Wasting Time, Sitting Still

Feeling a bit antsy these days, so much stuff planned for the future and winter is dragging along.  And it's been in the 50's and 60's and sunny so it doesn't even feel like winter.  Not that I'm complaining.  Yet there's still a smattering of snow and ice on the trails so it doesn't exactly feel like spring.  So as a questionable solution to the winter blahs I entered a 5k this weekend on a whim.  Will give me a good baseline for my running and will hopefully get rid of some of the ants in my pants for racing.  The race is paved which is not good but it's in somewhat scenic Bear Creek Lake Park which is better than a lot of options for 5k's.  Not many trail runs this year so I have to suck it up on the pavement.  And it's supposed to be a high in the 60's so should be in the 40's or so when the gun goes off.  Perfect racing weather.  We'll see if the forecast holds.

On a completely irrelevant note, dogs eating rawhide bagels.  Just because.

The ray of sunshine almost makes him look angelic.  But I know better.

Lola cracks me up.  Do you see how green my grass is?  In JANUARY???!!!  It is freaking me out.  It's not even this green in summer.

I've decided to get a new mountain bike this year, happy early 50th birthday to me.  My current bike is 11 years old and though I love it dearly it's lacking in many of the technical advances like disk brakes and tubeless tires and to get those things and a new suspension fork on my old bike will require about a $2000 expenditure.  Because the bike industry is evil and does the best it can to make you spend money by making old frames and technology obsolete.  Like the music industry.  Forget your vinyl records, buy your entire record collection all over again on CD's.  Now buy it on mp3's.  Sucker.  Anyway, there are now 3 different wheel sizes available, 26" which is what I currently have and what is being phased out, 29"ers which are like the CD's and 27.5"ers which are the mp3's.  Maybe.  This is the first year that there will be an explosion of 27.5ers on the market so we'll see.  Plus you have the choice of hard tail (no rear suspension) or full suspension.  6 possible types of bike, well really 4 realistically since 26"ers are on the outs, then all the different manufacturers, frame geometries, women specific designs.  I kid you not, I actually made up a spread sheet so I could keep it all straight.  It's a frustrating and mind numbing process especially trying to separate the facts from the marketing hype.  I'll spare you the supposed pros and cons of it all.  And of course it's way too early for the shops to have the new models in, will be March or April until they start trickling in and having demo days where I can take the test bike on the trail.  Ants in my pants.  My prediction right now is that I'll end up with a Specialized Fate 29" hard tail.  It's not a very sexy looking bike, a plain boring black ugly boy looking bike but it's designed specifically for women and is very light weight, great for my Xterra races and just like dogs you can't pick a bike out for its color.  I just need to see if I can handle a 29er or if it will feel like a tractor trailer.  And if my back and old bones will be o.k. with the lack of rear suspension.  I wish I was more excited about this but the reality is that I wish someone would magically drop the perfect bike in my lap and I could just go out and ride.

Ah well, time for some agility practice to get rid of the ants in Strummer's pants.