Bikes don't pay the bills...spread sheets do!!

After yesterday's ride on the Ogden's North Shoreline trail I had to check my calendar to make sure it was really still February. I was afraid that I had been so engulfed by school and lost the last two months of Winter! It felt way more like April if you ask me. And "they" say global warming is all a scam... ah huh. Talk about two amazing days of riding. The "North Side" (as its affectionately called by the local Ogden riders) was crazy good for mid-February, despite the rare patch of mud and about a million hikers with their trail-blocking dogs. Its amazing how many people came out of hibernation to take advantage of this warm weather weekend. That many people crammed onto a small section of trail doesn't allow for much flow during the ride, but that fact that I was sweating in shorts and a long-sleeved jersey in the middle of winter kept me smiling. Even more exciting was the fact that it was a truly sunny day without the typical middle-of-winter inversion the Wasatch Front is so famous for. Add in some good friends and you've got yourself a full out mountain bike party!

Speaking of good friends...Its sorta funny, just about all of our tight-knit mountain bike group are really smart engineers. Well except gym-teacher Tricia, forest ranger Eric, brew pub Brandon (my cute hubby), and doctor helper me. Seriously, in Ogden, is seems like your chances of finding a mountain biker who's not an engineer is pretty slim! Anyway, these guys (and Mary) get excited by silly things like Excel spread sheets and seemingly useless data--by the way, its only useless to me because I have NO idea how to interpret it! These smarty pants friends are nice to have around when it comes to things like power meter data. My husband's employees already think we are all crazy anyway because 99% of the time the topic of conversation at our weekly beer and pizza night at Rooster's is none other than...bikes. Now throw in terms like "watts per kilo" in the mix of engineer geeks/bike addicts and you've got one confused audience. Recently a few of us were lucky enough to have some testing done with the famous Max Testa and we just got the results back on Saturday. So of course we have all been clenching to the results like its our new bible. Comparing data, complaining about our weight or how the test was flawed...blah, blah, blah. Well at the meeting spot of our afternoon ride today we decided that with all these spread sheet data peeps, we are fully capable of doing the testing ourselves. I mean seriously, we have a few power meters, data-savvy people, and a book on power. How hard could it be anyway? HA! I guess we'll see how smart we really are or if we even partake in this grandiose plan of ours to outsmart those who have spent a lifetime of research on perfecting power.

Forest ranger Eric, gym teacher Tricia, me, and smarty engineer Chad.
(A few of us counting on the smarties to break the "Power Secret")

In the mean time, we talk big of this great plan and continue to clutch onto our priceless test results from Max, you know just in case the plan falls through. Ever so focused on that goal power threshold we hope to achieve before the bike season begins to pass us by. And boy does it pass by quickly when you have a full-time job, school, kids, etc, etc. Ahhhh, the life of a competitive racer who also has a full-time career! Its a little like living a dual life--racer starting 5 pm Friday, responsible employee by Monday morning. So until we optimize our power obsessions enough to pay the bills by riding bikes...Its off to work as usual Monday morning! Just for the record, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my friends figure out the power secret by August. Because for me that's when school ends and work begins...AKA Graduation. Ooh it would be nice to graduate to a career in cycling. But, just in case it doesn't happen I suppose I could always fall back onto this PA-thing (I hope you're picking up on the sarcasm, I know deep down the PA-thing is the golden ticket)!