Vacation week

Well, as most of you know, I'm not working this week so my posts will be a bit more spread out.

I'm able to ride during the day when it's warmer, so I probably won't be out at the Progress Park this week. I realize that I am unable to compete for the ironman award against a guy tlike Jayson who doesn't have any other responsibilities other than working and riding.

I have done a couple of good rides this week already and I'm getting ready to go out fro some intervals right now. I just wanted to throw up a post to say hey. I hope you all had a great Christmas and I look forward to seeing you out on the road soon.

by the way...
...what's this about the Tues/Thurs ride last night that had something to do with "Girls Gone Wild?". Please fill us in.

Seasons Greetings

Seasons Greetings to all of the 5count readers around the world!

Last night's ride...

It was another cold one out at the "Arctic ellipse". There was a good showing with over ten cyclists who came out for some winter training. Though multiple layers were imperative, the usual banter carried us through two hours of riding without too much discomfort.

The speeds are beginning to increase as the upcoming season fast approaches. We worked in a few intervals last night which broke the group up a bit, but that's the beauty of riding in a circle, eventually everyone joins back up. I'm sure there will be a faster pace for the remaining rides...especially if Scott and Danny have anything to say about it.

It was great to see Joe Brew out last night. He's home from college for the winter break and we look forward to him torturing us until January 15th when he'll return to school. There was a report of another Joe Brew sighting early this morning on the North side of Gainesville. He was spotted at 7am running...what he was running from has yet to be revealed...stay tuned to 5count for more details as they become available.

I think I coined a new phrase last night. In light of the cold weather and the increase in speed on our rides, I referred to our intervals as "Wintervals". There may be the possibility that that term has already been discovered, but until it left my mouth last night, I'd never heard it before. I was quite impressed with my witty terminology, however, I don't think that my riding partners were as smitten with my new buzz-word. I'm sure that it'll grow on them as I plan to use it repeatedly over the coming weeks.

I also attempted to provide a little background training music last night. I recently received small, portable external speakers for my ipod and I brought them with me to the ride. Unfortunately, the volume of the speakers couldn't compete with the volume of the wind whipping past my ears. I was never able to hear a single song as the "sound system" was stored in my rear jersey pockets. Only the cyclist directly behind me was able to enjoy my musical selections although it was reported that the sound quality wasn't even at an acceptable level. Hey, I tried...

Jayson O'Mahoney claimed his PowerGel prize last night as he was the winner of the "Quote of the Day" trivia. Stay tuned to 5count for more such trivia in the future. Jayson has also informed us that his new "time-machine" is fully operational and ready for a crack at the cemetery TT in January. Unfortunately for him (and me) we'll be riding a different type of bike that day, one with fat tires and a triple-chainring...and instead of riding on smoothly paved roads, we'll be riding over rocks, roots, sand and dirt...instead of going as fast as you can for 15-20 minutes, we'll be slogging through the San Felasco State Preserve for 5-6 hours.
(*Editors note: Although Jayson wears a Health Net skin suit and has a Team Health Net TT bike, he has no actual affiliation with the Health Net organization)

And now for trivia...
The winner of this edition of Trivia will receive a recent issue of Bicycling Magazine, packed full of training, diet, mechanical and raceing tips!

Q: What is the title of this blog, 5count, derived from?


...and now I'll Leave you with...The Quote of the Post
"...take yesterday for example. We were out at the olive garden for dinner, which was lovely. I happened to look over, at a certain point during the meal, to see a waitress taking an order, and I found myself wondering what color her underpants might be, her panties. Odds are they were basic white cotton underpants, but I started thinking maybe they are silk panties, maybe it's a thong, maybe it's something really cool I don't even know about..."
-what movie is this from, anybody know???

Bonus???

There may be a bonus feature on the ride tonight at the "Mobius Strip" ...come out and see what it is.

I guess it rained?

I returned from Ft. Lauderdale last night, my weekend abruptly at an end and I began to notice signs of a deluge. Judging by my flooded out front yard, it would appear that Gainesville may have had a bit of rain while I was gone. I wondered to myself, "did all that rain impede the GCC, or the Team Florida rides this weekend?"

Let me know what happened, if you guys rode, if you stayed inside with your noses pushed up against the front window while rain drops fell, puddles formed and your dreams of 4-hour training rides were dashed right before your eyes.

I feel strangely better knowing that I may not have been the only one not riding this weekend. If my rental car had been a little more accommodating, I would've brought my bike and enjoyed the 75+ degree sunshine...'c'est la vie'!

Aside from the weather...
There had been some emails going around pertaining to doing some rides this holiday season. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'll be off of work and in town the entire week in between Christmas and New Years. I plan on riding everyday, so anybody interested in some training, let me know. Hopefully, we'll all have some new cycling-related Christmas gifts to try out.

Something for Jayson to aspire to...
Austrailia has just announced a new development cycling team. Although Jayson is probably too old, maybe he can just find the team jersy for sale somewhere?

• if yer interested in the story, cycling news.com covered it here
and the team website is found here

check out this link
This link was sent out by big Phil from Team Florida. It's a flash movie that portrays cycling lingo verbatim. You'll understand once you watch it here

quote of the day
"Hey Ron, I'm riding a furry tractor"
***tell me what movie that is from and win a PowerGel from 5count!

Missing the rides

I'm currently posting from Ft. Lauderdale, FL. My weekend of riding is being replaced by two 5-hour stints driving in the car. Jen and I currently have a rental car while our car is getting prettied up after incurring some damage from Hurricane Wilma. Unfortuately, our insurance company only paid for the base model rental, thus leaving me with a KIA something or other (I'm not sure, but I believe that K-I-A stands for Killed in Action?). I'm also unhappy to report that the KIA doesn't have a big enough trunk for me to put my bike into it. see last post

I'm going to be filling my cardio quota by wrestling with my over-active dog, vigorously changing the channel between ESPN and ESPN2 and doing some intese blogarobics.

I hope you all enjoy your weekend rides...I'll be back at the Progress Park tuesday night, rested and ready to ride.

It's COLD!

As far as I'm concerned, tuesday evening was the coldest ride yet. Maybe I wasn't dressed warm enough, but I thought 3 layers would've been enough. Here's a picture of how cold the Progress Park was on tuesday, click here.

Scott was unable to attend the ride last night due to some very understandable family commitments, however, his absence moves Jayson into sole posesstion of the "Ironman Award". The standing are now as follows:

1st - Jayson O'Mahoney
(T) 2nd - Paul Messal
(T) 2nd - Scott Pfaff (pictured on left)
3rd through last - Everybody else

What else...
• Race season is just around the corner for us Floridians. The tenative race schedule has already been posted and it looks like there will be races to do in January! There's also the Tour de Felasco coming up in January as well...where did the time go?

• Dan Larson's new VMG team met here in Gainesville recently to take care of some testing, training as well as some personell stuff. Check out the report on Cycling News to get the low down as see some pics. Although it isn't ready as of now, the team's website will soon be full on team info.

• I had previously posted a link to Graham Watson's website where he was displaying a photo tribute to Lance. He now has put the remainder of the "tour years" images up. Check em out here.

• Football news: You may have already heard, but Tim Tebow has committed to the University of Florida. For those of you who don't know, Tebow is one of, if not the, most highly touted QB's coming out of high school this year.
His commitment has led to the transfer of Portis, the QB who followed Urban Meyer here from Utah. It looks like the QB position at the University of Florida will be in good shape for the coming years!







Quote of the Day...
"I hope you got a big trunk, cause I'm puttin my bike in it"


from the Movie, 40 year old Virgin
(if you haven't seen it, I would classify it as a must see!)

Here's yer "Can 'O Whoop A$$"

Call him what you want...just don't call him late to the start line.

This and That...

first off...
I love all the "banter" that goes on in this blog. The responses to posts and the responses to responses, all make writing and reading this blog fun! I hope that people who may be new to reading the 5count blog understand that 95% of the "trash-talk" that goes on is completely harmless and understood to be in fun. Most of the readers who take part are guys who know each other and know the temperament with which certain comments are made. I encourage EVERYONE to respond in whatever way they would like to...We all enjoy having stuff, that is relevant to ourselves or our interests, to read.

With that being said...
Whoever called my bike a coke can, make thyself be known!

Weekend in riding...
Saturday's GCC ride was well attended and the weather was gorgeous as well! In short, we ended up with 17 cyclists in the "A-group" after the rest stop and we motored back home quickly. The "race-tactics" disrupted the flow from time to time, but we all managed to get our heart rates up in the process. Jayson gets the most aggressive rider award for the day due to his multiple attacks and counter-attacks...and counter-counter-attacks, well done.

I didn't attend any group ride on sunday. My services were spent putting up a Christmas tree, decorating said tree and just getting into the all-around Christmas spirit with my Wife, Jen. I know that many of you were planning on doing the 4-4.5 hour ride with Team Florida, and others probably were loyal to the GCC south ride. Maybe our readers can chime in with reports of those rides.

Check this out...
I read an interview with Lance Armstrong this morning on Velonews. It's a two parter so link to part one first. Lance is pretty open with the journalist in the interview, he talks about everything from the early days to Johan to drugs to retirement.

In part 2 of the interview, Lance talks about cycling fans and what types of fans there are (in America and in Europe). He talks about what type of fans he thinks we need here in the U.S.. I'll let you read it and get a better idea of what I'm talking about here...but it got me thinking about what type of cycling fan I am.

In terms of what I like reading about in a cycling magazine...If I had a choice between reading about who has been recently accused of using EPO...OR...reading a bio of a pro cyclist, I'd take the bio every time! I don't know about you guys, but I'm sick of hearing about who's doping, who's not, who's battling accusations in court and who's being banned for two years. I want to know what was said on the team bus before the start of big race; I want to know about team tactics and how they played out; I want to know what was going through the pro's head while he was burying himself trying to get across a gap to the leaders.

My recent issue of Bicycling magazine is chocked-full of info, but that magazine has too much info about everything BUT racing. I'm not putting Bicycling magazine down, I still feel that they fill a need; but as far as my interests go, "How to Make Home-Made Powerbars that will get you to the Top Faster" isn't what I'm going to spend my limited free-time reading.

This is just MY commentary of the type of fan I am...how about you?...

Then there were Two???

I have been informed that the race for the "Ironman Award" has been whittled down to just 2 guys, and I am not one of those two.

For those of you who don't know, there has been an informal competition amongst the cyclists who frequent the Tues/Thurs night rides out at the Progress Park. The "Ironman Award" will go to the rider who doesn't miss any rides or he who misses the least amount of rides. Until thursday, there had been a 3-way tie between Jayson O'Mahoney, Scott Pfaff and Myself. Due to inclimate weather, visiting parents and what I thought was a joint agreement to NOT ride if things were wet, I abstained from driving out to the ride. Unfortunatly for me, my other two competitors reniged on thier original plan and rode anyway thus dropping me into sole possesion of 3rd place in the "Ironman" race.

Even though the above mentioned Jayson called me just one hour prior to ride time and assured me that he was not going to participate in the ride either...I still find myself out of contention (unless of course the other two miss a ride in the future). As for Scott...all I can say is that it must be nice to work just 60 seconds away from Progress Park. If I had to pass by Progress Park on my way home from work every day and I had my bike in the back of my truck everyday, I bet I'd be a lot more likely to "pop in for a ride". For those of us who travel great distances to get out to Alachua just to get some miles in...I think that we are all truly "Ironmen"!

In other news...
Team Health Net has discontinued it's use of Giant bicycles. So all the Team Health Net bikes that Jayson has recently bought, are now officially outdated!
Health Net has now joined up with Cannondale and will be riding six13's this coming season. This means that Rodrigo can now fully outfit himself with Health Net gear. Lampre has now switched over to riding Willier bikes and will no longer ride Cannondale...this means that all the Lampre stuff that Rodrigo has been collecting is also now outdated.

...In related news...I'm still riding the Ridley!

I'm sure that this post will ilicit some rebuttles, so let's hear 'em.
***note: editorial staff maintains the right to erase, delete, or edit any and all responses posted on the 5count Blog. Any objections to this clause can be voiced to our customer service department.

Ben's Story

For those of you who didn't know, Ben Brew (son of Chris and brother of Joe) was diagnosed with T-cell Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia on September 8, 2005.

Link to Ben's site to get the full story. While you're there, write a little note in the guestbook and let the Brew family know that they are in the hearts and prayers of the Gainesville cycling community.

If Ben is anything like his older brother, I feel sorry for that cancer...cause it's bout to be smoked!

in a side note...
Chris Brew tells me that lil Joe will be back in town on the 15th and will probably be looking to do a ride or two out at the Progress Park, he also says that he's in great shape... so you've been warned!