Goals

I know it's a little late to be making New Year's Resolutions, so I'm thinking of these as Late Year Resolutions. People always say that you need to write down your goals, so I'm writing them down to share with everyone. Because it's been kind of nice the past few days cycling has been on my brain. So these are all cycling goals for the coming year. Here they are in no particular order:

• Ride over the North Ogden Pass
• Ride over Trappers Loop
• Race the Antelope Island Classic
• Race the East Canyon-Echo Road Race
• Race at least 5 crits
• Ride LOTOJA (if I get in)
• Ride at least 2 centuries
• Log over 2,000 miles this year

There they are for now. I'll probably add some more specifics as I figure out what kind of form I'm in this year.

SEO

I've agreed to help my brother-in-law and wife with SEO for their real estate website. So I'm reading SEO for Dummies. I think it's actually going to be do-able. So here goes nothing:

View Utah Homes

The Best Home site to search, find, buy, or sell your home in Utah! View ALL available Utah MLS Listings, New Listings, Price Reductions, Google Street Views and More! Easy searches of Homes, Condos, Townhouses, Short Sale, Foreclosure and Bank Owned Homes and Properties!

Syracuse Utah Homes For Sale

Centerville Utah Homes For Sale

Hooper Utah Homes For Sale

Davis County Utah Homes For Sale

Layton Utah Homes For Sale

Farmington Utah Homes For Sale

Short Sales in Utah

Update

I figure it's been awhile so I'll post an update on my life. Unfortunately I tooted the horn a little premature (problem I have) about LOTOJA. It turns out that I did NOT get a spot. Which would have been fine if I could have found out a little sooner than the day AFTER registration had closed. I would have liked to at least try to get in through the lottery, but oh well. Maybe it was all meant to be because just last Friday I found out that my contract with the Davis County School District will not be renewed. So I'm looking for a job again. I'm glad at least that I have about three and a half months to look. I'm just not looking forward to looking. I love my job right now. Special Education is a hard job, but it's really satisfying too (the thought of having all summers off didn't hurt either). I totally dropped the ball on the 10 year reunion because of the stress of possibly losing my job (I've know that 1 year hires might not get their contract renewed for a couple of months now). Anywho. Life just barrels on regardless of the feeling that I've been left in the dust. I'm a positive person though. I believe that everything happens for a reason and I'm a firm believer in Karma (so if anyone needs their lawn mowed or something like that, I could stand to earn some brownie points). Things will get better. I just hate the thought of leaving a really good job for one that I'm might not like as much. So here's to hopping, and yes I spelled that right.

PS I finally found out what's wrong with my wrist. I have what's called gymnast wrist. Which explains a lot. I know I don't do gymnastics while I'm awake, so I must be doing it in my sleep which explains why I wake up so tired all the time. Two birds one stone.

Good day.

Here's today's route:

It was a great day. Legs felt great. Only had one small climb, but I didn't have to shift into my smallest gear like I normally do to get up it. Unfortunately my ride got cut short because of swim lessons. Every mile counts though...besides look at those calories!

Semi-Official

So I just got the word and it's only semi-official, but I'm announcing it now: I'm into LOTOJA. So where's my bike...I need to start riding.

Training? That's a good one!

Soooo, training isn't going quite as planned, but after today's ride I really need to ramp it up. Here's the route:

http://www.mapmyride.com/route//ut/syracuse/940127085602246078

I only went a little over 20 miles but it felt like a lot more. I had the wind at my back on the way home too. Most of all my butt really hurt. I've got to log more miles in the saddle. If nothing else to get my rump used to the saddle. If I'm going to do LOTOJA I've got to get used to sitting on that thing for about 10 hours. We'll see how it goes.

Garmin Edge 500

Just got my Garmin Edge 500 bicycle computer yesterday and I already love it. I haven't had a chance to give it a good long test but I rode around the block and it was pretty cool. The 500 doesn't have internal maps but when you hook it up to your computer it places your route on a map. I love the website www.mapmyride.com to keep track of my rides and such, and with the Garmin I can sync it directly to the site. Pretty freaking cool. I tried using the mapmyride app for a little while, but because that isn't based off of a real GPS when I rode out on Antelope Island it wouldn't track my ride. The app was a little inconsistent when riding around town even. Like I said I haven't had a chance to give the Garmin a full scale test, but I'm certain it will be more accurate than the mapmyride app on my iPhone. One thing that I was worried about when I bought it was the setup. Was it going to take me 3 days just to figure out how to use it? I didn't even have to look at the instruction manual. It took me about an hour and I was done (and that includes installing it on my bike). It has 3 cutomizable screens that you can put from 3 to 8 information readings. It has everything from speed to power output (if you have a power meter). I bought the version with the heart rate and cadence. It picked up them both instantly. I've had bike computers in the past that didn't want to communicate with the heart rate strap or cadence unit. So far this is the coolest bike computer I've ever owned. Hopefully the weather will improve and I'll be able to give it a proper test.

Not such a good start.

Well my alarm went off at 5 AM this morning and I turned it off and went back to bed. It's going to take me a while to get used to this whole waking up early to exercise thing. So far Training 1, Kris 0.

It has begun.

So I figured with it being Super Bowl Sunday and all I'd shave my legs...training starts tomorrow. The first of many days leading up to LOTOJA. I tried to put a countdown on the blog, but none of them worked very well. So if you know of one let me know. Anywho, not a huge post today, just wanted everyone to know that the training starts tomorrow and GO COLTS!

LOTOJA

I know I've been saying it for sometime now, but this year it's really going to happen. I'm doing LOTOJA. For those of you that have no idea what that is, it's a really long bike ride from LOgan TO JAckson. It's about 206 miles. Rumor has it that because the bike shop that I work at is one of the sponsors of the race we get a few entries into the race. So hopefully that works out. If it doesn't I'll have to do it like everyone else and put my name in the lottery and hope for the best. A few years ago they pretty much said this is the time that registration opens and the first however many people that register get in. They switched it to a lottery to make it a little more fair. Now registration opens for about a week then they hold the lottery. So for the next few months I'm going to try and keep everyone updated on my progress towards the 206 mile ride.

Here's the course map.

Here's the elevation map of LOTOJA.