Friday, January 29, 2010

Update + Mozzarella Sticks, Black&Bleu Burger, Fries, Custard Sundae with...

...caramel, hot fudge and salted pecans. That my friends evidently is the key to a good ride. This is what I ate last night for dinner and dessert. Oh yes, then when I arrived home at 9:30pm I ate salad, crackers & salsa and a few handfuls of almonds. All of that food is the fuel I was using to have some great training today.
Despite my objections for the past couple weeks, I have decided this is perhaps the easiest and best way to keep all those who care up to date on what is happening with me as I travel. I will be leaving February 3rd for training camp in Calpe, Spain with Team RadioShack. It is sure to be an adventure. I will do my best to post often, perhaps everyday, to keep all informed of how, what, when I am doing things (races, training, mentally, physically, etc.)

Back to the training today. It was a beautiful day out here in Las Cruces. I woke up to 32 degrees and snow on the ground, but that was quickly combated with sunny, blue skies and a slight breeze. I decided to ride one of my recent favorites the Afton power station ride. It was the perfect venue for my workout, which went very well. I have been recently training with power (SRM) thanks to the sponsorship provided The Shack, but it is all too easy to get wrapped up in the numbers. You need not play this "video game" and shoot for high score all the time, although I must admit it is very tempting. Recently I have been trying to ride more by feel and let the data simply collect until I have a more substantial base of numbers to base my training off of. It is working well as I am going back to my more old school method of training by feel. Today my efforts were totally by feel and after reviewing the numbers, I had a great day. Not only by the numbers, but by the way I felt, too. I think the volume and intensity I have been pushing since the return from Puerto Rico (more to follow) is paying off as I ease up a bit before camp.

After finishing my workout, I rolled back out to the beautiful valley road (Hwy. 28) and bumped into a fellow cyclist who I had never seen before, not that it is all too common. This guy hailed from El Paso, TX and was just out for an easy spin. We rode together for a bit until he turned home and I turned back toward Las Cruces. It was nice and I learned he was a physicians assistant, which would have been helpful the last week as I have been trying to get all this crazy blood work and heart exams done for the UCI. The tests are part of the physicals and biological passport business that is part of the crack down on doping in the sport. I love the crack down, but am not too fond of all the extra work I have to go through to do my part to make the sport clean. I constantly have to update my whereabouts information telling the testing companies where I am at all times. It is annoying, but I like it if it helps clean up the sport. Enough rambling.

Update for the rest of my life. I got married to my girlfriend/fiancee of 5 years on January 2, 2010. It was the best wedding we could have ever hoped for. Our friends and family were wonderful and we wish we could do it all again! Thanks to everyone who came and celebrated with us! And to those who couldn't make it, we missed you. Post wedding, we caught a crazy flight from MSP international airport at 7:30am. Yes that is right, 7:30am the morning after our wedding, we caught a flight from an airport 3 hours from Decorah... do the math. We left the hotel at 3:00am the night of our wedding, drove through the night/morning, arrived at the airport fine and then the lines... holy crap. I swear they were at least a half mile long. We were worried about making the flight, so I searched for other options, which revealed an outside check in. Weather update for MSP at 6am on January 3rd: -25 degrees withOUT the wind (there is a negative sign in front of the 25!) We had to sacrifice though in order to make the flight. The line inside was hundreds of people long while the line outside was 6 people long. The problem was that our destination was Puerto Rico, so we had packed our winter coats in the clothing to be shipped back to Las Cruces from Minnesota. We froze a little bit! Long story short, we made it and had a magnificent time in Puerto Rico, except: don't board the ferry to Culebra when you want to go to Vieques! Especially when the seas are rough from storms passing through the area. Yes, so we wanted to go to Vieques, an island off the NW coast of Puerto Rico for snorkeling and the best bio-luminescent bay in the world. Well, the weather delayed the Culebra (other island off the coast) ferry to depart at the same time as our ferry. Being the lemmings we are, we got in line boarded the ferry and sailed. And when I say sailed, I mean that I went straight to the back of the ferry and delivered my morning breakfast to the ocean, a few times. Upon docking, we looked up and saw "Welcome to Culebra". Crap. Unfortunately the weather was not great, otherwise we would have enjoyed Culebra for the day, including Playa Flamenco, one of the top 3 rated beaches in the world. Weather being bad though, we decided to board the next ferry back and weather the storm AGAIN. Yes, the way back was no different. By the time we arrived back at the mainland, I had thrown all the sea-sickness from my body, but Lisa was at the brink of her motion sickness, she toughed it out though and kept her guts to herself, show off! After this disappointment, we debated if we could try and board another ferry the next day to go to Vieques and do what we wanted. After feeling like we were in the ocean for the rest of the night, we decided no. Every vacation has one really good/bad story and that was ours. We had many other great adventures and perhaps I will post pictures later.

I am sure you are sick of reading now, so I will save the update on our new life together for a later date; summary is that marriage is great and we are have a wonderful time. Thanks for reading!

4 comments:

Phil Cianciola said...

Thanks for taking the time Matthew. I'll be passing on this link to all the PhilCast listeners on Monday's show.

http://onmilwaukee.com/author/showauthor.html?id=145

Your hometown fans in Tosa will enjoy reading your adventures I am sure.

Unknown said...

Wow, I just Googled Matthew Busche Blog and nothing came up. Then I logged onto Gmail and got a link to this blog - that's service. Big thanks from NE IA. Say hi to Jason for me sometime.

Bill Rucker said...

Hey, congrats on getting married!

Shane C. said...

Hope your flight is going well. The bags look great...you'll know what I mean when you see facebook. Take care.