Charlie Syracuse

Where to even start on this wonderful event. The beginning is probably the best place.

Back in march when I was diligently trying to plan my Mitchell training rides kevin said that he has heard good things about a century in lula, ga. I thought yea right who drives to Georgia to ride a century the week before Mitchell. As time approached something was tugging at my gut. So I signed upsaying that I should do a century before Mitchell.

Turns out that really wasn’t the reason I was lead to lula to reaffirm my faith in humanity and myself. After a spring of riding with my buddies and being passed by rude motorist I had lost faith that anyone other than a cyclist could be kind and courteous. The folks of lula proved me wrong. As my buddy and I drifted last through each sag stop they cheered and chatted. As slow as we were riding we never once felt rushed or that we were inconvieng them. I felt encouraged and heartened by each comment.

As myfriend gave up the ride at the 68 mile SAG I knew that I was then the last rider on the course and I internally pushed for speed, but the kind folks of LAP pushed me more without knowing it.

This push and encouragement came at just the right time along the way. From the clown at the midpoint to the ladies at the 75 mile SAG and of course the group cheering at the 2/3 Pie stop each added something special. These are truly God’s people.

Our world could take a lesson in how to interact with people from this fabulous community. So if the desire to take a long bike ride hits you one spring, look up this ride it is well worth the travel. Praise be to god for such an awesome church and event.

Well Mitchell is less than one and a half weeks out. My training has been sporadic at best this year. I have completed several long rides and several short rides.

But at this point I just feel a little ill-prepared for the upcoming event. However no matter what I am going to be doing the event.

Then it is going to be off to bigger and better things. For the remainder of summer I am going to be training like a mad man for the SC 1/2 Iron event. Then the big question of whether I am ready to compete in a full Iron is going to occur.

Holdbacks from a full iron are numerous but surmountable for the most part. The biggest issue will be balancing family and training. I think it is doable but I need to get into training first to verify. My daily training will start early in the morning hours and my trainer is going to become my best friend I suspect.

Just glad that I live in sunny, SC and have the opportunity to run outside for virtually the entire year. So only once or twice a week will everyone in my house be disturbed with me making the great noise of riding the fluid trainer.

But back to the task at hand. This weekend brings Lula and the LAP century ride. Hopefully I will complete it with no big issues and will have a great wek to recover. Off to Lula and thank goodness for a supportive family in all of my craziness.

Things are going well so far. 

Mon.  Bike and Basketball

Tues.  Swim

Wed.  Bike and Run + weights

Thurs.  Bike

Hopefully I can continue the trend that I am currently showing and improve on results from last year.  We are ever striving to move forward and moving is what I would really like to do when I am swim,bike, running.

Well I have finally set the schedule for 2009 and am a little scared of the actual effort that it will take.  From top to bottom it is going to take at least two training sessions per day for most weeks with a long ride or run on Sats. and Suns.

What are the events that I will work on:

April – Anderson YMCA Sprint Triathlon

May – Mt. Mitchell Challenge – Just a 100+ mile bike ride to the top of Mt. Mitchell.

June – Nothing scheduled currently but thinking about trying to find an Olympic Tri in the upstate area.

July – Tuning up and have agreeed to do the Assault on Mt. Mitchell Mt. Bike event with my bud Kevin.  This one is a maybe but we will see how I am doing at the time.

August – Nothing on the schedule just trying to tune up for the fall.

Sept. – Lets get up and ready for the Tri-the Ridge sprint triathlon.  Second time on this one and it is a training event for the big one.

Oct.  – SC Half Iron.  Holy smokes am I really going to try this one.  I guess that it will be the case.  Total time may be in the 4 to 5 hr. range, but do I really want to go here.

I think that is a yes, I really want to target the half this year.  Maybe next year will bring a full.  I have always considered it an insanity plea but there is just something about pushing your body to the limit and a full Iron would serve that purpose perfectly.  But to get going I have to get training, my Christmas bulk is up in the 210 lb range now and that just won’t do as by Oct. I need to be in the 165 lb. range.
Time to just Tri I guess this year.

Well the gifts are getting ready.nbsp; Only a few more things to pick up and christmas will be upon us.nbsp; Today was the last day at work for at least 2 weeks as I take my standard Christmas break.br /br /We are planning on finishing up the treehouse for the girls this weekend and then moving on to AK’s birthday on Tuesday.nbsp; Hopefully I will be back to my excercise routing sometime around the start of the year and ready for the Mt. Mitchell ride by May, 18th.nbsp; I guess if I am not I will simply struggle for the 100 miles to the top of the trail.nbsp; Hope everyone has a great Christmas and a perfect new year.nbsp; I will try to update the blog on exactly what gifts have been given and received.br /

Went up for our annual polar express train ride and tree hunt.  Totally awesome experience if you ever get the opportunity.  The best part of the whole thing was the look on the girls faces as they got onto the train and rode into the night.

We sang carols until I was hoarse and absolutely had a blast.  Thanks to everyone on the Bryson City Express car for making a memorable night for the whole family.

Well I finally got back to the states after a two week trip that started on election day.  How did it go you may ask, well very interestingly for work while also very stressful.  I enjoy Germany but hate being away from my family and worrying about them.

There is not a lot that you can do to help your family if something were to happen so while the days are always hectic the nights and evenings can be a little lonesome.  I truly wonder at times how people in the olden days survived cross atlantic adventures and how the families ultimately made it.  

Oh well Germany ultimately had great beer and great schnitzel.  Not to say you can’t get both in the states but they just don’t seem to exist in the quantities.  

But the downside to the food is the upside of my weight.  When I left I hovered in the 191-195lb range, now I am back to the 195-200 lb range and need to be down to about 180 lbs by the time May rolls around.  So I have a total of about 15 – 20 lbs to drop in a matter of six months.  Possible yes but my favorite eating holidays approacheth.  I will try to blog my workouts so everyone can track my progress.  

Here is to getting back to a shape other than oblonged and beer gutted.

Here I am on a business trip to Germany really wondering what exactly has happend to my great country.  From sea to shining sea or something like that the saying goes, but now we have elected a man that many will admit cannot even find a proper birth certificate that would put him into office.  A man who has noted ties to corrruption and militant muslims.
But not to be outdone the conservative right trotted our a hair brained gun toting soccer mom and her boss a Vietnam Veteran whose greatest claim to fame was getting shot down in a dispute that can’t even be classified as a war and then interred for five years.  So will our next republican candidate hail from Guatanomo Bay Cuba.  Who knows.

These are just the thoughts of an everyday man with way too much thinking time on his hands.  So the Germans ask are you happy with Obama, I say no.  Then so you supported McCain, I respond with no.  So what am I everyone asks.  I am a red blooded American who is quite honestly fed up with the current political system and the current politician.  I want change and the only way that I see that change happening is if we start electing Libertarians.  Yes that little know party that quite simply is what it is. Most conservatives are Libertarians at heart I must say.
The repubs just have to get by the little live and let live situation.  Yes my new party supports smaller government and troop moves back to the US.  It also doesn’t care about personal choices.  If you want to be gay then be gay, just don’t talk to me about it.

The Libertarian party is the way to go and I think that we all need to be All in and support this small party for the betterment of America and the elimination of a lot of political corruption.

Man have something under your name and occassionally you just forget about it. Well that is what happened. I finished my last race and then started into Triathlon training and totally forgot about my blog.

Well the training is going great at this point. I have decided that I will train for an Oly “Olympic Triathlon” and then race the sprint four weeks prior to the Oly.

This should allow for me to really run a good training run at the company event and to then complete an Oly which is this years goal.

Then I will start thinking about running greater distances and possibly pushing up to a 1/2 Iron.

As far as my running goes I am currently plugging along at a nice 7:30 or so pace on most of my training runs. This is allowing for me to properly gear up for a good race in Sept. Hopefully by then I will be down in the 6:45 pace or so for the race.

SImply to put things straight I have had one of those impossible situations. My computer ground to a complete halt and I needed to reinstall the operating system.

We have to simply reformat at times, but saving your overall work to date is very very critical to the operation. Since I was a linux Mint user I had to find all of my files and save them. The ordeal started out very nice and I put the files on my little bitty 80 gig USB backup drive.

All was going very well at that point, but things aren’t always what they appear. I then had to decide what exact operating system I was going to move too. Ubuntu had just released it’s latest version. But honestly it is becoming way to common, so the search was on.

I downloaded no less than seven seperate live CD’s and started playing. Consuming two days of my life I figured which one was the way to go. Drum roll please.

I am now running Fedora. The red hat system. It is running absolutely great. to date. Hopefully more updates are coming soon.