The Neary Family

"I changed my mind mommy, I do want a brick house so if there *is* a wolf, he can't blow our house down."

Brady after telling Karrie 5 minutes earlier, in reply to her question about what he wanted in a new house, that he didn't want a brick house.

Seeing the caller ID was the house, I answered and had the following conversation:

Me: "Hey, babe." (thinking it was Karrie)
Brady: "It's me, dad."
Me: "Hey buddy, what's up?"
Brady: "I went poop and wiped my butt all by myself!"

It was a proud moment for sure.  My little man is growing up.  Bring on the skid marks!

We went to the fair and Brady went on the Nemo ride.  When it was done I went to help him get out of his Nemo and he whispered the following in my ear regarding the girl who was in the Nemo in front of his and had face paint and glitter:

"Daddy, I like her.  She's showing off her fancy."

So today was our office bike race up Ilchester Road in Ellicott City.  If you are unfamiliar with this road, the portion we "race" is about 9/10 of mile long with an average gradient of ~8%.  It starts out at 18%, levels out a bit before pitching back up to 12%, and then leveling off to more sane gradients to the end.  Why we torture ourselves with this is beyond me, but because we do I have decided to rename it the 4DG Challenge, or Four Dumb Guys Challenge.

The participants of this race are myself, Scott S., Bob M., and Mike F., co-workers of mine.  The first two of this group are avid road cyclists; the latter two are avid mountain bikers.  How this all began is a bit of mystery to me but from what I have gathered Bob said "Road bikers suck. Hulk Smash!" and in doing so challenged Scott to a race up Ilchester.  I'm not sure how this venue was determined but I would like to kick one of them square in the nutsack for choosing it.  Another uncertainty is how myself and Mike got dragged into this, something which undoubtedly also requires some nutsack kicking.

Before today we had done this race one time: October 4th 2009.  On this fateful day we all suffered greatly and Bob, self-named 'The Destroyer', won with a time of 6 minutes 15 seconds.  I was 27 seconds behind him and Scott was another 30 seconds behind me.  Mike came in sometime before we were all ready to leave.  In 2010 we could not agree on a date that would work for all of us and so the race didn't happen; no one shed a tear.

Enter 2011.  Sometime a couple months ago we agreed ton June 4th at 9am.  Almost as soon as we had firmed up the date, the smack talking began and did not let up until a couple of days ago...Thursday to be exact.  Why Thursday, you might ask?  Because Wednesday I went out to Ilchester and rode the hill; no one was impressed and my times were well below those of 2009.  To my credit it was over 100F with the heat index and I had done a pretty hard ride the day before, but still my resolve and confidence were broken.  I attempted to throw in the towel, asking my compatriots to allow me to bow out gracefully and without penalty (i.e. ridiculing) but they would not agree.  So now I had two days to consider my fate, one which I was certain would not be good.  At all.

Thursday I did an easy ride and Friday I rested.  My plan for Saturday was to get to the be ready to ride at 8:30am so I could get in a nice 30 minute warmup.  Unfortunately I was running late and only managed about 15 minutes of a mediocre warmup, and my legs, they did not feel good.  We lined up and Mike counted down for the start.  I will let the video below tell the rest of the story.

Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7HPFfnBLg4

As a training note, I had new 1-minute and 5-minute power personal bests during this event.  I also won a free Indian buffet lunch!  Thanks to my compadres for pushing me to do my best.

"Mommy is slow as 'olasses."  Brady, pontificating on the amount of time it takes Karrie to use the restroom while in her one-piece bathing suit after we left the pool.

Kind of at the last minute I decided to do this race in the small little town of Smoketown, Pennyslvania, about 20 minutes east of Lancaster.  My teammate Tom also decided to do this race and after Karrie and the boys decided they would go watch, I booked rooms for us at Spruce Lane Lodge and Cottages since the early start time necessitated us spending the night in order to be on time.  The cottage we had was really nice and as a bonus, I could walk out the door, turn left, walk 50 feet and be on the airport's perimeter road.

The weather for this race had been looking iffy the last couple of days and on race morning it was wet and sprinkling.  Tom and I headed over, registered and set up our trainers in one of the hangars to warm up.  Karrie and the boys showed up just prior the race start.  One of the reasons this race appealed to me was the relative flatness of the course; a one mile circuit of the airport's two runways with a 180 degree turn on one end and a couple of smaller turns to navigate the other end.  The start side was the longer of the two and was slightly uphill.  The category 5 race was to be 15 miles and they started us off with a neutral lap behind the officials' vehicle.  Once the gun sounded we were off and pace was fast.

I only managed to stay attached to the lead group for four laps before getting unhitched.  Every lap I went by, Karrie and Brady could be heard yelling encouragement to me, which was motivating, however the elastic snapped and I was off on my own.  About five laps later I was caught by a group of three other racers and the four of worked together to the end where I was beaten by half a wheel in the sprint of our group.

Overall I was not dissatisfied with my 18th place finish of about 50 racers, even though only 31 showed in the results; I'm guessing they did not include DNF'd riders.  I think this is one I will definitely do again next year, maybe adding some time to see of the sites in the area with the family.

Memorial Day in the United States of America is a day set aside for us, as Americans, to commemorateU.S. Service Members who have died in military service.  A day to reflect on those who have perished defending the values each of us should hold near and dear to our hearts.  I often become emotional on this day thinking about the totality and finality of this selfless act.  If I had to venture a guess I'd say that well more than half of Americans today never consider this holiday for anything more than another day off, a time for barbecue, the beach or an extended weekend camping; never taking into consideration the sacrifices made by our service members which allow them to "celebrate" any way they see fit.

On this Memorial Day I offer these thoughts I wrote some 4 years ago.  I also ask that you remind your lawmakers of the consequences of their actions when it comes to our military and service members.  In addition, remind them that it is their duty to ensure that ourmilitary members are taken care of and provided with the best equipment available to ensure that when conflict is over, they are able to return safely to their families.  Contacting your lawmakers takes only minutes to do via email and contact information can be found here.  These things are very small sacrifices you can make today to honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice defending our nation.

Today, consider these numbers: Nearly 1.4 million Americans have died while serving in our military service in various conflicts beginning with the American Revolutionary War, with another 38,000 missing.  In the past decade alone more than 10,000 service members have been killed, each of them escorted to their home in America with the utmost diginity and honor.  If you have never seen it, I highly recommend the movie Taking Chance, which details the journey home for a 19-year-old Marine, PFC Chance Phelps after he was killed in action in Iraq.

Lastly, if and when you encounter the men and women of our military during your daily routine, thank them for their service.  If you know someone who has served, thank them for their service.  All of them have at one point or another made the decision that they would fight to the death for you.

Happy Memorial Day.

After an argument with Karrie about going to bed, crying as I try to settle him down: "Daddy, I'm just not a big fan of mommy right now."

In the last installment of "Tales From a Tail Gunner" I lamented on how I'd been viciously dropped at the Black Hill Circuit Race and that I had every intention of doing whatever it took to make sure I stayed in the pack in my next race, the Carl Dolan Memorial Circuit Race, which took place Sunday, April 17, 2011.  So Sunday morning I got up at 0530 to eat and get packed for the race, having planned to meet my teammate Tom at the site at 0700 for a course recon.  Once there, we suited up and headed out for a couple of laps before the Juniors' races started at 0800.  The first thing we noted was the wind: there was an abundance of it and it seemed to be in our face on every portion of the 2.1 mile course.

Let me describe the course which uses the main road through an industrial park in which most businesses are closed on the weekend, meaning very little traffic.  This allows the promoter to close the lanes for traffic in a clockwise direction for the race.  Leaving the start/finish line the course has a gradual right hand turn with slight undulating hills for about 1.25 miles; this entire section had either a direct headwind or nearly direct crosswind.  At about this point on the course begins a gradual downhill into the only real corner on the course, which opened up into three lanes and continued downhill until about 1.5 miles into the course; this downhill section after the turn was the only portion of the course where we had a tailwind.  At 1.5 miles in began the climb to the finish line.  This finish climb began more steeply before leveling off into a slight uphill, the whole thing totaling about half a mile before a gradual downhill to the finish line.

During out recon I noted where I needed to be in relation to the group on certain parts of the course in order to be shielded from the wind.  After two laps we returned to our vehicles, pinned on numbers and other various things to prepare for our race which started at 0845.  Once done we headed out for some warm-up laps in reverse on the course.  At 0845 the Cat 5s were amassing and waiting to be called to the line and I was there, ready to go, with three of my teammates.  When we got the call I positioned myself on the front row, left side, in preparation for the head/crosswind coming from the right that we would encounter first.  The whistle blew and we were off.

Immediately two lines formed with me on the head of the line on the left.  I felt like this was the perfect position to be in but once we encountered the wind it was almost full on in my face.  I slowed a little to bring myself even with the third wheel of the right line but the wind persisted.  Eventually I had to ease up or blow up, and when I did the former I fell the back of the line rapidly.  I had flashbacks of being popped and dropped on the first lap as I had been at Black Hills so when the end of the line came by I stood up and put in an effort to latch onto the back and get some shelter.  There I was able to recover to the corner.  This corner could easily be taken at full speed, but at the end of the line I was braking considerably to avoid colliding with riders in front of me who were also braking.  The result of that was having to sprint nearly full out on the exit of the corner to get back up to the main group to do the climb sheltered from the headwind; if you were on your own when you started the climb, you were in trouble.  With the exception last lap (and the details of the start) this was repeated eight times, requiring an 1100w peak sprint exiting the turn and a 50 second 350w climb of me each lap.  As much as I tried to move up towards the front of the group before the corner, I always found myself near the back of the line, sometimes dead last.

On the last lap the pace picked up but the herd didn't thin too much.  We hit the corner with around 40 riders I'd guess and again I came out near the back of the line.  Once around the corner I could see that the front of the group had definitely opened it up and the line was strung out quite a bit.  I hustled up to a group of five guys and recovered for a few seconds when I noticed people starting to fade bad.  I picked up my pace a little bit and got by about 20 riders before the end of the steepest part of the climb, at which point I backed of a hair and prepared for the next move.  At the top of the hill, just as it starts to go slightly downhill to the finish, approximately 200 meters away, I stood up briefly to sprint but only got in a few revolutions of the crank before I had to sit down and just go as hard as I could.  Riders were still slowing and I managed to get by several before lunging for the line neck-and-neck with one other rider.  All told, I think I was only a few bike lengths behind the winner and on the same time.  I was confident I had a top-15 and maybe a top-10 but not really sure.

About 90 minutes after the race, results were finally posted; my teammate Charles had taken 3rd and I finished 8th.  This result was far more than I expected or even thought myself capable of, but there were a lot of things, not the least of which was luck, that went my way.  For starters, the wind prevented any breakaways from sticking for more than a couple of minutes because people weren't willing to work together.  Secondly, the course was not that hilly, or at least it didn't seem to be; I can't get seem to get a similar number from any website or my GPS.  Lastly, aside from my stint on the front at the start, I was mostly able to sit in the pack and conserve most of the race (as did most of the riders in my race I'd guess) which allowed me to have a good spurt of energy for the finish.

Average pace for the race was 22.7mph with the last lap averaging 25mph exactly; race data is here.  No one hit the pavement, but there was one near accident I narrowly avoided about six laps in.

So that's it, my second race.  An overwhelming success in my opinion.  Next up is the Turkey Hill Country Classic Circuit Race in Lancaster, PA on May 7th.  Karrie and boys are heading up with me and I'll have five teammates in my race with me so it should be interesting.

Brady turns four years old today.  Hard to believe how fast time has gone by.  We have been blessed with a healthy, beautiful, smart and caring son and we count ourselves very lucky.  Brady really is a terrific kid and a real sweetheart.  Happy Birthday, son.