The Wonders of Sleep

To update quickly, the week prior to training camp was insane...deployment ended up taking 50 hours, almost straight. I only took 3 3/4 hours out of that time for quick naps at work and 2 1/2 hours for eating food. The rest was solid deployment-related work. It was the most I've ever done and this was my first deployment experience ever. The support my co-workers provided was awesome and it really helped at 2 am Monday morning (the day everyone was coming into work and expected the system to work) when one of my co-workers was on IM with me, keeping me awake and helping me think through solutions to our last problem. It's hard to think after working intensely so hard and with so little sleep.

No need to bore blog readers with this info, but I was very pleased with how that went off. It is something I feel very good about and was a very large part of my life (well, still is, and I'm happy about it). The rest of the week prior to training camp (after deployment) was still very hectic due to bug fixes now that the system was being used in production and some remaining deployment activities that hadn't been necessary prior to that. Didn't get more than 3 hours of sleep any night that week.

Training camp-- We all took LT tests the first day and got to know some top-notch coaches and Kimberly Baldwin, one of the fastest women racers (while she was racing) in the US and world. The ColoBikeLaw girls are strong and fast, and we all seemed to gel very well. The roads in Scottsdale were smooth and flat/rolling for the most part. There were a couple of significant climbs, thrown in there for variety. I don't think I saw a cloud in the sky once the entire weekend. I was trying desperately to do base miles (hr < 143) as that's what I do in January. It was hard to go as slow as I wanted to with the group-ride mentality kicking in, especially every time the road tipped up. After training like this for so long, it's no problem for me to wave good-bye to the group and not care about going my own pace. It's what makes me fast in the spring. And, being overly fatigued, it didn't make sense to try to go any faster, even when my teammates were trying to get me to go faster. I don't give in easily to peer pressure...never have, it's just not worth it, not in January, anyway. I realized later that I was running ~80 psi in my tires all weekend. It's just so easy to be in "trainer" mode. Good thing I remembered to wear a jersey & helmet!

This week, I finally got to completely make up for all of the lost rest (> 9-12 hrs sleep a night all week) and yesterday on my ride, it was pretty amazing to see what the sleep did. My power was up very significantly and the effort necessary to push the pedals so much harder seemed so much less than it did in AZ (interesting since there's even waaay more oxygen down there than there is up here). So, I think that's the nitty gritty. The plan for this blog is to move it to a different site where I can host it myself. So, I've been procrastinating on posting here b/c I just want to get the new site going...but that's contingent upon getting a new internet provider so I can run my own server w/o necessary ports being locked down. All of that should happen in the 2nd week of February so that's what I'm looking forward to now.

One more thing before I sign-off...wasn't this weekend fabulous?!?!!?!!! Nothing like perfect spring weather in January! :)

AZ Training Camp

Check out the ColoBikeLaw.com 1/2/3 women's team (not everyone in attendance)...stories soon...back to work today, weekend riding & hanging with teammates was awesome.

Work, but is it, Really?

The past quite a few weeks have been full of few other things besides work. Finally, today, I am deploying a huge project that I have been working on for the past 8 months. All of the real work is done now, the bugs have been found and tossed out. Much of deployment involves running scripts and waiting - and - hoping that everything goes as planned.

The adrenaline rush of having something like this come together and go out is very similar to the one I feel when finishing a race. This project hasn't been a solo effort, it's a team working together. Even though we're paid to do this, it wouldn't be successful if it didn't somehow excite us to do this work. It's in our blood. Just like racing...but not quite.

Never a dull moment

Let me introduce my esteemed co-worker, James.

Christmas Tree

This is my first real Christmas tree--ever! This tree was born and raised in Coal Creek Canyon. It's such a nice tree, I wish I could keep it all year. And, it really beats the little fake one that I had last year. Between this and getting to play in the snow this weekend, I'm really in the Christmas spirit now.

*Sneeze*

I'm dusting off the ol' blog...it's going to be all shiny and new in a few days. Too much has been going on, sleep has been minimal and I value sleep pretty much more than everything else in life.

There's a ton to blog, too. :) Hope everyone in blog-land is enjoying the July-like Christmas season!

I just signed up a new...

I just signed up a new Jott.com account this is really cool. I am talking through my phone and Jott will translate that text into a blog entry so lets see if this works. Bye.

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jott.com

Tonight I learned about this cool new service called jott.com. I'm not being paid to write about it, it's really cool, though, so I thought you'd want to know all about it. Basically, you call this number from your phone, leave a message to yourself or someone else, jott.com then transcribes the message and emails you with the text.

Something else jott.com does is allow you to speak your blog entries. So, I just tried it. Hopefully it'll show up here in the next few minutes. Speech recognition on drugs, man!

Happy Birthday, Doug! (For those of you who don't know, but you should if you've been to my place, Doug is the coolest painter in the world.)

Time Delay

Has it been that long since I last blogged? Apparently! Now, the Rockies have made it through the off-season and are in the World Series!!! No, I'm not the biggest baseball fan, but I have always been a fan of the Rockies. Besides, I'm a native Denverite, therefore, I do qualify as a loyal supporter (because everyone knows that Denver has the best fan base in the country).

It's hard to believe how loud the crowd was--my windows were shut (and the building is well insulated from noise) and I could hear every time there was an Arizona out or Rockies run. The energy is pretty amazing.

To celebrate, I started the morning by running around Coors Field. Three sports reporters and their crews were by the stadium reporting on the game. Of course, there was nothing going on and the grounds only showed slight signs of wear.

In other news, the past couple of weeks have been family-filled. There were lots of pictures and stories...so, of course, I haven't blogged anything because it involves uploading pics and writing...and my priorities have been focused on other things (same ol, same ol....training, reading, sleeping, working...)

Thank you, Rockies

Mondays are always the busiest day at the gym. It was quite a pleasant surprise to find that everyone except two people are such Rockies fans that they chose to watch yesterday's game rather than workout. It was a good game and the Rocks are going to the playoffs. That's big news...hopefully they go all the way so I have the gym to myself for awhile. Go Rockies!