1k

Made 1000 miles for the year today.  Unlike Brother Dave, I have not started using the metric system to keep track. 

January was a great start, got 365 miles in for the month, as part of a challenge group.  Have been keeping up since then.  I've had a few lulls where I took a few extra days off, but then got back on the horse, so I'm feeling good about things.  First race next week, that should give a few hints as to where the form is.

Ticket punched

Ticket Punched
Here's a list of teams that have punched their ticket to the NCAA tournament:
Quinnipiac, Minnesota, UMass-Lowell, Notre Dame, Miami, Boston College, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Denver, Niagara, Minnesota State, Union, St. Cloud State, Wisconsin, and Canisius.

I know what I am doing next friday night.  Some solid teams in there, it will be a nailbiter.  Will have to postpone that ski trip to Stowe.  The mountain will still be there...


What was I saying about the stochatic element?
 Tournament selection

The seeding process is partly driven by a strict process, while other parts are under the discretion of the committee. This year, the NCAA men's ice hockey committee decided to maximize the attendance possibilities over sticking strictly to its natural Pairwise ordering.

So who gets to play in the national tournament is not decided by season records, strength of schedule or anything like that, but a popularity contest (which teams have the most rabid fans?).  Happy with the way things turned out, but the selection process seems a bit cooky.

College Hockey Part II

Forget it, he's rolling

So now that NH has been out of the Hockey East tournament, I've been living on a hope and a prayer that they will get a bid to the NCAA tourney.

Stranger things have happened.

NH was in the top 5 in the polls.  They've now dropped to 10th and 11th.  http://www.hockeyeastonline.com/men/polls.php 
Edit:  Miami is in 4th?  Real hockey teams must live north of the Mason-Dixon line.  Yes, the Mighty Ducts are not a real hockey team.
 
NCAA tourney is a 16 team seed.  5 teams are selected by the winner of the conference, which right now is looking like Umass Lowell ( good grief ).  BU, you have 3 minutes to prove me wrong!  Edit:  Umass Lowell won.  Congrats.

So who makes it into the NCAA playoffs?  Outside of the individual conference champions?

Apparently, the other 11 teams are selected by some byzantine selection method involving polls, animal sacrifice, and something called the Pair Wise Predictor

As well as a stochastic factor.

Sounds devious, doesn't it?

In any case, NH is in a tie for 7th place in the PWP.  http://www.uscho.com/rankings/pwp/   Even if they lose that one, they'd be in 8th place, which by my calculations, would mean an automatic berth into the NCAA playoffs.  Which would mean the first game would be an hour away.  Which means...

WE'RE THERE DUDE!!

College Hockey

Let's talk about something else for a change, shall we?

Been getting back into college hockey this year after ignoring it for several seasons.  Since college, or just after, really.  Can't really catch Hockey East games on the west coast, for some reason.

I'm a big supporter of New Hampshire (duh) (Hockey East, the only conference that matters, IMO), but campus is a bit far, so have been catching some closer games.  Have been to Dartmouth twice (ECAC), Franklin Pierce (Northeast 10), Umass Amherst (Hockey East) and even caught the local high school team for a game.  Great games all.  Only saw NH play one game up in Dartmouth, which was great, but not a conference game.  They won that one, by the way.

NH was in a 3 way tie for first place in the conf until last week.  A few ties in their last couple of games brought them back down to 5th.  Edit:  now in a 3 way tie for third http://www.hockeyeastonline.com/men/standings.php Not sure what changed there.

Which meant that instead of home ice for the conf. quaterfinals, which I could have made it for a game or two, they would be playing in Providence.  Getting to Providence was going to be logistically impossible.

They lost the series, despite outscoring PC 8-7.  Just did not get the goals spread out across all 3 games when it counted.  Got to watch the last game from the bar, at least.

As my team was out, I had a bit less invested in it, but have been keeping up on the semi, and tonight the finals.  I'm without cable here, which is fine, as I never watch tv.  But there are 2-3 nights a year I wish there was such a thing as on-demand cable.  Not worth paying $44/month for 6 hours a year though.  CBS has a live-stream kind of thing for the BC games, and I kept on that game via that.  It was cheesy, but I could not make it out to watch a game.

Unfortunately, BC got dropped by Umass Lowell ( don't get me started), and the final this evening is not even covered by that.  I've been relegated to constantly reloading a box scores page to see what is going on.  And this one looks like it's headed into overtime.  Drat!!!

Back on the road

Weather here in New England has been warming up.  Been on the road a few times in recent weeks.  Got a snowstorm last mon/tues, and had a killer ski day, but the roads were cleaned up, and got a 40 mile ride in friday, and 56 miles with Darren today.  Always fun riding with friends.

Bike Fitting Drummond Cycles

Spent a bit of time at Drummond Cycles this week getting a bike fit.  I had already been fit by Paul at BikeFit, but got a new frame this year, and switched a few parts out.  I tried to keep the same measurements, but wanted to get checked out and fine tuned.  We had time to do three bikes, so I brought my cross bike and neglected TT bike as well.  I have not been doing many TTs since I have moved.  I still deciding if I should keep that bike, or sell it as I have only ridden it once or twice.  There was a casual weekly TT series in town last year, but I never really got that into it, and they have decided not to do it again this year.

First we installed some new Time iclic2 pedals on the bike.  I have been meaning to put these on for a while, but never got to it.

 Dick ( the shop owner and fitter) said "You will really like these pedals."  Good to hear.  My buddy Richard said the same thing at the end of the season.  It seems like my position was pretty good, but my saddle was tipped a bit forward, which was pushing me off of the nose.  I would push back on my arms to keep myself in place, which was causing my shoulders to tense up.  Dick kicked the seat back a bit, lowered the brake hoods a touch, and I felt immediately better.  Went out for a short spin on the road to double check, yep, that is a keeper!

Next we threw the cross bike up on the trainer.  It seemed like I was a bit cramped, and again my shoulders were getting pushed up.  We put on a setback seatpost, pushed the saddle back, and he seemed to think that was in improvement.  Took a few laps on the grass field outside the shop, and I could really feel the difference.  It felt like I was riding through the turns, rather than sitting on top of the bike. 

Last was the TT bike.  I sat down and Dick just shook his head.  I never had been fit on this bike, and had no idea how to set it up.  He moved the bars up, changed the angle of the bars, installed a shim to raise the arm rests a bit more, pushed the arm rests out 2 cm and tweaked the seat.  After all that, it was no longer painful to sit in the aero bars.  Much more better. 

Really glad I set this up.  I thought I was in a good position on the bikes, but a few small changes and things really felt better.  Excited to get out on the road and get settled in this, but it may be several months if we get some snow soon, as well as taking a break to heal up.

West Hill Shop cyclocross, Putney VT 11/11/12

Racing was a bit iffy after my crash the day before, but I was already prereg'd, and I had a few friends who would be there, it was the closest race to home all year, so off I went.  Slightly later start, which was nice as I could have breakfast with the family, instead of running out at ODark o clock.

Watched the earlier race, got a lap and a half in.  Super steep and long run up.  Some really fun flyover berms.  A treacherous downhill complete with a short wall to keep you from pitching off the downhill side.  And a bunch of bumpy corners in a cornfield.  Cool course.

Race lined up, small field.  Only 12 cat 4 35+ racers, a couple of dozen cat 4s, and another two dozen women and jrs behind us.  We were first off, and someone gunned it for the holeshot, leaving the group in the dust.  There was about 1/4 mile of gravel road before we hit the technical parts of the course.  I jumped on his wheel, and killed myself to get by him, but did not have the power.  Rolled into the grassy part of the course second wheel, which was first and very exciting.  Unfortunately, I was very quickly swamped by several riders.  My lungs were heaving, and the pain in my chest from the rib injury had me cross-eyed.

Kept rolling along, getting passed every few minutes by another cat 4, or occasionally by a jr who started 10 seconds behind.  My buddy Tom rolled past, and I tried to stay on his wheel, but after one lap, he just slowly drifted away.  I was making up ground every time up the run up.  However, this was just passing someone who had passed me a while back, and most times, they came around at the barriers.

Rolled in 9th out of 12 in my group, which was my highest placing this year ( or ever), but I would have hoped to have done much better had I been in good health.  My friend John got on the podium with a third place!  Ran into Tom and Darren, who was not racing but had come out to take pictures of the race.

Pretty sure I am done racing for the year.  I can still ride at a slow pace, but it would be best to take a few weeks off of the bike and get 100% healed before getting out there again, and before ski season kicks in.