I haven’t blogged about cycling in a LONG time.  I’ll save the suspense and explain that it’s because I’ve been BUSY WITH OTHER THINGS.  Occam’s Razor:  Simplest answer usually the correct one.  And I am the master of simple, trust me.  Anyhoo, two seasons on and I’m slightly less busy.  So I’m back.  You’re welcome.

There’s nothing more important to good writing than knowing what you want to write about, so as I sit here watching the opening stage of the Tour of Oman, that’s exactly what I’m stalling for.  Perhaps you could twitter me a good topic.  I’ll wait.

Hello out there.

Okay, I can see you’re in no mood to give a little help here.  Fine.

Tom Boonen won the first stage of the Tour of Oman by the way.  Oh, yeah, I should have said “Spoiler Alert!” first, but since you’re not exactly scratching my back, we both know how this game gets played.

Back to Tom’s win though, just for a moment, it should surprise nobody that the finish to stage one was NOT exactly a mountain-top thing.  We’re talking Oman. The one in the desert.  Highest point in the country is atop a hotel out by the aiport.

Stage 2 is kicking off now, which is amazing since Stage 1 finished in about 7 minutes of TV time and now we’re into the 11.3k TTT.

In all seriousness, thanks to God and to NBC sports for taping the ToO in HiDef.  It is so nice to be able to tell the riders apart – which doesn’t come easy in cycling.  I wonder has the thought crossed anybody’s mind about putting names on the back of those jerseys?  Last I checked, pretty much every other sport in the world does it. I’m just saying.

BMC’s riding now, with Taylor Phinney tucked in there.  Talk about a human rocket.  Interestingly, no TT bikes are being used – only road bikes.  And yet they still manage to polish off 11 k’s in a touch over 12 minutes.  Let’s do that math.  Twitter me when you’re done.  In the meantime, I’m guessing that’s 30+ MPH because that’s how fast these guys can go.  Almost 35, actually.  Yes, I did the math.  You owe me.

Garmin won the TTT, btdubs.  As you can tell, I’m all a-stir.

Actually, friends, the exciting thing in motion here, is that cycling season is once again underway.  For those of you north of 30 degrees Latitude in the Northern Hemisphere, or Interstate 70 for those without a sextant handy, I’m speaking perhaps theoretically about cycling season and all — but in desert places like Oman and Dallas, oh yeah, it’s on.

As a matter of fact, our team of 4/5s has completed its third race of the season already.  One was on a sunny and warm January day, and I rode that one though with no results worth mention.  The next two race weekends were annoyingly i) cold and dry, and ii) cold and wet, in that order.  Brilliantly, I’d declined to bother with those two races.

Again, referring to those of you who don’t enjoy year ‘round riding climates, this must sound nutty-early.  And I firmly agree.  I reached that conclusion in December when I crawled out of my cave and found people out riding already.  And they were going in-season fast.  I know, because I could see them riding away as I tried to get my heart out of my mouth.  You know you’re in trouble when holding wheels isn’t even possible – let alone taking pulls.  I had trouble written all over me.

Ok, so it’s mid-Feb now, and I’ve spent four+ weeks bouncing between group rides and interval training on my Cyclops indoor trainer.  Fortunately, some results and my confidence are returning.  My watts are actually slightly above my peak of last year, and I hadn’t planned to get to this level until April, maybe May, or September.  But here I am, getting all stoked about the season getting underway again.  You might be amused to know that I’d gotten off the bike at Thanksgiving, and for three months it collected dust while I switched to P90X training.  I liked P90X.  It felt good to do something having nothing to do with cycling.  I liked having a program to work through, with a finite end.  In the back of my mind, I had perhaps a moderate concern about how long it would take me to get the cycling legs back once P90X was over, but I wasn’t losing sleep over it.  And now all that’s passed, and I’m back.

[Btw, just watched Tour of Oman sprint finish where Cav lost because he decided to take a quick nap on the pavement about a couple hundred meters before the finish line.  Ouch.]

Tonight I joined the Monday night little-ring ride.  Great concept and a lot of fun, even when it hurts.  Long story short: group ride in a little ¾ mile race-track oval section of road, and whoever is on front goes as fast as they want provided you can’t use the big ring.  That takes the edge off a little.  Top speeds of around 28, averages in the 21-22 range.  And needless to say, pedal cadence approaches the speed of light.  When your turn comes up, you get either a half-loop or a full-loop on the front, depending on how many people showed up.  We were a small group tonight, so everybody got double-duty – hooray for us.  And it was windy out.  Like stiff-flags and blowing-dirt windy.  Which kinda makes both legs of the loop worse.  On the downwind leg, you get that nice boost from the back, but since you’re locked into the little ring, pretty soon your legs are spinning out of their sockets.  On the upwind leg it just sucks for the same reason it always sucks to ride fast into a headwind.

Tomorrow I have a night off the bike for weight training/core/upper body/strength work, which I’ve added to my repetoire this year since I’ve been suffering acute atrophy of manliness due to too many years of legs-only exercise.  My wife used to say she’d never date a guy who had a smaller waist than hers.  Which is good, since she’s married and all.  But maybe it’d be even worse if I could fit into her size 4 sweaters, right?  So now I’m working on restoring the upper bod.  Thank God I live in a flat area where useless muscle-weight won’t be too much of a boat anchor.  Spoken like a true Roadie, right?

Then on Wednesday it’ll be Loops night, which involves hanging with the gear-heads on a high-speed romp around a somewhat lighted industrial park.  Average speeds there will almost get you pulled over by the cops.  Forgetting your LED lights will definitely do it.

Anyway, I can only ramble on for so long, especially about nothing in particular.  I’ll check back in when I actually have something to say, like that I actually rode in a race and had a result worthy of the blogosphere.

Until then, don’t hate me for living in a warm climate.