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June 1, 2010
Anyone who has looked at pictures of me or has met me would probably agree that I don’t have a wide margin for weight loss. Unfortunately I have done just that following a 5 day bout of stomach issues that recently climaxed with a visit to the ER on Saturday night over fears of appendicitis.
I’m glad I went and got checked out, even if I did end up leaving at 4am with mixed feelings that I’m still unsure of. On the one hand: no need for surgery and no identifiable health problems. On the other: spent I dread to think how much on nothing and still have same symptoms- with no identifiable health problems. But here I am a few days later and definitely feeling better. To help counteract my leaning out, I was forced to buy the monstrosity of sugar and enriched bleached flour you will find pictured below. A mere 78g of this dense loop of near unbearable sweetness provides 310 calories of potential health complications glazed with deliciousness. A wonder of modern baking science and available to any grocery customer with the fortitude or ignorance to place it in their basket. I like to think I am the latter. My emaciated arms popped with lean muscle as my triceps fully engaged to master its mass. Hopefully this will translate into mass of my own once proper digestive pathways deal with it. Here she is- my vanilla pudding cake, my newest friend, my cavity filler, my coffee companion, Erika’s nightmare, and my pathway to salvation:
Interesting that I would bounce from the topic of juicing in my last post to this, a nutritionists nightmare. So be it. There is room for both in the wide swath of what I consider acceptable in the name of balance concerning my diet.
I’m feeling much better today so will likely be able to clock some hours tomorrow to remind the body what it is I do for a living before leaving on my next trip on Thursday. The weekend’s race is obviously Phily, but first, Brad White and I will be doing a charity ride for a very worthy cause on Friday morning:
http://www.ride2recovery.com/component/content/article/8.html
Looking forward to this weekend although I’m hoping I can pack away enough glycogen for all 256km come Sunday. Can anyone think of a way I might go about doing that? hmmmmmm….
See Ya
Matt C
Throwback pic: Baldwin and me racing Atlanta 10k in 2007. He is my teammate now, and was my roomate during ToC. He may be a muffin stealing scumbag (he raided my muffin stash during a desperate search for food at 3am following stage 6) but you can’t help liking the guy. Plus he has accused me of being “skinny fat” so to honor this dubious honor I am taking another fat bite of pudding cake. Mmmmmm…
mattcrane.missingsaddle.com
Filed by Matt Crane at June 1st, 2010 under Matt Crane, Road Blog
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May 28, 2010
Wow. Tour of California is done and here I am on my couch and still feeling a little knackered. And I didn’t even finish the bloody race!
Truly a great week for the team with Rory and Mark showing great form and everyone rallying behind them to make sure we made the biggest impression possible on the race. This being my third year racing Cali, I must say that being involved at the very sharp end of the race makes for a wholly different experience. “Sorry (insert ProTour team here) we are going to line up in front of you today, because, you see, we’re racing far better than you are and you know the rules…”
But anyway, I am home now and doing some proper recuperation before the next set of races, which will be Philly next weekend followed by Nature Valley on the following. With all of the recent activity on Cyclingnews, I am happy to point out that a huge part of my recovery is “juicing.” That is, using a juicer to create fresh, raw fruit and vegetable juices everyday. None of the enzymes or nutrients are killed like they are during cooking, and since the juicing process removes all the fiber, you are left with full, easy access to the good stuff without needing to digest or break down the insoluble plant parts. Also, it tastes really good! Safe to say I am finally able to match the increased nutrition requirements of my high input/high output diet! I don’t work for Jack LeLanne or whatever the hell his name is, but it is likely I am as fervent, though probably not as corny in my support of turning gigantic quantities of plant matter into liquid gold everyday.
Other than all that? Really, there’s not much to say! Other good things for recovery include spending time with Erika Graves, eating as much as possible, reading on the couch, and taking a few days off.
More to come soon, hopefully some cool pics from my upcoming recovery and training rides.
Here are some pics from ToC and also of the aforementioned juicing exploits:
Thanks for Reading!
Crane
mattcrane.missingsaddle.com
Filed by Matt Crane at May 28th, 2010 under Matt Crane, Road Blog
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Wow. Tour of California is done and here I am on my couch and still feeling a little knackered. And I didn’t even finish the bloody race!
Truly a great week for the team with Rory and Mark showing great form and everyone rallying behind them to make sure we made the biggest impression possible this year. This being my third year racing Cali, I must say that being involved at the very sharp end of the race makes for a wholly different experience. “Sorry (insert ProTour team here) we are going to line up in front of you today, because, you see, we’re racing far better than you are and you know the rules…”
But anyway, I am home now and doing some proper recuperation before the next set of races, which will be Philly next weekend followed by Nature Valley on the following. With all of the recent activity on Cyclingnews, I am happy to point out that a huge part of my recovery is “juicing.” That is, using a juicer to create fresh, raw fruit and vegetable juices everyday. None of the enzymes or nutrients are killed like they are during cooking, and since the juicing process removes all the fiber, you are left with full, easy access to the good stuff without needing to digest or break down the insoluble plant parts. Also, it tastes really good! Safe to say I am finally able to match the increased nutrition requirements of my high input/high output diet! I don’t work for Jack LeLanne or whatever the hell his name is, but it is likely I am as fervent, though probably not as corny in my support of turning gigantic quantities of plant matter into liquid gold everyday.
Other than all that? Really, there’s not much to say! Other good things for recovery include spending time with Erika Graves, eating as much as possible, reading on the couch, and taking a few days off.
More to come soon, hopefully some cool pics from my upcoming recovery and training rides.
Here are some pics from ToC and also of the aforementioned juicing exploits:
Thanks for Reading!
Crane
mattcrane.missingsaddle.com
Filed by Matt Crane at May 28th, 2010 under Matt Crane, Road Blog
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May 17, 2010
Well well well, welcome back to the written musings and blather of my conciousness! Let’s dispense with the “long time no sees” and get on with the future, which is now, and for your reading pleasure, is the Tour of Califonia as seen through the eyes of myself and for your benefit, my camera phone.
Truth be told, I have missed writing this blog. it is about time I got back to it if not for the sake of anyone who may choose to read it then for my own amusement. Curtis Zimmerman of Missingsaddle fame made me a sweet new layout, and to honor it I spent about an hour writing a super duper kick off post on the way to stage 1…and then managed to lose it during my inept use of WordPress. So you will be losing out on my sharper nerves before getting the race underway, and also a description of how on my flight from Atlanta a protein shake in my bag exploded and spilled from the overhead locker ALL OVER the person sitting behind me. The orginal story was more descriptive but also less time efficient so really all you have to do is picture a Banana Republic shirted business man suddenly engulfed in a sticky chocolate cataract and my ensuing prostration in embarassmet and horror. His implaccable calm led to an unsatisfactory resolution of the matter, as did the lack of humor involved when I saw him 4 hours later on my next flight. Ah well at least he didn’t cause me bodily harm!
Anyway, onwards to the race. We are a few minutes from the stage start in Davis. Yesterday I went down with 300m to go by plowing into Boonen when he hit the deck. I had my moment of “ohhhhh shhhiiiiiiiiiiiit” as I realized I wasn’t going to be able to miss him, and went right into the poor dudes back. Flipped over, nice tuck and roll, and then someones chainring ended up running over my arm. Spent a few mins on the ground and then realized I was ok. Phew!
Today looks like a good one with 4 categorized climbs and one of them a cat 2 30km from the finish. Looking for that break so I can have an easier ride up the hills! And of course so I can say hello to all my favorite blog readers on TV!
Here are some pics, check back later for more about the race!
mattcrane.missingsaddle.com
Filed by Matt Crane at May 17th, 2010 under Matt Crane, Road Blog
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August 11, 2009
Hello Estranged Blog Readers,
It has been a little while since I last wrote anything! I hope you all didn’t miss me too much, although with all the great new content up here on MissingSaddle, it is unlikely that my neglect has put you out too badly. For further reading on expectation regarding my abilities of task completion, please refer to August 2008, “Calculating Crane.”
Well, it has been a rather tepid span of months following my last post which concerned my trip to the Tour of Malaysia-tepid is good, I am a professional athlete-so I will not delve too far into catching up on the usual goings on. Beginning sometime after my last team race (Philly) and now (break time is a good thing), my happening have strayed not much further than training and sleep, training and eating, and for a change on certain days, eating and sleep. But besides that, I have mainly been focused on training, eating, and sleeping.
So with all of that excitement behind us, we can now focus on the more pedestrian elements of the here and now. Having prepared well and dutifully for my return to NRC racing last week in Elk Grove, I was very happy to get back into things and be able to have an impact on the racing in some way, largely in the form of ill fated but nontheless neccessary breakaway attempts. Since returning from racing 265km of criteriums in two days (lets face it, a road course of 150km over a 10km circuit with 28 corners is really just a long and confusing crit), I have been slow in bouncing back, but am happy and confidant that the speedwork I got in from ramping back to speed from each corner will serve me well in the upcoming events.
I recently had a chance to do some testing with Mike Geraud at the A2 Windtunnel in Charlotte, NC (http://www.a2wt.com/), which coincided well with being up there for the First Presbytarian Crit last weekend. The good news is that my skinny little body is very aerodynamic on the bike, although that seems to be status quo as Mike and I couldn’t find many places to make significant changes that might provide me with a “free lunch of speed.” However, the whole process was really informative, and Mike was able to shave a bit of drag away by moving my arms closer in. We also found the optimal position for me to hold my head, so I can now focus with full confidence on making the legs fast, knowing that the chassis is good to go.
Well, I will try to be more dilligent about posting in the upcoming weeks, as there are plenty of good races coming up. Also, a thank you to the Cranes of Elk Grove for reading my blog and reminding me to write a post!
Take Care
Crane
Pic from Charlotte crit courtesy of Hansley Photos
mattcrane.missingsaddle.com
Filed by Matt Crane at August 11th, 2009 under Matt Crane, Road Blog
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