Been a bit...

Well here I am sitting at the end of April and I'm feeling pretty good. I've been on the bike quite a bit over the last few weeks chalking up a little over 150 miles in the past 30 days. It's scary that most of these miles have been on the road bike...I think I'm turning into a roadie!!!!!! Noooo. LOL I'm sitting at just over 400 miles for the year. That's only about 75 miles off of what I did ALL of last year!!! Yikes. I'm running about once a week and am feeling fairly strong in that department to. I'm hovering at around 30 miles for the year running. I don't think I'll get the 200 miles for the year like last year but I chalk that up to the increase in cycling. I'm doing 4 workouts a week roughly. That's keeping me pretty busy and I'm not sure I want to increase it beyond that. My duties to the family/work make it tough to do much more. Also, all of this exercise taxes the legs and I need the down time for the legs to recover. I've noticed quite a few days of 'heavy legs' where its just really tough to get them moving.

One of the things I'm happiest about is my food intake. I've really gotten away from the fast food. We're eating out as a family maybe 3 times a month and that is way down from two and half months ago. I've increased the fresh fruits and vegetables and have found some good low sodium food. I haven't checked the BP lately but it was around 145 over 91 a few weeks ago. I don't know if I've dropped any weight but my gut looks to have shrunk a little. Kelly says it has and things are fitting a little better which is nice. I was 230ish when all of this started and I've been exercising/dieting for the past 10 weeks. I'm figuring that I've dropped 8ish pounds but that might be optimistic. I should really check but we don't own a scale anymore. I need to find one!

On the downlow side of things Kelly lost the baby. She was 17 weeks pregnant and we had gone into the doc's office to find out the sex of the baby. We found out instead that it had died. We got scheduled for an induced labor and a few days later Kelly gave birth to a 7inch 7oz very baby boy. We named him James Tiberius. It was a rough few days and continues to sort of haunt us here and there. We're both dealing with it the best way we can. I was proud of myself for not allowing depression/life to get in the way of working out. I ran/rode while we dealt with the whole thing and I think that for the most part this combined with the better diet helped me get through that time more smoothly. We've moved on now and while we talk about it here and there it is not a pressing overriding thing to us. Kelly is dealing with some depression issues but they've not been lingering but rather catching her here and there for a few hours. I'll keep my eye open on this as I don't want her to slip into a deep depression.

Well I think that about sums up the month of April for us. Tragedy and trauma to begin it and successful dealing of said tragedy at the end of the month. Currently I'm off on a little vacation. I have to work a bit tomorrow and Friday but I'll go back on vacation for another 5 days after that which will be nice. I'm doing my best to simply sit back and relax. Thanks for reading, catch ya'all on the flip side!

Ah how life ticks on...

Its been a while since I wrote last and lots have happened. I'm not quite sure how I feel about all of it but most of it has turned out well.


1.) Rode 58 miles in 4 hours
2.) Have put in just shy of 300 miles in 6 weeks.
3.) I've gotten back into running.
4.) We lost our baby in the 16th week of pregnancy.
5.) The girls turned 9.


As you can see I've been through the ups and the downs. I've maintained a balanced perspective largely because of the exercise and the fitness I'm slowly developing. One of the things they say you need to do when faced with grief (or any of the other little lifes obstacles) is to maintain your exercise and diet. I've done both and kept the 'junk' food to a minimum even with Kelly in the hospital for a day. For the record Kelly gave 'birth' to a 7oz 7inch baby boy that we named James. He was a cute little guy and it's a bummer he won't be able to experience the world. I'll miss him greatly and the miss the chance to take him through life like I've been able to take the girls and Jackson. I hope that where ever he ends up he's having a great time and watching over the family he'll always be a part even if we didn't get to hang with him.

In other family news I can't believe the girls have turned 9. I sit back and have to ask myself "What happened to the years?" it's truly amazing that they've gotten so old. In fact in another month and a half they'll be 4th graders! 4TH GRADERS! wth who gave them permission to grow up? I know I didn't. They're great kids though and are a blast to be around...most of the time! ;-)


The exercise has been great. The 58 mile ride was from my house here in Wildomar down to the Oceanside Pier and then over to Vista. It was a great ride and a good accomplishment. I did a 30 mile ride yesterday but really need to cut it back to an hour on the bike so I don't burn out. I think I'll plan one or two long distance rides a month so I keep things moving. I've also put the running shoes back on and did 9 miles in the last week. I joined a cool little site called Dailymile.com where I can track my ride/runs and that was pretty gnarly.


Hope everyone is having a blast out there. Enjoy the Spring weather it'll be a blistering hot Summer before you know it!

Here's a few shots of the various rides I've been on.

Above is a nice shot of me and the FSR on a short little ride in SRP it was an over cast morning but it was also a nice ride.

Here's a shot of the pier on the 58 miler.

Me at the pier...just to prove I was there.

The old Bonsall Bridge about 2 hours into the 58 mile ride.

See ya folks and keep the rubber side down!

It's been such a beautiful weekend that I didn't wanna waste it. Yesterday the girls and I went out to the park and spent two hours playing. Today the girls wanted to play on their scooters so I suited up and got the Freeride bike out and we played. One of my daughters got tired but the other was up for a few more loops around the neighborhood. We scooted/rode about 2 miles and had a blast. Unfourtanatly she crashed and got the cool road rash shown below! I was such a proud papa when she got up brushed herself off and asked if I was ready to go...of course I was but first I had to get a picture!!!! ;-)
The girls all ready to head out...

Daddy all ready to head out...

My steed of choice for the afternoon, my seldom ridden Transition Bottlerocket. I so need to take this beast out to Fontana...or the Rainbow jumps in temecula.....if I could find them!

It was a great afternoon...and u bet I'll add the two miles to my training diary! lol

A good weekend...

Today wrapped up three days straight of riding. I'm a little sore right now and the stairs down t the garage look oh so daunting! However, I got out and I hit the road on the Allez and it felt really good. I figured after a 17 mile road ride on Friday and 10 miles on the Heckler yesterday I'd be toast today. I don't think I could've handled a sustained steep climb but I did okay on Whitewood which is fairly steep. I did a total of 22.5 miles today in just about 90 minutes. I'm pretty please with that.

So the tally for the weekend is 4 hours of saddle time and 50 miles in 3 days. That's not really Lance Armstrong numbers or even Daniel Eitman type numbers but they're great numbers for me, so I'm happy.

One of my goals has been to be able to get a bit faster. Currently I'm a 14 to 15 mph rider and I'd like to get that up into the 18mph range. I've really concentrated on keeping my cadence steady and quick (sort of modeled after how I've seen Lance ride). It works and it seems to fatigue the legs less. In the next few weeks I'm hoping to kick in a few sprints, maybe make those darn stop lights work for me for a change sprinting from one to the next. That should help.

Below are a couple of pics from the ride...

This is my trusty road bike, I love this bike.

And this one is me...it's not the greatest shot of me but its not bad considering I'm riding and balancing!

So another great weekend. More miles to put into the training diary and all around I'm ready to tackle an upcoming week of work!

This is my first post on a new blog. I've had a few blogs before but I think this one may be more successful. This will be a blog about my life as a husband, father, and county employee trying to fit in as much time on the bike as possible. I love bicycles. I love to read about, look at them and especially ride them. I don't have the best bikes but I do have the best bike for me. Hopefully I'll be posting ride reports with pictures. Links to cool places on the web and just a few tid bits about me.

In this first post I'd like to share a few pics from a ride I did this morning. Let me set it up for you. It's beautiful here in the SoCal! It was in the mid 60's when I started at 8:40am and it gently got up into the low 70's by the time I was done at 10:15am. I hit up Vail Lake this morning and stuck to what i think was the last 12 hour course of 2009. I completed most of that and then explored a bit in the little washes and 'canyons' that are above the old go-kart course. I ended up on a nice little single track that led away from the downhill course. You can see where Eric Carter had really gotten started on a pretty good idea. It's starting to get pretty grown over but its all still there. I played around in the 'freeride park' area and then rode out for about 15 minutes past the RC car race track. I found a gentle uphill double track that was fun with a lot of transitions from side to side and some sand. It was a blast coming down it. All in all I have to say it was a pretty fun morning.

My bike, a 07 Santa Cruz Heckler. I love this bike!

This is the trail I had just come up, its about a tenth of a mile from the Dam Hill Climb. I was trying to get the wild flowers in the shot but not sure if it worked. This section of the trail was really nice.

This would be a pic of yours truly. It aint pretty! ;-) Bicycle helmets just don't make anyone look good...except maybe if you're Niki Guddex...she looks good in anything.

This was actually my second ride of the weekend. I did 16 miles on the road bike last night but no pics. Maybe next time but for now have a great weekend and keep the rubber side down!