can actually breath at 7,000 ft.). Eventually, 8 miles after we started, we hit the top of the climb. When I say the top I mean where the asphalt stops and the dirt starts. Apparently this dirt road continues for 5 more miles and heads up to about 10,500 ft. Tomorrow I'll pack the Ipod and head to the top. I'll take the camera and post some pictures tomorrow. Overall, it was good to get a decent ride in and the weather was beautiful so the ride was a success.

Remember when you were little and and you learned to spell states' names like Miss-iss-ippi, well apparently I skipped the day when we learned how to spell the city of Albuquerque. Every time I check the weather I have resorted to using the airport code (ABQ) to avoid spelling Albuquerque. Maybe I'm the only one with this problem...

So the spelling word of the day is = albuquerque. And yes their will be a test on this.

Thanks for checking in,

Chris