Life - Stuff or "Not Dead Yet"

So it's been forever since I've written a post, and honestly it's been hard to motivate to even finish one of the 190 or so draft posts I have.

Some of the last few have been clip type posts, where I post clips from the prior season. I have two more in the works, almost ready. One is on its 4th revision, the other is on its 5th. When they are 99% done I'll put them up. I say 99% because they're never 100% - after they go live I inevitably think, "Oh, I should have done xyz".

For now life is intruding a bit on stuff, and the blog is pretty low on the priority list. It illustrates pretty vividly how much time I had before, or, conversely, how much more important other stuff is compared to the blog.

Some of that "stuff" includes:

 - First, and most importantly, Junior is much more interactive and involved, with me, with his environment, other people, everything. Before he could play with cars for a while, or the train, or whatever. Now he enjoys interaction, typically with me (since I'm around). It might be anything from telling me about what happened at school or maybe something he heard or even just narrating what he's doing while he's doing it.

Taking a breather before getting in the car.
Picking Junior up from daycare can take 60-90 minutes as he plays all over before we leave.

He also seems to need about 45-60+ minutes of running (or other exercise) a day. When it's cold it means shopping trips take an extra hour or so as we run around either in bigger stores or out on sidewalks and such. When it's warm it means heading over to the playground, where he can easily burn through an hour of time, and more recently, until it got cold, he could do two hours before asking to go home.

One incident in particular helped me realize just how my priorities have changed. A couple weeks ago the Missus heard the forecast on a Saturday or Sunday that it would get warm out. She typically announces unusual weather like this and typically I'll ask back, "Do you mind if I go for a ride?"

Of course you know what happened instead.

Missus: "It's going to be 50 today!"
Me: "Junior, let's go to the playground!"
Junior, gleefully: "Playground!"

And we went to the playground.

 - Been looking for a job. Junior is getting older, I'm running out of savings, and it's about time to start working again. I'm looking to leverage my skills and passion in cycling but there's a cusp I need to reach to be able to put Junior in daycare full time as well as do things like cover health insurance.

 - Been working on a couple event services jobs. One is short term, ending Dec 7th, the other is longer term, scheduled for June 6th. I work for other people in both of these.

During the process I confirmed event work next year on June 7th (White Plains) as well as August something (Tokeneke).

Fortunately the company Carpe Diem Racing made money this year, barely, after taking a bath at Bethel once again. The extra event service gigs I did after Bethel ended up making up the difference because they're basically all profit. Those gigs have no real expenses so I'm paid for my time and knowledge. Bethel costs a lot of money to run (well over $40k for 2014 - I figure at some point I'll do a post on some of the broad numbers) and doesn't take as much money in as it spends.

With Bethel going by the wayside, due to the venue loss (traffic and such, not anything to do with racer misbehaviors), I hope to reduce overall gross numbers but increase profit. I hope that'll be straightforward - with a huge negative out of the way it makes sense that profit will go up.

 - My free times during the week are Tuesday and Thursday mornings while Junior is at daycare, meaning times where I don't have to keep an eye out on Junior. It's times like these that I can put the snow tires on the cars, do a real trainer ride, or work on projects and such. Unfortunately recently they've been taken with various time-sensitive things, leaving me with little/no time to do longer term stuff.

Daycare, I should mention, has been really good for Junior. He learns stuff there, he interacts with other kids, and we can reinforce that stuff when he's back at home. The opposite works too, where we'll teach him stuff and he gets reinforcement at school. For example we let him learn how to do puzzles, then at school the staff reported that he happily plays with puzzles which frustrate most of the other kids. So it's good overall and we're really happy with the balance of playing and learning at the daycare.

 - Been working on the Spring Series, a Bethel race, and one, two, or three other venues.

 - Trying to winterize the house. Things keep popping up, we get a reprieve with another warm day or two, but each time something seems to pop up. This last warm spell I couldn't use, and there's still some stuff to do. I did get some trailer stuff done, and used it to move some big equipment stuff to/from our storage unit.

Trailer at the bottom of the driveway.

I need a weight distribution / sway control unit for the hitch.

So that's the external stuff.

As far as stuff for me goes, as far as cycling goes, my big thing this year is to lose weight and get back to 2010 weight. I've never returned to that weight, gaining steadily each year, and I really notice the additional mass. It's interesting to relive and remember how riding felt when I was 25 pounds lighter (than I was 3 weeks ago).

At Bethel, on the non-aggressive laps, I was climbing the hill while lightly dragging my brakes. I didn't want people to think I was doping, if you can believe that, and I needed so much less power to climb the hill (300-400w versus 600-800w) that I had the luxury to do that.

Even in the flat races I could accelerate much easier out of the corners. Yes, my legs got heavy when the lactic acid built up, but until then I felt like my whole body was made out of super light styrofoam or something.

Therefore I want to lose weight, get back to a lean me, and then do whatever training I can do with whatever my schedule might be at the time. I started about 2 weeks ago, maintaining sub-1800 cal daily intake even over Thanksgiving. I found that I could get by with about 1450 cal a day, with three seemingly big meals a day. I was pretty proud of myself and I'd carefully eat a bit extra in the evening to make up the deficit.

Recently, when I recalculated my diet numbers using my new, lower weight, I got a much lower 1260 cal/day recommendation. That was a shock but I'll see if I can do it. I'm looking at 8 more weeks of loss, give or take, if I can manage things.

So that's my violin story. You can get your world's smallest violin and play it a bit for me. I'll wait.

(Pause)

Okay, that's it.

In the meantime I still have those two clips to upload. I'll have event announcements. And I might even have some thoughts on the racing and tactics I observed over the last summer, with some tips and hints and such.