FUNGA

Not only is Lara Logan SMOKING HOT, but she's got integrity and a fervent passion for the truth.

This video pretty much sums it up for me...although this topic is far bigger than simply being "women's news." "Bitch is the new black!"

Skip to 2:05 to go:

Does anyone else feel a little like the incredible hulk on Mondays? I'm not talking about being angry or green, but about feeling like your pants are going to become cutoffs at any second. Well, my pants always feel tighter on Mondays. I don't wear baggy clothes so I'm used to a fitted feel, but not akin to the lycra that I feel I never took off. I guess I'm not surprised since I get 50-100% of my training in on the weekends and the muscular swelling sets in by Sunday night. I'm never going to look buff, but at least I can feel buff and think that my suffering on the weekends is making me stronger.

Anybody actually go to the godaddy.com site and check out Danica Patrick's Superbowl commercial? If not, click here. Very funny!

I notice a lot of people feature hot chicks on their blogs. I came across this on Yahoo's homepage. I'm not at all happy with where Maria Sharapova, Keira Knightly, and Natalie Portman ended up (my top 3 in no particular order). And, I gotta say that the top 10 is pretty disappointing for my taste anyway.

I'm in a picture in the Jan/Feb issue of Bethesda Magazine on page 34/35. I'm not going to tell you what it's for, but the picture is a two-page spread. The title of the issue is, "The Best of Bethesda." I guess there's no coincidence that I'm in that issue right?!?!

I've been on TV and in a magazine the past couple of months. Not bad eh?

I just looked at the calendar and today is the 80th day in a row that I've worked without a day off. This is getting kinda funny for me...but I'm still highly motivated and things are going SUPER in the lab.

I've been asking myself whether it's appropriate to call myself a "cyclist" these days. After all, I'm harldy training. The following is the breakdown of my training volume for the past 4 weeks:

Three weeks ago: 2 hours
Two weeks ago: 0 hours
Last week: 2.5 hours
This week: 8 hours

I got to wondering where the line is drawn between "cyclist" and "dude who likes to ride his bike." I think there's a difference, and I'm feeling like I'm in the latter category. I rode my bike in to work twice this week, hence the higher volume. I simply can't bring myself to ride indoors. These days, I'm not prepared to suffer like that. I think about the winter routine I've done for the past three years doing VO2 max intervals and threshold intervals after work and the difficulty of maintaining hydration after losing 5 pounds of water weight each night. I had the powertap to focus on keeping my numbers in my zones, but many times my exertion was judged on whether I could make my nose bleed or not. I wonder if my hematocrit fluctuated back then as a result. I don't miss that brand of suffering...

I renewed my USA Cycling license and had a bit of a panic the other day. After paying, I was redirected back to my personal page where I noticed that my category was listed as category 2. I freaked out...WTF? I was thinking that there was no way I was going to be able to earn the upgrade back due to not being able to race a full schedule. But, more importantly, why the heck was I downgraded??? I checked the new rulebook to see if there was some revision that included poorly performing cat 1's, there wasn't...hmmm. I quickly wrote Randy Inglis an email about it asking what the rule change was that downgraded me automatically. Luckily, he determined that it was some glitch and that the only way I could be downgraded was if I requested it. Heck no I wouldn't request that!! So, all is well again and he took care of it for me. Whew!

I'm registered for Jeff Cup. Josh called me at 8:57 on Friday and talked me into at least registering. The only guarantee that I can provide is that if I am able to make it down to race, I'll get blown out pretty quick. Depressing, but I've never raced well at Jeff Cup. I'm excited to be registered though. It gives me motivation to make some sort of sacrifice (sleep) to train, but I know I have to keep my priorities in check and stick with the program. But, I'm going to do all I can to be in shape to last at least 50% of the way and try to help the team in any way I can.

Anyway, my training volume increased 400% this week and I'm now overtrained. I think I'll take a week off to recouperate...

I'm sure most of you have heard these green energy buzzwords ever more frequently lately. It's a very hot topic in politics as well as a heavy social issue. Al Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize for his research on global warming for goodness sakes. Well, as a cycling community, I think all of us are a bit more in tune with the ideas and practices of a healthy lifestyle compared to the general population. The term "healthy" is all encompassing to include the environment in which we live.

As you know, DC Velo promotes "Carbon Neutral" bike races with partnership with team sponsor Clean Currents. I wanted to share a few statistics that I was DUMBFOUNDED by after all the calculations were said and done.

The 2007 DrinkMore Water Grand Prix of Silver Spring was the third event promoted under the "Carbon Neutral" umbrella. For this race, 34,389.44 round trip miles were travelled to both racers to participate and to make the event happen. Out of all those miles only 1,116.22 miles were traveled by bicycle or mass transit leaving a net round trip total of 33,273.22 miles traveled.

Now, to certify the event "Carbon Neutral," renewable energy credits (RECs) must be purchased from Clean Currents or another green energy broker and then the Clean Energy Partnership certifies your calculations and verifies that the RECs purchased cover the emissions generated from the event.

So, here's the meat of the matter which I would hope should inspire you to make, or increase, your own efforts to reduce your energy demands and invest in renewable energy which I prove to be rather trivial in my calculations.

To offset the 33,273.22 miles traveled, 25,000 kilowatt hours of RECs were purchased from Clean Currents.

--> 1000 kilowatt hours = 1 megawatt hour = 1 REC

-->25,000 kilowatt hour = 25 megawatt hour = 25 RECs

--> 1 REC costs only $8

So, to make the 2007 DMWGPSS "Carbon Neutral," it only costs $200. Here's the real kicker though, 25,000 kilowatt hours ($200 worth of RECs) offsets:

1,400 POUNDS OF CO2

That's nearly ton of CO2. I find it remarkable and completely staggering that a bike race produces such tonnage of greenhouse gasses. And the cost of investing in renewable energy to offset the emissions is so very reasonable, everyone should be doing this.

Did you know that in addition to events like bike races, any resident or business in DC or Maryland can power their homes with green energy? Whether you're a Pepco or BGE customer, Clean Currents can broker your switch to renewable energy and quite possibly save you money in the process. So, you can lower your electric bill every month and use green energy. Seems like a no brainer to me. Whether it's your office or home, make the switch. Click on the links above and find out more about switching your home or office over to green energy. Make sure to fill out the appropriate form and then get in touch with Clean Currents to evaluate the switch.

There's no reason that all races in MABRA can't function under the "carbon neutral" banner. If your team would like to join the effort to "Go Green," let me know. I'd be more than happy to walk you through the process in advance of your event. I advocate this from a personal point of view only. I'd like anyone and everyone to depend on renewable energy. Leave me a comment or email me at adamsfung at gmail dot com if you'd like more information.

So Mike May, how about operating gamjams.com carbon neutral?

So, I put up some power numbers from group rides this past weekend and sure enough, the visitors here went through the roof. So predictable!! Everyone is curious, but hardly anyone talks about it. I understand why so many cyclists keep their numbers private. I'm speculating that a few possible reasons are 1) people are keeping their progress from their competitors 2) they're embarrassed by how low their numbers are 3) they hide them because everyone else does. Here's my argument: If you do any group ride, and let's be honest, we all do them regularly as group rides are a significant source of training stimulus, motivation, fun, and camaraderie to name a few, chances are that your competitors are out there riding right next to you. So many people are training with power that unless a person is completely clueless as to their own numbers, you can pretty much look over at whomever is next to you and deduce their power output within +/- 10 watts. So, what's the big secret? Are people using this as a reason not to discuss their numbers. A "you already know so why get specific" approach? Is it that you're actually keeping up with the leaders but are sandbagging and not showing your cards? I just don't think power should be such a hush-hush topic. If you look at time trailing, arguably where power output is most important, there are still so many factors that influence your race against the watch that your time can't be the direct result of your power output, but a summation of several variables with power a fraction of the equation. Apply that same argument to road races and crits and then factor in the dynamics of racing against others and the familiar statement that "it's not the strongest rider that wins, but the smartest" (or luckiest...or fastest sprinter...) seems to hold pretty true. Take a look at any category and we already know who the people to watch out for are. It's no disrespect to the others, but these are the people continuously animating and "making" the race. So again, what's the big secret?

I was re-reading my previous post and I want to make something a bit more clear when it comes to group riding. I mentioned that some folks "get in the way" so to speak. What I'd like to clarify is that I don't think anyone really gets in the way per se, but I think a lot of people don't quite understand their own strengths. It's like the strong tri guys that show up on group rides and can keep up just fine but don't have the experience of riding in a tightly packed group. I'm just always paranoid about getting unnecessarily injured and we all hear/see too many crashes. It's inherent to the sport, but it doesn't mean we should throw caution to the wind. If I crash myself, I take the responsibility for that, but what I never want to do is be responsible for others crashing. Look out for others with the same, or more attention as you give yourself. It's plenty ok to sit on towards the back of a group and is much safer than running out of gas trying to pull through.

Some people avoid discussing politics. It's a touchy subject especially in this area with all the people employed by Federal dollars. One of the most sensitive issues is where you get your paycheck and making sure you keep getting that paycheck. I'm not trying to offend or be insensitive, and I respect everyone's opinion, so bear with me. There's really no topic I won't discuss, but it's hard to talk about it without making specific mention of certain candidates and remaining neutral. I'm a Democrat, and I'll just make general mention about how I think it's best to approach choosing a candidate to support. I have three criteria which are weighted with equal consideration: 1) Matching the issues the candidate considers most important and their stance on said issue with your personal beliefs 2) Electability 3) RE-Electability. I will gladly support whichever candidate wins the Democratic nomination, but based upon the aforementioned criteria, one stands out. Let's take a look at #3 b/c this is the one that should perhaps be scrutinized more carefully. All three candidates are electable, but there are two clear front-runners ahead of the Feb 5th primaries in several states. The big movement, or buzz-word, is "Change." That's all good and it's clearly what the American public is crying out for at the moment, rightfully so. But, how best is this "Change" going to be implemented? Would you expect more "Change" to occur from a freshman Senator who has a fresh face and is an idealist but no significant experience in such a comprehensive management position, or one that has a very long and storied career in public service who has been at the forefront of "Change" for quite some time. So, the argument has been "Old Washington vs. New Washington" and no "Change" happens with the status quo. Well, that argument is total rhetoric and bandwagon propaganda when you consider the history of these candidates. Still with me? So, let's assume that either of the two front-runner Democrats win the presidency. With "Change" being such a cornerstone to each candidate's campaign, whichever Democrat wins simply can't fail at implementing that change. This is why...let's assume that the next president will run for re-election. If this promised "Change" is not in place and promises are not kept, we're looking at yet another change in government, and I don't mean "Change." That Democratic president won't win re-election if their record is poor as judged by their fulfillment of their promises...etc. So, back to the original issue, who would you more trust to implement "Change?" The candidates stand on nearly equal groud with minor differentiation on the issues. Do you trust someone with a proven track record who can't afford to keep instituting "Old Washington" as she's been accused, or do you navigate towards a "lightning rod" of a candidate with a fresh face and a similar stance on the issues but with little experience in making "Change" happen? I think it's quite trendy to align with Obama. Don't get me wrong, I think he's a great candidate and would support him if he won the nomination as I've said, but I'm more influenced by the greater prospect of seeing long-term "Change" and stability. That's just the way I feel anyway.

On a final note, Maria Sharapova crushed Lindsay Davenport in her 2nd round match. *Shriek*

With the 2 hours from the 7 AM last weekend, plus a 5:30 AM ride last Tuesday, and the 7 AM this weekend, I got up to 6 hours a week on the bike last week (my training weeks go from Sun - Sat). Woopee! On the 7 AM yesterday, it was a quite an elite crowd showing up. Russ, Butts, Josh, Ken, Dave B, Ryan, Nick M, Joe B, Brian M, myself?, Dave O, etc etc etc (just to be clear, if I missed your name, it's not because I don't think you're "elite," I just don't remember b/c I was trapped in the pain suitcase). Things kicked up hard on Mass Ave and it was full gas. Groups were scattered everywhere due to some poor choices in traffic negotiation, but I think things came back together somewhat. The tempo was fierce all the way to Old Anglers. People were looking around as usual at the bottom of the hill so I decided I'd test my legs a bit. I wasn't feeling great, but I don't expect to with the low training volume I have. It was enough to extract a group and off we went. Butts and I traded pulling up Anglers and down into Great Falls. McKinney shot off the front at the bottom of the park but I eventually pulled everything back together before the first leveling of the hill. Then, it was pretty steady the rest of the way. I skipped Brickyard to dissapate seeing stars and headed out w/ a group that was headed out to Sugarloaf. I just rode out Glen and back in River w/ Justin and Yo before heading to work for the afternoon. I did get home to see the Seahawks get crushed by the Packers. That was sad, but that Brett Favre is deserving of getting to the superbowl this year.

I joined the 8:30 ride this morning w/ Russ, Sean, Jose, Ray, Nick B, Ad, Dave O, Ramon, and some others. After an NCVC junior crashed himself at the top of Mass Ave. after not paying attention and running into Nick Bax, I almost packed it in and went my own way. There have just been too many crashes and serious injuries as a result during that ride and I normally avoid that ride as a form of self-preservation. But, I stayed with the group knowing things would split on MacArthur. The pace wasn't as fast today compared to yesterday, but was relatively steady with the exception of some riders that just don't understand how to ride w/ faster and more experienced people and get in the way instead of staying at the back. Nick attacked on Mtn Gate as per usual but didn't go anywhere. Sean, James, Nick, and myself took turns pulling and the pace stayed high enough that attacks weren't too disruptive. We kept the pace hard coming out of the park all the way until after the "sprint" on Democracy. It was a small select group and that is the only way to do that ride.

Jose came out on his brand new Cervelo Soloist SLC-SL. Damn that's a sexy bike. He let me ride it up the hill after the sprint just for fun. I think he's riding something like a 50cm and I would normally ride a 58, but it was fun. I rode the hill entirely out of the saddle and the bike felt like it was floating under me. Not sure if it was the tiny little machine under a 6'2" body or what, but it definitely felt like all it wanted to do was go forward. What a nice ride. If I could have any bike, it would be a really hard choice between the Giant TCR Team w/ the integrated post or the Cervelo SLC-SL. Of course, I'd be on SRAM Red either way. My goal is to get a new bike after I graduate and start actually making money instead of going deeper into debt.

So, I'm going to post my numbers here for fun. Power numbers are such a taboo and since I don't care anymore not being able to train as seriously as I'd like, what the hell. I'll post the more important numbers consisting of 20' and 30' normalized power as well as the % of time spent in the power zones at or above threshold. I am 6'2" and 157 lbs.

7 AM ride on Jan 12, 2008:

20' normalized: 353 watts
30' normalized: 341 watts

% Anaerobic Capacity: 7.0
% VO2Max: 5.2
% Threshold: 10.8

Total Ride Time: ~3 hrs

8:30 ride on Jan 13, 2008:

20' normalized: 350 watts
30' normalized: 338 watts
60' normalized: 323 watts

% Anaerobic Capacity: 13.8
% VO2Max: 8.8
% Threshold: 10.5

Total Ride Time: 2 hrs

Keep in mind when looking at the time spent at or above threshold that these account for the whole ride. If you subtract out the "non-business" part of the rides, those numbers go up dramatically. That gives an indication of how hard I'm working (and I still pull through!!!).

These numbers are significantly off of my best numbers at peak form, and they're around 5% lower than where they've been at this time the past two winters. So, I can't complain especially since I'm training less than 50% of what my training volume has been the past couple of years since I've been using power.

And, just for those naysayers out there that think I'm doing some super secret training and just not telling, my Critical Training Load is 24.2 and my Acute Training Load is 72.2. That should put things in perspective. For those that don't know these power training terms, my CTL tells the story of how much I've been training over time. It's perhaps in the range of 20-35% of the CTL compared to guys training seriously, and likely even lower when compared to my immediate competitors.

I often find myself questioning what the heck I'm doing in this process called a Ph.D. It's a hard enough process to begin with what with most of the professors still old school enough to think that graduate students should endure the same things grad students went through generations ago. There's quite a difference though these days considering the difficulty and sophistication of all the research being pursued these days. It should also be said that you'd get laughed out of your thesis defense if you were trying to justify a project of simliar sophistication to one conceived of just ten years ago.

The field I've chosen to pursue is extrememly complicated as it is. Add to that the politics of fellow scientists acting like children and slinging mud at each other because they have a difference of opinion, failure to evolve with new yet justifiable principles, or people completely ignoring their conflict of interest and trying to weild their distinguished positions to ruin people's careers and you will quickly agree that science (at least the field of protein folding) is more like grade school than intellectuals using their collective power to advance our understanding.

As I get caught up with people out on the bike, I'm often asked why I work so much. Well, here's why...I've had to deal with another significant source of adversity...my boss. He accepted a position in Spain and moved in January of 2007. Since then, the people in my lab have graduated or migrated there. There's now three of us left, two graduate students and a post-doc. A short time back, we found out the hard way that all our accounts were frozen due to a lack of funding. That means we can't buy supplies to keep our research projects going. Science isn't cheap, but I can't even buy the simplest of things and I've found myself borrowing from trash cans of other groups in my building. Yes, I'm now a dumpster diver. Of course, boss is mum on the whole debacle and never answers my calls or emails so communication is nil...always has been. Boss was in L.A. this past week and I found out he was stopping by the university to sort out the money issues. I think it's quite funny that such an egomaniac has to deal with authoritative figures to find a resolution because he walks about like he answers to noone. Anyway, he found a loophole to be able to funnel a finite amount of money to provide money for supplies. That means I *should* have money to buy things I need to complete my degree, but who knows. He's such a horrible manager (of even himself), I'm not holding my breath. It also means I have to teach again this semester and perhaps in the summer. That's exacly the last thing I want to be doing, it's a terrible distraction and sucks a lot of time away from labwork.

Aside from that, he's a little story which illustrates his character. I bring Rex with me to work on the weekends so he doesn't have to spend 7 days a week in the house alone and because I love his company. The boss was in yesterday meeting with his other two 'employees' because he opted to take a 2.5 hour lunch on Friday instead of taking care of business with us. He tried to make small talk with me about Rex and asked how old he is. I told him 'a little over 3 years old' to which he replied, "Oh, he's going to die soon then." WTF? Apparently he thinks that dogs only live to be a maximum of NINE years old. The mathematical genious that he is and Mr. Know It All just can't quite do the dog year calculation in his head or something because he said "nine years old for a dog is eqivalent to about an 85 year old human." HUH? Aside from the fact that he's obviously just completely an idiot when it comes to animals, there's nothing I can do to educate him about how long dogs can live...because he's knows everything about everything. Even if my dog was old, who tells someone that their dog is going to die soon?

So, that's just a little background on why the heck I'm applying such a masochistic work ethic these days. To be free of this kind of crap, it's plenty worth it to me.

I just want to highlight a couple of inco-effing-herent and contradictory things this bozo is talking about and then I'm going to put this issue to rest:

He has no idea what is necessary to run a team. This is highlighted by his lack of knowledge about which license to buy from the UCI in order to get into protour events. Now, this sounds like he's delegated that responsibility to someone else, but isn't Mr. Ball the micromanager of micromanagers? He says he's the one calling all the shots. So, when he says that whoever is responsible is going to pay, what kind of discipline is he going to impose on himself? Additionally, is this guy a hardcore cycling fan b/c even I know what tier you have to buy into to race those races.

Moreover, he's picking up all these guys that can't find jobs anywhere else because of their suspected ties with Puerto, doesn't he follow the news? Race organizers are barring any riders (perhaps at the expense of the team's invitation) from competing in their races if they are in any way implicated in a doping affair. How the heck does Mr. Ball expect to get an invitation to La Primavera, the Giro, and the likes w/ these riders on his roster? Look at what happened at the worlds. Bettini was allowed to start only after an 11th hour bid to end his attempt at repeating his world championship crown failed..and that was just based on some accusation which was retracted.

In the current state of cycling where people are at the very least putting out the image of clean racing, this guys is going out of his way to go against the trend. I find this perhaps most shocking b/c this is a guy that makes his living off of fashion trends. There seems to be quite a dichotomoy. To make matters worse, it's some chauvinist American guy who sees himself as some kind of messiah to the "fallen heros." It's bad enough with all the suspicion, proof, and admission behind Lance Armstrong, Floyd Landis, Tyler Hamilton, Frankie Andreau...etc regarding doping. Now there's some American guy stirring the pot and putting a big "X" on his back. Well, he sure is creating buzz, and maybe that's how he's selling clothes.

Let's be honest and take a step further and look at an example of the direction things are currently going. Bruyneel only imposed an internal doping protocol because he was forced to. In order to save Contador, put up a screen of credibility to Astana, and preserve his selfish desire to win the Tour de France, which I can't really judge, suddenly Rasmus Damsgaard becomes part of their program. Coincidence or strategic planning? "Coincidentally," all of the above riders were under his tutelage at some point or another. Whether you like these "champions" or not, there's no question that there's a proponderence of evidence that's weighs heavier than "matter-of-fact" or "coincidence." So, what does Mr. Ball do, exactly the opposite. He cries victim and says it's a waste of time. Well, there's one thing I can say, you don't become a leader by following. In this case though, he's leading an army of one.

As far as big American riders, I say go Levi! Aside from that, ask yourself, WWJD -- What Would Jens Do?