Chubby Racer

After last weekends races, I've finally decided to give up on bikes.  I think, after 10 years, I can conclude that I've tried everything that's reasonable to try to improve my performance, and it's not working.  Whether there's something fundamentally wrong with the way I ride the bike (that paid professional help can't see) or my muscles just produce lactic acid under a static load at a much higher rate than other people doesn't really matter.  The end result is that it too hurts so fucking bad I can't practice effectively.  So...moving on. I'm going to sell all the bikes, all my equipment, but keep my leathers just in case I want to try again down the road.  I'll use some of the funds to get Dozer's lipoma removed, some to get a lifting platform setup in the garage, and some to do a T56 (really a TR6060 since no on sells the old T56 anymore which sucks because I don't need the extra torque handling and really don't want to pay for...

There's an old adage, practice makes perfect.  It just happens to be wrong.  PERFECT practice makes perfect.  I use the example that I could shoot 1000 sloppy free-throws a day, missing most, and the only thing I'd learn is how to shoot a sloppy (mostly missed) free-throw. This basically sums up my guitar practice.  Except it's not even 1000 sloppy free-throws, it's like 10.  So I sat down with my guitar teacher and actually discussed what practice should look like.  And thankfully...it looks nothing like butchering songs.  So hopefully that will prevent me from rage-quitting the small amount of practice I do get from here on,

I've previously shared some thoughts on crossfit scaling , and I want to revisit that a little bit because I missed something key about scaling that hit home this week. It's not only important to scale the weights so that you're finishing the workout in the correct time domain (i.e. if Fran is taking everyone else 5 minutes, and you 20...you're doing it wrong), it's important to scale the movements properly as well.  All of the "hard" movements in crossfit (handstand pushups, pullups, muscleups, toes to bar, snatch) have several different ways to scale.  Some of these ways are a progression towards the movement that allows you to build the required strength of that movement, and some just attempt to turn that slot in the workout into another little cardio burnout.  A workout I did this week highlighted the need to actually pay attention to which scale you choose for a movement depending on the selected time domain of the workout.  I'll explain If y...

Motorcycle race season approaches, and I still don't really care.  The 600 hasn't been ridden in...8 months? now, and I haven't even bothered to go to the storage locker to put it on the battery tender. The 300 is still fucked.  I'm interested to see if all this crossfit has actually helped me on the bike, but beyond that, I don't really care.  I know I'm still going to be awful, and it gets harder and harder to justify burning the kind of cash racing requires to get dead fucking last over and over.  This year is going to be a decision point as to whether I quit or not. I finally have all my vehicles back.  Driveway seems overfull after being without the truck for so long.  Cobra runs.  Still needs new tires, but I'm still uninterested in coughing up the money for a set.  So it mostly sits...which is about par for the course.  On a related note: fuck thieves. Guitar is going nowhere.  My instructor is pushing me towards learning new ...

I am far and away better at spending money on stuff to make new and different sounds than I am at actually playing the guitar.  FAR AND AWAY.  Case in point: for the longest time I had an amp so loud it could blow women's clothes off, and because of its vacuum tube design it didn't really sound its best at a volume I could stand to be in the room with.  I actually spent significantly MORE MONEY trying to put the volume on a leash while simultaneously keeping it cranked for the best sound.  Ridiculous. That amp is a mesa roadster.  Originally I bought it for the dirty tons as it turns out that most of my favorite guitarists use a mesa rectifier amp.  This roadster is like the swiss army knife version of a rectifier.  One of the biggest differences is that roadster sounds really good clean.  Mesa lifted the clean from their lonestar line of amps for this particular amp  In fact, as far as I'm concerned, it's the best clean.  However, thi...

I've been doing crossfit for about a month and a half at the suggestion of my girlfriend.  I was pretty bored with my normal gym routine, was pretty stagnant so I should..sure, babe, I'll humor you and try this for 6 months.  Below are some of the points worth mentioning. 1. It might be better training for what you're really trying to do I'll get this one out of the way first because it probably applies to the fewest people that would read this.  My "primary" hobby is sportbike racing.  I'm pretty awful at it for one major reason: take me and any other racer, give us the exact same amount of practice time, and because I can't stay on the bike long enough...he'll get 2x the amount of practice and be faster in short order.  For YEARS I kept trying to build leg strength by doing high weight squats and deadlifts.  It didn't work, I STILL can't survive a 6 lap race at 100% of my best pace. Then I tried crossfit.  Turns out: moving somew...

I've been playing guitar again consistently for about 6 months now.  And by consistently I mean...not consistently.  I left citi to have more time for things like guitar lessons, which I've managed to accomplish and stick with, but outside the lessons my practice is a lot less consistent. What I have done, in typical Blake fashion, is buy the FUCK out of gear.  I think I'm sitting at a dozen guitars right now with one more to arrive in late January.  Initially I was of the mind (go figure) that guitars are like Pokemon: gotta catch 'em all.  However, now I'm not so sure.  I'm starting to figure out exactly how I want a guitar to feel in my hands, and what it needs to sound like.  To that end, I'm really grooving on this PRS SE Custom 24 I've recently acquired.  I think it hits a sweet spot of tone, weight, and feel.  It's crazy because I have MUCH more expensive guitars, and this is the one I'm spending the most time with because it just f...