From new

Phew, the holidays are now officially over and hopefully with it, the binging on food and the mass exodus of cash from the bank account. Overall, we fared pretty well on both accounts, a couple of slips here and there but considering the temptations of the holiday season things could have been worse. One good thing for me that comes out of the holiday season is that I usually end up with a bunch of new bike schwag. With the combo of my b-day (being a week before x-mas) and Christmas itself, the bike loot piles high. This year the list includes the Garmin Edge I mentioned before, Joe Friel’s Mountain Bikers Training Bible, two new Panaracer Rampage tires, an 06 Tour DVD, a Team Bikeman fleece cycling cap, some SWIX gloves and a sweet ass Castelli retro wool cycling jersey. Not bad I’d say. Thankfully, everybody knows about my cycling problems and help me by giving me another fix.

I plan on using two of the gifts (the Edge and Friel’s book) to seriously help me out next season. I’m already 1/3 of the way through the Friel book and I know that it will help me lay out a plan for next season. Having had no real structure to my training for the last few seasons (ok, never), I don’t expect to develop a really in-depth program but one with just enough structure to help me take a step forward this coming season. With the book helping me to plan my workouts and the Edge’s ability to program in specific workouts, I hope to really kick it up a notch this year. I’m excited already.