out to sea

this morning i woke up to a gray sky and a stiff wind. after an hour and 20 minutes of mt. biking i preped the sail boat for an adventure.

i took it down to park point (big sand beach), and met up with jason and one of his friends. we set up my 14 foot racing sailboat against 25 mph winds. it was crazy windy, a perfect east wind bringing in nice waves. there were guys surfing, and some kite surfing i saw one guy get like 20 feet of air. it was sweet. once the boat was set up it was time to see what would happen. we put on some wet suits since the air was about 65 and water at cold. then we had to get through the surf. that was the part. we had to push out a bit because the daggerboard doesnt work in shallow water. then i jumped in pulled in the sail and pulled jason on board. we still had a bunch of surf to get through and it was crazy. the best way to describe it would be those storm stories you see on the weather channel and such. but in real life. the water just crashed over us. somehow we kept her upright and got out past the breakers. then the wave stopped breaking, but got huge. the weather man said 5-7 feet. but that is only half the wave since waves are measured from normal water level, and a wave goes up and down. so 10-14 foot swells. it was insane. we had wrapped the sail around the mast to decrease sail area, as not to die. and with that and two people in the boat we still were able to plane (like a speed boat) down in the trough of the wave it was fairly calm, and up on top it was 25 mph wind. the waves were just mountains of water. it was just insane to experience. i had to look almost straight up to see the tops. just crazy. after a bit we came in to see if jasons friend wanted to try, but she is not a very experinced sailor so she passed. jason and i tried to get out again, but the surf defeated us and we flipped and broke a piece of metal that holds the rudder in place. so we had to call it a day.
but man it was just so much fun. jasons friend got some pictures so thats what you see below. enjoy!

inital launch

about to clear the breakers

The open sea

the top half of the 16 foot mast

surfin

wheres jason? (beginning of the end)

jason just chillin

the frontier

well since last time i updated not a whole lot has happened. allthough my family had a garage sale, my mom had some stuff priced ridicoulusly low, i marked it up and kept the profits. i made $43 wahoo.

yesterday i planned on going on a 3 hour ride, i wanted to ride some rds that i dont often. i went out aways but then was feeling great and i just kept going. and missed my turn. so i just kept going because eventually i would find a turn to take, so i basically went 2 hours north of home. i was way the heck out there. the frontier basically. no cell phone service for at least 50% of the ride. there were long
stretchs of 20 minutes or a bit more when i saw no cars. only a house or two every few miles. no side roads no nothing. the frontier i tell ya. but the road was really really nice. ill have to do it again someday. eventually i found out where i was. 24 miles straight inland from the lake. so i road to it and then it was another 20 back home. so all in all it was a 132 km ride. and i felt good almost the whole time. i just got really thirsty for a bit.

today my dad made me go try out the new bike path that is up the shore a bit. it was actually not bad. i think it was one of the few bike paths i need to use brakes on. it was a nice change from the usual rails to trails kinda thing.

tomorrow it is supposed to be windy. 2 to 4 foots waves on the lake. im going to go sailing.

oh i forgot. i have some nice wave pictures. there were decent size the other day.

the rock in the center is a good 7 or 8 feet abover the water

big spray

for reference, this guy was standing on the rock picture above this one.

smaller but at night!

more ruled out

today i had some tests done on my legs to see if something wrong could be found. the first test involved a lady sticking electrodes on my legs. then taking a tazer type thing and zapping the nerves in my lower leg. some hurt some did not. she was having trouble finding one of the nerves so she zapped me about 1000 times. that was a bit much, but finally she found it. my nerves are all normal.
next the doc. came in to test my muscles. he stuck a small needle into certain muscles which i said usually cramp when its happening. then once the needle was in i would tense the muscle and on the computer screen (which the needle was hooked up too) a whole bunch of lines would come. it was kinda like an electronic ricter scale. he did not have to poke me many times. he ruled out muscle diesese almost right away. my dad was really happy about that, i did not even know that is what i was being tested for.
so the mystery continues. in the mean time i guess i just have to ride my bike.

speaking of riding the bike. my plans have changed a bit. after doing lactate testing and talking about important training stuff, he who was doing the testing has reason to believe my glycogen is low. too much hard training without rest. perhaps this is the source of the cramping. very well could be since it seems nothing else is. so i will not be racing this weekend. i am going to take about 3 weeks nice and easy. he says that i will actually get faster from that, because ill have more energy stores. so instead of doing the race and not getting faster, ill save up for cross season. i will be attending state fair instead.

also i stacked 3 chords of wood. thats a lot of wood.

well, at least i can remember

this morning i was not sure if i was going to do the mtn bike race up at spirit but somehow sean convinced me to spend the 32 dollars. so sean and i decided to ride the 9 mile course an hour before the start. we did most of it. but then ran out of time and rushed back up to the start and made it 3 minutes before sean started. i had a bit of 5 minutes or so. got in the front row somehow and the race was off up the hill. the first lap went pretty well. i was a bit tired from the super long hour warm up, which i think i did way to hard. but still i was only tired on the really long climb (bottom of the ski hill to top) i felt i was riding decent lines and all. about a mile or maybe a bit farther after the start i passed sean who was laying on his back on some rocks, it looked pretty uncomfortable. the second lap started well the only problem were my hands cramping up, that made the super skinny rocky single track hard. right before the trail got to a nice open road area there was a steep rocky downhill section. i screwed up and went flying over my bars and smashed my legs into some rocks. it really hurt. it made me yell a while it hurt so much. the next 3 guys who were pretty far behind me stopped to help me out. so thanks for them. after 5 minutes or so the pain had receded and i was able to get back on the bike. i rode the rest of the downhill pretty carefully. then caught 4 guys who passed me while i was down. 2 had stopped to help me and were very impressed i was still moving. so ive still finished every race ive started, that makes me happy. i have no idea where i finished, but i think i was near the top ten before crashing.

i was told not to put this up, but pictures are so fun.

but overall i think this was a good experience. second mtn bike race ever, and first one that i remember. so things are improving!

marquette

this past week i was in marquette michigan visiting ingrid and family. it was a good time. to start it off it was a 5 hour drive and to my surprise and delight i only used half a tank of gas on the subaru. so that is fun. but yeah the week just kept getting better from there. went biking. went swimming, a nice sand beach is a two minute walk from ingrids. so that was very nice. i did both road and mt biking. the mt biking there was amazing. tons of trails. single track, downhill, places wide enough for four wheelers, technical, non technical, and so on. just amazing mt biking. (the ore to shore is in that area). since ingrids dad is the coach of nmu running and skiing he has got all kinds of fancy training tools. he was nice and decided to help me out by doing a lactate test. the purpose is to find out where my body starts making a lot of lactic acid and is unable to keep clearing it. also known as the lactate threshold (i think). also it is used to find the point where just lots of lactic acid starts to be created. to recover right, do intervals right, do OD workouts right this is important stuff. so we set my bike up on a trainer and all i had to do was (for round 1) put my HR at 125ish and keep it there for 3 or so minutes. then a finger prick and blood tested on a cool little gadget for finding lactate. then the next set was at 135ish HR then blood then 145 then blood, up to 163 is where my threshold is. so above that i will fatigue fast. and i should be under 143 for long distance stuff. hopefully this will help the training.
but even without that fun test the week with ingrid was great fun.
tomorrow sean comes for a race up at spirit and some bike riding.

still a mystery

today i went to the doctor to see if he could figure out what the heck is wrong with my legs. I got a whole ton of x-rays taken, absoulutley nothing wrong with the bones in my legs. then i got some, no actually a ton, of blood drawn for blood tests. 5 tubes of it in fact. no rest in between the tubes either, one right after another. after getting the blood drawn i stood up, and with the mix of less blood, nothing yet to eat (fasting for the cholesterol test) and no liquid i was really dizzy. but it passed and i made it out of the lab. after that i went and talked with the doc. again. and as the title suggests he has no idea what is wrong with me either. if the blood tests come back normal he said maybe try and mri to see what shows up.

the past few days have been decent biking. wednesday i rode with the local racers. they remembered me from last year, so that was cool. that was a nice 4 hour ride. i was not feeling very strong so i just chilled out. yesterday the weather changed to 60 degrees and a strong east wind, i think it was 20 mph or so gusting to 33. i still felt like riding bike and did not want to get muddy (rain and dirt on trails= mud) so i went for an easy 2 hour rd. ride. i made it down to the lake at one point and just watched the wave bash the rocks. it was the second highest surf ive watched at that particular beach that i can remember. oh i love the lake...
today i went into the woods for riding. a nice 2 hour mtn bike. this whole week my heart rate was kinda high, but today it was back down to its pre-week-off low. that made me happy.

back at it

well ive been home for a week and a day now. its been great despite a few leg problems.
this batch of cramps started when i got off the plane in chicago. my legs cramped just walking from the back of the plane to the front and kept getting worse until i stood in line. but got really bad again when i started moving after. as planned i took off a week from biking and so for a few days i did not do much at all. so no leg trouble there. on that wednesday it was off to the Boundary Waters with some buddies. the first and thankfully only portage (carrying canoes and all over land) i was carrying a canoe and pack. a bit after starting my legs cramped and by the end i was really really struggling to walk. not only to my legs cramp, but they loose all strength. it was awful. for the rest of that day i could hardly move. sleeping helped a bit, but they still cramped when i walked a bit. i made it out of the BW without to bad of cramps although they still showed up.
yesterday i tried going for a mountain bike. i made it 10 minutes before the cramps hit. at 16 minutes into the ride i had to stop because i could not take that much pain. after a bit i tried again, then stopped. and so on for nearly 2 hours. i managed to do a super shortened loop, it should take me under 45 minutes. it took me 2 hours. i got passed by a runner. i was both physical and mentally drained after getting home. dad thinks that i may have a herniated disk which pinches a nerve, obviously one that goes to my legs. tomorrow i get a doctor appt.
today i went down to milltown cycles to get my madONE all fixed up. it was good to see ben again. after getting some new parts ingrid drove the car back to northfield and i rode my bike. no cramps at all. nothin. so confusing.i think riding the road bike de-herniates my disk or something. because as soon as i got off and walked my leg cramped a bit. weird....hopefully i can get fixed soon.


the bw