Slacking

Boy have I been slacking on my posts. I don't have much of an excuse other than a lack of training. I just haven't had a lot to say.

Christmas was great, thanks Mom and Dad. It was a small Christmas as most of my family couldn't make the trip down to LA. Yesterday when we left LA it was sunny and about 52 deg, today in Fayetteville it is overcast, snow is on the ground, and the wind chill is in the teens. I need a warmer climate. I got a Suunto X6HR for Christmas, I have been wanting this watch for quite some time now. As soon as I get the software figured out, I will be able to post hr/elevation graphs. I like to get all geeky with graphs and w/o data.

Here are a few pics from today's ride. I made it for 2 cold hours. How many more days till Spring?

Fresh Paint

I'm still in the process of fixing up my mountain bike. I talked to a local auto body shop a couple weeks ago and they agreed to paint my frame but are booked until after the first of the year, So, I decided to paint the frame myself just for fun. I still plan to have it painted by the pros, but I wanted to see what kind of paint job I could produce with spray paint from a can. I'll tell you that the prep work took twice as long as the actual painting. I sanded and sanded the frame to get rid of all the chips in the paint, all manual no machines here. Below is a pic of the frame during the prep. I didn't take it all the way down to bare Al, that would have taken me forever and with the frame going to the auto body shop soon I decided to sand, prime and then paint. I'll let them sand blast the frame.

To be honest, the paint job turned out a lot better than I thought. I have logged many hours spray painting and I am better than average with the rattle can, but this is by far the best paint job I have done. The indoor pics don't do it justice, there's a lot of flake in the paint and it sparkles in the sunlight. Not bad for $22 and about 8 hours of labor.
On the training front things are going as planned. A few rides and a few runs per week, nothing major planned until late January and the first race is the last weekend in February