socialy retarded

Wednesday night mayhem.

Posted on 13. Aug, 2009 by Derrick.

In what has become our weekly ritual, Hyon, Floyd and I rode to the top of lookout mountain and as usual we timed ourselves.

The more I do this ride the more fun I have doing it.

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Head wind go away.

Posted on 06. Aug, 2009 by Derrick.

I called Hyon on Saturday and the conversation went kinda like this “Lets go ride tomorrow” Hyon responded with “O.K. what did you have in mind?” I couldn’t think of anything good so I said “I don’t care, lets do something that is going to make me work, and regret that I went on a ride”  without pause he answered with “Lets ride from Idaho Springs to the top of Loveland pass”. I hung up quickly after saying yes for fear I would chicken out. Summer started giggling and said to me “well, you did ask him to go on a ride that you will regret”

60 Miles, 4300 feet in elevation, and a boatload of pain.

When we got up to Idaho springs, it was a beautiful day. Not a cloud in the sky. However, after about the first 5 miles we realized that the 15-25 mile an hour headwind wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. Having a 30 mile assent without a head wind is difficult in its own. Adding in a head wind was just plain mean.

As you can see with the Stars and Stripes standing at attention, we had some serious windage.

Even the Georgetown lake had white caps

So after 6 hours of riding I decided that I was going to lay down at the bottom of loveland pass for a couple of minutes before we made our descent. I knew that we had another hour to two hours on our bikes, and at this point everything hurt.

Then we started downhill….. Whoooooooosh. Our average speed according to my GPS was 32mph with a top speed of 48mph. What made it fun was all the sunday trafic that we happened to be blasting past.

If you had asked me if I was having a good time at the top, I would have socked you in the nose. The speed of the descent and able to enjoy the scenery made it all worth it.

2 lara bars, 2 clif bars, 1 Gatorade, 2 liters of water, and 7 hours of riding later. We were finaly back at the car. EVERYTHING hurt. I have no idea how those professional cyclist do this every single day.

On the way home Hyon candidly said to me “We should do this once a month” I’m not sure if I’m ready for that but, hell, I’m not going to say No!

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Lap Swimming Etiquette 101

Posted on 23. Jul, 2009 by Derrick.

I got to the pool early yesterday to hit a short hard 750m swim. When I got there, all the lanes were full. I looked at the lane markings and absolutely NO ONE was following the “slow lap” “medium lap” and “fast lap” signs. To further my frustration, no one was circle lap swimming either, which was also clearly posted.

I don’t know if it was because it was predominantly older folks, and they simply didn’t give a shit, or all of theme were illiterate. I do know that it was a cluster fuck of people swimming everything from doggy paddle to brest stroke. So I picked what looked like the safest lane with the two most experienced looking swimmers.

I hopped in the lane and talked to the first guy and he said that he had no problem with me joining their lane. I asked him if it would be OK if we swam with a circle lap, and he said that would be fine, but the other guy in that lane had been sticking to one side. I then waited for the other gentleman to join us at the end of the pool. When I asked him if we could “circle lap swim” he looked at me with an odd look. I then drew a circle with my finger in the water indicating a clockwise lap and he simply stated “yeah, I’m not stupid, i know what a circle is”. I thought to myself, well you may know your shapes but your a fuckin idiot because you cant read for shit. He then jumped out and said “I’m done anyways”. Well then, why the hell did you take the time to be an asshole?

I wish he had stayed in the pool, I would liked to have peed right in front of him just for him to swim through it. I did see him later mackin on some grandma bun, and I wanted to walk up to her and say “This guy has a tiny dick” and walk off. Old fuckers like that annoy me.

So later that day I decided to take Floyd and Hyon up lookout mountain for some hill climbing on our bikes. I love that ride late at night. Perfect temperature, and its fun as shit to bomb down the mountain roads with just a bike light. We all timed ourselves on the way up. Hyon made it up in 33 minutes, I made it up in 37, and Floyd took 43 minutes.

Good fun, tonight is running night with Guinness and Summer.

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Week in review.

Posted on 19. Jul, 2009 by Derrick.

This past week has been action packed. So much so, that I didn’t have time to post any of this weeks events. So I’ll just do a day by day break down.

Saturday July 11th. Summer, Hyon, Theresa, and I had a road ride planned. The girls bailed, so the boys decided to do some mountainbiking. Not that I don’t love riding with Summer, but when its just the boys we have a tendency to go lickety split. Hyon took me to a place called Apex.

The trail in its self was difficult and challenging with multiple bike-n-hike areas. It was about 8 miles total with roughly 2200 feet in elevation gain.

At this point we were about 3/4ths of the way up (Hyon kept saying that at least)

On our way down we hit the Enchanted forest. An amazing decline, lots of roots and little hazards that made the ride just a tad more fun!

Saturday, July 12th. Summer and I rode 26  miles down the Platt river and back. We spent a good portion of that time chilling at a splash pool in littleton watch kids play.

Monday, July 13th. I took my mom out to the Westminster Open space. Guinness’ favorite place of all time. Mom was laughing at Guin and his antics in the water. Later that week we found out that they closed the Open space due to the plague.

Environmental Health Services submitted flea specimens to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment for testing on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 and received results back this morning. The area is being closed to the public and posted with plague warnings signs today.

Dr. Jim Dale, DVM, MPH, Director of Environmental Health Services said, “There have been no reported human cases of plague in the area and if precautions are taken the disease is not considered to be a threat to humans.”

Apparently all the little prairie dogs are extremely susceptible to plague. It was odd because Summer and I were lamenting before the press release that we hadn’t seen any little faces around open space. We thought it was simply due to the grass being to high in areas. Its a good thing that our dog has given up on trying to catch those little guys.

Tuesdays, July 14th. Mom and I swung by my little gym and I swam 2000 meters. It was a good session, and the Total Immersion training is paying off. I can easily swim the 750 meters required for my triathlon. We then headed downtown so we can buy her a new rain jacket at REI. Then sat and shot the shit for a couple of hours while she was amazed at how many people used the bike paths in downtown Denver.

Wednesday, July 15th. Since my mother is visiting form Germany, I loaned her my car. I normally commute on my bike anyways. So I hit the road and had a uneventful commute into work. Most of my co-workers seemed concerned about it being in the mid 80′s, but I have been used to riding in the 110 degree heat of Phoenix.

I got a call from Hyon at about 7:40pm asking if I wanted to go do lookout mountain. I knew that I was going to have to ride again on Thursday and Friday, but I could never turn down an evening ride.

So decked out in my commuter gear (ie T-shirt and running shorts) We hit the bottom of the ride at about 9:30pm. It was a nice cool 70 degrees, and the darkness hid the hill climb. My legs were still a little sore from our ride just a couple of days ago, but I put my head down and we made it up in about 40 minutes. Respectible time but we decided to push it to the tippy top and ride another mile.

Bombing down the mountain with just some bike lights was fun. My heavy ass steel touring bike with 28mm wheels tends to handle the descent better then a normal road bike. So I had to slow down a bit for Hyon.

Thursday, July 16. Commuting only! Just good ol fashioned bike commuting.

Friday, July 17. I thought that since I had not swam since Tuesday, I would hit the gym after work. So I packed my panniers with my swim gear and headed off to work. After work I rode over to the gym and figured I would get another 2000 meters in. This time I wanted to see how fast I could get my first 750 meters done. 22 minutes! When we started this Tri-training, I was well over 30 minutes. My goal is to be in the 18 minute range before the tri.

So in review, the past week I;

• Swam 4000 meters
• Hiked 5 miles
• 67 miles of road riding.
• 10 miles of mountain biking.
• Rode just under a mile of elevation (5000 feet)

I think somewhere in there I worked. I’ll have to say though. With all that I did, my legs feel great. I’m looking forward to running 4 miles on Monday

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Lookout Mountain

Posted on 08. Jun, 2009 by Derrick.

Our friends Hyon and Theresa invited us on a ride from Arvada to Golden. My groin injury less than 5 days ago left me unable to run and a long ride was in order. I’m not sure that I was entirely ready for what Hyon and his friend Brian had in store for me.

We started off at Brian’s house

The beginning of our ride was slow and easy winding through back roads around Arvada.

Once we connected to the Clear creek trail, we realized how swollen the river was. This wouldn’t be that big of a deal besides the fact that just two days prior we had planned a future rafting trip with Kit and Annika down the Clear Creek in Idaho Springs. Summer refused to go, but was convinced it was a good idea once she found out she would be given a wet suit and I promised that she wouldn’t be launched from the raft.

Most of the day we were having to dodge water hazards along the bike path. But there was a kinda of cool bridge spanning over the creek.

When we finally got into Golden Hyon dropped a bomb on me explaining that the girls were going to break off and the boys were going to climb Lookout Mountain. For those familiar, that is where Colorado school of mines has their big M. It’s also where Buffalo Bills grave site is.

Colorado had been getting more precipitation in the last 3 months than usual. Good for the foliage and great for the views.

I can say that I didn’t make it to the tipy top. My groin was murdering me, and when I saw Brian and Hyon blast past me I decided to not summit. Brian claimed that I was only a couple of switch backs from being at the top but I was looking forward to my decent. Blasting down the mountain was a well deserved reward.

We met back up with the girls at the bottom of the mountain and headed home. The damage had been done and my groin was throbbing. I could barely keep up with the boys and at times dropped back and was bringing up the rear. By the time we got back to Brians house I was getting waves of pain that left me light headed.

Some ice, asprin, and a nap later, and I was ready to head over Kit and Annika’s for some old fashioned german food.

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Hyon cherry creek Theresa

Posted on 27. May, 2009 by Derrick.

We met Hyon and Theresa (I’ve known Theresa from back in the day) at my B-day. We found out that Hyon is riding 150 miles for MS on June 27, and we decided to go for a ride with them to help out in his training.

Unfortunately, the camera died within 3 minutes of arriving downtown. So this is our only pic.

the ride was awesome, but a little congested because of Memorial day weekend. We ended up riding from downtown to Cherry creek and back. It ended up being 34 miles which was enough for Summer and Theresa.

- D

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