In case your interested...

Well then, its Sunday afternoon and I am coming to you live from good ole Penn Yan. I scooted back home yesterday afternoon from Syracuse after the long bike day was completed. Which brings me to the first item on the agenda, what I did on Friday and Saturday.

I think I wrote about how I was going out to dinner with the family on Friday night for me birthday, so basically that's what we did. My sister picked out the restaurant "The Copper Top", which was the same place that we went for her birthday. It was great. I had avacado rolls, huge bowl of pasta, and a big APPLE PIE dessert dish. All their desserts are made fresh to order so it was exceptionally awesome. And on that note I must note that I also had a small ice cream cone (2 scoops of vanilla with chocolate sprinkles in a sugar cone) yeah it's a plain jane no frills order but its my favorite (my mom's to). I also like stuff with peanut butter in it but I really wasn't in the mood for a huge sundae, not enough room in the stomach. Maybe I'll get another ice cream cone tonight! Heck, its a vacation weekend...let's live it up people!

After dinner with the family they all headed back to Penn Yan for the weekend. As this left me homeless in Syracuse I called up Cusetri and invited myself over for the night. He obliged and I showed up around 7pm. From about 7-930 we spent some male bonding time watching his buddy work on his bike. It was like when normal guys chill in the garage, work on the car, drink beer, etc...cept we were working on a vehicle with 2 wheels and no engine, and their was no beer involved as we would be getting up early to ride bikes and well that mix of alcohol and no sleep with a 6 hr ride in front of us..well that just wouldn't be smart. Plus 2 people (myself and Mike's mechanic/bike guru/cyclist friend)haven't had a beer in like 2 years. Myself being the 2 year and Mike's friend being the one who has never had alcohol in his life. Which is kind of funny because if you met him you would think he's either a bit loopy from booze/narcotics, however he has never had either of these enter his body. Funny guy though! Very entertaining and extremely good with bikes. These people are essential in life when you are someone like myself who cannot hit a nail with a hammer into a piece of wood without either breaking my own hand or completely screwing up the project from the get go...I was not gifted any handy man talents from my father, although my grandpa was handy it somehow skipped my dad completely dissappeared from the curbeau bloodline with the birth of myself.

Well, after the bike was put together and in good shape, Cusetri and I headed for the sheets. Cusetri into his bedroom and I into his 4 year olds bedroom (Is he 4? I can't remember the age so I am just making it up right now). Before you make a joke about this I am informing you that I was in his 4yr olds bed because CuseTri's son sleeps with his brother in bunk beds in another room,thus the kid's bedroom becomes the guest bedroom. It's a nice bed, I had a good nights sleep. Shortly after closing my eyes I awoke at 3am to eat "First Breakfast" also known as the pre-long workout or pre-race meal which consists of:
1.Applesauce (The natural kind, chunky style, about a whole jar of it)
2.A Powerbar (Peanutbutter flavor)
3.Banana (Dole - Organic)
4.Protein (Muscle Milk Pre-Made Shake)

After checking twitter and eating first breakfast..i have issues with twitter...it's my crack, very addictive, I headed back to sleep until about 445. When I got up at 445 I headed to the kitchen to start drinking coffee, eat another powerbar, and get myself in order for the morning's festivities. Mr. Cusetri joined me at about 5am. He greeted me while I sat in my usual spot at his counter. We were both in a very good mood as we were going to be biking for 6hrs in exceptionally nice weather (bib shorts and a jersey) something that was totally awesome considering the other days that we have biked together have consisted of cold, rain, darkness, flats, and one crash. This day however brought none of those, which was nice in a things went the way they should kind of way.

As for the ride...we did about 2.15 loops of a course that Mike scouted out. I attempted to sabotage his best laid plans in terms of routing by taking a wrong turn during a tempo section of the bike however he shepherded me back to our chosen course and we carried on. I must say that I really enjoyed the training plan for the workout. Contrary to my free nature no directions needed mentality I do like a plan. If I did not have plans made for me during bike rides I would never make it 6 hours with any sort of consistent power. I would shoot my bullets way to early and enter the hurtlocker about 4 hours to early. With that said our plan for the day was a 60 minute warmup endurance session followed by 5 intervals of 20 minutes at tempo pace (our zone 3 power)for me that's like a little over 200 watts or thereabouts depending on the terrain and such, for Mike its about 500 watts (WHAT AN ANIMAL :)!!!) hahaha..I don't think its quite that high but its definitely a bit higher than mine as he's a little bigger than me and my pipsqueak build. Like I said, I really liked the workout and was pretty much able to hold a good tempo power through each interval including the last 20 minute block in which I briefly entered the hurtlocker..not for very long maybe a minute tops, but their were definitely a couple moments where I was digging. It's been fun to see how over the last 3 weeks I have gone from never going over 4 hours on the bike to being able to hammer a tempo pace at hour 5:20 of a 6 hour ride, that makes me happy.

UPDATED 3:45PM 5/30/2010
How could I forget the DATA! Mike and I had a pretty good training day If I must say so. I'm usually not one to pass out stats but we knocked out over 120 miles in 6 hours...RARRRR! The "CC" (Corona and Curbeau) Peleton was in full effect. I also must add that Mike supplied me with my nutrition for the day, 8 powergels and 2 powerbars. I had packed my nutrition when I left my apartment but somewhere along the way I misplaced this bag...but Mike came to the rescue when he let me go grocery shopping in his Powerbar sponsored pantry, no joke the man has the goods! This reminds me of something that is actually nutrition related to training.

ACTUAL TRAINING DISCUSSION ON NUTRITION not just my mindless rambling.
Since I was not going to be running off the bike and I had run out of Gu's at the 5 hr mark I decided that I was just going to knock out the last tempo and endurance (1hr) on some gatorade and water. I did this on purpose COACH! Even if you wouldn't recommend this I wanted to see if their would be any repercussions for this lack of nutrition so late in the ride. Well the tempo interval (5:00-5:20) went good. I took my last gel at 5:00 so I was fueled up by that. Previously I took my second to last gel at 4:00. It was at the 4hr gel mark that I realized I had only 2 gels left, 1 at the 4hr mark and 1 for the remainder. I had misjudged my intake by 1 gel because I usually eat half a powerbar 30 minutes into the ride, yesterday I did not. Anywho I decided to hold off until the 5hr mark to take the last gel down and then just go on some gatorade and water for the rest with no gel at 5:30. I thought I was going to make it when at 5:30 I still felt alright. However whether it was due to the fact that I was almost done or that my legs finally we fried, I can honestly say that the last 15 minutes were a bit of a struggle. So in conclusion I would have to say that not taking this gel in at 5:30 did indeed have a direct effect on my performance over the last half an hour. I would have never done this if I was running off the bike so I guess by not doing that it was a good learning experience to never think you can get away with skipping a planned nutrition because maybe your sick of the gel or something. Just take the nutrition and get it down (as long as it wants to go down and your not getting sicker because of it...).

We cruised on home, I stretched and began to ice and shower and all that while Mike hit the roads for a 30 minute transition run. I still am not running (going on almost a month off) which stinks but the rest is necessary, I am recovering a lower leg injury and although the biking doesn't really aggravate the injury it still puts stress on it and the additional stress and pain from trying to run is just not needed. I am hopeful and optimistic that I will be able to resume running this Tuesday and race on Saturday, however if its just not in the cards then I will just swim and bike at the Keuka Tri and then cheer on my teammates as they finish the race..so its a win-win situation either way.

I'll end this post with a couple items of note:
1. Big Things are coming
2. The next post will include a cool picture of a former train this athlete and myself. Can you guess who it is?? It's a cool picture because were both wearing kits that Lance wore..on two different teams. For bonus points can you guess which kit I am wearing and which kit my friend is wearing. Your choices are:
a.Postal Service
b.Radioshack
c.Discovery
d.Motorola
e.Astana