With the short winter (Hawaiian winter) days that have seen a lot of rain lately, my riding hours haven’t been as high as I’d like, so in an effort of logging some extra workout time I’ve throw in some cross training intervals during mental breaks from studying for my next architecture license exam.

Here’s my latest weapon… My North Face backpack with a few weight plates thrown inside. Works out to be a pretty good squat workout, and good for plyometrics too.

I’ve lost count of how many bike miles this backback has encountered… Easily in the 30k range. It’s been all over Hawaii, Scotland, the US, and is still going strong 8yrs later!

Wow, where did 2010 go??? Hard to believe that 2011 is only a matter of days away. 2010 has been a pretty epic year… I held my ground as HI state champ in all 3 flavors of cycling (road, TT, criterium), took home 3 medals from master track nationals (2 being the important gold color), making new friends, seeing a meteor shower for the first time, improving my surfing and paddling out at new breaks, starting grad school, hacking away at a few more architect exams, and probably a whole bunch of other things that went from being on the To-Do list to the Done list.

The challenge for 2011 is going to be how to make it bigger and better than 2010! For one, I’m totally stoked that I’m hoepfully going to be flown around in an F18 with the Blue Angels. At least there’s one epic thing on the list. I’ve actually got a pretty good to-do list started with +/- 20 items on it, and I’m really looking forward to working my way through it.

After a failed first attempt at posting this, here’s the Nov 6 interview I did on KSSK’s Larry and Price radio show from Jimmy Buffet’s in Waikiki.

11-6-2010 KSSK Mike Zagorski by mzagorski

I came home from work today, opened my mailbox, and was welcomed by a couple Christmas cards, some junkmail, and one large brown envelope… from the Navy! My first thought was “Why would the Navy be writing to me?”. A couple years ago I applied for a job as an Architect with the Navy, so this was the only thought that came to my mind. I opened the envelope while riding the elevator up to my apartment and between the elevator and my apartment door, realized that it was an invite to fly with the Blue Angels (for those that don’t know, the Blue Angels are the display team for the US Navy) sometime in 2011. I bugged a few people and exhausted all options at trying to get into an F18 Hornet… Finally, a long time dream of mine (and probably lots of other people) is coming to fruition! I cried while reading the letter… A mix of shock, disbelief, and immense excitement…

I can’t wait for this!

Aside from getting the letter granting me US Permanent Residency, I’d say this is by far one, if not thee most awesome pieces of mail I’ve ever received. I think I’ve now read the letter about 20 times trying to get it into my head that it’s really happening. If my 2010 trip to the USS Reagan is anything to go by, this is going to be off the charts insanely cool. OK, I’m off to pinch myself one more time… 2011 is going to be an awesome year!

OMFG!

The downside… I think I just lost all my friends due to jealousy. Sorry eh!

Here’s some video footage from part of a Pali loop that I did a week ago shot and edited by Jason Smith.

After a crazy busy morning doing a million errands around town, I removed the winter fuzz from my legs and took the bike out for a couple hours. Despite training like a Cat 6 for the past few weeks I was surprised that I’m still able to throw down some pretty good watts without my heartrate going through the roof! I just need to shed 10-15lbs in the next 3-4 months and I’ll be ready to rock out.

Cruising up Old Pali Road.

Last Friday I decided to take out my board and check out the waves in town, which ended up being one of the top 5 worst surf sessions I’ve ever had. It went from super chopping with some fairly big (but hard to predict / read) waves, to smaller, inconsistent slop. Perfect conditions for… fishing! The best description would be “desperate surfing”.

On Saturday I woke up a little after 8am, threw the board in the car, and went back to my town surf spot. From the shore it looked pancake flat, and I was close to going home, but I decided to paddle out to get in a paddling workout. Once I got out to the break, there were 5 others in the water, and the glassiest waves I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t huge, only 2-3ft with occasional bigger freak sets, but it wasn’t hard to catch any waves on my 6′-2″ board, and for once there was a bit of wave face to play around on. I ended up staying out in the ocean for the best part of 4 hours and paddled back in with a smile. Absolutely perfect day of surfing! Supposedly there was an 8ft tiger shark spotted a week earlier in the shallow water / reef closer to short with a 4ft baby shark. Happy to say I never saw either!

Today I watched the finals of the Reef Hawaiian Pro. Parko continued his epic comeback by taking the victory and laying down the first brick in his quest for another Vans Triple Crown win. 2009 winner from Haleiwa, Joel Centeio (Who I surfed with recently), put up a serious fight but never got the second wave he needed to topple Parko. Before the final was the 3rd and final round of Clash of the Legends… Sunny, Occy, Curran, and Carroll. Sunny catapulted himself from 3rd place to 1st, taking the win with a whopping score of 40.05. His two wave total from the 3rd and final heat was higher than any two wave score from the main contest. Truly epic to see 4 legends throwing it down!

Almost a year ago to the day, I was watching Joel Centeio compete on his way to winning the 2009 Reef Hawaiian Pro (first event in the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing) at Haleiwa. Today, thanks to having the day off from work in observance of Veterans Day, I got to make the drive out to O’ahu’s North Shore where I met Joel Centeio for a couple hours of surf lesson. I’ve been surfing for just over a year and have some of the basics down, but still have some ways to go, so I figured I’d have another crack at the North Shore with a seasoned pro. Joel recently started a surf school: (www.surfwiththepros.com) along with Sean Moody and Zen Yoshifuku.

We met at Haleiwa where the holding period for the 2010 Reef Hawaiian Pro starts soon, and it was pretty crowded with surfers getting in some practice. We drove over to Laniakea (aka Lani’s) where it was slightly less crowded… While I didn’t catch a ton of waves, and wiped out on a lot, I learned quite a few things that I need to work on. It was a fun experience to go out there with a pro and get some quality critique.

Post surf… I think I look pretty damn tired!

Joel in action.

OK, I’ve been slacking on the blog posts so here’s an update…

I guess I’ll start things off with the most recent news – The death of pro-surfer legend Andy Iron’s on Nov 2nd. Wow, what a shocker that was, and continues to be. What a truely tragic story. I only saw him in person from a distance during the 2009 winter surf season on the north shore, but I still feel like I lost something. I dunno, he just seemed like the total rockstar athlete… An attitude that some people probably didn’t care for, but amazing surf skills to back it up. RIP Andy.

“I’ve had my fair shares of hills and valleys, but my life’s been radical and exciting. Stuff that kings would die to do. Straight up, fucken A. The lifestyle we’ve got and the life I’ve led since I was 17, I can’t even tell my friends. I try and tell stories and they think I’m making it up or saw it in a fucking movie. Straight up. It’s the life I wanted since I caught my first wave.” Andy Irons, October 12, 2010

As for me, I’m still in semi off-season mode. I didn’t have any real plans of when I would start training again, but after hopping on the scales for a quick weigh-in, followed by 3 more successive weight-in’s to confirm that I gained a small freakin’ animal. So, since then I’ve segway’d into damage control. Smaller portions of food, trying to sleep more regular hours, not eating late at night, cutting out the crap, and a few bike rides thrown in to light the metabolism fuse.

Now that I’m full tilt on the whole grad school things, my days are pretty much as follows:

0530 – Wake Up, shower, drive to work.
0615 – Get to work.
1200-1230 – Inhale lunch.
1615 – Drive home
1715 – Ride or Surf
1900 – Shower, Cook, Eat.
1930 – 2359 – Study.
0000 – Sleep!

I want to train more and I can’t exactly cut down to <5.5hrs of sleep, so I guess I need to make my 4.5hrs of study at night more efficient. If only I could shower at my work… Then I could ride back and forth and get in 50 miles/day.

As of today I’m the best part of 2 weeks into my off-season. The last time I touched a bike (a recumbent) was on Oct 2nd in North Carolina. Since then all I’ve been doing is working, studying (started my MSc course), trying to finish up the Architects Registration Exam (passed 5 exams, 2 more to go!), and getting in some surfing when there’s a swell in town that aligns with my available free time.

After taking home some metal from master track nationals, my mind has been busy thinking of the next challenge. Track World Cups? Track Worlds? Olympics? All pretty damn big goals for even the most talented / genetically gifted cyclist. I’m not that great at pursuit, and thanks to the UCI and OAC screwing things up, there’s no Individual Pursuit or Points Race at the 2010 Olympics in London. Track World Cups… Those seem to occur in Dec/Jan time, so it’s a bit late to get in serious shape for 2010-11 season. If I go that route then I guess I’d be looking at 2011-12. Track Worlds isn’t far away in terms of time, and is in Portugal, so I’d rule that one out as this definitely isn’t a short term project. Winter/Spring 2012 would be the target time to have my fitness better then ever.

Or… do I pick something else to do? I have some surfing goals but then definitely need a swift kick in the balls… I should be surfing 6-7 days/week if I want to chase that idea. I’ve been passively doing some cross-training that would help with surfing, and I’ve definitely got less fear of shallow water / reef / urchins than I did this time last year. I’ll just have to see how the winter goes!