madness

at least they lost to UCLA. i felt bad cheering against the bruins, but i had to stick with my team. could have been worse, could have been some garbage school like USC or something. while i was pulling for morrison and the zags to make it to the final 4 and possibly slide their way into the national championship game, i have to say i am glad they lost to UCLA. especially since UCLA looked phenomenal in their elite 8 game last night against memphis (in that pretty bruin blue to boot). so i will dutifully cheer for the west coast team through the remainder of their existence in the tourney.

speaking of, i think the refs have been doing an awesome job during the madness. they have been letting the kids play and not calling some of the iffy fouls. it adds so much more to the whole idea of college basketball, with players getting so amped for their schools and for advancing without having to worry about losing momentum b/c of lame refs. so i tip my hat to you, mr. part-time-worker-at-foot-locker. not to mention the games themselves have been AWESOME!i love march madness.

yesterday's quote-unquote bagel ride was a sub-par showing by the harrisonburg hardcore. i was the only other person who showed up in the mid 30-degree snow and rain to go out and ride, and had unfortunately missed the other rider by a minute or two upon reaching the bike shop. so i headed out on my own towards melrose and new market, quickly offing my extra long sleeve-layer. the snow and rain stopped, the skies cleared, and the legs warmed up. over the course of my ride i rode a strong tempo over some hills, an easier tempo up others. the roads were dry and i decided to add on some extra loops, going farther and farther outside of town.

i hadn't been out on a ride by myself for a good numbef of weeks, and it was nice to just relax; not worrying about holding a wheel or talking to anybody. my legs felt pretty solid, not great but not hindering my pedaling. lets hope i can keep getting stronger through the spring/summer. i tried calling mckeegan and grant when i was riding back into town, to see if they wanted to hop on their steeds and lead me on another hour loop or so, but to no avail, they still were waiting for the weather to "clear up". poo-poo. next time boys.

prior to the bagel ride (and silently part of my motivation to ride in the nar-nar weather) i made/ate 6 scrumptulescent chocolate chip pancakes.

i came to the conclusion (after eating a little of the leftover batter while waiting to flip my 'cakes) that dough/batter is God's gift to man. there are very few things as tasty/horrible for your health. brownie batter, chocolate chip/walnut/coconut cookie dough, bread dough (for those of us out there whose moms made dough for pizzas, bread, and pasta at one point). i mean honestly, if you've got about 4 scoops of dough left to make the last few cookies of the batch, are you going to scrape every last ounce out of the bowl kicking and screaming? or are you going to sit down in front of the tv while your cookies are baking and polish off the remnants of the bowl raw? no contest. guilty as charged.

another swift move is sliding into the kitchen while mom is making a batch, shoplifting a spoon out of the drawer, and removing a healthy portion of dough and walking out of the kitchen like nothing happened. all while her back is turned checking the cookies currently baking. its like a mission impossible def-con 5 operation. minus the bullets. plus the delicious dough. mmmmm. my arteries curse in angst, yet i do not hear.

uneventful week ahead. full of mediocrity and laziness most likely. i can't race at hopkins/umd next weekend because of my testing, which really sucks because those were gonna be some big-time races. oh well. looks like i will just have to turn up the epo...er...juice for va tech, harri-roubaix, and confrence champs at wvu in april.

speaking of performance enhancing drugs, i guess there is this new one called IGF-1, an undetectable growth hormone being investigated in Belgium. Erin Bishop had an great post regarding testing riders for EPO post-penalty. basically following the same rules as a former inmate does with a probation officer. it appears that this new growth hormone (EPO is not a growth hormone, it is a blood booster) may be quite widespread in the pro peloton. i guess we'll find out in the near future. and what, Fillip Meirhaeghe is Belgian? i am not directing that towards Belgians in general, i just think that he is a horrible role model for their country and should probably be the first guy tested for IGF-1 when they eventually come out with tests. i guess the whole mentality of europeans vs americans with doping in cycling factors in too. not that (i think) they think it constitutes a lesser degree of cheating, but we as americans are appalled that people do it in the first place, and europeans simply seem to shrug their shoulders and assume that almost everyone does it anyways.

again, all of this is just my opinion. dopers suck, kick them out of racing for at least 5 years, test them randomly while they are banned from racing, and stay on top of drugs they might be using. sounds simple enough, right?

and so i end this long entry, have a great week everybody. damn, i just realized that i wrote all of that without my music playing.

still workin on that chris horner smirk...