New Shades

So I just got back from The Bicycle Place shop.  It was the first time I had been inside.   I had a 50 dollar gift certificate for the shop so I went there to make some purchases.  I told myself literally out loud before I went in that I wasn't going to spend over 50 bux.  However once I got in there I lost control of myself.  Before I knew it I was trying on some sweet Giro sunglasses and handing the guy my debit card to pay the extra 80 dollars.  So yeah my new sunglasses are sweet.  But I have some other sunglasses I went to sell:

Tifosi Q3 (white) with 3 sets of lenses (clear, yellow, dark blue) and hard carrying case and soft carrying case-- $40

Tifosi Q3 (orange), limited edition Jittery Joes can't buy in stores, with smoke lenses and carrying like soft bag thing-- $30

Rudy Project Rydon (black with red earpieces) with 3 sets of lenses (dark blue, dark red, racing red-clearish) with hard carrying case and soft carrying case-- $70

Also I have Rudy Project Syluro lenses if you have those glasses they are dark blue.  Also have a hard carrying case and soft carrying case, but lost the frames racing in Canada.  For just the lenses-- $10 for the stuff together $15

I'm willing to negotiate on prices, so if you're at all interested email me at nate1wilson@verizon.net and I can send you pictures and stuff, please buy these glasses!  If I don't here anything pretty soon, I'll probably try and sell them on ebay.

Here are the glasses I bought today:

Hey

I kinda lost track and havent done any posts in a while, I wanted to do them more regularly but I choked, weak.  But more fun is my buddy Russ Brown was back this week from Durgango, CO for thanksgiving break.  ON Wednesday we did a long ride out to sugarloaf it was pretty fun, but kinda windy/cold, but we had tailwind coming back so that was awesome, and we averaged around 40mph.  

Russ just got back from altitude and all the big mountains in CO, and was acting like the loaf was gonna be nothing for him.  I warned him the loaf took no prisoners and documented the journey.  Here is a picture of Russ at the bottom of the vicious climb:

Going up the climb I was dominant but Russell was able to cheat and sprint around me at the end.  I took this picture at the top of the climb to document Russ post climb:

Unfortunately this was his biggest victory to date :(

Finally I thought I'd give my loyal readers a little view into what it's like to be in my position, one of sure dominance.  I sit there look at my powertap and just continue to shock myself with my inability to break 100 watts.

I strategically took the picture in a manner in which you can't see the face of the Powertap.  For anyone interested in more in depth analysis of my powerfiles and training can email me and make a check out of 20.00 USD per file to Nathan Wilson....well worth the money I think.

AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

It was cold! today.  I was gonna do some intervals but I really didn't want to ride on the trainer.  So I bundled up and went down to hains point.  It would've been fine, cuz I was wearing plenty of clothes, I wasn't cold, but becasue of school I couldn't get out on my ride till 3:30 and I ran out of light.  It was really annoying cuz I couldn't read the timer on my power tap so I was supposed to do a 4min effort at the end and it ended up being 3.5 cuz I thought it was over.  what a pain.  i guess Im going to have to concede and ride the trainer, during the week.  I don't mind the cold, thats what clothes are for, but with the lack of light its a real pain, if only I didn't have to go to school and could just ride during the day.   The sunset was pretty cool today, but I didn't take a picture of it.  Instead I took this picture of cars on GW parkway on the bike path overpass to Roosevelt Island, it looks alright.

Gettin Huge

Today I went to the gym, which I actually enjoy a fair amount.  Since the offseason started I've been lifting pretty regularly twice a week.  It is having a great effect.  For those of you that haven't seen me since the summer racing season, I've included a picture below, of my bicep.

More importantly my buddy Russ gets back from Durango, CO for his thanksgiving break on Friday so we get to ride and stuff which is awesome.  Also, i just found out that we're going to be in Tucson during the same time this winter so we'll get to beat up on all the chumps there.  Hopefully this weekend or next it will be relatively warm so Russ and I can go down to the mountains and beat up on eachother and anyone man enough to come with.

Weekend

On Saturday I woke up early to ride over to Spokes to do Computrainer class.  It was pretty good, nothing special, but I got to teach the 10am class so that was awesome ($$$).  My legs are feeling pretty vicious lately...I'm going to leave that ambiguous as to whether I want that to mean good or bad, yours to decide.  they said it was going to rain a lot Saturday but after the classes it was really warm and sunny so I got out for a couple hours outside.  When I got home I was really hungry so I ate a lot of food, probably entirely too much, but it was awesome.

Then Sunday wasn't quite as good.  It was cold and soooo windy.  The kendalls came over in the morning and we rode over to join the espresso ride, in Georgetown.  I don't know why so many people were there when it was so nasty out but it was awesome because like 80 people were there.  It was pretty fun, I went hard a couple times, but split off after the One lane bridge at Glen to go do a little more.  The Kendalls just finished the ride and I headed out for an extra 2 hours.  It was very dissappointing because there was a vicious headwind all the way out to Poolesville and the tail wind back was not that fresh, but whatever.  WHen I got back to the house the kendalls were just laying on my front yard...rofl.  Bradley locked his keys in the car.  It was pretty hilarious, they had to call a guy to come get them out but it took him like two hours to get there.  When they guy came I politely asked if I could document the event for my blog and he didn't respond, I think he hates me. 

So basically I've just been training and it's going pretty well.  mostly base but doing some intensity on the computrainer.  I really like racing cross, and I've always wanted to be really good at cross.  But I've only race twice so far this year, I'm sort of into training right now.  I'm lending my bike to someone else anyway.  i think I might race the cx race at the end of the year in REston.  I race two earlier one in MD and one PA.

Sunday Ride

Yesterday I got out for a nice long ride, just base miles, for the power geeks it was about 350 avg watts.  I was joined by coach, Pierre, and Steven and Bradley Kendall.  We left from my house at 10 and headed out to Sugarloaf.  The loop we did, my two favorite roads are Moore Rd. and Big Woods Rd., they're pretty cool and had leaves all over them which was cool.  Probably the only two roads I like more in the area are Montevideo road and Peters road. 

(Big Woods Rd.)

 Peters Road is the bomb it is gravel and has these two steep power climbs that are like redic, they're out of tour of flanders or something, i think im gonna ride over there next weekend and take a cell phone pic for my blog.

I'm feeling pretty good riding lately, I dont know if I mentioned it or not but at the end of august i hurt my hip flexor and it was bothering me for a long time, but it feels basically completely better so I'm going back to the full training load. 

There were so many people out riding yesterday, we saw so many people out around Sugarloaf, and there were a bunch of cars up there too.  WE got cauhgt behind a car on the descent and were going like 1mph.  

The only other thing worth sharing is that I was really annoyed that both places we stopped didnt have any blue gatorade.  WE stopped at the minimart at Seneca and 28 and I had to get Tiger Cool Fusion gatorade, and at the gas station in poolesville there was no blue either I had to get orange and lime...so weak. 

We did a sprint for the DC town line coming back in where I of course dusted everyone...actually Steven and Bradley beat me, but I think they cheated.

Nice Weather

The weather has been really nice lately, at least I think it is nicer than it is usually this time of year, i am very happy about that.  I'm sure in a month or two, maybe a week or two?, the weather will seriously suck and i will be bumming...I'll probably give up bike racing and pursue ballet or something.  But since the weather is nice, I'm still giving this sport a go.

Today I woke up early to go ride the computrainer out in Vienna, it was pretty good, not really going too hard on it yet, but starting some hard stuff.   I actually feel like I'm riding really good right now so hopefully I don't suck when the race season comes around...though I've always kind of wanted to be that guy who just massacres people on group rides and sucks in the race season.  I've decided that once I get to masters 40+, one year I'll not race the whole summer and just train like I would as if its the offseason then from November to January just go and crush people...thatd be awesome!

Tomorrow I'm gonna ride long with some friends, probably out to Sugarloaf, I like doing that.  I think the riding around here is really good, especially like last week we went out to like Buckeystown area and there are some really cool dirt roads, they're sweet.

I'm pretty pumped because when i went to the the grocery store today they were serving thanksgiving food like stuffing and turkey, which was aweseome, and in a few weeks my buddy Russ gets back from college for Thanksgiving break so we can go down to skyline and climb, cuz climbing is boss!  Also, this weekend is boss cuz Monday is senior skip day and Tuesday is Vet's day so I have a four day weekend.  I think I might've said that in my last post so if I did I'm sorry, but i think I didn't

Finally, I have a set of American Classic carbon tubular and the front rim is cracked.  I am trying to get AC to hook me up on replacing it cuz I don't have much money, but I don't know if thats going to work out (probably not).  So if you have some carbon tubular wheels you are looking to sell, for not much money, email me--nate1wilson@verizon.net, I might be interested.

Vicious Sesh

So yesterday was the first day of Computrainer classes out at Spokes Etc in Vienna.  I taught a 4:30 class after school, which is kinda fun, I get to just ride on the rollers while I'm teaching.  Then I rode the 6:30pm class on the computrainer hard to get my workout in.  I felt decent, but thats not really interesting.  What is interesting is the picture below, of the 3 mile TT we did at the end of class...there were 7 other people.

That number 1 under Nate W, well we all know what that means...yeah thats right, chalk one up for the victory column, right next to my proudest wins right alongside of Juniors Day Out!...oh yeah!  I would say it was a pretty prestigious win, below is a picture of some of my most fierce competition:

In other news tonight I will be hitting up the gym.  I like to do this twice a week in the offseason to accentuate how jacked and tan I am.  I try to make friends at the gym but usually whenever I get within 20 feet of someone they just run away fall to the floor and beg for mercy, oh well.

I think it is going to be nice this weekend, probably get out for some long basemiles followed by lots of eating.  And score its a four daay weekend for me this weekend.  Tuesday is Veterans day (I think) and Monday is senior skip day!

Bike Path

Cuz of the elections I didn't have school today.  So I thought I'd hit up a little bike practicing.  I took my sick nasty new TT bike (picture  below) out on the bike path (pictured below) to get aero.  My position is so aero on my new TT bike, I averaged a mere 48 watts but yet my average speed was about 32.4 mph, not bad for the flat to rolling terrain of the bike path.  But in all serious this was my first chance to ride this bike outside since I bought it from Lengermann last weekend...I hope it causes my competitors, such as Adam Leibovitz, to cry.

On a more serious note after Nationals when I was in California I crashed and strained my hipflexor.  I continued to race it on through September basically just trying to ignore it.  So by the time the offseason started it was raging pretty hard.  I've been doing a lot of exercises/stretches to help it get better and it is almost back to 100% so with that out of the way I think I might do some cross races.  I did two in October, but once I realized they somehow weren't making my hipflexor feel better I had to back it off.  I think I'm gonna race the tacchino cross in Leesburg in a couple of weeks, we'll see.

Tomorrow I'm gonna start doing the winter Computrainer classes.  I train on the CT out at spokes in Vienna and teach classes twice a week.  That is really nice cause I get $$$...but not so nice cuz this year instead of spending at all I'm supposed to save it for college (weak).

I'll this post with saying that I did my training ride today in a long sleeve skin suit...is that bad?  why do people only race in something so fresh?

Epic Stuff

So today my teammate Blair and I headed out to do a pretty cool ride out past Sugarloaf onto some cool dirt roads.  About 1 hour into the ride Blair's rear derailleur exploded.  With that being no reason to stop a ride, we cut his chain, and he single speeded the next 80 miles in his 39x19.  So we were talking about it and decided that if I was going to start a blog that today would be the day.  That way I'll at least have one interesting post.  If this blog makes it past 5 posts then I'll consider a success on my behalf.

Our ride was pretty good despite having to jam up the hills and coast on all the downhills.  Riding with Blair is always good cuz he knows all the best roads out there.  I don't really want to talk about how my legs felt good/bad or anything, so I'll pass on that.

So I guess I'll finish up this inaugural blog post with a little bit about myself...My name is Nathan Wilson.  I am 17 and live in Arlington, VA, I like racing bikes...uh yeah its cool.  Next year is my last year racing in the juniors, which is sad, because juniors is pretty tight, but oh well.  I'm a cat. 2 and thats all I'll share for now.  Hopefully this blog doesn't suck, cuz I hate blogs that suck.