Ok, I give!

Remember a month or so ago when I was complaining about how warm the temps were and the fact that it made it difficult to ride in the woods because of all of the mud. Well, times have changed and now it too freakin cold out. I haven't had a ride in the last two weeks that I didn't end it with frozen toes and/or fingers. This morning it was a balmy 6 deg and the digits just weren't having it. What I wouldn't give for temps to be up in the 20's. That would be glorious.

P.S.- I've got my first saddle sore of the year festering down in stank town right now. All of this seated climbing is really starting to rub me the wrong way if you know what I mean. Thankfully, base 2 has now started and the keister will be allowed to leave the saddle on occasion.

Yikes!

All I can say is "Damn!"

Fruit of my loins

Here is a pic of B perfecting her cornering skills while rocking the Twin Six T. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree apparently.

Good GAWD!

Holy smokes was it freakin cold for the ride in this morning. At 4:30, when I went for a jog with the pooch, it felt cold but nothing out of the ordinary. When I climbed aboard the road rocket at 5:15 though things were a bit different. I could immediately tell that it was a tad bit nippier than usual. My face froze on the short down hills and my fingers were getting a bit cold within the first few minutes. A mile in, the bank clock confirmed what I had suspected. 7 degrees. My official coldest commute this year. Shortly afterwards I was forced to pull over and put on the mitten shells that I now carry for emergencies thanks to THIS POST. Thankfully I had them because my mitts were nice and toasty the rest of the ride in. It looks like I'll need to design some mitts for the poor Garmin though. The extreme cold sapped its battery in about a 1/2 hour. Bummer, I guess when its really cold it'll be living in my coat pocket. Poor little guy.

Here is a tip for everyone who gets tired of flat tires on their road bikes or worries about dying of hypothermia while changing a flat this time of year. I found that if you remove the core of your road tube (assuming you have the type with a removeable core) you can shoot a bit of Stans in there. Put the core back in, air up, giver a couple of spins and you should be flat free for a while. I discovered this the other day when I got yet another slow leak in my front tire from all of the road grit out there these days. Hopefully the Stans will rid me of those for a while. I know a tire change this morning would not have been good.

Safe to cross?

 

you be the judge.

lonely track

 

For Tizzom's eyes only

This one goes out to Tizzom. Here is the full Damariscotta Route 66 loop. I was able to get out and ride the whole thing on Sunday. Its now 100% rideable (very tough at times but rideable) and will only get better as we get more snow so that the snowmobiles will get their butts out there and pack it all down. Click on the LINK to go to the Motion Based page for the gps info.



Enough of that. Here's an off the wall question. Exactly how gay is it to have your legs waxed? My thinking is that since a good portion of us shave our legs already it can't be that much of a leap to give the gams the ole wax-er-oo. Just wondering because shaving sucks monkey nuts and waxing, while being more painful, at least doesn't have to be done as often. Sound off!

You can thank my buddy Kevin for this

I'm famous!

For the last couple of weeks I've been sending e-mails back and forth to a guy who did the Metric Mash (LINK 1, LINK 2, LINK 3 he's the dude carrying his bike across the log in link 3) this past summer. Apparently he's writing a story for a local newspaper to be published sometime this winter/spring. He's using my completely amateur photos for the story and has indicated that he may actually use the pic of me taking a piss. Of course he checked with me to be sure it was ok to use the pic just in case I was bashful. So, of course, I sent him a link to the pic of me sitting on the toilet and asked "Does this look like a person who is bashful?" Hopefully when it prints I'll be able to get a copy to share.

crooked cogs

I just got done listening to a bunch of pod-casts from CrookedCog.com while watching the seconds tick by on this Friday afternoon. I've been a subscriber to the podcast for a while now but haven't checked it in months. The last one that I listened to was an interview with Mike Riemer from Salsa Cycles. Pretty interesting interview and cool to hear about some of the history of Salsa. Some good stuff. It was also interesting because it was released in September of last year and Mike obviously wanted to talk about the unveiling of the mamasita but was not at liberty to do so.

Good Friday afternoon stuff.

You can check out their podcasts HERE. Unfortunately though, it appears the Mike Riemer interview is no longer on the site since its so old. If I wasn't such a technoweenie I could probably find it but I'll leave that up to you suckers. Or else is there some way for me to make my I-Tunes copy available?

new wheels

Jason having let the cat out of the bag about his new WTB wheels for this coming season and its got me thinking about my wheel set-up for this coming season. The Delgado Disc 29'er rims I have on my current set have been a bit disappointing to say the least. Initially I thought they only sucked because I built the wheels myself but after taco'ing my first front wheel and having a professional build the second and then quicking f'ing it up, I've decided to go a different route this season. I'll keep the current set-up as my training wheels and race back-ups until the rims finally give up the ghost for good and I'll use the new set for racing.

I shot a couple of e-mails back and forth to Big Gay Al over at Bikeman.com the other day and we came up with a pretty good set-up:

Bontrager Mustang 29'er rim (good price, reasonable weight and tubeless compatible)

Butted spokes and alloy nips (not much to say here)

DT 240 hubs (light, reliable and not super duper expensive)

At the time it seemed like a good set up but after a bit more research I think I'm going to go with Hope P2 hubs again this year. They are only slightly heavier than the DT's but at a full $200 bucks cheaper than the 240's I think I can live with a few more grams.

I'm pretty psyched to have the potential for running my tires tubeless this year as well. I could never get the salsa rims to run tubeless because the rims were so wide that standard rim strips just didn't cut it. With a bit of work I probably could have jerry rigged something but I'm not into that type of thing typically, especially when I'm racing. The last thing you want to have happen at a critical point in a race is for some dumb-ass work around that you figure out fail on you. Or even worse, worry constantly about the jerry rigged component and therefore never race full on. Anyway, tubeless good, tubes not so good.

Of course, I'll have to scrape up some jing to pay for them first though.

Me and my Garmin

Its a match made in heaven.

It's fre-fre-freezing!

Last night I did one of my coldest commutes ever. Not really absolute temperature wise because I think I've done a commute in colder weather but because I was out for so long in the cold, I was by far the coldest I think I've ever been on a bike. On Monday it snowed a bit (about 3 inches) before turning to freezing rain. Because of this, I decided it wouldn't be wise to ride the road bike home (wisely) and would instead use the Dos and hit up some of the trails on the way to stay off of the slick roads as much as possible. Mission accomplished in one respect. I have now officially figured out how connect the trails behind the office to the Zak preserve trails then it is just a couple miles of road hoffage and I'm into the Schmid Preserve. From there its about 6 miles of roadage. A bit more road than I'd like on a mountain bike but beggers can't be choosers. Anyway, back on topic. Yesterday, because it was so cold (hovering around 15 degrees) I decided to take out a bunch of the trails and do the most direct route traile-wise home. I figured this would take my typical 45 minute road commute and turn it into about 1:15 or so. Unfortunately for me, the new snow with the crusty top turned out to be very difficult to ride in. Sort of like plowing through 6" of sand. Not very pleasant. To top it off, I had forgotten my good light and was relying on my back-up which hadn't been charged in a while so I had no idea of its run time. With that in mind, I rode as far as possible sans light and managed to get as far as the Schmid Preserve before turning on the light for the first time a good 20 mins later than I should have. Once into the preserve I really started to wonder about my decision to ride home. It was definitely too dangerous to stick to the roads all of the way home because my short stint on route 27 was downright scary with an icy breakdown lane and constant traffic. The trial were my safest route but with a light with questionable run time and the cold temps I started to get mildly concerned. To be safe I decided to check my cell phone to be sure I had service. I had a brief moment of concern when I realized my phone was no longer in my jersey pocket but thankfully had fallen out and been caught by the elastic band on my jacket. Phew! Unfortunately though, the cold seemed to have zapped most of the life out of the battery and it was down to zero battery bars showing. Damn, this was turning into one of those stupid stories about some moron who wanders off into the woods in the middle of the winter with nothing but tennis shoes and a windbreaker only to be found in the spring frozen solid. Of course, I was already committed to the ride now so the only thing to do was soldier on. Within about 20 mins I was out of the preserve and back into civilization again and feeling ok and almost enjoying the ride again.

At this point, I shot a quick call to Marcy so that she would know that I was in fact still alive and would be home soon. At the 2 hr mark I pulled into the garage but my hands were so freakin cold that I was initially unable to turn of my flasher lights. 20 minutes, a hot shower and a nice meal (thanks Marcy!) later I was feeling all of my extremeties again. Yippee!

Overall, it was sort of a ridulous ride but looking back at it now it was sort of fun. I don't want to repeat it though.

On another note, below you'll find a Google Earth image of most of the trials located behind my office. There are still a few to map out but its looking pretty nice so far. It has the makings of some really nice lunch rides.

I'm trying to figure out how to allow others to actually go to Google Earth and zoom in and out of this image but no luck so far.

Edit:

Oops, I got in trouble (rightfully so) by wifey for being unprepared for a solo mountain bike ride in the winter so I would like to amend the previous post to say that I was well prepared for the cold temps and had given consideration to what I would do if something unfortunate had happened. I would also like to remind her that my life insurance policy is in affect and she stands to profit handsomely if I ever do kick it while out for a ride. :)

New Bikeman clothing line

Brynna modeling the new fashionable line of evening dresses offered by our friends at Bikeman.com

Rolling with it

If there is one thing that I've discovered is that with a baby at home you definitely need to be willing to change your riding plans at the drop of a hat and roll with it. This past week has been both good and bad. Brynna hasn't been sleeping well (and therfore we haven't either) for a few days and yesterday it became clear why when she vomitted twice while at daycare. Being the excellent dad that I am (father of the year material if you ask me) I took her home and let her nap on me for close to three hours while I passed the time watching last seasons final episodes of 24 and channel surfing. By going home with B my planned lunchtime ride was aborted but I made up for it by doing some CycloCore abs work and some weight training followed by 1.5 hrs on the trainer down in the house of stank so overall it turned out to be a pretty good day training wise.

Anyway, I'm learning how to deal with these minor setbacks and build on them. As of right now, I'm actually still on track to meet the weekly goals that Mr. Friel has set for me and the body is feeling pretty good. Sort of that "I just did a hard workout but feeling fine" kind of thing. I love that feeling.

Season planning

Last night I was finally able to sit down and block out my training plan for the upcoming season. This is the first time that I have actually tried to plan a season with base, build and peak periods so its all a bit overwhelming for me right now but I'm sure I'm making much more out of it than need be. I've still got some races up in the air at this point but things are getting a bit clearer at least. Some of these include the Wilderness 101, Shenandoah 100 and the Vermont 50. Of course there will also be some Maine EFTA and NECS series races thrown in as well as schedule permits.

One thing that I'm really worried about is annual hours. For my race categoy and ambitions, Friel suggests an annual hour total of between 500 & 800 hours. Even at the low end of 500 hours spread out over the year that comes out to 10 hours a week. There is no freakin way in hell I can squeeze that kind of time in. Sure, some weeks I'm able to squeeze out 10-15 hrs but those are usually by luck and can't be counted on a regular basis. My guess is that a 400 hr schedule would more easily fit into my lifestyle so I've got some thinking to do. Whatever happens hours wise though, I'm sure just thinking about all of this now will help me focus to achieve my goals. For example, even though I was initially unmotivated to work out last night, the thought of getting in 12 hours this week motivated me to do a weight workout and to get up early this morning to fit in a jog and a Cyclo Core workout. Yay for me!

Done!

As you can see, the new template is finally up and I have a shiny new header thanks to my man Jason. Thanks also to my bro Rus who helped me with the html code because, lets face it, I'm sort of like a monkey with a stick when it comes to writing code. I still have a bit of tweaking to do on the colors but overall its looking pretty good.

Yesterday I snuck out for a lunchtime spin on the Dos and tried to hit up all of the trails that are located behind my office. I think I managed to hit (and map) 2/3 of what is there which is cool but more importantly, I think I figured out how to connect it to the Zak Preserve trails which means that if I want to take an extended lunch I can hit up about 10 miles of single and double track. Pretty sweet if you ask me.

Here's a LINK to the motion based map.

The Nelson Naked Crit

Brynna is currently in training for her first official naked crit.

She got the trike from her Grammie and Grampa Lucas for Christmas and without fail, if she's getting some naked time around the house, she immediately heads for the trike. Not sure whats going on in that little head of hers but she's not happy until we've given her a few laps around the house in the buff.

construction site

As you'll notice, we're working on a new header for the blog. You'll also notice that we haven't quite got the bugs worked out yet. Please bear with us during this messy process.

Thank you.

The management.

ps. You can find Jason's fine header in un-distorted form at the bottom of the page.

The commute

Finally managed to get a commute into work again today. I think its been about 2-3 weeks since I've been able to because of scheduling conflicts and such. Unfortunately, I felt like total dog doody the whole time but it was still nice to be out. If you're really bored, you can check out the gps map info at motionbased.com from the ride. The best way to view it is in the hybrid (map and satellite images). If the temps ever cool off again, I'll do the commute on the Dos Niner so that I can map out the trails on the way in. One of these days but right now, the woods are in a perpetual mud season. F'in global warming. Some people dig the warmer temps but this 40 degree bull just doesn't cut it. Lots of rain and not warm temps to dry things out leads to no mountain biking. Plus, riding in the snow and ice is damn cool.

Speaking of which, Saturday saw me on an interesting road ride. The plan was to ride to Marcy's mother's place to visit with her brother who was up from S.C. for the week. About 30mins into the ride it started to snow like a mofo. Not a heavy snow but a really small particle (sort of sand like) snow which quickly made the roads very slick. Slick enough that I was afraid to use the brakes for fear of my 23c road tires slipping and sending me to the pavement. With much care, I was able to make it about 24 miles before Marcy mercilously caught up to me and swept me up in the rolling toaster on her way up. Thank god because it was getting mighty scary having to worry about my ass getting leveled by 2 tons of steel.


This pic is from about 5 minutes into the snow while there was still "some" traction. After this show, I was too worried about dying to bother taking any more.

From Ride to Party

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.