Probable

OK, here are a couple of spain pics (bike related). we were there for almost 2 weeks and saw alot of other stuff (no bullfights), but seeing la Vuelta was pretty memorable.


Here is a pic of big mig! We saw Miguel Indurain. My friend Sean (sorta jokingly) asked me if we saw Indurain in spain, and was surprised when I said yea!!! Other (cycling) stars we saw were Cadel Evans, Fabian Cancellara, David Millar, Tyler Farrar, Vinokourov, Valverde, and a bunch of others. Vino almost won the stage we saw the finish of (he ended up 4th), and why is it that these dopers are worshiped is beyond me sometimes. Especially when 34 year olds are still dropping dead. I'm as guilty a fan as anybody I guess. I hate Valverde, as he is sorta not just a suspected doper, but an actual doper banned in Italy!!! and he is the hero and love of all the spaniards, winning la Vuelta. I guess maybe Contador is a bigger spaniard star, but he didn't show up at la vuelta this year.

As for Cadel Evans, he is the man. I was glad he got world champion stripes, the media makes him out to be a dork, but I think in real life he's a good guy at least from my observation after stage 10. Too bad he got that flat tire at Vuelta.

I thought Millar would have been uglier for some reason... He's a former doper, and now he's on the clean team Garmin, and I was going to say he never wins anymore, but he went on to win the final TT at La Vuelta, so maybe there's hope for the sport.

We're going to the race across the sky movie showing on Thursday, to see the leadville 100 mt. bike race documentary. Should be pretty cool, and I think I'm going to wear the dopers suck wrist bands for fun, and it will probably give me a little inspiration for Sunday (columbia gorge marathon), and future goals, maybe even leadville 100.

Upgraded to probable for the marathon. I'm pretty sure it will be a struggle, but I'm pretty stoked, and have been looking forward to this for a while. The crash a couple weeks ago was luckily after most of my important training, but I still feel like I haven't done enough running (and ate too many donuts) in the last 2 weeks to make a good race out of it (sub 3?). Someday I want to go sub lance (which is somewhere in the 2:50 range). One thing is for sure: running through the tunnel on the way back is going to be awesome, but it's still a ways to the finish.

Day to Day

After a long lapse, I'm updating the blog. Since updating, we took a pretty sweet trip to Spain, which I hope to post a recap at some point. In short I'll just say that southern spain is a very arid landscape and the weather is hot. We saw the Vuelta

In preparing for the Columbia Gorge Marathon on Oct. 25th, I had been getting into some good form. It's been 5 years since I've ran a road marathon(ran Portland marathon in 2004 in PR time) and I'm really looking forward to this one. The course is challenging and it's got a view of the gorge most of the way. If the weather's bad it could turn out to be an epic cold and windy death march. Two weeks ago I did yasso 800s averaging 2:46 per half mile, which (according to Bart Yasso) translates to the potential of being able to run a 2hr 46min marathon. I pre-ran the final 18 miles of the CGM course felt great. I was all scheduled to run a half marathon tune up last sunday, and then last week, on a 'recovery' run at forest park, I was running on the trail and instead of staying on erickson drive, I needed to warm up so I ran up to the wildwood on wild cherry trail and came back down dogwood, where I proceeded to crash on the down hill, tripping on a root or rock or something. It wasn't running fast, but running downhill that translated into a harder fall, and I didn't catch myself really at all, and basically landed on my side and managed to scrape both the left and right shins (very minor road rash). The worst was the impact to the lower right ribs, and if you've ever had a rib injury you know the drill. Hurts to laugh, hurts to sneeze, hurts to cough. Well try running. So I tried running 3 miles last week and it was not happening. Rested the weekend and got a couple hours on the bike yesterday in a desperate attempt to keep the fitness. Feels a little better this week than last week (but it's more sore after the bike ride), so my status is day to day for the CGM.

I'm nearing completion of school and will be looking to land a job staring in 2010 (around Feb or March). What does that mean? I don't officially get done w/ school until June2010, but I only have one class for the spring term. So the job will probably be here in the valley (portland / hillsboro area). My plans are to get employment in the semiconductor industry as it relates to solar cell manufacturing. The outlook looks pretty good. The program at the school I'm in really could prepare a student for potential employment in the wind, solar (manufacturing), solar (residential), hydro, bio-fuel or electrochemistry (fuel cell) industries. At this point I'm hoping the solar manufacturing thing works out, as I already have an internship at the largest solar cell factory in the Americas. And my senior project (call it Bachelors Thesis) topic is studying the light induced degradation of mono-crystalline CZ silicon solar cells.

Hope somebody still reads the blog, and hope to write a killer race report for the gorge marathon. And if the race doesn't go so well, that's ok, but I should be on the starting line.